These beginnings formed the nucleus of a multicultural enclave in the larger Waterloo County region that has continued to draw immigrants from Europe. While the township's first Mennonite settlers laid solid foundations for a farm economy, the migrants from Europe brought varied craft and trade skills that formed a basis for commerce and industry. Four villages were incorporated within the township by 1860 and became significant urban-industrial centres from the later nineteenth century. The expanding towns and cities stimulated the rural economy of traditional mixed farms and small service centres with their mills, blacksmiths, taverns and stores. Waterloo Township's changing population trends help to define the three eras in which this history is organized.
Additional chapters introduce the first era and close the third era.
The first era, from 1800 to the early 1850s, was a period of rapid population growth in which mainly Mennonite pioneers from Pennsylvania, joined by settlers from more varied backgrounds, established a farm-based economy and the foundations of a remarkable number of villages and hamlets. The middle era of the township's history, from the 1850s to the end of the First World War, is defined by new forms of political, economic and social organization. Turning-points in the early 1850s were the creation of county and township levels of local government and the construction of railways. This was an era of apparently mature and stable rural society, after the four largest villages separated themselves as urban municipalities in the 1850s. After the incorporation of Preston, Berlin, Waterloo and Hespeler, our history is concerned directly with the mainly rural area in the municipality of Waterloo Township and only incidentally with the urban places.