Sharon Temple National Historic Site and Museum

It should come as no surprise that the present-day agricultural focus of East Gwillimbury can be traced back to the early settlers of the community. Upon arriving in the area, those who received Crown grants for land were required to fulfill a number of obligations to then receive a land patent. These obligations included clearing the land of trees, building a home and cultivating a percentage of their property.

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Many male members of the Children of Peace were skilled craftsmen as well as farmers. Ebenezer Doan, who is most often regarded as the Master Builder of the Sharon Temple was also a successful farmer. In 1851 the Doans used twenty-seven of their sixty-eight acres for raising crops. As Sharon Temple's Curator Emeritus W. John McIntyre uncovered, the Doans "[produced] 150 bushels of wheat, eighty of peas, 110 of oats, forty of potatoes, sixty of turnips, and eight tons of hay. They also maintained a garden and orchard of one acre, from which they made seventy-five gallons of cider. On their seventeen acres of pasture, they kept twelve sheep, from which they obtained thirty pounds of wool that produced nine yards of fulled cloth and fourteen yards of flannel. The Doans had three milch cows and used the cream from their milk to churn sixty pounds of butter. They also kept one calf or heifer, three horses, and six pigs, butchering four hundred pounds of beef and one thousand two hundred pounds of pork. That same year, they produced sixty bushels of potash and 196 pounds of maple sugar, which provided an important source of cash for Upper Canadian farmers like themselves" (Children of Peace 1994, 136).