William’s father, Isaac Cross, emigrated from England in 1831. In the early 1840s, he moved to a log house on this property with his young family, including son William. Isaac Cross’s first home was farther back on hilly land to the west of this spot.

The William Cross and Mary Ann McKelvey family organized a raising bee to erect a new barn in 1916, the foundation of which can still be seen in the field. “The sand and gravel used in the concrete for the basement was scraped from sand bars in the Meech Creek, and mixed by hand.”
(Stan Cross, “The Raising,” Up the Gatineau!, Vol. 21)

William Cross built this house around 1878. After a fire in 1912, he rebuilt on the same foundation. The current house, also on the original foundation, dates to the 1940s.

Barn raising in 1916.