Farmers' Storehouse Company

The rise in the price of flour during the Napoleonic Wars led many Friendly Societies to form "Flour clubs" which purchased and ground wheat for members, selling it to them at prime cost; and by 1800, an increasingly large number were collectively erecting their own mills to grind grain at cost.

[1] Like these English examples, the Farmers’ Storehouse was organized on a joint stock basis to engage in trade on behalf of the poor; they were early co-operatives.

The first president of the Company was Joseph Shepard, a prominent Reform organizer with close ties to William Lyon Mackenzie.

Management of the Company soon passed to Samuel Hughes, a member of the Children of Peace, a religious group who lived in the village of Hope, East Gwillimbury township.

It was widely emulated throughout the province by the "Newcastle District Accommodation Company" (near Peterborough) and the "Bath Freeholders’ Bank" (near Kingston).

[4] Both presidents of the Farmers's Storehouse Company, Joseph Shepard and Samuel Hughes, were prominent Reform organizers north of Toronto.