 By the 1860s the settlement was referred to as Wesleyville and was dominated by a woman shopkeeper called Ma Wesley.Eventually the place was simply called Wesley, while the district continued to be called by its old French parish name, La Soie (La Swa).At the end of the 19th century the Roman Catholic Church began to make a move to evangelize the area, but so strong was the Protestant influence that it had to buy land for the first church by using one of its faithful to purchase the land in his name and then to declare it for the church after the sale was completed.