The community was founded by the family of Abraham Dayton, who was granted authority in 1793 to settle Burford Township with a religious congregation led by the Public Universal Friend, whom Governor Simcoe believed to be Quakers. According to Burford historian Robert Muir, "Wilkinson had drawn together a considerable body of free thinkers, undecided characters, and disgruntled members of other Christian bodies. These followers... were looked upon by the inhabitants who surrounded them, as a set of religious fanatics" who "decided at last, like the followers of Joseph Smith at a later date, to seek out a "New Canaan"" and appointed Dayton as their emissary to seek land in Upper Canada. "Abraham Dayton was an intelligent and estimable citizen, and his connection with the peculiar religious society, the infliction of whose presence Burford narrowly escaped, which first brought him to Burford, was doubtless brought about by force of circumstances and the nature of his local surroundings."