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Manufacturers Index - Major Harper & Son
History
Last Modified: Jan 26 2023 12:39PM by Jeff_Joslin
If you have information to add to this entry, please contact the Site Historian.

In 1854, eighteen-year-old Major Harper acquired Whitby's first planing machine and established a business with partner Stephen Grose to make lumber and mouldings. Very shortly afterwards he founded a machine shop that began making woodworking machinery of his own design. Harper provided machinery to the area's sawmills and planing mills. He used his own machinery to make the woodwork for prominent local buildings, including the court house and the Grand Trunk Railway stations in the area.

In later years, until Harper's death in 1917, the company kept a fairly low profile but did a good business selling machinery, especially their "Eclipse" and "New Eclipse" planer-matchers, through Toronto distributor A. R. Williams Machinery Co., Ltd.


Ad from 1869 "Ontario Gazetteer and Directory"

Around 1869 or 1870 the machinery manufacturing business's name changed from Harper & Grose to Major Harper. By then the planing mill was operating under the name of Stephen Grose. At some point, probably in the late 1880s, Harper Machine Shop became Major Harper & Son to mark C. Ernest Harper's joining the business. It is uncertain how long the business lasted, probably until at least 1917, the year of Major Harper's death.

Information Sources

  • The 1869 Ontario Gazetteer and Directory has ads (see above) for "S. Grose, Steam Planing Mill" and "Harper & Grose, Manufacturers of Wood Working Machinery".
  • Conner & Coltson's Directory of the County of Ontario for 1869-7O has a couple of relevant listings in its section on Whitby:
    • MAJOR HARPER, prop. Steam Machine Shop, cor Perry and Mary
    • GROSE STEPHEN, Planing Mill proprietor, cor. Perry and Mary
  • Listed in Lovell's Canadian Dominion Directory for 1871: "HARPER, MAJOR, manufacturer of planing machines, sash and moulding machines, tennating machines, and all other kinds of wood working machines. Perry st".
  • October 1903 The Canada Lumberman, in an article on The Toronto Exhibition: "The exhibit of the A. R. Williams Machinery Company, Toronto, comprised a number of up-to-date wood and iron working machines such as are manufactured by Clark & Demill and McGregor, Gourlay & Company, of Gait, and Major Harper & Son,of Whitby. The lat- ter firm manufacture the " Eclipse" planer and matcher, a large number of which are in use in all parts of Canada. It is especially adapted for cutting small stuff, its construction and operation being such as to produce a perfectly square joint. Major Harper built the first planing machine ever made in Canda."
  • Charles Ernest Harper received a 1906 patent for a segmented planer feed-roll.
  • From the Gazette and Chronicle of Whitby, 1917-05-03 courtesy of Ken Harper:
    POLICE MAGISTRATE MAJOR HARPER PASSES AWAY
    OCCUPIED POSITION FOR 36 YEARS

    The oldest native resident of Whitby passed away on Friday April 27, when Major Harper died in his 83nd year after an illness of several weeks. Mr. Harper had been in failing health for several years, but his strong will to be active and busy kept him at his work and on his feet when one of less vigorous constitution and determination would have given in to illness. Although he had been subject to severe attacks of weakness for a considerable time, and would be confined to his bed on frequent occasions, he would surprise his friends by appearing again in a few days at business or on the bench in the Police Court. It was doubtless this bodily and mental vigor that made Mr. Harper, as he liked to say, the oldest native resident of the town.

    The late Mr. Harper was born in Whitby in November of the year 1835. He was a son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Walter Harper. The family lived at the time of Mr. Harper's birth in the house now owned and occupied by Mayor Warren on Dundas Street which had been built by Mr. Walter Harper, who was a contractor. With the exception of a few years in his boyhood days when he lived with his parents in East Whitby Township, Mr. Harper lived all his life in Whitby. An incident which makes the longevity of Mr. Harper's career seem more remarkable occurred while the family was living in Whitby. The nurse girl who was carrying him when a baby, fell through an unfinished floor in the attic right through to the cellar. The babe was injured so badly that his life was despaired of and until he was about twelve years of age he was in very delicate health. He developed, however, into a man of very robust though not large physique.

    On July 1st, 1854, the year of Whitby's incorporation as a town Mr. Harper commenced operating the first planing machine ever seen in this district, and has been building wood working machinery ever since. He and his father did all the machine and wood work of the Court House in Whitby and also on all the stations and freight sheds between Cobourg and Toronto when the main line of the GTR [Grand Truck Railroad] was built. His firm later became known as Major Harper & Son when his son Mr. Ernest Harper entered the business. It has established a reputation for manufacturing high class machinery and lately has been making shell machines.

    The late Mr. Harper was in the town council from 1868 to 1881 as councillor, reeve and mayor, holding the latter office for two years. In 1881 he was appointed police magistrate and held that office until his death, a period of 36 years. In the discharge of his duties he was always most fair and impartial and during his long years of experience he acquired a very detailed knowledge of the statutes of the criminal code. He was also a member of the Board of Education for twenty years, almost continuously, having retired only about four years ago.

    On November 4th, 1856, Mr. Harper was married to Miss Emeline Person who predeceased him nine years ago. Of the family two sons and one daughter survive; Mr. Irvil Harper of Chicago Ill., Miss Nellie Harper at home and Mr. C. E. Harper of Whitby, who has been in business with his father.

    The deceased gentleman was a great lover of flowers and the grounds adjoining his home have been the mecca of flower lovers in Whitby for years. Especially on roses was Mr. Harper an authority and his exhibits at the annual flower show always won first prizes.

    Mr. Harper was a Mason of over 50 years standing and was a past master of Composite Lodge No. 30 GRC AF and AM, Whitby.

    The funeral was held on Sunday afternoon when a very large concour of friends gathered at the home on Perry Street. The funeral service was conducted by Rev. A. H. Foster, pastor of the Methodist Tabernacle. The members of Composite Lodge accompanied by Masons from Pickering, Oshawa and Brooklin attended the funeral in a body, holding a service at the home and later conducting the burial service and the graveside in Union Cemetery.

    Mr. Harper's life has been a long and useful one and he will be much missed both in his own home and in the life of the town.

  • From the 1967-09-09 heritage supplement to the Whitby Free Press, provided to us by Ken Harper, "...Whitby dates back to the 1850s before Whitby was incorporated as a town by Walter Harper, a builder. His son, Major, became one of Canada's most noted designers of woodworking machinery. The younger Harper served as mayor of Whitby in 1879 and 1880. He designed and built all the machinery used to make mouldings and trim for the Ontario Court House, which is now the Whitby Centennial Building. A brass plaque bearing the name Major Harper & Son is mounted on the main building of Rousseau Heritage House today. This plaque itself was taken from an original old piece of woodworking machinery designed for the old saw mill at Tyrone, Ont. Harper's son Ernest was also mayor in 1918, 1920, and 1921." Later on, the article, which is about Rousseau Heritage House, says, "The main store, originally the Harper Machine Shop, was acquired by Louis Rousseau..."
  • An article on "Major Harper, police magistrate" from the 1886 book, A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography—Being Chiefly Men of the Time, edited by George MacLean Rose, and provided to us by Ken Harper, indicates that Major Harper's father died when Major was 13 (a fact confirmed by Ken Harper), and therefore Major could not have worked with his father as indicated in the obituary. Perhaps the "father" in that article was a step-father.
  • A web page from the Whitby Historical Society has the following:

    205 Perry St. (c.1950) was built in the 1850's by Major Harper, a machinist, who along with Stephen Gross, established a planing mill a block west at Brock St. in 1853. Thus equipped, he and his stepfather did all the woodwork in the new County Court House (#14) and all the Grand Trunk Railway Stations from Toronto to Cobourg which were built in 1856. Later, he operated a machine shop around the corner in what is now Rousseau’s Heritage House at 216 Mary St. E. Here, he developed new woodworking machinery and manufactured shells during the 1st World War. Harper was Whitby’s Police Magistrate from 1881 until his death in 1917."

  • The Whitby Public Library's Whitby Online Historic Photographs Collection provided the Major Harper portrait and this biography:

    Major Harper was born in Whitby on November 1, 1835. Throughout his life he worked as a carpenter and builder of woodworking machinery. In 1853 Mr. Harper and Stephen Gross established the Whitby Planing Mill and Sash Factory at the south west corner of Brock Street and Mary Street. Mr. Harper ran the machine shop and designed the machinery used in it. Major Harper and his father, Walter Harper, did all the woodwork for the Ontario County Courthouse in 1853 and all the woodwork in the stations and freight sheds between Toronto and Cobourg built by the Grand Trunk Railway in 1856. In 1875 Mr. Harper made his son Ernest a partner in the business and moved the Planing Mill to Mary Street East. Major Harper was a town councilor from 1872-1874, Deputy Reeve from 1875-1876, Reeve in 1878 and Mayor of Whitby from 1879-1880. From 1881 to 1917 he was the Whitby Police Magistrate. He died at Whitby on April 27, 1917 and is buried at Union Cemetery, Oshawa.