Ancaster, Upper Canada (Now Ontario): A Question of Loyalists and Americans

From Wikipedia.

Ancaster was mostly a wilderness society before the War of 1812, with American farmers moving north searching for arable land, some French-speaking fur traders and British immigrants traveling southward.

Also traveling north  in substantial numbers and in substantial numbers, around 11787 with the incentive of inexpensive land grants were the United Empire Loyalists still loyal to the British crown who were fleeing from the United States after the American Revolution.

Britain's promise of free land brought many people from the United States to Ancaster and the area around it who did not have the loyalist feeling of the others.

This would eventually lead to a series of defections, accusations and treasonous actions during the War of 1812 that led to the largest mass hangings in Canadian history, the Bloody Assizes which took place in Ancaster in 1814.

--Brock-Perry