“Where once the pagan rite was seen,
Or French or Indian warlike bands,
Where fratricidal strife had been,
Two Christian nations now clasp hands.”

Janet Oarnochan.

WE have all beard the oft-repeated sneer that “Canada has no history,” but the story of this one county, if it could be told at all adequately, would effectually disprove the assertion. The trouble in writing of Lincoln is not paucity of historic material, but difficulty of selection from an embarrassment of riches. From the days of La Salle onward, the district about Niagara has supplied many a vivid page to the history of Canada. Like Quebec in Lower Canada, it is in our upper Province the chosen home of romance. Now cultured and fruitful and peaceful as a very garden, the peninsula, three parts surrounded by the mighty lakes and the majestic river, has formed a background for the deeds of heroes and lor the intricate play of the most varied human activities.

During the Revolutionary War that grim Loyalist, Butler, and the noted Mohawk, Joseph Brant, wintered several times at Niagara, and when peace was made Butler’s disbanded “Rangers” settled along lake shores and river bank, to begin a bloodless warfare on the great trees which seemed to them little better than “cumbered of the ground.” In the struggle to subdue the earth and to make homes in the wilderness for their large families of children (sometimes numbering twelve, sixteen, and even twenty lads and lasses), not only the military pioneers but their stout-hearted wives proved their mettle. Slowly they triumphed over their difficulties, but the records of the old churches hint that the hardships and privations and perhaps ignorances of the time were too much for many a tender little blossom of humanity, and, more even than in our own day, babies were born but to die in a few weeks or months. Those hardy enough to struggle through the first year or two often grew up strong and sturdy, able (both men and women) to bear burdens and to toil fur hours, which would make their descendants think themselves greatly ill-used.

At first, the new-comers lived under something like martial law, but the Loyalists, notwithstanding traditions to the contrary, were as much in love with liberty as their brethren who had driven them from their old homes, and they appealed —not in vain—for British law.

It was a great day in little Niagara (or Newark), the chief settlement of Lincoln (then a much more extensive county than to-day), when Governor Simcoe opened there the first Parliament of Upper Canada. It is sometimes said that the ceremony took place under a tree, but the fact is that the importance of the occasion was marked by all possible pomp and ceremony. That first meeting of the Legislature of our Province took place in the Indian Council House, on a hill above the river. The Governor, stately and gorgeous in his military uniform, was attended by soldiers from Fort Niagara as a guard of honour, and right royally he played his part that day as the representative of the Sovereign, while the guns from the fort and the shipping in the mer boomed out their sonorous applause.

For five successive years, (until the giving up of Fort Niagara, on the opposite side of the river to the Americans, threatened the security of the town) Parliament met at Newark; but long after it ceased to be capital its geographical position, and perhaps the character of its early settlers, ensured the continuance of its eager, stirring life. Many an old-time visitor to Canada has a good word to say for the busy little frontier town and its “very agreeable” society, which was indeed composed to a remarkable degree of people of a fine type, who had energy to spare for the things of the mind and the spirit, despite the pressure of the material needs of a pioneer community.

The records of the Anglican Church of St. Mark and the Presbyterian Church of St. Andrew, beginning respectively in 1792 and 1794, have been lovingly studied and interpreted by Miss Janet Carnochan, whose various papers on Niagara give many a glimpse into those old days. During the War of 1812 St. Mark’s was used as a hospital by the British and as a barracks by the Americans. In the churchyard are still to be seen traces of rifle-pits, and a large tombstone, hacked and broken, shows evidence of having been used by the soldiery as “a butcher’s block.” As for the church, only its solid stone walls escaped destruction when the town was set on fire by the Americans in 1813 on that

“day of fear and dread
When winter snow robed dale and down,
And mothers with their children fled
In terror from the burning town.”

Soon after the war it was restored, and "the picturesque grey-stone church, with its projecting buttresses and square tower peeping through the branches of magnificent old trees,” still stands. The Presbyterian church, though built in 1795 of extraordinarily solid timbers, was totally destroyed in the conflagration, and the later St. Andrew’s, now guarded “by a belt of solemn pines,” was not begun for seventeen years after the war. Another early church of the county which did duty as a hospital when the country was invaded was that at Twelve-mile Creek, near St. Catherine’s, now the county seat.

There were not a few book-loving folk about Niagara in its early days, and the little town has to its credit not only the publishing of the first newspaper in the Province, in 1793, and the formation of the first agricultural society, but also the foundation of the first public library. The fact had been long forgotten, when an old record fell into Miss Carnochan’s hands, which told the whole story from its foundation in 1800 to its dissolution nearly twenty years later, after having been sadly “wasted” in the time of the American occupation. It was supported by subscriptions, and during the course of its existence nearly a thousand volumes were bought, at a cost of over five hundred pounds. It was strong in works on history and agriculture and other grave subjects, but was more sparsely supplied with works of fiction and poetry. In those days books were an expensive luxury, bat the trustees of the library did not scruple to pay six guineas for a Life of Pitt, or, which is more surprising, half as much for Jane Porter’s Scottish Chiefs. After this library was scattered the congregation of St. Andrew’s established one which ultimately numbered over nine hundred volumes; and there is still in existence a most valuable collection of books sent out from England to the first clergyman of St. Mark’s and presented to the church by his heirs. Fortunately, when Niagara was burned in 1813, these books were at a log-house, called Lake Lodge, about three miles out of the town.

But it was not only the taste for books that gave savour to life at Niagara. The little group of people gathered in the wilderness had come from the ends of the earth, and there was a constant change in the personnel of society in all ranks. There was much coming and going of soldiers and officers, and, for a time, of the Government officials. Governor Simcoe, with his vivacious Welsh wife, long made it his headquarters, and that alone brought many visitors and settlers to Niagara. A misty figure in the traditionary lore of old Niagara was “the old French Count”; but investigation has proved him to have been a very real, very human personage, who lived through as many misfortunes and adventures as any hero of romance. The Count de Puisaye was conspicuous amongst the crowd of noblemen to whom the French Revolution brought disaster, and his name appears in every history of that dread time, “The Reign of Terror.” At first he had taken the popular side, but alarmed at the excesses of its leaders had set himself in 1792 to raise an army to aid the king. A price was set on his head, and he was obliged to flee. With the help of the English Government, a rising in Brittany was organised, and De Puisaye was one of the leaders. The attempt ended in disaster, and De Puisaye spent months in concealment in a cavern in the woods of Brittany. Failing to raise another force, he planned to lead a military colony of French Royalists to Canada, and received a promise of lands and assistance from the British Government. Only forty Royalists joined him, and this scheme too was a failure, though for a time the French Countess de Reaupoil dazzled society at York with her jewels, while De Puisaye and other noble gentlemen shed lustre on the social gatherings at Niagara and elsewhere. Clever, ambitious, graceful in manner and person, strangely dogged by misfortune, the gallant Count seemed formed to be a hero of romance; but, alas for him, it was a romance with a dismal ending, for after a few years in Canada, he returned to England to drag out his last years in exile and loneliness.

Of all the notable people who at one time or other have had a connection with Lincoln County, perhaps, in the eyes of Canadians, the imposing figure of Isaac Brock looms largest. Born at St. Peter’s Port, Guernsey, “the hero of Upper Canada” was the eighth son of a family of fourteen children. Even as a boy he was very tall, strong, and athletic. At fifteen he obtained a commission in the army, and before he was twenty-nine had attained the rank of Lieutenant-colonel. He saw active service on the continent of Europe during Napoleon's wars, but it was in our own land that he gained his lasting fame. It was not a little thing that in those days of terrible severity, when three subordinate officers could order a man to receive "999 lashes with a ‘cat’ steeped in brine,” that Brock won the love of his men. Yet he could be stern enough upon occasion.

Soon after his arrival in Canada, he visited Niagara under strange circumstances. He was at York when he heard that six deserters had gone off with a Government bateau across the lake, and at midnight he started in pursuit in an open boat with a crew of twelve men. “It was a hard pull of over thirty miles,” but Brock took his turn at the oar, and the deserters were duly captured.

A few months later news came that a plot was on foot at Fort George to murder the commanding officer, Sheaffe; and again, without an hour’s delay, Brock crossed the lake, walked quietly into the barrack square, found some of the suspected men on guard, and had them handcuffed and marched off to the cells before they could take breath. Four of the mutineers and three deserters were shot at Quebec, and Brock, assembling the garrison at Fort George, read the account of the execution, but he added, in a voice that trembled, “Since I have had the honour to wear the British uniform I have never felt

BATTLE OF QUEENSTON 1813

grief like this”; and when he took command at Foit George there were no more desertions.

Brock was a good friend and a true-hearted brother (as there are many incidents to show), as well as a great soldier. At first he found life at Niagara somewhat dull, and “would travel the worst road in the country—fit only for an Indian mail-carrier—to mix in the society of York.” But he did his share to enliven the little town, giving annually a ball, which was one of the events of the season. Perhaps one of the attractions that drew him to York was the fact that "a log mansion” on the outskirts of that little capital was the home of a young lad}- named Sophia Shaw, to whom he became engaged. Often, however, she used to go to visit a sister who lived near Niagara.

Mr. Nursey, in his vigorous and picturesque Story of Isaac Brock, says that a vast quantity of freight was sent up from Kingston to Queenston, “the remote North-west looking to Niagara for food and clothing—the return cargoes being furs and grain.” The goods were carried in farmers’ wagons round the Falls, “and the entire length of the portage from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie was practically a street,” full of bustle and activity. “A quite pretentious wharf lined the river, and from this on any summer afternoon a string of soldiers and idle citizens might be seen—casting hook and troll for bass, trout, pickerel and herring, with which the river swarmed.” Once Brock himself helped “to haul up a seine-net in which were 1008 white-fish of an average weight of two pounds, 6000 being netted in one day.”

But all the time while Brock was in Canada the storm-clouds of the coming war were slowly gathering. For years he was trying to prepare for the tempest, and before il broke fie was appointed head both of the forces and the civil government in Upper Canada When war was declared, more men than he could clothe and arm rallied to his standard, but in all Canada there were less than 1500 regularly trained soldiers, and the whole population of the two Provinces could have been packed into a city of the size of present-day Toronto, whilst the United States had 8,000,000 people. Moreover, Brock, subject to the orders of his far less able superior officer, Sir George Provost, had not a free hand; but, in spite of all drawbacks, his success at Detroit and his personality inspired the hard-pressed Canadians with such confidence that he fairly earned the title, with which he was greeted everywhere on his return from the west, of “the saviour of Upper Canada." By an odd coincidence the bells in England clanged out upon h's birthday for the capture of Detroit, and a knighthood was bestowed upon Brock, but he never knew it, for before the news reached Canada he had gone up to fight and fall on Queenston Heights.

I have no space—nor is there need—to tell again the story of that grim battle for the possession of the Heights; nor of the first burial of Brock and his gallant aide, Macdonnell, in a grave within a bastion of Fort George, soon to be desecrated by the footsteps of the invaders; nor of the building and destruction (in 1840) of the first monument, and of the gathering in that year of a mighty concourse of thousands to testify to their admiration for the dead hero and their love of British institutions; nor of the erection of the tall shaft beneath which Brock’s remains, three times disturbed, have now rested in peace for all but sixty years.

We must pass on to speak of a building, erected in old Niagara soon after the war, to which cling as many historic associations as to the remaining vestiges of Fort George and to old St. Mark’s. I refer to Niagara’s second jail and court house, once counted the handsomest building in Upper Canada, and transformed in 18G6 from a grim abode of misery and despair to a house of hope, for in that year it was bought by Miss Rye to shelter the little English waifs to whom she was giving a new chance in Canada; and the court-room, which had witnessed many exciting trials, became a dormitory’.

Here, on an August day in 1819, assembled a huge crowd to witness the trial of Robert Gourlay, self-elected champion of liberty and good government, whom some of the officials were determined to crush. At the time they seemed to triumph, not only driving Gourlay into banishment, but daring also to condemn the editor of The Niagara Spectator, in which had been printed a letter of Gourlay’s, to a punishment of unheard-of severity. This included a line of fifty pounds, an hour in the pillory, eighteen months’ imprisonment, and the obligation, under peril of a debtor’s prison, to give for seven years a security of a thousand pounds. This sort of thing, however, only provoked the advocates of justice to go to greater lengths.

In 1824 William Lyon Mackenzie began at Queenston to edit The Colonial Advocate, dragging abuses into the light and agitating for reform so unceasingly and fervently that he worked up himself and his followers into such a state that rebellion seemed the only hope of remedy. But there was no Canadian revolution, and on another August day, in 1838, the court house was again packed, while the judge, to the horror of many present, pronounced on two of the captured rebels the terrible old sentence for treason. Then were heartbreaking interviews with the prisoners through the narrow grating of the tomblike condemned cell. But at last, when all was ready for that dreadful hanging and quartering, the town was thrilled by the news that just in time had come a respite, won by two brave women, Wait’s young wife and Chandler’s daughter, who had made a hasty, difficult journey of seven hundred miles to Quebec to appeal to Lord Durham himself.

A year earlier Niagara had witnessed a desperate struggle to save an escaped slave from being cast out of the land of freedom, to which, when the Southern States were slave States, many a negro steered his course by the light of the North Star. A charge of robbery against the slave was the master’s excuse for demanding his extradition, and the authorities of Upper Canada allowed it. But, led by Holmes, a coloured preacher, the negroes, hundreds strong, guarded the jail, and finally, at the cost of two lives, succeeded in rescuing the man from the Sheriff as he was being taken to the frontier. It is good to know that at last the slave reached England safely, and so got beyond his master's reach.