Solving local history mysteries: Richmond Road's Aylen-Heney House

I've been slacking on the blog! Life has been busy, so my posting numbers have been down recently, but rest assured I've still been doing some history work as often as I can. I have a few posts that will be coming up soon.

The first of these is my article in the newest issue of the Kitchissippi Times. What I thought was going to be a relatively easy story to tell became my most intensive, my most frustrating, but also one of my most interesting research projects. I spent a lot of time trying to solve a lot of mysteries on the Aylen-Heney House, and for a month it felt like every time I thought I figured out one thing, two new mysteries would pop up. I never like to write (and especially publish) anything that I'm not fully confident in. One of my pet peeves with written history is when an author writes something to sound factual when it is based on guesses or hearsay. This is because, as soon as it is written.. it basically becomes fact, and will be referenced forever going forward (until someone takes the time to disprove, or new records emerge). In the case of writing an article about a house that is reputed to be potentially as old as 198 years, new records just don't emerge anymore.

Aylen-Heney House, present day

So with this article, I did what I could by digging deep into records. I took complicated assessment roll documents, land registry documents and Census data, and tried to piece together the story of the house from 1860 onwards. It wasn't easy because though the Aylen-Heney House is now on one identifiable small square of land, for most of its life (until the late 1940s), it basically stood in the middle of wide-open fields. Complicating things a little was the fact that other houses existed within the same parcel of land.. and when I say parcel of land, I mean a 100+ acre piece of land stretching from Richmond Road to Carling Avenue. Complicating things further is that the owner of that land, John Heney and later his son Frederick Heney, sold and reacquired bits and pieces of that land throughout the 19th century. And on top of this, several of the houses on the land were frequently or even exclusively occupied by harder-to-trace tenants, rather than the owners (including Aylen-Heney House). So to attempt to trace the history of a single structure from as early as 1821 to when records get a little more consistent in the early 1900s was painful.

I did not know when I started off the project, that the house was special. Inside the walls, there were originally two apartments. And those apartments were not on the same level (floor level and the second floor were at different heights). And only one side had a basement. And there were other architectural differences between the two halves. It's easy to look at the house from the street today and assume it's a nice square stone house that was built on that spot in the 19th century at some point... but the history of the house does not match that simple story. I set out to try to determine when the stone fronting went on the building, or when the rear addition may have been added.. but early on, realized I was also trying to figure out when the house had doubled in size, and did the two halves have previous lives before becoming the single "Aylen-Heney House".

Meeting Mrs. Liz Cotter was a stroke of luck. Mrs. Cotter is 87 years old, but has vivid memories of her family's time residing in one half of the house, from 1936 until 1990. I included several of her memories in the published article. It was a pleasure chatting with her, and meeting with her at her home in Belleville. Some of the tidbits she provided help tell the story, including about the old foundation of a house in the field next to the house (closer to Hilson Avenue). She joked that she was allowed to play anywhere in the vast fields around the house, but was strictly forbidden from going near or inside the old foundation close by. Aerial photos from the 1920s and 1930s shows that foundation sitting there...

Working backwards from the 1930s, I traced each of the residents of the house over time, and put together the story of who was living in the house, and used the annual assessed value of the house, and its roughly written location from various records to track any notable periods of changes. The one that stuck out was between 1906-1907, when suddenly residents of what had previously been two houses on the property were suddenly listed as sharing the same house. That house had also increased in value, un-proportional to other houses in the area during the same period. Previous to that date, census records had indicated the houses to be of wood or composite construction, never stone. And just a year or two prior to that period, the old Heney family home (Syringa Cottage) and its substantial stone wall were demolished. So putting the pieces together like a puzzle, the story began to come together.

Is it possible there are flaws in my assumptions? It's possible... but I feel that the story of the house is far better explained now than before. Where I frustratingly could not get clearer answers is back before the 1860s (before assessment roll and Census records exist). The majority of the house surely dates to at least 1860 (and the architecture and features of the house confirm that for sure), but prior to that is a mystery. Can we say the main portion of the house is the same from William Aylen's 1837 ad in the Bytown Gazette? Maybe! Can we say its the same log house that he built as early as 1821 when he arrived in Nepean Township? Maybe!! It would be nice if we could confirm it, and perhaps someday that may be possible.

The answers likely lie hidden within the walls. In 1989, Eric Cohen did perform a major renovation on the house, and at the time had planned a architectural assessment report to be written up for it (according to the heritage report written prior to the renovation). I did speak with Mr. Cohen who now lives out in Vancouver, and he did not recall if the report was made, and/or what the findings were within the walls (he was going to have a look for me though, so I may be able to update a little on this at some point in the near future). Even in the best-case scenario, concluding 100% that the house dates older than 1827 will be nearly impossible I think. (Doing so would mean it was older than the 1827 Commissariat building by the locks, home of the Bytown Museum; and perhaps older even the Foreman's House at Billings Estate, which is from 1823). It would be incredible if Kitchissippi could claim Ottawa's oldest structure... but I fear we'll have to just be satisfied with a "maybe".  :)

You can read my article here at:
https://kitchissippi.com/2019/02/04/aylen-heney-house-history-ottawa/

Aylen-Heney House on the newly-paved and widened
Richmond Road in 1930 (looking west)