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AT THE FORKS OF THE GRAND loneliness. Perhaps the answers lie in their being Quakers, or in their hoping to increase their wealth. John, the oldest brother, was a merchant at Niagara. On May 14, i819, he bought from William Dickson for the sum of £8oo00 a block of land consisting of lots 29, 30, 31, and 32 in Concession No. l of the Township of Dumfries. Today all of Paris north of the forks lies within this block. In 1822, he transferred his deed and mortgage to William. And so William - William with his fine clothes, cour- teous manners, and soft hands; William with his small group of sturdy retainers -became lord of the Forks, with the title of Squire. When he arrived at the Forks, Squire Holme ordered his men to make a clearing (near what is now the corner of Dumfries and Church Streets) and erect therein a log-cabin. Then he proceeded to develop his estate. He leased from George Hamilton the plaster bed on the south bank of the Nith, and sold plaster (gypsum) as a fertilizer to the pioneers of the district. At first his men, or the pioneers, broke up the lumps with sledge-hammers. But about 1824, Holme supervised the digging of a shallow race-way through the swamp from the Nith to the Grand, and the erection of a small grind- ing mill immediately south of where the post office now stands. And during the same years, he supervised the clearing of part of the oak plain north of the Forks, an area that today lies roughly between Homestead Road and the Golf Course Road. In 1821, Christopher Holme arrived at the Forks to join his brother. In 1819 he had bought from Benjamin Canby the strip of land lying between the Forks and Dundas Street; and it was on this land that William had built his log house. William, in 1822, was joined by William Curtis and family. For two or three years they all lived under the same roof. Curtis was a close friend of the Holmes; and he too was a Quaker and a man of considerable wealth and education. About i8oo he had emigrated from England to Sing Sing, New York State. There he had married Elizabeth Sutton, the daughter of a sea-captain; and in i804 had become the father of a son - William Granville Curtis - who was to become prominent in the early history of Paris. When Elizabeth died in I807, William married Esther Kinnion - a young woman who had conceived a great admiration for him at his first wedding. Then, in 1814, William and his family migrated to Canada and bought land in the new Quaker settlement around Norwich. He soon became a prominent member of the community. He lent money with land as security; and he became one of the township-officers, as is shown by his name's appearing in Robert Gourlay's "Statistical Ac- count of Upper Canada". In i819, Curtis bought a tract of land near the Forks - probably on the east side of the Grand, north of the Dundas Road. Two old documents throw some light upon the happenings of this period. The first -a statement made by Henry Sutton of Norwich in 1889, 8