Studio portrait of the Sharpe Family. Pictured in the centre are Mr. John and Mrs. Nellie (née Gray) Sharpe with their children Kate (front left) who married W.D. Henry (first marriage), and Lizzie (front right) who married W.D. Henry (second marriage). In the back row from left to right are William Sharpe, who was married to Florence Ingham and the father of Zeta, Muriel, and Kaye; Ann who married Thomas Lucas, George (father of Scott); Mary (married Doc Patterson, the Allandale druggist); Matt (father of Telford and Winnifred); and Margaret (married Jack Gordon). The women in the photo are all wearing long sleeved dark coloured dresses and the men are wearing dark wool suits. The Sharpe family came from Sligo, Ireland and were some of Innisfil's earliest pioneers. John and Nellie met in Rawdon, Quebec after both moving to Canada with their parents and together they moved to Innisfil in about 1843. They had twelve children and celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary. The original spelling of Sharp when the family came to Canada was without an E, but the E was added because it was considered fancier by William Sharpe's wife, Florence Ingham, and occurred long after the move to Innisfil. William Sharpe was an accomplished fiddler with no formal training. He performed in his 90s at the Canadian National Exhibition and at his Shibberee when he and his wife left the farm to retire to a home on main street in Thornton. Additional and clarifying information provided by Alan Heisey, great grandson of William Sharpe, in June 2026. An additional description provided by Alan Heisey about his family: "William had two Percheron draft horses that pulled his plough. The horses were named Wellington after the Duke of Wellington, and Blucher after Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, who together led the British and Prussian armies to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. My mother as a young girl in the 1930s was picked up by horse drawn sleigh at the Barrie Train station when she visited her grandparents in their Innisfil farm during the winter. The roads were not ploughed in the early 1940s and there was no electricity or running water. My great grandparents managed fine into their 80s. Our family still has the brass sleigh bells."
