Taxes are on everyone’s minds at the moment.
We are deep in another round of municipal elections, which means we are once again talking about tax rates, roads, services, spending priorities and what residents should reasonably expect their local government to provide.
In Emily Township, that conversation began with four dollars.
According to the 1881 Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Counties of Victoria and Peterborough, Emily’s first district tax was levied in 1824. Samuel Cottingham collected the money and personally carried it to the District Treasurer at Cobourg.
The entire amount—at least as reported many years later—was four dollars.
Emily Township’s first tax system could essentially fit in one man’s pocket.
Before Municipal Government
This was not yet municipal government as we would recognize it.
Emily Township did not have an elected mayor, township council, municipal office or staff preparing annual budgets. It was still Upper Canada, and local administration was largely directed through the Newcastle District and its appointed justices of the peace.
The township itself had only recently been surveyed and opened for settlement. The much larger arrival of the Robinson settlers would not take place until 1825. In 1824, Emily was still a thinly populated landscape of new clearings, rough shelters, forest, water and incomplete roads.
Samuel Cottingham was part of that earliest period of settlement.
He was a son of Maurice and Mary Cottingham and a brother of William Cottingham, whose mill on Pigeon Creek became an important centre for the developing community. Samuel cleared land near what would become Omemee and was involved in the practical work of establishing the settlement. By 1826, he had opened an early store near his brother’s mill.
He married Ann Laidley, connecting two of Emily’s early settler families, and remained associated with the community for the rest of his long life. He died in August 1884, at approximately eighty years of age.
Before he became a merchant and established local figure, however, he was given a rather thankless public assignment: collecting Emily’s first taxes.
What Did Four Dollars Buy?
The four dollars did not return to Emily as a neatly itemized package of municipal services.
District taxes in Upper Canada contributed to a broader “public stock” from which district expenses could be paid. Provincial legislation permitted these funds to be used for such things as courthouses and gaols, the support of prisoners, salaries and fees for certain public officers, bridges, houses of correction and other legally authorized district expenses. District funds could also become entangled with responsibilities such as relief for people in need.
Not every road was simply constructed from tax revenue. Settlers could also be required to perform statute labour—providing days of physical work on local roads instead of paying someone else to do it.
There were no snowplows, recreation departments, public libraries, garbage collection schedules or municipal websites. There was not even a municipal council for a resident to complain to.
What settlers received for their taxes was the beginning of shared public infrastructure: courts, administration, bridges, rudimentary roads, law enforcement and the basic machinery required to turn a collection of isolated properties into a governed district.
It was not very much machinery yet. But then, there were not very many people to pay for it.
Collecting Taxes When Money Was Scarce
Paying the tax may have been considerably more difficult than the small total suggests.
Early settlers could possess land, livestock, tools, crops and household goods while having very little actual cash. Much of daily life operated through barter, exchanged labour, store credit and obligations carried forward until produce could be sold.
A tax collector was therefore not necessarily visiting households where coins were waiting in a drawer.
The Atlas records that the following year’s collector had six dollars to account for and was said to have seized a woman’s flat irons for an unpaid amount.
It is a tiny and rather uncomfortable detail.
Flat irons were not decorative objects. They were practical household tools, heated at the fire or stove and used repeatedly in the work of maintaining clothing and household textiles. Taking them meant converting something useful—and likely difficult to replace—into payment for a public obligation.
The story survives because it sounds almost absurd: a government collecting taxes in flat irons. But it also tells us something important about the limits of a cash economy in a newly settled township.
The tax was assessed in money. A household’s available wealth might exist in almost every form except money.
The Journey to Cobourg
Collecting Emily’s four dollars was only the first part of Cottingham’s assignment. He then had to deliver it to the Newcastle District Treasurer in Cobourg.
A later account described the distance as forty miles.
We do not yet know Cottingham’s exact route, how he travelled or the season in which he made the journey. Any line placed on a map must therefore be identified as a reconstruction, not a documented road.
He likely travelled southward from the Omemee area toward the more established Lake Ontario corridor, possibly passing through or near Cavan before continuing toward Cobourg. The journey may have taken a very long day on horseback or required an overnight stop. On foot, it could easily have consumed two days in each direction. Weather and road conditions could make either estimate optimistic.
Cobourg was approximately forty miles away, but Cottingham also had to come home. His public errand may therefore have involved close to eighty miles of travel.
For collecting the tax, the Atlas says he received a commission of one shilling. It also reports that several shillings of the amount had come from Cottingham’s own pocket.
The precise circumstances are not explained. Perhaps some assessed amounts could not be collected. Perhaps the later writer compressed or misunderstood part of the story. What remains clear is that this was not a profitable undertaking.
Cottingham gathered Emily’s first tax, completed the accounting and carried the township’s contribution through the woods to Cobourg—for compensation that scarcely matched the inconvenience.
James G. Chewett, A Map of the Province of Upper Canada and the Adjacent Territories in North America, c. 1825–1826. Compiled under the direction of Thomas Ridout, Surveyor General. Library and Archives Canada, item 4129225. Public domain. – Portion used only and highlight points of Emily and Cobourgh added for emphasis.
What Was a Dollar in 1824?
In 1824, Upper Canada did not yet have a distinct Canadian currency. British coins circulated alongside Spanish, American and other money, while accounts could be recorded in pounds, shillings, pence or dollars.
One of the most widely accepted coins was the Spanish silver eight-real coin—also called a Spanish dollar or “piece of eight.” Under the Halifax rating formally restored in Upper Canada in 1821, one Spanish dollar was valued at five shillings.
That means four Spanish dollars represented twenty shillings, or one pound in Halifax currency.
However, an older York rating—under which a Spanish dollar was valued at eight shillings—continued to be used in parts of rural Upper Canada. Money could therefore have different stated values depending upon which accounting system was being followed.
This may help explain why surviving histories disagree about Emily’s first tax. The 1881 Atlas reports approximately four dollars, while a 1921 county history gives the amount as sixteen shillings. Those totals are not equivalent under either rating. Somewhere in the story’s journey through time, the amount—or the currency used to describe it—appears to have changed.
George IV silver shilling, 1824. Royal Mint, London. Photograph by Justine Philip, Museums Victoria. CC BY 4.0.
National Museum of American History. “Spanish Silver Dollar, 1821.” National Numismatic Collection, Smithsonian Institution. Object ID nmah_1111924.
Government Grows Because Communities Grow
Four dollars did not build modern Emily Township.
It did, however, mark the beginning of a relationship that remains familiar two centuries later. Residents contributed money to a larger public fund. Officials decided which shared needs should be supported. Someone had to assess the amount, someone had to collect it and someone had to explain why it was necessary.
As the population grew, so did the roads, bridges, schools, public buildings, administrative responsibilities and expectations placed upon government. The tax system grew because the community grew—and because the list of things people expected government to do grew with it.
Today, municipal taxation is an enormous administrative system of assessments, budgets, departments, payment portals and public meetings.
In Emily Township, it began with four dollars, a long road to Cobourg and Samuel Cottingham carrying the government in his pocket.