From the front page of the Huron Expositor
Friday, 18 December 1931

Reprinted with the permission of the Huron Expositor
Copyright: the Huron Expositor
“Your Community Newspaper Since 1860”
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Seaforth, Ontario N0K 1W0

Chapter 13 Huron in Arms

Van Egmond was the only man from the Huron Tract who joined the insurgent army of 1837. Doubtless among the poorer settlers whose part he had taken against the Company, there were some who had listened to his political propaganda and who felt not unsympathetic toward the cause he had made his own. “And what are we to fight for?” declared one Reform farmer, with a draft-slip in his hand, according to the Misses Lizars. “Against Mackenzie? Never!” However, such men remained outside the fray - reluctant to act on behalf of the insurgents and reluctant to take part in action against them. In general, the Scots settlers of Huron, whether poor or well-to-do, felt a great pride in their native land, counted themselves British first of all, and threw their weight against separation from the Empire. The Colonel apart, “there was not a rebel in Huron,” say the Misses Lizars, save that one Ryan, a fugitive from Montgomery's, found refuge by the lake border until a friendly American schooner conveyed him to safety in the spring of 1838. Nevertheless, there were one or two malcontents who waited for an opportunity to show their sentiments.

The news of Mackenzie’s rising reached Goderich on December 10th. The inhabitants of the Tract at once pronounced emphatically on behalf of the Loyalist cause; and the men of Colborne proceeded to raise a local force on behalf of the government. On the 11th, the first company of Huron militia under Captain Gooding, and Lieutenants Galt and Fraser, assembled in Goderich; next day, a part of the third company mobilized under direction of Lieutenant Biscoby, and then the rest during the next two days after which Captain Lizars took charge of the whole. On December 14th the whole battalion “repaired to quarters” or, in other words, encamped until they should receive directions. The defeat of the insurgents at Montgomery's, however, rendered a march to Toronto unnecessary; and the Hurons remained idle for three weeks. During this interval, the militia officers, mostly men of Colborne commissioned by the Lieutenant Governor, pressed all the able-bodied men into service and did not omit even poor Edward Van Egmond, son of the Colonel, who resisted at first, but yielded in order to accompany his horses. After New Year's Day there arrived word of an assemblage of “rebels and pirates,” or at least of fugitive insurgents, on the Michigan frontier, who were preparing to invade the province. The Hurons, as nearest to the danger, received orders to meet it. On January 6th the first company, under command not of Captain Gooding apparently, but of Colonel Dunlop, assisted by Lieutenants Galt and Fraser, set out, and a part of the third company proceeded with them. These two units, or parts of units, making in all some seventy-five rank and file, marched through the woods for Port Sarnia; and the same day Captain Hyndman also left Goderich with his men for the same destination. The rest followed by degrees. The first “division,” under Captain Colonel Dunlop, arrived in Sarnia on the 11th; the second, under Lieutenant Colonel Taylor, on the 14th; the third, under Major Prior, on the 15th; the fourth, under Captain Lizars, on the 16th; the fifth and last, under Lieutenant Wilson, on the 17th, and the baggage and provisions under charge of Lieutenants Kidd and Lawson, about the 22nd. The register of officers might well have been transcribed from a list of the Colborne Clique, so unmistakably did these well-to-do Scotsman translate their sentiments into action. At the same time, according to the Misses Lizars, Captain Luard took a small detachment to Navy Island. The march of the others, some 300 in number, to Sarnia, entailed a good many hardships which are related in detail by the Misses Lizars. Our other chief authority, an anonymous correspondent of the British Colonist (issue of March 29, 1838), describes the endurance and conduct of the Hurons in enthusiastic terms. “To any man who has never had to plow, dig, swim and wade his way from the known parts of this province to Port Sarnia through Adelaide, Warwick and Plympton, the suffering and merit of these men who accomplished what to me appeared an impossibility can never be known, understood or appreciated. But, Sir, the settlers in this place (Sarnia) - the inhabitants of this village - fully know what the Huron militia endured to evince their loyalty to their Queen and Constitution and to protect the land of their adoption from foreign intrusion and presumptuous invasion; they know from much lighter and far less painful duties what it is for 300 farmers at one day’s notice to leave their wives and children, their cattle and farms, themselves without greatcoats or blankets, many nearly barefooted, without a change of shirt or socks, and march 120 miles and remain on duty for ten weeks. And they will ever bear testimony to the kindness, civility, sobriety, contentment and good discipline of these loyal men. No body of officers and men ever left a place more respected and beloved.”

The Hurons spent rather a pleasant winter in Sarnia, anecdotes of which time appeared in the Misses Lizars account. Almost daily they heard rumours of intended invasion by the fugitive exiles or “Patriots” as these called themselves; and invariably these rumours proved baseless, or founded on some innocent occurrence like the trooping of wild ponies over the ice. The people at home in Huron, meanwhile, were alarmed by reports that Sarnia had been taken and that nearly all their men had perished. Dame Rumour was apparently the busiest body among the St Clair River and Lake Huron in that January and February of 1838. On February 12th the Hurons left Sarnia for Chenal Ecarte, near Walpole Island, which was as likely to attract the “Patriots” as Navy Island on the Niagara frontier. Here alarms were even more frequent than at Sarnia, obliging the men to remain under arms all night on several occasions; but as before, they came to nothing. On March 4th, the Hurons returned to Sarnia, and on the 8th, as the danger seemed at an end, they received orders to return home for discharge. Captain Gooding's company left that day, the second division on the following day, and on the 10th the third company under Captain Lizars. The last company had reached Plympton in the evening of the 10th when word arrived at Sarnia that the insurgents had again assembled behind Fort Gratiot and would positively come over that night. At once the Sarnians sent an express after the poor Hurons; and these found themselves instantly ordered to march back the fourteen miles which they had just traversed two hours before. But the men of Huron accepted the reversal cheerfully. “Now, boys, we'll show them something; they have humbugged us long enough; we'll forgive them all now they've mustered courage to land.” They marched and reached Sarnia before daylight, only to find that, as usual, “the vagabond Patriots” had thought it better not to venture on Canadian soil. Quite assured, the Hurons, “wet, weary and tired . . . stretched their limbs on the boards” for the sleep they had missed. They remained in Sarnia until March 12th, when the approach of a company of Queen’s Light Infantry, a permanent regiment, enabled them definitely to depart for home. In Huron they were discharged, having served their country to the best of their ability for three months.

Their conduct in Sarnia stirred the British Colonist’s correspondent to a final word of praise. “I must mention one more distinguishing trait in the conduct and discipline of the Hurons. They were quartered in the new Methodist Church and yet while they were in it they had it so clean and neatly arranged that we had divine service every Sunday at which they gave the most general and decent attendance, and I regret to say that since their departure we have not been able to use the church in that way. I desire not to find fault with any but to commend the good examples of these men who are far above my praise and have the reward they seek -- their own approving consciences -- and will, I trust, meet the reward from Government which their conduct merits.” So wrote a freeholder in Port Sarnia, on March 13, 1838, a willing witness to the character and behaviour of those early farmers of Huron.

That spring and summer a series of incidents occurred which showed that the few malcontents were yet at work. While the Hurons were still on the frontier, the baking oven of W F Gooding was set on fire and rendered useless. As the oven was employed in baking bread for the troops, and as a Gooding himself was a captain at the front, the Goderich people at once put the occurrence down to the account of incendiary “Patriots.” On April 14th, the farmhouse and fences of Charles Prior, magistrate, were destroyed by fire, which was also ascribed to the insurgents. Worse followed. In June a party of 30 “Patriots” stole as sloop near Detroit, cruised to Goderich, raided the town, plundered the stores and made good their re-embarkation. Meanwhile, however, the American authorities had sent a vessel in pursuit, which finally ran the sloop to ground in United States waters but succeeded in capturing only one of the crew. Later, another American vessel took eight of the raiders, three of whom were convicted and sentenced to terms in jail. On September 15th, another case of arson - or at any rate, suspected arson - occurred. The valuable barn and stable of Charles Prior, victim of April, were reduced to ashes. An alarmed Huronite spoke to the British Colonist correspondent (September 27, 1838) of these incidents and declared “Lynch law is only wanting in the Huron and then neither life, property, nor character will be safe.” But as matters turned out, this affair was the last fling of the insurgent sympathizers. The part of Huron in the rebellion of 1837 had come to an end; the county had indeed, as the correspondent of the Toronto Patriot had boasted, shown itself “perfectly loyalist.”

Political danger at an end, the settlers were at liberty to renew their war on the Company. For some years dispute waxed warm over the high price of land in the Tract, the Company's monopoly of commerce and its lethargy in providing roads, bridges and means of transportation; a dispute which led to a heated election contest in 1841, when Dr Dunlop abandoned the Company, became settlers’ candidate in opposition to that organization and in the end won the seat. But as population grew, as the land passed into the hands of the settlers, as the men of Huron created for themselves more and more of the amenities of civilized life, the quarrel with the Company vanished of itself. At the present time, few Huronites realize that some less valuable portions of their county are still in possession of that Canada Company which was an object of hatred to their ancestors a hundred years ago.

This marks the end of Dr W Brenton Kerr’s account in thirteen chapters of “Colonel Anthony Van Egmond and the Rebellion of 1837 in Huron County” which appeared in the Huron Expositor in the autumn of 1931.