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LOT HISTORIES
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Schatz, George, - February Pioneer-of-the-Month Benefactor or Predator What to do with the wilderness of wood? The first objective of every early settler was to get rid of it! If a man had located on a lot he was entitled to clear what he needed for land and buildings. Of course, he was only to cut enough to meet his needs but that could be a lot. As a matter of fact, the governmental regulation was designed to hinder exploitation and depredation of valuable wood and save a lot's resources for genuine settlers. However, then as now there are ways around every regulation and some of our pioneer forefathers looked for the main chance. Our Pioneer-of-the Month, George Schatz, born in Germany in 1815, was one of those entrepreneurs who ran a foul not only of the regulation but of some pretty angry settlers too. Andrew Stahl, Jr., Frederick Preszcator and William Halligan, or at least Mrs. Halligan, all had great complaints to make of him. Schatz and his crews were removing timber from many lots without authorization. However, our George had plans to benefit the settlements along the Brock Road too. In the fall of 1843, he built a sawmill on his farm and won the rights to build a grist mill on the famous "mill lots" where nothing had ever seemed to get done. Of greater long-time significance, he caused his farm to be surveyed into village lots and what is now Aberfoyle almost became Schatzville. Never one to relax, it seems, he also started a foundry and when that failed turned it into a tannery. He is also described in some documents as a tavern-keeper and brickmaker. A man of many parts! But the sawmill of his got him into some trouble. He tended to enter lots "in a scheming manner" and carry off fodder to feed his mill, "leaving behind all the useless part, the ponderous tops and loppings which will require a Herculean labor to burn and clear off and also stumps with their sprawling roots, no better than so many fixed rocks". Mrs. Halligan called him a "plunderer" and begged the land agent "to send a most strict and threatening letter by post to said Schatz". So did Andrew Stahl, and Frederick Preszcator noted, "Schatz has several hard at work at present cutting and hauling away sawlogs at a wholesale rate on three different lots on which there never was a penny paid on and the District Agent knowing so does not offer to prevent him." Eventually, Schatz must have stopped making people angry and the early 50s find him devoting himself to the developing of his village. His Will even urges his executors to encourage buyers to make improvements. Ironically, in 1856 while attending to the needs of some German immigrants he caught the cholera and died. An anonymous admirer wrote at the time, with some hyperbole: "He was a real pioneer giving his life in the path of service, and yet no early settler and village builder of importance in Western Ontario is so little known as George Schatz." We hope here to reverse this cry of dismay! (Schatz genealogy appears elsewhere on this site) |