Waterloo, Ontario called the founder of Waterloo, had come to the area in 1806 from Franklin County, Pennsylvania. He bought 900 acres of bush land in 1806 from the German Company and founded a sawmill (1808) and grist mill (1816); these the focal point of the area. The grist mill operated continuously for 111 years. Other early settlers of what would become Waterloo included Samuel and Elia Schneider who arrived in 1816. Until about 1820, settlements such as this were quite small. In 1816 the new township was named after Waterloo, Belgium, the site of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), which had
The Field of Waterloo Critical Review" judged it as "absolutely the poorest, dullest, least interesting composition that has hitherto issued from the author of "Rokeby". Even the gazette of the battle contains more information, and the style of the poem is very little, if at all, superior to that of Marshal Wellington's modest dispatches." The poor reception of the poem led to widespread joking about Sir Walter Scott like Napoleon meeting his greatest defeat at Waterloo, as in the widely circulated squib attributed to Lord Erskine: The Field of Waterloo The Field of Waterloo is a poem by Sir Walter Scott, written and published