From the front page of the Huron Expositor
Friday, 6 November 1931

Reprinted with the permission of the Huron Expositor
Copyright: the Huron Expositor
“Your Community Newspaper Since 1860”
P. O. Box 69
11 Main Street
Seaforth, Ontario N0K 1W0

Chapter 7 The Huron Union Society

In the matter of the Goderich Harbour Bill the Colonel had scored a technical success. He next attempted to organize the settlers into a protective association aimed no doubt primarily at the Company. A dispatch of January 15th to the Reform Journal Correspondent and Advocate of March 12, 1535, informs us that a “general meeting” of settlers in Hullett, Stanley, Tuckersmith, McKillop and Hibbert was held at the house of Mr Richard Lowe, in Tuckersmith. Van Egmond was called to the chair and Henry Cooper appointed secretary. Under such capable guidance the assembled settlers passed a resolution to form a Society, “The Huron Union Society,” with the object of protecting members against wrong and injustice from any quarter whatever and of obtaining redress if such wrongs and injustices should be committed, but in no other way than the way of peace and propriety. Any settler would be allowed to apply for membership and would be accepted if the majority approved. The Society should meet regularly once in two months, at other times if the President should see fit to call a meeting; and it should maintain a treasury by voluntary contributions. The principles of the society having been thus laid down, the members proceeded to elect officers. They chose Van Egmond president; Cooper, Vice-president; Lowe, corresponding secretary; Constant Van Egmond, treasurer, and Edward Van Egmond, assistant treasurer; named an executive committee consisting of Archibald Dickson, Edward Biskoby, James Hutchinson, James Gosmar, Thomas Harkness, John Hannah, Richard Twaid, James Mulholland, Samuel Carnocham, Jas Dayly, John Govenlock, James Dickson, Alex Cameron. Also added as honorary members were Michael Fisher, Edward Taylor, Dr James Chapman, John Galt, William Sargint, Andrew Helmer, Andrew Subart, and three other Fishers. The last list included men of standing whose names would presumably add to the respectability of the new society. Probably all the men mentioned were known to be opponents of the Company. The length of the list and the weight of the names indicates a serious discontent in the Huron Tract with the existing order of things. Unfortunately we have no record of the activities of the Society, no knowledge of their opposition to the Company beyond that recorded here.

There appears, however, to have been a sequel of some importance for Richard Lowe, corresponding secretary of the new society and owner of the house at which the organization meeting was called. In the Correspondent and Advocate of July 9, 1835, there is a letter from Van Egmond appealing to Reformers for help for Mr Lowe. According to the account this gentleman had arrived in the Huron Tract in the summer of 1832 with a wife, eight children and three domestics and had bought land and set about clearing it. After two years’ work he had been informed that the greater part of the land he had cleared was not on his own allotment at all but belonged to his neighbour. He at once consulted the Company’s agents, who assured him that he would receive pay for the work he had done. Soon the neighbour sold the ground. The purchasers set a surveyor at work and on the strength of his survey proceeded to claim Lowe’s house, stables, garden and nearly all of his cleared land. Lowe at once appealed to the Company’s commissioners and agents, who declared they could do nothing. Worst of all, the purchasers refused to pay for any of Mr Lowe’s work. In consequence, Mr Lowe had suffered a very serious loss, and on his behalf the Colonel wrote to the editor of the leading Reform journal of Upper Canada:

“A case of unparalleled hardship and without a parallel in the Annals of Emigrants’ Misfortunes.

Mr Lowe, his sickly wife, eight small helpless children, and a female servant routed out of their beds and without giving them time for breakfast, turned by force out of doors and their beds and furniture strewed on the public highway; while the tears of his wife and children would move and excite the most deeply felt commiseration of all such as had a heart beating within their bosoms except their merciless oppressors and persecutors! Mr Lowe himself is a cripple and unable to earn by manual labour a sixpence a day and none of his family a penny a day. He has thus lost (with the exception of an acre of cleared land) all the fruits of his three years’ labour and expenditures. House, barn, garden, all lost and not a single dollar at his command to build another house or to clear other lands and no provision for his (so large a) family to eat. I have given him a house to live in for ten months gratis, and it being a good tavern stand, some little to start up on, but being supplicated for more than tenfold the assistance I am indeed unable to afford, I appeal in Mr Lowe’s behalf to all his countrymen in Toronto and to friends to Man in general, to contribute their mites to extricate that unfortunate family from an unheard-of misery. And to you, Sir, to undertake the gathering of such charitable donations. Your most humble and most devoted servant, Anthony W (?) Van Egmond.
PS - Mr Lowe’s children are all about naked.”

So runs the only letter (apparently) of the Colonel’s which has survived to our times. In it we can see clear evidence of the Dutchman’s struggles with the English language; we can see clear evidence also of the natural sympathy and generosity which led him to miss no opportunity of doing a kindness to one in distress. Nevertheless the writer’s indignation at “the merciless oppressors and persecutors” probably overcame his judgment. As the editor of the Correspondent and Advocate pointed out, Mr Lowe himself was at fault, first for not having ascertained the proper boundaries of his land; second, for having depended on the word of the commissioners and agents of the Company when he discovered his mistake. The case was unfortunate and Mr Lowe’s treatment harsh but not illegal. If this were the w … th … case against the Canada Company … was probably not so s … Colonel believed. Yet … shows Van Egmond in … even if … people i … their own