Frederick and Levinah Mabee

Introduction

In July 1993, the village of Turkey Point on Long Point Bay in Charlotteville Township, Norfolk County celebrated the bicentennial of the arrival of their first settlers- Frederick and Levinah Mabee. To mark the occasion, descendants of several of their children, sixth and seventh cousins, met for the first time and swapped family stories at the old town hall in Vittoria then rode on floats in a parade at Turkey Point. It was a fitting tribute to a couple who were among the county’s earliest pioneers. Many years ago, I set out to learn the Mabee story and it seemed that no matter where I went, whether it be New York, New Brunswick, or Turkey Point, Ontario there was something more found about the Mabee couple and their family.

Dutchess County, New York

Frederick Mabee was born at Yorktown, Dutchess County, New York about 1735 to a third generation American family of French Huguenot descent headed by Simon and Marie (Landrin) Mabee.¹ Both of them were descendants of an earlier generation of refugees from Europe to America. Father Simon’s family, originally “Mabille” in France fled in the Protestant persecutions to Holland then crossed the ocean to America. With marriages in The Netherlands intervening, Simon’s family had become quite Dutch. Simon’s grandfather went by Pieter Casparszen Van Naerden when he arrived in the New World, settling at New York City which in the middle 1600’s was known to Pieter as the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Frederick’s mother Marie’s father, Guillaume Landrin, and her maternal grandfather, Ambroise Sicard (Secord) came directly from France and were among the founders of New Rochelle, New York in the closing years of the seventeenth century.

During the French-Indian (Seven Years) War, Frederick joined the other young men of Colonial New York who served. Frederick enlisted in 1760 in the 5th Company, Upper Battalion of the Westchester County Militia under Captain Annanias Rogers.² Afterwards, he farmed in the Rombout Precinct in Dutchess County, New York near Fishkill. Frederick married by 1768, Levinah Pelham, daughter of William Pelham, an English West Indies trader stationed at New York City. Frederick was taxed at Rombout from 1773 to 1779.³

The Mabee Family in the American Revolution

Frederick and most of his brothers were not immediately involved in the early days of the American Revolution. One brother, Simon Mabee, Jr., the oldest, and one of two active in the British cause early in the war, was captured by a revolutionary Committee of Safety. In a summary trial held on

April 11, 1777, he was convicted of being a recruiter and spy for the Tories then hung on April 15, 1777.⁴ Soon afterwards in July, a second brother, Peter Mabee, lost his life in British General John Burgoyne’s disastrous route at Saratoga, New York. One by one, the nine surviving brothers and two brothers-in-law went off to New York City to join the Royal Standard, most of them in military capacities, some in civilian departments.

No actual record of Frederick Mabee’s war service has been found. After his death, his widow stated in a land petition that he “joined the Royal Standard last American War” and their son-in-law Peter Teeple added that “about the year 1781 she [Levinah Mabee] entered the lines of His Majesty’s forces with her family and her husband.” The secretary of the Land Board of Upper Canada wrote on the petition that her husband, “unquestionably joined the Royal Standard before the Peace of 1783.”⁵

The Exodus From New York

In 1783, the war formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (still a part of the former) were designated to be the future home for many of the loyalists. Thousands of families made their way to New York City that year to be taken in the exodus from the foot of Manhattan Island, among them Simon Mabee, Sr., aged about 82, along with his surviving sons and daughters, all of them married with young children.

Every available boat of size was pressed into service to evacuate the refugees and all that spring, summer and fall the vessels carried families to their homes in the British north. Frederick and Levinah were among the last, sailing in the “October Fleet” of 1783 on the Sally in John Wetmore’s Company arriving at the Saint John River about October 17. This final fleet included eleven militia and civilian companies of more than 2,900 men, women, and children on eight ships.⁶ The roster of the Sally recorded the Frederick Mabee family consisted of one man, one woman, four children ten years old or over and five children under ten. Three of the known children who were ten or more were Elizabeth 14, Lydia 13, and Ann 10. The fourth child is unknown. The five under ten were Oliver 9, Mary 6, Simon 5, Sarah 3, and Frederick 2. The latter who is mentioned in family traditions must still have been living then but afterwards disappears from further record. In May and June 1784, families at Saint John (then known as Parr) were provided with supplies and Frederick Mabee’s name was on both of those victualling lists with the same number of children.⁷

In 1783, Frederick Mabee received an allotment of lot number 401 in the town of Carleton, present south Saint John.⁸ This was a town lot located at the southeast corner of the present Buliteley Street and Prince William Street near Queen’s Square.

The Search for a Farm

Early Saint John was a tent city crowded with the many refugee families. More locations elsewhere were surveyed, among them a new town down the coast called Beaver Harbour, located on an arm of the Bay of Fundy five miles southeast of present St. George. The name of Belle View was given to the location by proprietor Samuel Fairlamb in 1783 but this was generally ignored, the residents opting instead for the earlier name in petitions as early as 1784.⁹ Frederick Mabee was on a list of those who had drawn lots at Beaver Harbour dated September 16, 1784, his being Lot 5, Letter F, Fairlamb’s Division. He was also recorded as the grantee of that lot on a list of August 22, 1785.

There was considerable difficulty in obtaining the actual patents for those lots and many who drew locations never actually moved there. Although a grantee, Mabee seems to have been among those who didn’t establish his family in this settlement as he was not on a list of inhabitants who signed a petition expressing concern at the delay in the grants on January 15, 1785.

Frederick and a cousin on the Secord side, John Chedeayne filed a land petition dated at Parr on April 13, 1785,¹⁰ stating that they had arrived in the province in 1783 and were yet without land. They requested Lot 15 and half of Lot 16 in the Second Range of Dibble’s Survey on Grand Lake west of St. John. The lots turned out to be granted already and the request was refused.

Generally, it was every man for himself in the race to the land office with petitions for choice lots during those years. In his next land petition dated at Carleton on July 28, 1785,¹¹ Frederick Mabee requested a grant of one of the first lots in Bedell’s survey at Burton, York County. The Executive Council ordered him a grant of Lot 10. A certificate from William Ellis dated at Burton on May 17, 1786 appended to the petition noted Mabee’s further purchase of Lot 7 at Burton from Ellis. This was situated between Middle Island and Swan Creek and permitted by the Executive Council on February 6, 1787.

Mabee next moved to Lots 120 and 121 in the third block at Queensbury, York County, a 400 acre property with the addition of Big Bear Island on the Saint John River. Located on the east side of the river, Queensbury was named in 1786 for the Queen’s Rangers which was led into battle by Colonel John Graves Simcoe, afterwards Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. Frederick’s sister, Margaret Mabee, and her husband Anthony Manuel also moved there at an early date.

On October 15, 1791, Frederick and Levinah sold their Queensbury farm to Lawrence Wilsie for seventy-five pounds. The deed is rather descriptive of the surveying methods of the day. Lot 120 began at a small birch tree, ran to an ash tree after which it followed the St. John River in a northeast direction. Lot 121 began at the ash tree and ended at an oak stump. The Mabee family included in the sale “all of the houses, outhouses, barns, fences, shades, buildings, ways, waters, watercourses and improvements....”¹²

When the newly appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe arrived from England in November 1792, he put out feelers to prospective settlers for his new province and Frederick and Levinah were ready listeners. The big selling point was the reputed fertility of the land in Upper Canada.

The Move to Upper Canada

An account of the Mabee family move to Upper Canada was written by Dr. Oliver Mabee from the reminiscences of Reverend Oliver Mabee who accompanied his parents on the trek. The historical framework matches petitions later filed by Levinah Mabee. Dr. Mabee recorded that the Frederick Mabee family set out for Upper Canada in the early winter of 1792. There were two young couples with the family. One was Lydia Mabee and Sergeant Peter Teeple of the King’s American Dragoons who had settled on land at York County, New Brunswick. This settlement brought them desultory results similar to those of the parents. At the time of their trek to Upper Canada, the Teeples had four children ranging in age from one to six years. Another daughter, Ann married not long before the family’s departure to another veteran soldier of the Revolution, John Stone, a brother-in-arms of Teeple who was equally eager to leave “difficulties and distresses suffered” in New Brunswick, selling his property “at a great disadvantage”.¹³

There was a winter sojourn at Quebec City, during which they received a letter of recommendation from Simcoe “to all the Commanding Officers of the different Ports for assistance in order to reach Niagara.”¹⁴ At spring breakup, the party setting out was headed up by Frederick Mabee and his wife Levinah. With them were Lydia aged 22, her husband, Peter Teeple, aged 32 and their four children aged one to six, and the younger couple, John Stone, aged 28, and Ann Nancy), aged 18. Then there were the younger Mabee children- Oliver 18, Simon 15, Mary 15, Sarah 13, and Pellum 6.

In Dr. Mabee’s account, the family travelled over the Governor’s Road up the north bank of the St. Lawrence River to Kingston and then along Lake Ontario past the present day sites of Toronto and Hamilton. Oliver Mabee, Frederick’s son who was present, remembered years later that those two future cities consisted of two log cabins each.¹⁵ They continued to Niagara-On-The-Lake where the Niagara River empties into Lake Ontario. Here they reunited with Secord cousins not seen since before the Revolutionary War. While at Niagara the Mabees apparently met others interested in the Long Point district, at that time unexplored and known only by reputation from the hunters and trappers who passed through; they made this unknown territory their destination.

Frederick and Levinah completed their trek in the spring of 1793 when they found Turkey Point on Long Point Bay. They built their log cabin on the east side of a creek on the neck between the mainland and the point, later surveyed as the front of Lot 13, Concession A, Charlotteville Township. This first pioneer cabin was said a few years later to be the most attractive in the whole district.

Frederick and his sons and sons-in-law, now joined by a third, David Secord who married Frederick’s daughter Mary Mabee, began immediately to clear the land along Turkey Point. Within a year they had thirty-three acres for planting.¹⁶

In the spring of 1793, after the initial land clearing, the Mabees planted among the stumps corn seed brought from Niagara. The grain was pounded into meal in a hollowed out bowl made in the stump of a walnut tree. Dr. Mabee wrote that the pestle used was attached to a sweep like the “Old Oaken Bucket.”¹⁷

In June 1793, Lieutenant Governor Simcoe sent his surveyor, William Chewett to survey the Long Point shoreline. On his map prepared on August 28, 1793, Chewett showed the Mabee family on Turkey Point and David Secord just east of them still on the Point.

The Death of Frederick Mabee

The rigours of pioneer life and land clearing took their toll on the family patriarch. Frederick was living in June 1794 when his son-in-law John Stone mentioned him in a land petition but was dead by the time Simcoe visited his widow in September 1795. Norfolk historian E. A. Owen who interviewed a later generation wrote that the pioneer died of “apoplexy”, or stroke as we would call it today.

Frederick Mabee’s being the first burial in Norfolk County, has become the stuff of legend. No actual documentation has been found. The story goes that his coffin was a hollowed out walnut log with a heavy slab of the same wood covering, his burial on the bluff above Turkey Point, the place marked by a large boulder.¹⁸

Levinah Mabee’s Land Petitions

Levinah Mabee made out a land petition dated on October 18, 1797,¹⁹ noting that her late husband had been a steady loyalist and that “Simcoe was pleased to authorize your Petitioner to settle at Long Point and with his permission she has settled Lots 8 and 10 in front of the Township of Charlotteville...” Additionally, Levinah requested the grant of the marsh in front of Lot 8 and a small slip of maple grove containing about seventeen or eighteen acres lying between two of her fields, constituting a point of land. She finally requested a town lot at Turkey Point “near to her present Dwelling.” In this petition she stated that she came to the province with eight children. This created three mysteries for later family historians. We know of seven surviving children who came to Upper Canada. The eighth was one of three possible. There was the unknown child aged over ten in the New York Exodus or the youngest son, Frederick, both of them alive when the family arrived at New Brunswick, or this was the oldest daughter Elizabeth.

On January 29, 1798 Levinah’s two requested lots were granted by the Land Board of Upper Canada and referred to the Surveyor General’s office which gave its approval on October 20, all of this written at length on the back of the petition. Her grant totalled 600 acres, each of her lots including extra land in the marshes between Turkey Point and the mainland.

With this hurdle crossed, Levinah in the spring of 1798 petitioned to have her name entered on the United Empire Loyalist List. It was quite unusual for a woman of the day to be in a position to make this request, the husband usually surviving to the time of the list’s compilation in 1797. In this instance, it was the wife who proved that she had gone with her husband and family behind the British lines during the war. To this was appended a testimonial from her son-in-law Peter Teeple who was by this time a Justice of the Peace. He declared that Levinah Mabee was an inhabitant of the state of New York before the American Revolution and entered with her husband and family behind the British lines about the year 1781.¹⁹ The request was ordered granted on June 25, 1798. Levinah was one of the very few women whose name was recorded on the list of United Empire Loyalists.

By 1798 Levinah’s children, with the exception of the youngest son Pellum, then still a youth, had married and moved to their own land grants. In that year Levinah and Pellum left the cabin on Turkey Point to move in with Lydia and Peter Teeple whose Crown grant was Lot 9 in the front of Charlotteville between the mother’s grants.

Levinah Mabee’s Second Marriage

About 1800, Levinah married secondly to Sergeant William Benjamin Hilton, a New Brunswick loyalist formerly of the Kings American Dragoons, the regiment in which her sons-in-law Peter Teeple and John Stone had served. Hilton came to Norfolk in 1797 and received grants in Woodhouse Township. He was recorded as a private on the muster rolls of the Charlotteville Company of the Norfolk Militia, then aged fifty.²⁰ William served twice on the Grand Jury in the Court of Quarter Sessions of the London District Court, April 8, 1800 and April 14, 1801.²¹ On September 10, 1801, the Court ordered sessions of the Charlotteville Court of Requests to be held in the Hilton home.²² The marriage was a short one, William dying on September 28, 1801. Levinah was granted Letters of Administration over his estate on November 3, 1801.²³

The Agriculturalist

In the property assessments taken at Charlotteville in the later part of the first decade, Levinah’s valuation was one of the larger ones. In 1808, her estate was placed in the £100 to £199 category. In 1809, she had 180 acres of which 20 were cultivated. She had a one storey frame house, one horse, two cows and one swine. In 1811, Levinah had 115 acres, of which 25 were cultivated.²⁴ During these years, the Teeples left the homestead, selling it to Pellum Mabee who resold it to his mother in 1813.

In traditions passed down in the Pellum Mabee family, Levinah Mabee was the “Johnny Appleseed” of Charlotteville, partially confirmed by two early twentieth century observations. As each of her children married and established their own farms, Levinah planted on their properties apple seeds to begin their orchards. In the early years of the 1900’s a great-grandson, Dr. George E. Mabee with Norfolk artist Edgar Cantelon visited the site of the homestead and remarked in a letter that there were still several apple trees marking the location of the home. Among them was “Aunt Liddy’s favourite”, by then partially dead, named for Lydia (Mabee) Teeple. Norfolk historian W. B. Waterbury also wrote of this tree and of a great walnut tree, almost five feet in diameter which was a landmark for miles around. By the time of the Mabee-Cantelon visit it had fallen over the overgrown garden.²⁵

Levinah Pelham Mabee Hilton died at Charlotteville Township on March 4, 1823 the date recorded in the probate papers attached to to her will. In this testament dated October 6, 1821, she left the homestead to her youngest son Pellum during his lifetime then to his children. The Mabee matriarch was buried in a small cemetery on her farm. In his letter, Dr. George Mabee also wrote that Frederick Mabee’s remains were disinterred from his former resting place and buried in this cemetery on the homestead in 1872.

The Missing Gravestones

Nothing remains to mark the location of the burial ground that was located in front of the Mabee farm on the south side of the Front Road. Dr. George Mabee wrote of his search for the grave markers. Driving around the area, he located a farmer who assisted him. Mabee wrote:

“Accompanied by the farmer, we drove south, then east along the lake shore road. Coming to a location where a steep rise in the ground showed on our left, while to our right was a fence completely overgrown with vines and bushes. Here we halted, and, hurrying ahead of our guide, upon parting the bushes, revealed to us a small weather-worn gate. Passing through that, we were in a pasture field with cattle grazing in the distance. Close to the shrubbery was an old well and well-sweep. Our guide, after removing the well covering, remarked, ‘Gentlemen, now look and tell me what you see.’”

“Having two small mirrors with us, we reflected the sunlight in the well and upon its walls. Exchanging glances, we asked ‘Are we dreaming, or are we living over again the memory of some long forgotten story or work of fiction?’ For we saw that the walls of the well were composed of layers of marble and grey gravestones and grave markers interspersed with natural field stones.”

“After leaving the old well, our guide requested us to drive down the road until we would see an old barn on our left. Arriving at the place indicated, we saw several additional large tombstones serving as part of the foundation of the barn.”

Sources

1. In the absence of a surviving Dutchess County church register and no surviving gravestone, family researchers have estimated Frederick Mabee’s birth year at 1735 from the know birth years of his children and his order of birth among the children of Simon and Marie (Landrin) Mabee. He was of an age to enlist in the New York Militia in 1760.

2. Verplanck, Catherine A., “Colonial Muster Rolls,” in New York Genealogical & Biographical Record (New York, NY), January 1907

3. Reynolds, Helen Wilkinson, Editor, “Eighteenth Century Records of the Portion of Dutchess County that was included in Rombout Precinct and the Original Town of Fishkill,” Collections of the Dutchess County Historical Society (Fishkill, NY: 1938) Vol. VI.

4. Calendar of Historical Manuscripts Relating to the War of the Revolution in the Office of the Secretary of State. New York State Library (Albany, NY: 1868)

5. Petition of Levinah Mabee, 25 Jun 1798, Upper Canada Land Peitions, National Archives of Canada, “M” Bundle 4, Doc. 273

6. Bell, D.G. Early Loyalist Saint John, New Ireland Press (Fredericton, NB: 1983), P. 31

7. Ibid. P. 222

8. Minette, R. C., “List of Grants at Parr and Carleton.” National Archives of Canada MG23 D7

9. Rayburn, Alan. Geographical Names of New Brunswick. Surveys and Mapping Branch, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources (Ottawa: 1975)

10. Petition of Frederick Mabee and John Chedeayne, 13 Apr 1785, New Brunswick Land Petitions, 1785, Document 31

11. Petition of Frederick Mabee, 28 Jul 1785, New Brunswick Land Petitions, 1785, Bundle 5

12. Register of Deeds of York County, Vol. 1, P. 542

13. Petition of John Stone, 1794, Upper Canada Land Petitions, “S” Bundle 1, Document 57

14. Petition of Levinah Mabee, “M” Bundle 4, Document 273

15. Mabee, Dr. Oliver R., “The Ancestry and Hardships of Frederick Mabee,” in Ontario Historical Society, Papers and Records, Vol. 2, P.441

16. Charlotteville Township Papers, P.6. Archives of Ontario RG1 C-IV, MS 658, Reel 074

17. Mabee, Oliver P. 441

18. Owen, P.37

19. Petition of Levinah Mabee, 18 Oct 1797, Upper Canada Land Petitions “M” Bundle 4, Document 259

20. Ibid.

20. Yeager, William R., Editor, Pioneers of Charlotteville Township, Norfolk County, 1798-1816. Norfolk Historical Society (Simcoe, ON: 1976)

21. Fraser, P. 2, 17

22. Ibid. P. 28

23. London District Surrogate Court Filings, Number 33

24. Yeager, William R., Editor. Charlotteville Assessments 1808-1811. Norfolk Historical Society (Simcoe: 1976)

25. Mabee, George E., letter to Frederick Secord, date missing but appears to have been c. 1920’s from information contained, in Mabee family binder at the Eva Brook Donly Museum, Simcoe