John Walden Meyers

John Walden Meyers (January 22 1745 – November 22 1821) was an Upper Canada businessman and United Empire Loyalist.

He was born Johannes Waltermyer in Albany County, New York in 1745, descended from German immigrants. In 1777, he joined the army of Major-General John Burgoyne and served as a recruiter for the loyalist forces, also collecting information for the British and carrying dispatches. In 1781, he led an unsuccessful raid on the house of Philip Schuyler. Later that year, Meyers became a captain in Edward Jessup's Rangers. After the war, he first settled on Lake Champlain, but was later forced by the British to move further north along the north shore of Lake Ontario in 1785. He was named a justice of the peace in 1788. In 1790, he settled in Thurlow Township where he built a gristmill near the mouth of Meyer's Creek, now the Moira River. The community that sprung up there, first known as Meyer's Creek, was renamed Belleville in 1816. Meyers also built a sawmill, distillery and brick kiln and established a trading post at Meyer's Creek. He built boats and provided transportation between the area and Kingston and Montreal. He served as captain in the local militia. Meyers later helped prepare a report for the township in response to the questionnaires distributed by Robert Gourlay and his son attended Gourlay's convention in York in 1818.

He died of fever at Belleville in 1821.

External links

* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=3029 Biography at the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"]