Richard money, and he was also in debt to the prominent merchants the McGill Brothers of Montreal. The McGills had business connections to Richard Cartwright, and Richard was urging James to pay them off. At some point Richard even took over some of James’s debt to the McGills, on top of what James already owed him.
In 1801, James mortgaged his farm in St. Davids to Richard so that his creditors could be paid. That same year Laura appeared before a judge in Niagara, signing away her “claim of dower” on any of their property.
Sometime after Harriet’s birth in 1803, James thought he could see better times ahead, and he moved his family into their new house in Queenston. The white frame house of one and a half storeys with two small rooms upstairs sat below the escarpment that rose above the village to Queenston Heights.
That first winter in Queenston was long and very cold. Many days it was impossible for the residents of the town to leave their homes. Laura would have been thankful that she’d had the foresight to dry the berries she’d picked the previous summer, along with some of the garden vegetables and the peaches and apples from the orchards in St. Davids. She was fortunate to live in the best fruit-growing area in Upper Canada, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, between the Niagara River and the head of the lake. The first settlers to the region, the Loyalists, had planted cuttings they’d brought from the fruit trees they had left behind in the Mohawk Valley and Pennsylvania.
Tucked away in the kitchen dresser, the seeds Laura had saved from last year’s beans, squash, and corn would be the genesis of her new garden in Queenston in the spring. For now, she and her three little daughters could only stare out at the snow piling up in the yard.
Soon, two more babies would join the family — the couple’s only son, Charles Badeau, was born in 1809, and a fourth daughter, Appolonia (Appy), arrived in 1810.
James was now a wholesaler in flour, potash, and other goods. In 1810, when his business needed an infusion of cash, he and Laura sold 228 acres of land in Nelson (now Burlington), part of her inheritance from her father.
As the years passed, James’s business picked up. With Britain and Napoleonic France again at war, his main concern was that the sea lanes stay open so that he could get his supplies from England.
Laura had always admired her husband’s optimism, the way he kept his spirits up, sure of better days ahead. She knew they might never be out of debt, but life was good. Their five children were healthy, happy youngsters, and she and James loved each other. Years later, their daughter Harriet wrote that her parents had always been “most devoted to each other and lived in the closest mutual affection.”
The Secords’ lives weren’t without sorrow, but they had much to be thankful for. Laura’s beloved sisters had all married, although Elizabeth, who had married Reverend Daniel Pickett in 1806, had died in 1811. Mira was married to Julius Hitchcock, and the family had received the good news that little Abigail, the sister who had been adopted by the Nashes, had married Guy Woodsworth in 1804 and had moved with him to Vermont.
Early in 1812, Laura received word from Port Credit that her father, Thomas Ingersoll, had had a stroke and was asking for her. She hurried to his bedside as quickly as possible and he died the following day.
By 1812, James Secord was able to write in a letter that he was “in easy circumstances.” His house was modest but comfortable. He and Laura had two black servants, and James had managed to pick up several pieces of property that he hoped to sell at a profit.
Back in 1792, when John Graves Simcoe arrived as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, there had been seven hundred blacks living in the province. Most of them had been slaves who had arrived after the American War of Independence as spoils of war, or those that had belonged to the Loyalists.
Simcoe’s Act Against Slavery, passed July 7, 1793, had banned further importation of slaves and granted gradual emancipation to those born in the province. It did not abolish slavery altogether, which is what Simcoe had desired, but it was, however, the first act to limit slavery in the British Empire.
It was not uncommon in Upper Canada for successful merchants like James Secord to have black servants. He and Laura had two: a girl named Fan (or Floss) and a man whose name was Bob. They were no longer slaves, but rather paid employees, and they were treated with respect by everyone in the family.
After her years in St. Davids, where several of her neighbours were also her in-laws, Laura was now less shy than she had been. She had become part of the social life in the busy town of Queenston, attending Sunday church services, taking part in spinning and sewing circles, visiting friends, and chatting over afternoon tea.
When Simcoe arrived in 1792, British troops still occupied the forts at Michilimackinac, Detroit, Oswego, and Niagara — that refuge of Loyalists and Indians from the American War of Independence. These old wooden forts, many of them in a state of disrepair, were on the American side of the frontier that had been set by the Treaty of Paris in 1783. By rights, the British should have returned them. Britain argued that the Americans themselves had not fulfilled all the terms of the treaty, but because she was again at war with France, Britain was not eager to get into another war with the Americans over the issue.
The Jay Treaty in 1794 provided for the British to leave the forts by June 1, 1796. When that day came, the British troops moved back across the lakes and rivers and the American troops took over.
In 1806, James Monroe, former American ambassador to France and, at the time, minister to the Court of St. James, negotiated a treaty with Britain to replace the Jay Treaty. The American president, Thomas Jefferson, rejected it in 1807 because it contained no ban on Britain’s infuriating practice of conscripting American sailors, referred to as “impressment.”
Britain had found that it was losing sailors when they jumped ship upon docking in the United States. Consequently, Britain declared its right to stop and search neutral American ships at sea for deserters and to conscript sailors, even though they might be American citizens.
Some politicians in Washington wanted Britain out of North America altogether and the whole of the Great Lakes region brought under the American flag. Although the northern states didn’t want war with Canada, the “war hawks” in Congress demanded that President James Madison, who had succeeded Jefferson, declare war.
There would be no need to fight the war in England; Canada was right there for the taking. With Britain occupied in Europe in the war with France, it should be an easy victory. There were 7.5 million Americans and a trained army of thirty-five thousand, compared to only half a million British subjects in Canada. And one-fifth of those were “late Loyalists,” who could go either way. At best, the Canadas had five thousand British soldiers and possibly four thousand militia. Arms, too, were in short supply.
By the summer of 1811 the crisis had reached the boiling point. Citizens in the United States were talking openly about annexing Canada, and there were some Canadians who welcomed the idea.
Perhaps, while she sat sewing with her friends or visiting the shops in Queenston, Laura heard such rumblings from those in the community who were American sympathizers. Certainly everyone was talking about the possibility of an American invasion. It seemed only a question of when.
The Loyalist militia in the Niagara Peninsula had begun to drill. Another war was on her doorstep, and before it was over, Laura’s whole life would be changed.
4
Isaac Brock and the Battle of Queenston Heights
