The Background of the Family Names - Toller International

The background of the family names Toller and Cranston and Shillito is interesting. The roots extend deep into Canada. On the Toller side, we appear to be descended from as many as nine original Mayflower passengers including John and Elizabeth Tilley, their daughter Elizabeth, and John Howland. The Tilleys were members of the pilgrim group while Howland was a servant of pilgrim John Carver. Howland, who married Miss Elizabeth Tilley, eventually rose in the Plymouth Colony to become Assistant Governor in 1633.

There are other prominent connections among the Tollers including Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley who became premier of New Brunswick and was one of the Fathers of Confederation. Sir Leonard too could trace his roots back to the Mayflower passengers. My father’s brother (Uncle Hugh) was fondly nicknamed Hugh Tilley.

The connection continued in other descendants of Handley Chipman, including a great-great aunt Alice who became the second wife of Sir Leonard. Lady Tilley’s younger sister Annie married Col. Frederick Toller, who was Sir Leonard’s private secretary and Comptroller of the Dominion Currency. This brought the name Toller into the family and its use as a first name. Col. Toller was the first in his family to move to Canada from Devon, England, where the Toller family had lived for more than 400 years.

On the Cranston side, our great-grandfather, James Goldie Cranston was a doctor and surgeon in the Ottawa Valley town of Arnprior, Ontario. Dr. Cranston had graduated with the first-ever medical class of Queens University in Kingston. Given the many lumber mills and logging camps along the Ottawa River, doctoring in those days meant dealing with an endless stream of dreadful accidents where guys had to be patched up, stitched, sutured, splinted, cauterized, and amputated. Doctor Cranston left a legacy of respected scholarly articles about surgery.

He married Miss Louisa Shillito. Our father, Montague Shillito, was named after her and that
is where Toller appropriated the name that often appeared in articles. The Cranston house was one of only 42 houses in Arnprior, Ontario when the Prince of Wales, the son of Queen Victoria and Albert, came to town in 1860. That house where our father was born in 1912 still exists. A generation later, Grandfather Cranston (also James Goldie) married Mary Francis Toller, the daughter of Col. and Mrs. Frederick Toller of Ottawa. William Lyon Mackenzie King, who later became Prime Minister attended that wedding and gave the happy couple a beautiful set of crystal decanters that eventually came to Phillippa and that she passed on to her nephew Graham when he was married. Doctor Jim, as he was known, was much loved and the whole town of Arnprior closed down for his funeral. He died of a sudden and massive heart attack at age 63. The next Cranston to die young of a sudden and massive heart attack was Toller in 2015 at age 65.

Toller women married into the Bryson family at Fort Coulonge. George Bryson Sr. was a Scottish-born businessman and political figure in Québec. He helped establish the Bank of Ottawa, later serving as a director, and he promoted the development of railway links in the region. George Bryson Jr. was a Québec lumber merchant and political figure. He served as a member of the Legislative Council of Québec for Inkerman division from 1887 to 1937 as a Liberal member. Bryson was a director for the Bank of Ottawa, which later became the Bank of Nova Scotia. He was named a minister without portfolio in the province’s cabinet in 1931 and became government leader for the Legislative Council in 1932.

The historic Toller House at 229 Chapel Street, in Sandy Hill, a neighbourhood east of Ottawa’s downtown, was designed by Henry Horsey and John Sheard, architects of the original Ottawa City Hall and other notable buildings in Ottawa. Col. Frederick Toller, comptroller of Dominion Currency, and his family occupied the residence for more than 30 years. The extensive grounds were the site for numerous weddings and family gatherings. The house is now the embassy for Croatia.

The Cranstons belong to the Scottish Clan Cranstoun and are entitled to wear the tartan and clan badge. The Cranston crest is an image of a crane standing on a stone (crane-stoun) and the family motto is “Thou shalt want ere I want.”

On the maternal side, the origins are English. Toller’s mother, Stuart, was a Chubb. The same Chubbs who founded the world-famous Chubb Safes company more than 200 years ago and who, at one time, owned the Stonehenge estate in England, until 1918 when Cecil Chubb donated it to the State.