The Cemetery on the Nith: The Secords of Blenheim

Detail from the 1857 Tremaine Map of Oxford County

Among the 19th century inhabitants of Blenheim Township were Elijah Secord (1808-1899) and his younger half-brother, Levi Secord (1830-1875). On the 1857 Tremaine Map of Oxford County, Elijah is shown occupying 130 acres of Lot 5 Concession 5, while Levi is shown occupying the north half of Lot 8 Concession 5. Elijah, a Baptist, was buried at Riverside Cemetery close to the Nith River. Levi, however, was a Methodist and is buried at nearby Richwood United Church Cemetery.

Elijah and Levi’s father was Daniel Secord (1780-1837). It has been wrongly said the Daniel was the first white child born in what is now Ontario.¹ Elijah and Levi’s grandfather, John Secord (1757-1830), was a Loyalist who served in Butler’s Rangers during the Revolutionary War. He was present at the Battle of Okiskany in 1777, and the Battle of Wyoming in 1778. John was discharged from Butler’s Rangers on 7 Oct 1778 due to hearing loss, and is often referred to as “Deaf John.”

John was one of a group of discharged Rangers that established farms west of the Niagara River before the end of the war. This group included John’s father, John Secord (1725-1804), and his uncle, Peter Secord (1726-1818). A “List of Settlers at Niagara,” dated 1784, shows John Secord having cleared ten acres while his father had cleared 50. This suggests that John helped his father start his farm at Two Mile Creek before beginning clearing his own farm on the west bank of Three Mile Creek.

In 1792, father and son petitioned Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe to “relieve their minds from the anxiety they labour under, by confirming them title to the Lands they have so long occupied.” It was not until 1796, however, that title was received. John was granted a patent for 193½ acres “between the streams of the Three and Four Mile ponds” while his father was granted a patent for 286 acres of land “in the broken front” and “three chains from Lake Ontario.”

John repeatedly and successfully petitioned for additional land. In his 1798 petition, John argued, “that your Petitioner’s services and the trust reposed in him having been beyond the common duty of a Private...” entitled him to further grants. An attached certificate signed by several former officers of Butler’s Rangers attested that John, “in many instances behaved himself as a brave man.” Peter Russell, the Administrator of Upper Canada, recommended that additional land be granted “in consequence of the Petitioner’s loss of hearing in the service and the noted attainments of his father and himself.” Included in these grants were several hundred acres in Blenheim.

When his father died in 1804 at the age of 79, John took over the farm at Two Mile Creek. By 1813, a two story house, 60 feet by 32 feet, stood on the property surrounded by “200 acres of arable land divided in twenty two fields and an orchard containing 493 apple, peach and pear trees.”

Map of the mouth of the Niagara River dated 1815 showing Fort
Niagara and Fort George. Construction of Fort Mississauga began
in 1814 on the site of the Mississauga Point Lighthouse. John
Secord's farm is shown at lower left with the notation, "Sicords
burnt by the American Army Decr 1813." Digital map reproduction
provided by: Brock University Map, Data & GIS Library

The house, orchard, and adjoining farm buildings were destroyed during the War of 1812. In May 1813, about 4000 American soldiers landed west of Niagara² and crossed the Secord farm during the Battle of Fort George. When the Americans abandoned Fort George on 10 Dec 1813, they pillaged and burned the town of Niagara as well as some of the neighbouring farms. After the war John claimed £2222 in damages but was awarded £1578.

John died at Kingston in 1830. In his will he left his farm to his sons Cortland Secord and Abraham Secord.

Upper Canada Land Petition of
Daniel Secord dated 10 Jan 1803

Daniel became a merchant in St Davids, a village west of Queenston in the Niagara Peninsula. In January 1803, he successfully petitioned the government of Upper Canada for 200 acres as the son of a Loyalist. This may have been the property in Mosa Township, Middlesex County that Daniel later bequeathed to Levi in his will.

In 1806, Daniel married Rachel Springfield, and was commissioned an ensign in the 1st Regiment of Lincoln Militia. In 1809 his rank was recorded as Quarter Master, but he was listed as “unfit for duty.”

Pay records from the War of 1812 show that Daniel served continuously from 25 Mar 1813 to 27 May 1813. During this time 1st Lincoln was under canvas on the military reserve surrounding Fort George known as the Commons. During the Battle of Fort George on 27 May 1813, two companies of the 1st Lincoln participated in the unsuccessful attempt to hold back the American landing. The remainder of the regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel William Claus (1765-1826), defended the fort.

As the Americans began to overrun Niagara, the British commander, Brigadier General John Vincent (1764-1848), ordered Claus to spike the cannons and evacuate the fort. When the retreating British forces reached Beaver Dams, Vincent instructed the militia to temporarily disband, and withdrew his regular forces to Burlington Heights.

Daniel next appears on the pay lists of the 1st Lincoln in June and July of 1814. In the summer of 1814 the Americans crossed the Niagara River at Buffalo on July 3rd and captured Fort Erie. Advancing north, they defeated the British at the Battle of Chippewa on July 5th and briefly occupied St. Davids and Queenston.

During this period, detachments of the 1st Lincoln conducted raids and ambushes against the Americans. Major Daniel McFarland of the United States 23rd Infantry wrote to his wife, "The whole population is against us, not a foraging party but is fired on and infrequently returns with missing numbers." In retaliation, on July 19th, a detachment of American militia looted and burned St Davids including the home of Daniel Secord.

Following the Battle of Lundy’s Lane on July 25th, the Americans withdrew to Fort Erie. In November they demolished the fort and retired back across the Niagara River.

Daniel’s claim for losses includes a detailed description of his house in St Davids. The 1½ story house measured 40 feet by 20 feet, had three fireplaces and an oven, six windows of 24 lights, eight additional windows, and an adjoining summer kitchen. Daniel claimed £607 pounds in damages and was awarded £458.

The Niagara Peninsula in 1815. Digital map reproduction
provided by: Brock University Map, Data & GIS Library

After the war, Daniel moved to Niagara and became an innkeeper. When his father died in 1830, Daniel inherited the two properties in Blenheim, but it was Elijah and Levi who first settled there. In his will, Daniel describes himself as a yeoman and bequeaths to his son, Daniel, land in Niagara Township that he had purchased from his brother Cortland. Daniel died in 1837.

Elijah was born in St Davids on 17 Dec 1808. His brother, John Wartman Secord, had been born the previous year in March, while a sister, Susan Maria Secord was born two years later.

Elijah’s mother, Rachel, died in December 1812 just after Elijah’s fourth birthday. His father, Daniel, remarried the following year. Elijah’s stepmother, Electy Page,³ the daughter of Elijah Page and Sybil Brooks, had been born in Cooperstown, Otsego, New York in 1796 and had emigrated with her parents to Upper Canada shortly before the War of 1812.

Elijah would have heard the cannon and musket fire from the Battle of Queenston Heights when British forces repulsed an American attack across the Niagara River on 13 Oct 1812. He may have witnessed the British forces retreating after the Battle of Fort George on 27 May 1813, and may have noticed the red glow in the sky from the burning of Niagara on 10 Dec 1813. And on 18 July 1814 he would have watched as his own home was burned by the Americans.

Elijah married twice. He married his first wife, Catherine Elizabeth Smith, on 29 Mar 1832. They had four children. The oldest, Sophia Electy Secord was baptized at Niagara on 25 Aug 1832. Catherine died sometime between the birth of her son, John Smith Secord, in 1838 and Elijah’s marriage to Jessie Taylor on 6 Apr 1846. Nineteen-year-old Jessie was the niece of Elijah's step-mother Electy Page. Jessie and Elijah had seven children beginning with Isabelle Electy Secord in 1847.

Elijah moved from Niagara to Blenheim soon after his second marriage. In the 1852 Census, Elijah is a farmer living in Blenheim with Jessie, three children from his first marriage, and three children from his second.

Elijah Secord's gravestone at
Riverside Cemetery, Blenheim, Oxford

Elijah died in Blenheim on 18 Mar 1899 at the age of 90. Jessie survived him by twelve years, dying at Blenheim at the home of her son-in-law Theo Parnell on 8 Feb 1912. Elijah’s youngest son, Richard, continued farming in Blenheim for a few years after Elijah’s death, but by 1908 has moved to Saltfleet Township. Another son, Elijah Secord (1848-1898), predeceased his father and was buried at Richwood.

Elijah’s half-brother, Levi Page Secord, was born about 1830 in Niagara Township. He was baptised along with two of his brothers on 13 Aug 1831. On 12 Nov 1850 he married Jane Laycock, daughter of Joseph H Laycock (1800-1872) and Eliza Earnshaw (1804-1872).

Levi and Jane were living in Blenheim Township at the time of the 1852 Census. By the 1861 Census they had two children: Charlotte, born in 1855 and Mary Edith, born in 1859. Ten years later the number of children had doubled. Hartley was born in 1862 while Charles was born in 1868. Gaps between the births suggests that they may have been other children who died young.

Also living with the family at the time of the 1871 Census was Levi's mother, Electy Page.

On 20 Oct 1871, Jennie Eliza Secord was born. Her mother, Jane, died five days later, likely due to complications from childbirth.

Levi Page Secord's gravestone at Richwood
United Church Cemetery, Blenheim, Oxford

Levi died of pneumonia four years after the death of his wife, leaving five orphaned children living with their grandmother. Charlotte was 19 at the time of her father's death while Jennie was only 3½. 

The four youngest children continued living with Electy until sometime after the 1881 Census. Electy died in St. Catharines in 1882.

Charlotte married Joseph Christopher Yates (1857-1919) in 1879, and moved to Michigan where she died in 1895.

According to their naturalization papers, Mary and Jennie emigrated to the United States in 1884. Neither sister married, and they lived together in Chicago until Mary's death in 1940. Jennie died in 1956. Both are buried with their parents in Richwood Cemetery in Blenheim Township.

Charles likely emigrated to the United States at the same time as his sisters. He married in 1893 and was living in Chicago in 1900. By 1910 he had moved to Louisville, Kentucky where he died in 1943.

Hartley’s fate is not known.

¹ A French agricultural settlement known as Petite Côte was established at the site of Windsor, Ontario in 1749. The earliest surviving register for the parish of L'Assomption de la Pointe-de-Montréal shows seven baptisms in 1761. A number of families had also lived at Fort Frontenac at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Fort Frontenac was built in 1673 by the French and was captured by the British in 1758 during the Seven Years War.

² Niagara, on the west side of the mouth of the Niagara River, was known as Newark between 1792 and 1798, and became Niagara-on-the-Lake about 1880.

³ Electy Page’s name is frequently recorded as Electa, however, her death certificate, gravestone, and Daniel Secord’s will record her name as Electy.

Sources:

Archives of Ontario. RG 22-155. Court of Probate estate files.

Archives of Ontario. RG 22-235. Lincoln County Surrogate Court estate files.

Cruickshank, Ernest. Battle of Fort George. Niagara Historical Society, Niagara-on-the-Lake, 1896.

Feltoe, Richard. The Pendulum of War: The Fight for Upper Canada, January-June 1813. Dundurn, Toronto, 2013.

Feltoe, Richard. The Flames of War: The Fight for Upper Canada, July-December 1813. Dundurn, Toronto, 2013.

Library and Archives Canada. RG 1 L 3. Land Petitions of Upper Canada, 1763-1865.

Library and Archives Canada. RG 19 E5A. War of 1812: Board of Claims for Losses, 1813-1848.

Library and Archives Canada. RG 9 1B7. War of 1812: Upper Canada Returns, Nominal Rolls and Paylists.

Merritt, Richard D. On Common Ground: The Ongoing Story of the Commons in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Dundurn, Toronto, 2012.

Walker, Dorothy. A Village in the Shadows: The Remarkable Story of St Davids, Ontario. Friesen Press, Victoria, 2018.

The Cemetery on the Nith: Reverend Francis Pickle

Francis Pickle (1773-1860), Riverside
Baptist Cemetery, Blenheim, Oxford, Ontario

Another New Brunswick migrant with Loyalist roots was the Reverend Francis Pickle.¹ According to his obituary,² he was the second pastor of Riverside Baptist Church. At the time Francis was a minister, two branches of the Baptist Church were active in Upper Canada. Riverside was a Close Communion Baptist Church. Only members of the church in good standing were allowed to receive communion. Also active were the Free Will Baptists who permitted open communion.

Francis was born in Alexandria Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey in 1773 to Nicholas Pickle (1745-1843) and Rachel Inscoe (1756-1806). Alexandria sits on the Delaware River on the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Francis’s father was likely also born in Alexandria Township.

The consensus is that Nicholas was the son of Franz Wilhelm Pickle (1722-1786) who had been born in Bad Durkheim in the Palatinate but had emigrated with his parents to New Jersey about 1727. Nicholas’s mother, Sophia Phidia Van Horne (1726-1764), had been born at New Germantown³ in Tewksbury Township, Hunterdon County. Rachel Inscoe, the daughter of Joseph Inscoe (1725-1790) and Ann Wohlenben (1731-1763) was likely born in what is now Warren County, New Jersey.

During the Revolutionary War, Nicholas Pickle, a blacksmith, “suffered many abuses and was brought to death’s door by trials and menaces.” After independence was declared in July 1776, Nicholas refused to swear the oath of allegiance and was fined £30. He was later imprisoned several times. In October 1777 he “broke out of prison loaded with irons” and escaped to Philadelphia, then occupied by the British.

In Philadelphia, Nicolas worked for the British first as a wagoner then as a blacksmith. His wife and son likely joined Nicholas in Philadelphia, and he and his family accompanied the British when they withdrew to New York in June of 1778. In New York, Nicholas worked for several years as a carpenter for the British.

Loyalist Landing by Adam Sheriff Scott

When the British began evacuating New York in 1783, Nicholas and his family embarked on one of the transport ships of the Spring Fleet that carried over 1700 Loyalist refugees to the mouth of the Saint John River, arriving there in May 1783.

Unlike many refugees who were remained in Parr Town⁴ until they received their grants upriver, Nicholas headed inland and spent his first winter in New Brunswick squatting on the northwest side of Kennebacasis River in what in 1795 became Norton Parish, Kings County, New Brunswick.

The following summer, Nicholas was granted official title to two lots of 200 acres each on the Kennebacasis. In 1796 he was granted an additional 200 acres.

On 6 Feb 1787, Nicholas appeared before the Loyalist Claims Commission and claimed losses totalling £521 which included furniture, a wagon, six horses, oxen, sheep, cattle, hogs, blacksmith’s tools, and the fines paid for refusing to take the oath. He produced evidence that his household property in Alexandria Township had been confiscated and sold in 1779.

Francis was the first child of Nicholas and Rachel. A child may have been born while they were in New York, as a list of civilian Loyalists intending to sail to Saint John records both a child, ten and above (Francis), and a child under ten. Several sources state that their son John, who died in 1818, was born in 1778. Other sources place John birth in 1787. What is known for certain is that a John Pickle of Kings County petitioned the New Brunswick government for land in 1808, and received 250 acres in Hampton Parish, Kings County in 1812.

Nicholas and Rachel had at least seven more children, born when the family was safely in New Brunswick: Rachel (1784-1843), Joseph (1785-1871), Mary (1787-1871), Elizabeth (1794-1838), Jane (1795-1835), Julia (1796- ?), and Ruth Ann (1798-1870). Joseph migrated to Upper Canada and settled in Burford, Brant around the same time that Francis came to Blenheim Township. Mary’s husband Peter Molaskey (1777-1848) also brought his family to Burford. Mary died at the age of 84 and was buried at the Burford Congregational Cemetery.

Nicholas and Rachel moved to Hampton Parish, Kings County sometime before Rachel’s death in January of 1806. Nicholas remarried within two years and eventually moved to Upham Parish, Kings County where he died on 16 Jun 1843 at the age of 97. His second wife, Catherine, died the same year at the age of 80.

Kings County, New Brunswick

Francis Pickle married Jane Dickie, the eldest daughter of Hector Dickie (1743-1837) and Sarah Walker. Jane was born in 1776 in the Ninety Six District of South Carolina. Jane and Francis's first child, Rachel, was born in 1796. Francis and Jane had at least eight children. Their son, Hector Dickie Pickle, who died in 1805 at the age of 3, is thought to be have been the first burial in Norton’s Baptist cemetery.

In 1811, Francis Pickle became a deacon of the Norton Baptist Church, founded in 1800. In 1824 he was ordained as its pastor. Prior to his involvement in the church, Francis had been an innkeeper in Norton.

The precise date when Francis left New Brunswick for Upper Canada is not known. One published source⁵ claims Francis came to Upper Canada with his son Nicholas in 1842. Francis, however, is recorded as having performed marriages in Blenheim, Burford, and Townsend townships in 1833 and 1834, while Nicholas appears on the list of Blenheim’s Overseers of Highways or Pathmasters for 1833 and 1834, and on militia muster rolls for 1838 and 1839.

Jane Pickle 1776-1849, St Abner's
Cemetery, Brantford, Brant, Ontario

The 1857 Tremaine Map shows that Francis Pickle owned the 100 acre east half of Lot 10 Concession 4 Blenheim. The 1876 Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Oxford, shows that after Francis’s death, the property had been acquired by William Pinkham, the son of his daughter Rachel Pickle and her husband Hanson Pinkham. Rachel had sailed with her children from Saint John to New York in 1831, presumably to join her husband in Upper Canada.

When Francis’s wife Jane died in 1849 she was buried at St Abner Cemetery near Burford beside others members of the Dickie Family. Francis then married the much younger Elizabeth Nice (1810-1884), daughter of John Nice (1781-1836) and Margaret Walker (1783-1856) who had also brought their family to Upper Canada from Kings County, New Brunswick.

Francis died in 1860 at the age of 87 and was buried at Riverside. Elizabeth remarried and is also buried at Riverside. Of Francis’s eleven children, only Rachel is buried there.

---

¹  Alternate spellings include Pickel and Bickle.
²  Reprinted in Shenston, Thomas S. A Jubilee Review of the First Baptist Church, Brantford, 1833 to 1884. Toronto: Bingham & Webber, 1890.
³  Renamed Oldwick during the First World War.
⁴  Parr Town combined with Carleton in 1785 to become the City of Saint John.
⁵  Pickle, Weldon. Ancestors and Descendants of the Sherwood and Pickel U. E. Loyalists in Canada. Self-published, 1949.

The Cemetery on the Nith: Henry Rupert

Riverside Baptist Cemetery, Blenheim, Oxford, Ontario

Riverside Baptist Cemetery lies close to the Nith River on the 5th Concession of Blenheim Township, Oxford County, Ontario. The land for the cemetery was donated by pioneer Henry Rupert and contains the graves of many Loyalist migrants from New Brunswick, as well as those of immigrants from the United States and the British Isles. A church was built east of the cemetery entrance on the banks of the Nith. The river, named after the Nith River in Scotland, would have been the scene of many baptisms, as worship continued at the church until 1875.

The American Revolution (1775-1783) resulted in the migration of tens of thousands of refugees to Canada. After the war several thousands of these “Loyalists” were granted land in the Saint John River valley in New Brunswick.

Not all remained. Within a decade quite a few New Brunswick Loyalists had moved west to the colony of Upper Canada (Ontario), no doubt attracted by the land grants offered by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe. While these land grants were discontinued after the War of 1812, emigration to Upper Canada from New Brunswick continued, driven by the shortage of arable land.

The area which is now Blenheim Township had been acquired by the Crown from the Mississaugas through the 1792 Between the Lakes Treaty. For many years settlement was limited to the southernmost part of the township, along the Governor’s Road, but by the 1820s pioneer families had begun clearing the forest and establishing farms to the north.

Henry Rupert (1774-1848)

Henry Rupert 1774-1848

One such pioneer was Henry Rupert, a descendant of German Palatines, who brought his family to Upper Canada in 1828. The journey would not have been particularly easy. A surviving passenger manifest shows that Henry, his wife Elizabeth, and their children sailed to New York from Saint John, New Brunswick in the spring of 1828 aboard the brig Wanderer. From New York they would have travelled up the Hudson River to Albany, and then by barge to Buffalo along the newly opened Erie Canal. After making their way to Dundas at the head of Lake Ontario, they would have followed the Governor’s Road until they reached Blenheim Township where Henry had purchased 200 acres beside the Nith River from the Canada Company.

Henry Rupert was born on Cuffytown Creek in the Ninety Six District, South Carolina on October 31, 1774 to Johann Paul Christoph Rupert and his wife Margaret. Henry's father (Christoph) had been born 22 years earlier to Heinrich Rupert and Maria Barbara Braun in Imsbach, a village in the densely forested and mountainous northern part of the Palatinate, then part of the Holy Roman Empire.

Heinrich and Maria Barbara had two other children: Elizabeth, born in 1747, and Friedrich, born in 1755. Maria Barbara appears to have died before the family emigrated to South Carolina in 1764.

The 18th century was a period of mass emigration from the Palatinate due to poverty and overpopulation. Thousands travelled down the Rhine River to Rotterdam, across the North Sea to London, then onwards to the New World.

After the defeat of the French during the Seven Years War, Great Britain actively encouraged Protestant emigration to their colonies in North America, but left the recruitment of colonists to individuals. Not all recruiters, however, were competent or honest. Heinrich Rupert fell victim to one such unscrupulous recruiter, Johann Heinrich Christian von Stuemel.

In February 1764, Stuemel received approval to settle 20,000 acres in Nova Scotia. That spring he recruited a few hundred colonists from the Palatinate and made arrangements for them to come to London. Stuemel then disappeared with their money. Many of the Palatines were still aboard their ship moored at the customs docks, unable to disembark. Other were encamped in Goodman's Fields north of the Tower of London.

Reverend Gustav Anton Washsel of St. George’s Lutheran Church described their situation in a letter to Lloyd’s Evening Post:

[...] some of them have lain, during the late heavy rains, and are now lying the open fields adjacent to this metropolis, without covering, without money, and, in short, with the common necessaries of this life [...] More than two hundred remain on board the ship which brought them over, on account of their passage not being paid for, where they are perishing for food, and rotting in filth and nastiness.

Response to Washsel’s letter was swift. The Palatines were permitted to disembark; and tents, food and clothing were delivered to Goodman's Fields. Over £4000 was raised including a £300 donation from King George III. Soon arrangements were made to hire three ships to take the Palatines to South Carolina where land grants would be made available.

Heinrich and his three children departed London aboard the Union on 7 Oct 1764. They arrived in Charlestown, South Carolina ten weeks later on 14 Dec 1764.

Heinrich Rupert's Grant on Cuffytown Creek

Heinrich was granted 200 acres on Cuffytown Creek (a tributary of the Savannah River) in the South Carolina backcountry. His daughter Elizabeth, then 16, was granted 100 acres on the adjacent Beavendam Creek.

When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Christoph, now married and with an infant son, remained loyal to Great Britain, as did his father and younger brother, Friedrich. Most of what we know about Christoph's activities during the war comes from the evidence presented to the Loyalist Claims Commission, established after the war to compensate Loyalists for their losses. 

Christoph and Friedrich were present at the Siege of Savage’s Old Fields in November 1775, the first major battle in South Carolina. They were captured a month later during the Snow Campaign and appear on a list of prisoners taken at Great Cane Break. Christoph was taken to Charlestown but was later released and presumably returned home to Cuffytown Creek.

The Snow Campaign effectively stalled Loyalist activity in the South Carolina backcountry. for the next two years. In early 1778, however, a few hundred Loyalist volunteers from the Ninety Six District, including Christoph, Friedrich and their father, left South Carolina for Saint Augustine in East Florida. When they arrived in early April, the South Carolinians were formed into a regiment called the South Carolina Royalists consisting of four companies of infantry of forty-five men each and two troops of dragoons of 40 men each.

In his evidence to the Loyalist Claims Commission, John Hamilton, who knew Christoph "almost from the beginning of the dissentions in America," wrote: 

Christopher Rupert rather than to be compelled to take up arms in a cause so abhorrent to him forsook his habitation leaving his family and property at the mercy of those from whom he had no reason to expect they would receive any indulgence. He joined the Royal Army in East Florida in the beginning of year 1778 and entered a private dragoon in the South Carolina Royalists then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robinson wherein from his merit he was made sergeant.

In his own evidence, Christoph records that he was a private until September 1779 and thereafter a sergeant, but was not paid for 18 months.

A detachment of the South Carolina Royalists saw action at the Battle of Alligator Bridge in June 1778. The regiment was present at the capture of Fort Morris in January 1779, the Battle of Brier Creek in March 1779, and the Battle of Stono Ferry in June 1779.

On 2 Oct 1779, Heinrich Rupert was killed by shrapnel from a French ship during the Siege of Savannah when French and Continental Army forces attempted to retake the city. A surviving muster roll dated 1 Dec 1779 shows Friedrich Rupert at Savannah, Georgia, and notes the death of his father.

Siege of Charleston (1780) by Alonzo Chappel

A few months later the regiment was at the Siege of Charlestown, a major engagement and British victory fought between March 29 and May 12, 1780.

Christoph obtained a discharge in June 1780, “having enlisted a man in his stead,” and returned home to the Ninety Six District. Friedrich also obtained a discharge at this time. Both joined the Little River Militia, Ninety Six Brigade, where Christoph was commissioned a Lieutenant.

South Carolina in 1779

After their success at Charlestown, the British defeated the remnants of the Continental Army at the Battle of Waxhaws. This battle is noted for the massacre that occurred when British commanding officer Colonel Tarleton was shot at as the Americans were surrendering, causing his horse to fall and trap him. Tarleton’s men, thinking their commander dead, and outraged at the breaking of the truce, attacked the surrendering rebels with an “indiscriminate carnage never surpassed by the most ruthless atrocities of the most barbarous savages.”

“Tarleton’s quarter” soon became a battle cry for the Patriots, meaning no prisoners would be taken. A year later, at the Battle of Kings Mountain, the rebels refused to cease firing when Loyalist soldiers began to surrender. A few days after the battle the rebels held a mock trial and convicted 36 Loyalist prisoners of treason. Nine Loyalist officers were hanged before the American commander ordered the executions stopped.  

It was into this environment that Christoph and Friedrich returned home to their families. Fighting in the South Carolina backcountry. had deteriorated into partisan warfare with both Patriots and Loyalists looting homes, executing prisoners, and killing civilians. Contemporary accounts describe the plundering and burning of farms, as well as revenge killings and hangings. A British officer described one backcountry home that was, “stripped of everything that could be carried off; the woman of the house left standing in her shift; her four children stripped stark naked.”

Continental Army Major General Nathaneal Greene wrote:

The animosity between the Whigs and Tories, rendered their situation truly deplorable. There is not a day passes but there are more or less who fall a sacrifice to this savage disposition. The Whigs seem determined to extirpate the Tories, and the Tories the Whigs. Some thousands have fallen in this way in this quarter, and the evil rages with more violence than ever. If a stop can not be put to these massacres, the country will be depopulated in a few months more, as neither Whig nor Tory can live.

In April 1781, Greene crossed into South Carolina and began attacking British outposts. By mid-May, the only remaining British garrison in the backcountry was at Ninety Six.  In 1780, the British had fortified Ninety Six in 1780 with a palisade surrounded by a deep ditch and abatis, and two redoubts. The larger redoubt was known as the Star Fort. Manning the defenses were the 1st Battalion of De Lancey’s Brigade commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Harris Cruger, the 3rd Battalion of the New Jersey Volunteers, and the Ninety Six Brigade of Loyalist Militia.

Star Fort at Ninety Six

Greene arrived at Ninety Six on May 22 and began constructing siege lines. When his demand to surrender was rebuked by Cruger, Greene ordered his artillery to open fire.

On June 7, a relief force commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Francis Rawdon left Charlestown. On June 18, Greene made one final attempt to capture the Star Fort but was repulsed in a fierce battle dominated by bayonets and clubbed muskets. With Rawdon less than two days away, Greene ordered a withdrawal.
 
After his arrival at Ninety Six, Rawdon ordered the garrison to abandon the fort and return with his forces to Charlestown. Hamilton wrote:

That in consequence of his Loyalty and Exertions, he [Christoph] was obliged to accompany his Majesty’s Troops when they retired from the Frontiers of that Province and his family were afterwards banished [from] their habitation and obliged to follow his to Charlestown where he performed Militia Duty until his embarkation for Halifax with your memorialist.

In a separate document concerning Friedrich, Hamilton notes “that when the Troops abandoned Ninety Six he [Friedrich] was obliged to accompany them. His family were soon after compelled to follow him to Dorchester [outside of Charlestown] a post there held by the Loyal Militia where his Wife died.” At the time Friedrich had two daughters, Catharine, born in 1774, and Elizabeth, born in 1778.

Christoph and Friedrich both appear in the pay abstracts for the Little River Militia while they were at Charlestown.

Records of refugees receiving financial aid and donations in Charlestown in 1782 also survive. One one list, Margaret Rupert appears with one child. On several other lists a Catherine Rupert appears. As she is usually described as a widow, Catherine may have be the second wife of Heinrich Rupert, although no other records of her exist.

In the late fall of 1782, a year after their defeat at Yorktown, the British began evacuating their soldiers and Loyalist supporters from Charlestown.
 
A Loyalist émigré in London, provided a vivid description of the evacuation as relayed to him by a British officer:

There were old grey-headed men and women, husbands and wives with large families of little children, women with infants at their breasts, poor widows whose husbands had lost their lives in the service of their King and country, with half a dozen half-starved bantlings tagging at their skirts, taking leave of their friends. Here you saw people who had lived all their days in affluence (though not in luxury) leaving their real estates, their houses, stores, ships, and improvements, and hurrying on board the transports with what little household goods they had been able to save. In every street were to be seen men, women, and children wringing their hands, lamenting the situation of those who were about leaving the country, and the more dreadful situation of such who were either unable to leave or were determined, rather than run the risk of starving in distant lands, to throw themselves upon, and trust to, the mercy of their persecutors, their inveterate enemies, the rebels of America. 

Christoph left Charlestown in the early states of the evacuation. On 1 Nov 1782, a convoy of eight transports escorted by HMS Belisarius departed for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Crowded onto two of the ships were over four hundred refugees, mainly from the Ninety Six District. Christoph arrived at Halifax with his wife and Henry on November 21, 1782. With him were the orphaned daughters of his brother, Friedrich, who had died aboard ship eight days earlier.

Nova Scotia governor John Parr describes the condition of the arriving refugees:

Those from Charlestown are in a much more miserable situation than those from New York coming almost naked from the burning sands of South Carolina, to the frozen Coast of Nova Scotia, destitute of almost every necessary of life.

At Halifax the refugees were given six months provisions from military stores. Christoph and family wintered in Halifax then embarked for the mouth of the Saint John River. Christoph was one of over ten thousand Loyalists who, between 1783 and 1785, arrived in what became the colony of New Brunswick.

In June 1783, Christoph was assigned Lot 770 in Parr Town¹ on the east side of the Saint John River. Building lots were given to many of the Loyalists while they waited for grants of land upriver. Each Loyalist was given a quantity of lumber, as well as shingles and brick with which to build a shelter. Most of the Loyalists in Parr Town built log houses, saving the lumber for the roof, while the brick was used to construct fireplaces. Christoph and his family would also have received full provisions for one year, two thirds provisions for the following year, and one third provisions for the year after, drawn from the Fort Howe commissary.

Christoph Rupert's 1784 Grant

In 1784, Christoph was granted 200 acres along the Kennebacasis River. In 1786 his farm became part of Norton Parish, Kings County. In 1786, Christoph was granted an additional 200 acres on Belleisle Bay which he immediately sold. In 1799 he purchased Lots 18 and 19 on the east side of the Kennebecasis River in Norton Parish. He sold Lot 18 to his son Henry three years later. Henry purchased Lot 19 from his siblings in 1810.

Christopher's will is dated 26 Sep 1807. In his will he describes himself as “sick but of sound mind and memory” and bequeaths “to my beloved Wife Margaret Rupert all my real and personal estate.” Christoph died within a month of writing his will.

Christoph and Margaret had four other children, all born in New Brunswick. An eighteen year gap exists between Henry, born in 1774, and his brother Christopher, born in 1792. William was born in 1794, followed by Elizabeth in 1795, and Frederick in 1796. All four remained in New Brunswick.

Around 1799, Henry married a very young Elizabeth Dickie. Elizabeth, the daughter of Hector Dickie (1744-1837) and Sarah Walker (1740-1839), had been born in Claradon, Jamaica in 1784. Hector had been born in Northern Ireland but had emigrated to South Carolina in 1768. During the Revolution he was a Lieutenant in the Steven’s Creek Militia, Ninety Six Brigade. After the British withdrew their forces to Charlestown in 1781, Hector served as a quartermaster to the refugees. He was one of many evacuated from Charlestown to Jamaica in 1782. A number of years later he brought his family to New Brunswick where in 1797 he was granted 274 acres in Norton Parish.

There is uncertainty as to the number of Henry and Elizabeth’s children. Three of their children are buried at Riverside: Christopher (1802-1877) John (1823-1899) and Alexander (1826-1874). Christopher married his first wife, Sarah Fritch, in New Brunswick shortly before coming to Upper Canada. A fourth son, Henry (1817-1891) later moved to Essex County, while a daughter, Margaret (1812-1892) moved to Brantford after the 1879 death of her husband, William Peregrine Cochran.

Part of the 1857 Tremaine Map of Oxford County

The 1828 passenger manifest also shows William, aged 24, Catherine, aged 28, and Elizabeth, aged 13. William may have returned to New Brunswick while Catherine may have been the daughter said to have died shortly after the family arrived in Upper Canada. Elizabeth Rupert appears in the 1852 Census living with her mother and in the 1861 Census living with her brother Christopher.

Henry received title to the 200 acres at Lot 4 Concession 5, Blenheim on 7 Nov 1832. In 1834, 65 acres were transferred to his son Christopher, while 40 acres were transferred to William Peregrine Cochran. The remaining 95 acres were inherited by Henry’s sons John and Alexander.

Henry Rupert died “of dropsy” on 15 Mar 1848. Elizabeth Dickie died twelve years later on 9 Jan 1861. Both are buried at Riverside.

¹ In 1785, Parr Town amalgamated with Carleton on the west side of the river to form the City of Saint John.

Sources:

Bell, David. American Loyalists to New Brunswick: the Ship Passenger Lists. Formac Publishing, Halifax, 2015.

Coldham, Peter Wilson. American Migrations 1765-1799. Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore, 2000.

Hoock, Holger. Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth. Broadway Books, New York, 2017.

Jones, Thomas. History of New York during the Revolutionary War, Vol. 2, edited by Edward Floyd de Lancey. New York Historical Society, New York, 1879.

Lambert, Robert Stansbury. South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution. 2nd ed., Clemson University Digital Press, Clemson, South Carolina, 2010.

Rampy, Gordon A. “The South Carolina Palatines of 1764.”  http://upamerica.org/roots/scpalatines.htm.

Rubin, Ben. “The Rhetoric of Revenge: Atrocity and Identity in the Revolutionary Carolinas. Journal of Backcountry Studies, Vol. 5, no. 2, 2010. http://libjournal.uncg.edu/jbc/article/view/102.

Troxler, Carole Watterson. “Refuge, Resistance, and Reward: The Southern Loyalists' Claim on East Florida.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 55, no. 4, 1989, pp. 563–596. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2209041.

Troxler, Carole Watterson. “A Loyalist Life: John Bond of South Carolina and Nova Scotia”. Acadiensis, Vol. 19, no. 2, Oct. 1990. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/Acadiensis/article/view/11853.

Wright, Esther Clark. The Loyalists of New Brunswick. Self-published, Fredericton, 1955. 

Obscured No Longer: Four North Devon Monuments

Loveringe Chest Tomb, Tawstock Devon, England

When you visit church graveyards during an English summer, you are almost certain to encounter brambles, ivy, and stinging nettles. These plants make can gravestone photography both challenging and painful.

On a trip to North Devon last summer I made a return visit to Tawstock, one of five parishes that I collect historical and genealogical information about. In the graveyard is a chest tomb surrounded by a wrought iron fence that for many years was completely obscured by ivy. However, on this visit, the ivy was gone, revealing an old slate slab.

The inscription on the slab commemorates several members of the Lovering family – a family that has many gravestones at Tawstock.

The first name mentioned is that of Thomas Loveringe who was buried in 1618. Research suggests that Thomas was the son of John Loveringe who was baptised at Tawstock in 1559. It is possible that Thomas was the son of Thomas Loveringe who had been baptised a year earlier, however, the next name on the slab is that of Thomas’s oldest son, John Loveringe (1600-1682). The first born son was typically named after his paternal grandfather, therefore it is likely that Thomas was the son of John.

Since the lettering of the inscriptions for both Thomas and his son are identical, the tablet likely dates from after John’s death in 1682. This still makes it the oldest gravestone in the churchyard, and older than many of the tablets and monuments inside the church.

The next death recorded on the slab occured over over a century later. William Lovering, son of John Lovering and Sarah Heyman (1696-1767), was baptised at Tawstock in 1734, and was buried there in 1798. He married Mary CROCKER at Fremington, Devon in 1760. Mary was buried at Tawstock on 27 Oct 1821.

The memorial inscription records that there were “14 children to lament their loss.” The parish register records the baptisms of all fourteen children beginning with Hayman Lovering in 1762 and ending with Fanny Lovering in 1781. At least five of the fourteen have gravestones at Tawstock. William and Mary’s fifteenth and youngest child, Anne Lovering, is commemorated on the slab. The inscription states that Anne died in June 1786 at the age of five, however, she was likely just three since her baptism occured in May 1783.

Capt. John Lovering's gravestone
at Earleville, Maryland

Part of the reason why there is a century long gap on the chest tomb slab is the possibility that William’s father, John Lovering, was buried in Maryland. There is no record of John Lovering’s burial in the Tawstock parish registers, but there is a gravestone at St Stephens Episcopal Cemetery in Earleville, Maryland that reads, “Here Lieth the Body of Capt JOHN LOVERING of Tawstock in the County of DEVON Mariner who departed this Life the 29th of Septr 1754 in the 55th Year of his Age. 

Little is known about John Lovering, however, in 1750, he was contracted to transport 12 convicts to Virginia. John Lovering was likely the son of John Lovering and Rebecca Roe who was baptised at Tawstock on 14 Sep 1699. Another son, Thomas, baptised on 29 Jul 1702, may have also been a mariner as the “Will of Thomas Lovering, Mariner of Tawstock, Devon” was probated at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in 1765.

The connection between the John Lovering who married Rebecca Roe at Tawstock in 1689, and the John Loveringe who died in 1682 at the age of 82 is proving elusive. In the Tawstock parish registers there are more than one hundred Lovering(e) burials, and more than 140 baptisms recorded in the 300 years following the first recorded burial in 1559 and baptisms in 1557. While entries in the Tawstock registers continued through the Commonwealth period (1649–1660), the number of entries was sparse suggesting that some Lovering(e) baptisms, marriages and burials were never recorded.

James Essery's gravestone at St Giles in the Wood

I also revisited St Giles in the Wood where various members of the Cooke family lived from 1740 to 1827. Once again, some ivy and brambles had been cleared away, revealing a stack of gravestones leaning against the east wall of the church.

Of particular interest are the early 19th century gravestones of James Essery and his brother John. Essery is a name more commonly associated with Great Torrington to the west of St Giles. John and James, however, were the grandchildren of John and Elizabeth Friendship of St Giles in the Wood.

James Essery, the son of John Essery (1746-1837) and Frances Friendship (1761-1839), was baptised at Great Torrington on 7 Mar 1792, and was buried at St Giles in the Wood on 7 Apr 1817. He received training as a veterinary Surgeon. His brother John Essery was baptised at Great Torrington on 5 Nov 1790, and was buried at St Giles on 18 Sep 1817. Four months earlier John had married Grace Harper (1788-1855), daughter of Richard Harper of Great Torrington. She remarried in 1821.

Anonymous gravestone at St Giles in the Wood

Also found in the stack was an anonymous gravestone. The inscription reads:

Children forbear to grieve for me
I’m gone but where you soon will Be
Therefore improve each moment well
That so your soul with Christ may dwell

Ivy has also been cleared away from the Braginton chest tomb. This Grade II listed monument commemorates the 1842 death of George Vicary Braginton and the 1850 death of Richard Braginton, children of George Braginton and Margaret Grace Vicary. Also memorialized is Fanny Eleanora William Cotton (1832-1859), the daughter of Margaret Grace Vicary by her previous marriage to William Cotton (1804-1832).

Braginton Chest Tomb at St Giles in the Wood

George Braginton was a merchant and banker, and served as both an alderman and as the mayor of Great Torrington on a number of occasions. The Rolle Canal, completed in 1827 was leased to George from 1852 until about 1865 when control of the canal passed to Mark Rolle. George was also a shipowner. George Braginton's bank, Braginton, Rimington & Co., failed and George declared bankruptcy in 1865. He subsequenly faced a number of lawsuits as a result of his "rash and hazardous" dealings, and it wasn't until 1874 that the bankruptcy was discharged. George, and his wife Margaret Grace Vicary are buried in Ford Park Cemetery in Plymouth.

William Pope: Canada's Audubon

Pope, William. Pileated Woodpecker. 1843.
Watercolour and Ink. Toronto Public Library, Toronto.

In the dark shadow of the spruces that tower over Vittoria United Cemetery is the simple gravestone of William Pope and his wife Martha. But underneath the usual names and dates is the inscription: "Canada's first artist-naturalist and his wife." As an amateur historian with an interest in fine art, I investigated further and discovered that, like the more famous John James Audubon, William Pope was a 19th century ornithologist, naturalist and painter. Pope, however, spent much of his life here in Canada, living at Port Ryerse on the north shore of Lake Erie.

Many of Pope's watercolours of birds are in the Toronto Public Library's Baldwin Collection and can be viewed online. Of greater interest to the historian, however, are Pope's journals. The journals cover his first and second visits to Canada in the first half of the 19th century. They not only describe birds and other wildlife once common in Southern Ontario, but provide insight to the character of life in 19th century Upper Canada.

Fant House, Maidstone, Kent

William Pope, the second son of Horatio Pope (1780-1849) and Mary Ann Lee (1788-1853) was baptised at Maidstone, Kent on 15 Feb 1811. William was one of ten children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Horatio Pope was a wealthy landowner, and William's early childhood was spent at Fant House. He attended school both locally and at a boarding school in Sussex. Pope showed artistic talent at an early age and studied at the Academy of Art in London. He also developed a passion for hunting.

In March of 1834, at the age of 23, Pope began a year-long journey to North America, accompanied only by his retriever Pinto. Pope's journal for this period not only provides a detailed description of his travels through Upper Canada and the Northeastern United States, but also describes the birds and other wildlife that were once common in Southern Ontario.

Pope sailed from England on 28 March 1834 aboard the Ontario. The crossing to New York took 31 days due in part to a gale which lasted for 18 days. From New York he sailed up the Hudson River to Albany aboard the steamer Erie and then by train to Schenectady. Pope then travelled by a combination of horse-drawn towboat, steam powered packet-boat, and stage coach along the newly opened Erie Canal to Buffalo. He writes:

For my part, I hardly know which to give the preference, whether to the travelling by canal, or whether by stage coach, they are all bad, infernally bad, damnably bad.

Pope at one point described his cabin aboard a towboat as "a second hole of Calcutta" and complained how "noisesome and pestilential vapours floating about our rattlesnake den of a cabin." 

From Buffalo, William took a steamer across Lake Erie to Kettle Creek, now called Port Stanley. Having finally arrived in Upper Canada, he was not impressed by what he saw:

The best of Kettle Creek was bad. The meat was bad. The drink was bad. The beds were bad. The wharf was bad. The house bad. The roads bad, and in short, the whole place was bad, damned bad altogether. The only exception may be the people, in any case I hope so.

Pope then walked north to St Thomas where he finally had a good meal of beef and ale. After a brief stay in St Thomas, William set out to walk to Brantford, a distance of 100 kilometres. It was on this leg of his travels that he first encountered mosquitoes:

The heat of the sun and the sand was far preferable to the accursed torments of those minute Devils.

From Brantford he travelled by stage coach to Hamilton and then by steamer to York, the capital of Upper Canada. York did not impress him:

The streets and houses are dirty and unimpressive, and prices for provisions, house rents, and shop goods seem exceedingly high.

From York, William crossed Lake Ontario to Youngstown, New York and then walked to Niagara Falls. He described the falls from the American side as "by far the most wonderful and the most sublime work of nature I ever beheld" but conceded that the views was probably more impressive from the Canadian side. William then returned to St Thomas via Buffalo and steamer to Port Stanley.

For the next five weeks William stayed at a farm outside of St Thomas, hunting, painting, and complaining about a diet of salt port, sourdough bread, and rye whiskey. In early July he wrote that he was "beginning to get tired of living in the back-woods" and a week later set out by stage coach to see see Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. After visiting several American cities that summer he returned to St Thomas, took lodging at a tavern, and spent the next nine months shooting and painting.

Pope, William. The Passenger Pigeon.
1835. Watercolour and Ink.
Toronto Public Library, Toronto.

.

One of his paintings from this period is that of a male passenger pigeon. This bird, now extinct, once numbered in the hundreds of millions if not billions. Huge flocks of migratory passenger pigeons could darken the sky for hours.

Pope returned to England in June of 1835. He took up the life of a gentleman farmer, although it appears that most of his time was spent hunting. At the time of the 1841 Census, William was living in Penshurst, Kent. One of the servants in his household was 21-year-old Martha Mills, daughter of Richard Mills. William married Martha in the fall of 1841. It is likely that William's parents did approve since William had married "below one's station." This may have encouraged William to return to Canada in 1842. William and Martha's son, William, was born shortly after they were married.

William and Martha's firstborn survived the trip to Canada but died sometime before the birth of their fourth child, William Edwin, in 1848.

According to his journal, William's second visit to Canada was not as trying as the first, although the ocean voyage was stormy. After a journey of eight weeks, William arrived back in St Thomas, bringing Martha, his son William, and his retriever Pinto with him. After a few weeks of looking at properties near St Thomas, William walked to the Long Point area and rented two rooms from John Kilmaster. Kilmaster was a merchant who owned a number of properties in the Port Rowan area.

William was frequently employed by Kilmaster in tasks such as apple picking, digging potatoes, cutting and hauling firewood, threshing, and the production of sugar from maple sap. He also describes the numerous "bees" he participated in such as barn raising, logging, and corn husking. In October 1843, William rented a house and nine acres east of Port Rowan from Michael Troyer. 

The following spring William cultivated a large garden, and his journal details the vegetables he planted: Indian corn, peas, French beans, Swede turnips, celery, and watermelon. William did not, however, plant pumpkins. During his first trip to Canada, William often complained how meals were often accompanied by apple or "pumkin sace," and described pumpkin pie as "a poor, mawkish, tasteless, insipid thing."

Pope, William. Baltimore Orioles. 1859.
Watercolour and Ink. Toronto Public Library, Toronto.

William continued to hunt and paint, and his journal is filled with notes about the countless birds he killed, as well as numerous squirrels and a bear. William also records the death of his retriever Pinto on July 29, 1845:

Buried my old Dog Pinto — having previously become very infirm and wasted to a mere shadow with sores and disease — the old fellow was about 12 years of age, 11 of which he had been in my possession — twice crossed the Atlantic — excellent in the field — a capital retriever, tender mouthed — a good water dog & very sagacious.

What is not in his journals are many references to his children. The only direct reference was in the Winter of 1844 when he wrote: "Child taken ill, with fits and stomach disordered — tried Castor Oil, and warm water applied to the feet and legs." This may refer to his son William but could also refer to his daughter Mary Ann, born in 1843. His son Horatio was born in 1845.

At some point Martha's sister Harriet also joined them in Canada. William records her marriage to Steven Price on 26 February 1845. Regrettably, Harriet died the following year on 22 May 1846 at the age of 28.

In 1847, William and family returned to England, possibly due to the ill health of his father who died in 1849. At the time of the 1851 Census, the family, which now included William Edwin, was living in Lee, Kent. Charles Lee was born soon after. The family then returned to Canada where Thomas Price was born in 1852, but were they back in England two years later.

Gravetye Manor
East Grinstead, Sussex

From 1854 to 1859, William, Martha and their five children lived at Gravetye Manor in East Grinstead, Sussex. Gravetye Manor is a two story Elizabethan house built in 1598 by ironmaster Richard Infield for his bride Katharine Compton. From 1884 until 1935 it was the home of William Robinson, author of the The English Flower Garden. The property is now a luxury hotel and is Grade I listed.

In the spring of 1859 William and Martha returned to Canada, this time for good. William purchased a 137 acre farm just west of Port Ryerse. Although he continued hunting, fishing and painting, William described himself as a farmer in the 1861 Census and 1871 Census. The 1861 Agricultural Census shows William cultivating wheat, peas, corn, potatoes, carrots and hay.

William Pope House, Port Ryerse, Woodhouse, Norfolk, Ontario

William and Martha celebrated the marriage of their daughter Mary Ann to George Hewitt, a harness maker, about 1863. George and Mary Ann lived in Vittoria and are buried there. Although they had ten children, their first, Carrie, died at the age of two. Another five died in infancy. 

Thomas Price Pope died in 1868 at the age of 14. His brother, Charles Lee Pope, died in 1877 at the age of 26.

Horatio Pope married Rachel Ann Cook in 1873 and had three children. Horatio died in 1904, a few years after the deaths of his parents, and was also buried at Vittoria.

William Edwin Pope married Emily Amelia Hunter about 1873 and had four children.

According to family tradition, William gave up hunting and painting after the death of his brother, Horatio, who died in 1879 during a visit to Canada. Horatio had made the trip from England to visit William on a number of occasions. At the time of his brother's death William was 68, so age was likely a factor.

William and Martha continued living in the house at Port Ryerse well into their eighties. Before Martha's death in 1901 they moved to Vittoria to live with their daughter and son-in-law. William died in Vittoria on 20 Mar 1902. He was 91 years of age.

William Pope 1811-1902
Canada's First Artist-Naturalist

Sources:

Barrett, Harry B., The 19th Century Journals & Paintings of William Pope, Toronto: M.F. Feheley, 1976

Garland, M.A., Ed., William Pope’s Journal, March 28,1834 - March 11, 1835, London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 1952