Today, we’ll visit the Bradford West Gwillimbury village of Wraggs Corners.
If you’re scratching your head, at a loss to place such a name, you’re likely not alone. The community still very much exists but hasn’t been called Wraggs Corners for a long time.
Today, it’s better known as Bond Head.
The history of Wraggs Corners dates to the first surveys of Simcoe County in 1819. One of the first settlers to arrive in the area was Maj. Wraggs, a former British army officer who fought in the defence of Canada during the War of 1812 and received a land grant for his service. Wraggs took up land on the south side of the 7th Line (modern day County Road 88), just east of what is now Highway 27.
Wraggs wasn’t alone there for long. Other settlers, predominantly immigrants from the British Isles, joined the old soldier and, soon, a community nestling the crossroads took shape.
The hamlet was named Wraggs Corners in honour of its founding settler.
Joel Robinson, an ambitious businessman, recognized the community’s location at the intersection of two important roads meant Wraggs Corners was bound to grow in the coming years, and he wanted to profit from it. In 1828, he started a hotel and a general store. It wasn’t long before he was the wealthiest man in town.
In 1837, Robinson’s campaign for the thriving farming hamlet to be granted a post office finally bore fruit. Robinson was named postmaster. That arrival of a post office was a boon for the community — it was a sign the community was coming of age — but it spelled the end of Wraggs Corners because Robinson elected to name it and, by extension, the village, Bond Head, in honour of the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada at the time, Sir Francis Bond Head.
Bond Head boomed, but the name Wraggs Corners faded into the recesses of history. Also fading away was Wraggs himself. History is silent on what became of him.
