In this issue:

Connect with us:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/uelac
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2303178326/?ref=share

Extending the Search: A Case in Point. Part Two of Two
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
The details concerning the life of the Loyalist William White and his family would amount to very little if one limited one’s research to primary documents contemporary with White’s life. It was only by searching New Brunswick’s newspapers that were published more than a century after the Loyalists’ arrival in the province that more vital statistics were uncovered for the White family, including that most treasured of all data – family memories.
In June of 1888, the Daily Sun published an article written by a descendant of the White family. Much to the delight of historians and genealogists, the writer listed the children of the William and Deborah White – as well as their sons- and daughters-in-law. Such information was not found in any documents printed during the lifetime of the Loyalist refugees and only existed because a descendant committed the data to paper.
Philip White, the oldest surviving child of the Loyalist couple, settled on Washademoak Lake at the Narrows in New Brunswick’s Queens County. There he raised a large family and lived to be in his 80s. (Other sources list his two unnamed wives; they were sisters: Phoebe and Catherine Lawson.)
Peter White, who was born after his parents arrived in Saint John with the Loyalist refugees, married Charlotte Bookhout. Peter went to Saint John to learn the trade of a tanner and currier, and then practiced his trade on Grand Lake. Dying at age 68, he left three sons. Two grandsons became doctors.
Samuel, the White’s third son, married Elizabeth McFarlane. They lived at White’s Point on Grand Lake where they farmed and ran a lumbering business. Samuel died at age 73, “leaving no issue”.
Vincent, the youngest White son, was also in the lumber business on Salmon River. He and his wife Mary Dykeman had 9 children (a later account says 10). Vincent died at the age of 97. Among their sons and grandsons were doctors, millers, farmers, lawyers, and a member of the provincial legislature.
Mary White married William Wiggins and raised a large family on Grand Lake. Mary lived to be 77.
Susannah and Sarah White were twin sisters. Susannah became Mrs. Hiram Briggs and lived to be 70 years old. Sarah and her husband eventually moved to Ontario where she died in 1868.
Deborah White married Samuel Wilson and settled at Washademoak Lake. Her youngest sister Eleanor is noted as being the only sibling who was born in the 19th century (meaning that her mother was close to 50 when she was born). She and her husband, a Mr. Fairweather, raised a large family on the shores of Washademoak Lake.
This 1888 article has an embarrassment of genealogical information, but by extending a newspaper search for the name of William White even further, there was still more data to be found.
On February 23, 1893, an unnamed writer submitted an article on the White family of Queens County to the Daily Sun, a newspaper based in Saint John. Its 543 words contain a wealth of genealogical and historical data – information that did not appear in the musters of Fort Howe, the probate record of James Bell or the newspaper article that had been published 5 years earlier.
From the article, we discover that William and his wife Deborah lived on “a large property” on New York’s Long Island at the beginning of the American Revolution. This writer claimed that White entered the privateer service (rather than the army) and over the course of the war became a lieutenant in the navy. The family “landed safely on the rocky bound coast” of New Brunswick, and for a few years lived in “a rude log hut” in Saint John.
The White family then established its final home on the shores of Grand Lake in Queens County near where William’s brother Vincent White had his homestead. For the next 60 years, William and Deborah managed their 600-acre farm until old age compelled them to live with a neighbour. According to the article, both Loyalists lived to be 97. They were buried in the Anglican graveyard, which is described as being located at White’s (or Robertson’s) Point.
The article listed the spouses of the White children, including two first names not found in the 1888 article. Sarah, one of the Whites’ twin daughters, became Mrs. Henry Manzer, and Lena (Eleanor in the earlier article) married Jedediah Fairweather.
Ten months later, The Kings County Record of Sussex, New Brunswick published another article on the family of the Loyalist William White. This newspaper’s feature provides a few extra names in the family tree, but most importantly added a dollop of family lore that sheds light on the character of William White.
Said the writer, “When William had grown so weak through age that he could scarcely lift his chair, one had but to pronounce the hated name ‘Yankee’ to electrify the old man back to such energy and anger that he would get down his musket, the companion of his dangers and shouldering it, fight in mimic action his battles all over again.”
Among the claims of this writer is the fact that William and Deborah White lived to be centenarians. (Family lore tends to exaggerate some details. Later data indicates that Deborah died at 95 on June 7, 1849, and that William died at 98 on December 6, 1857.) The writer then noted that while the Loyalist couple’s descendants had made a number of contributions to New Brunswick society, some had “wandered back to the United States and made homes as far west as California”.
Whether the current generation of William and Deborah White’s descendants live in Canada or the United States, they can be thankful that earlier members of their family decided to commit family details to paper and publish them – even if the newspapers that held the Whites’ story were read 30 to 35 years after the Loyalists died. The Whites’ descendants remembered and retained their ancestors’ history – including fascinating vignettes of their refugee experiences—but did not share them until long after their ancestors died.
It’s a cautionary tale that reminds genealogists and historians to scour newspapers that were published decades after the arrival of the Loyalists to find similar stories.
Editor’s note: Access New Brunswick’s historic newspapers online.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Atlantic Loyalist Connections: Research Finds in the Graveyard, Part 2
(Continued from Part 1)
by Leah Grandy UNB Libraries 27 October 2021
take a closer look at loyalist settlement era grave markers.
In early settler graveyards of the Maritimes, funerary marker art was influenced by (like other material culture) traditions carried from the American Colonies, while at the same time, denoting the appearance of new physical and social circumstances.
In the northeastern American colonies, grave markers were initially produced and exported mainly from New England. Much of the literature written on grave markers in North America focusses on New England settler graveyards, although some of this work is still applicable to other regions of the eastern continent since New England was so influential in carving traditions.
Grave marker output went down in the northeastern American colonies with the outbreak of the American Revolution, signifying the great economic and social upheaval caused by the war. Richard F. Welch writes, “One sign of stress suffered by the New York City gravestone cutting community during the Revolution is the type of markers which were erected during this period.” Many marker carvers, both loyalists and patriots, had to relocate. Examples of stone makers from the period are poorly made, demonstrating the disruption caused by the Revolution. At the conclusion of the Revolution, trades such as stone carving were resumed, and more stone cutters were working than ever before in the American colonies. Read more…

More on the John and Hannah Aikman Family
In the previous issue of Loyalist Trails on 26 Oct. 2021-43, Original Aikman Homestead Has Roots Going Back 230 Years noted John and Hannah Aikman (Showers). More on the family of one of their children.
On 12 December, 1822, John and Hannah Aikman’s daughter, Nancy, married Justus Wright Williams of Barton, formerly of Hadley Mass. In 1833 they moved to Oakville where he became a very important person in local history. He was a school trustee, secretary of the school board, a Justice of the Peace and when Oakville was incorporated as 1857 he became the Treasurer. He assisted in organizing the Temperance Society and was Churchwarden at St Jude’s for 20 years. Williams was also instrumental in the founding of the Oakville Methodist Chapel. They had 7 children before her death following the birth of their youngest in 1837. In 1839 he married Elizabeth Hammill of Ancaster. (From A Williams Genealogy by Sophia L Main, Madison Wisconsin, 1929..)
Justus Williams was a descendant of Robert Williams of Roxbury Mass. Robert arrived in Massachusetts in 1647. One of his descendants signed the American Declaration of Independence. Williams College is named after another. Louisa May Alcott is a descendant and Justus Wright Williams’ middle name comes from the Wright family that later produced Orville and Wilbur.
Justus and Nancy had 7 children.

  • Emily Williams (1823-1909) married Charles H. Bigger of Trafalgar, then James Freeman and finally Hiram Cline. She had no children.
  • Cynthia Ann Williams(1826-1921) married George Griffin and had 11 children many of whom stayed in the Oakville area.
  • Hannah Dorcas Williams was born and died in 1828.
  • John Aikman Williams (1829-1921) married Ann Eliza Daniell and had a dry goods business in Oakville. They had 9 children.
  • Alexander Williams (1832-1913) married Sarah Grace Sutherland and was an Anglican clergyman. He was an early graduate of Trinity College and became the Rector of St John the Evangelist Church in Toronto. They had six children. One daughter married Harvey Lightbourn. Their daughter was the founder of Lightbourn Girls’ School in Oakville, now St Mildred’s Lightbourn.
  • Mary Hammill Williams (1835-1919) married George Brock Chisholm of Oakville. She was his second wife following the death of his first wife, Annie Arnott. He was my great grandfather, a nephew of William Chisholm (founder of Oakville) and grandson of George Chisholm UE. They had five children. His grandson, also George Brock Chisholm, known as Brock, was the first Director General of the World Health Organization.
  • Nancy Aikman Williams was born and died in 1837.

Justus Williams’ wife, Nancy died shortly afterwards. Two years later Justus Williams married Elizabeth Hammill of Ancaster. They had two children:

  • Justus Samuel Wright Williams (1841-1913) became a doctor, Medical Officer of Health and coroner for Halton County. He married Jennie Agnes Effie McGilland They had no children.
  • The last child was Mercy Sarah Elizabeth Williams (1841-1842).

It’s interesting that a daughter of the first marriage was named after the wife of the second marriage. Justus died 1875. He was the 8th generation of Williams in North America. My grandchildren make the 14th generation six of which lived in Oakville.
George Chisholm, President of the Oakville Historical Society

Loyalist:  Sergeant Jacob Anguish (Enckisch), Butler’s Rangers
Niagara, 4 August 1784
PRIVATE JACOB ANGUISH (Enckisch) TO LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN BUTLER
To Lieutenant Colonel John Butler, Commanding Officer.
The petition of Jacob Anguish, late a Ranger in Lieutenant Colonel Butler’s Corps, most humbly showeth:-
That your petitioner, in the year 1777, quitted his habitation near the Susquehanna, and joined Lieutenant Colonel Butler, under whose command he went on the expedition against Fort Stanwix and was present at the
battle of Oriskany.
That when the army retreated, he obtained permission from Lieutenant Colonel St Leger to return home in order to bring off his family, but having the misfortune to be taken prisoner on his journey, he was put into a dungeon at Hartford where he was detained nine months; that during this confinement his sufferings had reduced him to such a state that the Americans found it necessary to release him and permit him to return to his home; that on arriving there, he found that a party of Indians had plundered his house and carried off his wife and children prisoners. He, therefore, joined Colonel Butler a second time and went with him on an expedition to Wyoming.
That during the time that your petitioner remained in the dungeon at Hartford, he was subjected to all the sufferings which pain, sickness and intense cold could produce; that as he lay on the ground his clothes were sometimes frozen to it, and that one morning his heel was frozen so fast in the mud that he was obliged to get one of his fellow prisoners to disengage it, being himself so reduced by sickness that he was incapable of making any effort; that having ever afterwards troubled with pains in the foot and leg, an ulcer at last broke out upon the heel attached with a disease of the bone; that after having undergone great torments for near two years he was upon the reduction of the Corps of Rangers admitted into the garrison hospital at Niagara here the surgeons have found it absolutely necessary to cut off his leg.
That being fifty nine years of age, deprived of a limb and much reduced by a long course of sickness and distress, he is utterly incapable of maintaining himself and his wife, and that they must, therefore, be reduced to the greatest
misery, unless His Excellency, the Commander-in-Chief, should take their case into consideration and be graciously pleased to make some small provision for them.
That your petitioner humbly hopes, that in case he should not recover from the operation, His Excellency will nevertheless extend his bounty towards his helpless widow now between fifty and sixty years of age.
Your petitioner concludes with humbly entreating that you would be pleased to lay his situation before His Excellency, the Commander-in-Chief.
Niagara, 4 August 1784
I hereby certify the truth of the above representation, and although I could not be a witness of his sufferings in the dungeon, I think it necessary to observe that when he joined me at Tioga, his limb was still swelled to an enormous size.
John Butler, Lieutenant Colonel.

Jacob signed the petition with an X as he was not able to read and write.
_______________
British Library. Sloane and Additional Manuscripts, Add MSS 21765, Correspondence with Officers at Niagara, 1777-1784; National Archives of
Canada, Haldimand Collection, microfilm reel A-682.

A couple of interesting followups from the petition:
Jacob survived his amputation surgery in 1784, living until about 1797. After his death his widow Elizabeth (still looking for the surname) petitioned on March 25, 1797 to be granted the family lands around Bertie. It was approved, plus there is an order directly after her petition that in future all family lands for deceased Loyalists were to be granted to the widow.
Also, I took a trip to Ontario in 2016 and dipped into northern New York State to see the area and visit the Mabee Farm Historical Site (Jacob’s son Henry, also a Loyalist, married Elizabeth Mabee). On my return to Ontario I stopped at Fort Niagara. I told them that my 6x Great Grandfather had been there in 1784 for an operation. They directed me to the French Castle to speak with a man there. He told me that they had found bones near the surgeon’s area. Knowing that there was a burial ground outside the walls where bodies would be buried, I sent an email to my mother that evening (her mother was the last Anguish in the line) and said “I think I found Jacob’s leg!” We both had a good laugh about that.
I hope to go back to NY State someday and also possibly to Pennsylvania. Jacob had a large farm in the Susquehanna Valley that was NOT confiscated, and passed to family in 1800. I imagine that because some of Jacob’s sons stayed in the US, they were able to keep the land and then formalized the transfer:

Luzerne Co, PA Deeds, Vol 7, p.130
11 Feb 1800 – a half proprietor’s right, late the property of Jacob Enguish, deceased, to Joseph House of Minden, Montgomery Co, NY. Grantors: John Enguish and Peter Eigenbradt & wife Maria, all of Montgomery County, NY; Jacob Enguish, Henry Enguish, Frederick Garrison & wife Barbara, Henry Putman & wife Hannah, and Peter Law[r] & wife Elizabeth, all of Lincoln County, Upper Canada.

Of note, that the Mabee Farm is the oldest farm in the Mohawk Valley (1705) and the house is still standing. Lewis Mabee, Elizabeth’s father (and another of my 6x grandfathers), was also a Loyalist who has been proven (he was with Butler’s Rangers, as was Jacob Anguish). Yet another family that was separated by war, leaving some on either side of the border.
My parents both passed on their family trees in 2003 (my dad’s was cribbed together with correct and not so correct items from Ancestry, and my mother’s was a hand-typed tree from 1933 — with a note “UEL?” In the corner with Henry Anguish). It became my purpose to connect to previous generations, supply the answers to my parents, and gave me a reason to do a lot of travel.
I love how the stories reveal themselves every now and again. I used to say to my mother “just wait 7 years and a day and we will find out”. That was the timeline to find Jacob’s name in a ship’s list, arriving in Philadelphia in 1751.
Robyn Kendall UE, Grand River Branch, from an email exchange with Stephen Davidson

JAR: George Washington and the First Mandatory Immunization
by Richard J. Werther 26 October 2021
The debate over mandatory vaccination for Covid-19 has led to many articles referring to how George Washington handled a similar issue, this one involving smallpox, with the Continental Army early in the American Revolution. With the advantage of hindsight, the decision Washington made to fully inoculate (not vaccinate) his army may today seem obvious, but it wasn’t so simple for Washington and the others who lived it in real time. It’s worth revisiting exactly how this decision came to pass.
“The small Pox! The small Pox! What shall We do with it?” wrote an exasperated John Adams. Good question. The story of how Washington answered it provides insight into his vaunted leadership and ability to learn and change, as well as the trust his soldiers had in him. How smallpox was handled is an underrated factor in how the army lived to fight and eventually win the war.
Caused by the variola virus and extremely contagious, smallpox was the most deforming and lethal of the plague-like epidemics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Symptoms included severe pitting of the skin, eyebrows and lashes falling out, scarring so severe as to sometimes close up the nostrils, and even blindness. Persons infected with smallpox are contagious for a period of about seventeen to twenty days and afflicted for twenty-one to twenty-four days after an initial asymptomatic period. There is a period of time (generally one day) in which individuals are contagious but are either asymptomatic or have only begun to experience minor symptoms such as fever, headaches, body aches, nausea, and malaise, which could be attributed to other ailments. The smallpox virus is capable of surviving for a considerable time (days or even weeks) outside of the human body, making it much more easily transmitted and enabling its weaponization. Read more…

The Dutch Influence on the American Revolution
Written by: Denise Doring VanBuren, President General, DAR, 8 October 2021
(forwarded by Elsie Schneider, Grand River Branch)
Ahead of my upcoming trip to the Netherlands, I wanted to share this article from the September/October 2020 issue of American Spirit…
The Netherlands, in decline from its 17th-century heyday as a colonial world power, made major contributions to the American cause via arms merchants and banking houses.
By Jeff Walter
Dutch sympathy. Dutch weaponry. Dutch recognition. Dutch money. American independence. Without the support of our friends in the Netherlands, the outcome of the American Revolution might have been altogether different. While such contributions have been largely overlooked by historians on this side of the Atlantic, they were indispensable to the Patriots’ efforts.
When the war was over, and for years after, the United States of America was deeply indebted — financially and figuratively — to its Dutch allies. The Dutch Republic, on the other hand, paid a heavy price for its assistance.
A Fading Power
During its peak as a major colonial trade influence in the 1600s, the Dutch Republic built a global colonial empire, fostered a vast network of maritime connections, and became an international center of finance and culture. But it had since degenerated into a decentralized state, with political control alternating between the province of Holland and a series of stadtholders, or provincial officers. At the time of the American Revolution, the stadtholder over all seven Dutch provinces was William V, Prince of Orange, who had family ties to the British royal house. But ordinary Dutch citizens, weary of the outmoded and out-of-touch oligarchy, yearned for change.
The writings of the French Enlightenment philosophers Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau—a major influence on America’s Founding Fathers—also found receptive ears in the Dutch Republic. The writers’ views on liberty, separation of powers, the “general will” and related topics resonated with many progressive Dutch, who saw the American rebels as the embodiment of said social theories—and kindred spirits. The Dutch “Patriots,” unfortunately, would fare much worse than their American counterparts.
About 100,000 people of Dutch origin resided in the Colonies, where the Dutch West India Company had carried out 17th-century colonization. Roughly 85% of them remained in what was once New Netherland—comprising parts of modern-day New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Early Dutch settlers suffered under the tyrannical governance of Peter Stuyvesant, who was appointed by the West India Company. After the British freed the settlers from Stuyvesant’s control in August 1664, many of them assumed prominent business and social roles in the Colonies. However, immigration from their mother country all but came to a stop. Read more…

Ben Franklin’s World: Native Americans in Early American Cities
Colin Calloway, the John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and a Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, and the author of the book “The Chiefs Now In This City”: Indians and the Urban Frontier in Early America, joins us to investigate Native American visits to and experiences in early American cities.
During our investigation, Colin reveals why it’s important to understand interactions and diplomatic relationships between Native American peoples and white Europeans and Americans; Why Native Americans visited early American cities; And, how Native Americans experienced early American city life and entertainment. Listen in…

Washington’s Quill: Washington Slept Here—A Lot: Christiana Campbell’s Williamsburg Taverns
by William M. Ferraro, 29 October 2021
Between military service, business activities, and political obligations, George Washington traveled extensively and slept away from home many nights. In fact, he slept in so many places, and those locations so loudly publicized these visits, that the claim “George Washington Slept Here” became humorous.
My purpose now is not to trace bad jokes but to introduce a woman who may have provided accommodations for Washington more often and over a longer period than any other person. This woman was Christiana Campbell, who kept taverns in Williamsburg, Va., during the 1760s and 1770s, when Washington routinely visited that town to attend sessions of the House of Burgesses and to conduct business—notably transactions related to the Custis estate that he oversaw for his stepchildren, John Parke and Martha “Patsy” Parke Custis. Why did Washington patronize Campbell’s establishments? And did the two develop a friendship? Read more…

JAR: Justice, Mercy, and Treason: John Marshall’s and Mercy Otis Warren’s Treatments of Benedict Arnold
by Rand Mirante 28 October 2021
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the founders of the new American Republic were lurching forward from the shockingly successful outcome of their increasingly remote Revolution, and finding themselves immersed in the uncharted waters of nation-building. The political landscape was inflamed by passionate partisanship and varying, often vituperatively expressed visions of what course to follow, what form the Republic ought to assume, and what guidance the past could offer for the discordant present and an uncertain future.
Squaring off contemporaneously at opposite poles of the political spectrum were two of the country’s most prominent historians who were participants in the years of the Revolution: the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, former staunch Federalist John Marshall, a Virginia veteran of Washington’s army and subsequent survivor of Thomas Jefferson’s assault on the federal judiciary; and Mercy Otis Warren, a fervent Jeffersonian Republican, iconoclastic dramatist and chronicler who found and placed herself at the Massachusetts epicenter of pivotal Revolutionary history. Marshall’s platform was his multi-volume, periodically released, and unevenly focused biography of his consummate hero, under whom he served at Brandywine, Germantown, Valley Forge, and Monmouth: The Life of George Washington. Warren’s pulpit was her comparably monumental History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution Interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations. Both works can be seen as polemical exercises that were intended to shape the future by transfiguring the past via the authors’ respective ideological prisms. Read more…

The Oldest Buildings in Every Province and Territory in Canada
Laura Hanrahan 27 October 2021, in Daily Hive
The oldest surviving buildings in Canada date back centuries, with many still standing from nearly 500 years ago.
With early colonial settlers making their way to different parts of the country at different times, each province and territory has its longest-standing buildings spanning many decades.
Quebec, for example, is home to a laundry list of buildings from the 1600s and is the only province to have surviving buildings from that century. Read more…

Rebellion Boxes from 1837
We have, to date, “discovered” 152 different boxes crafted by a least 70 different prisoners. Our most recent discovery is a box purchased at a yard sale in southern California – neither seller nor buyer had any notion of what the box was. When the buyers did some research, they found me. When they learned the story of their box, they immediately determined that it should be sent home. The result is that the box is now at the King [Township] Heritage and Cultural Centre. If you see the York Pioneer, the 2021 volume (delayed but apparently about to be published) contains the story of Jesse Cleaver and the box.
The just-published Autumn 2021 of Ontario History issue has an extended article about the life of some of the prisoners held in “John Montgomery’s Room” in Toronto’s jail, much of which is based on an account book of one prisoner, John G. Parker. It is commonly known that the prisoners had access to knives and chizels – Parker’s notes reveal among other things,that prisoners not only bought knives, but also a whet stone, sandpaper, ink, paper, and varnish.
Timothy Munro petitioned Lt. Governor Arthur seeking Royal clemency. He was not alone; many prisoners submitted such petitions, often worded almost identically. Apparently the lawyers who were advising them drafted standard forms to be copied and completed in with personal references.
Chris Raible chrisraible1@gmail.com
The book “From Hands Now Striving to be Free” by Chris Raible with John Carter and Darryl Withrow was published by the York Pioneer and Historical Society in 2009. See their store. Note that a fully expanded and revised new book is in the works.
UELAC Members can access part 1 of the Rebellion Box story in Loyalist Gazette Spring 2021 in Members Section at uelac.ca
Also for UELAC Members, Jo Ann Tuskin, a descendant of Timothy Munro presented his story as one of the rebellion participants, a prisoner following and the source of one of the rebellion boxes in a branch meeting. This was recorded and is available in the Members’ Section, under Presentations to Branches, under the heading “Dieppe | Timothy Munro, UE”, beginning at the 22 minute mark.

Remembering Our Veterans: Unmarked Grave Program
As we approach Remembrance Day, I am hoping that perhaps the UEL membership can assist me with a solemn task related to Veterans. I am the Coordinator of the Last Post Fund’s Unmarked Grave Program in BC lastpostfund.ca We are a non-profit organization with a mission “to ensure that no Veteran [who served after 1867] is denied a dignified funeral and burial, as well as a military gravestone, due to insufficient funds at time of death.”
The catalyst for the creation of the Last Post Fund and subsequently, the Unmarked Grave Program began in December 1908. Two policemen find a homeless man huddled in a doorway in downtown Montreal. Unconscious, the man is taken to the nearby General Hospital where he is quickly diagnosed as being a drunk and taken to a room where he could sleep it off. When the head orderly Arthur Hair looks on the so-called drunk, he notices a blue envelope sticking out of the man’s pocket. Being a Veteran of the South African War, Hair is familiar with that type of envelope. Issued by Britain’s War Office, it contains the honourable discharge of one Trooper James Daly, who has served the Empire for more than 20 years. This blue envelope represents his sole possession.
However, Trooper Daly was not drunk. Instead, he was suffering from hypothermia and malnutrition. He died 2 days later, still unconscious, at age 53. Since his body was unclaimed, his remains would be turned over to science for medical research, as was customary in those days.
Hair was utterly shocked by the Empire’s disregard for its Veteran. So he raised money from friends and colleagues to give the soldier a decent and dignified funeral. Daly was then buried at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery on Mount-Royal. This was the catalyst for the creation of the Last Post Fund in Montreal, in April 1909. Trooper Daly was the first of nearly 150,000 servicemen and women for whom the Last Post Fund has provided financial benefits over the past century.
Our main objective is to ensure that no Veteran will ever experience the same fate as Trooper Daly.
In many circumstances, when a Veteran passes away, either, they or their family did not have the financial means to purchase a marker. As a result, I rely, not only on British Columbians across the Province, but, individuals and families across Canada to provide me with leads to follow up, which I do so with fervour. Across Canada this year, the Last Post Fund is currently on track to provide approximately 1000 headstones to veterans lying in unmarked graves!
Our criteria to provide a marker is relatively straightforward: The UMG Program is available to eligible Veterans whose grave has not had a permanent headstone or foot marker for five years or more, and who have not previously received funeral and burial funding from the Last Post Fund or Veterans Affairs Canada.
I will also point out that a Veteran to us is someone who served, regardless of the era and how long they served! If a grave of a Veteran has been marked with a temporary marker (IE: wooden cross), we will also consider replacing it with something more permanent. If any of you readers are aware of an unmarked Veteran’s grave, regardless of location, I would love to hear from you. I can be reached at smithglenn039@gmail.com
Glenn Smith UE, Membership at Vancouver Branch; Last Post Fund; Unmarked Grave Program

Toronto residents fight for Ontario’s First Parliament Site
By Samantha Beattie onCBC News 29 October 2021
Downtown Toronto community groups are fighting to reinstate plans for a library and a park that are 20 years in the making at the historic First Parliament Site — all threatened when the province swiftly expropriated the city-owned land in August.
The provincial agency in charge of regional transit in Greater Toronto, Metrolinx, will use the full block at Front Street East and Parliament Street for a subway station and has suggested the rest be developed into condo towers. As the property’s owner, it now has full control over the site where the province’s first legislature stood, and how it is used.
Its proposal is “aggressive” and would “obliterate” the city and community’s vision for much-needed public space, including an interpretive centre to recognize its cultural and historical significance, Cynthia Wilkey, West Don Lands Committee co-chair, told Mayor John Tory’s executive committee Wednesday. Read more…

When Malaria Was a Fact of Life in Ontario
By Jamie Bradburn – 27 Oct 2021, TVO
In a letter sent to her mother in November 1834, Catherine Parr Traill apologized for a long silence. “When I tell you it has been occasioned by sickness,” she wrote, “you will cease to wonder that I did not write. My dear husband, my servant, the poor babe, and myself, were all at one time confined to our beds with ague.” She believed her family’s illness “had its origin in a malaria” due to stagnant water in a flooded cellar under the kitchen of their home near Peterborough. “The heat of the cooking and Franklin stoves in the kitchen and parlour, caused a fermentation to take place in the stagnant fluid before it could be emptied; the effluvia arising from this mass of putrefying water affected us all.”
Whether it was known as ague, swamp fever, or “the shakes,” malaria was a serious concern in Ontario during the late 18th century and much of the 19th century. The disease was present in North America as early as the 16th century; there are various theories as to how it reached Ontario — through British soldiers previously posted in such places as the Caribbean and India, perhaps, or through United Empire Loyalists who migrated following the American Revolution. Read more…

The Wallpaper Of Spitalfields in London
October 27, 2021.
In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London.
One house in Fournier St has wallpapers dating from 1690 until 1960. This oldest piece of wallpaper was already thirty years old when it was pasted onto the walls of the new house built by joiner William Taylor in 1721, providing evidence — as if it were ever needed — that people have always prized beautiful old things.
John Nicolson, the current owner of the house, keeps his treasured collection of wallpaper preserved between layers of tissue in chronological order, revealing both the history and tastes of his predecessors. First, there were the wealthy Huguenot silk weavers who lived in the house until they left for Scotland in the nineteenth century, when it was subdivided as rented dwellings for Jewish people fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe. Yet, as well as illustrating the precise social history of this location in Spitalfields, the wider significance of the collection is that it tells the story of English wallpaper — through examples from a single house.
When John Nicolson bought it in 1995, the house had been uninhabited since the nineteen thirties, becoming a Jewish tailoring workshop and then an Asian sweatshop before reaching the low point of dereliction, repossessed and rotting. John undertook a ten year renovation programme. Read more…

Events:

Gov. Simcoe Branch Wed 3 Nov. 7:30ET “First People: Exploring Toronto’s Indigenous History “

By Richard Fiennes-Clinton. This presentation explores the history of the First People in the Toronto and Southern Ontario area; how they interacted with one another, both before and after the first European settlers arrived – a good primer for gaining more insight into Toronto’s official land acknowledgement. Richard Fiennes-Clinton has operated an historical walking tour company called “Muddy York Walking Tours” for many years, and is the author of a book on Toronto’s early history called Muddy York: A History of Toronto Until 1834. Register here

FamilySearch: From the Colonies to Canada: Researching Your United Empire Loyalists. Thurs. 18 Nov. 12 noon ET (10 am MT)

Loyalists were individuals who supported the British cause during the Revolutionary War, most of whom were expelled to the future nation of Canada after the American victory. This class will focus on history, methodology, and record sets to help you find your own Loyalist ancestors. Register for Zoom link

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

  • Interesting Deed for property in Digby, NS dated Jan. 27, 1786, recorded in Registry of Deeds for NS (Digby County, Book 1B, Page 303) from Samuel Hitchcock, Loyalist who served in King’s Orange Rangers to Loyalist Robert Ray for land including ‘my former dwelling’ – Brian McConnell,UE @brianm564
  • Reproduction of original painting of James Moody (1744 – 1809), Loyalist officer with New Jersey Volunteers in American Revolution, located in St. Peter’s Church, Weymouth North, Digby County, NS – Brian McConnell,UE
  • Colonial newspapers contributed to the perpetuation slavery. Advertised 250 years ago: “TO BE SOLD, A likely, strong, healthy Negro Woman, about 25 or 26 Years of Age, who understands all Sorts of House Work.” (Essex Gazette 10/29/1771)
  • Headquarters of General George Washington 1775-1776. Home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1837-1882. Cambridge, Massachusetts. See
  • Joseph Payson’s name appears on the earliest known list of men who participated in destroying the East India Company tea, published in 1835. I (J L Bell) posit that list might have come from Boston newspaper publisher and politician Benjamin Russell. Read more about recognizing Payson.
  • This Week in History
    • 25 Oct 1769, the Boston selectmen voted to build a new watch house on the town’s land near the fortification at the Neck. The men hired to patrol there were supposed to watch the army sentries stationed at their own guardhouse nearby.
    • 29 Oct 1770, the 14th Regiment’s muster roll listed Pvt. John Moies as in “Prison,” accused of theft by a shopkeeper. Moies was convicted and ordered to work for that man–his way out of the army. He stayed in Boston, married, had kids.
    • 26 Oct 1774 First Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia.
    • 24 Oct 1775 British naval attack on Norfolk, Virginia ends in humiliation at hands of Patriot riflemen.
    • 25 Oct 1776 King George III issues proclamation urging able seamen to enlist in Royal Navy.
    • 27 Oct 1776 Royal Navy forcibly impresses 1,000 sailors from boats on the Thames for service against America.
    • 28 Oct 1776 Battle of White Plains ends in Washington retreating to New-Jersey.
    • 29 Oct 1777 John Hancock resigns as President of the Continental Congress.
    • 23 Oct 1783 Virginia frees slaves who fought for the Americans in the Revolution.
  • Clothing and Related:
  • Townsends
  • Miscellaneous
    • Pumpkins are a New World crop, and thus unavailable to the ancient Irish from whom the Jack O’Lantern comes from. So what did they use? Multiple other crops including famously the absolutely terrifying turnip.

Last Post: WALT UE, Maxine Pearl
Passed away on 23 October 2021 in Belleville ON. Maxine was born on the 1st of June 1928 in Frankford Ontario. She was the beloved daughter of Volonie Elgin Lusk UE and Marjorie Alice Bell UE. Sister to Eva Brinklow of Brighton and Douglas Chandler of Belleville.
Beloved mother of David, Bob, Gary (2020), Carl Walt and Angela Johnson UE Beloved grandmother of 14, great grandmother of 27 and great great grandmother of 6. Maxine was predeceased by 3 sons and 4 grandchildren.
Maxine was married to Wilbert Arthur Walt UE for 63 years. She was a life member of the Bay of Quinte Branch UELAC. Maxine was descended from several loyalists, Duncan Bell, Wm Bell Sr. Isaac Brisco, Daniel Carr. George Finkle Jr. George Finkle Sr., Peter Stoneburgh and Capt. John Meyers. to name a few. Maxine had a love of history and served as a Trustee for the Old Hay Bay Church for many years.
Interment took place on the 29th of October 2021 at Stockdale Cemetery near Frankford ON. If you wish to make a donation in Maxine’s memory please make a donation to Old Hay Bay Church or the charity of your choice.
Angela Johnson UE, Bay of Quinte Branch

Last Post: CORLEY UE, Chad
Friends and loved ones of Chad Corley will never hear him riffing on a guitar or playing a piano in Peterborough again.
Described by those around him as selfless, full of life and for years trying to kick his drug habit, Corley is being mourned after the news on Wednesday, Oct. 20, that his life was claimed by addiction.
“Chad was a huge advocate for people on the street,” says friend Alex Bierk. “It’s really sad to see someone like him, who was this one-of-a-kind energetic person, be gone.”
Dan Hennessey, another friend and advocate for homeless people, says Corley had been trying to put his life back together for years, but the supports weren’t there to help him.
More about Chad’s struggles.
Chad’s mother, Jan Corley, a member of Kawartha Branch, has a Loyalist Certificate to three Loyalist ancestors: Josiah Hart, Richard Morris and Donald Ross.
Bob McBride UE, Kawartha Branch

Published by the UELAC
If you do not now receive this free newsletter directly but would like to, you can subscribe here.