Major Reuben Sherwood

A soldier in the British Loyal Rangers at age 14, Reuben later became surveyor for Leeds and Grenville. He lay out the lines from Elizabethtown through the Rideau Lake system to Perth. He had a brilliant war record in the war 1812 while he was Captain-Superintendent of Guides for the entire river between Coteau-du-lac (east of Cornwall) and Kingston. One of the leaders of the British forces at the Battle of Chrysler's Farm, he once worked as a spy for the Loyalists forces, disguising himself as a woman. His documented diaries had been turned over to the Royal Ontario Museum.

February 1816 the crown signed a treaty with the Algonquian Indians for tracts of wilderness lands north of the Rideau system. Surveyor Rueben Sherwood located the townsite for Perth on the Pike River (later re-named Tay River). Settlement of the Perth military settlement began on April 18, 1816 according to a contemporary report by Col. Christopher Myers. Source - book: PERTH: Tradition & Style in Eastern Ontario

The whole survey of this section was under charge of Capt. Reuben Sherwood, a U.E. Loyalist, who had settled after the Revolution at Brockville. Sergt. Quigley was a chain-bearer with the party which surveyed Bathurst, this party being under command of Capt. Hayes, an assistant of Capt. Sherwood.

http://billbuchanan.byethost17.com/ourfamily/pafg340.htm#6811

More about the family:

http://www.uelac.org/education/QuebecResource/Chapters/The_Sherwood...