page_title: History of Richmond Hill, Ontario
section_title: Toronto purchase and early settlement
hierarchical_section_title: History of Richmond Hill, Ontario / Toronto purchase and early settlement
caption_attribution_description: John Graves Simcoe and Augustus Jones, supervising the Queen's Rangers of York cutting trees during the construction of Yonge Street, 1795
context_page_description: The history of Richmond Hill began when the First Nations came and settled in the area. With the Toronto Purchase, the city gradually expanded with new greenhouse industries and improved transportation infrastructure.
context_section_description: The Toronto Purchase took place on September 23, 1787 between the British and the Mississauga Indians.  The purchase was understood by David Smith, the Surveyor General for Upper Canada to include the Richmond Hill area.  The Mississauga Indians had a different understanding of the northern limit of the purchase.  Conflicts arose between the Europeans that began to move into the area and the Mississaugas.  The area was first surveyed by Augustus Jones for Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe in 1794 while he was constructing Yonge Street.  By 1797, the Mississaugas in the area had left for the regions of Niagara and Peterborough.  A meeting between British officials and Mississauga chiefs in 1805 clarified the northern border placing Richmond Hill within the land of the Toronto Purchase.  At this time, the land that later became Richmond Hill was divided between Vaughan township west of Yonge Street, and Markham township east of Yonge Street.
  The first European settlers to arrive in Richmond Hill were Balsar and Katharine Munshaw, accompanied by their children: John, George, Jacob, Betsy and Polly, who arrived in Richmond Hill in the spring of 1794 from Pennsylvania.  They cleared a plot of land in the Elgin Mills area.  That summer, their sixth child, a daughter named Susan Munshaw was born.  She was the first European settler born in Richmond Hill, and the oldest recorded birth.  The Munshaws soon found their location too isolated from other European settlers in the area, and resettled themselves on the south-west corner of Yonge Street and Highway 7, outside of Richmond Hill.
  In 1794, the present day Bayview Avenue and Leslie Street were also laid out and planned, and sometime in the late part of 1794 the first settlers arrived in the area.  Some two hundred people led by William Berczy arrived in Markham township from western New York and Pennsylvania after being promised land grants in Markham township in exchange for working on the construction of Yonge Street, in an arrangement Berczy made with the Executive Council of Upper Canada.  The surveyor assigned to the area known as Markham township was Abraham Iredell, he was able to begin settling the followers of Berczy in Markham township by November 1794.  Some were settled in the second and third concessions which today are part of Richmond Hill, others were settled further east in what would become Markham.  Arriving in November, the settlers spent the first winter in miserable conditions, unable to grow any crops before winter.  Some supplies were made available to them by the German Land Company of New York and the government of Upper Canada.  Crop failures occurred with these settlers in 1795 and 1796, and soon a third of them had left their homesteads.  In 1796 it was decided that deeds for these lots would not be issued to Berczy and his associates, as they were not naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom.  The German Land Company of New York stopped supporting the settlers and Berczy left, but some settlers stayed on.  The presence of these German speaking settlers in Markham township would attract other German speakers in the coming years.
  The next settler to try his hand at the Vaughan township part of Richmond Hill was John C. Stooks, who arrived there with his wife in June 1797.  Arriving in York, the Stooks travelled north along Yonge Street and settled on lot 47 of Vaughan township, on the west side of Yonge Street one lot north of Major Mackenzie Drive.  The Stooks too found the life a difficult one, they cleared little land and built only a modest house before abandoning the area and moving on.
  The first settlers to come to Richmond Hill and remain there for more than a few years were Hugh and Ann Shaw who arrived in 1798 and occupied lot 46 on the northeast corner of Yonge Street and Major Mackenzie Drive.  Other lots along Yonge Street quickly became occupied, with Thomas Kinnear in lot 48, William Jarvis in lot 49 and William McLennan in lot 50 east of Yonge Street.  West of Yonge street, Abner Miles occupied lot 46 and Samuel Heron on lot 49
caption: John Graves Simcoe and Augustus Jones, supervising the Queen's Rangers of York cutting trees during the construction of Yonge Street, 1795.
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