Church

Church
It has stood at 83 Essex Street Guelph since its base stones were set in late June 1880. Its cornerstone was set on September 17 1880 as recorded in the Guelph Mercury and Advertiser. The contents of the cornerstone were described in that article, "Copy of the Holy Scriptures, Hymn Book of the BME Church, copy of the Missionary Messenger - the organ of the church; and copies of the Mercury and Herald." Presumably, the contents had already been placed inside a tin box, hermetically sealed and then painted over before being placed in a carved-out section of the cornerstone, then covered with sand and mortared under the stone above it. The Mercury report noted that the structure was already twelve feet high, with half the basement four feet in the ground and the other four feet above it. The base stones of the church could well be mortared directly onto the same ridge of limestone that extends across the road to where the ground drops behind the southside homes and into a remnant of the quarry from which many of the nearby stone houses had also come. The Guelph BME was, by the 1880's, one of the last stone structures erected in the neighbourhood. The quarry had been owned by the man who had been awarded the contract to raise the church, William Slater, listed in the 1881 city directory as a stone cutter.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

William Groat, The Colored Man From Marden:

Freeborn son of a former Loyalist slave or servant
in Guelph,town and township*
*click for satellite image
      The Colored Man from Marden, Guelph Township, William Groat, died at the age of 80 in the Wellington County House of Industry, the poor house, in 1900.
His life in Guelph, to which he moved around 1842, in some ways is the anti-thesis of his family history before Guelph. Michael Groat, father of William, had been a 15 year old slave or servant in the home of the Loyalist William Davis who arrived in Upper Canada in 1892.  William Groat was born in Stoney Creek in 1820 and raised in Nelson township, Upper Canada, on a farm his father bought in 1806 off of the Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant.* (Now part of Burlington.)
    *Since Brant was perpetually in need of money, from time to time he sold lots within the block. In 1803, he sold 200 acres to Nicholas Kern, and the next year he sold 205.5 acres to Thomas Ghent. In 1806, lots were sold to Michael Grote and Ebenezer Guise." 
    The Upper Canada Land Leases and Petitions Indexes note the signature of a Henry Groat on a petition twice in 1807, a Caleb Groat* in 1809, and a William Groat in 1810, The actual petitions and their topics are not included. Who they were to Michael is not clear, but they appear to have different arrival in Upper Canada stories, although there is an old North Carolina escaped slave-Tuscarora Indian lineage in most Groat storylines. Henry Groat is probably connected to the Groat/'Mike'-Cryslers of Brantford, as William seems to be as well. Although Amelia Crysler, who married Michael Groat in 1878 (before he changed his name to 'Michael Mike') had herself been born in Nelson township, although she is thirty years younger than William of Marden. The actual names of Crysler family slaves -  the Crsylers made famous at the War of 1812 Battle of Crysler Farm - are a much sought after genealogical prize that does not yet seem to have been claimed. By the same token, Michael Groat maybe the only name we know from the Davis household, slave or servant.
       Caleb Groat appears to be a man from another family in Lincoln County, “Caleb, as near as we know, is a Palatine descendant, spent time in QUE (signed Oath at Missisquoi 1795), migrated to Whitby, then to Lincoln/Grimsby where he fought in Lundy's Lane (1812) and then settled at Chinguacousy, Peel Co., ON."
       There were a great many descendants of that line in Peel, as any genealogy search will show, only Michael Grote seems to connect to Stoney Creek, Nelson township and the William Davis family.
    was a document created by a group of freed slaves who had fought for the British in the U.S. Revolutionary War, and been rewarded with land grants in Upper Canada for their service to the Crown. Because the grants were spread around the province, isolating the freed men amongst the otherwise-white settlers, on June 29th, 1794 nineteen men from the Niagara region submitted a petition to Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe hoping to address this.[1]
Their petition read:
    "That there are a number of Negroes in this part of the Country many of whom have been Soldiers during the late war between Great Britain and America, and others who were born free with a few who have come into Canada since the peace, -Your Petitioners are desirous of settling adjacent to each other that they may be enabled to give assistance (in work) to those amongst them who may most want it.
    Your Petitioners therfore [sic] humbly Pray that their situation may be taken into consideration, and if your Excellency should see fit to allow them a Tract of Country to settle on, separate from the white Settlers, your Petitioners hope their behaviour will be such as to shew, that Negroes are capable of being industrious, and in loyalty to the Crown they are not deficient."
Jack Baker, Jack Becker, John Cesar, John Dimon, Tom Frey, John Gerof, Peter Green, Michael Grote, John Jackson, Adam Lewis, Peter Ling, Richard Pierpoint, Pompadour, John Smith, Saison Sepyed, Simon Speck, Robert Spranklin, Thomas Walker and Jack Wurmwood.[2]
       The petition was turned down by Simcoe: his just passed compromise anti slavery act was a year into causing problems among slave owners. The Lt. Governor's  answer of no to the Free Negroes, speaks to his understanding of the volatility of the times. Simcoe's plan was to establish a House of Lords in Canada, a chamber of upper management, a ruling class: he'd done his best for blacks, but money talked and his power was time so he turned from Grote and the others, and set about creating a Family Compact out of the real politik factions of his situation, monied class Loyalists he could herd towards the noblesse oblige of a High Church House of Lords.
      Simcoe shied away from creating a negro settlement to prevent a Canadian, Yankee-slaver uprising, which would have brought American Slavers into the mix.  Simcoe chose to make the best out of a bad situation in order to get what he wanted, only it turns out that the best remained a bad situation, one that  matured and died in armed rebellion, revolts that flared throughout the Canadas over abuses in 1837-38 , as Canadian reformers tired of playing Family Compact and demanded political reforms such as those the British had passed in their own parliament in the years that Earl Grey, Lord Durham and company also passed the Emancipation Act into law in 1834. 
     Free Loyalist blacks fought for the government in those battles and skirmishes, not because they liked the Family Compact, but because they'd rather live and kill and die under British Common law than to ever be subject to American law again. It was a belief that would take hold of the African Canadians who created the BME out of the AME, at a time when William Groat lived in Guelph, he would have seen the wooden church of 1870 being built, it not laboured on its construction. 
      By 1874, when William finally left Guelph and settled in Marden, he had lived in Guelph for thirty two years.  He would have lived knowing of - if not participating in - discussions on the organic union struggle against re-incorporation into the AME; he would have been aware of the Chancery court decision of the Guelph BME remaining a BME, because it had been deeded to the BME. As the son of a Loyalist, no doubt William Groat would have understood and supported the ordination of Bishop Walter Hawkins, perhaps even heard or read one of Hawkins old school anti-American Law sermons on the money.
     Whatever other problems there might be throughout the British Empire to Loyalists and former slaves, British law was better than American law, because Yankee's compromised with slavers since George Washington was first President.     
It's as true now, as it was when Michael Grote either became a free man in Upper Canada or always had been a free man working for William Davis in North Carolina: in 1793, Lt. Governor Simcoe passed a flawed but real anti-slavery act, in 1793, President Washington signed the first fugitive slave act into law, turning America into a slave prison: the difference in national law was always more real to black Loyalists than it ever was to white ones, and Rebel leader Lyon MacKenzie, while not quite mystified by their choices, and in the end coming himself to prefer British constitutionalism to American law, disagreed with their choices during the uprisings, however much he could appreciate why they fought to preserve the power of the crown despite the scandals and scurrility and the outright lack of necessity for the province to be run by a Family Compact.
       There is this genealogy posting, suggesting the Groats were servants of William Davis, father-in-law of John Ghent...
      “One line of my family I suspect were the servants belonging to a William Davis, wife Hannah Phillips of Orange Co., N.C., who married in Yorktown VA. In 1771.
Their home was destroyed by the American forces during the
Rev. War, and Wm. Davis moved back to N.C. buying 800 acres of land in 1786 from David Phillips, father of Hannah.”
   “In 1792 he sold his land in Orange Co. and by 1793 the family was in Ontario, Canada. William's daughter Elizabeth and her husband Thomas Ghent (Gant) of N.C. and the rest of his children also traveled with them, as did several faithful servants. I believe one of those servants was my ancestor Michael GROAT who at that time was likely around 15 years old.” Arlene Noble, North Bay, Ont.
      She received one reply from shhewlitt in Aug/Nov 2001
    I don't know if you have had a reply to your message but my great great gradfather was William Groat son of Michael Groat. William was born in 1820 in Stoney Creek, SaltFleet Township, Ontario, Canada. To the best of our knowledge he had a brother Peter and sisters Jemime, Margaret and Hannah. We have some indication that the family may have come from North Carolina.
       That said, and the North Carolina link holding true, then taking Arlene Noble's statement of Michael Groats age as a starting point, a 15 year old servant when he arrived in 1793, could not have been a sixteen year old petitioning for land on the basis of Loyalist service in the Revolutionary War. Which suggests there was an older Michael, a man who might have been father to Henry, William and Michael, or to just Michael, he also may have fathered daughters , no records seem to exist. Arlene Noble's 'Michael' could not have been a Loyalist solider and petitioner in 1794. By 1807 the fifteen year old 'servant' Michael of 1793 however, was 29 years old and perhaps wanting to start a life's work and a family by buying land from Brant near the Davis-Ghents.  He did so a few months before Brant died on November 24 1807.
(taken from chapter by John A. Aikman in a history book prepared by the Hamilton Branch UELAC)
     William Davis was born on 23 December 1741 in the colony of Maryland, his parents were Thomas and Mary Davis, they were of Welsh descent.
North Carolina 1770's
    As a young man, William went to Virginia where he met and married (1771) Hannah Phillips. They moved to North Carolina where William soon became a wealthy plantation owner with a large tract of land, a beautiful home, large distilleries and breweries and many black slaves.
Alongside the Davis’ plantation was the Gant (Ghent) family, also of Welsh descent; they became friends as well as neighbours.
     When the troubles turned into War in 1775, William remained out of the actual fighting although he was a loyal supporter of the King. In 1779, General Cornwallis marched into Carolina with 2,000 soldiers, and in 1781 arrived at the Davis plantation where his men were sheltered and fed.
     The Gant plantation was the headquarters for Cornwallis. The soldiers consumed all the available food supplies on the land. Cornwallis gave Davis a DUE BILL for 10,000 pounds in recompense for the food consumed and the damage done to the plantation.
Meeting Simcoe, with the Queen's Rangers
     The British left and soon after the “Rebels” swept in and completely destroyed the plantations. The disheartened Davis Family fled to the Phillips’ home in Yorktown, Virginia. It is believed that Cornwallis retreated to this town also. During the stay, John Graves Simcoe (Queen’s Rangers) was entertained and cared for by the Phillips and Davis families. The war terminated in 1783.
     The Davis family, along with Hannah’s ill parents, the Phillips, returned to Orange County, North Carolina and tried to re-establish the plantation. They endured a cruel barrage of abuse from the victorious rebels and the harsh taxes. When the elder Phillips died in 1791 the Davis family decided to seek opportunity and remain under British rule in Canada. Simcoe had been made Lt. Governor of the new Province of Upper Canada.
Elizabeth Davis marries Thomas Ghent;
they live with William and Hannah Davis.
     Everyone, and many things, including slaves began the 800 mile journey from North Carolina to Newtown (Niagara-on-the-Lake). The party finally reached the mouth of the Genesee River (now Rochester area) and realized they could not go any further by land.
    Thomas Ghent (husband of Elizabeth Davis) and Asahel Davis (oldest son of William Davis) set off on horseback to Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) in search of John Graves Simcoe. They were received and Simcoe sent a government gunboat, the Bear, to bring the entire party to Newark.
Due Bills Presented
     At Niagara, William Davis presented Simcoe with the Due Bills that he had been given by General Cornwallis and Simcoe sent them on to London hoping for approval of a “Crown Grant” for Davis. However, the books for Loyalist claims had been closed in 1790 and since Davis had still been in the colonies until 1792 the application was turned down – too late.
      Hannah, William’s wife, Ghent's mother-in-law, died and was buried at Chippewa. With Simcoe's support William Davis petitioned to London on June 19, 1793 stating he had arrived from North Carolina and had taken 200 acres in Barton Township for which he asked for a “certificate of location.” In the following year, 1794, he partitioned again and ultimately obtained 2,300 acres in Barton and Saltfleet Townships. The sons and daughters of William, including Elizabeth now a Ghent, received 200 acres each. This may have been part of the 2,300 acres above. Thomas Ghent obtained an additional grant of 300 acres adjacent to the Davis property.
      It was at this time that Michael Groat and the other Davis freed slaves and their friends, unsuccessfully petitioned Simcoe for a settlement based on their war service.
     The area of land we are talking about is Glendale Golf Club (Hamilton/Stoney Creek, Ontario)... and the top of the escarpment at Mount Albion (Hamilton/Stoney Creek). Mount Albion owes its existence to William Davis and his family. “Harmony House” plantation of the north, a tannery, distillery, an orchard, a herd of Ayrshire cattle and a saw and grist mill on the Albion Creek were some of the accomplishments of the family. Davis also constructed a church “Auld Scotch Kirk” in an attempt to draw settlers to the area. Albion Mills served as a local hub of commerce and services for the rural countryside.
Thomas Ghent buys land from Brant
     In 1804 Thomas Ghent purchased 205.5 acres of land from Joseph Brant. The land was very good for growing fruit trees. The families had brought fruit seeds from North Carolina and seedlings from the Mount Albion area were transported to Brant’s Block. They became part of the group of founders of the fruit growing industry in Burlington.
     Around this time, Asahel Davis (who also purchased property in Brant’s Block) and his brother-in-law, Thomas Ghent, and their families, which included 12 pre-school children, moved near Burlington. They settled in “Freeman”. Freeman was near this cemetery...
      By 1812, the presumed elder Michael Grote, had either died or had enough of war, but Henry, William and Michael Groat showed up for duty against the Americans. The search for records led to genealogy threads like the following,
   " Andrew,
    Thank you for your reply. I have only two records for the 3 Groat men at this time. You can find my payroll document transcriptions at 
Private Henry Groat
   Served Aug. 27 to Sept. 1, 1813 (D243). See also (D293). Henry served in Capt. John Chisholm’s Flank Company in 1813. Men had to have been proven loyal to the British to be accepted into a flank company. Many were United Empire Loyalists. These companies were to be the first mustered to confront an American invasion. Document 293 was a payroll for Capt. James Mordan’s Co. from 1812 to 1814. 
Privates Michael and William Groat
   Working on Dundas St. Oct. 27 to 30, 1813 (D297). See also (D293). William and Michael served together in Capt. James Mordan’s Co. The two men would therefore have known each other and may have been related. Henry served with William in payroll D293. I have some records for the Coloured Corps and the Lincoln Regiments but did not find any Groats there.... Fred.
   ...at ourontario.ca you will find some original muster rolls including GROAT in the Lincoln Militia - Caleb GROAT (GRADT etc.) this is my connection. Caleb, as near as we know, is a Palatine descendant, spent time in QUE (signed Oath at Missisquoi 1795), migrated to Whitby, then to Lincoln/Grimsby where he fought in Lundy's Lane (1812) and then settled at Chinguacousy, Peel Co., ON."
     Caleb would appear to be from a different family.
William Moves to Guelph
   In 1842, William Groat “migrated” to Guelph, in Wellington Co. The same year that his future wife, Elizabeth Adams came to stay with her aunt and uncle, the Archibalds.
   Sometime in 1849/50 William married Elizabeth ADAMS.
 Their eldest daughter, Hannah, was born December 28 1850.
     In the 1861 census for Guelph, William, is listed as a 40 year old mulatto labourer, Elizabeth 30 is Irish, Hannah 11, Jane 8, Eliza 6, Louisa 5, Aibigail 2 were all listed as mulatto's.
    Elizabeth was originally Church of Scotland but became a Methodist. It seems probable that there may even have been some kind of conversion experience because all the daughters and a son James were baptized on April 20 1867 by Reverend James Carroll in Guelph: Edith Eliza, born April 8, 1854; Abigail, born August 26, 1859; James, born April 1, 1864; Henrietta, born on September 26, 1865; Martha, born Oct 15 1872 in Ontario.
    In August 1874, William bought 1 acre on the southeast corner of Lot 15, Concession 1, Division D, on the Atkinson farm from George Atkinson. And they moved out to Marden after 32 years in Guelph, married and unmarried.
      The September 9th 1885 marriage of Attie Groat, 24, Guelph township to 22 year old William of Guelph, but born at Gaspie Basiu? curiously lists her father William as Thomas Groat, although her mother is still Elizabeth Adams; they were married in Elora by a Presbyterian minister Reverend James Middlewise.
      The 1896 marriage record of William Lillie and Hannah Groat reads: "William R. LILLIE , 24 , laborer , Marden Guelph Twp., Guelph , s/o Thomas LILLIE & Hanna GROAT , married Helen GRAY , 24 , Nichol , same , d/o William GRAY & Jane REID, witn: Charles ATTICKSON of Guelph & Lena GRAY of Buffalo , 30 Dec 1896 at Nichol". Hannah died in Salem, Wellington County (outside of Elora) on October 24 1934, she was the mother of 5 children, William, Annie, Percy, Ruby and Leonard.  Annie's marriage record reads:   George J. ROBINSON, 28, painter, Guelph , same, s/o Edward ROBINSON & Catherine HANLON, married Annie LILLIE , 23, Guelph Twp., same, d/o Thomas LILLIE & Hannah GROAT, witn: Thomas SIMPSON of Guelph & Ruby LILLIE of Marden. Hannah Groat Lillie died on Dec 29 1905 in Guelph Township
        Mary Jane was born Nov 18 1851, and died 12 AUG 1930, Louisa, born in 1856, died in May of 1943 in Denver ,Colorado ; Abigail, born in 1859 died in 1939, likewise in Denver to a man named Thomas Fennel, Winnifred Groat, born in 1871 died in April 1959 in Pueblo New Mexico
    In July 1905, William's widow Elizabeth sold it to Charles Atkinson witness at Hanna Groat's son William Lillie's Dec 1905 wedding. Elizabeth is said to have lived with her eldest daughter Hannah until her death in 1909, except Hannah died in 1905, so perhaps Elizabeth Adams Groat lived with William Lillie and his wife, Helen Gray Lillie.
       There are many other Groat families in Ontario, not directly linked to Michael and the Davis-Ghent's of Nelson township via Stoney Creek. There are native-black-mulatto Groat-Mike family and mid 1800's Crysler family intermarriages in Brant and Haldimand Counties, who appear to have traveled together under the banner of the Tuscarora for two centuries having leaving North Carolina in the later 1600s because colonial settlers had enslaved some of them them, their lives lived in The Great Dismal Swamp, their matrilocal clans spit up, some arising in Flordia on the side of the Seminole in the last stand of southern tribes down there. 
      Some went to New York where they were sponsored by the Sececa after the Cayuga were destroyed, eventually settling on the New York side of the Niagara River, where there remain, Lewiston build on their old lands, their three mile long shore road community became divided, those portions of the tribe closer to the British or to their need for freer territory than upper New York State, and so moved onto the Six Nation's Reserve at Brant's Ford, where remnants of Groat families linked to the now lost Tutelo tribe lived out the last of their languages's days, their births, deaths, marriages, baptisms, land or lease holdings, assessment rolled up lives of stories traced now on genealogy threads. Including the stories of the Mississaugua of the New Credit, who sold the land they'd received for services rendered to the Crown during the Revolutionary War, they took lands and were welcomed into the Six Nations community, where they remain distinct from the Mohawk's who call themseles Keepers of the Eastern Door, which once meant the St. Lawrence River from Kingston to Montreal, back when the Iroquoians were known as the Five Nations, long before Revolutionary Wars.
       So within all those tribes surviving, all those Tutelo and Cayuga clans dying out , marrying into the mix, the keepers of the Eastern Door had come to serve as a Western Door into Upper Canada, then into Canada West, binational tribes and clans coming continuously, the remnant that is the work of Haldimand and Brant and endless negotiations with the British overlords undeserving of the Loyalty of the dead of the tribes who had fought and died for the Crown.
        Even as the underground railroad came into being, the tribes themselves had just begun to settle down into Simcoe's Upper Canada: Simcoe's 1793 compromise anti-slavery act was met in the same year by George Washington's signing of the first American Fugitive slave act; the movement of people seeking freedom in mythical Canada by heading straight for the North Star , something that could pointed to in the sky by anyone in the know, the North Star, just there off the edge of the Drinking Gourd/Big Dipper. And who better to find help from than from families and parties of tribes and clans with continuously binational movements to and from all sorts of places south of the community that was coalescing onto and around the Six Nations Reserve, which, by the 1850's, had the newly created, the Mississauga New Credit* Reserve beside it.
     *In 1930, Ira Roberts, the grandson of Guelph's BME minister for 1880-81, Junius B. Roberts of Robert's Settlement Indiana, married a white girl on that reserve after the Hamilton chapter of the Knights of the American KKK organization centre in Indiana, tried to stop him from marrying her by burning a cross on his lawn. The Grand Dragon of the Indiana of KKK had just undergone a humiliating trial in the Robert's Settlement in 1926. Ira's fear was so acute he and his mother (Ida Roberts) and his father John “Mundy” Johnson told the Toronto Star a story about Cherokee blood which was untrue and local blacks knew it. Ira and Alice were married to be married in a Oakville African Methodist Episcopal Church in which Junius B. Roberts had once served, before the KKK intervened.     
      They ended up getting married in the kitchen of the Reserve's parsonage by the Minister, with the Reverend's wife and a Missisauugua chief as witnesses.
     To conclude with the Six Nations and all the clan comings and goings to so many different American reserves: in 1808, the Pennsylvania Quaker, Levis Coffin was supposed to have started what we now mean by the Underground Railroad; tens of thousands of people with help and without while help were able to move north through potentially hostile Americans everywhere they went no matter how far north in the States they went, chased by bounty hunters at times from the first Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, until the end of the Civil War in 1865, and their best allies for most of that time were the tribes of the wayside, who traveled armed, and were not easily intimidated by slave catchers.
      Michael Groat, the slave or servant of William Davis, came the loyalist route in the company of his burnt-out plantation owner , and then claimed a soldier's stake in a black settlement in Upper Canada in 1794, which was denied him. Then came the Michael Groat who served in Captain James Morden's company defending the Dundas Road, and later married some now unknown woman who gave birth in 1820, to William (Thomas), later known as “The Colored Man from Marden”, who could split cordwood with prowess.
     William Groat, married to Elizabeth Adams, and the father of nine girls and one boy, seems to have become so weakened at the age of 77 that he spent the last three years of his life in The House of History, which sits on the road between Fergus and Elora. It was in essence the poor house, the only place of care available. Ten days before his death he began dying of apolexy, which ended on August 27, 1900. The House of Industry is now the Wellington Co. Museum and Archives and has its own website.) William was 80 years old when he died; he is buried in the Belsyde Cemetery in Fergus.
        There is a high probability that at least some of the Groats might have attended the cornerstone setting ceremony of the British Methodist Episcopal Church in September 1880. The children all appear to have been baptized Methodist enmasse in 1867, before the building of the wooden BME church near the Quaker meeting place on Market Street. The family lived in Guelph until 1874, and the very existence of blacks and mulattos in the town was the reason for creation of the first BME in town; and certainly William and Elizabeth had been their since 1842, and were well known; their daughters knew people in the community. Their son James may have lived and died there before the move to Marden. Which is all to say that the Guelph BME church would have been part of their community experience, if not the source of spiritual development for some or many of them.
    In July 1905... Elizabeth sold the Marden property to Charles Atkinson.    
She then lived with her eldest daughter Hannah until her death in 1909.
       William is referred to in A.E. Byerly's The Beginning of Things: "William Grote (coloured), the Marden man in history, who chopped, split, and piled about 4,000 cords of hardwood. On putting up his two cords each day, he shouldered his axe and went home". (A Timleck, Aug 2008)
This is Marden's future.
 

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

A Society of Friends: The Wetheralds and “Quaker Howitt.”

        Early American fugitive slaves settled in the townships of the Guelph area from the 1820's on, keeping in mind the Johnsons in Nassagewaya, who had probably been sailed to Oakville by an abolitionist captain, after which George Johnson and whoever was with him, followed the Sixteen Mile creek and a tributary northwest to the pass through the Niagara Escarpment Campbellville and then settled across the road from what is now Moffat Scrap metal. 
     There are as well to remember, the Bush and the Bowlen families.




Township of Puslinch 





Map of Puslinch Township
To view a larger version of this map click here
  In the Annals of Puslinch

        Bowlen is also mentioned.
    "About the year 1842, the farm of the late M. P. Lynch was pur­chased by a negro, Ben Bowlen.  This man was found frozen to death beside his oxen and sleigh, while teaming his wheat to Preston."
    "...In 1845, this land was purchased by Michael Lynch.  He erected the present house about the year 1848, and the barn 1874.  At his death in 1902 it passed to his son, Michael P., who farmed here until his death in 1948."  
    Presumably M.P Lynch is linked to Concession 8 in the vicinity of the schoolhouse on lot 17 as listed in this entry of The Annals of Puslinch. 
    " Among a number of letters gathered by Matthew McPhatter many years ago, was one written by Martin Cassin (he)... refers to his early school days... across the road on Lot 17, Concession 8, and stated that the Hammersleys, the Ellises, the Kennedys, the Allens, the Hanlons, David Stirton and the Lynches were among his school mates in those days.  He also stated that his father and family came in from Hamilton in a long-sleigh drawn by a yoke of oxen.  Martin Cassin was 7 years old when he arrived in Puslinch and he states that he could remember when the Indians would camp in the district and that he had seen as many as 65 deer lying dead in their camps on their return from a hunting tour. The Indians would trade a carcass of deer, after the hide was taken off, for a loaf of bread. He stated that some of their tents as he recalled them were very large.  The squaws and young Indians would keep a supply of dry wood on hand gathered from the bush for their camp and when night came the Indians would sit around the fire and smoke tobacco and sumac.  They would cut and dry the sumac and smoke it when the tobacco was scarce.  He played with the young Indian boys around their tents and in the forest and often saw the papoose in the fall strapped or tied to a board on their backs, fastened with thongs made of dogwood or slippery elm bark placed around their feet and arms and hung on a limb with a southern exposure for hours at a time.  Mr. Cassin referred to this period as he played in the wilderness of forest then abounding with wild life, as the happiest days of his life."
  The above is included here for two reasons, its sense of time and place, the great wonder of an early Canadian summer, juxtaposed with the harsh realities of Ben Bowlen being found frozen by his ox and cart on the Preston Road.  The second reason the above is here is because of the Indians, the unsung Abolitionist groups of brown skinned people moving off to the sides of roads and borders, friends of the Society of Friends, a point I'll come back to at the end of the chapter.
     The Bowlens, like the Buckinghams, were among the founding members of the Guelph BME in the old wooden church in 1870, a church near the Quaker Meeting place, both on Market Street, now Waterloo Ave., on the way to the start of the Preston Road.  In 1840, Bishop Morris Brown of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (America) opened the Canadian conference in Toronto. Reverend Noah Cannon, who AME Bishop Payne later described as "The master-spirit of the Canadian Churches"  had begun to walk the Upper Canadian roads looking for congregations to tend, marry together, christen etc.
     “In the log house, on the farm now owned by Fred Crawley, lived for many years, Mr. Raeme,* with his family, formerly a Southern planter of French descent and with consider­able wealth.  He had married a mulatto.  The younger generation were for the most part coloured.  Before the Civil War, he left his country Virginia, fearing lest his family might be sold into slavery.  He sought safety in Canada.  They were refined and intelligent but never having worked knew little of farming or housekeeping.”
       *Claude Rame, is listed in the 1861 census of Puslinch, which would have been recorded in the spring, so they had been in Canada for most of 61, if not longer: Rame is a 62 year old, widowed Roman Catholic born in France in 1798, and living with four adult children, all born in the United States, William 27, Adeline, 25, Emily 22, and 17 year old 'Eugan'. In the 1871 census Claude is 74 and spelling his name the same way, so it must be the spelling he used. There is also an 1867 record that places Eugene and William Rame on lot 16 of the 4th concession of the township.
        Whether Claude's wife moved to Canada and died here, or died in Virginia is unknown at this point.
       One other group must be entered into any equation involving self-emancipated fugitives/grown up beneficiaries of 1793, and that is Quakers. If underground railroad passengers came to Guelph and surrounding townships there would be evidence of Quakers.
      “Quaker communities sprang up across the Maritimes, Québec and Upper Canada. The settlements were often isolated from the other communities. In the 1700s, the Quaker settlement in Uxbridge, Ontario was the furthest northern white community in Ontario. Up until that time, the land north of Uxbridge was virgin forest and native land. Other Quaker settlements in Ontario were formed in the Bay of Quinte, the Niagara district and Pickering.”
Canada contributed two notable agents in the Michigan branch of the Underground Railroad, Laura Smith Haviland and Elizabeth L. Comstock.
     Laura Haviland's father came to Upper Canada from eastern New York and her mother from Vermont. Haviland was born in Kitley Township, County of Leeds, Upper Canada in 1808. In 1815, the family moved further west, to Niagara County in New York State, then in 1829, most of the Quakers of Royalton Meeting in Niagara County moved yet further west to Michigan Territory. Quite likely they traveled north of Lake Erie on their way to Michigan, passing though the Quaker communities at Pelham, Norwich or Sparta. During this long west­ward migration, Laura remained within the boundaries of New York Yearly Meeting. 
      In 1858, she was joined in the work of aboli­tion by another immigrant from Canada, the English born Elizabeth L. Comstock. Comstock was a Friends minister and in the 1870s was one of those who brought the "new methods" of Midwestern Friends to New York Yearly Meeting. Comstock's formal years were spent in Union Springs, New York, where she advocated the reconciliation of Orthodox, Hicksite and Wilburite Friends.3 
     The central tenet of the Brethern/Quakers was that humanity was imbued with the Inner Light, they recognized Africans as children of God and treated everyone else that way. They were of course human and flawed, and have detractors, but from the fugitives they helped into Canada, they extracted little but generational gratitude.
     Quakers and Mennonites of 18th century Lancaster County, Pennsylvania were hard to distinguish in terms of dress. The similarities in their teachings overlapped where slavery was concerned as well as a refusal to bear arms.
      The presence of the large Mennonite community in Waterloo townships would later form a buffer for the self-emancipated trying to create lives for themselves in the Queen's Bush headwaters of the Grand from the 1830's to the 1860's. But what of Quakers, especially around Guelph, which has a stone church begun in the name of the emancipated families that made up its congregation. Surely here there should be some Quakers.
     “From the late 1790s, Quakers in Upper Canada were connected to the wider Quaker world through the organizational ties of the meetings and through the visits of Friends "traveling in the ministry." New York Yearly Meeting was concerned, for example, that Quakers and their meetings were well supplied with Quaker books. Canniff Haight's Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago, published in 1885, has a list of the library of Haight's Quaker grand­father, who died in 1829. While not a large library by modern standards -- only twenty­ six titles -- it was a well selected collection.”
      “The early Friends who came to Canada brought the Peace Testimony with them in the fibre sinew of their beings. We can read it in their Books of Discipline. The living out of peace in their lives made settlement easier and they developed quickly. Gov. Simcoe of Upper Canada promised exemption from militia duties to Quakers and other peace sects in 1792.”
     “Simcoe would have preferred to populate Upper Canada with members of the Church of England who would have been more accepting of British ideals, such as a strong military presence, however insufficient numbers of Anglicans were available. Simcoe enticed the Quakers and Mennonites to Upper Canada with promises of the benefits of British law, an abundance of land, and respect for their pacifist ideals.”
      “One location sought out by the Quaker and Mennonites was the Niagara Region. Many were landless immigrants who came from south eastern Lancaster County, Bucks County and from Sussex County, New Jersey.”
   "Some of these very early Mennonite settlers took up land along the Twenty Mile Creek. Others were granted land in Bertie Twp, Wainfleet Twp., Thorold Twp. and Pelham Twp. Quaker settlements sprang up at Black Creek and The Short Hills in Pelham Twp."
     "During the early years of the 1800's, there was a great migration of Quakers in the western United States. Twenty eight thousand Quakers moved West, mainly from the southern states. One reason for leaving the South was to get away from the culture of slavery. Of the 28,000 who left, some of the Quakers trickled North, forming colonies in Western Canada and on the Pacific Coast.(7)"
     "The settlements in Sharon, Ontario, and communities around the Town of York suffered heavy fines and property confiscation by the British as punishment for refusing to take part in the war. Twenty- five years later, during the Rebellion of Upper Canada, two Quakers did get involved with the rebel movement. Although they were against violence and wanted to try and resolve the conflict with the Family Compact through compromise, they were labeled cowards by the rebels and ridiculed for their pacifist stand. After the failure of the rebellion, the British troops rounded up those who were the ringleaders or known to have been involved in the conflict."
     "Joshua Doan and Joseph Gould, sons of two early Quaker families in Ontario, were arrested. They were the only two Quakers who played a prominent part in the rebellion, although many Quakers, tired of the persecution suffered under the British and the Family Compact, had broken with the Quaker doctrine of peace and supported the Rebels.(8)"
     And what of south Wellington County, the townships of Eramosa, Puslinch and Guelph ?
     “Vaughan Township and King Township were part of lands purchased from the Mississaugas of the New Credit in 1784, and their surveys were initiated respectively in 1793 and in 1800.”
      “Within a few years, land patents were being registered. The early settlers in both townships were comprised of the children of Loyalists as well as immigrants. In Vaughan Township, American Pennsylvania Dutch, Huguenots and Quakers predominated while in King Township, the immigrants included English, Irish, and Scotch as well as American Quakers (Armstrong,1985; Reaman, 1971).”
        “The 1793 land purchase included the lands that would become Puslinch Township in Wellington County. The War of 1812 however, disrupted the economy and halted the flow of immigrants to Ontario and it was not until after the Treaty of Ghent was signed in 1814, that there was a renewed interest in emigration from overseas, particularly the British Isles, and from the United States. Puslinch was not surveyed until 1828." 
   "The Puslinch Township settlers were the children of Loyalists, soldiers from the War of 1812, and immigrants, particularly Highlanders and Germans (Puslinch Historical Committee, 1967; Armstrong, 1985) Pulsinch Rockwood: February 1834"
       The place to find Quakers in those new townships was among the Wetharalds of Rockwood & Pulsinch and John “Quaker Howitt” of Puslinch and Guelph. The story, rearranged for the purposes of this narrative can be found in:
"Wellington Owes Its Excellence in Beef Cattle to Pioneer Importers 
     (The article following was transcribed from the Guelph  Mercury newspaper for Wednesday July 20th 1927.The writer of the article is known only by the pseudonym “Reminiscent”.)"
Wetherald and Howitt
     “In the early part of 1832, with a view of later emigrating to Canada, John Howitt, though a man of means, worked his passage to New York as the captain’s cabin boy.  On the same ship came a Mr. Wetherald, a Quaker.  Together, they travelled to Upper Canada, and after viewing several districts, they reached Guelph.   Mr. Wetherald, pleased with the rolling nature of the land, exclaimed, “Now I will go no farther; I am satisfied.” 
      Mr. Howitt also decided to make Guelph his future home, and on the advice of his nephew, Henry Orton, grandfather of the present Dr. Thomas Orton, he later purchased from John Linderman, 500 acres immediately south of Guelph, which was afterwards known as “The Grange”.  
        The Quaker was a widower named John Wetherald, a butcher, whose wife, Isabel Thistlewaite “was born 5 MAR 1781 in Carr End, Aysgarth, Yorkshire, England, and died 19 MAR 1826 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England. She married John Wetherald 21 JAN 1803 in Countersett, Aysgarth, Yorkshire, England. He was born JUL 1781, and died 5 AUG 1852 in Puslinch, Near Guelph, Ontario, Canada.”:
        In 1832, after John Wetharald sailed to Canada onboard the ship on which John Howitt was working, Howitt followed Wetherald to Puslinch and then went on to Guelph; then both went home and both returned in 1834, perhaps together with their families. John Howitt was an Anglican trending towards Methodism, the denomination in which he died, and yet his moniker in Guelph was Quaker Howitt, perhaps because his friendship with John Wetherald changed some of his beliefs.
     In February of 1834, John Wetherald, widower, settled with two of his children on a farm in Puslinch Township. His son, William, a daughter* and his two youngest sons “departed 13 months later to join their father and, once they had arrived, the children had to share in the arduous work of clearing the wilderness. William (of delicate physique) determined to become a teacher. Mostly self-taught, he read voraciously and, mainly working at night by candlelight, he spent seven years cross-referencing the Bible.”
      “At the age of 23 he (William) secured a position as a teacher in nearby Eramosa Township and seven years later, in 1850, he opened a boarding-school for boys in Rockwood, a village near Guelph.”
The Canadian Dictionary of Biography notes:
     “WETHERALD, WILLIAM, educator, Society of Friends (Quaker) preacher, and Congregational minister; b. 26 Sept. 1820 in Healaugh (near Reeth), England, son of John Wetherald and Isabel Thistlethwaite; m. 17 March 1846 Jemima Harris Balls, and they had 11 children, including Agnes Ethelwyn*; d. 21 Aug. 1898 in Banbury, England.”
     * Ethelwyn Wetherald was one of the four leading female Canadian poets at the end of the 19th century
        “William Wetherald’s mother, who died when he was five, came from a North Country Quaker family and William was sent at the age of nine to Ackworth, a Quaker school in Pontefract. He later stated that the school was formal and unsympathetic but that he “had learned how to learn.” The experience of the cold routine and the rigid system of punishment without tenderness was to influence his own more liberal, though strict, pedagogical principles.”
         “Although a ... disciplinarian...(William Wetherald's) natural sensitivity made him instantly aware of the inner needs of... “each scholar – not as a member of a class or community but as an individual”... “praying with them, not for them.” 
      “Wetherald had been active, as had other members of his family, in the Orthodox (evangelical) branch of the Society of Friends in Rockwood and “his gift in the ministry had been acknowledged” by the Pelham Monthly Meeting...”
      “In 1864 Wetherald … responded to a call to become superintendent of Haverford, a Quaker college near Philadelphia... The annual report in 1865 stated that there had been a great improvement due to the disciplinary measures instituted, but Wetherald felt that this achievement had alienated him from the students.”
He returned to Upper Canada in 1866 and settled with his family on a farm, Tall Evergreens, near Fenwick in Pelham Township...
     At the first Canada Yearly Meeting, in Pickering in 1867, he preached to an overflow crowd... “He stood in a wagon, and in his own sweet, tender manner pointed the people to the way of salvation.” ...
         In 1880, Wetherald withdrew from the Society of Friends and in April began serving as minister at the Congregational Tabernacle in St Catherines (although he was not ordained until 1 August). After a “fruitful and peaceful” ministry there, he resigned on 30 Dec. 1885 effective at the end of June.
     He then returned to the Society of Friends and on 15 Dec. 1887 at the Toronto Monthly Meeting was “acknowledged a Minister of the Gospel.” He was once again active in the Monthly Meeting and Yearly Meeting, and in his later years many came to him for counsel and sympathy. In 1898, whilst engaged in ministry in England, he died suddenly of pneumonia in Banbury, where he is buried.
The return of Quaker Howitt
     “In the centennial year of Guelph and the sixtieth year of confederation, our thoughts naturally turn backwards to the early days and events in the history of this district.
     Within a few years after John Galt broke the silence of the forest in felling the historic maple tree*, two men came across the Atlantic to Guelph, one in 1831, from Rhuabon, Denbighshire, North Wales, the other, in 1832, from Long Eaton, Derbyshire, England."
     John Galt, the Head of the Canada Company whose job it was to distribute land in Canada, founded Guelph in April 1827, and soon after wrote   "We then with surveyors and woodmen … proceeded to a superb maple tree, and I had the honour and glory of laying the axe to the root thereof, and is soon fell “beneath our sturdy strokes” with the noise of an avalanche. It was the genius of the forest unfurling its wings and departing forever. Being the king’s name-day, I called the town Guelph"...
Quaker Howitt 1830's
     "The late Rowland Wingfield and John Howitt played a large part in making Guelph and district famous for livestock breeding.  
     Wingfield established an extensive farm of 800 acres in Puslinch in 1831 and was the first man to bring purebred shorthorns into the district.  
     Unfortunately, for Wingfield’s success, an election was forthcoming, and he was induced to become a candidate for the “Gore District”, which at that time extended from south Wellington to Lake Huron, that is, including the “Queen’s Bush”.  Wingfield’s generous nature prompted him to keep open house in all the taverns of the district. However, he was defeated and financially ruined, and his personal effects were sold by auction in Guelph, even to his silk stockings and ties.  Remarks made by ladies from Guelph, Rockwood, and district, at the sale, constituted fireside gossip for many a year. He afterwards removed to Sarnia, where he resided for several years, and later returned to his native place, where in time, he became Lord Wingfield.
    It was commonly rumoured that Mr. Wingfield was a sympathizer with the cause of William Lyon MacKenzie, in 1837.
...It was fortunate for the livestock industry of Ontario when Wingfield’s valuable stock and estate were purchased by the late John Howitt, a remarkable man who continued to import and sell Shorthorn cattle and Southdown sheep.”
“Born, as we have said, in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, where his family had lived since the days of Edward IV, this second Guelph pioneer was originally of Danish descent.  In his youth, he was fond of athletic sports, but detested games of chance, pugilism, etcetera. More than once he had been the hero of swimming exploits in his native Trent.  In appearance, he was tall and erect, six feet in his stockings, muscular and virile, with dark hair and eyes.  His manner was serious and meditative.  He was well educated, independent of opinion, and a great reader and elocutionist.  He had a remarkable command of history and a retentive memory.
Howitt 1834-1836
     Howitt had “returned to England, and after arranging his business affairs there, set sail with his family for Canada, in January 1834.  He brought with him his family heirlooms and records and an extensive library, which for years was admitted to be the largest and most comprehensive in Western Canada.  
     He set about clearing the meadowland nearest Guelph, and the first table land beyond, of his new estate, intending originally to build on that spot opposite “Homewood”, the present residence of Mr. C. E. Howitt, and he constructed a bridge across the river there, which stood the storms and floods until well into the 1870’s.
           But when travelling one day through the forest, he found two fine, fresh water springs and determined to build his residence there, the spot on which “The Grange” house still stands.” It was later fire-gutted in a Christmas night blaze.
The Building of the Grange
     In 1835-36, Mr. Howitt accordingly erected a fine residence there, which included family quarters, servants’ quarters, a brew-house, conveniences and coach-house, English style; and about the same time, he built fine farm buildings, including the first banked barn, probably of Western Canada.  This work was done by Mr. Hebe, a German American. The barn was 100 feet long by 100 feet wide; the frame to the peak purline was made of squared rock elm.       
    This barn stood until last year when it was destroyed by fire.
“Lodge House Still Stands
    The house faced south with double verandahs in front and “stoop” in the rear.  The ground in front was beautified by flowers and shrubs. A road was built to the Waterloo Road opposite, with a bridge and a lodge-house at the gate.  This lodge-house still stands today.
To protect the sheep and cattle from wolves, a sheep-pen was built of cedar posts, 14 feet high, set upright, closely together and what was known as the “bull-pen” enclosed two acres in a similar manner.  The sheep pen stood intact until 1873... “
“Avoids 1840's politics
      Undoubtedly Wingfield's bankruptcy experience hadn't been lost on him.
*The united Province of Canada existed from 1841-1867, and was brought in, along with responsible government, following the recommendations in Lord Durham's report on the Rebellions of 1837-38 in Upper and Lower Canada. Canada West and Canada East had legislatures in the days of Baldwin and LaFontaine. Quaker Howitt lived the life of an eccentric Anglican Divine, who took up his mother's Methodist beliefs, his breed stock, and traces of John and William Wetharld's Friendship in the non de plume by which he lived.
2nd Marriage Witnessed by Henry Orton
     Margaret Murray was born on October 8, 1811.. married by Rev. Thomas Fawcett on February 22, 1844 and was the second wife of John "Quaker" witnessed by Henry Orton and William Richardson
Dr. Henry Orton 1802 - 1869... "a pioneer" 
    Dr. Henry Orton was born 1802 at Kegworth, Leicestershire, England and died in Fergus on March 30, 1869.
         He was the son of a doctor and in the 1830's settled in the Paisley Block. 1834 bought farm but in 1835 moved into the village of Guelph to start his medical practice.
          He served in many public capacities in Guelph and was without a doubt the best known of all the early physicians of this district. 1832-34 was part of group responsible for the organizing of the Methodist's in Guelph,* In 1837 he was listed as a Physician,and in 1847 a Mill owner with Dr. William Clarke called Wellington Mills which was burned by arsonists
       Which is all to say that an old Methodist friend, Dr Henry Orton, from his earliest days in Canada, witnessed Quaker Howitt's second marriage, and also helped organized Methodism in Guelph from 1820 on, the group that brought Samuel Fear and established the Methodist community into which the wooden British Methodist Episcopal church was built on Market Street in 1870. The Quaker Meeting place was also said to have been on Market Street.
     "I remember Brother Fear and myself arriving together at Guelph on the 1st of June 1836...to see what he could find in the wilderness. On his arrival he found a little Society, principally British, organized, happy and prosperous, without the aid of the ordained ministry. I cannot remember all the particulars of those primitive days, but I hope Brother Fear will be able to supply my lack."
      According to Samuel Fear
 "We arrived in Guelph in June 1836. I opened my commission first Sabbath, with Psalm cxviii 25. Prayer having been offered on both sides of the Atlantic, on the foaming deep. We saw answers of prayer in the power and goodness of God, and evidences of the working of Satan, too palpable to be mistaken. Yea, an infidel would believe could he see as we did.
HOWITT MEMORIAL CHURCH
      The history of Howitt Memorial Church is courtesy of Lyla Hayden whose mother, the late Mrs. George Lewis (Nee Heath), wrote this history of Howitt Memorial Church. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~methodists/howittchurch.htm
       It was demolished in 1983, because it had been abandoned in 1929, and left to vandals and ruin, but the Howitt Memorial had stood “at the corner of lot 10, concession 5 in Puslinch... a little country church, then known as Howitt Memorial. A few yards to the west of this building was where the first little church stood.”
This church,built in 1845,
     “was on the property of John Howitt, and was built of logs boarded over on the outside. It had a cottage roof and two windows on each side, while the seats inside were plain, hard, straight-back seats.”
“This was a Methodist church and known as Kirkland Church, to some, it was known as Kirkland's Apportionment.”
     “West and south of the church is a little cemetery of about one acres... that was first used as a community burying ground in the late 1850's...”
     “When John Howitt provided a deed to "...Thomas Ellis, Edward Ellis of Puslinch Twp. and William Ellis of Waterloo Twp. all being members of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada in connection with the English Conference..." deed dated 1 day of August 1868. This cemetery was to serve the "Kirkland Congregation" which had been established during the 1840's as a site for a church building as well as a burying ground.”
      “This church served the community for forty years. Then it was deemed necessary to build a new one. The new church was built of stone, donated by and taken off the farm of Alfred Howitt. Day after day, men laboured with their teams and wagons, breaking and hauling the stone. The appointment at that time was on the Hespeler circuit and the minister was Rev. Robert Coe Henders. He donned his working clothes and came on horseback from Hespeler to work side by side with the men of his congregation.”
     “A meeting was called to decide on a name for the new church. Alfred Howitt's suggestion that it be called Memorial Church, in memory of those gone before was adopted.”
     “ An extra large stone was chosen to be placed directly over the door and the name was to be put on it. However, in putting it up, the stone was broken. In its place was put a plain white slab, and on it written "Memorial Church". In later years sometime between 1902 and 1907, the name was changed to "Howitt Memorial" and it remains that...
     “ Among the names of the congregation in those days you would find Salt, Evans, Metcalf, Smith, Howitt, Ireland, Rudel, Heath, Eagle and Thompson. The Rudels...were Presbyterians...
1850's Guelph -Fugitive Slave Act – Destruction of the Grange
Life was good for Quaker Howitt at the start of the 1850's, he was the kind of man who cannot have been unmoved by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, a man who's lands on the Speed river shore had seen more than one fugitive slave on their way up river, or down river to elsewhere. Never an actual Quaker, he needed no more than his own conscience and John Wesley's Thoughts on Slavery to negotiate his decades in a township and town through which fugitive African Americans had come and gone in ever increasing numbers from the 1830's on. While his presence in the writings of others has been noted, there seems to be a conspicuous absence of his work online. Quaker Howitt is an easy search. A man of papers and books and travels, you'd think he'd have at least left files for eventual archiving. It is clear, in fact that that had been his intention, until
“The Grange” Destroyed
     "At three o’clock Christmas morning 1853, a neighbour noticed flames and smoke issuing from the roof of “The Grange”. Knowing Mr. Howitt’s disbelief in locks, he was able to rush through the French windows of his bedroom and roused him with difficulty, half suffocated as he was by smoke.  Mr. Howitt leaped up the burning stairs to save two of his children, and coming back, had to jump over the banister, striking the floor just as the stairs fell behind him into the cellar.
    "In this fire, everything in the house was burned excepting a bureau, a gun and a silver mug. Mr. Howitt lost his heirlooms, his records, and his library.  The family and servants escaped to a neighbour’s in their night clothes."
     "The mental shock of this harrowing experience was one from which Mr. Howitt never afterwards fully recovered.   His public activities ceased.  He became diffident and had little intercourse afterwards with any but his own family and a few friends, but he always remained just and kind. 
Later, the historic Shorthorns were sold to Mr. Frederick William Stone.
     Margaret Murray Howwitt died on February 19, 1863 and was buried at the Howitt Chapel.
       John Howitt died at “The Grange” on the 29th of March 1881, within a few days of his seventy-sixth year.
Poet, cattle breeder, Methodist minister and journalist, traces of Quaker Howitt  can still be found, snippets like The... picturesque narratives of Quaker Howitt, who has just published a second volume on the battlefields, monuments and antiquities of England, recently visited by him, share the popular success with Baillie's correspondence. Howitt's wife is a poet, he himself turns into quite pleasantly. In some very elegant stanzas addressed to Mrs. Howitt, and he praised his nomadic life:
     "Oh! the beautiful life, my dear wife, my beloved, and when I travel alone on the foam and the hill country of the North!
     "Do not think that I rise with the sun! Not. I let it come and climb into the sky, where the lark soon followed him and replied, and soon played the blackbird, twirling the tip of the wing drop waterfall.
     Of all that can be said about Quaker Howitt; and of John and William Wetherald and the underground railroad in Guelph, Puslinch and Eramosa townships, is that a Quaker Methodist relationship existed, both denominations were institutionally involved in aiding and abetting escapees from American property owners. Back in 1832, the African Methodist Episcopalians had started developing relationships in the province when they sent Reverend Jeremiah Miller to find out what he could about who was in Upper Canada and what was needed using the white Methdoist Epsicopal Church of Canada as its chief aid. Between the 1830's and the 1850's fifteen hundred escapees holed up in the Queen's Bush, after 1840 many could walk the new road from Guelph to Arthur.
Did they do so with the help of Local Quakers and Quaker Howitt? Did they do so with the help of local indigenous peoples on their hunting and gathering travels.
    Part of the answer can be glimpsed in that entry on Indians in The Annals of Puslinch mentioned above.
   " Martin Cassin was 7 years old when he arrived...and he states that he could remember when the Indians would camp in the district and that he had seen as many as 65 deer lying dead in their camps on their return from a hunting tour."
     In the Fall 1995 issue of Canadian Quaker History Journal No. 58, is the following: Address to the Canadian Friends Historical Association Annual Meeting, Sparta, Ontario, October 28, 1995. 
Migrating Quakers, Fugitive Slaves and Indians: 
The Quaker Ties of New York and Upper Canada 
Christopher Densmore 
     "Lorenzo Mabbett, from Collins Center, in southern Erie County, New York, was another Quaker conductor on the URR.
In 1849, he wrote to the North Star, about some of his own guests who had to cut short their stay in New York State.
A few hours since Anna G. Mabbett was seen upon one of our back roads with a horse and wagon containing besides herself a fugitive slave and his wife, all in women's attire. The slave was about to commence school on the Reservation with the Indians, when his friends learned that the base ministers of Slaveocracy were on his track and close upon him ... 4"
    'These accounts are intriguing, but also point out how little we know about the mechanism of the Underground Railroad. Canada is so unspecific as a destination."
     "The Mabbett account also mentions the fugitive intending to attend school on the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation. It is quite possible that the school was the one sponsored by Genesee and New York Yearly Meeting (Hick site) and taught by Friend Griffith M. Cooper." 
     "The juxtapo­sition of Quakers, Indians, fugitive slaves and Indians in Mabbett's letter seems inci­dental, but also occurs in a letter written by Philadelphia Friend Lucretia Mon to the Liberator in 1848. This letter includes in almost equal portions descriptions of her visits with "self-emancipated slaves" in Buffalo, Detroit, Chatham, Dawn, London, and Toronto, and of her visit, as part of the Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, to the Seneca Indians at the Cattaraugus Reservation."
    "Quakers from New York and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings worked with the Senecas in New York State from the 1790s onward. An intriguing result of this Quaker effort came in June 1812. Major John Norton, at a council held at Grand River, was attempting to enlist Iroquois support for the coming war between the United States and Great Britain. During this council, two of the "most respectable" of the Seneca chiefs approached Norton stated their intentions to stay out of the coming conflict."
    "Seeing therefore, that no good can be derived from War, we think we should only seek the surest means of averting its attendant Evils: -- We are of the opinion that we should follow the example of some of their people [the Quakers], who never bear arms in war, & deprecate the principles of hostility.6"
     "The Quakers as allies of the British is the theme of a very curious piece of documenta­tion that I encountered while working on this paper. The document is a print, first published during the War of 1812, and then reissued in New York during the Canada Rebellion. The title is "British Warfare in 1812, 1837-38." On the left side of the print is the depiction of a British soldier offering rum to an Indian in return for scalps; on the right side, a British officer encourages a slave to set fire to a building. The print is made relevant to the Upper Canada Rebellion by the depiction in the background of the burning of the "Caroline."*  In the center of the print is the figure of a Quaker inciting a slave to arson by means of a document labeled "Liberty for Negroes." 
      *The Caroline was a steamer used by the rebels during the Rebellion of 1837 , the burning of which was connected to the presence of a "Colored Corps" of black volunteers.
        Christopher Densmore concludes his paper by noting,  “We know a little bit about Quakers in New York and Upper Canada, and a little bit about Quakers and abolition, and a little bit about Quakers and Indians, but we do not fully understand all of the connec­tions or the implications of those connec­tions. There is much work to be done.” 
    The same could be said for the same field of research in Guelph.





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