The Three Greenhorns
Encyclopedia
The Three Greenhorns were three Englishmen, Samuel Brighouse, William Hailstone and John Morton, who were the first white settlers in the area known today as Vancouver's West End
. They were so-called because they bought land for what was believed to be an inflated price thus earning the nickname of “Three Greenhorn Englishmen".
, Huddersfield
, England
. They lived close to a public house by the name of The Spotted Cow, which was owned by Samuel Brighouse who had a son, also Samuel, born in 1836. The Mortons were pot-makers, having originally moved from Scotland in the 1580s to escape from religious persecution. They settled in Salendine Nook because of a particular type of clay which was good for making pots. John and Samuel were cousins. In 1862, they decided to sail for Canada
to join in the Caribou Gold Rush and met William Hailstone on the voyage. In June of that year, they arrived at the place that today is Vancouver.
With his friends Samuel Brighouse and William Hailstone, Morton tried prospecting in the Caribou gold fields
. They made two trips, walking a distance of some 1,400 miles. Although unsuccessful in their main endeavour, Morton chanced upon a profitable side-line in selling horseshoe nails. A blacksmith in the outlying territory had run out of nails, and Morton saved the day by producing twenty-two nails from his outfit and making the sum of twenty-two dollars in the process. The three friends returned to the small settlement of New Westminster to ponder their next move.
and then Coal Harbour
. He found little of value in the soil: most of the coal seam and clay deposit had been washed away.
But the situation of the land at Burrard Inlet
, overlooking a natural deep water harbour, so impressed Morton and his friends that they set about making enquiries about purchasing it. They discovered that it had neither been staked not surveyed, and so they acquired 180 acres each, the maximum stake permissible under the law of the time, bought for $550.75. The lot contained what later became the West End district of Vancouver. By Christmas 1862, they had cleared a small part of the land and created a log cabin, much to the derision of the local inhabitants who christened them "The Three Greenhorns". It was even suggested that the colonial government had deliberately placed a shiny piece of coal in the shop window with the intention of enticing someone like Morton to buy the land. Although their investment in this remote piece of forest was considered a futile one, there was another person who was interested in the land. Robert Burnaby
made a claim that he had obtained the original preemption for the property, but his claim was dismissed by the court. Judge Chartres Brew
condemned the documents Burnaby produced as forgeries, saying that they were "obviously written by a liar or a knave."
The cabin was situated on a bluff above the sea. The greenhorns turned their hand to raising cattle and becoming brick makers. Only one of them remained in the cabin a month at a time, while the others went to work in New Westminster. But the brickmaking business failed - in a country where wood was in plentiful supply, bricks were not in great demand at that time, the clay was of poor quality and New Westminster was too far away to transport large quantities of bricks to. There was the solitude, too, which on one occasion made John Morton feel very exposed. He was woken at night by noises outside the cabin. Getting dressed, he went to take a look and saw a gathering of Indians chanting and the body of a woman hanging from a tree. Next day he reported the matter to the police in New Westminster and an investigation revealed that the dead woman had killed a baby and been hanged for murder.
(also shown on some maps as Coal Island) to Brighouse for $5, but Brighouse declined in the belief that they already had plenty of land. In 1865, Morton rowed across to the island and was fascinated to find hundreds of red cedar boxes perched in the upper branches of the trees. But going to touch one of the boxes, he found it fragile and it crumbled easily, showering him with the bones of a long-deceased Indian. The boxes contained the bones of Sḵwxwú7mesh Indians and when Morton made enquries with the chief of the tribe, he was told that the island had been the site of a massacre in which some 200 tribesmen had been killed. Morton quickly changed his mind about buying the island.
In 1886, they were persuaded to donate one third of the property to the Canadian Pacific Railway
(CPR) as an incentive for them to build a railway through to Coal Harbour, hoping that this might bring people to the area to buy the lots. By the time CPR had made it to Gastown
, however, the "Three Greenhorns" had parted ways, feeling that they had been cheated. Morton went to California in search of gold, and Brighouse went to farm in Richmond
. Hailstone had sold his interest to Brighouse for a $20 gold piece, several sacks of flour worth $5 and an Indian pony with a string halter worth $25, and returned to England.
Entrepreneur John McDougall
was contracted to clear a large part of the Three Greenhorns' "Liverpool Estate." He was known as "Chinese McDougall" because the Chinese labourers he used to do this. But in February 1887 the Chinese workers were attacked by an angry mob who burned their homes and forced them to leave town.
In 1887, the lots began to sell, with prices from $350 to $1,000, as people realised the potential of the area. With CPR building rail lines, a hotel was going up, roads were being laid through the area plus the establishment of Stanley Park, lots began to move quickly. By 1888, the area was gaining respectability and had swiftly become an attractive investment to wealthy and elite buyers with fine views across Burrard Inlet and a reasonable distance from the smelly warehouses of Gastown.
marks the site of the Greenhorns’ log cabin. At 22 stories and a height of 341 feet, the building overlooks the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The West End of Vancouver neighbours Stanley Park and the areas of Yaletown
, Coal Harbour and the downtown financial and central business districts.
On his return to England, Hailstone married and had two daughters. He then returned to the Vancouver area and remitted his earnings home, but his wife died and left everything to their daughters. He returned to Yorkshire and, according to rumour, he died after falling down stairs and breaking his neck.
Morton's first wife was Jane Ann Bailey of Blackpool, England, but she died in childbirth. In 1881 Morton was subsisting on doing odd jobs such as ditch digger and milk roundsman. The money left to him by Jane enabled him to retain his part in the Brickmaker's Claim. He married Ruth Mount, set up a brickmaking business in Clayburn, part of the town of Abbotsford
, and farmed at a place called Mission
. It was here on 13 June 1886 that his family saw the Great Vancouver Fire
burning in the distance. True to his Baptist roots, he donated $1,000 towards the site for a new Baptist church in Vancouver and laid the cornerstone of the church in 1910. When he died in 1912, he left an estate valued at approximately £154,000.
West End, Vancouver
The West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is on the downtown peninsula neighbouring Stanley Park and the areas of Yaletown, Coal Harbour and the downtown financial and central business districts....
. They were so-called because they bought land for what was believed to be an inflated price thus earning the nickname of “Three Greenhorn Englishmen".
Early lives
Born in 1835, John Morton was from a family of eight brothers and sisters in Salendine NookSalendine Nook
Salendine Nook is a district of Huddersfield to the north-west of Huddersfield in the English county of West Yorkshire.Bordered to the north-east by Laund Hill, Weather Hill and Low Hill and to the south-west by the natural scar of Longwood Edge, above the suburb of Longwood...
, Huddersfield
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. They lived close to a public house by the name of The Spotted Cow, which was owned by Samuel Brighouse who had a son, also Samuel, born in 1836. The Mortons were pot-makers, having originally moved from Scotland in the 1580s to escape from religious persecution. They settled in Salendine Nook because of a particular type of clay which was good for making pots. John and Samuel were cousins. In 1862, they decided to sail for Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
to join in the Caribou Gold Rush and met William Hailstone on the voyage. In June of that year, they arrived at the place that today is Vancouver.
Caribou Goldfields
Cariboo Gold Rush
The Cariboo Gold Rush was a gold rush in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Although the first gold discovery was made in 1859 at Horsefly Creek, followed by more strikes at Keithley Creek and Antler Horns lake in 1860, the actual rush did not begin until 1861, when these discoveries were...
. They made two trips, walking a distance of some 1,400 miles. Although unsuccessful in their main endeavour, Morton chanced upon a profitable side-line in selling horseshoe nails. A blacksmith in the outlying territory had run out of nails, and Morton saved the day by producing twenty-two nails from his outfit and making the sum of twenty-two dollars in the process. The three friends returned to the small settlement of New Westminster to ponder their next move.
The Brickmaker's Claim
One day, Morton was passing by a shop window in the settlement when he saw a lump of coal for sale in the window. In a later newspaper report it was recorded that "his interest was specially excited". Coal was a rare commodity in those parts, the only available fuel being wood. But most of all, the sight had triggered his interest as a potter: he knew that a certain kind of clay used in pot-making was usually found near coal deposits. He entered the shop and on asking the shopkeeper where the coal had come from was pointed in the direction of a native who was disappearing down the road. Morton hurried after the Indian, caught up with him and made arrangements to visit the coal seam. Taking a guide, he first visited False CreekFalse Creek
False Creek is a short inlet in the heart of Vancouver. It separates downtown from the rest of the city. It was named by George Henry Richards during his Hydrographic survey of 1856-63. Science World is located at its eastern end and the Burrard Street Bridge crosses its western end. False Creek is...
and then Coal Harbour
Coal Harbour
Coal Harbour is the name for a section of Burrard Inlet lying between Vancouver, Canada's downtown peninsula and the Brockton Peninsula of Stanley Park...
. He found little of value in the soil: most of the coal seam and clay deposit had been washed away.
But the situation of the land at Burrard Inlet
Burrard Inlet
Burrard Inlet is a relatively shallow-sided coastal fjord in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Formed during the last Ice Age, it separates the City of Vancouver and the rest of the low-lying Burrard Peninsula from the slopes of the North Shore Mountains, home to the communities of West...
, overlooking a natural deep water harbour, so impressed Morton and his friends that they set about making enquiries about purchasing it. They discovered that it had neither been staked not surveyed, and so they acquired 180 acres each, the maximum stake permissible under the law of the time, bought for $550.75. The lot contained what later became the West End district of Vancouver. By Christmas 1862, they had cleared a small part of the land and created a log cabin, much to the derision of the local inhabitants who christened them "The Three Greenhorns". It was even suggested that the colonial government had deliberately placed a shiny piece of coal in the shop window with the intention of enticing someone like Morton to buy the land. Although their investment in this remote piece of forest was considered a futile one, there was another person who was interested in the land. Robert Burnaby
Robert Burnaby
Robert Burnaby was amerchant, politician and civil servant in British Columbia. The city of Burnaby, British Columbia is named for him, as well as at least ten other urban and geographical features, including a mountain, a lake, a park, a Queen Charlotte Island and a street in Vancouver.Burnaby...
made a claim that he had obtained the original preemption for the property, but his claim was dismissed by the court. Judge Chartres Brew
Chartres Brew
Chartres Brew was a Gold commissioner, Chief Constable and judge in the Colony of British Columbia, later a province of Canada....
condemned the documents Burnaby produced as forgeries, saying that they were "obviously written by a liar or a knave."
The cabin was situated on a bluff above the sea. The greenhorns turned their hand to raising cattle and becoming brick makers. Only one of them remained in the cabin a month at a time, while the others went to work in New Westminster. But the brickmaking business failed - in a country where wood was in plentiful supply, bricks were not in great demand at that time, the clay was of poor quality and New Westminster was too far away to transport large quantities of bricks to. There was the solitude, too, which on one occasion made John Morton feel very exposed. He was woken at night by noises outside the cabin. Getting dressed, he went to take a look and saw a gathering of Indians chanting and the body of a woman hanging from a tree. Next day he reported the matter to the police in New Westminster and an investigation revealed that the dead woman had killed a baby and been hanged for murder.
Deadman's Island
A government surveyor who was surveying the boundaries of the Bricklayer's Claim, offered a small island in the bay known as Deadman's IslandDeadman's Island (Vancouver)
Deadman Island is a 3.8 ha island to the south of Stanley Park in Coal Harbour in Vancouver, British Columbia. The indigenous Sḵwxwú7mesh name is "skwtsa7s", meaning simply "island." Officially designated "Deadman Island" by the Geographical Names Board of Canada in 1937. it is commonly referred to...
(also shown on some maps as Coal Island) to Brighouse for $5, but Brighouse declined in the belief that they already had plenty of land. In 1865, Morton rowed across to the island and was fascinated to find hundreds of red cedar boxes perched in the upper branches of the trees. But going to touch one of the boxes, he found it fragile and it crumbled easily, showering him with the bones of a long-deceased Indian. The boxes contained the bones of Sḵwxwú7mesh Indians and when Morton made enquries with the chief of the tribe, he was told that the island had been the site of a massacre in which some 200 tribesmen had been killed. Morton quickly changed his mind about buying the island.
New Liverpool
The land originally known as the Brickman's Claim was later renamed "New Liverpool" by investors keen to develop the area. The Greenhorns tried to sell the land as lots, claiming New Liverpool would soon be a major city, but intially they had had no success.In 1886, they were persuaded to donate one third of the property to the Canadian Pacific Railway
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...
(CPR) as an incentive for them to build a railway through to Coal Harbour, hoping that this might bring people to the area to buy the lots. By the time CPR had made it to Gastown
Gastown
Gastown is a national historic site in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the northeast end of Downtown adjacent to the Downtown Eastside. Its historical boundaries were the waterfront , Columbia Street, Hastings Street, and Cambie Street, which were the borders of the 1870 townsite survey, the proper...
, however, the "Three Greenhorns" had parted ways, feeling that they had been cheated. Morton went to California in search of gold, and Brighouse went to farm in Richmond
Richmond, British Columbia
Richmond is a coastal city, incorporated in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Part of Metro Vancouver, its neighbouring communities are Vancouver and Burnaby to the north, New Westminster to the east, and Delta to the south, while the Strait of Georgia forms its western border...
. Hailstone had sold his interest to Brighouse for a $20 gold piece, several sacks of flour worth $5 and an Indian pony with a string halter worth $25, and returned to England.
Entrepreneur John McDougall
John McDougall
John McDougall was the first lieutenant governor of California from 1849 to 1851, and later the second governor of California from January 9, 1851 until January 8, 1852.-Biography:...
was contracted to clear a large part of the Three Greenhorns' "Liverpool Estate." He was known as "Chinese McDougall" because the Chinese labourers he used to do this. But in February 1887 the Chinese workers were attacked by an angry mob who burned their homes and forced them to leave town.
In 1887, the lots began to sell, with prices from $350 to $1,000, as people realised the potential of the area. With CPR building rail lines, a hotel was going up, roads were being laid through the area plus the establishment of Stanley Park, lots began to move quickly. By 1888, the area was gaining respectability and had swiftly become an attractive investment to wealthy and elite buyers with fine views across Burrard Inlet and a reasonable distance from the smelly warehouses of Gastown.
The West End
The West End grew up on the Brickmaker's Claim as "high class" residential housing, although this declined with the development of Shaugnessy by the CPR in 1911. Today, Vancouver's art-deco Marine BuildingMarine Building
The Marine Building is a skyscraper located at 355 Burrard Street in Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada near the Financial District, designed by McCarter Nairne and Partners. It is renowned for its Art Deco details....
marks the site of the Greenhorns’ log cabin. At 22 stories and a height of 341 feet, the building overlooks the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The West End of Vancouver neighbours Stanley Park and the areas of Yaletown
Yaletown
Yaletown is an area of Downtown Vancouver approximately bordered by False Creek, Robson, and Homer Streets. Formerly a heavy industrial area dominated by warehouses and rail yards, since the Expo 86, it has been transformed into one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the city...
, Coal Harbour and the downtown financial and central business districts.
Later lives
In 1864 Brighouse purchased almost 700 acres of land in the area that would become the town of Richmond and became a man of considerable wealth. After farming in the district, he returned to Vancouver in 1881. He became an alderman in 1887, having been involved in obtaining the City Charter. In 1911 he returned to England and died there two years later.On his return to England, Hailstone married and had two daughters. He then returned to the Vancouver area and remitted his earnings home, but his wife died and left everything to their daughters. He returned to Yorkshire and, according to rumour, he died after falling down stairs and breaking his neck.
Morton's first wife was Jane Ann Bailey of Blackpool, England, but she died in childbirth. In 1881 Morton was subsisting on doing odd jobs such as ditch digger and milk roundsman. The money left to him by Jane enabled him to retain his part in the Brickmaker's Claim. He married Ruth Mount, set up a brickmaking business in Clayburn, part of the town of Abbotsford
Abbotsford, British Columbia
Abbotsford is a Canadian city located in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, adjacent to Greater Vancouver. It is the fifth largest municipality in British Columbia, home to 123,864 people . Its Census Metropolitan Area, which includes the District of Mission, is the 23rd largest in Canada,...
, and farmed at a place called Mission
Mission, British Columbia
Mission, the core of which was formerly known as Mission City, is a district municipality in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It is situated on the north bank of the Fraser River overlooking the City of Abbotsford and with that city is part of the Central Fraser Valley. Mission is the...
. It was here on 13 June 1886 that his family saw the Great Vancouver Fire
Great Vancouver Fire
The Great Vancouver Fire was a conflagration that destroyed most of the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on 13 June 1886. The fire began as a brush fire to clear land between present-day Main and Cambie Streets that was spread out of control by a strong gale...
burning in the distance. True to his Baptist roots, he donated $1,000 towards the site for a new Baptist church in Vancouver and laid the cornerstone of the church in 1910. When he died in 1912, he left an estate valued at approximately £154,000.