A settlement built to avoid a war, not join one

Newmarket

While most of the GTA's founding stories involve British colonial land grants or war-hero honours, Newmarket was founded by pacifist Quaker families who crossed the border specifically to avoid fighting in the American Revolution.

Newmarket, in York Region north of Richmond Hill, has one of the more distinctive founding stories in the GTA — a settlement built by people specifically trying to avoid a war, rather than fight in or commemorate one.

Quakers fleeing the Revolution

In 1800, Timothy Rogers, a Quaker from Vermont, scouted the area around the Holland River for a new settlement site. Rogers and fellow Quaker Samuel Lundy secured a grant of 8,000 acres, and beginning in 1801 led Quaker families from Vermont and Pennsylvania north to settle it — families who had left the Thirteen Colonies specifically to avoid participating in the violence of the American Revolution, consistent with Quaker pacifism.

A mill on the Holland River

In the summer of 1801, fellow Quaker Joseph Hill — arguably Newmarket's first non-Indigenous resident — dammed the East Holland River near what's now Water and Main streets, creating the millpond known today as Fairy Lake. Tradespeople and merchants gradually filled in around Hill's mill through 1802 and 1803, and the settlement adopted the name "Newmarket" — a deliberate contrast with the older, more established markets nearby.

York Region today

Newmarket sits alongside Richmond Hill, Markham and Vaughan as part of York Region's ring of Toronto-adjacent suburbs, and retains a historic downtown core along Main Street that predates almost every other commercial strip covered in this guide.

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