423 Trafalgar Road - Home of William Cecil Lorne Ashbury and Ethel McKenzie Ashbury

The Ashbury family owned a mill on Sixteen Mile Creek between 1900 and 1927.

This house is another one owned by the Ashbury family who operated the mill located on the river bend down the slope from what is now Cornwall Rd. The mill was run by Thomas Ashbury and his sons Herbert & Lorne from 1900 to 1927, and carried on by the sons after their father’s death in 1917.

While Herbert lived on the west side of Trafalgar Rd. at the top of the bank of Sixteen Mile Creek, his brother Lorne purchased land across the street where his house was built in 1915.

Lorne was born William Cecil Lorne Ashbury in 1882 in Linton, Ontario to parents Thomas & Sarah Ashbury. In 1900, the family relocated to Oakville when father Thomas purchased the mill. The family lived in a house which was located at the top of the hill above the mill on the west side of what is now Old Mill Rd. It has since been demolished.

In 1915, Lorne married Ethel McKenzie who was from Toronto and they settled into their newly built house in Oakville, where they lived with Lorne’s mother when she became a widow in 1917. Lorne’s brother Herbert passed away in 1927 and the mill was sold.

Ethel Ashbury died in 1943 and her husband Lorne died in 1955.