The Altona Inn

by John W. Sabean

Few hamlets or villages can date their beginnings as precisely as can Altona. Until 1850 the only public or industrial building that existed at the juncture of Pickering Township's Sideline 30 and Uxbridge Township's Second Concession Road was a log schoolhouse.In the year 1850 three entrepreneurs—Abraham Reesor. Joseph Monkhouse and William Cooper—created the nucleus of the hamlet of Altona with the building of a mill, a store, and a hotel.

Illustration: The Altona Inn as it would have looked in 1850.

Reesor's Mill

Abraham Reesor (1815-1855) was the son of immigrants Peter Reesor (1775-1854) and Esther Eby. In 1804 the Reesor family, headed by Christian Reesor, Peter's father, made the trek in a Conestoga wagon from Pennsylvania to Markham.1 They were among the early settlers of Markham Township. The Reesors were part of an extensive Mennonite migration to Markham, part of which spilled over into western Pickering Township.In 1850 Abraham Reesor, who farmed Lot 34, Concession 3 in Pickering Township (down by Cherrywood), built two mills, a flour mill and a saw mill, at the north end of Lot 30, Concession 9 in Pickering township.2 However, just five years after he started the mills he died of typhoid fever. Joseph Monkhouse married his widow and ran the mills for awhile until Christina died, then Abraham's and Christina's son, Abraham, Jr., took over the operations. After the Reesors the mill went through a series of hands until it burned to the ground in 1944.