Last October this column featured a brief outline of Hustonville, near the present village of Moorefield.
That hamlet is the best example of a settlement of some significance that has entirely vanished. A close second on that list would be Hollen, also in the former Maryborough Township, a few miles southwest of Drayton and just a stone’s throw from the Peel-Maryborough town line.
Like Hustonville, Hollen’s period of prosperity lasted barely 20 years. Founded in 1850 by Hugh Hollingshead, the hamlet immediately became the trading centre for a large portion of Peel and Maryborough Townships. For a few years it was of greater importance than Drayton. Decline set in during the 1870s, when trade increasingly diverted to Drayton and its railway station. From then it was a slow and painful death for Hollen.
Hollingshead commissioned the first survey of town lots, and lent his name to the new village. There were alternated spellings of the village name – both Hollin and Hollen were used well into the 20th century. The post office used the latter spelling, and that eventually became the preferred version.
There is some confusion in historical records over the precise dates of events during the first few years of Hollen. Hollingshead built a sawmill, perhaps in 1851, and put up the first bridge, making the settlement readily accessible to Peel and Maryborough. The following year another settler, Sam Robertson, was conducting a general store. The potential of the village impressed postal authorities. They authorized an office there, which opened on Mar. 6, 1852, only six months after the office at Drayton commenced business. Robertson received the appointment as postmaster.
By 1853 Hollingshead had a flour mill in operation and was turning out shingles at the sawmill. A dam on the Conestogo supplied water power to run all the equipment. Other businesses followed in the mid-1850s: two more stores, two hotels, a potash operation, plus the usual tradesmen who gathered in promising 19th century villages: a blacksmith, a wagon maker, a tailor, and a shoemaker. The township erected a school in 1854, and both the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches put up buildings.
The area surrounding Hollen was originally covered with some of the finest hardwood forest in the province, with maple, oak, beech, elm, and butternut. The nuts grew in such profusion that they supplied a portion of winter nutrition for the early settlers. Some of the hardwoods were so immense that a tree could yield four or five cords of firewood. Had there been adequate transportation in the 1850s, those trees would have been valuable. Most went for firewood.
In the first years, much of the trade was conducted on a barter system. The mill, for example, ground wheat in return for one-twelfth of the flour. By the late 1850s, that had largely changed. The grain market by then was conducted on a cash basis, and the farmers produced sufficient grain that most flour was exported, rather than staying in the area. Cash received by farmers at the mill percolated through the other businesses in the village. The multiplier effect boosted business activity in the hamlet.
During the 1860s, Hollen was the terminal of a daily stage line from Elora, on a route through Alma, Bosworth, and Drayton. For a time, Hollen connected with Glen Allan and Elmira on another stage line. Hollen seemed destined to become a major trading centre for the area.
The population, in 1870, hit the 400 mark, not far behind Drayton, the other large centre in the area and Hollen’s rival for dominance of local trade.
The businesses in Hollen in 1870, when the hamlet was at its peak, show that it had a well-rounded business sector. The key business at that time, of course, was the flour mill, operated in 1870 by Charles Hahnel. Robert Daly’s cooper shop supplied the barrels then used to ship flour out by wagon. Robert Patterson operated the sawmill complex. Other small industries were the Mannell & Sons tannery, Alex Preston’s wagon shop, and Joe Billing’s carding mill. Construction was then a major activity, as farmers put up large barns and replaced their original houses with more impressive structures. Jim Clark manufactured bricks. E.W. Scrigley was the major building contractor, and construction activity also supported a mason, three carpenters, and a tinsmith.
Three general stores, and for a while, four of them, dominated the retail sector. In that respect Hollen lagged behind Drayton, which then boasted five general stores, plus some specialized retailers: two grocers and a druggist. Hollen though, had three hotels compared to the two in Drayton.
That was probably due to its position as the terminus of the stagecoach line: travellers would stay overnight at Drayton before proceeding to their final destination. But their barrooms also did well, serving the notorious Maryborough forty-rod whiskey to thirsty patrons at five cents per tumbler. A patron feeling generous could treat everyone in the bar for a flat 25 cents, no matter how many men were present.
The retail sector also included two tailors and a shoemaker. Three blacksmith shops competed for the rural trade. Three doctors, John P. Brown, Hampden Fell, and Hugh Maudesley, conducted their practices in Hollen, and served a huge rural area. There were also two produce and commodity dealers, T.R. Baker and Thomas Rolls, who purchased grain and livestock, and who dominated the short-lived monthly cattle market in Hollen.
The construction of the Wellington, Grey & Bruce Railway through Drayton doomed Hollen as a country market town. Drayton’s new station handled the bulk of the 1872 crop, and over the next decade, most of the businesses in Hollen closed and their proprietors moved on to other centres.
One of them was Sam Robertson, the first postmaster, who had been closely associated with the growth of Hollen. In 1873, he moved up the railway to Harriston, where he operated a grain dealership and invested in other businesses. Four years later he opened a private bank there, which did business as the Bank of Harriston.
The flour mill seems to have shut down in the 1870s, perhaps as the result of a washout of its dam across the river. The dam had been a problem since the day it was built. It was very vulnerable to floods, and required rebuilding to some extent almost annually. Its demise accelerated the decline of Hollen. By the early 1880s Hollen had shrunk from 400 people to about 100.
The post office shut its door in 1914 with the introduction of rural mail delivery. The last of the stores lasted a decade longer, suffering as farmers no longer needed to go to the hamlet for their mail. By 1950, the only activity in the hamlet centred on the United Church and the school. Many of the old houses and businesses were crumbling piles of rubble.
Part of the site of the village, which had contained 150 lots and eight streets, fell victim to the rising waters of the lake following the completion of the Conestogo Dam in 1955. Work crews demolished several of the remaining buildings, and a Canadian army artillery exercise took care of others.
During the late 1950s and 1960s, several new cottages went up along the shore of the lake in the vicinity of old Hollen.
But virtually all signs of the old town are consigned to history. Hollen briefly had a professional photographer in the late 1860s, but none of his views of Hollen from that time seem to have survived. We can only imagine the heady days of Hollen and its boom years a century and a half ago.