When William Hamilton Merritt and the Welland Canal Company changed the route of the Welland Canal to go down Dick's Creek, it must have seemed like a betrayal to John DeCew. Hadn't he been with them from the start, supporting them every way he could? And now they were stabbing him in the back. From that moment, John DeCew was a bitter enemy of Merritt and the canal, even going so far as to run against Merritt for election to the Legislative Assembly in 1832.

Many of the facts about DeCew's early life are not entirely clear. Although he is supposed to have been born on February 3, 1766 in New Jersey, he himself stated that he was born in Vermont and remembered as a boy "rambling along the sides of the Green Mountains". His ancestors had been Huguenots, French Protestants, who had fled persecution and moved to England. The DeCews (or DeCous or DeCows) went to Yorkshire and may have become Quakers because Johns greatgrandfather was married in the Settle Monthly Meeting in Yorkshire. That greatgrandfather and most of his family left England for a new life in the New World, settling in New Jersey. That is where John's grandfather and father were born. After the Revolutionary War, he came to Canada in 1887 with his father and most of his brothers and sisters. They initially settled in the Short Hills, where John had at least one job as a surveyor. Later, his father, Jacob, and part of the family moved to Burford.

John, however, stayed in the Niagara region, eventually buying land on the escarpment above 12 Mile Creek in Thorold Township in 1792. According to John, he bought "a hundred acres for an axe and an Indian blanket and another hundred acres for a gold doubloon". The land was on Beaverdams Creek and included a waterfall where Beaverdams Creek went over the escarpment. The falls became known as the DeCew Falls. Here he built a sawmill, one of the first in the Nassau District. Later, with Robert Hamilton importing the required tools and machinery, he built a gristmill and, probably, a linseed-oil factory. These must have been at the site now occupied by the Morningstar Mills, a group of mills from a later date.

Morningstar Mills

In 1798, John DeCew married Catherine Dochstader, the only child of Lt. Frederick Dochstader, who died on active service with Butler's Rangers in the Revolutionary War. John built a fine stone house on his land on top of the escarpment. The remains of the house are still there, near the bridge across the junction of Lakes Moodie and Gibson. At that time, the house was one of the finest on the Peninsula.

Decew House

When the War of 1812 broke out, John took up his post as a captain in the 2nd Lincoln Militia. His house, being in a strategic position on the escarpment, was taken over as a headquarters for units of the British Army. John was captured when his regiment retreated from Niagara after the fall of Fort George in May 1813 and was taken to Philadelphia, where he remained until he escaped in 1814.

In July 1813, after John DeCew's capture, his house was being used by Lt.James FitzGibbon as headquarters for his Bloody Boys. It was to here that Laura Secord made her historic 20-mile walk to warn FitzGibbon of the force being sent against him under the command of Col. Boerstler of the American Army. In the end, FitzGibbon's Iroquois allies ambushed the Americans, leading to FitzGibbon's audacious bluff and victory in the Battle of Beaver Dams.

After the war, DeCew continued to operate his mills at DeCew Falls but suffered the same water-shortage problems as his neighbours, Hamilton Merritt and George Keefer, on the 12 Mile Creek. So when Merritt suggested a scheme to divert some water from the Chippawa Creek to the Beaverdams Creek and then to the 12 Mile Creek, DeCew was all for it. In 1818, he, Merritt, and Keefer made their historic survey of the area and came up with a plan to build a canal that would carry barges up the escarpment near DeCew Falls. DeCew became an enthusiastic supperter and charter member of the Welland Canal Company.

As the plans developed, it soon became clear that the canal would need to be bigger than was originally proposed so as to beat out the Erie Canal in New York State in competition for ship traffic. One of the things to go was the idea of carrying barges up and down the escarpment because the canal would have to carry vessels bigger than barges. So the route was changed to carry the canal down Dick's Creek, an easier way to negotiate the escarpment. DeCew felt betrayed. The new route would actually take water away from his mills and this turned him into an enemy of the whole scheme.

In 1834, in increasing frustration at his inability to get compensation from the government, he sold up and moved to the Grand River, where he began all over again. He founded another community, Decewsville, and lived there until his death at the age of 89 in 1855.