No Pleasures or Prospects: Francis Goring (1755-1842)

Niagara by James Peachey ca. 1783
Source: Clements Library, University of Michigan

During the Revolutionary War, many colonists who remained loyal to the Great Britain fled to other parts of British North America. Loyalist refugees from the Mohawk Valley area of New York, and from the East Branch of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, often made their way to Fort Niagara, located at the mouth of the Niagara River. It was here in 1778 that 15-year-old Lucy Secord met 23-year-old Francis Goring.

Lucy Secord was the daughter of Peter Secord, one of three brothers who settled on the East Branch of the Susquehanna River about 1773, but were forced to abandon their farms during the war. The date of Lucy and her family's arrival at Fort Niagara is uncertain. It is known that Peter Secord was a member of Butler's Rangers, a Loyalist Regiment, but was discharged in 1778 because of his age. In 1780, Peter Secord became one of the first settlers west of the Niagara River.

Francis Goring, on the other hand, was born in Westminster, England, and was baptised at St Martin in the Fields on 7 Sep 1755. His father, Abraham Goring, was a bookseller. In 1776, Francis, an indentured apprentice, left England for Quebec, arriving on the 30th of June. He was then unexpectedly sent to Fort Niagara which he reached on the 26th of August. In a letter written soon after his arrival he describes his situation:

There are no pleasures or prospects to direct the mind, being confined by the woods in one side and the water on the other. Our whole place consist of a fort and four houses and about five hundred men, therefore I leave you to judge how agreeable it must be to one who has accustomed to much pleasure.

Francis was initially employed by Edward Pollard, but later became an employee of Captain Thomas Robison,¹ who had resigned from the Naval Department in 1777 to become a merchant at Niagara. Robinson's firm supplied Butler's Rangers, the Indian Department, and the Fort Niagara garrison with rum and other sundries.

Some of the sundries were a bit unusual. In Aug 1779, Goring received a letter from Capt. Walter Butler who was encamped with Butler's Rangers on the Genesee River near the High Falls of the Genesee River. In his letter Butler asks Goring to send him two bear skins and a barrel of port, and writes, "I am obliged to you for the hooks, for now it is, that he that will not hunt or fish, must not eat."

In 1779, Robison sold his business to George Forsyth. The following year Goring entered into a partnership with James Burnet and Samuel Street. This partnership however, lasted little more than a year.

While the bulk of Goring's surviving correspondence can be found at Library and Archives Canada, other letters have appeared in secondary sources. In a letter to his uncle, James Crespel, dated 23 Sep 1779, Francis describes his first three years at Niagara.

I have lived at this place three years last August and have two masters in that time and am now getting a third still in the same house. The first was Mr. Pollard. He made a great fortune and left off. The second, Mr. Robison, who was formally a captain on these lakes is now tired of business and assigns in favor of George Forsyth, who has treated me with the greatest of kindness and is ready serve me in anything I should ask. I have had several offers by two old employers to leave Niagara and live with them, but I believe I shall continue here which I prefer to Canada where everything is carried in with the greatest gaiety and this is a place which you may say is almost out of the world in the woods and frequented by nothing but Indians, except the people of the garrison. As I have stuck close to business so long I shall continue that I may be of service to my lost sisters. At this place is carried on a great business which consumes every year £30,000 sterling worth of merchandise of all sorts which is mostly retailed to Indians. We employ four clerks of which I am senior. For the first two years my salary was but small, I have now (and I flatter myself that there is not in these parts a clerk that has as much) about fifty guineas per annum, being found in food and washing. By carrying on correspondence with my friend Mr. Cruickshank, who supplies me with silver work, such as the Indians wear and which I dispose of to the merchants in the upper country and the profit arising there from is sufficient to keep me in clothes.

The winter of 1780 was especially hard with frequent storms and bitter cold. New York Harbour froze completely, and British soldiers were able to march across the ice from Manhattan to Staten Island. At Fort Niagara, the Haudenosaunee refugees who had taken shelter there after the Sullivan Expedition suffered greatly from cold and starvation.

John Warren, in charge of the commissary at Fort Erie, wrote to Goring in January:

We have experienced the longest succession of severe weather I ever felt in Canada. It has snowed and drifted here every day this month. We have in common not less than four feet on the ground. In the woods where it has drifted in some places it exceeds ten. The sun is become a stranger here, hardly ever showing his face, and when he does it is thro' a mist as if he intended not to be too familiar.

Goring himself described conditions at Niagara in a letter to his uncle dated 14 Oct 1780:

I cannot help mentioning that last winter was the severest that was ever felt here. Our river was frozen over for seven weeks, so that horse and sley could pass, which was never known to be froze over before, owing to the great rapidity of the water from the falls. The snow in the woods eight feet on a level ground.

In the summer of 1780, several members of Butler's Rangers who had been discharged due to their age were given permission to begin farming on the west side of the Niagara River. Among them was Goring's future father-in-law, Peter Secord. In August 1780, Goring recorded, "Secord commenced farming over the river."

HMS Ontario at Fort Niagara

The following year, Goring wrote to his uncle about the sinking of the HMS Ontario:

A very malancholy misfortune happened nigh here last fall. On the 31st Oct. a New Vessel called the Ontario sailed from here in the afternoon, and about 12 O-clock at Night a violent storm arose in which the vessel was lost and every soul on board Perish'd in number about 120, among which was Lt. Col. Bolton, who commanded this post, Lt. Collerton of Artillery, Lt. Royce of the 34th Reg't. About a week ago six of the Corps were picked about 12 miles from her and buried, which is all that has ever been seen. This was the finest snow that every sailed these Lakes and Carried upwards of a thousand Barrels.

When the Revolutionary War ended, Francis received an initial grant of 300 acres on the west side of the Niagara River and took up farming. He tutored the children of his neighbours, and opened the first school house in the district in 1790. On 10 Dec 1792, Francis recorded in his journal, "This day commenced keeping school at the Landing for day scholars." A list of students followed, including three sons of Robert Hamilton.

Hamilton, a prominent Niagara merchant and member of the Legislative Council of Upper Canada employed Francis as a debt collector from 1800 to 1808. Hamilton and Francis knew each other from when Goring was a clerk for Robison at Niagara while Hamilton was a clerk for the Ellice brothers at Carleton Island.

Most of the surviving correspondence from this period relates to business matters, however, in a letter to Goring dated 25 Mar 1780, Hamilton writes of having "spent a very idle, tho' in other respects not a very uncomfortable winter" at Carleton Island. In the same letter he shares news about the Battle of Grenada and the Siege of Savannah, and how he, "will not see my Niagara friends 'till the second trip of the Haldimand." Hamilton moved from Carleton Island to Niagara later that year and went into business with Richard Cartwright.

Francis was responsible for writing and delivering letters to those indebted to Hamilton. This sometimes required Francis to travel as far as Ancaster at the head of Lake Ontario. At Hamilton's bequest he kept a detailed journal. The journal from 1805 survives and in addition to recording who received letters and their responses, provides snippets of information about some of the inhabitants of Upper Canada:

Old Henry Dochseder has a new large fram'd House & seemingly everything in plenty, but has not generosity enough to ask a traveller to Eat.

James Ross, a very poor man that was burnt out at Chippewa & has been a long time sick, has a wife and children, the only Cow he had the Doctor took for his attendance.

Isaac Durham has a good fram'd House & Barn & large clearing & seemingly in a good way. John Durham attends more to the Blacksmith's trade than farming.

Chambers has no grain in the ground & by appearance, nothing has been done since I was here 2 years past.

Francis and Lucy married about 1781. They had ten children and numerous grandchildren. In his Upper Canada Land Petition dated 20 Oct 1796, Francis wrote, "That your Petitioner has been married many Years—and has had 9 children, Six of whom are living—and has received 400 acres of Land; for which he is thankful." Attached to the petition is, "A List of Francis Goring's Children" beginning with Charlotte born in 1782 and ending with Abraham Hamilton born in 1796. Not on the list is the youngest child, Lucretia Caroline, who was born about 1799. The three children who had died were twins Francis and Lucy, born in 1788, and Arthur, born in 1792.

Lucy died during the Winter of 1801. Francis never remarried.

Francis was a highly literate person, and much of what we know about him comes from his surviving letters and journals. The journals contain records of his accounts, the crops he planted and harvested, the animals he butchered or sold, lists of his students, visits of dignitaries, but very little about his family. The 1792 marriage of Lucy's cousin David Secord is mentioned, as is the funeral of her cousin Peter. Of his own family only the births of his son Arthur and daughter Mary Ann are recorded:

Friday, August 10, 1792—My wife delivered of a Son at about half-past nine in the evening.

May 26, 1794—My wife delivered of a Daughter at about 11 o'clock at night.

The weather is frequently mentioned. A drought in the spring of 1791 resulted in a fire that caused considerable damage:

May 11, 1791—Considerable damage done in this settlement by the woods catching fire. Mrs. Guthrie's House and fence burnt and most of the fence by the river. Peter Secord's fence burnt and many others.

May 12, 1791 - A remarkable dry spring. But one day's rain between the 13th April and 12th May—29 days drought—Mostly hot days and frosty nights.—Rained 24th in the Morning.

Journal entry for Sunday, July 1, 1792

Francis's entry for Sunday, July 1, 1792 is perhaps the oldest surviving description of a tornado in Canada:

A violent hurricane happened this day about 2 & 3 o'clock in the afternoon which began at the little lake at the head of Lake Ontario which drove which such violence towards Fort Erie as left hardly a tree standing for two miles in width. The heaviest part fell among the Short Hills, between the Fifteen and Thirty Mile Creeks. In some places, for near five miles wide, there is not so much as a sapling, but what is torn up by the roots, whole trees carried a considerable distance, some fifty trees a foot and a half thick twisted like a [?] — every house disroofed and many blown down, in some places the hail was as large as a man's fist, in other places there was neither hail or rain. The woods now is rendered impassable 'til roads can be cut through, forty men were three days cutting so as to get out five families and their cattle, the whole way it went was as a whirl wind, the trees falling different ways. There is no appearance by the woods that such a storm has ever happen'd in this country before, what is very remarkable we hear of no lives being lost except those of Cattle.

In his will, dated August 26, 1833, Francis left most of his estate to his sons Abraham Hamilton Goring and Frederick Augustus Goring, and to his daughters Mary Ann Darby and Lucretia Caroline Lambert. The only other child named is Frances Sophia Milliard.

Francis died in 1842 at the age of 87. He was buried at Homer Cemetery in Niagara Township, however, no grave marker remains.

Notes:

¹ Thomas Robison had commanded various ships on Lake Erie including the schooner Earl of Dunmore, and the brig General Gage. During the Revolutionary War he was briefly in command of vessels operating on Lake Ontario. After the war, he moved to the United States and settled in Portland, Maine where he became a distiller and merchant. Robison retired to Kingston, Upper Canada in 1805.

Sources:

Durham, J. H. Carleton Island in the Revolution: The Old Fort and its Builders. Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen, 1889.

Francis Goring Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, MG24, D4

Francis Goring Fonds. Archives of Ontario, F 594

Ketchum, William. An Authentic and Comprehensive History of Buffalo. Vol 2. Buffalo: Rockwill, Baker and Hill, 1865

Lincoln Country Surrogate Court Files, Archives of Ontario, RG22-235

Perry, Charlotte L. "Reminiscences of Francis Goring," Family History and Reminiscences of Early Settlers. Publications of the Niagara Historical Society No. 28.