Part 24

A Detroit newspaper of June 30th, ’38, tells how “on the night of Tuesday last some thirty of these heroes (patriots) stole a sloop and cruised to Goderich, in Canada. There they plundered the stores of everything valuable and came off. The steamboat _Patriot_ was immediately manned and sent in pursuit of them, and after a long chase found them in our waters. The persons on board the sloop were all armed, but being--as they are--a miserable lot of cowards, they ran the sloop on to the land, and everyone on board, with the exception of one man, made their escape. The sloop was captured and brought down in tow to this place.” Luckily, by July 12th the Detroit paper can say further, “The steamboat _Governor Marcy_, under command of Captain Jephson, has succeeded in capturing eight of the pirates who robbed the storehouses at Goderich, U. C. They were brought down from the St. Clair a week since, and on their arrival were taken before the U. S. judge. Four were discharged for want of sufficient evidence...; two were held to bail.... Since that time three others have been brought down ... and convicted. From the present appearance in this quarter, I am now of the opinion that the enlightened portion of the citizens of this section of the country have seen the error of their ways, and are now determined to set their faces against the Patriots. They find that the ‘Patriots’ are an unspeakable set of vagabonds, and that no dependence can be placed in them--a very wise conclusion, for I assure you that a more miserable set of beings never existed in any country. The commander-in-chief of the force in this section of the frontier I have been shown; and met him in a public bar-room. He stands five feet four inches in his shoes--that is, when he is fortunate enough to have a pair that can be so called--not lacking in impudence by any means, and a miserable, drunken vagabond, as his appearance plainly indicates.” This was Vreeland, who bore the unsavoury reputation of being “a Judas and a traitor.” He was found guilty of violation of the neutrality laws, and was sentenced by Judge Wilkins to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of $1,000.

Of his companion, Dr. McKinley, an unflattering silhouette is given by the Detroit editor, “The complete wreck of all that once constituted a man.” Also, “The Patriot force does not amount to anything like that number (one thousand), besides which they have not courage enough to cross the line.” The Indians took not a little pleasure in keeping these marauders on their own shore, and one of the former gives a spirited account of how “the savages drove the unfortunate fellows over again” from the St. Clair mission; he said they had to watch all night and sleep all day, wear feathers and tomahawks, “and if the pirates do not soon mend their ways the red-men will have to dress themselves so that the invaders will fall dead with fright, even before hearing the war-whoop and yells. We are in fear we shall get as savage as our fathers were in all the wars under the British flag.” Changed times these from those of the Indian proverb, “We will try the hatchet of our forefathers on the English, to see if it cuts well.”

Deborahs of ’37.

“_Although our last toast, gentlemen,--Place aux dames, ‘The hand that rocks the cradle guides the State.’_”

“‘_Madame! Madame Cornelia, you are not worthy of the name you bear._’

“‘_Sir, we do not live in the times of the Gracchi; I am not a Roman matron._’

“_In truth, the poor lady was nothing more nor less than a good, tender mother and excellent wife, not very interesting, perhaps, to philosophers, but very acceptable in the eyes of heaven._”

During the Seven Years’ War the only tillers to be seen in the Prussian fields were women. Likewise, in 1812, it was a common sight in Upper Canada to see women at the plough in place of absent husbands and brothers. Small wonder, then, that the mothers of 1812, and the daughters to whom they gave birth under such circumstances, were what they were in ’37.

Small wonder, too, that their neighbours across the line, who were kin and should have been friends, continued obnoxious to them when the representatives of the Stars and Stripes were such men as Theller and Sutherland. Yet, allowing for all provocation, the period of first dentition in the Canadian Infant was unusually squally; full of whims, shy fits, small fisticuffs and wailings.

Like that pattern of all good housewives described by the prudent mother of King Lemuel, it could be said of the immigrant’s wife, “She layeth her hand to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff; she seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands; she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” And when Madame de Léry was presented at the Court of George III. her beauty forced the monarch to say, “If such are all my new Canadian subjects I have indeed made a conquest.”

The women of ’37 combined all these virtues with a few heroic ones. From the dark days of civil dissensions, when Canadians, like their sisters of Deborah’s time, saw their husbands obliged to travel by the by-paths because the high roads seemed to each to be occupied by his foes,

“A company of ghosts steal out And join their voiceless sobs and cries.”

And there is laughter, too; for when she forgot for a moment to cry--her tears dropping into her teacup--Deborah did not disdain to see the humorous side of affairs. If the survivor be the fittest, then Place aux dames of the Tory stripe.

“Nay, we would in the title glory, For every honest man’s a Tory,”

is the burden of their song. It is a song which loses half its thrill 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.