Nicholas Sparks, The Prince of Bytown

Nicholas Sparks was an Irish immigrant who became one of Bytown’s leading citizen.  Leveraging connections with the Wrights, Sparks was the richest man in Bytown throughout the life of the settlement.  He married into the Wright family, feuded with John By and the Ordnance department, built political alliances with John A. MacDonald, and single-handedly created a high society for the frontier town on the Ottawa River.

Transcript

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Good day and welcome back to the Ottawa History Hub podcast. In recent weeks, we've been settling into life in early Bytown. We've learnt about the geography of the neighborhoods, the religions of the locals, and the economic conditions that regulated life for our locals. Today we're going to learn a little bit about the elites of the emerging town, particularly by looking at the life of one Nicholas Sparks, the first large landowner, moneylender, litigant, and hypergamist to leave his mark on Bytown. He actually arrived before John Bai, when the town was forest, not even a field. He was a power player throughout the Bytown era, and even sat on the town council for Bytown, and then the city council for Ottawa, once that was proclaimed, and still so when it became the capital of Canada. He arrived in the period of Upper and Lower Canada's and died in the period of Canada's west and east. He didn't quite make it to Ontario and Quebec, but he literally witnessed the entire life of Bytown. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography quips that he was more important for what he owned than for what he did, and I'm going to suggest that he was more important for what he represented. He represented a city emerging from the wilderness, an elite culture developing in a provincial backwater, and the earliest hints of a shift from a resource extraction economy of furs and lumber, to one of consumption, of real estate, investing, and commerce. Sparks was born in 1794 in Wexford County, south of Dublin. Also fun fact, this was the birthplace of William Lamport, the historical inspiration for Zorro a century before. Unlike the Irish laborers of Lowertown, Sparks was a born Protestant, and would not be one to show any proclivity to Irish camaraderie or hostility. Sparks' community beyond himself and his immediate family was limited and transactional. At the age of twenty, he left the lonely seagull calls of the Irish port for Lower Canada, and began his life anew in Montreal, where he met Ruggles Wright, the son of Philman Wright, and was recruited into the family business of P. Wright and Sons. He worked on the farms and community businesses of Columbia Falls, and the Wrights quickly identified his business acumen and his talent with numbers. After one year of working in town, he became a regular fixture of the St. Lawrence Runs, where he would join the family cohort of Ruggles and Phillman Jr., called Phil, on their regular trips to Montreal and Quebec City in order to sell their wares and resupply. One particular member of the family that he met at this time, with whom he would build an important relationship, was Sally Olmsted Wright, the wife of Phil. After five years of working for the Wrights, he knew that it was time to set out on his own. As he was an ambitious man and there's only so far he could go in Wrightsville, working for the Wrights, when his last name was not Wright, by which I mean not correct, or literally, the same as the ruling family. So it came to be that during the time of Governor General Dalhousie, that there were two hundred acres available in Lot C, Concession C, on the other side of the river, in Upper Canada. John Burroughs Honey, Surveyor Extraordinaire, was more than happy to facilitate the sale. For the low low price of just ninety pounds, the equivalent of about twenty three thousand of today's Canadian dollars, the lot would be his for farming. The land in question was rocky, swampy, and inland from the river, making access to irrigation and trade a bit of a difficulty. But for that price, you take your chances. The land in question would occupy the footprint of Wellington's south to Laurier and Bronson east to Waller at the University of Ottawa. At this point in time there was no canal to divide the land. To make the land an even more dubious prospect, he couldn't afford the ninety pounds and had to borrow it from old Filman himself. And that was just the start of his problems. You may recall in episode 9 The Squire of Hull, that Phillman Wright had bought land from someone that was only pretending to own the land, and that began a long procedure of lawsuits and acrimony between he the buyer, the government official who pretended to have the ability to sell the land, and the crown. You may also recall from episode 14, the Rideau Purchase, that the Crown bought traditional Algonquin territory from the Mississauga chieftains near Kingston, and then had to break the news to local algonquins of the deal that their fellow Anishnabe had struck. Well, I hope you like sequels and reruns because here we are again, where John Burroughs Honey didn't entirely have the authority to grant deed to the land, though he certainly took the money. Sparks bought the land in September of 1821, but did not receive title until 1823 for the south half and twenty-four for the northern half. Because of this he didn't officially own the land until June of twenty four, three years after he had paid and moved on to the lot. It would continue, and Sparks would have to pay Burroughs Honey and his wife an additional five shillings in eighteen thirty to finally close the contested ownership, nine years after the fiasco had begun. In the backdrop of the legal squabbles over ownership of the lot, lots happened, and happened quickly, particularly across the Ottawa in Columbia Falls. And for that, we'll have to reintroduce another orbit of the Wright family, Sarah Olmsted Wright. Sarah, whom everyone called Sally, was the daughter of Captain Gideon Olmsted, a fisherman turned smuggler during the American War of Independence. She was from Woburn, Massachusetts, the same town as Phillman, and his wife and second cousin Abigail. In eighteen oh eight, at the age of eighteen, she married Filman Wright Jr. This was a good opportunity to remind ourselves that Hull Township was settled by Americans looking for cheap land, not loyalists, and not French Canadians from elsewhere in Lower Canada. Phil and Sally had a fruitful marriage, living first in the White House with the rest of the Wright family, and then on the Gadino Farm, named after the Tegadino Zibi, the Tegadino River, known to us today as the Gatineau River. There they managed crops and livestock, Sally ran the region's first distillery, and more importantly, she also managed the farm's books. Together they had eight children. Their marriage was a happy and functional marriage, even though trade sent Phil away to Montreal and Quebec several times a year. It was on one of those trips in eighteen twenty one that Phil's carriage overturned near Grenville, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. The thirty one year old Sally now had a farm that she could manage, but not necessarily work, and eight children, aged between one and thirteen. In a small community like Columbia Falls, there would be compassion for her, and a willingness to support the eight young rights, but Sally's control over the farm and business was in question, to the point that it would seem as though she would now become a ward of the right family, as the widow of a beloved Scion. While women were able to legally own land in their own names in Lower Canada, the practicalities of the situation made that unlikely. But she struggled on alone for five years until eighteen twenty six. eighteen twenty six was a big year for Nicholas Sparks and Sally Olmsted Wright. In September, the choice of the location of the canal was decided upon, and the Wright family was committed to supplying the project with stone, lime, clay, mortar, food, rope, and any other supply they could possibly need. This marked the most significant commercial event in the history of this parcel of land before or since, with the possible exception of being named the capital in the future. Two months later, in November, Sally Olmsted Wright and Nicholas Sparks got married. Nicholas adopted all eight children, and the family moved across the river to the Sparks House. In addition to the Olmsted Wrights joining the Sparks House, Nicholas also joined the Wright House. He was a long-term friend of the family, now joined through marriage, and now stepfather to eight of Phillman's grandchildren. Over the years, Nicholas and Sally would add three more to the brood. For those of you keeping score at home, she popped out eleven healthy children over 20 years. In addition to marrying into such a prominent family, Sparks' land was now immensely valuable, as the canal was slated to drive right through it. Sparks had purchased small lots across the area for farms that never really provided much of a return on investment. But now the biggest public works project in the British Empire needed his land. Lieutenant Colonel John Bai was in charge of the Rideau Canal project and had the authority to expropriate land at his discretion. He also had funds to buy land, again at his own discretion. Sparks jumped ahead of the queue and gifted by 88 acres of land. This was intended to ensure that the canal would go through Sparks' land, meaning his now 112 remaining acres of grudging farmland was now canal adjacent, greatly increasing its value, and people were now moving into the area, greatly increasing the value of the land for sale and for lease. It also represented a short-term boost to the development of the land, because he could now charge by for the right to cut down trees for the canal from his land, clearing the land in the process. 1826 was a big year for Nicholas Sparks. In December of that year, he sold the remainder of his territory on what was to become the east bank of the canal, between the canal and what's now the Ottawa U campus for two hundred pounds as individual allotments for residencies. This land which he'd bought for ninety pounds, he just sold off a tenth of it for two hundred, balancing his books as a farmer and a debtor to his new father-in-law on the other side of the river. Unfortunately for Sparks, the cozy relationship between Bai and Wright didn't transfer across the river, despite Nicholas's magnanimous gift of the eighty eight acres. Sparks tried to sell his lease of Barracks Hill to Bai for 500 pounds, which Bai considered exorbitant, so he simply took the land by the authority of the Rideau Canal Act, and did not pay a penny for it. Bai even expropriated all of Sparks' land east of Biddy's Lane, modern day Elgin Street. Sparks would sue Bai and enter into litigation against the Ordnance Department for the next twenty years over this. It was at this point that Sparks gave up the ghost on farming as a sucker's game. Being at the mercy of the weather, commodity pricing in Montreal, and the power of great men like John Bai made the practice risky, whereas selling and renting land was safer and brought immediate and predictable rewards. Ironically, he even sold land to John Honeywell Burrows, a humble sixty six by ninety-nine foot parcel of the giant Lot C, which he had purchased for ninety pounds, went to the old surveyor for two hundred pounds, cash on the barrelhead. One of the major rewards that this brought to him was that his enterprise was no longer caught up in futures, his own debts and random acts of God. It now yielded a healthy harvest, not of wheat, not of corn, not of barley, but of cash. Even Filman Wright and Sons were caught up in barter and commodities, but Sparks became the only player in the area who was cash rich, aside from Colonel Bay himself, of course. Nicholas Sparks became a serial landlord, investor, and moneylender. This started to give him clout in the new settlement, but not enough to challenge Bai and the Ordnance Department as the main employer of the community. The officially unnamed settlement was even called Bytown by locals. Sparks wasn't about to find a jury sympathetic to a moneylender against the crown in these conditions. In eighteen twenty eight, he met with Thomas Mackay and agreed to part with a corner of land to be dedicated to God's good works, in the form of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. A rebuilt version of the church still stands at the corner of Kent and Wellington. In eighteen thirty two, being the ecumenical Protestant soul that he was, he gave up another piece of land, for the construction of Christchurch Cathedral, just west of St. Andrew's, on the very street where Nicholas himself lived. Later on, in forty eight, he would have that muddy street properly cobbled to be a pedestrian commercial area and imaginatively named it after himself as Sparks Street. Back in thirty nine, he met with Mackay again and donated land for Bytown's first courthouse and jail. Once the town had become adequately municipal to merit a break from Perth's orbit. In 45 he enlisted the services of the former member of Legislative Assembly for Bytown, Stuart Derbyshi, and Kingston Alderman, lawyer and future notable politician, John A. MacDonald, to finally and formally sue the Ordnance Department over the expropriated land that had gone into the canal and then left follow and unused for fifteen years. Because of Bai's disgrace and the lack of any serious return on invested capital by the Canal Project, not to mention Sparks' role as a community leader, the Crown found in favor of Sparks and awarded him twenty seven thousand pounds, so a little shy of eight million of today's dollars. While never really a civic minded player, he was elected to city council in 1847, and would continue, on and off, to represent his constituency of private capital, protecting their investment rights. While not affiliated with any political party, he dedicated his service to preventing the state from ever passing any law that would force him to do anything, such as pay taxes. It was a different time, and politics and policies were different to the point that making any comparison to modern political parties would be difficult. Most politicians of the eighteen hundreds would be considered shockingly racist, ignorant, corrupt, and small minded by today's standards. Spark's last big investment was in eighteen forty nine, when he had the westward market built, to be a more mannerly market, to compete with the byward market that catered to the lower town plebeians. It was built on the east side of Elgin Street, between Queen and Albert, where the National Arts Center now stands. As it turned out, middle class people did not do their own shopping, but sent their servants to do that, and those servants would get the best deals at Byward, so expensive middle class grocery stores would have to wait to have their time in the sun. The Westward Market went belly up, and Sparks donated the building to act as the first city hall. Sparks died in eighteen sixty two, owning four hundred and forty lots in Bytown, and yet was buried in St. James Cemetery across the river in Wrightstown. His wife Sally would be buried next to him thirty years later. Their son, Nicholas Jr., would continue in the family business of landlording. Their first daughter, Mary, would marry back into the Wright family, when she married lumber baron Alonzo, the King of the Gatineau Wright, the son of Tiberius Wright, her mother's first husband's brother. Their second daughter, Esther, married the superintendent of the Rideau Canal, James Dyson Slater, the namesake of Slater Street, in Nicholas's Lotsy Concession. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ottawa History Hub Podcast. Please subscribe and give a listen. Every Monday there's a new episode exploring a new aspect of early Ottawa. Next week we'll be looking at how the first police and fire service formed. Please take a minute to give the show a five-star rating and review if you feel so inclined. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to email me at OttawahistoryHub at gmail.com. Follow me on Facebook or Blue Sky as the Ottawa History Hub, or Twitter X as Otta History Hub. The website is OttawahistoryHub.com, and I'm the writer, researcher, producer, and performer, Brendan Ray. Until next week, advance Ottawa Ottawa!