The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1835 – 1866 · Band 1, the settler record
The first family: "The first settlements in the territory now forming Lincoln township were made as early as 1835. Christian Fulmer came during that year" (Howard). The town's own page names the family whole: "The first known family to settle in Walkerton was Christian and Anna Fulmer, along with their children who came in 1835," and adds the son: "Oliver R. Fulmer came with his parents to this county in 1835, and settled in Lincoln township." The town page also preserves the settlement's texture, from the reminiscence record: "No roads had yet been laid out so the settlers there who had stores would go out before breakfast, as they had leisure no other time of day, and chop and slash down the underbrush to make roads through which teams might pass." The Fulmers stand at the head of the town's people-record on two independent tellings, Howard's and the town's.
Jacob Rupel, the second name of 1835: "Jacob Rupel also came to this county in 1835, which was at that time was still a wilderness, with but a few settlers who had just ventured in. He was one of the organizers of Liberty tp., and assisted in building its first churches and school houses" (the town's page, from the Chapman record). Rupel is the thread that runs through the whole founding: a settler of the first year, an organizer of the township the ground then lay in, and — thirty years on — the man who platted Walkerton's growth, his first three additions recorded 11 December 1868, a fourth on 2 July 1875, and a fifth on 23 January 1884 (Howard). Settler, church-builder, and town-platter in one life: he is the nearest thing this ground has to a founding father with a whole record, and he stands in the proprietors' article below at the plat-book strength as well.
Howard's settler roll: after Fulmer, Howard names the township's first comers in one breath: "Soon after came Thomas H. Wiley, Philo Ruggles, Joshua Cole, Washington Fuson, Thomas Barton, Archibald Goit, Samuel Lorens, Ebenezer Jones, Charles and Jackson Usher, Charles Havens, Morris Frost." Twelve names, printed as Howard prints them, at roll strength — the record gives most of them nothing more, and this section gives them nothing more either. What the record does give the ground around them: the first schoolhouse was erected in 1858, about a mile from the present town, and removed into the town in 1876; the Methodist Episcopal society built the township's first church, in Walkerton, in 1859, under the Rev. J. E. Newhouse and the Rev. James Johnson, presiding elder — the society "long known as the West York Mission church," West York being the post office, established 1851 a half-mile south, that served the settlement before Walkerton had one of its own. The church's establishers, named in the town's record, were H. Haskins, exhorter and leader; Emery Otwell, exhorter and steward; and J. A. Lambert, exhorter and leader, "and several others whose names could not be obtained" — printed with the record's own admission riding on them.
Sources:
- Howard, Ch. VIII §10, pp. 290–291 — the settler roll, the first schoolhouse, the first church.
- Town of Walkerton, official history page — the Fulmer family whole, the Rupel sketch, the West York post office, the Methodist establishers, from the Chapman (1880) record and the Independent's 2012 reminiscence series.