founder, Thomas Ingersoll (1749–1812), was a native of Westfield, Massachusetts who moved to Great Barrington, Massachusetts in the early 1770s, and then to Queenston in the Niagara District, Upper Canada in 1795, where he operated an inn while organizing his grand venture to create a new settlement deep in the Upper Canadian wilderness. In 1793 he and associates had received grant of Oxford township, which became the site of the community of Oxford-on-the-Thames, and where he opened roads, established a farm for his family and settled dozens of other families on their own farms nearby. Further rights to the township were revoked in 1798, and Ingersoll's own grant was limited to 1200 acres (486 ha). Discouraged by this and the resulting slow pace of the settlement, Thomas withdrew his family from Oxford in 1806 and took up operation of a government-owned inn and ferry at Port Credit, but after his death the family decided to return to the Oxford homestead, at first Thomas Jr. (1796-1847) with James (1801-1886) in 1818, then his widow Sarah and his other children in 1821 along with eldest son Charles (1791-1832) and Charles' wife and children. Together Thomas Ingersoll's four sons laid the foundations for the hamlet of Ingersoll. Thomas's eldest daughter, Laura Secord (1775-1868), who had married in 1797, had distinguished herself as a heroine of the War of 1812, and remained with her husband and children in Queenston. The hamlet of Ingersoll was proclaimed a village in 1852 and a town in 1865. Whereas Woodstock, the County seat, was Oxford County's administrative centre, Ingersoll became the county's principal industrial centre, in 1871 home to all four of the County's industries that had 50 or more hands. Noxon Brothers and the Eastwood foundry, both manufacturers of agricultural implements, employed 103 and 70 hands respectively. With 4,022 in population in 1871, Ingersoll's population surpassed that of Woodstock (3,982), although its advantage was not to last. By the 1860s, dairying was an emerging industry, sparked farm-wife production of cheese and butter, and then by the introduction of the factory system of cheese production in 1864. In 1866, to promote Ingersoll cheese as a high-quality, standardized brand, a cheese producer, James Harris, and local businessmen produced a 7,300-pound mammoth cheese, exhibited it at the New York State Fair in Saratoga, N.Y., and then exported it to England. Annual town events Ingersoll was home to the fall fair