POSTCARD MEMORIES: This hamlet was not always called Bond Head

Today, we will visit the village of Wraggs Corners in Bradford West Gwillimbury.

If you’re scratching your head without coming up with such a name, you’re probably not alone. The community is still very much around, but it hasn’t been called Wraggs Corners for a long time.

Today, he is better known as Bond Head.

The history of Wraggs Corners dates back to the first surveys of Simcoe County in 1819. One of the first settlers to arrive in the area was Major Wraggs, a former British Army officer who fought in the defense of Canada during the War of 1812 and received a cession of land for his service. Wraggs took up land on the south side of Route 7 (today County Road 88), just east of what is now Highway 27.

Wraggs wasn’t alone there for long. Other settlers, mainly immigrants from the British Isles, joined the old soldier and soon a community nestled at the crossroads took shape.

The hamlet was named Wraggs Corners in honor of its founding settler.

Joel Robinson, an ambitious businessman, recognized that the community’s location at the intersection of two major roads meant that Wraggs Corners was bound to grow in the coming years and he wanted to capitalize on that. In 1828, he opened a hotel and general store. It wasn’t long before he became the richest man in town.

In 1837, Robinson’s campaign to get the thriving farming village a post office finally paid off. Robinson was appointed postmaster. That arrival of a post office was a boon to the community – it was a sign that the community was coming of age – but it marked the end of Wraggs Corners, as Robinson chose to name it, and by extension the village, Bond Head after to the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada at the time, Sir Francis Bond Head.

Bond Head boomed, but the name Wraggs Corners faded into the depths of history. Wraggs himself has also disappeared. History is silent about what happened to him.