Jacob Cummer (Kummer) and his wife Elizabeth, emigrants from Pennsylvania and among the earliest settlers in Willowdale, established themselves on this site along Yonge Street in 1797. A farmer, craftsman and entrepreneur, Jacob acquired other lands in the vicinity and by 1819 owned a saw-mill on the Don River near present-day Cummer Avenue. Originally Lutherans, the Cummers became devout Methodists in Upper Canada: their home serving as a Methodist Episcopal Sunday School from 1816. In 1834, Jacob donated a nearby site upon which a Methodist meeting house was soon built. This area, closely identified with Jacob and his large family of 14 children, was originally know as Kummer's Settlement.