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Samuel Swarts was born November 8, 1778 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He died October 16, 1862 in Rainham Township, Upper Canada. He is buried in the Rainham Mennonite or Hoover Cemetery at Hoover's Point. He married Anna Overholt who was born August 1781 in Pennsylvania and died December 2, 1863, buried with Samuel in the Rainham Mennonite Cemetery. Samuel came first to the Twenty Mile Creek or Jordan area of Niagara where settlement by Pennsylvania Mennonites began a few years prior to 1800. Albright, Culp, Fretz, Fry, Funk, Grobb, Gross, High, Hipple, Hoch, Honsberger, Hunsburger, Houser, Kratz, Kolb, Meyer, Moyer, Nash, Overholt, Rittenhouse, Swartz, Tufford and Wismer are the names of most of the families that came early to this area. In Grimsby, a bit west of "The Twenty" Samuel Swarts married Anna Overholt on September 5, 1801.
Samuel and Anna Swarts came later to the Walpole - Rainham area of Haldimand County. This area also had been settled prior to 1800 by Mennonite families from Pennsyvania, namely Byers, Fite, Hoover, Kendig, Kendrick, Knisley, Miller, Shank, Sprenkle, Starnaman, Strickler, Stoner and Wolfe. The Reverend Michael Shank was the first Mennonite minister in Rainham. Samuel Swarts was also a Mennonite minister, as was his son Jacob. Samuel Swarts is on the 1829 assessment of Walpole, and is noted as having built the first mills on the Sandusk Creek on Lot 17 in the first Concession of Walpole Township.
There is no mention of Samuel Swarts in Christian Hoover's Mill books, with the last surviving entry dated January 1811. Christian would die in December of that year. Samuel Swarts is on the 1829 assessment in Samuel Hoover's Mill book, assessed at £4 4s 10. Samuel Swarts Jr. married Catherine Hoover about 1827, but it is not known if he was of Walpole Township or still in Lincoln County. We may assume the Swarts family would likely have come to the area some time after 1811, most probably about 1826.
From - 1879 Historical Atlas of Haldimand County, Walpole Township
"Samuel Swarts built a sawmill on the Sandusk Creek in 1830."
From "The Mills of Walpole and Rainham" published 2006 by Ross Makey:
Sam Swartz Sr. was born in the U.S. in the year 1778. It is said that he came from the same area of Pennsylvania as did the Hoovers, although the Swartz family first settled in Lincoln County whereas the Hoovers came directly to Haldimand. Sam. Sr. ("Old Sam," as I prefer to call him) married Anna Overholt in Lincoln in 1801. In 1829 he came to Walpole and purchased the land that is now the Selkirk Provincial Park. The seller at that time was Tom Francis, son and heir of the infamous Captain Francis who was murdered there at the time of the 1812 war. The men of the Swartz family that came to Walpole and settled at C 1 Lot 20 were Old Sam who had just entered his 50's, Sam Jr. who was about 22, Jacob 17, and John who was about 10."
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Rainham Builders
1778 - 1862 (83 years)