Even though Lazarus David had not lived long enough to see the building completed, he had the unique distinction of being the first Jew in Canada to be interred in the cemetery.19
Fortunately, the widow Phoebe David was made of stern stuff. While raising five children, she took over the family assets, managed the mercantile business, and carried out her late husband’s wishes. As she reported to Governor General Frederick Haldimand in 1780, it was a struggle to maintain five children “out of the profits of a small shop, her only support.” Shortly before her death, a visiting British merchant took tea with her and was charmed by “a very sensible clever old woman” who was “very entertaining in her conversation.” Shown the synagogue by one of her sons, the visitor reported that it was “a very neat one for so small a congregation.”20 Phoebe David died on October 10, 1786.21 David became the head of the family business with brother Samuel as a partner. Moses was in charge of buying furs from the Indians. That he proved his skills many times over was borne out by the fact that he had established a reputation for his ability to procure and select the finest pelts at the best possible prices for the entire Montreal market.
Moses David: Pioneer Loyalist, Merchant, and Equal Rights Advocate
Moses was acting as the family’s representative in the Detroit area as early as 1790.22 In 1793, an early Detroit trader, Thomas Dugan, complained to Colonel Alex McKee, the British Indian Agent,23 that Moses David, “another cheap shop adventurer, the same that was here three years ago [1790], is arrived with a Cargo, it appears that he and his competitor Mr. Pattison, are fully resolved to undersell all the other traders of this place.”24 The charge against Moses as a “cheap shop adventurer” suggests that he was not a permanent resident who was part of the community with established premises, and strengthens the notion that Moses was not yet committed to Detroit as a permanent location for his entrepreneurial activities. It is interesting to note that nothing further is heard of the complainant, while David and Pattison become major figures in the region.
By 1793–94, the region was about to undergo a fundamental transformation.25 For years after the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution, the British remained in the border posts in United States territory, using the excuse of unresolved debts and obligations to their native allies. Another outcome of the Revolution was the Loyalist migrations to Quebec fostering settlement and growth and the decision in 1791 to divide British North America into provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Loyalist settlers required provisions and services, which stimulated demand for merchant expertise in the Niagara and Detroit regions. With the Americans developing a military capable of enforcing their boundary pretensions and preoccupied with Revolutionary France on the Continent, Britain in 1794 decided to regularize relations with the new republic.
Jay’s Treaty and the establishment of the international boundary committed British subjects and military forces to relocating to the Canadian side of the boundary. In preparation for handing over Detroit to the Americans in 1796, the Settlement of L’Assomption (later Sandwich) was chosen as the temporary seat of government for the Western District of Upper Canada and land opposite the Island of Bois Blanc (later Amherstburg), because of its strategic position commanding the entrance to the river, was selected as the place where the military post and naval station would be established. The Indian Department also set up its headquarters there. It was assumed that Amherstburg would become the dominant urban centre on this Upper Canadian frontier.26
Since the end of the Revolutionary War, a number of British adherents living in the town of Detroit crossed over and settled on what is now the Canadian side of the river. This was mostly in the Township of Malden near the fort, in the section of Petite Côte north of La Rivière aux Dindes where the original French settlement had started in 1749 or in the New Settlement on Lake Erie. Earlier French settlement, later reinforced by Loyalist grants, resulted in most of the riverfront from the mouth of the river to Lake St. Clair being occupied. British residents who stayed in Detroit in 1796 were given one year to make a declaration of their intention to remain British subjects living in American Territory, or they would be considered American citizens. A number of British subjects made the declaration — enough to alarm the new American officials in Detroit — but many others moved across the river, preferring to live under the British flag. This group included merchants and government officials who contributed much to the development of the business, social, and cultural life of the area.27
Moses David may have anticipated this move as early as 1793–94. The Godfreys suggest that Moses David had already chosen the Canadian side of the boundary when he accompanied the militia force that stopped the American forces under General Wayne at Fort Miami near Detroit. They place him as a merchant in Sandwich as early as 1794 and credit him with having built one of its first residences.28 Whether Moses had already made up his mind to locate his enterprise on the Canadian side of the river, he was an active trader in the Detroit area and volunteered for Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s Upper Canadian militia during the 1796 war scare.
Sandwich
Merchants still closely tied to Detroit found the military settlement at Amherstburg too far from the centre of economic activity in the area. For the convenience of these citizens, in the summer of 1797, the Honourable Peter Russell, president of the Executive Council of Upper Canada, bought the reserve at the Huron Church containing 1,078 acres on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. It was a barren sandy plain, a gore, that stretched along the river from Rivière à Gervais to the Huron Church. An area of sixty-one acres along the river near the church was reserved for the use of the Huron Indians. The grant also included improved lands of Wm. Hands and Thomas Pajot that had already been alienated from the Indians through private deals.29 June 1797 was the deadline for British subjects to declare whether they would remain British or become Americans. The British could lose them to the American side if there was not an equally convenient place for business provided on the British side of the river. Part of the purchase was divided into one-acre lots for settlement; three streets were laid out parallel to the river — Peter, Russell, and Bedford — and cross streets were established from Detroit Street to South Street — Mill, Huron (Brock), and Chippewa. At the corner of Bedford and Huron (Brock), the four corner lots were reserved for public use.30 Eventually, a military barracks, a courthouse, and St. John’s Anglican Church and burial ground graced this community centre.
A drawing of lots in Sandwich was held July 7, 1797. To encourage building in the new town, Russell directed that those settlers who built the first houses should be given park lots of twenty-four acres to the rear of the town site. The first four to receive this bounty were John McGregor, Robert Innis, Wm. Park, and Richard Pattison, Moses David’s old competitor, who had built houses.31 Russell rather over-optimistically reported to Lieutenant Governor Simcoe that several houses had already built there and expressed hope that, “it promises to become soon the most beautiful town in the province.”32 Moses David had not applied for a town lot in Sandwich in the first instance, probably because he was not yet perceived as a permanent resident of the area. He did not fit the Governor General’s categories of “former inhabitants of Detroit” nor “Merchants who seated themselves with the Fort at Amherstburg on the first evacuation of Detroit.”33 Moses did have, however, sufficient presence and military experience and merit to apply for a two-hundred-acre crown grant in 1797. Surprisingly, he was refused on the cause that he was tied to the Lower Province and not sufficiently rooted in Upper Canada to be awarded land. A deeper and more insidious explanation emerged in the aftermath of his rejection when Chief Justice Elmsley issued his opinion that Jews could not be granted Crown lands in Upper Canada. Apparently, Moses David took Elmsley’s decision seriously because he travelled to Lower Canada and in March 1799 applied for a 2,000-acre grant on the basis of his military service. David was refused a second time in December 1799, his application denied as “too late under present instructions.”34
Moses David had been turned down for government land grants in both provinces, not
