settled within the tract. Many were Quakers and a frame meeting house, planned in 1812, was erected in 1817. These resourceful pioneers founded one of the most successful Quaker communities in Upper Canada. The Otterville grist mill and Otter Creek sawmills The first mill on the site was built, in 1807, by partners John Earle and Paul Averill Jr. The Averill family was from the Great Barrington area in Massachusetts, where Thomas Ingersoll had lived before coming to Oxford. Paul Averill Sr. had developed mills in Townsend township in the 1790s. John Earle married Paul's daughter Mary and with Paul Averill Jr. managed the Townsend mills. In 1806, Earle purchased the land surrounding the mill site at Otterville and with his brother-in-law Paul (sometimes referred to as Paul Avery) built the first grist mill on the site. The mill standing today, built in 1845 by Edward Bullock and Herbert Hilliard Cameron Tufford, is run by water power supplied by a dam on the river. The South Norwich Historical Society, on a lease basis, maintains this historic site and offers tours on request. Located in the centre of the village, the mill and its surrounding meadow is the site of an annual barbecue. The pioneers of Oxford Township were slow to develop mills because of lack of any easy mode of transportation to send products to market, but Norwich township had the natural benefit of Otter Creek running through the township on a course which flowed south to Lake Erie and what became the harbour at Port Burwell. By the 1820s there were several sawmills along the creek in Norwich Township, supplying not only local needs but also rafting sawn timber and lumber down the creek to Port Burwell, for export to New York state. Dairy farming and cheese factories Oxford Township's pioneer farms were already famous for butter and cheese-making before the War of 1812, and Norwich Township's Quaker pioneers were quick to follow. In response to a questionnaire from author and agitator Robert Gourlay in 1817, Norwich farmers submitted a detailed chart showing the progress in the Quaker settlement in its first five years, which Gourlay published in his book about conditions in Upper Canada (see chart on this page). It shows that the 11 pioneer Quaker families brought with them more cows (28) than horses or oxen, and after five years had nearly tripled the number of cows