THE WESTERN SETTLEMENTS
Sir Frederick Haldimand Offered the Loyalists a wide choice
of places in which to settle. He was willing to make land
grants on Chaleur Bay, at Gaspe, on the north shore of
the St Lawrence above Montreal, on the Bay of Quinte, at
Niagara, or along the Detroit river; and if none of these
places was suitable, he offered to transport to Nova
Scotia or Cape Breton those who wished to go thither. At
all these places settlements of Loyalists sprang up. That
at Niagara grew to considerable importance, and became
after the division of the province in 1791 the capital
of Upper Canada. But by far the largest settlement was
that which Haldimand planned along the north shore of
the St Lawrence and Lake Ontario between the western
boundary of the government of Quebec and Cataraqui (now
Kingston), east of the Bay of Quinte. Here the great
majority of the Loyalists in Canada were concentrated.
As soon as Haldimand received instructions from England
with regard to the granting of the lands he gave orders
to Major Samuel Holland, surveyor-general of the king's
territories in North America, to proceed with the work
of making the necessary surveys. Major Holland, taking
with him as assistants Lieutenants Kotte and Sutherland
and deputy-surveyors John Collins and Patrick McNish,
set out in the early autumn of 1783, and before the winter
closed in he had completed the survey of five townships
bordering on the Bay of Quinte. The next spring his men
returned, and surveyed eight townships along the north
bank of the St Lawrence, between the Bay of Quinte and
the provincial boundary. These townships are now
distinguished by names, but in 1783-84 they were designated
merely by numbers; thus for many years the old inhabitants
referred to the townships of Osnaburg, Williamsburg, and
Matilda, for instance, as the 'third town,' the 'fourth
town,' and the 'fifth town.' The surveys were made in
great haste, and, it is to be feared, not with great
care; for some tedious lawsuits arose out of the
discrepancies contained in them, and a generation later
Robert Gourlay wrote that 'one of the present surveyors
informed me that in running new lines over a great extent
of the province, he found spare room for a whole township
in the midst of those laid out at an early period.' Each
township was subdivided into lots of two hundred acres
each, and a town-site was selected in each case which
was subdivided into town lots.
The task of transporting the settlers from their
camping-places at Sorel, Machiche, and St Johns to their
new homes up the St Lawrence was one of some magnitude.
General Haldimand was not able himself to oversee the
work; but he appointed Sir John Johnson as superintendent,
and the work of settlement went on under Johnson's care.
On a given day the Loyalists were ordered to strike camp,
and proceed in a body to the new settlements. Any who
remained behind without sufficient excuse had their
rations stopped. Bateaux took the settlers up the St
Lawrence, and the various detachments were disembarked
at their respective destinations. It had been decided
that the settlers should be placed on the land as far as
possible according to the corps in which they had served
during the war, and that care should be taken to have
the Protestant and Roman Catholic members of a corps
settled separately. It was this arrangement which brought
about the grouping of Protestant and Roman Catholic
Scottish Highlanders in Glengarry. The first battalion
of the King's Royal Regiment of New York was settled on
the first five townships west of the provincial boundary.
This was Sir John Johnson's regiment, and most of its
members were his Scottish dependants from the Mohawk
valley. The next three townships were settled by part of
Jessup's Corps, an offshoot of Sir John Johnson's regiment.
Of the Cataraqui townships the first was settled by a
band of New York Loyalists, many of them of Dutch or
German extraction, commanded by Captain Michael Grass.
On the second were part of Jessup's Corps; on the third
and fourth were a detachment of the second battalion of
the King's Royal Regiment of New York, which had been
stationed at Oswego across the lake at the close of the
war, a detachment of Rogers's Rangers, and a party of
New York Loyalists under Major Van Alstine. The parties
commanded by Grass and Van Alstine had come by ship from
New York to Quebec after the evacuation of New York in
1783. On the fifth township were various detachments of
disbanded regular troops, and even a handful of disbanded
German mercenaries.
As soon as the settlers had been placed on the townships
to which they had been assigned, they received their
allotments of land. The surveyor was the land agent, and
the allotments were apportioned by each applicant drawing
a lot out of a hat. This democratic method of allotting
lands roused the indignation of some of the officers who
had settled with their men. They felt that they should
have been given the front lots, unmindful of the fact
that their grants as officers were from five to ten times
as large as the grants which their men received. Their
protests, contained in a letter of Captain Grass to the
governor, roused Haldimand to a display of warmth to
which he was as a rule a stranger. Captain Grass and his
associates, he wrote, were to get no special privileges,
'the most of them who came into the province with him
being, in fact, mechanics, only removed from one situation
to practise their trade in another. Mr Grass should,
therefore, think himself very well off to draw lots in
common with the Loyalists.' A good deal of difficulty
arose also from the fact that many allotments were inferior
to the rest from an agricultural point of view; but
difficulties of this sort were adjusted by Johnson and
Holland on the spot.
By 1784 nearly all the settlers were destitute and
completely dependent on the generosity of the British
government. They had no effects; they had no money; and
in many cases they were sorely in need of clothes. The
way in which Sir Frederick Haldimand came to their relief
is deserving of high praise. If he had adhered to the
letter of his instructions from England, the position of
the Loyalists would have been a most unenviable one.
Repeatedly, however, Haldimand took on his own shoulders
the responsibility of ignoring or disobeying the
instructions from England, and trusted to chance that
his protests would prevent the government from repudiating
his actions. When the home government, for instance,
ordered a reduction of the rations, Haldimand undertook
to continue them in full; and fortunately for him the
home government, on receipt of his protest, rescinded
the order.
The settlers on the Upper St Lawrence and the Bay of
Quinte did not perhaps fare as well as those in Nova
Scotia, or even the Mohawk Indians who settled on the
Grand river. They did not receive lumber for building
purposes, and 'bricks for the inside of their chimneys,
and a little assistance of nails,' as did the former;
nor did they receive ploughs and church-bells, as did
the latter. For building lumber they had to wait until
saw-mills were constructed; instead of ploughs they had
at first to use hoes and spades, and there were not quite
enough hoes and spades to go round. Still, they did not
fare badly. When the difficulty of transporting things
up the St Lawrence is remembered, it is remarkable that
they obtained as much as they did. In the first place
they were supplied with clothes for three years, or until
they were able to provide clothes for themselves. These
consisted of coarse cloth for trousers and Indian blankets
for coats. Boots they made out of skins or heavy cloth.
Tools for building were given them: to each family were
given an ax and a hand-saw, though unfortunately the axes
were short-handled ship's axes, ill-adapted to cutting
in the forest; to each group of two families were allotted
a whip-saw and a cross-cut saw; and to each group of five
families was supplied a set of tools, containing chisels,
augers, draw-knives, etc. To each group of five families
was also allotted 'one fire-lock ... intended for the
messes, the pigeon and wildfowl season'; but later on a
fire-lock was supplied to every head of a family. Haldimand
went to great trouble in obtaining seed-wheat for the
settlers, sending agents down even into Vermont and the
Mohawk valley to obtain all that was to be had; he
declined, however, to supply stock for the farms, and
although eventually he obtained some cattle, there were
not nearly enough cows to go round. In many cases the
soldiers were allowed the loan of the military tents;
and everything was done to have saw-mills and grist-mills
erected in the most convenient places with the greatest
possible dispatch. In the meantime small portable
grist-mills, worked by hand, were distributed among the
settlers.
Among the papers relating to the Loyalists in the Canadian
Archives there is an abstract of the numbers of the
settlers in the five townships at Cataraqui and the eight
townships on the St Lawrence. There were altogether 1,568
men, 626 women, 1,492 children, and 90 servants, making
a total of 3,776 persons. These were, of course, only
the original settlers. As time went on others were added.
Many of the soldiers had left their families in the States
behind them, and these families now hastened to cross
the border. A proclamation had been issued by the British
government inviting those Loyalists who still remained
in the States to assemble at certain places along the
frontier, namely, at Isle aux Noix, at Sackett's Harbour,
at Oswego, and at Niagara. The favourite route was the
old trail from the Mohawk valley to Oswego, where was
stationed a detachment of the 34th regiment. From Oswego
these refugees crossed to Cataraqui. 'Loyalists,' wrote
an officer at Cataraqui in the summer of 1784, 'are coming
in daily across the lake.' To accommodate these new
settlers three more townships had to be mapped out at
the west end of the Bay of Quinte.
For the first few years the Cataraqui settlers had a
severe struggle for existence. Most of them arrived in
1784, too late to attempt to sow fall wheat; and it was
several seasons before their crops became nearly adequate
for food. The difficulties of transportation up the St
Lawrence rendered the arrival of supplies irregular and
uncertain. Cut off as they were from civilization by the
St Lawrence rapids, they were in a much less advantageous
position than the great majority of the Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick settlers, who were situated near the
sea-coast. They had no money, and as the government
refused to send them specie, they were compelled to fall
back on barter as a means of trade, with the result that
all trade was local and trivial. In the autumn of 1787
the crops failed, and in 1788 famine stalked through the
land. There are many legends about what was known as 'the
hungry year.' If we are to believe local tradition, some
of the settlers actually died of starvation. In the family
papers of one family is to be found a story about an old
couple who were saved from starvation only by the pigeons
which they were able to knock over. A member of another
family testifies: 'We had the luxury of a cow which the
family brought with them, and had it not been for this
domestic boon, all would have perished in the year of
scarcity.' Two hundred acre lots were sold for a few
pounds of flour. A valuable cow, in one case, was sold
for eight bushels of potatoes; a three-year-old horse
was exchanged for half a hundredweight of flour. Bran
was used for making cakes; and leeks, buds of trees, and
even leaves, were ground into food.
The summer of 1789, however, brought relief to the
settlers, and though, for many years, comforts and even
necessaries were scarce, yet after 1791, the year in
which the new settlements were erected into the province
of Upper Canada, it may be said that most of the settlers
had been placed on their feet. The soil was fruitful;
communication and transportation improved; and metallic
currency gradually found its way into the settlements.
When Mrs Simcoe, the wife of the lieutenant-governor,
passed through the country in 1792, she was struck by
the neatness of the farms of the Dutch and German settlers
from the Mohawk valley, and by the high quality of the
wheat. 'I observed on my way thither,' she says in her
diary, 'that the wheat appeared finer than any I have
seen in England, and totally free from weeds.' And a few
months later an anonymous English traveller, passing the
same way, wrote: 'In so infant a settlement, it would
have been irrational to expect that abundance which bursts
the granaries, and lows in the stalls of more cultivated
countries. There was, however, that kind of appearance
which indicated that with economy and industry, there
would be enough.'
Next in size to the settlements at Cataraqui and on the
Upper St Lawrence was the settlement at Niagara. During
the war Niagara had been a haven of refuge for the
Loyalists of Pennsylvania and the frontier districts,
just as Oswego and St Johns had been havens of refuge
for the Loyalists of northern and western New York. As
early as 1776 there arrived at Fort George, Niagara, in
a starving condition, five women and thirty-six children,
bearing names which are still to be found in the Niagara
peninsula. From that date until the end of the war refugees
continued to come in. Many of these refugees were the
families of the men and officers of the Loyalist troops
stationed at Niagara. On September 27, 1783, for instance,
the officer commanding at Niagara reports the arrival
from Schenectady of the wives of two officers of Butler's
Rangers, with a number of children. Some of these people
went down the lake to Montreal; but others remained at
the post, and 'squatted' on the land. In 1780 Colonel
Butler reports to Haldimand that four or five families
have settled and built houses, and he requests that they
be given seed early in the spring. In 1781 we know that
a Loyalist named Robert Land had squatted on Burlington
Bay, at the head of Lake Ontario. In 1783 Lieutenant
Tinling was sent to Niagara to survey lots, and Sergeant
Brass of the 84th was sent to build a saw-mill and a
grist-mill. At the same time Butler's Rangers, who were
stationed at the fort, were disbanded; and a number of
them were induced to take up land. They took up land on
the west side of the river, because, although, according
to the terms of peace, Fort George was not given up by
the British until 1796, the river was to constitute the
boundary between the two countries. A return of the rise
and progress of the settlement made in May 1784 shows a
total of forty-six settlers (that is, heads of families),
with forty-four houses and twenty barns. The return makes
it clear that cultivation had been going on for some
time. There were 713 acres cleared, 123 acres sown in
wheat, and 342 acres waiting to be sown; and the farms
were very well stocked, there being an average of about
three horses and four or five cows to each settler.
With regard to the settlement at Detroit, there is not
much evidence available. It was Haldimand's intention at
first to establish a large settlement there, but the
difficulties of communication doubtless proved to be
insuperable. In the event, however, some of Butler's
Rangers settled there. Captain Bird of the Rangers applied
for and received a grant of land on which he made a
settlement; and in the summer of 1784 we find Captain
Caldwell and some others applying for deeds for the land
and houses they occupied. In 1783 the commanding officer
at Detroit reported the arrival from Red Creek of two
men, 'one a Girty, the other McCarty,' who had come to
see what encouragement there was to settle under the
British government. They asserted that several hundred
more would be glad to come if sufficient inducements were
offered them, as they saw before them where they were
nothing but persecution. In 1784 Jehu Hay, the British
lieutenant-governor of Detroit, sent in lists of men
living near Fort Pitt who were anxious to settle under
the British government if they could get lands, most of
them being men who had served in the Highland and 60th
regiments. But it is safe to assume that no large number
of these ever settled near Detroit, for when Hay arrived
in Detroit in the summer of 1784, he found only one
Loyalist at the post itself. There had been for more than
a generation a settlement of French Canadians at Detroit;
but it was not until after 1791 that the English element
became at all considerable.
It has been estimated that in the country above Montreal
in 1783 there were ten thousand Loyalists, and that by
1791 this number had increased to twenty-five thousand.
These figures are certainly too large. Pitt's estimate
of the population of Upper Canada in 1791 was only ten
thousand. This is probably much nearer the mark. The
overwhelming majority of these people were of very humble
origin. Comparatively few of the half-pay officers settled
above Montreal before 1791; and most of these were, as
Haldimand said, 'mechanics, only removed from one situation
to practise their trade in another.' Major Van Alstine,
it appears, was a blacksmith before he came to Canada.
That many of the Loyalists were illiterate is evident
from the testimony of the Rev. William Smart, a Presbyterian
clergyman who came to Upper Canada in 1811: 'There were
but few of the U. E. Loyalists who possessed a complete
education. He was personally acquainted with many,
especially along the St Lawrence and Bay of Quinte, and
by no means were all educated, or men of judgment; even
the half-pay officers, many of them, had but a limited
education.' The aristocrats of the 'Family Compact' party
did not come to Canada with the Loyalists of 1783; they
came, in most cases, after 1791, some of them from Britain,
such as Bishop Strachan, and some of them from New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia, such as the Jarvises and the
Robinsons. This fact is one which serves to explain a
great deal in Upper Canadian history.