Before it was a village, it was a forest.
Twenty years before it earned the name Elmira, the tree-packed bush near the recently established Conestogo was owned by a sawmill owner named David Musselman. In 1832, he brought on a young Englishman named Edward Bristow as an employee, and eventually sold him a 53-acre parcel for somewhere between 50 cents and one dollar an acre. And though there was a disparate smattering of immigrant families roughing it in the area, it was Bristow’s eventual trading post that gave the place its first name: Bristow’s Corners. This would become the foundation on which a village would form, and then flourish.
