[siebert] loyalists AND SIX NATION INDIANS 123 



once on account of sickness, and was therefore kept from occupying 

 the site he had selected until 1794. The other families remained 

 in_ the Niagara settlement.^ 



Although the project for the military occupation of Long Point 

 went without the approval of the British government during the next 

 two years and more, refugee families continued to enter the townships 

 of Charlotteville, Walsingham, Woodhouse, and Townsend, coming 

 from New Brunswick, Pennsylvania, Niagara, New Jersey, and Long 

 Island. Thus, in 1793, Peter Secord and Frederick Maby (Mabee) 

 with the latter's family, including two married daughters and their 

 husbands, came in, as did also Abraham Smith and family. Both 

 of these parties came from New Brunswick. In the same year Lucas 

 Dedrick and family settled in Walsingham, having journied thither 

 from Pennsylvania. In 1794 Captain Edward McMichael and family, 

 likewise refugees from Pennsylvania, established themselves on the 

 lake front of Walsingham Township. For the previous decade they 

 had lived on the western bank of the Niagara River. In March of 

 this year, also, Jabez Culver, a Presbyterian minister, together with 

 his wife and children, came on foot to Townsend from the State of 

 New Jersey. The arrival of Mr. Culver marks the beginning of public 

 worship in the new community, for he held service every Sabbath 

 in his own house until he became pastor of the Windham Church in 

 1806. Another settler of 1794 was Thomas Welch (Walsh) of Mary- 

 land, 3^ho came to Charlotteville from New Brunswick, where he 

 had been engaged since the war in surveying lands for the swarms of 

 refugees settling in that province. On July 1, 1795, Captain Samuel 

 Ryerse (Ryerson) of the New Jersey Volunteers arrived with his 

 family and several hired men at the mouth of a creek that empties 

 into the Outer Bay of Long Point. After more than ten years in New 

 Brunswick the Ryerses had returned to Long Island in the spring of 

 1794, until the Captain could visit Upper Canada in search of a more 

 congenial location. They settled at length in Woodhouse Township at 

 a time when there were but four other families living within a 

 distance of 20 miles along the lake shore. But during the next few 

 years settlers came in steadily. As the lots chosen by Mr. Ryerse 

 possessed valuable water rights, he was required to build a saw mill 

 and a grist mill. Until these structures were completed the families 

 at Long Point had to depend on Niagara for their flour. As the 

 woods abounded in game of all kinds and fish were plentiful in the 

 creeks and in the lake, tables could be readily supplied with these 



^ Canniff, Settlement of Upper Canada, 189, 190; Papers and Records, Ont. 

 Hist. Soc, II, 44, 78; Owen, Pioneer Sketches of Long Point Settlement, 76-79. 



