Jacob Yost Shantz (2 May 1822 – 28 October 1909) was a Mennonite farmer, businessman, and industrialist from Ontario, Canada.

[2] Jacob Yost Shantz was born and raised in Ebytown, Upper Canada, which later evolved into the city of Kitchener, Ontario.

[3] He was the sixth son of Jacob Shantz and Mary (or Maria)[4] Yost, who were Mennonites from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

[2] His paternal great-grandfather was an earlier Jacob Shantz, who had been born around 1710 in modern-day Switzerland and emigrated to Montgomery County by the mid-18th century.

[5] Jacob and Mary purchased land in the Ebytown area in 1810 as a part of the original wave of Mennonite settlement in the German Company Tract led by Benjamin Eby.

[8] Pioneer youths were usually kept busy with farm duties such as carrying water, caring for animals, and chopping wood.

[6] Shantz received a basic education several months at a time during the winter, when less labour was required on farms.

[6] As his brothers reached adulthood, they dispersed to carve out their own farms from the heavily forested wilderness of the German Company Tract.

Jacob's eldest brother, Isaac, was married at eighteen to Catharine Clemens and started his own farm across the Grand River.

[12] Around the time he took over management of the sawmill, Shantz began a partnership with two of Benjamin Eby's sons, Christian and Elias.

"[12] In exchange for the workshop, the partners received two properties along King Street in Berlin, marking the beginning of Shantz' involvement in the real estate business.

[12] Soon, Shantz became involved in the transformation of Ebytown, a rural village, into "Busy Berlin", a growing industrial town.

When the rebuilding was complete, the mill was valued at C£150 and was said to produce 200,000 board feet (470 m3) of lumber per year, while employing two workmen.

The older Schneider mill, in contrast, was valued at C£200, but produced only 100,000 board feet (240 m3) of lumber per year, and only employed one workman.

[12] This was significant in helping to create a unified settlement out of the initial cluster of farmsteads and businesses strung out along King Street and in the surrounding area.

A miller named Friedrich Ludwig Rickermann[e] had recently immigrated to the area from Mecklenburg (now a part of modern-day Germany), and wanted to construct a wind-powered gristmill similar to one he had operated in his homeland.

[18] In October 1861, Rickermann purchased the windmill and the land it sat upon outright from Shantz, but later sold it to a man named August or Augustus[19] Boehm in early 1863.

[2] While it was not Berlin's first large commercial building, but it was the most prestigious, and symbolized Shantz's upbeat "white collar" debut.

As early as 1859, Shantz had been a supporter of a central farmers' market in Berlin, but the village council at the time was not ready to act.

[23] In 1870, Shantz built a button factory for the business partners Emil Vogelsang and John Jacob Woelfle.

[25] The company originally used natural materials such as vegetable ivory (imported from South America) and mother of pearl (harvested within the wider region from freshwater shells in the Grand and Thames Rivers), but this was later supplanted by casein, Bakelite, and ultimately, plastic, which was introduced in the 1940s after the company was taken over by the Gross family and renamed to the Dominion Button Manufacturers Limited.

[25] In 1872, Shantz accompanied Bernhard Warkentin, a Russian Mennonite, on an exploratory trip to the newly formed province of Manitoba.