Читать книгу Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35 - Rosemary Sadlier - Страница 23

Laura was not with the Ingersoll family when Thomas pulled up stakes and moved Sally and the children to the Credit River in 1805. Nor had she gone with them in 1796 when they first left Queenston for the log house in the settlement of Oxford-on-the-Thames. Laura had remained behind because she’d met a handsome young man by the name of James Secord and fallen in love.

William Kirby, in his book Annals of Niagara (1896), listed among the ladies who stood out in Niagara Society from 1792–1800, “belles of the day,” one “Miss Ingersoll.” No doubt this was Laura, the eldest of the Ingersoll girls.

She was an attractive twenty-one-year-old in 1796 and part of the area’s social scene, with frequent invitations to people’s homes, community functions, dances, and parties.

James Secord, who had become a Freemason in 1795 when he was twenty-two, often came into the Ingersoll Tavern in Queenston. James was the youngest son of one of the most prosperous and well-respected families in the area. The Secords were shopkeepers in nearby St. Davids, a village whose original name had been Four Mile Creek. A number of major creeks in the area were named according to their distance from the Niagara River.

Much of the stock for Secord’s store would arrive by ship at Queenston, and occasionally James would be the one to come to the landing to collect the shipment. A stop at the Ingersoll Tavern before heading back seemed to be in order for the young man who had been immediately attracted to the vivacious girl with the expressive brown eyes — Laura Ingersoll, daughter of the owner.

James Secord had been born in New Rochelle, in the colony of New York, on July 7, 1773. His parents were James Secord Sr. and Madelaine Badeau. He’d been just five years old when he and his family came to Niagara from the United States in 1778. His father, Lieutenant James Secord Sr., and two older brothers were members of Butler’s Rangers, among the first Loyalists to come to Upper Canada.

Organized by Colonel John Butler, the Rangers had fought on the side of the British during the American War of Independence. Colonel Butler had been aware that many Loyalists who had tried to return home after the war had been either banished, thrown in prison, or murdered, and he arranged for his Rangers and their families to have a home on the west side of the Niagara River.

Another account has Mrs. Secord and four other women, accompanied by thirty-one children, including James, arriving by wagon at Fort Niagara “in a starving state.”

The group had fled through the wilderness, escaping for their lives from a band of ruffians who were intent on driving Loyalists from their homes on the banks of the Hudson River and the Mohawk Valley. After nearly a month of hardship the refugees, guided on the journey by friendly Natives of the Iroquois Confederacy, arrived at Fort Niagara with only the clothes on their backs.

Land grants were made to Butler’s Rangers around 1784, after the lots had been surveyed. Until then, all new arrivals squatted close to Fort Niagara, where they were given tents, food, and clothing. Nearly everyone had to depend on the generosity of the government. The food rations they received consisted of flour, pork, a limited amount of beef, and a bit of butter. For a period of three years, or until they could provide clothing for themselves, the refugees were supplied with coarse cloth to make their own trousers and dresses, with Indian blankets to be made into warm coats, and with shoes.

Once they received their land grant the Loyalists were given some basic tools, some seed grain to cultivate, and possibly a cow that they would share with one other family. As well, the government saw that gristmills were shortly erected to aid the settlers.

However he got there, James Secord grew up on the Niagara Peninsula, and at the time of his meeting with Laura Ingersoll, he owned two hundred acres at St. Davids, land he’d received as a United Empire Loyalist.

The Secord family came originally from La Rochelle, France, where their name was D’Secor (or Sicard). One of the men in the family had converted to Protestantism and his descendants followed suit. Those of that particular branch of the family who survived the persecution of the French Huguenots (French Protestants) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included five brothers who eventually immigrated to America, settling in Westchester County, New York. They founded the town of New Rochelle and became successful lumbermen.

When the American War of Independence divided the family’s loyalty, those who sided with the British changed their surname to the more anglicized Secord.

Although the exact date and location of Laura Ingersoll’s wedding to James Secord is not known, it was most likely in June 1797. The marriage records have been lost. The couple may well have been married by James’s older brother, David, who was a justice of the peace in St. Davids. All his records were lost when the town was burned by the Americans in July 1814.

Only clergymen of the Church of England (Anglican) were permitted to perform weddings at the time. Except for circuit riders or saddlebag preachers, clergy in Upper Canada were scarce. For this reason, magistrates were commonly called upon to perform marriage ceremonies.

Because James Secord’s family was wealthy, one can imagine that the wedding of Laura and James would have been quite lavish, complete with ribbon-tied, handwritten invitations. Had Laura’s family come from Oxford-on-the-Thames to attend the happy event? Her sisters Elizabeth and Mira were young adults of seventeen and fifteen respectively. The Ingersolls’ daughter was marrying well, and it seems likely that Thomas and Laura’s stepmother, Sally, would have been there to give the young couple their blessing.

It was usual at that time for the wedding ceremony to be held in the evening and for the bride to wear white, with “something borrowed” for good luck. It was customary for the groom’s parents to give an elaborate supper for the many guests, and this would be followed by dancing — or cards for those who desired a less strenuous activity.

After the wedding, Laura went to live in the house in St. Davids that had been built for James. The front half of the ground floor of the house was taken up by James’s store; the merchandise — everything from bolts of printed calico, pudding dishes, and brass candlesticks to casks of rum, men’s hats, and snuff boxes — was displayed in the front windows so that people passing by in the street could see what was for sale. The rest of the house was their private home.

Laura would have been a willing and capable assistant in James’s store, accustomed to helping her father Thomas in his business, and the tiny community of St. Davids, four miles west of Queenston, welcomed the shy new bride into their midst. Laura’s closest friend and confidante in the village was her sister-in-law, Hannah (or Annatie) DeFreest Secord, wife of Stephen (or Etienne). The Stephen Secords lived at the northeast end of the village, where they ran a mill.

Hannah may well have been at Laura’s bedside to assist her when she delivered her first child, Mary, born in St. Davids in 1799.

More than anything, James wanted to provide Laura with many luxuries, but he’d fallen into the habit of extending credit to his customers and was having trouble getting paid enough to make ends meet. During the early years of the Secords’ marriage, finances were often strained.

Hoping to remedy the situation, James made the decision to establish a general store in Queenston, a much more important centre of business than little St. Davids. He opened the store near the wharf in Queenston and bought land near what was then the end of town, below the Niagara Escarpment, a short walk from his business. There he would one day build a house for his family.

In the meantime, he commuted between Queenston and their home in St. Davids. Daughter Charlotte arrived in 1801, and two years later, on February 10, 1803, Harriet was born.

The restored Secord home at Queenston, now an interpretive centre.

Source: Wikipedia. Author Ken Lund.

Richard Cartwright (1759–1815), the husband of James’s only sister, Magdalene, was one of the most successful businessmen in Upper Canada. He became James Secord’s adviser. He was also James’s chief supplier of goods for his store.

Based at Niagara, Cartwright, a committed Loyalist, had served as secretary for John Butler’s Rangers until 1780. Subsequently, he became a merchant involved in the provisioning trade and was for ten years in partnership with the wealthy shipping agent Robert Hamilton, the founder of Queenston.

After moving to Kingston in 1785, Cartwright built up the largest retail outlet in the town. As well as being a justice of the peace and a judge in the Court of Common Pleas, he was a member of the first Legislative Council of Upper Canada. Before Simcoe returned to England, he commissioned Cartwright lieutenant-governor of Frontenac County.

James Secord had the idea that he would like to establish a potashery. Potash was first produced when the settlers were clearing their land and burning the hardwood trees. The product was obtained by leaching the ashes left from the fire and then catching the runoff to be evaporated in iron pots.

The result was caustic potash, which the settlers used to make soap. The sale of wood ashes to the Americans had provided Canadian settlers with easy cash. In fact, potash had been exported from Canada from as early as 1767, sent to England for the fledgling chemical industry.

It was Richard Cartwright’s opinion that his brother-in-law James Secord took too many risks. Operating a business in Upper Canada wasn’t easy, particularly when people often had to resort to paying for their purchases with goods instead of cash.

Although not the best businessman in the world, even with Laura’s help, James was hardworking and honest. He was also by then deeply in debt. He owed his brother-in-law Richard money, and he was also in debt to the prominent merchants the McGill Brothers of Montreal. The McGills had business connections to Richard Cartwright, and Richard was urging James to pay them off. At some point Richard even took over some of James’s debt to the McGills, on top of what James already owed him.

In 1801, James mortgaged his farm in St. Davids to Richard so that his creditors could be paid. That same year Laura appeared before a judge in Niagara, signing away her “claim of dower” on any of their property.

Sometime after Harriet’s birth in 1803, James thought he could see better times ahead, and he moved his family into their new house in Queenston. The white frame house of one and a half storeys with two small rooms upstairs sat below the escarpment that rose above the village to Queenston Heights.

That first winter in Queenston was long and very cold. Many days it was impossible for the residents of the town to leave their homes. Laura would have been thankful that she’d had the foresight to dry the berries she’d picked the previous summer, along with some of the garden vegetables and the peaches and apples from the orchards in St. Davids. She was fortunate to live in the best fruit-growing area in Upper Canada, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, between the Niagara River and the head of the lake. The first settlers to the region, the Loyalists, had planted cuttings they’d brought from the fruit trees they had left behind in the Mohawk Valley and Pennsylvania.

Tucked away in the kitchen dresser, the seeds Laura had saved from last year’s beans, squash, and corn would be the genesis of her new garden in Queenston in the spring. For now, she and her three little daughters could only stare out at the snow piling up in the yard.

Soon, two more babies would join the family — the couple’s only son, Charles Badeau, was born in 1809, and a fourth daughter, Appolonia (Appy), arrived in 1810.

James was now a wholesaler in flour, potash, and other goods. In 1810, when his business needed an infusion of cash, he and Laura sold 228 acres of land in Nelson (now Burlington), part of her inheritance from her father.

As the years passed, James’s business picked up. With Britain and Napoleonic France again at war, his main concern was that the sea lanes stay open so that he could get his supplies from England.

Laura had always admired her husband’s optimism, the way he kept his spirits up, sure of better days ahead. She knew they might never be out of debt, but life was good. Their five children were healthy, happy youngsters, and she and James loved each other. Years later, their daughter Harriet wrote that her parents had always been “most devoted to each other and lived in the closest mutual affection.”

The Secords’ lives weren’t without sorrow, but they had much to be thankful for. Laura’s beloved sisters had all married, although Elizabeth, who had married Reverend Daniel Pickett in 1806, had died in 1811. Mira was married to Julius Hitchcock, and the family had received the good news that little Abigail, the sister who had been adopted by the Nashes, had married Guy Woodsworth in 1804 and had moved with him to Vermont.

Early in 1812, Laura received word from Port Credit that her father, Thomas Ingersoll, had had a stroke and was asking for her. She hurried to his bedside as quickly as possible and he died the following day.

By 1812, James Secord was able to write in a letter that he was “in easy circumstances.” His house was modest but comfortable. He and Laura had two black servants, and James had managed to pick up several pieces of property that he hoped to sell at a profit.

Back in 1792, when John Graves Simcoe arrived as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, there had been seven hundred blacks living in the province. Most of them had been slaves who had arrived after the American War of Independence as spoils of war, or those that had belonged to the Loyalists.

Simcoe’s Act Against Slavery, passed July 7, 1793, had banned further importation of slaves and granted gradual emancipation to those born in the province. It did not abolish slavery altogether, which is what Simcoe had desired, but it was, however, the first act to limit slavery in the British Empire.

It was not uncommon in Upper Canada for successful merchants like James Secord to have black servants. He and Laura had two: a girl named Fan (or Floss) and a man whose name was Bob. They were no longer slaves, but rather paid employees, and they were treated with respect by everyone in the family.

After her years in St. Davids, where several of her neighbours were also her in-laws, Laura was now less shy than she had been. She had become part of the social life in the busy town of Queenston, attending Sunday church services, taking part in spinning and sewing circles, visiting friends, and chatting over afternoon tea.

When Simcoe arrived in 1792, British troops still occupied the forts at Michilimackinac, Detroit, Oswego, and Niagara — that refuge of Loyalists and Indians from the American War of Independence. These old wooden forts, many of them in a state of disrepair, were on the American side of the frontier that had been set by the Treaty of Paris in 1783. By rights, the British should have returned them. Britain argued that the Americans themselves had not fulfilled all the terms of the treaty, but because she was again at war with France, Britain was not eager to get into another war with the Americans over the issue.

The Jay Treaty in 1794 provided for the British to leave the forts by June 1, 1796. When that day came, the British troops moved back across the lakes and rivers and the American troops took over.

In 1806, James Monroe, former American ambassador to France and, at the time, minister to the Court of St. James, negotiated a treaty with Britain to replace the Jay Treaty. The American president, Thomas Jefferson, rejected it in 1807 because it contained no ban on Britain’s infuriating practice of conscripting American sailors, referred to as “impressment.”

Britain had found that it was losing sailors when they jumped ship upon docking in the United States. Consequently, Britain declared its right to stop and search neutral American ships at sea for deserters and to conscript sailors, even though they might be American citizens.

Some politicians in Washington wanted Britain out of North America altogether and the whole of the Great Lakes region brought under the American flag. Although the northern states didn’t want war with Canada, the “war hawks” in Congress demanded that President James Madison, who had succeeded Jefferson, declare war.

There would be no need to fight the war in England; Canada was right there for the taking. With Britain occupied in Europe in the war with France, it should be an easy victory. There were 7.5 million Americans and a trained army of thirty-five thousand, compared to only half a million British subjects in Canada. And one-fifth of those were “late Loyalists,” who could go either way. At best, the Canadas had five thousand British soldiers and possibly four thousand militia. Arms, too, were in short supply.

By the summer of 1811 the crisis had reached the boiling point. Citizens in the United States were talking openly about annexing Canada, and there were some Canadians who welcomed the idea.

Perhaps, while she sat sewing with her friends or visiting the shops in Queenston, Laura heard such rumblings from those in the community who were American sympathizers. Certainly everyone was talking about the possibility of an American invasion. It seemed only a question of when.

The Loyalist militia in the Niagara Peninsula had begun to drill. Another war was on her doorstep, and before it was over, Laura’s whole life would be changed.