About Brantford, ON

Brantford (2021 population 104,688) is a city in Ontario, Canada, founded on the Grand River in Southwestern Ontario. It is surrounded by Brant County, but is politically separate with a municipal government of its own that is fully independent of the county's municipal government.Brantford is situated on the Haldimand Tract, traditional territory of the Neutral, Mississauga, and Haudenosaunee peoples. The city is named after Joseph Brant, an important Mohawk leader, soldier, farmer and slave owner. Brant was an important Loyalist leader during the American Revolutionary War and later, after the Haudenosaunee moved to the Brantford area in Upper Canada. Many of his descendants, and other First Nations people, live on the nearby Six Nations of the Grand River reserve south of Brantford; it is the most populous reserve in Canada. Brantford is known as the "Telephone City" as the city's famous resident, Alexander Graham Bell, invented the first telephone at his father's homestead, Melville House, now the Bell Homestead, located on Tutela Heights south of the city. Brantford is also known as birthplace and hometown of Wayne Gretzky. == History == The Iroquoian-speaking Attawandaron, known in English as the Neutral Nation, lived in the Grand River valley area before the 17th century; their main village and seat of the chief, Kandoucho, was identified by 19th-century historians as having been located on the Grand River where present-day Brantford developed. This community, like the rest of their settlements, was destroyed when the Iroquois declared war in 1650 over the fur trade and exterminated the Neutral nation.In 1784, Captain Joseph Brant and the Mohawk people of the Iroquois Confederacy left New York State for Canada. As a reward for their loyalty to the British Crown, they were given a large land grant, referred to as the Haldimand Tract, on the Grand River.