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Waterloo
COunty
Waterloo County was largely uninhabited in the late 18th century. The Mississauga used the area and may be said to have owned it. Certainly the British government accepted that claim and it was from this nation that they purchased land for the Six Nations (Iroquois) in appreciation of their help and loyalty during the American Revolutionary War. Now driven out of New York, the Six Nations were offered land along the Grand River. The purchase was made in 1784 by Sir Fredercik Haldimand, Governor and Commander in chief of the British Forces in North America. The tract was reckoned as 12 miles of land along the the Grand (Ouse) River from Port Maitland to the river's upper reaches, as surveyed by Augustus Jones in 1791. Giving the land to the Mohoawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora allies was not simply an act of thanks. It was believed that their presence would strengthen the British position in the Great Lakes area. It is possible that the Mississauga did not understand the terms of the agreement in the same way that the British and Six Nations did. They may not have had the same notions of land ownership that would have tolerated the transfer of land from one party to another. They continued to use the land seasonally well into the 1840s. Nor did the Six Nations and the British look on the settlement in the same light. Joseph Brant, representing the Iroquois, took the grant to mean that his people could use, settle or sell the land as they chose. The British thought of it as a reserve upon which the Iroquois would live in perpetuity. When Joseph Grant tried to negotiate the sale of a few lots, he was blocked the the Governor and Executive Council of Upper Canada. It took a lot of wrangling to win acceptance of his right to sell land from William Claus, deputy Superintendant of the Six Nations. Brant wished to sell half the tract for funds to be used by the Six Nations as needed. In the late 1790s the upper reaches of the Grand RIver were surveyed and divided into four blocks which were then sold to land speculators at a time when the cost of land in most of Upper Canada was low. Loyalists could have land for free on pledging allegiance. Other people were buying land by putting down the cost of a survey. Even those who paid for land found the price absurdly low compared to the USA. The four blocks outlined in the survey were called Blocks 1 to 4 until 1816 when they became Dumfries, Waterloo Township, Woolwich Township and Nicol Township respectively. Interestingly, no Crown or Clergy reserves were set aside in these townships. Elsewhere in Upper Canada 1/7 of the land was set aside for the clergy to lease so they would have a reliable income. Nor were road allowances included nor townships surveyed. As a result, roads and towns grew organically. The land to be settled was covered in native bush, a mix of white pine, maple, beech, wild cherry, elm, ask and red oak. Since it was virgin forest, some of the trees were 3 to 5 feet in diameter and stood 150 feet high. Clearing them was a slow process. Natural wildlife in thea area included fox, wolf, bear, deer, ducks, geese and pigeons. The first hurdles for settlers were clearing the land, bridging the Grand River and finding suitable building material. There were of course, plenty of trees and once a few sawmills were built, there was lumber, but stone was expensive because there were few outcrops of bedrock and very little fieldstone. Early brickyards appeared in Preston, Berlin, Waterloo and Breslau. Towns formed at crossroads and around mill sites at spots like Kitchener, Waterloo, Elmira, Hespeler and Galt, attracting in turn, more craftsmen and tradesmen. Kitchener was the centre of a thriving German community with roots in Mennonite immigrants from Pennsylvania. Galt, founded by the Canada Company in 1816, was the largest urban centre in Waterloo County, dominated by Scottish immigrants, and one of the few towns that was purpose-built as a town. The first Mennonite death in Waterloo County occured in 1808 and forced the community to find a burial ground. Land was donated as a cemetary and for a meeting house/school (First Mennonite Church), but people continued to come together in homes for worship. A meeting house was built in 1813 (at Hagey Cemetary) and Benjamin Eby became the first bishop in the area after being ordained by the bishops of Niagara (Jacob Moyer) and Markham (Jacob Groff).
More immigrants arrived in the 1820s as an agricultural depression set in at Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Knowing they would find brethren in Upper Canada, many Mennonites chose to relocate. By 1830, 2/3 of the land was deeded, although there were a number of absentee landlords and many lots remained uncleared of bush. After 1830 came an influx of Roman Catholics and Lutherans from Germany, attracted to Waterloo County because of its cultural roots. Berlin (incorporated as a town in 1854; the administrative capital of the area) for example, sported a number of German newspapers, book companies, and musical societies. German continued as the common language in shops and elsewhere. 55% of the people in Waterloo County were German-speaking compared to 10% for the rest of Upper Canada. Workers and tradesmen were able to find places to set up shop in towns and in rented accomodation on farms, but farmers found that most of the land was gone and moved on to Woolwich, Wilmot or the Huron Tract. The Mennonite population continued to prosper and grow and in 1834 they expanded their meeting house. Bishop Eby was at the head of a series of reforms being passed by the community, possibly in response the influx of non-brethren neighbours and the ideas they introduced. Not everyone sympathized and a reforming backlash led the community to split in 1850s. This was followed by a further break in the 1870s when part of the community formed the Reformed Mennonites (Mennonite Brethren in Christ, Missionary Church). In 1889 another splinter parted when traditionalists formed the Old Order Mennonite Church. Further splits over the next 50 years included groups who removed themselves from new technologies of the 20th century. By 1871, the population of the many small towns stood at:
The population of Waterloo County had grown:
By 1881, 22% of the working population had jobs in factories in town. |
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