The Capital Years - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550021494 ISBN 13: 9781550021493

Publisher: Dundurn Press, 1996

The Capital Years is being published to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of the opening of the first parliament of Upper Canada.

Nine scholars have contributed to this book, which explores the daily life of the inhabitants during the time period 1792-1796 when the area served as the capital of Upper Canada. Their knowledge and expertise give the book depth and breadth of scholarship.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Richard Merritt is the current president of the Niagara Historical Society; Nancy Butler is the past president of the Niagara Historical Society; Michael Power is a researcher for the Ontario Historical Foundation.

CHAPTER ONE
BUILDING A TOWN
Plans, Surveys, and the Early Years of Niagara-on-the-Lake
Joy Ormsby

As the principal inhabitants of Niagara waited, on 26 July 1792, for the Onondaga carrying John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant governor of the new province of Upper Canada, to dock near Navy Hall, the group of four buildings erected in 1765 for the use of the Provincial Marine, many of them were no doubt pleased that, no longer part of Quebec, they would henceforth use English customs and law. At the same time, however, they were likely apprehensive about the effects the new administration might have on their possessions and their status in the community.

Chief among these early inhabitants were Lieutenant-Colonel John Butler, deputy agent of Indian affairs and former commander of Butler's Rangers, the loyalist corps whose disbanded members formed the nucleus of the Niagara farming community, and Robert Hamilton, a prominent merchant. Butler, who had begun the settlement in 1780 under the aegis of Governor Frederick Haldimand and had shaped its development, retained at age sixty-seven the role of elder statesman. Hamilton, a newcomer by comparison but a rising star in Niagara, was Butler's colleague in the Court of Common Pleas, Court of Quarter Sessions, and land board, a local body responsible for issuing certificates for land. Both men were uneasy about whether they would retain these appointments — made by the governor general in Quebec before the establishment of Upper Canada in November 1791 — under the new administration. Surveyor Augustus Jones, who had completed a survey of the town plot only a month earlier, and Walter Butler Sheehan, John Butler's nephew, who had been appointed sheriff in August 1791, also had concerns about retaining their positions. Other members of the community included farmers such as Adam and Isaac Vrooman, Peter and David Secord, John P. and Joseph Clement, Jacob Servos, and Jacob, George, and Joseph Ball. Merchants George Forsyth, Archibald Cunningham, William Dickson (cousin of Robert Hamilton), Joseph Edwards, John McEwen, and Daniel Servos also waited, as did Robert Kerr, surgeon to the Indian Department in Niagara, and James Muirhead, former surgeon's mate.

These men with thirty others from the Niagara district, had, the previous February, signed a statement prepared by Butler and Hamilton which under the guise of a welcome address to Simcoe set forth the major concerns of the entire community. Their settlement, they noted, had made rapid progress and had emerged from indigence and obscurity; their possessions had at last become valuable; and their latest crops were abundant. Yet they lacked deeds to confirm ownership of their land. Reasons for the long delay in issuing these vital proofs of ownership are made clear by plans, surveys, and associated documents which illustrate the state of flux in the early years of the settlement on the west bank of the Niagara River from its beginning in 1779 as a government-sponsored farming community to its capital period from the autumn of 1792 to 1796.

In its first stage from 1779 to 1783, the settlement was officially a temporary arrangement, designed to provide food for Fort Niagara, which during the War of Independence had become a staging ground for Butler's Rangers. From this base the Rangers and their Indian allies made raids against American posts in the border area, ravaging the country in order to destroy their enemy's food supply and eating most of the captured cattle. Some refugees had followed the Rangers to Fort Niagara. More came as a result of the Rangers' scorched-earth policy, and finally, as American troops advanced north, dispossessed loyalists and Indians made for the fort seeking refuge. They put such an enormous strain on the resources of the fort, whose provisions had to be shipped from England via Montreal "at great expense and difficulty," that Lieutenant-Colonel Mason Bolton, commanding officer at Niagara, wondered at one point whether maintaining the post was not costing "old England" more than it was worth. In order to reduce the expense, Governor Frederick Haldimand suggested to Bolton in October 1778 that he encourage and assist some capable people to cultivate the land "about the fort in order to supply entirely the post with bread."1 After consulting "several gentlemen" Bolton advised Haldimand in March 1779 that "both from the soil and situation, the West side of the river" was "by far preferable to the East/72 At that time, the gentleman most familiar with soil conditions on the west bank was Major John Butler, who, in order to alleviate overcrowding at Fort Niagara, had moved his Rangers' headquarters across the river and had built barracks in the fall and winter of 1778 and additional log houses and a hospital in the spring of 1779 at the considerable cost of more than �2,500. Butler's input no doubt influenced Bolton's recommendation, a recommendation that resulted in Haldimand's approving, without waiting for authorization from Britain, the sending of three or four refugee families to farm the west bank.3

This very small-scale initiative was expanded after Haldimand had received approval from Britain in March 1780 and had consulted, in June, with John Butler, by then promoted to lieutenant-colonel, about the mechanics of establishing and operating a settlement. Haldimand's plan, outlined in a letter to Colonel Bolton in July 1780, called for the reclamation of a strip of land formerly "granted by the Mississaugas to Sir William Johnson ... opposite the Fort"4 and the distribution of that land to loyalist refugees willing to farm it until they could be restored to their former homes in the American states. The land (some of which had already been cleared by Butler's Rangers by the summer of 1780) remained the property of the crown and crops could be sold only to the garrison, whose commanding officer set their prices. In essence, then, the first loyalist settlers were squatters occupying land under military direction.

The Haldimand project was put in charge of Lieutenant-Colonel Butler. Before the end of 1780, Butler reported that he had established four or five families who had built themselves houses. The head of one of these, Peter Secord, a former Ranger, was later allowed an extra grant of 100 acres for having been the first to have settled his family on the west bank in 1779.5 Another, John Secord, in 1780 was host to Elizabeth Gilbert, one of a family of fifteen captured by Indians who brought her with them to Butlersburg to get provisions. Other heads of families who claimed to have reached Butler's barracks by 1780 included Mary De Peu (petition of 21 April 1797), Catherine Clement (petition of 27 July 1797), and James Secord (petition of his sons of 3 August 1795). In May 1781 the purchase of the strip of land from the Mississaugas was completed at a cost of "300 suits of cloathing."6 By mid-summer 1782, sixteen farmers, whose names were recorded by Butler in the settlement's first census, had settled their families and cleared 236 acres. All were producing food. Peter Secord, for example, produced 200 bushels of corn, 15 of wheat, 70 of potatoes, and 4 of oats on 24 acres of land cleared at the foot of the escarpment near the present St Davids. John Depue grew 200 bushels of corn and 50 of potatoes on 16 acres cleared near Queenston, and Michael Showers produced 40 bushels of corn, 6 of oats, and 15 of potatoes on 12 acres cleared along the river a few miles south of Navy Hall. In addition, the Rangers had prepared a block of land known as the Government's Farm in order to plant Indian corn7 and several of them had "got their families from the frontiers'7 and had shown interest in settling after discharge.8

During 1783 the temporary status of the young community ended as a result of the signing, on 30 November 1782, by Great Britain and the United States of a treaty of peace which established the Niagara River as an international boundary. The Treaty of Paris also recommended an amnesty for the loyalists and the restitution of their property, but left implementation of that recommendation to the legislatures of the individual states, many of which preferred confiscation to restitution and execution to amnesty. By the spring of 1783 it was clear that land would soon have to be found on the Canadian side of the boundary for those unable to regain their former homes.

For Lieutenant-Colonel Butler's settlers, tenure of the land now became a pressing issue. Their spokesmen, Isaac Dolson, Elijah Phelps, Thomas McMicking, and Donald Bee, all of whom but Bee had been included in Butler's first census, asked for "leases or some other security"9 so that their farms could not be taken by the commanding officer at Fort Niagara for the benefit of potential new settlers. Butler and eight of his officers who were also fanning shared this interest in establishing tenure or, at the very least, obtaining some documented proof of occupation prior to 1783. Perhaps to supply this evidence, Butler employed Allan Macdonell to survey the settlement without waiting for official approval.10 This first survey, completed before 3 May 1783, drew a mixed response from Governor Haldimand, who, though pleased that Butler had made a beginning, charged that he had exceeded his authority by marking out "seventy lots of land, thirty of which were nominated for different persons."11 "Nominated," meaning the endorsement by the surveyor in the name of a specific settler, suggested tenure, which was not part of the Haldimand plan of settlement.

In the Haldimand papers there is an undated, unsigned plan of the "New Settlement, Niagara" which marks out lots on the west side of the river, thirty of which are nominated mostly in the names of Rangers and former Rangers. This may be the Macdonell survey. It shows the extent of the "temporary" settlement and its concentration along the river bank and in a block of smaller lots north of the Due West Line—now called the East- West Line—on land that would be reserved for the crown in 1784. The latter group, with the Rangers' barracks nearby, probably constituted the village of Butlersburg. Although the plan is not to scale — in particular the Four Mile Pond is located too close to Mississauga Point and the path of the Four Mile Creek is not correct—the eastern boundary of the block of smaller lots does coincide approximately with the Garrison Line, which later became the western boundary of the town, dividing it from Butler's land and cutting off a large corner of the planned town plot.

When Haldimand dismissed the Macdonell-Butler plan as unauthorized, he promised to send a surveyor to Niagara to make an official survey that would be in accord with instructions from the British government, which had by then acknowledged that the settlement had entered a new permanent stage of development. These instructions encompassed several new rules. Land was to be laid out in seigneuries, as befitted an area that was still part of the province of Quebec, on which loyal subjects would be settled according to a set formula, ranging from 1,000 acres for a field officer to 100 acres for a private or head of family and 50 acres for each family member. Settlement of officers and privates was to be contiguous and, therefore, 100- acre lots were to be drawn for randomly; and, in each seigneury, between 300 and 500 acres were to be reserved for the clergy. In the spring of 1784 two further directives were issued. The high ground from Navy Hall to the Four Mile Creek was to be reserved for the crown and, on 24 June, major troop reductions (which would lead to increased demand for land) were to be implemented.

A week or two before the troop disbandment, Lieutenant Tinling, the surveyor promised by Haldimand, arrived in Niagara with orders to mark off the crown reserve, to survey the area of the Niagara seigneury, to conduct a draw for its 100-acre lots, and to enter names of individual drawers on certificates.

Tinling, an assistant engineer at Cataraqui (Kingston), had problems, especially with the early settlers, who had already cleared land and naturally wanted to keep it. By the time he arrived, there were, according to Lieutenant-Colonel Butler's list of May 1784, forty-six farmers in the area, including a few on the land about to be reserved for the crown. Among these were four or five officers of the Rangers and Butler himself (though he was not included in the list of forty-six) who had already declared that, "having cultivated and built good farm houses" on the land between Navy Hall and Four Mile Creek, they intended to stay there.12 These were men that the surveyor could not challenge with impunity. In addition, Tinling had difficulties with the influx of newly disbanded Rangers, about eighty of whom had grabbed land preferably with water frontage and had begun to clear it before the process of drawing for lots began. Moreover, neither the surveyor's parcel of certificates of possession nor all his required tools arrived in Niagara.

Indeed, Tinling's problems were such that Philip Frey, who superseded him as surveyor in December 1785, suggested, in a letter to Deputy Surveyor General John Collins, that Tinling never completed a survey and that plans he submitted were possibly spurious: 'The person who had been employed in the surveying business previous to me had made few and very erroneous surveys, having only laid out a few lots for particular people, many plans may have been transmitted, which may not have been effectively executed/' 13 Augustus Jones, Prey's successor as surveyor at Niagara, was also critical of Tinling's expertise, though he charitably attributed disparities in his "lines" to "an instrument very imperfect called a plane table."14

Whether Tinling's work or not, several similar plans survived from his relatively short and frustrating period of duty at Niagara. One of these, included in the papers of Shubbal Walton, who farmed in Niagara Township near the present village of Virgil, and dated "1784 or earlier," generally observed the government's instructions of 1783-84. It showed a township laid out in 100-acre lots, with part of the river frontage of some lots in the first tier severed in order to make all the lots uniform and to leave the river bank a crown reserve; five lots were set aside for the clergy; and the ground north of the Due West Line between the river and Four Mile Creek was reserved for the crown. Within the latter area, blocks were nominated for Lieutenant- Colonel Butler, John Secord, and F. (Francis) Pilkington. Not fortunate or influential enough to be named on the plan was William Pickard, a private in the Rangers, who complained in a petition of 10 October 1796 that, though he "was one of the first settlers on the Four Mile Creek when the land was all vacant about him," he had been deprived of this acreage east of the creek after 1784 because he lacked acceptable proof. A rectangle marked the location of the "village" shown on the 1783 survey but the Rangers' barracks were located much nearer to Navy Hall than in the earlier plan, so much nearer that one wonders if they had been moved.15 Most lots south of the Due West Line were nominated; some of them were also annotated "ticket given," signifying authorized occupation; some were labelled D (Disputed?); and some had already had more than one occupant. Very few undisputed lots were still vacant. A few of the nominees were not on the list of existing settlers, disbanded Rangers, Joseph Brant's volunteers, and loyalists which was submitted t...

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