Pioneer Settlement In Norfolk County

Our Multicultural Province

Ontario has a long tradition of welcoming peoples of many nationalities dating right back to our first settlers – the United Empire Loyalists. Even two hundred plus years ago, in the 1780’s and 1790’s, we had a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan province. The ethnic origins of our first settlers included German, French, English, Swiss, Portuguese, Irish, Scottish, Prussian, Dutch and African. Some descended from families who lived in the American Colonies for generations; others had been there for just a few years. A number came directly to Canada from the old country, making a diverse mixture of customs and languages.

Even many of the Indians had been non-native to this province, having lived in New York, then serving with the Loyalist forces. The government officials of the day had to search carefully to find a few scattered tribes of the Mississauga and other nations from whom they purchased the land here.

The primary occupation ran decidedly to agrarian, followed by merchants, tanners, tailors, innkeepers, blacksmiths, barristers, millers, physicians, shoemakers and numerous others. Many combined their trades with farming.

Post-War Settlement

As is often the case of immigrants today, those of the late 1700’s fled their earlier homes as refugees of war. At that time, they faced the War of the American Revolution and its aftermath. Then as now, Ontario’s lure came as a haven for the war weary and the peaceful. Although these men and women derived from many different backgrounds, all had one thing in common during those formative years of the late 1700’s. They felt a deep rooted desire to live with the orderly laws and security they had known under the British Crown in pre-Revolutionary times, now promised in Canada.

Many immigrants could be described as peaceful farming and business folk alarmed by the mob scenes that occurred in the larger American cities prior to and during the Revolution. They had been alienated by the wanton destruction of the urban and rural property of those suspected supporting the British cause both during and after the war. Anyone who did not espouse either side militarily became accused of Loyalist leanings by the republicans and fell under ostracism in their community. Also, after the Revolution, further uncertainty developed as the federal Congress of the United States struggled to establish its identity in the face of demands for individual states’ rights. Further, the unsavoury threat existed of yet another war with Britain espoused by elements of the American population. The United States proved not to be a place congenial to the peaceful immigrant from the “Old Country” to set down roots. The peaceful immigrant required a land devoid of the political and religious wars that rent the Europe of their forebears.

The earliest of the immigrants to Canada came as discharged soldiers who served in the Loyalist corps during the Revolution, with their families. Having fought against neighbours and even near relatives in the British cause for many years, they afterwards found themselves unwelcome in their home communities. Many had already moved their families to the military encampments during the war and their property had been confiscated.

Canada, as vast as it is known to be today, at that early post-war period of the early- to mid- 1780’s, offered but few settlement destinations. On the Atlantic seaboard, the Loyalists found the land in many parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rocky and difficult to cultivate – a crucial problem in a largely agrarian society. Many a prospective settler cleared a part of his government grant only to discover the soil unsuited to crops. Some either returned to the United States or went elsewhere.

Quebec, which at that time comprised all of the territory west of the Maritimes, still had the old seigniorial system of land ownership and French civil laws guaranteed to the inhabitants by the Government of England under the Quebec Act of 1763. In this system, an individual settler could not own his land outright, a prospect alien to the ways that had developed in the colonies to the south.

In present Ontario, relatively small pockets of surveyed lands developed along the Niagara and St. Lawrence Rivers and along the north-eastern shore of Lake Ontario during the 1780’s. These all went to the men of a few Loyalist regiments, among them Butler’s Rangers, the Indian Department, the King’s Royal Regiment of New York and others.

As a result, many Loyalists adopted a wait and see attitude and remained in the United States, enduring the fines, confiscations and taunts that came their way despite a clause of the Treaty of Paris which specifically forbade such treatment. Under those circumstances, a trickle of immigration to Ontario gradually developed into a stream, as more and more in the new republic could no longer deal with the persecution. Some compensation in land went to those who arrived by 1789 providing a welcome relief. With most of their American possessions confiscated or fined away, they had little to lose in making the move. By 1791, when the province of Upper Canada severed out of Quebec, it has been estimated that the population reached as many as 30,000 people where none had been a decade earlier. These pioneers cried out for more familiar and closer government than Quebec City. The sheer size of the immigrant population lent undeniable weight to their claims.

Governor Dorchester's Proclamation

The following resolution was passed by Lord Dorchester and the Executive Council of Quebec (which at that time included Ontario) then forwarded to London for presentation to the Government and King of Great Britain.

At the Council Chamber at Quebec,

Monday 9th November 1789.

Present,

His Excellency the Right Honble Lord Dorchester.

The Honble William Smith, Esquire, Chief Justice.

Hugh Finlay,           )     George Pownall,           )

Thos. Dunn,           )     Henry Caldwell,             )

Edwd. Harrison,   )      William Grant,              )

John Collins,         )      Francois Baby,              )      Esquires

Adam Mabane,    )      Charles De Lanaudiere)

J. G. C. Delery,      )      Le Cte. Dupre                )

His Lordship intimated to the Council, that it remained a Question, upon the late Regulation for the Disposition of the Waste Lands of the Crown, whether the Boards, constituted for that Purpose, were authorized to make Locations to the Sons of Loyalists, on their coming of full Age and that it was the wish to put a Mark of Honour upon families who had adhered to the Unity of Empire, and joined the Royal Standard in America before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783.

The Council concurring with His Lordship, it is accordingly ORDERED,

That the several Land Boards take Course for preserving a Registry of the Names of all Persons, falling under the aforementioned, to the End of their Posterity may be discriminated, from future Settlers, in the Parish Registers and Rolls of the Militia, of their respective Districts, and other Public Remembrancers [sic] of the Province, as proper Objects, by their preserving in the Fidelity and Conduct, so honourable to their Ancestors, for distinguished Benefits and Privileges.

And it is also Ordered, that the said Land Boards may, in every such Case, provide not only for the Sons of those Loyalists, as they arrive to Full Age, but for their Daughters also, of that Age, or on their marriage, assigning to each a Lot of Two Hundred Acres, more or less, provided nevertheless that they respectively comply with the general Regulations and that it shall satisfactorily appear, there has been no Default in the due Cultivation and Improvements of the Lands already assigned to the Head of the Family, of which they are Members.

Williams C.C.

Attached to this was a “Form of militia roll for the western districts to discriminate the families before mentioned” This included:

“N. B. Those Loyalists who have adhered to the unity of the Empire, and joined the Royal Standard before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783, and all their children and their descendants by either sex are to be distinguished by the following capitals affixed to their names: U. E. alluding to their great principle the unity of the Empire.”

Lieutenant Governor Simcoe

And the Creation of Upper Canada

Many Loyalists waited in the United States through the 1780’s into the 1790’s for some clarity in settlement prospects in Canada. The decade of the 1790’s marked the turnaround for the “wait and see” Loyalists’ fortunes.

On May 14, 1791, the Parliament of Great Britain drew a partition along the Ottawa River and created the Province of Upper Canada to the west with it’s own Lieutenant Governor, Executive Council and a popularly elected sixteen-member assembly. The Province’s name, Upper Canada came from its location “up” the St. Lawrence River, its capital tentatively placed at the mouth of the Niagara River on Lake Ontario, in a fledgling community then called Newark, now known as Niagara-on-the-Lake.      

A major boost to the early settlers of Upper Canada occurred with the arrival of the Province’s first Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe. He landed at Quebec on November 11, 1791, wintered there, then set foot in Upper Canada in June 1792 with a well thought out plan for the development of his new province. Simcoe felt highly sensitive towards the plight of the Loyalists. He fought in the trenches with them as the Colonel of the Queen’s Rangers, an incorporated company of colonial men loyal to the British cause. He had an awareness that many Loyalists still remained in the United States awaiting the opportunity to come to Canada.

The Long Point Settlement 

Simcoe wrote precisely in his singling out of the Long Point Settlement in Norfolk County as a key defensive post for Upper Canada noting the growing pressure for settlement there:

“Applications have already been made for lands near to Long Point on Lake Erie, where I have always projected to establish a Military Colony as being situated opposite to Presque Isle, the most practicable route from the United States.”

Only a few arrived before Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s time. With verbal or written permissions from Simcoe’s predecessors, they filtered in and simply squatted on land along Long Point Bay in the expectation that surveys and grants would follow. Others petitioned for permission to take up land but then fell under deferral until Simcoe could put in place his settlement plan.

The earliest known arrival, Asa Holmes had a cabin built and an acre of land cleared at the front of Walsingham Township by the fall of 1790. John Troyer purchased the rights to this lot and was then joined by John Foryea. Troyer’s brother, Christian, dropped in and out of the Settlement, and later brought with him his Amish neighbours from Pennsylvania.

Also in 1790, John Stacy, his son-in-law Silas Secord, with Christian Warner and Nathan Barnum explored along Long Point Bay then settled on the heights above Turkey Point in Charlotteville Township. Peter Walker built his pioneer cabin at the mouth of Patterson’s Creek in the location of present Port Dover, Woodhouse Township. Timothy Murphy established himself on present Dedrick’s Creek in Walsingham Township.

The brothers-in-law, Conradt Cope, Tunis Cronk, and John Darby began improvements on the shore of Long Point Bay immediately south of present St. Williams and belatedly applied for their permission in 1793.

In the spring of 1793, Frederick Mabee and his sons-in-law, Peter Teeple and John Stone pulled up stakes and travelled all the way from New Brunswick to settle at Turkey Point on Long Point Bay. West of Troyer, on Big Creek, Lucas Dedrick and his father-in-law, John Parsin, cleared their first acre and planted their first crop of wheat in 1793. The Abraham Smith family established themselves up Young’s Creek west of present Vittoria.

Only a few of those first settlers along Long Point Bay had Simcoe’s official blessing. Most received earlier tentative permissions from the then commanding officers and others had no permission at all. On September 20, 1793, Simcoe wrote to Home Secretary Henry Dundas extolling the advantages of the area:

“Long Point is the favorite object of all descriptions of people; Its vicinity is represented as the most desirable for Settlements, and whether the restraint which it has hitherto thought prudent to place upon its colonization seems to enhance its value, or it really possesses great Advantages, there appears to be little doubt but that it will become a flourishing part of Upper Canada.”

The restraint Governor Simcoe referred to were deterrents of his own making. He considered the establishment of a fort on the heights overlooking Turkey Point and the entrance to Long Point Bay to be a prerequisite to settlement.

Simcoe had two reasons for his military requirement. First, he heard the rumblings of renewed hostilities from the United States where some officials had never reconciled themselves to Canada not becoming a part of their Union. American General Anthony Wayne marched northwest during this time with designs on establishing forts along the frontier. One of these outposts went up directly across Lake Erie from Long Point at Presqu’Isle. The second reason for Simcoe’s reluctance came from the possibility of the Six Nations Indians situated along the Grand River taking sides in a long-standing conflict between the western Nations. Their warpath would take them right through the Long Point district and the settlers would be caught in the middle.

Simcoe felt that a strong fort manned by the King’s troops and Loyalist veterans of the Revolution combined with a supporting settlement would, “effectually separate the Mohawks on the Grand River from the other Indian Nations, and prevent what Captain [Chief Joseph] Brant once intimated to me in a letter ‘the Six Nations becoming a Barrier between the British and Western Indians.’”

Simcoe took advantage of every opportunity to put forward his plan for a military base at Long Point, bending the ear of anyone in Canada or England who would listen. He ran into heavy weather from his superior Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester, the Governor and military head of both Upper and Lower Canada.

The year 1793 turned into 1794 and still Simcoe waited for approval of his strategy. Meanwhile, he held up settlement and issued an eviction order to those without his authorization. In obedience to the ban, some left their few cleared acres in Norfolk. One such disappointed pioneer was John Parsin and, in his absence, Cornwall Ellis moved in and took over Parsin’s improvements. Timothy Murphy, called to duty in the Indian Department in Detroit (at that time a British possession), rented out his land and had no awareness of the order. His improvement fell to confiscation and Murphy spent years afterwards trying to prove his claim. Conradt Cope and his brothers-in-law left to take up grants being offered on the Governor’s Road north of Dundas at present Copetown. Christian Warner found his claim denied. Settler Nathan Barnum died in the interim and his heirs would have to make renewed applications in after years.

Most others produced their authorizations and remained to wait out the turn of events. In the summer of 1795, the surveyor completed the first lot mappings on the front from Long Point to the Grand River and identified those with legitimate rights.