on the rise above.Courtesy of Cosmo Condina.
Chapter 6
The First Butler’s Rangers’ Barracks
By late summer 1778 Fort Niagara had become dangerously overcrowded. In addition to the regular garrison there were hundreds of Butler’s Rangers, some with families, who would need to winter over, as well as desperate loyalist refugees including Six Nations allies streaming in from the Mohawk Valley. Moreover, with Ranger pay slightly higher than that of regular British soldiers, the potential for dissension among the men had to be avoided.[1]
John Butler, artist Henry Oakley, oil on board, 1834. Butler (1728–1796) raised and commanded the Butler’s Rangers Corps until it was disbanded in 1784. At Niagara he served as office holder, judge, Indian Department agent, member of the Land Board, and church warden. Courtesy of the Niagara Historical Society and Museum, # 988.194.
Private, Butler’s Ranger, 1780–82, artist Don Troiani. Butler’s Rangers researcher and re-enactor Calvin Arnt has concluded the military coat worn by the Rangers was forest green with white facing. Headgear may have been cocked “hatts [sic]” (turned down in this illustration) or the simpler caps.
Courtesy of www.historicalartprints.com.
Before winter set in Major John Butler received permission to erect a barracks for his officers and men across the river.[2] It is not clear why the site (now occupied by Chateau Gardens and Queen’s Landing) was chosen. Although situated on the edge of the embankment it was not opposite Fort Niagara. In fact, only two years later Fort Niagara’s new commandant complained, “[t]here certainly could not be found a more improper spot for the Barracks of the Rangers.”[3] He felt from a defensive standpoint, Point Mississauga would have been a far more logical site. Historian E.A. Cruikshank[4] hypothesized the availability of oak logs nearby influenced the decision; in fact at least some of “the timbers” were floated across the river.[5] Perhaps its proximity to the already established Navy Hall, much more protected from the prevailing winds than windswept Point Mississauga, was a deciding factor. Moreover, these log barracks were considered only temporary accommodation.
Plan of Fort Niagara, artist John Luke, sketch on paper, 1779–1782. This only known surviving plan of the Rangers’ Barracks was drawn by an American spy, John Luke. The upper portion shows a primitive rendering of the Rangers’ Barracks consisting of two “Rangers Houses” and several small huts.
Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, John Bradstreet Papers MSS. B Box 2, Folder 8,BIB 1D Mss 271268.
Butler was ill, so his capable son, Captain Walter Butler,[6] actually supervised intermittently the construction — much of the basic work was performed by the Rangers themselves, supplemented by more experienced artificers and masons.[7] Meanwhile, the Rangers were quartered in tents until they could actually start to move into the new barracks in late January. The barracks were actually part of a complex consisting of two long buildings configured in an L shape. The smaller building was at a right angle to the river, with several small log houses, possibly for married rangers, within the hollow of the L. The total cost of construction was almost £2,500, half of which was itemized for rum to fortify the Rangers and other workmen during construction.[8]
Later in 1779 another building was erected as a hospital for sick and wounded Rangers.[9] This hospital was the first in the Niagara Peninsula and the earliest purpose-built hospital in what is now Ontario. In the mid-nineteenth century, a buried tombstone was found in present St. Mark’s cemetery for “Lenerd Blanck.” Ranger Blanck, whose actual name was Planck, had been wounded at Sandusky in the Ohio Valley in June 1782 and was probably brought to the hospital at Niagara where he succumbed to his wounds. He may well have been the first European to be buried in that portion of the military reserve later designated as hallowed land, just north of the Rangers’ barracks complex.[10] Interestingly, the house of surgeon Robert Guthrie of the Butler’s Rangers was situated just north of the burying ground.[11]
More buildings were added to the complex, including a barracks “for the Savages,”[12] probably the Indian Department’s personnel, and for the storage of their trade goods. The Indian Department would maintain a presence at Butler’s Barracks[13] until its purchase of Peter Russell’s house on the Military Reserve in the late 1790s. With the Butler’s Rangers officially disbanded in 1784 and the men and their families eventually dispersed to their new land grants, rental space in the complex became available. In 1790, meetings of the influential Land Board were held in the home of clerk Walter Butler Sheehan “in the Rangers’ Barracks.”[14] Sometime schoolteacher and land agent Francis Goring also lived in the barracks for a while.[15]
Just as the log buildings had been erected quickly using green wood they also deteriorated rapidly.[16] When Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe arrived in the summer of 1792 he ordered that at least one building in the complex be thoroughly repaired “for the Legislature of the Country”[17] with the addition of two wings.[18] One chamber served as the House of Assembly, and presumably the other wing accommodated the legislative council. Renovations of Butler’s Barracks were incomplete when the first session of the first parliament of Upper Canada was opened on September 17, and hence the first session was held in nearby Freemasons’ Hall on present King Street, facing the Commons. However, sessions two to five were in fact held at the refurbished Butler’s Rangers complex, where many of the formative laws and legislation of Upper Canada were enacted. The legislative chambers were also used by the Church of England for divine services[19] and probably for occasional indoor Indian Council meetings.
With the heightened threat of war with the United States in 1794 and the future Fort George still just a concept outlined by Royal Engineers’ stakes in the turf of the Military Reserve, Simcoe ordered at least one of the log buildings in the complex be used as a barracks for the mustered militia[20] and proposed that if the “Heights at Butler’s Barracks” were fortified with Carronades, an attack by the Americans and Natives would be “frustrated.”[21] In essence, the fortified Butler’s Barracks complex was very much the precursor of Fort George.
After the capital of Upper Canada was moved to York, the local militia continued to use the complex as did the Indian Department. The battery became less important with the building of Fort George to the south. In a 1799 list of “Public Property” at Niagara, the reference to Butler’s Barracks states simply, “This House was since burnt.”[22] However, apparently not all the buildings had been destroyed.
Niagara, 1790. This map shows the waterfront from the Navy Hall Complex (A) on the left with an area behind marked “reservation for a Fort” (B). Part way along a building is identified as the Rangers’ Barracks (C). Towards the lake, a fortification is indicated at Mississauga Point (D). The small building (E) is probably the site of Widow Murray’s farm. Library and Archives Canada, NMC 17879.
It was already uncomfortably hot and humid at daybreak when a twenty-one-year-old regimental assistant surgeon, Dr. William “Tiger” Dunlop, stepped ashore at the ruinous Navy Hall wharf in July 1814. He and fellow officers of the 89th Regiment of Foot had sailed all night from York after a gruelling ride by horseback from Kingston. He was soon informed that a horrific all-night battle near Lundy’s Lane had just been fought and that soon wagons carrying the wounded would be arriving. He later recalled:
Accordingly,
