The de Puisaye Settlement 1799

In the fall of 1798 some 40 exiled French Royalists under the leadership of Joseph-Genevieve, Comte de Puisaye (1754-1827), emigrated from England to Upper Canada. The following year they were given rations and agricultural implements and settled along Yonge Street in the townships of Markham and Vaughan. However, these members of the nobility and their servants were unable to adapt themselves to a pioneer existence and by 1806 their settlement, known as Windham, was abandoned. De Puisaye lived for a time on an estate near Niagara, but returned to England in 1802.