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The farmers were not the only residents of Pickering. There were at least four tavern-keepers; Samuel Munger, in 1803, Noahdiah Woodruff, 1803, Francis Leys, 1824, and Thompson during the l830's. As well as a tavern keeper, Leys was a Justice of the Peace who preformed marriages and who kept a store as well as the meeting place known as Squire Ley's School. There were itinerent peddlers besides Bentley; The Woodruffs' butchered for the neighborhood and Hawkins Woodruff had a large weaving shed at the back of his house on the Brock Road and 4th Concession. There were also three recognized (not until after the pioneer period) clergymen as well as a larger number of lay preachers who lived humble subsistence livings, gardening and boarding around. Their food was always available for company was a tremendous treat to the backwoods dwellers. Wing Rogers was a travelling mender of tools and a Quaker who lived and prayed for families who needed his services. He lived in a completely unmaterialistic world of his own and in our modern times there would be no place for him. There were also quite a few, ever-changing school teachers. These people made up only a handful of the approximately three thousand farm residents; for there were at this time, no villages. The villages came during the 1840's and late l830's with the establishing of mills on the water courses, and the small cluster of houses aroung Roger's and Head's mills could not yet be considered villages. However, the farmers, who were so self-sufficient in all local matters of farm management, school, church and town-ship government, were completely frustrated by the rigid, eighteenth century, aristocratic pattern imposed upon Upper Canada by Colonel Simcoe. Joseph Gould in his Diary describes his visit to the Parliament of Upper Canada in the late l820's: "Here first to be seen was the Lieutenant-Governor, a mere figure-head, surrounded by six placemen, called Executive Councillors, who held the Governor as a mere puppet in their hands to do their will. These were appointed by the Crown during pleasure, and were not responsible to any other body. They received large pays and salaries for their services, and had sinecures that made them quite independant of the popular will. Their duty was to advise the Governor on all matters pertaining to the Government, and to recommend candidates to office. Below them sat an assembly—mostly of old men—some lame, some nearly blind and some quite deaf. Those men had a chairman or a speaker, to preside over them—mounted on a high chair, called a throne, with a table in front of him. A clerk sat at the table to record the proceedings and before him on the table was laid the mace, representing a brass crown; and at the other end of the room stood a little black-haired, black-eyed man in a black coat and black knee-breeches, and black silk stockings, and pumps. The duty of the latter was to carry the brass crown before the speaker when he left the chair, and to summon the chamber below when required by the Governor. On latter occasions, he carried a little black rod in his hand to rap at the door of the chamber with, and from this was called "Black Rod". The men composing this chamber were called the Legislative Council. They had the power of supervision over all legislation. "Immediately below them again sat a larger assembly of men, much younger and more active, and earnest, and zealous in their discharge of their duties. These men were from the country, and country towns, elected by the free franchise of the people, and their duty was to make and amend the laws, in accordance with the well understood wishes of the people." Our farmers must have felt that they were far-removed from and ignored by this Parliament. It was more than a mere question of town comforts compared with country hardships. Pickering residents had cause for deep resentment because of the stroke of chance which caused so much of the land to be parcelled out to non-resident landowners, belonging to the Family Compact. The family of Chief Justice Elmsley, through a re-shuffle with Jacob Farrand, received nearly 10,000 acres of land in the eastern portion of the township which they held until the late 1830's and early l840's. (For this paragraph references are contained in the Map of Land Grants at the beginning of the Pioneer section). William Allan held 900 acres of valuable lakefront property, the broken fronts of Lots 18, 19 and part of 20. He purchased from Shaw in 1808 and did not resell until 1835, a parcel to J. Lamoreux; 1837, a parcel to Sarah Gordon; 1839 a parcel to James Andrew. The enormous Smith grants of most of the eastern lakefront were broken up fairly early by sales to Rogers and Powell. But there were many smaller absentee grants to William Holmes, Captain G. Hill and Isabella Hill, Captain Law, Peter Robinson, William Ross, Catherine McGill, the Canada Company, King's College. These people paid no taxes on wildlands.