SPARTA SETTLEMENT

Plaque at the cemetery on the south side of County Road 27, west of Sparta, street number 46870

Jonathan Doan (1765-1847), a member of the Society of Friends came to Upper Canada from Pannsylvania about 1789. He settled first in the Niagara peninsula, and then purchased 200 acres of wilderness here in South Yarmouth Township in 1813. A few years later Doan became a land agent for the Honourable James Baby. He acquired 3,000 acres for settlement and revisited Niagara and Pennsylvania to recruit fellow Quakers. A community known as the Quaker Settlement, or Yarmouth Corners developed around Doan’s grist-mill and tannery. In 1820 he donated the land for a meeting house and this burying ground. The name Sparta was adopted by the settlement in 1832.