The Founding of Port Hope

Commemoration

Peter Smith, a fur trader, occupied a house here at "Smith's Creek" by 1788. The first permanent settlers were Loyalists brought to the township by 1793 by a group of associates headed by Jonathan Walton of Schenectady, N.Y. and Elias Smith, formerly of New York City. Walton and Smith were granted land after promising to build mills on the creek. The mills were operating by 1797 when Smith moved here and, in 1800, he laid out a town plot. The community's name, "Port Hope," was adopted at a public meeting in 1818, despite local pressure to call it "Toronto." A village with a board of police in 1834, it was incorporated as a town in 1850.