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Esquesing Post Offices Richard E. Ruggle In 1816 there were still only nine post offices in Upper Canada. Jacob Cook, a blacksmith, received a contract in 1820 to carry mails from York to Niagara along the Dundas Road. Sometimes he carried them on his back; usually he traveled by horseback. Offices were opened in Trafalgar and Nelson in the early twenties. The driver of a stagecoach put the mailbags under his seat or on top of the coach; on reaching a post office, he blew on his horn and threw the mailbag off. The postmaster emptied the bag, took out what was addressed to his district, put the rest back, along with mail outgoing from his office and returned the bag to the driver. There was a 20 minute delay at post offices like Trafalgar where horses had to be changed. Mail was carried along Dundas Street through Trafalgar and Nelson. A route led south from Dundas Street at Nelson to the lakeshore, to avoid climbing the Niagara escarpment on the way to Dundas. Where it turned to continue west at the lake another post office was opened in 1827 at Wellington Square. After the establishment of the Bronte post office in 1851, mails were carried daily by stagecoach on the Lakeshore Road between Toronto and Hamilton. [Max Rosenthal, 'Early Post Offices of the Oakville-Burlington Area,' BNATopics, 20, 4(April 1963), 96-102.] William Lyon Mackenzie pressed in 1831 to have a dozen new offices opened, partly to make it easier to distribute his newspaper, the Colonial Advocate. The next year his suggestion bore fruit, with the opening of offices in Esquesing, as well as in Etobicoke, Albion and Chinguacousy. Caledon and Erin, which he had also proposed, had to wait till 1839. [Max Rosenthal, 'Postal Service in the Early Days in Peel and Halton Counties,' BAM Topics (August 1966), 171-4.] The postmaster was Henry Fyfe. Henry's father, Thomas Fyfe, was said to be the fist settler in Esquesing, and was elected the clerk at the first town meeting, in 1821. He had come from Dundee, where he may have known Mackenzie. In Esquesing, he was the agent for the Advocate, until he was appointed magistrate, and Mackenzie dropped him from his list of agents, lest it prejudice his chances of advancement to be connected with the Reformer. He also ran a store, with goods on consignment from Mackenzie, but the settlers were too poor in that first decade to buy even such necessities as flour. [Colonial Advocate, 29 July, 5 August 1824.] Duncan McColl, while still a boy, about 1836 began to carry mail twice a week on a horse, from Esquesing into Trafalgar. He left the home of his father, John McColl, on Lot 11 in the 6th Concession West, in the morning, and went to the Inn of Thomas Thompson. or "Long Tom's" as the place was called, on Lot 13. on the Seventh