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Home My WebLink About785"Article taken from the News Advertiser, February 17, 1988, pages 1&3. MYSTERY SURROUNDS CASE First Pickering resident murdered? AJAX-PICKERING - Less than 300 years ago, the Ajax and Pickering area was a wilderness of great forests and secluded clearings, home to the bear, wolf and deer. Mississauga Indians led a hunting and gathering life and camped around the mouth of the stream known today as Duffin's Creek. Decades before 1787, many fur traders canoed the Lake Ontario coast, travelling up the rivers and streams that emptied into it. They found the natives eager to trade for white man's goods such as whiskey, axes and weapons. French traders, happening on the future Duffin's Creek, were so amazed at the number of salmon in it, that it came to be called Riviere au Saumon (Salmon River). Then some time after 1780, a King's County Irishman named Duffin paddled up Salmon River and found a perfect spot to set up camp - in future Pickering Village. Miles away from any other trapper, he traded with the local Indians without much competition. The site was also miles upstream of 'Stinking Point', where natives skinned animals for their fun and threw stripped carcasses into the creek. ""Pickering Village would have been a good spot for Duffin,"" says Devon Smith, an Ajax resident of 17 years and member of the Ajax Historical Board. ""The creek was much higher then and navigable by small boat even miles further north. It was an ideal trade route. The forests were full of deer, there was a great population of bears, and lots of wolves. Of course it was beaver, fox and muskrat that Indians most likely traded with Duffin."" So Duffin (his first name is unknown) cleared a few acres and erected a pioneer shanty. A 1911 reference mentions he built his cabin ""to be exact, above the bank on the north side of the Kingston Road near where the Logan residence now stands"". The Logan home once belonged to the Pickering Village postmaster after 1880, and today is a deemed historic home. It's current address is 592 Kingston Road, which is close to the Kingston Road/Church Street intersection. Says Smith, ""Duffin lived much the way an Indian did - he would have had all their skills. There was food in the streams and surrounding forests."" Duffin has been called genial and friendly in history books, and he was a polite host to travellers or traders passing by. Though not possessing much in the way of worldly goods, he got along with Indian and stranger-until the day be was murdered. Between 1785 and 1791, someone entered Duffin's humble cabin and killed him. It was maybe days, weeks or months later that a traveller stopped by his shanty to find the door ajar. Inside, there were signs of a struggle and blood stains on the rough plank floor. (Another account says the traveller ""knocked in vain upon the cabin door"".) From that day on Salmon River became known as Duffin's Creek, as was the village soon to spring up around Duffin's cabin known by that name for many years. And to this day, no one knows who murdered Duffin or where his body might lay. No one knows who 'the traveller' was. Duffin could well have been murdered by a bandit,"" says Smith See MUSING . . . Page A3 [Sticker: ""Duffin: First name may have been William""] " "Musing mystery FROM PAGE A1 ""It could have been a trader gone a little wrangy from being in the backwoods so long. Maybe someone passing through suddenly thought 'Oh boy, look at all these furs and stuff I need like gun-powder, shot and traps'. With Duffin so isolated, it would've been easy to turn on him. But I'd hate to pin the murder on a certain person."" The identity of the traveller discovering the scene is shrouded in as much mystery. There is really only one person who may have been told the story by the traveller. Or possibly, he was the traveller. That person is William Peak. If he did know of the murder, he either never told his descendants, or did, and they chose not to speak of it or pass the story down through the family. (A direct descendant, another William Peak, was a trustee of Pickering around 1907.) It's said that Peak arrived at the mouth of Duffin's Creek in 1799, to carry on the small trade in furs Duffin had left behind. The land Peak squatted on was held by absentee owner Lt. Col. John Smith, who'd been granted 4,800 acres in what became Pickering Township officially in 1790. But Peak was definitely in the area years prior to 1799. Before settling at Duffin's Creek, Peak had been a wandering Indian trader and interpreter. He was also a friend of the Indian Chief Waubikishko. whose rule extended from the Bay of Quinte to the Humber River. Some time between 1790 and 1794, he became involved in an incident with the chief and a settler whose camp near Oshawa Harbor had been raided by Indians. Peak acted as interpreter for the settler. Within four days, what was left of the goods and ""provisions were returned, and the chief gave the settler furs worth more than what had been taken. How is this important to the Duffin case? Firstly, Peak was not only a fur trader but an interpreter as well, so he must have been in the area earlier than records show-if only to become fluent in the Indian tongue, knowledgable of their customs, and learn the fur trade. As a friend of the chief, Peak likely travelled his range and knew every creek and trailer from Belleville to just west of the future site of Toronto. Secondly, if Duffin was murdered as early as 1785, as suggested by one reference, certainly another trader would have taken up his business before the first documented Pickering arrival of Peak in 1799. With the beaver being more and more depleted in the area, a trader would have moved in as quickly as possible. Even if the date of 1794 of the settler incident is taken as the earliest Peak was in the area, why didn't Peak apply for a free land grant that became available in Pickering in 1795? Had he stayed away from the Duffin Creek region for a number of years for any particular reason? Records then show that the Smith family sold some acreage to a Quaker named Rogers in 1807, which included the piece Peak squatted on. In that same year, Rogers sold that smaller piece of his purchase to Peak. 1807 was also the year Rogers wrote in his diary that someone had broken into his 'stor' and stolen about $400 or $500. Then one reference states that Peak, too, had been a Quaker. It seems strange he would have been one during his wandering years as a fur trader and Indian interpreter. Quakers had a reputation for settling down with their families. Possibly Peak had 'seen the Quaker light' later in life, when he wanted to purchase the land upon which he squatted. But Rogers never mentioned him in his diary as a Quaker friend or 'brother'. Piecing together the Duffin murder mystery has been like working on a jigsaw puzzle that has missing pieces. Yet logic points to the strong possibility that William Peak knew all the clues to the mystery. Perhaps he knew more than he ever let on. Just as Duffin's body was never found, likewise the final resting place of William Peak was never discovered. The old Peak-Greenlaw Family cemetery on the property once owned by Peak is today without headstones but preserved as a historical site. The Ajax Historical Board list shows that Peak wasn't buried there. An odd twist of fate perhaps? It makes one wonder if the mysteries of Duffin and Peak are really, after all, one and the same,. Devon Smith of the Ajax Historical Society. [On back, handwritten:] 1792 W. H. Peack family had a cabin on the banks of the Don River, along with 3 wigwams William Peak -> George [William Peak] -> James Peak -> William H. d. 1928 -> Nelson d. 1938 Henry Peak -> Wm. J. Peak d. 1940"