Peter Reesor

This Peter came to Upper Canada in the 1790's as the envoy of his father Christian, who, with all his sons and daughters, was contemplating a migration from Pennsylvania to the new Canadian colony. After Christian's death it was Peter who assumed much of the responsibility for relations between the new community and the government of Upper Canada. The family chose this land because they were not only farmers, but also millwrights and millers. The brothers settled along the stream at its mill sites and began to build just as

their grandfather had done in his youth in Pennsylvania.

The following is from "The Trail Through the Centuries" written by Blodwen Davies.

"Beneath my windows the land slopes away to the low banks of the present Little Rouge River. On the high banks also its ancient course the Indians made their

camps and left the relics of their nomadic life behind them, in old stone implements and broken pottery. The Land around about was a great pine forest that in time beckoned the white men who saw a power in the streams and building materials in the tall trees. The last of the mighty pines are gone and all we have are ancient tree stumps rotting in the wood lots and century old barns

and houses whose enormous timbers are evidence of the forest wealth that awaited the coming of the pioneers.

Today the Little Rouge River has shrunk to a shallow stream creeping through a narrow, rocky bed. Along its shores cedars and some very, very old elm trees grow. But after every storm, and in the spring thaw, the stream swells suddenly into an angry river, twisting and curving between crumbling pastures, rising in muddy, constricted crests as though the stream was recalling furiously its once stately and lonely past.

Across the flat lands of the old mill pond, above the cedars and through the naked golden branches of the willows that grow by the old mill site I can see the long roof of an old stone house and the beautiful, weathered walls of a white pine bark barn. The high place on which the house stands is a finger of land between the Little Rouge Valley and a rocky miniature ravine to the west

of the house, cut away by the flow of water from an ancient spring that has served the house throughout its long history. It was on this high triangle of land that Peter Reesor built his home and lived his patriarchal life. Peter came to Upper Canada in the 1790's as the envoy of his father, Christian Reesor, who, with all his sons and daughters was contemplating a migration from Pennsylvania to the new Canadian colony.

After Christian Reesor's death it was Peter who assumed much of the responsibility for relations between the new community and the government of Upper Canada. Like all the family, Peter Reesor prospered in the new land,

where eight generations have now flourished. The stone house he built is still beautiful, its thick walls pierced with many windows, for Peter Reesor loved

the land and from his Mennonite home he could look in all directions over his cleared and fertile fields. South of the house, where the triangle came to its apex, he laid out his garden, and from the southern end of his garden he could look southward through the valley as the river went its way down to Lake Ontario.

The Reesors chose this land because they were not only farmers, but also millwrights and millers. The new community needed mills---grist, flour and lumber mills --- as much as it needed roads. The Reesor brothers settled along the stream at its mill sites and began to build just as their grandfather had done in his youth in Pennsylvania. The mill dam that was built at Cedar Grove

backed the water into the natural contours of the old river bed: guided into the flues to great water wheels, it ground the grain into food and cut the trees into lumber.

Peter rode his horse from Pennsylvania to what is now the Markham area of Ontario. It was Reesorville for a time. He traded his horse and saddle for 600 acres of land. Insisting the bridle was not in the deal he carried it and walked back to Pennsylvania. Some 500 miles.

• Updated from Find A Grave Memorial via son John E. Reesor by SmartCopy: May 5 2015, 23:58:13 UTC