1144 Barkway Road

Lot 16 Concession 12

Goose Tracks Quilt Square

Crown land granted to Samuel McCord on March 19, 1881. There were various owners after this time and on October 25, 1910 the Heffern family sold to William Lowe.

The Lowe family first resided in Lewisham and then moved to Barkway. They built this house around 1900. It was the first brick home in this community and was called ‘The Willows’. William Lowe and his son Jack built it and hauled all the bricks by horse and cart from Bracebridge, 17 miles away.

William Lowe devoted a good deal of time to township affairs. He did much to improve our roads, removing the old wooden bridges and replacing them with cement bridges. These wooden structures were low and often floated away when the water was high in the spring. He later became a Colonization Roads Inspector and later took over as the Superintendent of bridge building, just as roads were being built throughout Muskoka in the 1920’s.

Jack, his son, purchased the property from his Father and Mother on July 17, 1942 and lived there most of his life with his wife Maude and children. Jack’s daughter Mildred Rowe says that she remembers ‘when we would have at least two squares at a time for square dances in our house. We had a lot of fun.”

Prior owners  state “a new owner before us dug out a basement and rewired and re-plumbed the house in 1971. That owner later sold the house to Kilbournes. A five acre and a two acre lot were sold for residences from the NE and SE sections of the 100 acre property in the 1970’s. The Kilbournes used the property to grow Christmas trees – hence the plentiful Scotch Pines on the property.”

This is a private residence without public access to the property.