The Founding of Markham

Shortly after 1800, the earliest settlers in this part of Markham Township, including several Pennsylvania Dutch, arrived on the Rouge River. Within ten years Nicholas Miller had erected mills around which a community known as Markham Mills had developed by about 1820. In 1826 Joseph Reesor laid out a village plot called Reesorville north of the mills, and two years later a post office named Markham opened. By 1850 the village had a population of 650 and industries that included a woolen mill, a foundry, and a distillery. Markham was incorporated as a village under a by-law of November 20, 1872, about eighteen months after the arrival of the Toronto and Nipissing Railway.

Ontario · Canada