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
Waterloo Bay massacre it was suggested by the Adelaide newspaper, "The Chronicle", that the gazetted name for the bay around which Elliston is built, Waterloo Bay, is a reference to the Aborigines who "met their Waterloo" there in the 1840s. The presence of adjacent landmarks with gazetted names associated with the Duke of Wellington's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, such as Wellesley Point and Wellington Point, contradict this interpretation. In 1969, local author Neil Thompson published a book, "The Elliston Incident", which included the camp oven story and said that Geharty (spelled Gehirty in the book) was involved in rounding