The Chisholm family, under the patriarch George Chisholm, lived at the end of Navy St. and operated not only the family shipping company but also the Custom house and, later, the Bank as well. These days the Erchless estate is home to both the Oakville Museum and the Oakville Historical Society: the town’s archives.
When you first enter you are greeted by the Interpreters. They can be your guide if you wish but you can also take yourself through the house. You have two options to enter the exhibits: to the right is the entrance to the servant’s quarters and kitchen. Here you can see not only what the house looked like through time but also whatever non-permanent exhibit is on display. Right now you would see Art and Fashion which will run until June 18, 2017.
This shows off parts of the museum’s impressive collection of costume wear and clothing alongside famous art from the same period.
If, instead of heading to the right, you head straight ahead and then to the left, however, you enter the Family section of Erchless. This section has five rooms that start in the Victorian Library and ends in the bedroom of Hazel (Chisholm) Mathews.
1) The Victorian Library: host to period clothing, furniture, instruments and the history of George Chisholm and his wife. There are also things to entertain the children including toys from the Victorian period. In one section there is the deed to the land around the 16 Mile Creek that is now Oakville. Here we meet Robert Kerr Chisholm who inherited from his father and ran the custom house from the age of 19.
2) The Edwardian Sitting Room: here we meet the next generation of Chisholms including Allan, RK’s son. Allan was one of the first men in this part of Canada to own a car. We also see how fashions changed from Victorian rich, dark colours and full rooms to lighter, lacey, sparse rooms in the Edwardian period. After this we journey upstairs to the bedrooms.
3) The Three Bedrooms:
A) The Children’s room. Here we can see toys that Hazel Mathews and Juliet Turney may have played with as children such as a crokinole board and Snakes and Ladders along with dolls and photos of the young girls.
B) Juliet’s room. Juliet was a doctor and a painter and very well-traveled and her room reflects this. On one wall is beautiful silk stitchings from China, another houses a painting of hers as well as an article from a Parisian paper about her art. An artifact box on yet another wall houses her medical tools.
C) Hazel’s room. She wrote the first definitive history of Oakville: “Oakville and the sixteen” along with a few other books all of which are displayed alongside her typewriter and desk. It was Hazel who restored most of the house to what we see today. She lived there with her own children and co-owned it with her sister Juliet after 1951.
There is one more room in this part of the house: the crowing glory of OM. This room houses the pocket watch and Certificate of Freedom of Branson Johnson. You will have to visit yourself to hear more. http://www.oakville.ca/museum/exhibits-collections.html
Images copyright 2012 by the Corporation of the Town of Oakville