The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Although most of the United Empire Loyalist grants had been given out before Pickering Township was surveyed, in the districts east of Clarke Township and west of Niagara Falls, a few families were granted land in Pickering, deep in the woods on the Fifth and Sixth Concessions. Among them were the Matthews. Thomas Matthew in 1799 was given a Crown Grant of 350 acres - Lot 18 and ¾ of Lot 17, Concession 6, Pickering. On this beautiful, high terrace of fertile black loam, overlooking Lake Ontario, the family, including David and Peter, carved out a farm. They must have worked endlessly since they came to Pickering with nothing but their few personal belongings, the seed grain and a few tools donated by the Government, and their own magnificent morale. In 1811, Thomas Matthews is mentioned in the Township records as being a member of the Council; was for many years thereafter a pathmaster. He was responsible for the Brock Road and changed it from an Indian Trail to a path wide enough for a stage coach to travel up and down to Uxbridge. As early as 1813, there was a stage coach running up the Brock Road to the Fifth Concession and then West to Newmarket. The work done on Township roads, with the exception of the Kingston Road, was unpaid statute labour, until quite recent times. As late as 1920, the tax receipts show credit for statute labour, although at this later date, there was considerable financial help as well as statute labour. Captain Matthew, as well as establishing his farm, married a second time, Mary Rattan and thus acquired an additional 200 acres of land, Lot 19, Concession 6. The family was therefore, from early times, large landholders as well as prominent in township and church organizations. The only remaining building on the farm which dates back to pioneer days (and we must limit this period to 1800-1835) is the barn. A small bank barn with solid stone foundation remains. The crude first shanty and later plank house were destroyed many years ago. The land itself is truly beautiful, and still well farmed by its present owners, the Newmans, who have built fine building recently. However, we have learned from Mrs. Mary Matthews of Brougham, that the first years were very difficult, everything done by hand and an endless walking up and down the Brock Road to Kingston Road with grain to be ground at Timothy Rogers mill after 1807. Potash was carried to York until after several years the family could afford a horse and oxen and life was not so dreadful, as it had been from 1800 - 1805. The first wheat crops had to be taken to Whitby and York to be sold and ground. Game and fish abounded and life must have been somewhat like a summer camp during the summer without any of the leisure of summer life. Smaller members of the family were sent out to fish and gather berries which abounded. Vegetables grew without trouble. But the work of clearing the land continued almost all of their lives and money was almost non-existent. Fuel, or course, abounded. The children were first taught at home, but soon the Matthews, Hubbards, Majors and Willsons of this neighborhood, built a crude log school house on the corner of the Fifth Concession and the Brock Road, which they maintained out of their own pockets until well into the 1840's. They undoubtedly resented this crude education for their children—Peter and Hannah Major, Matthews had fifteen children, and their opportunities were in dreadful contrast to the pupils of Anglican Grammar School in York, conducted after 1805 by the Rev. George O'Kill Stuart, a Pickering absentee landowner. When Rev. John Strachan took over education it became even more select and received enormous land grants in Pickering (see map). Great bitterness grew up as a result of the clergy reserves, and the Matthews, leading non-conformists, resented the unfairness of state subsidy to the only Anglican schoold and churches. The same bitterness developed with regard to the Methodist Church, to which the family belonged— Egerton Ryersib preached in this district on his way from Newmarket to Pickering, riding down the Brock Road. Peter Matthews is listed among the donors to the new College at Belleville, and he was unable to carry out his pledge because of his death. The family belonged to the Christian Church at Brougham after it was built, in the 1850's and her Captain Thomas Matthews' Stone was placed after it was removed from the old barnyard graveyard on the farm to the Church Cemetery.