Whitchurch-Stouffville (population at the 2021 census 49,864) is a town in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada, approximately north of downtown Toronto, and north-east of Toronto Pearson International Airport. It is in area, and located in the mid-eastern area of the Regional Municipality of York on the ecologically-sensitive Oak Ridges Moraine. Since 1993, its motto has been "Country - Close to the City".
The town is bounded by Davis Drive (York Regional Road 31) in the north, York-Durham Line (York Regional Road 30) in the east, and Highway 404 in the west. The southern boundary conforms with a position approximately north of 19th Avenue (York Regional Road 29), and is irregular due to the annexation of lands formerly part of Markham Township in 1971.A Brief History of Whitchurch-Stouffville , Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville.
Between 2011 and 2021, the town grew 32.8%. The number of private dwellings jumped from 7,642 in 2001 to 16,705 in 2021, with an average of 3.0 people per private dwelling.Compare Statistics Canada, 2001 Census community highlights for Whitchurch-Stouffville, with [Census Profile 2021, Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario]." The town projects a total population of 72,109 by 2031, and 91,654 in 2041, with most of the growth within the urban boundaries of the Community of Stouffville plus lands adjacent to Highway 48 and south of Stouffville Road.Cf. Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, Leisure and Community Services Master Plan, September 2022. Future growth is governed provincially by the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act (2001), the Greenbelt Protection Act (2005) and the Places to Grow Act (2005).Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan ; Greenbelt Protection; Ontario Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, Places to Grow Act, 2005. The intent of these statutes is to prevent urban sprawl on environmentally sensitive land and to protect the ecological integrity of the moraine and its hydrological features.
Communities The Town of Whitchurch–Stouffville consists of several distinct communities and the intermediary countryside. The largest urban area is the community of Stouffville proper (2021 pop. 36,753Census Profile 2021: Stouffville), and other communities in the larger town include Ballantrae, Bethesda, Bloomington, Cedar Valley, Gormley, Lemonville, Lincolnville, Musselman's Lake, Pine Orchard, Pleasantville, Preston Lake, Ringwood, Vandorf, Vivian, and Wesley Corners.Cf. Boundary Map, Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, official website. For a detailed history of these unique communities, see Jean Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township (Erin, ON: Boston Mills, 1993).
History The oldest human artifacts found in Whitchurch Township date to 1500 BC and were found in the hamlet of Ringwood (now part of urban Stouffville).Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township , 118f.; for a very descriptive account of ancient native burial grounds in Whitchurch Township written in 1888, cf. C. Mulvany et al., History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1885), 148–151. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, two Native trails crossed through what is today Whitchurch–Stouffville. The Vandorf Trail ran from the source waters of the Rouge River to Newmarket, across the heights of the hamlet of Vandorf. The Rouge Trail ran along the Rouge River and northwest from Musselman Lake; both were part of the aboriginal and Coureur des bois trail system leading through dense forests from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe.Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township, ch. 1, pp. 9ff., 18. Cf. also C.P. Mulvany, et al., Whitchurch, History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario (Toronto: C.B. Robinson, 1885), 148ff.; cf. 1718 map by Guillaume de L'Isle, , with trail from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe clearly indicated. The territory was the site of several Native villages, including Iroquoian peoples' settlements around Preston Lake,Cf. A Brief History of Preston Lake, Pride and Preston Lake website). Vandorf,Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township , 124f. and Musselman Lake.The Community of Musselman's Lake: A Little History, Musselman's Lake Residents Association (MLRA) official website.
In 2003, a large 16th-century ancestral Huron village was discovered in Stouffville during land development; approximately 2000 people once inhabited the site (Mantle Site), from 1578 to 1623. A palisade protected more than 70 longhouses, and tens of thousands of artifacts were excavated here.Archeological Services, Inc., Mantle Site ; Jennifer Birch, Coalescent Communities Iroquoian Ontario, PhD Dissertation, Dept. of Anthropology, McMaster University, 2010; Toronto Museum Project, Dunsmere Pipe ; also Minutes, Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville Council, Huron Ancestral Village Resolution (C10-C0 & R00), June 17, 2007.
In 2012, archaeologists revealed that a European forged-iron axehead, believed to be Basque, was discovered at the site--"the earliest European piece of iron ever found in the North American interior.""Curse of the Axe on History ," Northernstars.ca, the Canadian Movie Database, July 6, 2012; also Patrick Cain, "Vanished Huron village in Whitchurch-Stouffville held baffling mystery," Global News, July 6, 2012. Other significant late precontact Huron village sites have been located to the south-east (the earlier Draper Site on the Pickering Airport lands) and to the north-west of urban Stouffville (the later Ratcliff or Baker Hill Site on Ontario Highway 48, and the Old Fort or Aurora Site on Kennedy Road).See List of archaeological sites in Whitchurch–Stouffville.
The western end of Whitchurch and Markham townships was purchased by the British crown from the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation in 1787 as part of the Toronto Purchase. Whitchurch Township was created in 1792 as one of ten townships in York County. It was named in honour of the village of Whitchurch, Herefordshire in England, where the family of Elizabeth Simcoe lived (she was the wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada Sir John Graves Simcoe). The first European settlements in Whitchurch Township were established in the 1790s. The south-Central Ontario Mississaugas did not formally cede these areas of Whitchurch and southern Ontario until 1923.
Between 1800 and 1802, John Stegman completed a survey of the township, which created a system of land concessions. This allowed for the organized distribution of land to settlers, with each concession containing five, lots. This layout remains visible today, as the road network in the area reflects the locations of the boundaries between concession blocks.Cf. Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township , 14.
Early settlers of this period included QuakersWm. H. Smith, Whitchurch, Canadian Gazetteer (Toronto: Roswell, 1849), 212. and Mennonites—two pacifist groups from the nearby American states of Pennsylvania, Vermont and New York. Both groups were seeking religious freedom, and were identified by the Upper Canadian government as people with necessary skills and abilities for establishing viable communities that could, in turn, attract others to settle in the region.Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township, 14. The Crown also granted land in Upper Canada to mercenary German Hessian soldiers, such as Stegman, in exchange for their service against the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution.
Many of the first settlements in Whitchurch Township were developed at the intersections of main roads throughout the township and /or near streams where mills could be built to process the timber cleared from the land.See Barkey, et al., Whitchurch Township , 19f. Stoufferville was one such hamlet, developing around the saw and grist mills of Abraham Stouffer, a Mennonite who with his wife Elizabeth Reesor Stouffer immigrated from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1804. He acquired of land.History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario, vol. 2 (1885), 462. Elizabeth's brother Peter Reesor established what is today Markham, first called Reesorville. Fifty-five more families from Pennsylvania, mostly Mennonite, arrived in Stoufferville in the next few years.For a detailed account, see Jean Barkey, Stouffville, 1877–1977: A Pictorial History of a Prosperous Ontario Community (Stouffville, ON: Stouffville Historical Committee, 1977), 2ff. Stouffer's sawmill was in operation by 1817 on Duffin's Creek on the Whitchurch side of Main Street. By 1825 he had a gristmill across the street on the Markham Township side of Main St. as well.(Whitchurch Township, 34; also Isabel Champion, ed., Markham: 1793–1900 (Markham, ON: Markham Historical Society, 1979), 289–296. For a detailed description of pioneer life, cf. L. Henry and G.C. Paterson, Pioneer Days in Ontario (Toronto: Ryerson, 1938).
In the early 1830s, the old Stouffville Road was carved through largely virgin forest to connect York (Toronto) with Brock Township;Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township , 18. a post office was opened in 1832 and the name Stouffville was standardized.Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library, Stouffville Walking Tour No. 1 . In 1839, a new resident from England noted that Stouffville still had "no church (other than the Mennonite Meeting House in neighbouring Altona), baker, or butcher," though "saddlebag [Methodist circuit] preachers sometimes arrived and held meetings at the schoolhouse."Barkey et al., Whitchurch Township , 96. Stouffville was considered a centre "of Radical opinion," one of the "hotbeds of revolution," and it was here that William Lyon Mackenzie set forth his plan for the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837–38.C. Fothergill, ed., Mackenzie's Own Narrative of the Late Rebellion (Ottawa: Golden Dog, 1980), 5; J.C. Dent, The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, vol. 2 (Toronto: 1885), 218; D.B. Read, The Canadian rebellion of 1837 (Toronto, 1896), 293.
The hamlet of Stouffville grew rapidly in the 1840s, and by 1849, it had "one physician and surgeon, two stores, two taverns, one blacksmith, one waggon maker, one oatmeal mill, one tailor, one shoemaker."Stouffville, Canadian Gazetteer (Toronto: Roswell, 1849), 177. The population reached 350 in 1851, 600 in 1866, and 866 in 1881, with a diversity of Mennonite, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptist and Congregational places of worship.Cf. Barkey et al., Appendix A: Churches , Whitchurch-Township, 126ff. Also C.P. Mulvany, et al., Stouffville, History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario (Toronto: C.B. Robinson, 1885), 202. Mulvany (p. 152) notes that Whitchurch Township, without the Village of Stouffville, had a population of 4,529 in 1881. Cf. also The Ecclesiastical Gazette, (London, 1869), 318;The Congregational Quarterly, Vol. 11 (1869):140; A Historical and Statistical Report of the Presbyterian Church of Canada (Montreal, 1866), 36; Altona Mennonite Meetinghouse (Stouffville) , Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online; see esp. Barkey, Stouffville, 1877–1977, 138–151, 7. In 1869 Ballantrae had a population of 75, Bloomington 50, Gormley 80, Lemonville 75, and Ringwood 100.McEvoy, The Province of Ontario Gazetteer and Directory, 1869. In 1876, there was a regular stage coach connection from the hamlet of Stouffville to Ringwood, Ballantrae, Lemonville, Glasgow, Altona and Claremont.J. A. Crawford, Gazetteer and Directory of the County of Ontario, for the year 1876 (Uxbridge, ON: 1876), 14.