M(a)cEwans and cheese (pt.2)

Without doubt, any discussion of the McEwan connection to the cheese industry must lead directly to Thomas Ballantyne.  Thomas Ballantyne and Agnes Ballantyne McEwan were doubly related.  First, Agnes' father Robert was the younger brother of Thomas' father James, and second, Thomas married Agnes' younger sister Mary.  This means that Thomas was both first cousin and brother-in-law to Agnes McEwan. This double relationship may explain why John McEwan was willing to transfer to Thomas Ballantyne five acres of land on the north-west corner of  Lot 25 Concession 4 in Downie Township at the point where the Black Creek takes a lazy bend to the east as it skirts the high rise of land on which John McEwan built his stone house.
Here is what I know about Thomas Ballantyne. Several years after his Uncle Robert left Scotland in 1839 to settle in Canada, Thomas' two older brothers emigrated and took up land near Robert.  Then in 1852, Thomas, his parents and his sister

Agnes left Scotland to live in Canada. Shortly after he arrived in Canada Thomas was hired as a teacher in one of the newly established schools in the community. He was 24 years old. The year was 1853.  Almost immediately. Thomas became involved in municipal politics.  In 1855 Thomas became the township auditor and in the next year he was the township clerk.  In the same year he married his first cousin Mary Ballantyne, the daughter of his Uncle Robert, and Thomas and Mary went to live in a log house near the school where he taught.  Six years later, in 1861 Thomas quit teaching (there may have been a dispute about salary) and he returned to farming. However, it appears that farming was not totally satisfying to Thomas.  During this period, new business opportunities were opening up in the dairy industry for settlers in this fertile land of Upper Canada which I will write about next time. (In the meantime, I have attached a photo of Thomas and the only one I have of Mary.  Neither picture portrays them as they would have appeared in their younger years during the heady - but doubtlessly frightening -  years when Thomas developed the Black Creek Cheese Factory.)