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Joseph Reesor sold Joseph Henderson Village Lots 9 and 10, Block D, Plan 18 in 1835. A two storey frame house was constructed on the property. The building was shown on Markham Village Plan 18, with what appears to be a shop attached to the south end. Joseph Henderson was a shoemaker. By the time of the 1861 census, his occupation was given as “gentleman” – meaning a retired person. Joseph Henderson Jr., a son of Joseph and Sarah Henderson, also lived here and was a school teacher, based on the Markham Village Directory of 1866. In 1887, the property was sold to Charles S. Billing, a carriage-maker born in Quebec. An archival photograph shows the house in its early, possibly original roughcast stucco cladding, with an enclosed porch with a balcony door over top. That door is still visible on the front façade. In the 1970s, the old house was converted to a print room by Lionel Clarke, who remodeled the building in the “mock Tudor” style. In the 1980s, a pub known as the Duchess of Markham opened here and is a long-established business in Markham Village. |