2
HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
CHAPTER II.-EARLY BEGINNINGS OF ST. AGATHA.
The land about St.
Agatha is generally more hilly than usual in the western peninsula of
Ontario, but fertile and well cultivated. The first Catholic
settler from Europe seems to have been Theobald Spetz, who came from
Upper Alsace about 1827. He settled in Waterloo Township, two
miles east of Erbsville, seven from St. Agatha and about three from
Waterloo Town. Through correspondence with friends in Alsace,
others came in. The earlier ones located
west of Waterloo Town on the Upper Road, as it was formerly called, and
called the little settlement Rummelhart , after one of the principal
early immigrants. Frieburger, Schwartz and others bought land
here from the Mennonites. Carl Schaefer, a shoemaker from Baden,
began the first tavern here, and kept it till his death, making and
mending shoes at the same time. Martin Hergott, came with his
father, when nine years old. His father bought the last farm on
the north side of the Upper Road on the west end of the Township at
about 1830. His son Martin grew up on the farm and remained on it
till called by death at the age of about 94 years, in 1915.
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