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Lot 28, Concession 7 was granted by the Crown to King’s College (the pre-cursor of the University of Toronto) in 1828. In 1839, the west 100 acres were sold to William Lee, an Irish immigrant who was residing on the property at the time of Walton’s Directory of 1837. According to the census of 1851, Alexander Lee, a son, was living on the property with his widowed mother, Jane in a one storey log house. By the time of the 1861 census, Alexander Lee had married Mary Hamilton and this farming family lived in a one and a half storey stone house along with Thomas Lee, Alexander’s younger brother. Based on the census records, the stone house was built some time between 1851 and 1861, so a date of construction of c.1855 is proposed. Alexander Lee was the long-time steward of Peach’s Primitive Methodist Church.
William H. Lee inherited the property in 1876, and owned it until 1884. The farm passed through the ownership of the Boynton, Evans, Peach and Burkholder families until it was purchased in 1919 by Charles and Florence Leadbetter, English immigrants. Charles was a farmer, according to the 1921 census, practicing mixed farming. In England, he and his brother John were butchers on the estate of the Earl Ferres in Stowe-by-Chartley. In 1922, Charles and John Leadbetter opened a butcher shop at 120 Main Street North in Markham Village, establishing a family business that endured until 1998. The Leadbetters purchased the building that housed their butcher shop in 1924 from Thomas Lowry, a Markham Village livery operator. Thomas Lowry in turn purchased the Leadbetter farm that same year. Some of the later owners of the stone farmhouse at 11137 McCowan Road included the Drudge, Crisp, Risebrough and Ferguson families.
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