Richard Sullivan

Return The Sullivan House at 15 Centre Street North, Huntsville, OntarioThe house was built by Allan Shay,a United Empire Loyalist, who came to Huntsville in 1863 from Dundas County. He married Mary Elizabeth Hanes, daughter of James Hanes, and eventually settled on Lot 13, Concession 1, Chaffey Township in 1875. After erecting the first two-storey log house in Huntsville at the corner of Main Street and Centre Street, which his growing family of twelve children outgrew, although it contained eight rooms, he built the three storey house at 15 Centre Street North. Intricate wooden decoration can be seen on the upper balcony and the verandah. There is a bay window on the south side of the house and the roof was wooden shingles. In 1890 Allan Shay sold a parcel of land bounded by Centre and Susan Streets to David Alexander and William Sutherland Shaw to establish a tannery in Huntsville. In 1905 the tannery re-organized to become the Anglo Canadian Leather Co. with Charles Orlando Shaw, a cousin of William Sutherland, as general manager and later president. In the early 1900's the Anglo-Canadian Leather Co. bought numerous properties to house its employees, including the property at 15 Centre Street North. It became known as the "Sullivan House" when it became home to Richard Joseph Sullivan and his family. Richard Joseph Sullivan (1878-1954) had come from Michigan to Huntsville in 1901. He started as a worker at the tannery but was soon promoted to foreman. His daughter Dorothy, who married Huntsville druggist Alex Campbell, remembered him as "a quiet, gentle person who smoked his pipe and cared for his fellow man". Richard Sullivan and his wife Agnes Paulley had four children, three girls and a boy. Apparently the little girls shocked the town by being the first to wear white stockings, and were the belles of Huntsville dressed in beautiful, light coloured dresses made by their mother, a talented seamstress. Francis "Bud" Sullivan, the son, became a musician of international repute. He was drawn to music after hearing the Anglo-Canadian Leather Band, play next door in the bandshell, and was taken under the wing of C.O.Shaw, who gave him the opportunity to get a musical education. Bud played both the saxaphone and the clarinet, starting out with the Anglo-Canadian Band and then joining the band of John Philip Sousa. During the depression he returned to Canada, playing with the Toronto Symphony. In later years he ran a music store in Peterborough, Ontario, where he lived with his wife Dorothy Jobbing. After the death of Richard Sullivan in 1954 the house at 15 Centre Street, was sold by the Anglo-Canadian Leather Co. to the Pentacostal Assemblies of Canada and it became a parsonage. In the 1970s the house was sold into private hands.