Early Kitsilano property documents emerge from yard sale
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2019 18:49:33 +0000
On Feb. 20, 1886 Samuel Greer sold a lot to Henry Thomas Frost for $20. The document for the sale was handwritten, which may be why the sale of the same lot was drawn up a second time on a printed document on Nov. 15, 1886.
The property was lot one in block four “in the subdivision … situated south of False Creek, on English Bay.”
That would be Kitsilano, where Greer claimed to have purchased 200 acres of land for $200 off four native people in 1884.
The province and the Canadian Pacific Railway refused to recognize his claim, and Greer fought them over the land, sometimes literally. In 1891 he was jailed for shooting a sheriff who tried to evict him from a cottage he had built on what was known as “Greer’s Beach.”
Property documents this old rarely turn up; they might be the earliest Kitsilano property documents in private hands. And over the next couple of weeks, they’ll be sold by Brian Grant Duff of All Nations Stamp and Coin in his weekly online auction.
An 1886 document for the sale of a lot in what became Kitsilano.
Grant Duff has sold several Greer-related documents, including a map of Greer’s property that sold for $33,000. It was once owned by Gerald Wellburn, a legendary B.C. collector that had a knack for unearthing unusual items.
The latest Greer documents came to Grant Duff from out of the blue.
“Somebody contacted me on Facebook, said they had them and asked was I interested,” he said Grant Duff.
He was, because they’re the first actual sale documents from the Greer property he’s ever seen. Incredibly, the consignor found them decades ago in the bottom of a box of books they purchased at a yard sale.
“They appear to have been saved from the dustbin of history,” said Grant Duff.
A third Greer document is being auctioned off Saturday for the same property, which Frost sold to Henry John Saunders on Feb. 20, 1890 for $50. The estimate is $100, as opposed to $500 for the 1886 documents, which will be auctioned Aug. 17 and Aug. 24.
The difference in price is due to the fact Greer signed the 1886 documents, but didn’t sign the 1890 one, although he’s named on it.
“What I haven’t figured out is whether these are actual (legal) documents or (whether they’re) Greer trying to show a history of owning the land and so on,” said Grant Duff. “That is not clear to me. (But) they’re good for research.”
It’s doubtful either Frost or Saunders lived on the property, which is on the Kitsilano waterfront at the northeast corner Point Grey Road and Waterloo.
Today the lot is part of Jean Beaty Park, one of several pocket parks on the tony street. The house next door is assessed at almost $13 million, for two lots.
The original handwritten document is dated Feb. 20, 1886, which was six weeks before the city of Vancouver was officially incorporated.
Frost is described as a mill hand in the 1889 Henderson’s B.C. Gazetteer and Directory, while Saunders is described as a clerk in the 1891 Williams Directory. Greer is described as a farmer in “Chilliwack” in the 1889 Henderson’s Directory — he lived in the Fraser Valley before his Vancouver adventures.
Greer built a farmhouse near Kits beach and planted some fruit trees. But the province had given his land to the CPR in 1885 when it gave the railway 6,000 acres in what became Vancouver, most of it on today’s west side.
When a deputy sheriff tried to evict Greer from his farmhouse on Sept. 26, 1891, Greer fired a shot from his shotgun through his locked front door. The deputy was wounded and Greer was convicted of assault causing bodily arm and sentenced to 27 months in prison. But he had a lot of local support, and was released after only serving a couple of months.
This weekend’s auction also includes a rare stamp from when Vancouver Island was a crown colony in 1864. It was once owned by the billionaire U.S. collector Bill Gross, one of only three people to form a complete collection of American stamps. The pre-auction estimate is $5,000.
The 1890 document.
Sam Greer, pictured in 1923.
A map drawn by Sam Greer in 1884 of his claim sold for $33,000 at an auction on July 1, 2017.