Queen St. – west side, south of the Humber river

• By 1840, when local merchant and postmaster Samuel Sterne had completed his inn, Bolton had 15 or 16 buildings, two blacksmiths, two shoemakers, a tailor, a cooper, a tanner and a distiller ¹.  One of these buildings, built from logs, was his home; a second, also log, was his store which also housed the post office ²
  
• Samuel Sterne’s two-storey inn, (also referred to as a hotel) was built with mud bricks ³.  There were sheds and stables at the rear (see map)
• The inn was known for its bar and for about 10 years, Samuel operated a distillery in a stone building across the river ⁴
• After Samuel’s untimely death in 1850, his widow Ann Sterne took over his businesses and closed the bar
• The 1851 census records the hotel structure as a ‘Temperance Inn’ which suggests that Ann held different views than her late husband about alcohol and she no served alcohol in the inn
• Ann’s son-in-law Thomas C. Starrett managed the inn in the mid-1860s ⁵ after which William Hassard was hired as innkeeper ⁶
  
• For a short period of time, the inn was known as ‘Hassards’.  William died in 1872, age 36, leaving his wife Mary Ann and four young children ⁷
  
• In 1873, John Corliss purchased the inn from William Sterne ⁸.  He re-named it the ‘Railway Hotel,’ a nod to the Toronto & Grey Bruce Railway line which started passenger service to Bolton in 1871 ⁹
  

And the building?

• The hotel stables burned down in 1872 shortly after William Hassard’s death ¹⁰
  
• The hotel burned down in 1880 ¹¹
• In 1881, the Doig Block, consisting of three brick commercial units, was built on the site.  The Doig Block still stands