Wolves in Upper Canada--Adventure of Thomas Conant--A grabbing
land-surveyor--Canadian graveyards beside the lake--Millerism in
Upper Canada--Mormonism.
Turning to ordinary affairs, we find that at this date our Government
helped the settler to exterminate wolves by paying a bounty of about $6
for each wolf head produced before a magistrate. In reference to these
ferocious animals, once so plentiful in Canada, an anecdote of the
author’s grandfather will be found both interesting and instructive,
giving us a true glimpse of the county in 1806. Thomas Conant, whose
portrait is found on opposite page, and who was assassinated during the
Canadian Revolution on February 15th, 1838 (_vide_ “Upper Canada
Sketches,” by the author), lived in Darlington, Durham County, Upper
Canada. In the fall of 1806 he was “keeping company” with a young woman,
who lived some three miles back from Lake Ontario, his home being on the
shore of that great lake. Clearings or openings in the forest were at
this time mostly along the lake shore. Consequently, to pay his respects
to the young woman, he had to pass through some forest and clearings in
succession. It was in November of that year. Snow had not yet fallen,
but the ground
[Illustration: THOMAS CONANT.
Was born at Bridgewater, Mass., in 1782; came to Darlington, Canada,
with his father, Roger Conant, in 1792. On February 15th, 1838, during
the Canadian Revolution, he was foully massacred by one Cummings (in
Darlington), a despatch bearer, of Port Hope, Ont. The assassin was
applauded for the act by the Family Compact.]
was frozen. Tarrying until midnight at the home of the object of his
affections, he left, alone and unarmed, to walk the three intervening
miles to his home. Getting over about one-half the distance, he heard
the distant baying of wolves. Fear would, it may be supposed, lend speed
to his feet, but thinking rightly that he could not outstrip the wolf on
foot, he walked quietly along, watching for a convenient tree for
climbing. In a very few minutes the wolves were upon him, in full cry,
eyes protruding, tongues lolling, and ready to devour him. A near-by
beech tree, which his arms could encircle, furnished him with the means
of escape. He climbed, and climbed, while the wolves surrounded him and
watched his every motion, never ceasing their dismal howls the live-long
night. Thus he kept his lonely vigil. To lose his hold for a single
second meant instant death. Great, however, as was the tension upon his
strained muscles, they held on. Morn tardily came at last, and with its
first peep the wolves left him and were seen no more. When they were
really gone, he said he for the first time began looking about him, and
found, with all his climbing, he had ascended a very few feet from the
ground, and but just out of reach of the wolves’ jaws as they made
frantic jumps to reach him. We may, however, be safe in assuming that
the scare and involuntary vigil did not do him much harm, for in the
March following (1807) he married the girl he went to visit that night,
and made no complaints of having been maltreated by wolves.
In dismissing Thomas Conant at this time, the author digresses to say
that he was born in the United States, and was only a small lad when
Roger Conant, his father, brought him here. He was a generous,
industrious citizen, and was always noted for being one of the best
natured men in Canada, and possessed ability of a very high order. He
was liked universally by all who knew him, and he pursued the ordinary
avocations of life, such as Canadians then pursued, up to the time of
his assassination (as before mentioned) during the Canadian Revolution,
on February 15th, 1838. He went down to the grave from the stroke of a
sword, wielded by a dragoon, and without any provocation other than
accusing the dragoon of being drunk, as he was and had been many times
previously when on duty as despatch bearer. But such was the state of
affairs in Canada in 1837-8 that no investigation was held, nor was the
murderer ever punished even in the mildest degree. The author asks the
reader’s indulgence when he says he is very certain that only his
grandfather’s (Thomas Conant) untimely death prevented him from leaving
a name after him high up in Canadian annals, for he was a man of grand
physique (6 feet 2 inches in height) and of commanding talents. He had a
well-balanced mind and had wealth at his command.
Surveyors were now at work plotting out the townships, and settlers were
coming very rapidly to occupy the lands which were surveyed. Readers
will bear in mind that the Family Compact was still in full power. All
grants for lands had to come through them. A story of a famous old land
surveyor is in order in this place. He had been surveying for many
seasons, and, about quarterly, came to York to make his reports and show
the plots of the new townships laid out. It so happened that an uncle of
the author’s was chain-bearer (whose office Fenimore Cooper, the
novelist, has immortalized) to this long-winded surveyor. At the time of
his service as chain-bearer this uncle was only a lusty young man, and
was not supposed to know the very first elements of surveying. Among
other things it was his duty to erect the tent for the nightly bivouac,
and make a fire at the tent mouth. Before the dancing, fitful flames,
lights and shadows in the forest primeval, he nightly sat with the
lordly surveyor, and saw him prepare rude maps of the past day’s work.
And, without any sort of knowledge of surveying, he saw him just touch a
parallelogram here and there (which would represent 100 acres) with the
point of his red pencil; but ever so light was the touch. Night after
night he saw dots go down on the parallelograms, and when the quiver was
full of sheets of survey, to York he went with the surveyor, to report
at the Crown Lands office. He said that in the office he noticed the
officials in charge scanning very intently for the red but faint dots.
We all now know the result: friends of the government officials had
secured hundreds and hundreds of acres of the best lands in the region
surveyed, while the surveyor became a mighty land-owner of most choice
lands, and died a very, very wealthy man. As may be surmised, he had
marked the choicest 100-acre lots with faint red dots, and he and the
officials grabbed the very choicest lands in that surveyor’s district.
Should a would-be purchaser ask for any certain lot, he was put off for
a day in order that they might see in the surveyor’s map if it really
was a choice one, as they surmised, since he asked to buy it, in which
case some friend immediately entered for it, and consequently that
choice lot the settler could not purchase. Using a fictitious name to
illustrate, it is said, and truly, too, that Peter Russell, Governor,
deeded to Peter Russell, Esquire, many choice lots of 100 acres each of
the public domain in Canada, in the days of the Family Compact. But here
one can justly remark that the eternal fitness of things comes pretty
nearly correct after all, for, although that surveyor was fabulously
wealthy, none of the property to-day is in any of his descendants’
possession, nor are there offspring of any of the Family Compact with
enough pelf to-day, severally or collectively, to cause any comment.
“The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,” in
Canada just as they did in Greece and Rome in days of yore.
This travesty of the conveying of public lands was one very just cause
of complaint on behalf of the people, and the refusal of the authorities
to correct it helped materially to cause the Canadian Revolution of
1837-38.
The settlements in central Canada were at this time for the most part
close to the edge of the lake. Many very worthy, hard-working,
law-abiding men and women of Canada found their last resting places in
places of sepulture, as they had found their homes, beside the waters of
Lake Ontario. Most pathetically all such graveyards appeal to the tender
side of any Canadian who loves his country and his fellows. When we stop
to consider all the hardships they had gone through, with unremitting
days, weeks, months and years of the hardest and most strenuous
muscle-aching toil, and remember, too, that they fought and conquered
the forests of Canada, it would not be human to pass by the memory of
such a noble race. Their fight had not the spur of excitement to keep up
their courage, as in war, but it was a fight, nevertheless--silent,
monotonous, trackless, soundless and alone, in forests greater than
which earth presents few examples if any.
Noble men and women, pioneers of Canada, who gave us our birthright, you
merit our regard and ungrudgingly you shall have it! On earth is no
greater or more glittering example of a better, more prudent, loyal,
law-abiding, religious and industrious people than were those now asleep
in the soil of Canada, and from whom we sprang.
Old Ontario generally is placid and beautiful, ultra-marine blue, and
shimmering. But he is not always so. When rude Boreas awakes the
slumbering giant, he frets, and froths, and spumes, and roars. As he is
in his might he becomes awful to look upon, and doubly so if one
ventures upon his bosom. And while he is spurring and warring, his waves
continually come upon the shore, each time a little higher and higher,
searching each nook, cranny and fissure along the bank of the water’s
edge. Many such storms, you can easily understand, you who live distant
from navigable and great waters, tend to undermine the foundations of
the banks, which after a few more beatings fall with a plunge, a roar,
and a cloud of densest dust, into the waters below. In this manner does
old Ontario encroach at points upon the land. The sequel may be readily
seen. Those in their graves must give them up, while their bones whiten
the shingle for many a sunshiny day. This is no fanciful picture. With a
fowling-piece upon his shoulder the author has passed along the foot of
the bank, where a graveyard is, and seen skulls, long hair, ribs, femurs
and other larger bones of the human body bestrewing the beach. And he
has seen also where the bank has fallen away, only one-half the length
of the grave, and where only one-half of the skeleton went down with the
submerged bank, while the other half remained in the grave, and the
point of severance of the bones was plainly observable on the bank above
the beholder’s head. Flesh, of course, there is none. Time has long
since decayed and changed that.
Noble men and women, the pioneers of Canada, you deserve better graves,
and cushions to lie on of the softest and most enduring velvet!
Pursuing this subject a little further, the author may observe that he
personally owns a graveyard on a large farm which has been used by
whites since 1798 and by red men before that on Lake Ontario
[Illustration: OLD GRAVEYARD NEAR OSHAWA, THE PROPERTY OF THE AUTHOR.
Graveyard on a bluff beside Lake Ontario, at Port Oshawa, overlooking
the surrounding country for a radius of ten miles. The red man, with an
eye to beauty, first used this for his place of sepulture, and now my
tenants plough out skulls, stone pipes, thigh bones, and iron tomahawks
with a star on them, which were given to the Indians by the French
before the English Conquest of Canada. The waves of Lake Ontario perform
a perpetual requiem to the memory of Indians and whites here
interred.]
shore, where the waves produce a perpetual lullaby and a requiem to the
sainted memories of the dead.
In this case there is no particular danger of the graves being washed
into the lake, but it seems hardly meet that any private owner should
have absolute control of the remains of the forefathers of so many now
dwelling in Canada. During his life no one shall be allowed by him to
meddle with the spot, but to save it for all time he has made a standing
proposition to deed it to any properly organized church that would
receive it and look after it. No such body has yet been found to receive
the gift in trust, but the author hopes that his only son, Gordon, may
keep it and hand it down to his son, and his son, in order that it may
never be disturbed.
About the year 1833 Millerism found a lodgment in Canada from the New
England States, where one Miller, by his preaching, proved very clearly,
to some minds, that on a night in February of that year the earth would
pass away. Now, quite as great a proportion of the people in Canada
embraced this doctrine as did those of the United States, when
populations are compared. These persons had not the slightest doubt that
the world would really burn up on the date announced. Hence there were
many who during that winter, up to the time, failed to provide
themselves with wood for heating their houses. The old Virginia snake
fences being all about, they proceeded to take rails from off the fences
and burn them in their own houses, for they surely would have enough
from this source to last until the 15th February of that winter. But
even though they were to die so soon they could not well do without
food, and they had failed to provide any. John B. Warren at that time
kept a large general store in Oshawa, and was noted for his wide
dealings. And we accordingly find that good Millerite farmers came to
him with their sleighs and offered him their own notes, endorsed by good
neighbors, for as much as $300 per barrel for flour, which they would
take home in their sleighs. It was then worth generally $5 per barrel.
John B. Warren, to his honor be it said, always refused to trade with
them on such terribly unequal terms, but explained to them that they
could have the flour and could pay for it if they found themselves alive
after 15th February. Warren, it will be understood, did not become a
Millerite. Again, it is related that a husband who had for his second
wife, Jane, lived near the graveyard in which slumbered his first wife,
Elizabeth. As the hands of the long “grandfather’s clock” of those days
got around to midnight, this husband said to his wife, “Jane, put on
your things and let’s go over to the burying-ground, for I want to die
beside my first wife, Elizabeth, so as to meet her the very first one
after the great fire.” Jane’s faith, it seems, was not so strong, and
she flashed fire at his manifest preference for her predecessor in her
husband’s affections, and replied, “If that’s your game, you may go, and
I won’t live with you any longer.” And it is added that she did not live
under his roof again for several months after the great fire that was to
be. Several different dates have been assigned since that first dread
day, and no doubt some earnestly looked-for date is regarded as now
approaching by this small but earnest body of people.
One Hoover believed the Millerite doctrine so very strongly that he
gradually fancied himself more than human, and not amenable to nature’s
laws. He announced that one day in the fall of 1832 he would walk on the
water from Port Hoover, across Scugog Lake, seven miles to the mainland.
The faithful gathered, and hundreds besides from curiosity. Hoover
entered the water, slowly waded from the shore, and sought refuge behind
an old pile of the dock, where he remained a few minutes. There were
boxes like big boots upon his feet. Soon the crowd called vociferously
for him to come out. When he did emerge from behind the pile he turned
his face shoreward and gained solid land. The boys began to hoot and
laugh at the would-be miracle-worker. Then Hoover made an explanation
nearly in these words:
“My friends, a cloud rose before my eyes and I cannot see. I cannot walk
upon the water to-day while this cloud is before my eyes. Soon it will
be announced when the cloud has been removed, and I will do it.”
The crowd went away, never again to assemble at Hoover’s bidding.
Millerite farmers who were usually good husbandmen, as the day
approached, failed to turn their stock out of their pens, or to feed
their animals, and actually nearly starved them. To-day all that is
past, and in almost every instance those who embraced Millerism, and
those who then opposed it, have gone to the great silent majority.
Millerism is not now known in Canada.
One other sect now, so far as I know, is extinct in central Ontario; it
may be worth mention. I say extinct, but I am not quite so certain of
that, as there yet may be some isolated persons of that faith here and
there in Ontario. I refer to the Mormons. During the summer of 1842
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-Day Saints, came to central
Ontario and spoke at open-air meetings, camp-meeting-like, as well as in
houses. He even attempted to perform miracles by curing sick persons. I
get it from persons on the stage of action this day, who heard Joseph
Smith in Upper Canada in 1842, and they say he was a good talker and had
a very insinuating manner, and they naively add that it is almost beyond
belief that any one could fall in with him. It is only fair, however, to
say in favor of the sincerity of those who joined him, that polygamy was
not then announced. We ought, I think, to make this admission to let off
those who did join as easily as possible; and from central Ontario there
were Seeleys, McGahans, Lamoreaux and others, with their families, who
sold their farms and gave the money to Joseph Smith, and went off to
Nauvoo, Ill. It is a little singular, too, that these people were never
again heard of directly from their new Mormon homes at Salt Lake, where
they no doubt removed after the break up at Nauvoo. All these Mormon
converts vanished from their neighbors with Joseph Smith, and never
again sent any word to their friends and relatives left behind. I was at
Salt Lake City for a short sojourn in 1879, and upon passing a
stonecutter who was at work upon a square building stone for the new
great Mormon tabernacle, asked the workman, “Do you know any one called
McGahan about these parts?” Instantly the stonecutter dropped his tools
and looked me very intently in the eye and replied, “Yes, I do. What do
you know about them?” I explained that they came from Ontario, their
former home, when the stonecutter urged me to go and see them; said they
lived only fifteen miles down the valley south from Salt Lake, were
wealthy, and would be pleased to see me, and most earnestly urged me to
go. But my faith in Mormon integrity in those days was too low, and I
dared not leave Camp Douglas and the protection of United States
soldiers as far as fifteen miles away. Never since has any kind of trace
been heard of our Mormon converts or their descendants.