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Full text: The forest was left an unbroken line along the lakeshore until long after the first-known settler, William Peake, arrived at the mouth of Duffin's Creek in 1799, to carry on the small trade in furs which had been left by the unfortunate Irish trapper, Duffin. He was murdered and left nothing in the way of worldly goods, but ever afterward, the Riviere au Saumon, was called Duffin's Creek. Peake planted a few potatoes and some corn, according to the tales handed down in the district, but his furs were his chief source of revenue. Unfortunately, the great bulk of the land was granted to absentee landowners, Major John Smith, with his son David and Daughter Anne, Jacob Farrand, the Elmsley family, Major Aneas Shaw, Capt. Law, the Hills, William Holmes, Ross and later King's College and the Canada Company. (See Map of original grants and later settlers contained this section.) Since these absentees held their land in some cases until the late l830s, the handful of United Empire Loyalists who received grants were sent far from the lakeshore, on the fifth concession and farther north. John Major, A. Towsend, J. Ryckhart, Thomas Hubbard, and later, the Phillips, located on the fifth con; Thomas Matthews and Mary Rattan, his future wife, on the sixth; The Wixons, in-laws of Townsend, far up on the ninth concession, and a number of years later, the Sharrards on the seventh. The Mathews were the first family of Pickering. Their grant, issued to Captain Thomas Matthews, was made in 1799, and they, unlike some of the less fortunate small military grantees, moved to Pickering and stayed. There were a number of lots granted to families of German names on the ninth concession, and since members of the Barkey and Reesor families with whom I have spoken, insist that the names Wismer, Harffy, Siefert, Swartz and Rott, are not Menon-ite names, these were either grants to Hessian mercenaries or one or two left-over von Bercy settlers from Unionville. There is no evidence that these people stayed for any length of time or even occupied their property. These lots were later taken over by the Altona Mennonites. Timothy Rogers' Diary, states that when he travelled "the line" in 1800, the Township was a vast wilderness, all except the narrow path chopped out by the surveyors, and the Indian paths. After "vueing" the Smith property, he arranged with Chief Justice Elmsley, to be responsible for bringing at least twenty families to Pickering,. Noahdiah Woodruff, Samuel Munger, William Peake (two years earlier), Anthony Rummerfield and David Crawford travelled to Upper Canada in 1801, and settled in Pickering. Other Quaker families followed Rogers in 1807. Noahdiah Woodruff was the founder of the Pickering Woodruffs, who were prominent landowners and path masters until recent times. Their name has recently died out but Silas Toole is related to the family and tells us that Noahdiah did a tremendous business in his tavern during the war of l8l2. His tavern and shed for changing the coach horses, was situated conveniently on the Kingston Road, now the property of the Calverts, just east of the Brock Road, where coaches also ran up to Uxbridge and Markham. Licensed in 1808, it continued for almost twenty years. The house is shown below, although the original large, comfortable log building has been covered over with siding and a porch and gable added. This is a large building compared with the farm houses built before 1810, and evidently the travellers on the Kingston Road had a lot more cash than the farmers could hope to find. (Description of Picture) Woodruff's Tavern, built before 1808, remodelled and presently owned and occupied by the Calvert family, Kingston Road. There are still a number of large old sheds on the property, left over from coaching days.