Founded on a 400-acre land purchase in 1805
Whitchurch-Stouffville
A Pennsylvania Mennonite built a sawmill on Duffin's Creek in 1824. The hamlet that grew around it eventually merged with its surrounding township in 1971 to form one of York Region's fastest-changing municipalities.
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Whitchurch Township was created in 1792 as part of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe's administrative division of Upper Canada, named after the village of Whitchurch in Herefordshire, England, where his wife Elizabeth was born. The township's largest community traces to 1803, when Pennsylvania Mennonite Abraham Stouffer settled on the shores of Duffin's Creek; by 1824 he had built a saw and grist mill there, and a hamlet grew around it.
From village to amalgamated town
Early settlers included Quakers and Mennonites from Pennsylvania, Vermont and New York. A post office named Stouffville opened in 1832, and the community was incorporated as a village in 1876. The township and the village amalgamated in January 1971, the same year York Region was formed. In recent decades, Whitchurch-Stouffville has become one of the region's faster-growing municipalities as GTA suburban development pushes further north.
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