Daniel Cole, one of the members of that first U.E.L. Band, in his old age thus described his remembrance of Kingston, as the party passed through it on their way up the bay in 1784. He said: “Old Mother Cook then kept tavern in Kingston, in a low flat house with two rooms. There were only four or five other houses in the place. Some of our earlier log shanties were deeply covered with marsh hay or flags, carefully laid on lengthways, which seemed to keep out the rain and snow very well.”
from the Napanee Beaver, January 1897 (http://www.sfredheritage.on.ca/GOMRuttanA.htm)