After the first influx of the U. E. Loyalists, the population increased less rapidly. In 1800 there were about 50,000 persons, exclusive of Indians, settled in Upper Canada, and in 1812 about seventy thousand. The principal settlements were in the Niagara District, the Home and Eastern District, with a considerable settlement on the shore of Lake Erie.

The town of Newark [Niagara-on-the-Lake] remained the largest and most important place for trade. Queenston, as an adjunct, had also a number of mercantile and forwarding houses connected with the portage around the Falls of Niagara, which continued to be the great link in the chain of transportation by the lakes to the western country.

Teams of from four to five yoke of oxen, or from two to four span of horses, hitched to great strong wagons, laden with barrels, bags and boxes of merchandise, went up the mountain and on to Chippawa, where s fleet of bateaux—propelled by sail or oar—took on board the goods and conveyed them to the most remote part of the lakes above. These goods were largely articles for Indian use, wear and consumption—among which spirituous liquors, chiefly in the shape of rum, figured largely and unfortunately. Abstinence as a principle and prime virtue was not practiced generally. While absolute drunkenness was condemned, it did not imply much disgrace, either among Indians or whites. Improvement has grown slowly in this, but it has made itself obvious in our day, when the old drinking usages of society have been largely modified, and in many cases wholly abolished.

Newark had quite changed its appearance by 1806. Substantial and even elegant houses of frame and brick replaced the original log tenements. Excellent clay for bricks was found within the limits of the town, and skilful brickmakers worked it up into bricks, better than was done afterwards.

New streets were built upon as the population increased. Front street, Prideaux street, King and Queen streets, Simcoe street, that led out to the Lake Road, Johnson street, Gate street and others were full of residences, shops and inns. The inns were a prominent feature of the town. Apart from the military troops always stationed here, who were liberal patronizers of the bars and tap-rooms, the concourse of people attending the courts of law, which were for the whole District of Niagara, required much room and accommodation in inns.

The troops in headquarters at the barracks, the district officials connected with the law courts and other offices, the superintendent of Indians and his staff, the commissariat and engineers’ quarters in the town, the ship-yard, and various industries carried on, all made Niagara a busy and prosperous place, even after the removal of the capital to York.

The settlers on farms in the township shared fully in the general prosperity as their farms were cleared and brought into cultivation, which, being heavily wooded, required eight to ten years of time and labor. The farmers were able to raise splendid crops of wheat, maize, oats, barley and root crops of all kinds suited to the soil and climate. On every farm was an orchard of apple trees, with pears, plums and cherries. Peaches as yet were not introduced, nor vines, which have since become so much cultivated. The garden and field vegetables were abundant and of fine qualities. The town of Newark offered a good and profitable market—so good that farmers at a distance of thirty or forty miles found it to their advantage to bring their produce for sale at Newark. The clay roads of summer and the winter roads of snow for sleighs, with good teams of horses, made trips to Newark market—with the addition in prospect of a day’s pleasure in town—pleasant to the farmers, who thought nothing of the distance.

With the growth of the town the farms in the township improved likewise. Many of the principal farmers had in the old colonies been men of landed estates and large means, who knew all that was known of the profitable cultivation of land, and who brought their knowledge and experience to bear in the new country where they had founded new homes.

Niagara Township had been surveyed into lots of two hundred acres each.¹ Many farmers held several of these lots, granted to themselves or members of their families. These properties of course became changed or sub-divided as family convenience made necessary, but to considerable extent the old families retain the whole or portions of their original estates to this day.

The first settlers of necessity built houses and barns of round logs or square timbers. Their fields were fenced with rails of wood, laid zigzag one upon another. Near the door was generally a well with a lofty sweep overhanging it to lift the oaken bucket, full of the delicious, sparkling limestone water that was found nearly everywhere. If water was not found easily, some well credited old man would volunteer to find a desirable spring by going over the ground with a divining rod of witch hazel, the use of which was by many believed in at that time, and the virtues of which no one could explain by giving a reason why.

The house was generally built spacious and roomy. The large kitchen was the sitting and work room for the maids and serving men, with a huge open fireplace that would hold on its andirons great logs and piles of cut wood of four feet in length, the blaze of which in winter made quite needless the light of candles, and the warmth from which made all sit at a distance from the fire. Round this social hearth gathered the whole family on winter nights, when all found comfort in the knowledge that the cattle and horses, and all other living animals belonging to the farm, were safe and snug on straw, instable or barn or outhouse belonging to them.

After a good plentiful supper and all was cleared, the women and girls sat down with knitting or sewing in their nimble hands, while the men tried, with gay songs, stories or country jests and riddles, to enliven the company. All joined in cracking butternuts, walnuts or hickory nuts, eating apples, and drinking cider made on the farm and preserved for winter use, until bedtime, when all retired in peace to well earned rest, and without a fear of the morrow.

The routine of work was methodically carried on. The whole year had its distinct duties. Then men servants and maids were hired by the year and lived in the house. Ploughing and seeding in spring; making hay, shearing and preparing for harvest in summer. The wheat harvest, always the first, came on in July or August. Then in autumn the general ingathering of all other crops—maize, oats and barley the chief. In winter the flail of the thresher was heard fast and regularly all day long in the barn, and the woodman’s axe resounded in sharp strokes, broken at intervals by the heavy thud of a falling tree, which shook the cold air, as the work of clearing the great woods went on. The women and maids of the house attended to the cows and dairy, cooking, and all the household duties. A loom for weaving occupied a corner of the large room, and the spinning wheel would hum musically at hours devoted to it.

The living was plain and plentiful. Fresh and salted beef, pork, game, wild fowl, waffles, corn and buckwheat cakes and poultry, with fish, bread, butter, milk, eggs, vegetables, pastry, and maple sugar, maple syrup and wild honey, formed a wholesome diet. Many Dutch and German dishes were commonly on the table, and are not even now out of use. Cabbage in the form of saur kraut, kold salad, schmier kase, and other Dutch dainties were relished by them—and are still.

The Twp, Four and Eight-Mile creeks ran in full streams of water out of the tree-shaded swamps, and in the spring, as soon as the ice disappeared in the outlets, shoals of fish, pike, muscalonge, suckers and others, almost choked the streams as they pressed up them to spawn. Later on, in April and May, the white fish came in endless shoals to the lake shores, and were caught in seines and eaten fresh, or salted and smoked for use. Most excellent eating they were—fit for the table of the nicest epicure. Berries of many kinds—the strawberry, raspberry, huckleberry, thimbleberry and cranberry—grew wild and in profusion, affording dainty additions to the table of the tidy, provident housewife. In short, twenty-five years had sufficed to turn the wilderness of woods into a rural paradise, where all things goodly grew for the use of man.

Taxes were almost unknown. The few wants of the community were roads, bridges, and the administration of justice, all of which were in the unpaid management of the Quarter Sessions. There were no elected municipal organizations, with salaried officials and jobs, while a light license fee on inns provided most of the public money needed. The people met once a year and elected assessors, a tax collector, pathmasters, pound keepers and fenceviewers. That was all the community required at that time—a simple organization, but sufficient.

The clothing of the people was mostly of home fabrication, and made up in the house, either by the women or by travelling tailors who went from farm to farm in regular circuit to make up or mend the men’s apparel. A travelling shoemaker came when needed to make or mend the boots and shoes of the family, the leather of which had been made by a small tanner, who tanned on shares the hides and skins of cattle killed for use of the farm.

Much of the small traffic of the community was carried on by peddlers, either by carts or in packs born upon their backs. His walking stick, studded with nails for measuring, was his yardwand. His arrival brought always a cheerful day to the solitary farmstead—dress pieces, ribbons, combs, necklaces, and not a few books, tracts and song books, had the honest pedlar to dispose of, and if a worthy disciple of Autolyeus his sales were always good and profitable to himself and pleasing to his customers. The pedlar held his rounds for a long time against the rivalry of the town and country store. Old honest John Ball, ever welcome, carried his pack round the townships of Niagara and Grantham until about 1850.

The trades of the carpenter, the blacksmith, the plough and wagon maker were the first in request in the new settlements, and were always skilfully carried on, for plenty of handicraftsmen as well as farmers had come into the new districts. Agricultural implements were still of the sort in general use in England and North America. The ploughs were strong and useful, the harrows, carts, hoes, forks and other tools adapted to the work. No machinery, in the modern sense of the term, was used on the farm. Threshing was all done by hand; the fanning mill, turned by hand, cleaned the grain from the chaff. The harvesting of the grain was done by the cradle—a frame work on the scythe—which the reaper swung by his strong arms. The plain scythe cut the grass in the meadows, and the hay fork and rake, were sometimes in wet weather handled by the girls of the house. All the work of the fields was done by hand, and modern machinery was undreamed of. The industrious farmer had more money in his stocking at the end of the year than the modern agriculturalist who keeps fast horses, stylish buggies and wears fashionable clothes, and whose daughters prefer the piano and parlor to the dairy and kitchen, and gadding about to staying attentive to their duties at home.

Still everything seems for the best when no better was known; and as a famous Scottish ploughman has sung:

An’ buirdly chiefs and clever hizzles

Were raised in the sic a way as this is.

All were content and happy, with hope shining before them as a bright star of coming days.

The people minded their own business. They turned a careless ear to predicted trouble coming on from the States. They were comparatively few to many, but they had brave hearts and knew that Britain was a sure help in need, and had fleets and armies ready to come to their defence if assailed by the enemy. And always ready to do their duty to their King, they knew the King would never fail in his duty to them. In the same spirit if not in the words of the immortal bard of Avon, the thought was in their hearts as it has been in the hearts of their descendants ever since:

Nought shall make us rue,

If England to herself will be but true.

The general cost of living in the first years of settlement, from 1784 to 1790, in the township of Niagara, may be estimated from the old account books of Captain Daniel Servos, still preserved by the family. The following prices are here set down in dollars and cents, but the books were kept in New York currency, then in general use:

Price of lumber, per 1,000.. $20.00 Price of Tobacco, per lb….. $0.63

Flour, per cwt. … 7.50 Madeira wine, per

Bran, per bush … .50 gal ………………... 3.00

Salt, per bush … 4.50 Rum, per gal. ……. 3.00

Tea, per lb. … 1.50 Nails, per lb. …… .25

Deer skins, each .. .63 Writing paper, per

Elk skins, each … 1.75 quire……………… .36

Bear skins, each 2.50 Sugar, loaf, per lb. . .30

Martin skins, each .62 Candies, per lb. … .30

Window glass, per Corn, per bush. … 1.25

pane, 7x9 .18 Spinning wheel 6.00

Wheat, per bush … 1.25 Calico, per yard .18

In 1790, Mrs. Molly Johnson, widow of Sir William Johnson, is charged with 20 bush. Corn and 300 cwt. Of flour—paid by Robert Kerr.

1790—Fort the making of six pairs of shoes in the house by Thos. Brown, leather found him, is paid $3.65. One pair was for John and one for Billie—that is, for the afterwards John D. Servos and Lt. Wm. Servos.

In 1803 there was a brewery in Niagara, kept by Thos Page, who had his malt ground at Servos’ mill.

A man’s wages were 50c a day; a servant girl’s $2 a month with board. This will give a good idea of the economical situation about 1780 to 1800 in Niagara.