Cambridge Ontario Part 3: Hespeler and Blair Village in Photos: Saving Our History One Photo at a Time

Publisher Marketing: Blair Village The Bowman and Bechtel families are credited with starting the development of the village of Blair. Joseph Bowman built the first dam in the village, located on Bowman Creek, and erected the area's first sawmill, the first industrial enterprise in the village. Henry Bechtel built the Durham Flour Mill in the early 1830s. Blair Village became part of Preston in 1969 and became part of Cambridge in 1973. Hespeler This area was originally part of the land granted to the Six Nations Indians by the British Crown in 1784. The Indians led by Joseph Brant sold part of their block of land measuring 90,000 acres to Richard Beasley and his partners. A group of Pennsylvania Mennonites agreed to buy some of the land and began arriving in the Hespeler area in 1809. The most important of the area's early settlers was Jacob Hespeler, the man who gave the settlement its permanent name. Jacob Hespeler was born in Germany, educated in France and emigrated to Canada with eight of his brothers and sisters. In about 1835 he moved to the German community of Preston where he opened a store. He looked for land in order to build a grist mill and found a suitable site on the Speed River in the settlement of New Hope. He also built a sawmill, a cooperage, a gas house, a distillery and a stone woollen mill. The name of the village was changed to Hespeler in 1859 with the arrival of the Great Western Railway.