Jacob S. Shoemaker

Jacob S. Shoemaker, the founder of Bridgeport, had the unique distinction of being the one who sent out scouts to warn William Lyon Mackenzie that efforts were being made to capture him. MacKenzie was taken across the Grand River and guided to Bush Inn, Doon, from where he escaped to Buffalo.

Shoemaker came from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to Abraham Erb, a miller in Waterloo in 1820. He managed the Waterloo mills for two years. In the late 1820s he purchased a lot in the area now comprising Bridgeport and constructed a large dam and sawmill. In 1830 he erected extensive mills and was soon proprietor of a sawmill, flour mill, store, woollen mills and a distillery. The flour mill, enlarged before 1851, when there was a financial depression, was destroyed by fire in 1970.

This settlement was known as Shoemaker’s Mills, then Lancaster, later Glasgow, and eventually Bridgeport.