businesses – a grist mill, a store, a distillery, and an ashery – which became the nucleus for the hamlet of Ingersoll (a village 1852 and a town, 1865). James was appointed county land registrar in 1835, which eventually necessitated his move to Woodstock when it became the county seat in the 1840s. Thomas Jr. and Samuel were invited by the Canada Company in 1839 to build the first mills in Blanshard Township at St. Marys, and they again became town founders there. McNab, Crotty, Carnegie, Holcroft and Rothwell families. By the start of the 1830s the hamlet had extended beyond the Ingersoll family ventures clustered around their millpond, and families from Ireland, Scotland and England were setting down roots, particularly on the vacant land north of it, which had remained dormant in the hands of speculators until then. Between them, Crotty (from Ireland, 1831), Carnegie (Scotland, 1834) and Rothwell (Ireland, 1834) became the owners of most of it. McNab, from Scotland via Ireland, probably came with or around the same time as Crotty. McNab and wife fell victim to the same cholera epidemic that took Charles Ingersoll in 1832. James Ingersoll became guardian of the five orphaned McNab children. Holcroft, from England, had commanded the Royal Artillery regiment in Upper Canada during the War of 1812, and became owner of large blocks of land including what is now the Ingersoll golf course. These families soon joined in collaboration with the Ingersolls and others to steer projects to improve the community. Crotty in particular led the effort in the 1840s to ensure the area's first railway would be built through the centre of the growing village rather than bypassing it. Charles. E. Chadwick, a farmer and businessman who witnessed the next half-century of growth in Ingersoll, predicted the future belonged to immigrants from many ethnic groups who would, with the aid of Canada's institutions, be moulded into a new people "not second to any in the world.". James Harris (1824–1885). Owner of the factory in which was built Ingersoll's famous Mammoth Cheese, 7,300 pounds, in 1866. Sponsorship of the venture came from a newly formed private corporation, the Ingersoll Cheese Company, whose shareholders included Harris, farmers who supplied the milk and expertise for construction of the mammoth, and businessmen. The cheese was exhibited at the New York State Fair at Saratoga in 1866, and then exported to England. Adam Oliver