Thomas Paxton was an Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 businessman and political figure. He represented Ontario North

Ontario North

Ontario North was a federal electoral district represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1925. It was located in the province of Ontario. It was created by the British North America Act of 1867....

 in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario , is the legislature of the Canadian province of Ontario, and is the second largest provincial legislature of Canada...

 as a Liberal

Ontario Liberal Party

The Ontario Liberal Party is a provincial political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. It has formed the Government of Ontario since the provincial election of 2003. The party is ideologically aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada but the two parties are organizationally independent and...

 member from 1867 to 1881.

He was born near Whitby

Whitby, Ontario

Whitby is a town in Durham Region. Whitby is located in Southern Ontario east of Toronto on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and is home to the headquarters of Durham Region...

 in 1821. He later moved to Port Perry, where he built a sawmill

Sawmill

A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....

 with his brother. He was also part-owner of a gristmill

Gristmill

The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...

 and a foundry

Foundry

A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...

 there. He served on the council for Reach Township and was reeve in 1853. He resigned from his seat in the legislature in 1881 to become sheriff for Ontario County

Ontario County, Ontario

Ontario County was the name of two historic counties in the Canadian province of Ontario.The original Ontario County existed from 1792 to 1800 as part of the Eastern District, and consisted of the islands in the St. Lawrence River...

. He died at Whitby in 1887.

External links

• Member's parliamentary history for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario
• http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/mtq?doc=32951The Canadian parliamentary companion and annual register, 1877, CH Mackintosh
  Charles H. Mackintosh
  Charles Herbert Mackintosh was a journalist, mayor of Ottawa from 1879–1881, represented Ottawa City as a Liberal-Conservative in the Canadian House of Commons from 1882 to 1887, and from 1890 to 1893, and served as Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories from 1893 to 1898.-Parentage and...
  
  ]