Peter Reesor House

Peter Reesor{son of Christian Reesor}, born Dec 25, 1775 in Lancaster Count, Pennsylvania. In 1798 Peter was appointed by his family to travel to Canada and access the new country. He saddled up a horse{also with bridle} and packed a few things for his seven week, 500 mile journey to Little York{Toronto}. Upon arrival Peter was directed to the Rouge River in Cedar Grove. There was ample amounts of good timberland. On his short stay here he met a German army officer Frederic Baron de Hoen. The German officer had offered Peter roughly 500 acres of land in Whitchurch Township in exchange for his horse and saddle. Peter took the offer but the officer had wanted the bridle as well, but Peter stated it wasn(a)t in the deal. So Peter was left to walk home to Pennsylvania carrying the bridle on his shoulder. In 1804 after Peter arrived back home, his family had decided that they were going to undertake the long journey back to Canada. Peter had chosen Lot4, on Concession9{5 acres of land}. The family had to clear quite a large amount of trees in the area to build their home and preparation for farming. At the time they only had axes and hand saws to cut down the 3-4 foot in diameter maple and pine trees. This was very dangerous work for them. In 1806, shortly after arriving in Canada Christian Reesor was killed by a falling tree. After a few years of tree clearing there was enough land to start farming wheat. They would take their wheat and travel mills to a grist mill to be turned into flour. By 1840 there was a total of 14 mills in the Rouge bottomlands in Scarborough and countless mills in Markham Township.

As for the house I couldn(a)t find much info on it. I don(a)t know when it was actually built and or if there was modifications made to the house post 1900(a)s. I do know that the house was built by Peter himself and the timber the family had cut down was used to build their home.
There once stood a barn on the property as well. Just the foundation walls still stand. Also attached to the barn was this small hut, possibly held some kinda of small animals.{pic 11 to 14} There is also a lot of junk/garbage thrown about on the property.

Check out this link. It is a painting by Murray Pipher of Peter Reesor himself and the Reesor Landmarks. Really cool. http://www.reesorfamily.on.ca/peterreesorprint.htm