without the pointed reply, the little electric sparkles which run
through it. Those who have furnished the bulk of the following pages
shall tell their own stories:
“I am just that kind of Tory that the only time I went to the United
States I put Canadian earth in my shoes, so that I might not walk on
Yankee soil.
“I do indeed remember ’37 and Mackenzie, and how angry we all were
that he escaped in a woman’s clothes. ‘He need not have cheated the
authorities by putting on _our_ clothing,’ we said; it was hard to
forgive him that.
“My father had a logic of his own. ‘Show me a Reformer,’ he used to
say, ‘and I’ll show you a Radical; show me a Radical, and I’ll show
you a rebel; show me a rebel, and I’ll show you a traitor to his
country and his Queen; and a man who is untrue to his Queen is untrue
to his God.’ He always declared he could smell a Radical in the next
concession. A sword on one side of his bed and a gun on the other,
and it was death to anyone who touched either. He always called my
mother madame. ‘Madame, do you remember so and so?’ ‘Madame, is dinner
ready?’ He was a volunteer in 1812, and, like many other loyal-hearted
men, had to leave wife and family to look after themselves as best
they might. He took part in all the chief battles then, and often was
away for a month at a time. It was during one of these absences that
McArthur’s freebooters, infamous marauders, plundered the country,
pretending they were a branch of the United States army. When they
got to our house they first of all removed a baking of bread, taking
off the oven doors to do so; then they emptied the feather-beds on
the brush-heap, and filled the ticks with cornstalks for fodder; they
took our best blankets to cover their horses, and stole the silverware
and valuables. They then destroyed what they could not carry away;
one, more infamous than the rest, hurled a tomahawk through a large
and valuable mirror. Some time afterwards, a Loyalist, when passing
Colonel Talbot’s, saw a little copper tea-kettle hanging in a tree and
a silver spoon with it, and Colonel Talbot recognized the crest on the
spoon--a lamb encircled with a wreath--and the things were returned.
My mother had buried what she could--her own clothes and whatever she
could manage to secrete--and put brush over the place, and anything not
lucky enough to be buried was taken. My father’s sister was alone when
the marauders reached her house, so she called as loudly as she could,
‘John, Joe, Dick, all of you, make haste down--here they are!’ as if
she was just waiting for them. She was a very resolute woman. Then she
took down an old musket that always hung on two wooden hooks, rested
it on the window-sill and fired at random; but random happened to be a
good mark. The leader of the gang was at that moment riding towards the
window, and the charge nearly carried off his horse’s leg; the animal
fell, and remained there till it died. Then the whole party of these
moss-troopers, who were alarmed as much by her shouts as by the shot,
thought they had to encounter a number of men in the house, and made
off as fast as they could. This was the time that Colonel Burwell’s
place was burned and that Colonel Talbot made such a narrow escape from
the same party. Colonel Burwell was ill with fever and ague; they took
him prisoner and sent him to Chilicothe, where they left for him some
time. They burnt his house, but his wife, after sending a message to
Colonel Talbot to advise him of their coming, made her escape on her
Indian pony. The marauders were all masked. She had recognized the
leader, an American from across the border at Fort Erie, where she was
born. She kept him interested while her messenger was on his way to
Colonel Talbot--no new kind of work for Mrs. Burwell; in her old home
she had had a similar experience, during which a small brother had
improved the opportunity of the soldiers’ absence, while they ransacked
the house, to make a visit to their stacked muskets, take a dipper
and fill up every muzzle with water. When Mrs. Burwell arrived at our
house, my mother dug up some of her wardrobe, and as the visitor often
said afterwards, ‘Whatever should I have done if you had not given me
something to wear!’ She remained with us till the next day, and Colonel
Talbot in the meantime was lucky enough to look like a shepherd or
labourer in his homespun smock. He was about to milk his cows, and
would have made a queer figure to grace a triumph. The marauders had
among them some Indians and scouts who figured at Tecumseh’s last
battle, and an Indian was the first to enter on the scene. ‘You an
officer?’ he said to Captain Patterson, Talbot’s friend and neighbor.
‘Oh, yes, big officer--captain.’ But this answer did not divert
suspicion, and looking towards the ravine to which Colonel Talbot was
directing his steps, the Indian continued, ‘Who that yonder--he big
officer, too?’ ‘No, no,’ said Captain Patterson, ‘he is only the man
who tends the sheep.’ Notwithstanding this assurance and the appearance
which bore it out, two guns were levelled at the retreating figure.
Twice they tried to cover him, but each time were diverted by the
assurance repeated. The Colonel dropped into the ravine, and their
chance was gone. They burned the mill, they plundered Castle Malahide,
in the booty took some valuable horses, and they drove off the cattle;
but two quart pots of gold and the plate, snug under the front wing of
the house, escaped.
“The daughters of Joris Janson Rappelje went through much the same
kind of thing. The father, a descendant of a Huguenot, had come here
in 1810 with a detailed account of the family farming life, how the
Dutch Governor of the New Netherlands had given a silver spoon to Sarah
Rappelje, the first white child born in the colony--1635--and many
other items of family interest, closely written in a fat manuscript
volume. His American experiences had been stirring ones; at Lundy’s
Lane it was no figure of speech to say they waded ankle deep in blood,
and yet everybody said that the worst scourge of all was the raid of
this band of McArthur’s marauders. They were one thousand strong,
mounted, and unfortunately the camp was pitched at the Rappelje farm,
where St. Andrew’s Market in St. Thomas now is. By night-time the
place was in a glow of light from the fence-rails burning in heaps,
the shadows of the overtopping trees making gloom above and beyond.
By morning Rappelje’s sheep were all slaughtered, crops destroyed and
the crib emptied of the corn. When Colonel Talbot tried to hide his
valuables he gave Mrs. Rappelje a specially precious box, which was to
be guarded at all hazards. It had so far been underneath a bed, a safe
enough hiding in ordinary times, but she now took it out and put it
between the beehives, sure that her lady bees would make good guards.
Her young daughter Aletta would have fought the raiders herself had she
been allowed, but she had to content herself by telling the commander
that he was a thief and a scoundrel.[5]
“When the news of the uprising of ’37 reached us my father was off
again, and my brothers too. One of the boys took down the big poker
from the fireplace, the only weapon he could find, and I cried out to
him by way of encouragement, ‘Mind you don’t get shot in the _back_!’ I
and another girl, Margaret Caughill, sat up all night running bullets,
and we had an apronful in the morning. I turned the grindstone, too,
for one of the officers to sharpen his sword.
“It so happened that Dr. John Rolph was at my father’s place for three
months. He poisoned the minds of a great many.”
In the house of a high Tory, who could smell a Radical in the next
concession, the seditious doctor seemed to enjoy himself and showed a
particular fondness for the blood-thirsty little Tory maid. “Come here,
my fair child,” he would say, and when wanted and not to be found her
mother would remark, “Oh, I suppose she is on Dr. Rolph’s knee.” She
got at his quicksilver once, divided it with her finger to make it run,
investigated the mysteries of his big watch, and helped him eat the
johnnycake which he insisted her mother should bake in the ashes. The
flaxen-haired, blue-eyed damsel was danced up and down by the light of
the big fire--
“Send them back to Yankeeland
To hoeing of their corn,
And we will eat a johnnycake
While it is good and warm,”
is the song associated with the man of whom his best biographer records
there was no such thing as self-abandonment, never giving himself
to frolicsomeness or fun. It is almost a relief to find him in this
out-of-the-way corner of the wilderness in such homely and off-guard
actions. “What do you think this little one wants--she wants my
money-bags,” and up she was on his knee again to examine the leather
money-belt where he kept his guineas.
“He once came to us for flour and lost his way after he left, got into
a brush-heap where he had to remain all night, and was so tormented by
mosquitoes that in a frenzy, to protect himself, he emptied the flour
and drew the sack over his head. He presented himself at the breakfast
table next morning--and my father said he never saw such a show as the
man was when he reached the house,”--“covered, if not with glory, yet
with meal.”
Another visitor, of very different calibre, was the famous
Tiger Dunlop, who would ride the saucy child upon his massive
shoulder--which, she said, ought to have a saddle. He pronounced his
admiration of egg-nog as made under her father’s supervision, “Ah, your
coo gives good milk!” There was the usual greed in this neighbourhood
for the liquid which made the egg-nog so uncommonly good, and the
expedients to get the desired article were sometimes ingenious. One
toper, impecunious and resourceful, provided himself with a keg
partitioned down the centre, each side seemingly tight; one contained
water only. He would arrive at the general store with the water side
half-full, get the whiskey side filled, and then say payment would be
made on his next visit. If prompt payment were demanded he would wax
indignant; “Well, if you won’t trust me, take your old whiskey.” Out
would come the water cork and the water would gurgle into the whiskey
barrel; the owner, showing outraged virtue, would then march home with
the whiskey side comfortably full.
As to the oft-repeated slander that Methodist preachers were the root
of disaffection, scattering the seed of gospel and rebellion together,
these ultra-loyal ladies are dubious. One says, “It is seldom you find
one of them a _real_ staunch Tory and a good man”--a remark, by the
way, which admits of two meanings. Three loyal dames, one of them a
foreigner, once upon a time attended a revival; no doubt the three
minds were prejudiced as to the politics of the preacher. The latter
finally came down the aisle, addressing his questions right and left:
“And now, my good woman,” to the foreigner, “what has the Lord done for
_you_?” “By Job alive,” said the lady, “I do not tell my family affairs
to everybody!”
It is hard, even yet, to convince these dames of fixed feeling
that good could come out of certain quarters. “They call them
Reformers,--but what were they else? He” (a person above general
suspicion) “may not have carried two heads in one hat, but he was not
the _true thing_.”
“I would rather be killed by a good Tory bullet than be singed by
rebel gunpowder,” said this fire-eating slip of a girl to a crying
friend. “What are you crying for--because you have no more brothers to
send?” “No, I’m afraid they’ll be brought back dead.” “_I_ don’t care,
provided mine are not shot in the _back_.”
Of the said brothers, one was in a troop of cavalry and another met his
death, as many did, through the sudden change from home comforts to
campaigning. “Getting up out of a down bed and sleeping under waggons
or on frozen ground with a carpet-bag for a pillow was a great change,
and he died before he could be got home.”
But another brother seems to have kept his health and spirits in a
marked degree. The absences of the husband and father were now as long
and trying as they had been in 1812, and the mother, whose name was
the good old-fashioned Betsy, gave voluble tokens of her grief. This
boy imitated his father’s handwriting and wrote a long and sympathetic
letter, ending, “Do the best you can, Betsy, I don’t expect to be back
till spring.” She threw down the letter,--“If you don’t come back till
then, you need not come home at all.” The boys were delighted, but the
mother discovered the forgery, and the scribe suffered severely. It
was a custom with the father to give his daughter a birthday present
of a roast of beef, every added year marked by an added pound of meat.
In those days spinsterhood was not as fashionable a state of life as
nowadays, and the father waxed annoyed: “Now, my dear,” he said, when
the roast tipped considerably more than twenty pounds, “if you are not
gone off within the year I shall have to drive in the whole beast.”
Arnold somewhere says that according as the New or Old Testament takes
hold of a nation, so do what he terms the religious humours in it
differ. It would be hard to determine from the data procurable just
what the influence in this case was. Some had anxious thoughts as to
how things had “sped” and the division of spoil which old and new
dispensations always allow as lawful. One old lady sent off her son
with a blessing to join his corps, but called him back again to give
him a large shawl. “Now, Willie, take this with you, and when you get
to Toronto be sure to get it filled with the best Young Hyson tea.
Don’t forget now, and bring the best. By the time you get there you’ll
find plenty of it for the taking.”
An old farmer ascribed the degeneracy of the times not to influences
broad as Arnold’s, but to the “flattery” understood in the difference
of manner toward farmers’ wives. “When ’twere dame and porridge, it
were rale good times; when ’twere mistress and broth, ’twere worser a
great deal; but when it comes to be ma’am and soup, it be werry bad
indeed,” and no wonder the country went to the dogs. He preferred the
days when U. E. Loyalist ladies speared salmon with pitchforks. If
dress had aught to do with it, the change there was great indeed. In
the early days to which he alluded many a U. E. Loyalist belle had only
one garment to her name, a deerskin slip, and men’s buckskin trousers
sometimes brought a dollar and a half after twelve years’ wear; by ’37
the following is a description of an evening dress, thought worthy to
be sent to Canada--“Gros royale black ground with flowing pattern,
wide flounces and short tight sleeves, long gloves of _peau rosée_,
English lace cap with pompous (?) roses, English lace handkerchief,
black satin shoes, and one bracelet.” During the good old days so
bemoaned by the farmer, one U. E. Loyalist girl unfortunately made
a neighbourly visit where she saw the mysteries of the laundry for
the first time. The lesson sank deep in her mind, and at the first
opportunity after her return home, when the rest of the family had left
her in undisturbed possession of the house, she made her maiden attempt
as blanchiseuse on her own deerskin garment. But as this adaptation
from Godiva laboured, the garment grew less and less. Any woman who has
attempted to wash a glove wrung into a wisp can appreciate her horror.
There was no Peeping Tom, but the sounds of the returning family
precipitated her into the generous shadow of the potato-hole, whence
she interviewed them--if, indeed, the attenuated bit of chamois was
not the more eloquent of the two. I’ll find a thousand shifts to get
away, has been written; alas, she could find not one. She was packed in
a barrel and conveyed upon an ox-sled to a neighbour’s where clothes
were more common, and the distressed and shiftless maiden could truly
have said she was in her right mind when again clothed. The last of the
English and the first of the Canadians were in some points uncommonly
alike.
* * * * *
“In our house in my childhood everything was dated by 1812--things had
importance only as they were affected by that year and whether they
were ‘before’ or ‘after’. My father was through the whole of ’12 and
was with Brock at the taking of Detroit; Brock gave him a horse and all
trappings for it and himself, and I very well remember the bearskin
holsters and the pistols--enormous pistols that we often shot off when
we were little.
“General Hull came through our district when he was on his way
to Detroit, and every house was searched for arms of any kind or
description that could be made use of by the Americans. My father was
away from home with our own troops, and my mother received the American
officer who came to search our house. He staid an unconscionable
time, and mentioned that my father was fighting his own best friends,
the friends who came to offer us liberty. ‘Liberty,’ said my mother;
‘liberty indeed--we want no more than we have; we are happy and have
good laws, but _your_ country is one of lawlessness.’ My little
brother, who was very small and who thought that when Yankees were
spoken of wild beast and fairy-book creatures were meant, quietly
sidled up to the officer and felt his legs. ‘Why, mother, mother! The
Yankees wear trousers just like papa!’
“All children had nightmarish notions about the Americans, but they
rather enjoyed it all; saw the excitement and fuss, revelled in the
occasional strange circumstances, and knew none of the dangers. Once
there was a great scare about the Indians, they were coming to kill us
and burn our goods, and many precautions were taken. A big hole was
made in the ground in the woods and all our valuables were put in it,
and to the same woods we children were taken to be left hidden there;
we had some chairs and a few comforts, and we thought it great fun--a
little disappointed when during the night it was decided there was no
more cause for alarm, and we were taken home again.
“A Mrs. Perry, to whom I went to school, had two sons away fighting.
One day some Indians arrived, several of them wearing extra long
scalp-belts, and one had in his belt a scalp with long yellow hair.
Mrs. Perry said she knew that was her son’s hair; and anyway the son
was never heard of again, as far as I know.
“On the occasion that the officer came to search for arms his troop
evidently thought he was staying a good while, for sometimes they would
try to approach the house a little nearer, when he would go to the door
and wave them back. On their tour through the country they burned every
grist-mill, so that the people would be starved out, and then of course
we had to pound our grain as best we could. My uncle had a grist-mill
and a saw-mill. He also had a daughter of sixteen, a lovely girl. When
they had demolished the grist-mill they turned their attention to the
other, but the girl was determined to save it, and as fast as a man
would set it alight in one place she would pour water on it, until at
last they admired her courage and bravery so much that the officer in
charge ordered a man to help her destroy everything which would mean
the least danger from fire and that the saw-mill was to be let alone.
“My father was also all through ’37, and when the first troubles came
and our streets were full of shouting mounted rebels he waited for no
orders but got supplies on his own account, trusting that some day the
authorities would repay him, and his regiment was equipped and sent
off without delay; he was colonel of the 4th Middlesex. If I had had
anything to do with those times there would have been no question of
making prisoners--shoot the dogs and be done with it. What business
had they coming over here to stir up peaceable people, first in 1812
and then in 1837. Father saw no real fighting in ’37, except that in
connection with the taking of Theller and the _Anne_, but he was in
Windsor at the time of the Hume tragedy. Hume was skinned, and they
said they were going to make drumheads out of the skin. When the
brigands left his body hanging on the posts they went to Prince’s
place, cut the trees, destroyed the fences, and frightened Mrs. Prince
out of her senses.
“I saw Sutherland and Theller when they passed through St. Thomas on
their way to Toronto for trial. My father as Colonel was president
of the court-martial, and at that time he received many threatening
letters, scores of them, saying that if any American lives were taken
he and all his race would be killed. He laughed at this, saying that
they evidently knew very little about a court-martial, for as president
he had really less to say than the youngest officer in the room.
“At the beginning of the troubles in St. Thomas the Loyalists one day
took refuge in an upper room of a big building, thinking they were
going to be surrounded by rebels below; they were surrounded, but I
don’t remember that anything hostile was intended. One of those in
the upper room threw an axe out of the window and it fell on a man’s
head, splitting his face open, and he was carried home on a stretcher,
covered with a white cloth. I suppose he died afterwards. My husband
was away with the militia, and I was terrified at being left alone
with a maid-servant and a servant boy. One day a lot of them came in
front of the house, and furiously began to pull the palings of the
fence down, one of them shouting, ‘A Tory lives here; we’ll not leave
a stick for him to see! We’ll burn the house, too!’ A magistrate came
along just then and caught the fellow by the throat, calling him a
rebel, had him arrested, and the rest of them left my premises. I was
afraid they would return to carry out their threat, and got a man to
come and watch all night, but they did not reappear. A party of the
rebels were somewhere near, and our men wanted to catch them, but we
were poorly supplied with ammunition. I was in a shop and heard the
proprietor of it talking to another man, lamenting the lack of bullets,
so I said, ‘Give me the moulds, and give me all the lead you have, and
to-morrow you shall have all the bullets you can carry.’ So they did,
and I and my woman-servant sat up the whole of that night melting lead
and running bullets, and when the men came for them next day there was
nothing too much for them to say, and they went away cheering me. The
thing got into the American papers, which said that even the Canadian
ladies were so earnest in the war that they sat up all night running
bullets. When my servant and I were making them we had two moulds, one
cooling while we filled the other. After the bullets were emptied into
the cold water of course they were not smooth, and we each had a knife
to cut off the part adhering; so there we sat in silence that whole
night, filling and cutting, the silly maid weeping steadily. She was a
young Scotch girl just out, and she cried all through the night as she
worked. I gave the men their balls, saying, ‘Every bullet should find
a billet,’ but they did not catch their party of rebels.