Person Record

Metadata

Name

Toms, Dave

Othernames

David Toms

Born

1936

Places of residence

Owen Sound, Grey County

Father

Cecil G. Toms

Mother

Violet "Vi" Toms (nee Krause)

Nationality

Canadian

Notes

David Toms is from Owen Sound and is a son of Cecil G. Toms and Violet Toms. David's father was a service station and garage owner in Owen Sound for many years, and the Toms family also resided in Sydenham Township historically and farmed there. David's father also owned a car dealership in Owen Sound, and sometimes people traded livestock in the 1930s and 1940s for vehicles. Therefore, Cecil Toms needed a farm property to keep the livestock he acquired.

When he was about four years old, Dave's parents and he moved from their farm (where the Heritage Place Mall would later be) to the 1881-built red and buff brick farmhouse known as "Branningham Grove". Cecil and Violet Toms purchased this property in 1940 from the Estate of Dennis Hatton. They moved from town to the farm as they called it (Branningham Grove).

In the early 1940s, they had a fieldstone cottage added to the property, and they sponsored three or four Dutch families, and one German family, to work on nearby farms. After he and Ivy Bodenham married in 1960, the couple lived in the stone house, later moving into town after they had a son and a daughter.

In 1974, Cecil and Violet Toms decided to move into Owen Sound, and after having the house for 35 years, sold the property to Lillian Weaver.

When he was growing up, Dave did not know anything about the house being previously used for a time as a summer brothel (about 1907-1915) by Margaret Matthews. Instead, in his recollections, it was a much-loved farm home, with a large vegetable garden, a big steel barn, and a spring-fed pond that his father had dug. It also was the site of many gatherings where friends and family would play cards, chat, and sing.