T R O U B L E   I N   P U S L I N C H  

   leads to  the birth of Schatzville / Aberfoyle

  German settlers began to trickle into Puslinch Township in the 1820s. Among the earliest were the Stahls, Schatzes and Preszcators. These people of German/Alsatian origin, with other German immigrants, located on the Brock Road (known when they arrived as the Aboukir Trail)  around what became the village of Morriston . Although the Township was designated as Clergy Reserve, settlers were allowed to occupy the land in anticipation of the opening of these reserve lands for sale in the near future. Settlement proceeded with no more hindrance than the forest presented but in the nature of things frictions sometimes developed. One dispute that erupted  even got into the “Papers”, that is to say, the records collected in the Township Papers, lodged in the Provincial Archives in Toronto and in the office of the Puslinch Historical Society. 

                           T  H  E    P  R  I  N  C  I  P  A  L  S

1. Joseph Schatz and his son George 

The first mention of Joseph Schatz discovered so far is made in a letter of a land agent in Waterloo, William Scollick. On June 6, 1830 in a letter to Peter Robinson, Land Commissioner in Toronto, Scollick reported that “one of the Germans spoken of in my last the name of Schatz” had visited Puslinch and sought to take up land there. Of more interest, Schatz also told Scollick that “three Germans now at Buffalo” had been to Puslinch and liked what they saw. As well, Schatz knew that “ two Shiploads of Germans (had) arrived in N.Y” and were “expected here soon.”  

Census records show that Joseph was a German-born Catholic and that he had a son George also German-born in 1815. In 1830  Joseph would have been a man in his prime. Clearly, he was involved somehow in the German immigration and settlement in the area.  What is so intriguing, of course, is the identity of “those Germans now at Buffalo” and those German families in those ships sitting in N.Y. harbor for at this time the Calfas and Morlock families, the Winers, Wyses, Stahls and Preszcators were about to come into Puslinch.

2. Frederick Preszcator

Born in Alsace (possibly Hambach) in the late 1700s, Frederick Preszcator appears to have arrived in Puslinch in 1830 with little fanfare. He and his family took up Lot 24 Rear 7 where they cleared the land, built a dwelling and seem to have lived unremarkable lives until the fall of 1846.  Then a controversy arose between Preszcator and  Joseph and George Schatz. For three years Preszcator battled  against them. 

3, Andrew Stahl, Junior 

Andrew Stahl came to Puslinch as a young man with his father and brothers. He had little to do with the dispute between Schatz and Preszcator, except for a letter he wrote in 1847 to Andrew Geddes, the local land agent in Elora. The letter recounts an interesting tale but more significantly purports to reveal  unsavory aspects of the characters of the two Schatzes.  In the spring of 1830, then about 20 years old, Andrew traveled to Toronto to obtain the location ticket for Lot 32 Front 8 where he proceeded at once to clear a house site, prepare house logs, and to “underbrush upwards of three acres.” Unfortunately, the Dwelling house in which the said Stahl boarded in got burnt down, in which Stahl got his wearables reduced to ashes, which caused. . .  Stahl to feel obliged to go out to Dundas for a few weeks to earn some wearables but Schatz so soon as he took notice of the said Stahl being absent. . . collected all the men that he could prevail on, and entered. . .(Lot) 32, took up the two piles of. . . Stahl’s houselogs and built them into a small shanty. When Stahl returned from Dundas in the spring of 1831, to his “woeful surprise” he found that Joseph had “invaded his location” He also complained that Joseph “bullied” him and ”precluded” his entry into the lot, and swore that he (Stahl) could furnish affadavits as to the truth of his statement. In a postscript he added,”the said Late Joseph Schatz had been such a furious and lawless character, so that he would not matter to take a man’s life, which caused (Stahl) to feel discouraged in further interfering. . . whilst the said Joseph did live”. How prone Stahl, or his scribe Dominic Mahon, was to exaggeration can be questioned. And why Stahl chose to complain 17 years after the event is open to interpretation. Perhaps he just wanted revenge or perhaps, as Andrew Geddes thought, he was simply the “pawn of Dominic Mahon”, a highly literate and expressive local Irishman. 

T  H  E       D  I  S  P  U  T  E

In late 1846, Joseph Schatz died but son George followed his father’s lead. Both men were almost certainly involved in taking timber off unsettled lots and George himself was an entrepreneur who kept a tavern and tannery on Lot 22 Front 8. He  intended to build a Mill in Aberfoyle and subsequently laid out the village lots. (As some know, Aberfoyle was first called Schatzville). For some reason, George wished to add Lot 24 Front 7 to his holdings and in the fall of “46 arranged with Frederick Preszcator to exchange his Lot 32 Front 8 for Preszcator’s Lot 24. A verbal agreement was made that fall  and each man went to his new lot to begin work, Preszcator setting out an orchard.  

The written agreement between the two men was executed on January 1, 1847 but when Schatz went to register the lot transfer with Andrew Geddes and make payment, he was told that the transfer was too unusual to be approved except by the land officials in Montreal. At the same time, Preszcator had come to believe the transfer would be invalid because Lot 32 Front 8 had been claimed by  Joseph, not George Schatz and the authorities seemed to agree despite the fact that George had inherited his father’s rights. So began an endless round of letters to land officials of which the most memorable is the one Preszcator sent to Geddes on February 15, 1847. 

Sir, I beg leave to request of you for humanity’s sake, not to receive any money from George Schatz in payment for my lot of land. . . until I see you myself for the purpose of making a payment  thereon for myself. I do not like to trouble you . . . on your manly integrity I place the most firm reliance, that you will not be influenced by any meddles that would attempt to twist you from truth and Justice. . . I shall pay you for your trouble  with thanks so soon as I see you. . . N.B. Schatz is plundering ahead  and logs all out of the Bush

So angry and frustrated was Preszcator that he assaulted Schatz , was had up on charges in April in Guelph, convicted and fined one shilling and two pounds costs.

Andrew Geddes did not enjoy his encounters with Preszcator who, he said, is a “Dutchman and cannot speak the English - therefore Mahon spoke for him and that in no gentle terms.” Geddes recommended to Montreal that Schatz be allowed to purchase Lot 24. Nevertheless, the response which came in May questioned George’s right to his father’s possession of Lot 32 and favored Preszcator resuming his rights to Lot 24. In fact, George may not have had a valid claim to Lot 32 given the following entry in the Puslinch Land Register. On July 15, 1848, the Registry recorded the Crown Grant of Lot 32 to George Schatz but a note in the margin states, “No such patent was issued. Land has not been paid for”. It does seem that George had been trying to pull a fast one! 

At the very end of the year Montreal rendered a decision that each man be allowed his claim to his original lot. Preszcator was ecstatic but noted that he had been “obliged to enter two suits in the Queen’s Bench against Schatz and his mob for tresspass and damages.

No more documents exist among the Township Papers but the Preszcator family has kept in its possession a written decision handed down by an Arbitration Board in Guelph on February 14, 1850. It bound George Schatz to pay Frederick Preszcator 300 pounds by the end of the month unless a group of arbitrators, including William Leslie and John Hammersley of Puslinch, were able to bring about an amicable resolution between the two men. Whether the arbitrators were successful or whether George paid up, we do not know. But the story continues.

In 1849 Preszcator and his family had set off in an ox-cart for Stephen Township in Huron County, a favorite destination for Puslinch Germans. Curiously, on the day before the Arbitration Board’s decision, Preszcator conveyed in a formal document his Huron lands and all his possessions to his son Christian. A further contract was drawn up charging Christian to provide all the necessities of life to Frederick’s wife and children. According to family tradition, one Sunday, they came home from church to find that Frederick had disappeared, never to be seen again. 

Back in Puslinch, George pursued his Aberfoyle dream but only until 1854 when he died of cholera, a man praised fulsomely by some: 

George Schatz, whose energy did much to develop the country between Guelph and Dundas, died July 29, 1854, cut down in the hour of his success. He died of cholera, contracted while attending some German immigrants. 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. 

And so George and the Schatzes disappeared  from Puslinch history.

The family of Andrew Stahl eventually all moved on to Stephen Township and finally to Michigan where their descendants still live .

The Preszcators prospered in Huron and flourish there to this day.

B.Woolsey