Heritage Register
Fernwood

1209 Yukon Street
(ex-3, then 1209 Whittaker Rd)

Built 1892
Heritage-Designated 2019

For: William Whittaker

ARCHITECTURE:

This is the first of four almost identical houses (1213, 1217 & 1221 Yukon St) built by William Whittaker (1201-03 Yukon St). It is a two-storey, hip-roofed vernacular Italianate which lacks the usual eaves brackets. It has a hip-roofed extension to the rear. Unlike its neighbours, which have corbelled chimneys, 1209 has two external brick through-the-roof chimneys on the right side. The façade has an asymmetrical, hipped roof above a single-storey box bay on the right and a porch on the left. The porch has an unusual chamfered square post with decorative brackets that echo the eaves brackets on 1201-03. The balustrade has solid balusters with cutouts. The cladding is drop siding, with vertical siding below the water table.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Tenants: 1892-93: Widow Agnes Jackson Wooton (b. Danville, QC, c.1866) was the daughter of the Rev. Robert Hall and Jessie Smith who died two weeks apart in 1883 of pneumonia. [The Smiths, born and married in Ontario, came here in 1877. Robert was the First Presbyterian preacher, and the grand chaplain of the Masonic Lodge.] In 1885 Agnes Smith married Henry Homewood Wootton (b. Victoria 1864-1890), a senior clerk at the land registry office. [Henry’s parents were Henry and Eliza Wootton. His father Henry came to Victoria with the HBC on the SS Labouchere in 1859, and was Victoria’s postmaster from 1861-75.] In August 1890, in nursing Agnes through typhoid, Henry himself contracted the disease and died at age 26.

By 1891 Agnes’ younger sister Frances Amelia Smith (b. Rosemont, QC, 1871-1947) was boarding with Agnes and her two children. In 1892 Frances was a monitress, then a teacher at Spring Ridge Ward School. On December 23rd, 1893, she married Agnes’s brother-in-law, barrister Edward Ernest Wootton (1865-1944).

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

1894-95: Edward and Francis Wootton were the tenants; also in the house were Agnes Wootton, her children, and their servant Miss Sarah McKibbon. Edward was called to the BC Bar in 1888, and was in the partnership McPhillips, Wootton & Barnard (1462 Rockland Av, Rockland) from 1890-1904, then with Bernard Goodwin Goward until 1915. Edward and Frances’s son Robert Alexander Burnie Wootton went into partnership with him in the 1920s, and founded the Wootton Scholarship in Law at University of Victoria in 1976. Robert’s daughter Anna Frances was called to the Bar in 1954 and went into partnership with her father. Edward was also involved in various businesses, including the Osoyoos and Okanagan Railway Co, and the Nelson Water-works Co with Robert S. Day (806 Dereen Pl, Rockland). He was one of the founding members of the Arion Choir in 1892.

1896-1901: Joseph Frederick Sallaway (b.1859) and Esther Ann Martin (b.1860) immigrated from England in 1887. Joseph was a school teacher. From 1908-1912 the Sallaways lived at 1225 Yukon St (demolished). 1902-11: Marine engineer Andrew Townsley (1852-1924) and Rachael Amelia (née Carter, 1854-1932) came to BC from Montreal c.1885.
1912-16: John S. McKee, foreman carpenter for Westholme Lumber Co. 1918-20: Jesse Marion (née Jenkins, b. Bristol, ENG, 1878-1950), widow of Stafford Horne (b. Berwick-on-Tweed, SCT, 1861-1917), and her offspring: Logger and building contractor Thomas Stafford and Lily Victoria. Jesse came to Canada in 1881 and she and Stafford lived in Illinois in the early 1900s. By 1908 Stafford was a salesman in Victoria with his brother Thomas Henderson Horne at Bannerman & Horne, flour, feed & seed merchants at 635-37 Johnson St. He was also a miner, mariner and rancher.

1921-23: Newfoundland native Alice Hickman, the widow of Capt Robert Forsey Hickman, and her daughter Alice, a BC Telephone operator. Robert and Alice had their children in Newfoundland, and Halifax, NS, before coming to BC. In 1911 Robert was a schooner captain. He died in 1920 on the CPR SS Princess Charlotte, a ferry, on his regular crossing to Vancouver. 1924: Brothers William, Charles and Albert Rivers, who had lived in 1201-03 Yukon St in 1923. 1925-31: Edith Jensen, the widow of J. Jensen.

1932-41: William Baxter Caird (b. Kirremuir, SCT, 1891-1971) and Martha (née Morwood, b. Glasgow, SCT, 1895-1980), and their sons, ironworker David George and John Baxter. They came to Canada c.1916 and BC c.1924. From the early 1930s William was an ironworker and coopersmith with Simister Art Metal Works at 2007 Government St, owned by Norman Marsden Simister, Industrial Arts teacher at SJ Willis School from 1937-58. William took over the company in 1940 and renamed it Victoria Art Metals, ornamental iron and brass workers. By 1943 he had shut it down and William and David were both working as shipbuilders for VMD, where their talents were put to good use in the war effort. David later worked in construction. John was a pipe fitter in the shipyards.

1942-49: Farmer, then BCCSS dock office janitor Edmund Henry Lindley (b. Yorkshire, ENG, 1876-1959), Victoria “Mabel” (née Brookes, b. ENG, 1884-1960) and their daughters H. Lorraine, a saleswoman with Metropolitan Stores, then Woolworths, and Mabel I., a driver with Northwestern Creamery. Edmund married the widowed Mabel Edwards in 1920 in Victoria. He retired in 1946, and by 1949 Mrs. Mabel Lindley was a maid at the Windermere Hotel, but still living at home with her husband.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Fernwood History

• Fernwood Heritage Register

• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume One: Fernwood & Victoria West