The German Company Purchase

In December 1802, when the newly arrived Sam Bricker attempted to register the land he had purchased from John Biehn, he discovered that there was an unpaid mortgage on all of Beasley’s land, and the Mennonites’ titles were probably not valid. All of the settlers were very worried; some started making plans to move on. Word quickly got back to The Twenty and Pennsylvania, and for two years new immigrants settled around the village of Markham, north of Toronto, instead of coming to the Grand River area.

In the meantime, Sam Bricker met with Richard Beasley to see what was up and what could be done. It turned out that Beasley had not been able to make payments and was in a pretty tight corner. He’d used the money he’d received for lots sold to pay off other debts, and he could make payments on the mortgage only if he sold more lots, which he wasn’t allowed to do and now wasn’t likely to do. It seems that they came to some kind of agreement that Bricker would try to raise enough investment to cover Beasley’s mortgage and thus clear the deeds on lots already purchased, as well as purchase more land.

In early 1803, Sam Bricker and his brother John travelled to their old home in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to try to interest their father and other relatives to invest in Beasley’s block of land, but they had little luck. They travelled on to Lancaster County where they got a much better reception from John’s brothers-in-law, John, Jacob, and Daniel Erb. By late summer, they were back in Upper Canada negotiating with Beasley. They were able to reach an agreement that on or before June 1, 1804, Beasley would sell 60,000 acres of Block 2 (excluding the lands he had already sold and surveyed) to Daniel Erb and Samuel Bricker for the sum of 10,000 pounds (the amount of his mortgage).

This agreement was filed with the government and approved by the Executive Council and by the Trustees of the Six Nations on May 15, 1804, with Erb and Bricker putting down 4,692.10 pounds. The remainder was to be paid by May 23, 1805, so the Brickers and Erbs headed back to Pennsylvania to secure more backers. They managed to round up a total of 26 investors in the scheme, all putting up different amounts, with the Erb and Eby families investing about 75% of the total. The Upper Block was divided into 128 lots of 448 acres, and a parcel of land in the Lower Block into 32 lots of 83 acres each. Parcels were assigned randomly to the investors, according to the amounts of their investments. While the group came to be known as the German Company, it wasn’t really formalized as a corporation.

The story goes that the Brickers and Ebys (armed with rifles) travelled back to Canada in a buggy and on horseback, with the money in silver coins packed into a barrel. One night they were accosted by a group of men, but they managed to scare them off. They delivered the money to the Trustees, and clear title for the land was issued to John and Daniel Erb, as trustees for the German Company, on June 29, 1805.

The huge tract of land they’d purchased was surveyed into the required number of lots, and the lots were assigned to the investors. Immediately, there was a flurry of subdivisions and re-sales. Many of the original investors divvied their lots out to their children who wished to settle in Canada. Others sold their lots or bought up more lots and sold them on. In a 1934 article written for the Waterloo Historical Society, I. C. Bricker documents, lot by lot, the hundreds of land sales made in Block 2 between 1805 and 1825 (the list of sales goes on for some 25 pages in Bricker’s article).

I. C. Bricker’s Map of Land Ownership in Block 2 in Sept 1805
(click here to open a full-size copy in a separate tab)

It was a speculation frenzy, but also a steady stream of settlement. On July 1, 1805, there were 33 inhabited lots in what later came to be known as Waterloo Township—probably no more than 200 people. By 1825, the population was 1640 inhabitants. Already in 1807, there was enough demand for land that Mennonite investors purchased a large portion of Block 3 from the original purchaser, William Wallace (see “Settlement in Block 3“).

While the Mennonites paid for their land in good faith that the money was to go to the Six Nations of the Iroquois, there is no evidence that the Six Nations received any of it. In fact, the Trustees invested the money in various schemes to further settle the Six Nations’ land, including companies set up to dredge the bottom end of the Grand River so settler traffic and commerce would be easier. These schemes all went broke, and the Six Nations, rather than benefiting, were increasingly crowded into a smaller and smaller fragment of the land they’d been given by the Crown “for their enjoyment in perpetuity.”

This land that has become so definitively Mennonite is the traditional homeland of the Neutral Iroquois nation, followed by the Mississauga Ojibway. It was then given to the Haudenosaunee (the Six Nations of the Iroquois) by the British Crown. Though our ancestors cleared the land, built the farms and villages and churches and schools and industries in the European manner, it is essential to remember that we were not the first people here and that the way in which this land was made available to our ancestors had a terrible impact on the First Peoples, an impact that continues to this day.

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Sources:

Cruikshank, Brig. General E. A. “The Reserve of the Six Nations Indians on the Grand River, and the Mennonite Purchase.” Waterloo Historical Society Annual Report, volume 15 (1927).

“Ezra Eby’s Introduction,” From Pennsylvania to Waterloo: A Biographical History of Waterloo Township (http://ebybook.region.waterloo.on.ca/ebyintro.php).

Martin, Geoff. “From the Banks of the Grand.” New Quarterly online (https://tnq.ca/from-the-banks-of-the-grand/).

Monture, Rick. We Share Our Matters: Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of the Grand River.  Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014.

Arrival of the Mennonites in Upper Canada

The thousands of Mennonites who emigrated to Pennsylvania from Europe in the early 1700s flourished in the following 80 years, buying up and clearing the land, taking over large swathes of Lancaster, Berks, and Bucks counties. Towards the end of the century, they needed more land and so looked west to Ohio and north to Upper Canada, where land was being opened for European settlement.

Furthermore, after they had lived in relative peace for almost a century, the revolutionary war (1775 to 1783) tested their commitment to pacifism and brought back nightmares of the endless wars that had overwhelmed their ancestors for so long in Europe. Because the British had made their home in Pennsylvania possible, many of them instinctively felt some loyalty to the British.

For whatever reasons, Mennonites started crossing the Niagara border in the 1790s looking for land. A number of families settled at “The Twenty” around present-day Jordan and Vineland, and one family ventured as far west as the Hamilton mountain area. Soon, word of land for sale deep in the heart of the forests along the Grand River reached these settlements.

In the spring of 1800, two Pennsylvania Mennonites, Joseph Shoerg (Sherk) and his brother-in-law Samuel Betzner Jr, and their families arrived on the banks of the Grand from The Twenty, where they had over-wintered, and started the laborious process of clearing the land. The Betzners’ place was just east of where the village of Doon developed, while the Shoergs’ land was directly across the river, near where the Pioneer Memorial Tower now stands. A few weeks later, Betzner’s parents and other members of the extended family arrived from Pennsylvania.

Later that summer, a group of seven inter-related families arrived. John Biehn (Bean) purchased 3,600 acres from Beasley, stretching west from the Grand River at what is now the village of Doon (the Biehn Tract), as well as several other lots near Blair, while George Bechtel purchased 3,150 acres just to the north of that (the Bechtel Tract). All seven families settled on this land, with the remainder subdivided and later sold to other immigrant families.

By the end of the year 1800, about a dozen families, most of them Mennonites, had purchased land and started settling in the Lower Block. (See “The First Settlers” for more details on the immigrants of the year 1800.)

This was the beginning of a speculation and flipping frenzy. In the following 2 years, many other lots were purchased, and many lots were flipped to new owners, or subdivided and sold on. By 1803, there were some 25 to 30 Mennonite families who had started to clear the forests and build simple log homes and out-buildings, who were actually living in the Lower Tract. Many more lots had been sold, but were not yet settled.

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Sources:

Bricker, I. C. “Trek of the Pennsylvanians to Canada, 1805.” Waterloo Historical Society Annual Report, volume 22 (1934).

Bricker, I. C. “Waterloo Township History to 1825.” Waterloo Historical Society Annual Report, volume 22 (1934).

“Ezra Eby’s Introduction,” From Pennsylvania to Waterloo: A Biographical History of Waterloo Township (http://ebybook.region.waterloo.on.ca/ebyintro.php).

The Haudenosaunee

Before we continue with the story of our ancestors in Canada, we need to have some understanding of the history of the land they settled on. And that history is First Nations history.

The Haudenosaunee (“people of the long house”) are a confederacy of Iroquoian speakers who occupied all of what is now upstate New York when white Europeans showed up in the early 17^th century. The confederacy was originally made up of 5 distinct nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. In 1722, the Tuscarora (who fled north from North Carolina) joined the confederacy, and the group became known in English as the Six Nations. The Haudenosaunee territory stretched from the Hudson River Valley in the east to the Niagara River in the west, but their influence went much further.

Until the late 16^th century, these Iroquois nations continually fought with each other over land and resources, but according to their tradition, sometime between 1570 and 1600, Dekanawidah (the Peacemaker), a Huron (Iroquoian Wendat) from north of Lake Ontario, crossed the lake in a stone canoe and persuaded the 5 nations to make peace and form a confederation. Each nation had its own council composed of clan and village chiefs (appointed by the clan mothers), with representatives sitting on a confederate council to resolve inter-national issues. At this level, decision making was by consensus, with unanimity required. The Six Nations claim they are one of the world’s oldest participatory democracies.

This confederacy was highly successful in warfare against neighbouring nations and in negotiations with European settlers. They expanded their control eastward into the Hudson Valley, southward along the Atlantic coast to South Carolina, and westward into southwestern Ontario, Northwestern Pennsylvania, and Ohio. They gained control over, and demanded tribute from, the Mohican, Neutral, Tionontati (or Tobacco), and Erie peoples. They traded with the Dutch and the English and allied with the English in their conflict with the French in the late 17^th century, while their traditional enemies, the Huron and the Algonquins, allied with the French.

After the Haudenosaunee destroyed the Huron confederacy in southwestern Ontario in 1648-50, they launched attacks on the French settlements along the St Lawrence into the 1690s (the Mohawks captured Pierre-Esprit Radisson as a boy near Trois Rivieres in 1651/52, and he was adopted by one of the clan mothers; he became a Mohawk warrior and later an important European explorer of the Great Lakes basin and a founder of the Hudson Bay Company). By forming a buffer between the French and English colonies, the Haudenosaunee were able to maintain their independence until the American War of Independence.

First Nations Peoples in 18th Century New York and Upper Canada

In 1763, Britain defeated France to end the Seven Years War (of which the French and Indian Wars were the American theatre) and win control over France’s North American colonies, as agreed in the Treaty of Paris. In those wars, the Haudenosaunee fought for the British cause. Just over a decade later, in 1776, when the American colonies rebelled against Britain, the Haudenosaunee again were caught between the warring parties, and again the British pressed them for support. For their help, the British promised that they would protect the Haudenosaunee homelands no matter what the outcome of the war.

In the end, the Oneida and Tuscarora sided with the rebellious colonists, while the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca sided with the British, causing a rift in their confederacy. The Mohawk war chief Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) and other war chiefs fought alongside the British in many skirmishes in the Mohawk Valley, and in 1779 George Washington ordered the Sullivan campaign in retaliation. General John Sullivan and Col Daniel Broadhead marched their troops across upstate New York, destroying Haudenosaunee villages and farms, burning everything in their path.

When the British lost that war, they forgot to include their Haudenosaunee allies in their negotiations with the victorious Americans and forgot their promise to protect their lands. The British surrendered all of upstate New York to the new country, and the Six Nations were left to negotiate with the Americans for land to live on. In the treaties of Fort Stanwix in 1784 and Canandaigua in 1794, they were forced to cede almost all of their land to the Americans. They moved the central fireplace of the confederacy to a small reservation on Buffalo Creek at the head of Lake Erie.

In the meantime, Chief Joseph Brant went to Quebec City to ask the Governor of Quebec, General Sir Frederick Haldimand, for a homeland in Canada as acknowledgement of their help during the war and the loss of their traditional lands. Eventually, Haldimand purchased a large tract of land in the Grand River valley from the Mississauga Ojibway (Anishinaabe) and gave it to the Six Nations in what is known as the Haldimand Proclamation of October 25, 1784. This proclamation gave all of the land 6 miles on each side of the river from its source to its mouth to the Six Nations for “them and their posterity to enjoy for ever.” It was subsequently discovered that all of that land hadn’t actually been sold by the Mississauga, so the Haldimand Tract reached only about as far upriver as present-day Fergus.

After receiving this title to their new homeland, Brant brought a group of about 2000 refugees from New York to settle in the territory (many of their people remained in New York state). Brant chose the land near the present-day Brantford (Brant’s Ford originally) for his Mohawk people, and the remnants of other nations settled in villages down toward the mouth of the river. Many of the people were war-widows and orphans; all were completely destitute. Brant realized that without capital to get them on their feet, the settlement would fail. He therefore decided that it was in their best interest to sell or lease some of the land to raise some cash.

He had several blocks of land north of Brant’s Ford surveyed so they could be sold, but the Crown said he couldn’t sell or lease the land without their permission. Brant argued that if it really was Haudenosaunee land, if they really had sovereignty, they could do with it what they wished. The Crown patronizingly countered that they could sell land only if all transactions were approved and overseen by a Crown-appointed committee of trustees and if the funds from the sale would be administered by the trustees.

Brant had no choice but to agree to the Crown’s conditions. The Six Nations began selling and leasing land around 1796, and by 1798, the following blocks had been sold:

• Block 1: Township of North Dumfries, Waterloo County
• Block 2: Waterloo Township, Waterloo County
• Block 3: Woolwich Township, Waterloo County, and Pilkington Township, Wellington County
• Block 4: Nichols Township, Wellington County
• Blocks 5 and 6: Townships in Haldimand County south of the current Six Nations Reservation

Of most interest to our family history are Blocks 2 and 3. Block 2 was purchased by Richard Beasley of Burlington Heights and two short-lived partners, James Wilson and John Baptiste Rousseau. Block 3 was purchased by William Wallace of Niagara.

As soon as he acquired Block 2, Richard Beasley had the tract surveyed into two parts called Wilson’s Upper and Lower Blocks, then had portions of the Lower Block (about a third of the total) surveyed into lots. Even though he was not allowed to sell until he had paid off his mortgage to the trustees for the Six Nations, he was deeply in debt, so he started selling in order to make his payments.

The Haldimand Tract
(current Six Nations Reservation shown in yellow)

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Sources:

Bourrie, Mark. Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. Windsor: Biblioasis, 2019.

Cruikshank, Brig. General E. A. “The Reserve of the Six Nations Indians on the Grand River, and the Mennonite Purchase.” Waterloo Historical Society Annual Report, volume 15 (1927).

“Iroquois,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Iroquois_Confederacy).

Martin, Geoff. “From the Banks of the Grand.” New Quarterly online (https://tnq.ca/from-the-banks-of-the-grand/).

Monture, Rick. We Share Our Matters: Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of the Grand River.  Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014.