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2022 Conference Presentations: Something for Everyone UEL
The theme of the presentations is:”Eclectic and Inclusive.” They fall into three broad categories: historical figures, genealogy, and socio-political history.
Historical Figures:
Dr. Jarvis Brownlie of the University of Manitoba will do a presentation on the great Shawnee warrior Tecumseh whose support of the British led to victory at the Battle of Detroit in 1812 but who lost his life at the Battle of Thamesville (Moraviantown) the following year. The title is “Tecumseh: A reassessment of his Legacy for our Times”. This will be a fresh look at a well-know hero of our history.
Dr. Richard Monture of McMaster University will do a presentation on Joseph Brant, the great Mohawk War Chief of the Revolutionary War period whose legacy lives on in Grand River.
Dr. Janet Noel of the University of Toronto will do a presentation on Laura Secord whose woodland trek to warn the British of an impending American attack contributed to the British victory at Beaver Dams. The title is “Apocryphal Ambulations? The Many Walks of One Laura Secord”. This promises to be an insightful account of a legendary figure.
Dr. Cecilia Morgan, also of the University of Toronto will do a presentation on Amelia Ryerse Harris, a nineteenth century loyalist historian and prodigious diarist whose London, ON home, Eldon House is testament to nineteenth century social history. The Title is “Family, Friends, and Wild Turkeys: Amelia Ryerse Harris’ Loyalist History”.
Dr. Carl Benn of Ryerson University will do a presentation on Major John Norton, the multi-faceted protégé of Joseph Brant whose military strategy saved the British from defeat at Queenston Heights> The tile is “John Norton and the Indigenous Great Lakes, 1780s-1820”.
Trivia Quiz:

  1. Which one of the historical figures owned over 50 slaves?
  2. Which one was born and educated in Scotland?
  3. Which one promoted a Pan-American Confederacy of Indigenous Nations?
  4. Which is commonly known by the surname of his stepfather?
  5. Which one was a cousin of Egerton Ryerson?
  6. Which one lived to be 93?
  7. Which one worked briefly as a school teacher?
  8. Which one received a gift of 100 pounds from the Prince of Wales?
  9. Which one committed manslaughter of a relative?
  10. Which one wrote a diary that covered almost 9000 days?

See the answers.

Register Today for the Conference
From the registration team of Alice and Bruce Walchuck item, read these helpful notes before registering.
Don’t miss the great speakers and topics – register today.
More details; follow the links for each speaker and topic

“Magnates, Mavens, and Miracle Workers: Loyalist Descendants in Manitoba”
A number of people who have made significant contributions to Canada have Loyalist ancestors

Brigadier General Henry Norlande Ruttan

Loyalist forebear:

  • William Ruttan, UE, 3rd Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers

Henry Norlande Ruttan was born 21 May 1848 in Cobourg, Ontario to Henry James Ruttan and Margaret Pringle. The whole of his professional life was interwoven by two major strands, the military and civil engineering.
Ruttan’s military life began in his teens when he joined the Cobourg Volunteer Militia mustered against the Fenian Raids in 1866. At 18 he graduated from the School of Military Instruction in Kingston. After he moved to Winnipeg he became a founder of the 90th Battalion of the Winnipeg Royal Rifles in 1883. Read more…
Mary Steinhoff, Chair, On behalf of the 2022 Conference Planning Committee of the Manitoba Branch

Registering for UELAC AGM, for Members
NOTE: This is a separate registration from the UELAC Conference
The AGM for current members is scheduled for Saturday, 28 May 2022 at 11:00 a.m. ET.
Registration to attend is required – details to register (separate from the Conference registration) are in the Members’ Section – login at uelac.ca for instructions.
The agenda for the meeting, and a package with all the reports etc. have now been posted there as well. Check out the President’s report, branch reports, financials and what each of the many committees accomplished in 2021.

Loyalists Executing Loyalists – Part Two of Three
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
There were no “true crime” magazines or mystery novels during the first 40 years of Loyalist settlement in New Brunswick. If someone wanted to read about capital punishment, then the only source for morbid details would be the colony’s newspapers. In the briefest of accounts, one could find the names of those who faced execution, the crime that merited the sentence, and the names of victims. When read today, they provide a very different perspective on the early years of life in a Loyalist colony. It is an insight into both Loyalist justice and Loyalist crime.
Fredericton’s The New Brunswick Royal Gazette reported an execution on October 13, 1786. Because they robbed the home of George Sproule, the colony’s surveyor general, two men were “sentenced to suffer death”. The paper couldn’t pin down the correct spelling of the criminals’ names, rendering them as James Coap/Forbes Cope and Thomas Heney/George Heaney.
Five months later, there was a report of a Saint John man who had died due to a broken neck. In this case, the coroner’s verdict was that it was “willful murder by person unknown”. Sometimes, it seems, there were unsolved Loyalist homicides.
March 1795 was the occasion of the hanging of James Shank. The Kings County man had murdered his wife. Both Loyalists are recorded in the victualing muster that was tabulated when Saint John’s Fort Howe was provided food to refugees during their first year in the colony. Shank had been a carpenter when the couple sailed to sanctuary on the Thames in June of 1783.
The 1783-84 victualing muster contained the name of another Loyalist who would later become a murderer in 1797. Prior to the American Revolution, Archibald McNeil had emigrated from Ireland to earn a living as a baker in the British colonies. McNeil was committed to Saint John’s jail in October for the murder of Thomas Kitchen, a shoemaker. A month later the Loyalist was executed. His victim had left family in England.
In 1805, the Saint John Gazette reported on a murder trial in Shediac, Westmoreland County. Amos Babcock was convicted of killing his sister, Mercy Hall. Three years later, three deserters from the 101st Regiment were charged with murdering Captain Clayton Tilton.
Henry Baldwin, James Lennon and Patrick McEvoy abandoned Fort Howe in October of 1808, heading west for the American border. Six days later, the armed deserters knocked on the door of a house near that of Clayton Tilton’s to ask directions to Dipper Harbour. Knowing that there were deserters in the neighbourhood, Tilton called on two servants to help him capture the soldiers.
Tilton confronted the deserters on St. Andrews Road as they were leaving Musquash. Private Baldwin shot and killed Tilton with his musket, and then escaped into the woods with his two companions. The local militia eventually captured the three privates and took them back to Saint John for trial. Lennon and Baldwin were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Both men testified that they had persuaded Patrick McEvoy, a teenager, to desert with them. Since the youth had no part in Tilton’s murder, he received mercy.
The deserters’ execution was set for November 23, exactly a month following the murder of Clayton Tilton. Lennon and Baldwin marched to the King Street gallows that Wednesday morning in the company of a Methodist layman who sang hymns in the hope of comforting them.
Many who witnessed the men swinging from their nooses must have wondered if there was some form of divine intervention. Both of the deserters’ ropes snapped and the men dropped to the ground unharmed. The convicts then had to stand beneath their gallows until new rope could be acquired and put up a second time. With fresh nooses around their necks, Lennon and Baldwin once again stood on the gallows. This time the ropes held, and the men died.
Almost six decades later, while working along King Street, city labourers unearthed some rotten boards and bones. Digging further, they discovered two coffins that contained scraps of red cloth and tarnished military brass buttons. These artifacts were evidence of a speedy burial in 1808. Still dressed in their regiment’s uniforms, Lennon and Baldwin had quickly been consigned to shallow, unmarked graves at the foot of their gallows.
The November 5, 1810 edition of The New Brunswick Royal Gazette reported on the trial of William Masculine who was charged with the murder of Peregrine White, a Loyalist who had settled in Springfield, Kings County. White and his neighbor James Rogers – a Loyalist from North Carolina– had got into a heated argument over the fact that White had thrown a stone at Rogers’ dog and crippled it. It didn’t help matters that Rogers was drunk at the time.
Rogers was William Masculine’s stepfather. When he heard the two men arguing, Masculine stepped out of the Rogers’ home and tried to break up the ever-escalating quarrel. White turned his abuse on Masculine and the latter’s fiancé Mary Evans who had also come out to see what was the matter. White vowed that if he had a gun he would “blow {Masculine’s} brains out”. In response to the threat, Masculine went back to the house and returned with his own shotgun.
White continued his abusive tirade, making fun of Masculine’s limp and daring him to fire his gun. When Masculine pulled the trigger, “the whole load of shot” passed through White’s left leg between the knee and ankle. Had he intended to give White a crippled leg like his own? Masculine would later testify that he had not intended to kill White.
Horrified by what he had done, Masculine ran back into his stepfather’s house. Despite the abuse that White had heaped on her, Mary Evans tended to his wounds. Clearly, Mary and William’s plans to marry in a day or two were now postponed indefinitely. Shot on September 22nd, White “languished” until he died on October third.
The outcome of William Masculine’s November trial did not go well. The Royal Gazette’s reporter noted, “The feelings of the jury (as well as the court) appeared much interested for the unfortunate criminal, and had they considered those only, their verdict, as is presumed, would have been manslaughter, but aided by a most excellent charge from the learned judge, who pointed out to them in a clear, perspicuous manner their obligation to be guided by the law, which he fully and satisfactorily explained to them, their feelings yielded to a sense of duty, and they returned their verdict (after an hour’s deliberation) “Guilty of willful murder”.
The Loyalist judicial system of the day had William Masculine hanged. A sad footnote to his story concerns his fiancé, Mary Evans. When she died in 1827, her probate record notes that she was a “spinster”. After being just days away from becoming Mrs. Masculine when William shot Peregrine White, Mary never found anyone to replace her fiancé and died alone. She had no relatives in New Brunswick, only a widowed mother in Wales.
This series on the executions of Loyalists concludes in next week’s Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

JAR Book Review: Cornwallis: Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World
Authour: Richard Middleton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022).
Review by John R. Maass 2 May 2022
Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis(1738–1805)
Middleton attributes the lack of biographical interest in Cornwallis’s long service to the British crown to the need to “master the details of a career spent in widely differing roles in three separate continents,”[1] i.e., North America, India, and Europe (particularly in Ireland). and the inherent challenge in condensing the material to one volume.
Cornwallis received a fine education, followed by a commission in the Grenadier Guards in 1756. Because of his youth and the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, he enrolled at an Italian military school in Turin in 1757. The next year he joined the British forces fighting the French, and saw active service through June 1762, at which time he assumed the title of Lord Cornwallis upon the death of his father, and took a seat in the House of Lords soon thereafter.
The author also describes Cornwallis and his political career leading up to the Revolution, in which he was largely sympathetic to the American colonies’ grievances as a Whig. Eventually, he abandoned that faction in 1766 and reduced his political activities by the early 1770s due to his military obligations. By the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, “any sympathy he may have had for the American cause had long since disappeared.”
Middleton provides a standard overview of Cornwallis in the Revolutionary War, from his arrival in early 1776 at Cape Fear, North Carolina, the battles of Long Island, Trenton and Princeton, Brandywine and Germantown, and Monmouth Courthouse in June 1778. Read more…

History of Apohaqui, Kings County, NB
By Marjorie Bupee McAlpine, 1962
Edited and pictures added by Barbara Pearson UE
(Apohaquiis half-way between Saint John and Moncton, located on the Kennebecasis River at the confluence of the Millstream River.)
“In the following pages I have endeavoured to give a brief account of life in this area of Sussex and Studholm parishes, known as Apohaqui, since the year 1780. ”
If we examine a map of original land grants for this area, we will find, on the north side of the Kennebecasis River the names: Major Guilford Studholm, John Burgess, William Inwood, Benjamin Harned, Edward Burgess and Samuel Hallet. On the south side were Studholm, John Whitejack, John Ross Jr., Reader Gray and Dougold MacDonald. Grants to both William and Jonathan McLeod lay along the Millstream River.
Major Studholm was born in Ireland in 1740 and as early as 1762 was in command of Fort Frederick in what is now West Saint John. He was very active in military circles and was later made Commander of Fort Howe. Here he was to welcome the Loyalists in 1783 and tried to establish as many of them as possible. Read more…

From Barb Pearson. The Jones Inn and other travel items are referenced in the document. Barb adds:

Oxen were used for farm work and at times to visit the neighbours. Very few horses were in the country when the Loyalists arrived. Gradually the roads were improved and stage-coaches became the luxurious mode of travelling. Regular trips were made between St. John and Fredericton; St. John and Halifax. Fresh horses and entertainment were provided at the many “Road Houses” or Inns along the way. The usual price for such accommodation as lodging, supper ½ pint rum and tobacco was 1s 6d. Another economical buy at this time was 2 gal. rum, with a tub to carry it in., at 18s. 9 d. Think of the many uses the tub could be put to afterwards. Some of the Inns had very few guest rooms and guests provided their own blankets. Each guest rolled up in his own blanket and lay as near to a large open fire as he could, roasting one side and freezing the other.

THE KING’S COLOUR: French Place Names in Upper Canada
by Stuart Manson May 2022
The May 2022 issue of The King’s Colour has been published.
Titled “Le Pays d’en Haut: French Place Names in Upper Canada.” It describes some of the French names originating from the New France era, persisting through the Upper Canadian period, and still appearing on our modern-day maps.
The Broadside can be accessed on The King’s Colour page.
Visit Stuart’s website for more details about Stuart and his services.

JAR: Charles Thomson and the Delaware
by James M. Smith 3 May 2022
There are many, many founding fathers in the story of America’s Revolution and unfortunately only a few are really known to the general public. Yet without those who are less known, there would have been no revolution.
One of those men was the official secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thomson. He was the sole fixture of the congress throughout its entire fifteen years of existence… There was a time after the war was over when they all went home and left Charles Thomson all alone; he was the entire government for a period of time. He never left his post; he was always there. In the end, when it was all over, it was he who traveled to Mt. Vernon to inform George Washington, officially, that he had been elected to the presidency of the new government under the new constitution. He then accompanied Washington to New York, the new capital of the nation, and turned over to Washington all the official papers, journals, and documents of the nation including the Great Seal.
Charles Thomson was born into an Irish family. In 1739 his mother died and his father thought he should emigrate to America. Thomson’s father left his daughter in Ireland with other members of the family, took his three sons, and sailed for America. Charles was eight years old, the youngest. Unfortunately, his father died before the ship reached America. When the ship arrived at New Castle, Delaware, the two older brothers were able to get jobs and support themselves. The captain apprenticed Charles to a blacksmith in town who had no children of his own. That night Charles overheard the man and his wife talking about they now had someone who would learn the trade and support them in their old age. It seems no one asked Charles about that. So, that same night, Charles put what goods he had into a small bag, climbed out a window and left town. Read more…
Editor’s Note: A must read to understand how the European Indigenous relationships evolved. Charles Thomson was a “scribe” for the Delaware Nation under Teedyuscung during negotiations for a settlement.

Bloody Creek Cairn in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia (Acadian, French, British)
Bloody Creek Cairn in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia marks location of two 18th century battles between British & French with allied first nations. Fortunate to take video between noise from nearby highway.

Commonplace: Learning Through Historical Role-Play
“New Seats at the Tea Party”
When facilitated responsibly, historical role-play can be an invaluable educational method because it encourages empathy and taking ownership of one’s participation in the classroom.
On a warm autumn day in Northern Virginia, a dozen girls enter their all-girls high school’s eleventh grade U.S. History classroom; about half are boarders and half are day students commuting from the greater DC area. They’re Black, brown, and white, several are international students, and all are prepared for class.
Their assignment is to play the role of an early American woman, pre-assigned and carefully researched. Read more…

Who are the People In The Picture? Picnic Lunch
Go to Who’s In The Picture (WitP). May 5, 2022. This photo (Ref. Code 2-14-24) was taken by Gerald Rogers during the 1989 Royal Convention, the caption identified Jean Walton only (in the pink dress).

Can you help resolve the questions?
If so, please send an email to Carl Stymiest, Leader of the Library and Archives Committee at communications@uelac.org — please note the date and reference number of the photo. Any additional relevant comments are welcome, and appreciated.
Carl Stymiest

In the News:

Travel back 230 years to Ontario celebration of historic culture
Cornwall Standard-Freeholder by Laura Dalton 5 May 2022
The 1784 celebration is a free event that will honour culture from the three founding groups of Ontario: the Mohawks of Akwesasne, the United Empire Loyalists (UEL), and French Canadians.
The Loyalists first landed in what is now Cornwall on June 6, 1784, at the outbreak of the American Revolution. They remained in what would become Cornwall and spread into the surrounding area to form other towns like Martintown.
Over 26 organizations will be set up in 40 booths at the fair. The 1784 celebration will have dedicated events and entertainment for each Loyalist, French Canadian and indigenous culture. The Cornwall Community Museum will be offering walking tours and free tours of the museum itself. Events will be held in English, French and the language of the Mohawk people. Read more…

Recipes for … on your ancestor’s gravestone
How making recipes etched on gravestones changed this student’s perspective on death.
Rosie Grant says she wishes she could throw a dinner party for all the women whose cherished recipes she has prepared.
But she’ll never meet any of them, because she found their recipes etched on their gravestones.
“They also are wonderful, very giving people. They all love to cook. They all had a signature dish that they would bring to family gatherings,” Grant told As It Happens guest host Helen Mann.
“I mean, even literally their last testament to the world is the gift of a recipe.” Read more…

Hamilton ON: Councillors support installing signs that share Indigenous history at ‘problematic’ sites in Hamilton
Dan Taekema, CBC News, 6 May 2022
Our intent is to round out the true history,’ says manager of Indigenous Relations.
Councillors have voted in favour of setting up signs at six sites in the city that will indicate they’re “problematic” and provide Indigenous history, following a review of Hamilton’s landmarks and monuments, including the statue of John A. Macdonald.
The emergency and community services committee received a report Thursday calling for the city to build relationships with local Indigenous communities based on trust and respect, hire an Indigenous community liaison and curator and prioritize gathering spaces for Indigenous community members. Read more…

Response to Query. Route from New Brunswick to Upper Canada
In the April 10 issue of Loyalist Trails, Kathy McIlwaine asked about the route Loyalists took from New Brunswick to Upper Canada. (NOTE: This is the last response received to date. Thanks to all who have contributed)

Travelling from Sunbury, NB to Upper Canada in 1793
Prepared by Guylaine Pétrin ©2022
Regarding Daniel Cook, from Sunbury, I don’t have information about his specific trip, but I can give information about how other Loyalists from Sunbury and Northumerland Counties N.B. travelled to Upper Canada in 1793. They came by ship.
Many of the settlers on the St.John’s and Miramichi rivers were mariners or sailors. Some also worked as ship carpenters at the King’s Works on Bear Island.
In his 1796 Upper Canada Land Petition (UCLP) John Willson of Yonge St described how he left his home in Northumberland County N.B. in July 1793, and how he arrived in Newark U.C. with 60 persons including his family.

The trip from the Miramichi River to Quebec city took 27 days, and it was recorded in the Quebec newspapers.

  • Source: QUEBEC GAZETTE July 11, 1793
  • 11 July 1793 Departed. 8 August 1793 Arrival Quebec City ( 27 days )
  • Schooner Susanna, Capt Simon Dorset, in 27 days journey from Miramichi. Passenger Johns Wilson, Esq. and family, Mrs. Prentiss, and 56 men, women and children for Upper Canada.

As an aside, there are many such articles in the Quebec Gazette, but generally only prominent passengers are noted. But they often give the origin of the passengers.
At Quebec, they would have transferred to other ships allowing them to travel on the St.Lawrence River and then Lake Ontario. This trip was already well established in 1793, and it involved transfers to low boats, called batteaux, to cross the Lachine Rapids.
In the Toronto Public Library collection of manuscripts, there is a memorial by John Willson to Governor Simcoe, where he acknowledged that he received rations for some families when they arrived in Newark (Niagara) in October 1793. They were supposed to repay these rations, and they signed the papers to say they would. The names of those families are: John Willson, Richard Lawrence, Patrick Cobgon (Colgan), Joseph Kendrick, Peter Whitney (signed) John Kendrick, Titus Fitz, Duke William Kendrick, Samuel Sinclair, Samuel Osborn, Hiram Kendrick, Peter Long.

  • Source: TPL. Baldwin Room. McGill Manuscript Papers. B38 1781-1794, folio 114 Memorial of John Willson to Governor Simcoe. A true copy by E.B. Littlehales.

Of those families, some like the Kendricks were settled on the St.John’s River before the American Revolution so they were Planters, while others were Loyalists. The Kendrick lived in Sunbury County and Northumberland County N.B., and they sold their land there before moving to Upper Canada.
The Kendrick brothers were sailors and ship builders, and they would continue to travel on the Great Lakes from the Town of York, and to Montreal and Quebec. In fact, Hiram Kendrick would die in Quebec City in 1817, probably during a voyage, since his wife was still in Upper Canada.
The other families can be found in the UCLP collection as they petitioned for land in Upper Canada, and many of them settled on Yonge Street and around the Town of York, since that was the area where Governor Simcoe was encouraging settlers to live. They were soon followed by many other families from New Brunswick, who also settled close to their former neighbours. They might have been encouraged by letters sent from Upper Canada.

Therefore I would suspect that your ancestor travelled from New Brunswikh to Quebec by ship, and then on the St.Lawrence and Great Lakes to Upper Canada. It is quite likely that he travelled as part of a large family group, and he would have encountered many former neighbours in Upper Canada. And who knows, he might even have travelled on a ship built by the Kendrick brothers.
Cheers, Guylaine Petrin

Carriage Accidents and Remedies in the 1700 and 1800s
By Geri Walton 7 August 2015
During the time of carriages, there were numerous reasons as to why accidents happened and they happened to everyone. The primary causes for carriage accidents usually involved something related to drivers, roads, horses, harnesses, carriages, or riders and occurred for a variety of reasons that ranged from intoxicated drivers to equipment failures to shying or bolting horses.
The following posts lists the causes of carriage accidents, some of which were deadly and also offers some of the remedies people suggested to prevent future accidents and incidents. Read more…

UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Entries
Entries which have been added, or revised, this week, with thanks:

  • Appreciate Sumner Hunnewell Jr. submitting information about his Loyalist ancestor
    • Capt. William Thomas who moved back and forth several times between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
  • Thanks to Lynton “Bill” Stewart for more information

Do you have a Loyalist ancestor? Is the ancestor in the Loyalist Directory?
Help us improve the directory, even with a few pierces of information. By adding a few details – any of:

  • spouse’s name
  • children’s names
  • where they were settled before the war
  • where they settled after the war
  • birth, death, marriage dates

All of these help other descendants of that Loyalist verify their ancestor, and maybe set out to obtain a Loyalist Certificate.
If you would like to submit just a few pieces of data, simply note then in an email and send to loyalist.directory.submission@uelac.org
All help is appreciated. …doug

Upcoming Events:

Fort Plain: The Hessian Repulse at Red Bank. Mon May 16 @7:00ET

A Noble Defense: The Hessian Repulse at Red Bank October 22, 1777
At this small post, a determined group of Rhode Islanders turned back an assault by a Hessian column some 1,200 strong. More details and free registration

From the Twittersphere and Beyond

Memorial Service for Sandra Shouldice UE
You Are Invited to Join Us As We Remember and Celebrate Sandra:
Friday, May 13th at 2:30 p.m.
At the Blue Church and Cemetary in Prescott, Highway 2
We’re planning an opportunity to share favourite stories and special memories of fun times enjoyed with Sandra. Please give thought to sharing one of yours.
You are asked to share this invitation with friends and colleagues of Sandra we haven’t been able to reach.
RSVP numbers by May 6 to aid in planning.

Jack and Brian Shouldice jack.shouldice@gmail.com
See “last Post” from January 31.

Last Post: VAN NOSTRAND (née Ireton), Margaret Felicia
November 23, 1936 – May 1, 2022
Beloved mother, sister, grandmother, mother-in-law and friend, Felicia van Nostrand died peacefully at home, surrounded by her family, just as she had wanted. Predeceased by her husband, Innes van Nostrand (2005), she leaves her sons, including Innes (Alison Holt) and Andrew (Caroline); brother John Ireton (Pam); sister, Elizabeth Ireton; grandchildren, Jack, Claire, Alec, Will and Andy; and countless close friends and relatives. Born to Margaret Cook and Prof. H.J.C. Ireton, Felicia was a lifetime resident of Deer Park in Toronto.
She made lifelong friends at St. Mildred’s College and at the University of Toronto’s School of Nursing. After working in paediatric and outpatient nursing, Felicia married Innes in 1963. In addition to raising three rambunctious boys, Felicia returned to work as an occupational health nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she looked after her colleagues and developed deep friendships that went beyond her retirement in 1996.
Visitation is Sunday, May 8, 3 to 6 p.m. at Morley Bedford Funeral Home. Funeral service will be held at Christ Church Deer Park on Monday, May 9 at 10:30 a.m. See obit…
My mother Felicia passed away on Sunday after a short battle with cancer. She was at home where she wanted to be with all of her family around her.
My Dad – Innes – never knew that he also had loyalists on his mother’s side as well. Her paternal grandmother was a Helliwell from Todmorden Mills in Don Valley and her mother was a Wilson and both of her grandfather’s were loyalist, Irish John Wilson and Nathaniel Pettit III who I recall from memory are in the Home District.
I was trying to get in contactone of your new members in 2019/2020 when the van Nostrands were holding their family reunion which we hold every ten years in Vandorf and 2020 was a special year as we were celebrating 200 years in Canada but we had to Covid cancel it. We might do it in 2025. I can also fill in a lot of David’s blanks from his January 2022 article “Eureka” in “The Simcoe Loyalist” newsletter.
Hugh van Nostrand

Last Post: CLAXTON UE, Marion Avery July 30, 1920 – March 4, 2022
We were saddened to recently learn of the passing of Marion at the grand age of 101. Marion was born and raised in Whitewood, Saskatchewan just east of Regina.
Her parents were Arthur E. Avery and Muriel Dean Carman. She met and married Edgar B. Claxton in 1944 and located to Chilliwack sometime in the 1970’s with children Arthur, Paul and Richard.
Marion’s UE application lists her occupations as Registered Nurse, Real Estate Agent and Homemaker. But she was so much more than that. She was very involved in the Chilliwack community and was a member of many organizations
Always interested in her family history, she did not let her vision loss get her in her way. She had many stories to tell, and one particularly interesting one was written up in the Chilliwack Progress October 8th, 2013, when she told of the quilt her great grandmother Isabel Black, had made about 1900. It had been handed down through the generations and was now in her possession.
Marion was over 90 with limited vision, when I met her and helped her put together her loyalist application.
She was so proud to be presented with her certificate on Sept. 20, 2014 by the Mayor of Chilliwack at a special event held at the Chilliwack Museum and Archives as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of the UELAC.
Her loyalist is Richard Carman. Her approved application facilitated a number of her great nieces to be able to also get their loyalist designation.
We send condolences and prayers to her family.
Marlene Dance UE

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