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A History of Canadian Yearly Meeting
Friends and Peace: Quaker Pacifist
Influence in Ontario to the Early 20th Century
by Lise Hansen
Friends in the Niagara Peninsula 1786-1802
by Richard MacMaster
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Friends in the Niagara Peninsula, 1786-1802
By Richard MacMaster
Friends began settling in the Niagara region in 1786. They were
part of a larger migration "from the states of New York, Pennsylvania,
and New Jersey, particularly the county of Sussex, in the latter
state".(1) Many incoming settlers, including some Friends, had stood
loyally by King and country during the American Revolution and could
be counted as refugees from the United States. Nearly all Friends
who came to Niagara had taken no active part in the war and did
not claim to be Loyalists. They had suffered nevertheless from double
taxation and the loss of civil rights for their refusal to bear
arms or pledge to defend the new nation. These penalties continued
after the war. In 1778 Quakers in Chester County "in behalf of themselves
and others in similar circumstances" petitioned the Supreme Executive
Council of Pennsylvania for relief stating that "being conscientiously
scrupulous of bearing arms, they have been fined in considerable
sums for not attending militia musters" and their property seized
by local collectors who gave no receipts so "the petitioners are
still chargeable with the same fines." In urging repeal of "the
present disgraceful test law" in 1789, the editor of the Pennsylvania
Gazette observed that: Virginia, and the governor of Canada, have
already taken advantage of our folly; they invite Quakers, and other
sects who are opposed to oaths, and promises of fidelity to government
to come and settle among them.(2)
Other patterns can be seen in this Quaker migration. It originated
in a small number of Quaker communities that had exceptionally close
ties with one another. Friends who settled in the Niagara peninsula
came from southeastern Lancaster County and eastern Bucks County
and from Sussex County, New Jersey. Mennonites, Baptists, Presbyterians,
Lutherans and Anglicans also came to Niagara from these same places.
During the American Revolution this had been the safest route for
British prisoners escaping from internment camps to reach their
own lines at New York. Sergeant Roger Lamb, for instance, recorded
in his journal how "our worthy friends the Quakers" helped him and
his companions across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Quite a few settlers
in Ontario had sheltered these fugitives and some had suffered for
it.
Friends in other parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey sent few or
no members at all to Ontario. Friends moving to Shenandoah Valley
of Virginia in these same years did not come from meetings in Bucks
County or Sussex County. Of 84 Quaker migrants from Pennsylvania
who brought certificates of membership to Hopewell Monthly Meeting
in 1786-1797, Chester County meetings accounted for 52 individuals
and families with certificates. Sadsbury Monthly Meeting in southeastern
Lancaster County sent 15 certificates, two meetings in York County
sent 10, Exeter Meeting in Berks County sent 4, meetings in Montgomery
County sent 3, and Philadelphia only 2. Since the wartime experience
of Pennsylvania Friends was much the same, with no regional differences
in the enforcement of state laws, these different sources of Quaker
migration to Ontario and Virginia are striking. Only Sadsbury sent
members to both Niagara and the Shenandoah Valley. In this case
Friends reflected a broader migration pattern.(3)
The pattern was already an old one. In the eighteenth century some
l,260 southeastern Pennsylvania Friends followed the Philadelphia
Wagon Road to cheaper, but equally fertile, land in Virginia. "The
migration accelerated dramatically in the 1760's, when 291 Quakers
moved south," the majority of them with children. Land was no longer
available for more than one or two sons of Chester County farmers,
but the general prosperity of the region provided other alternatives
to migration, as Duane Ball demonstrated. In his study of Chester
County Friends, Barry Levy showed the degree to which they were
able "to diversify their children." They had some more investments,
rented more land, and followed a wider variety of occupations than
their parents had. Bucks County Friends used the same strategies.
They combined farming and a trade and set their sons up as blacksmiths
and wheelwrights and in every other honorable occupation. Migration
also relieved pressure on a now limited supply of land. This migration
was also at full tide in the 1760s. Fifty Quaker families moved
to Virginia. Friends in Bucks County also crossed the Delaware to
settle first at Kingwood in Hunterdon County, New Jersey and later
to establish a daughter colony at Hardwick in Sussex County.
Movement to new lands on the frontier again began in earnest in
the late 1780s as the economy revived in Pennsylvania after a period
of severe depression. With farm prices improving, tenants and small
land owners could afford to move. As Professor James T. Lemon noted
in his classic study of southeastern Pennsylvania:
Even Quakers and Mennonites, after two or three decades during which
their holdings did not expand, felt the pressure and established
new colonies elsewhere. In the more expansive early 1790s movement
was considerable.(4)
As land grew scarcer and land values soared in long-settled areas
of eastern Pennsylvania, sons of large Quaker families would have
to subdivide their father's farm, move away or choose another occupation
than farming. Subdividing a small farm made no sense. Economic diversification
and migration to other settlements of Friends worked as ways to
preserve the Quaker community so long as the individual sought counsel
from the meeting in making a change and did not go off on his own
"in a disorderly manner." The experience of one Bucks County Quaker
family can illustrate some pressures on the meeting.
John Gillam, who came to Ontario, a landless, unmarried young man,
was one of eight sons of Lucas and Ann Dungan Gillam of Middletown
Township in Bucks County. His father ranked among the less prosperous
farmers and paid taxes on 117 acres in 1782. One son Simon, who
married in 1783, lived on his father's farm and eventually inherited
it. Other sons appear on tax lists from 1785 through 1791 as landless
or as tenant farmers, paying taxes only on a horse or a cow. Middletown
Monthly Meeting disowned all of Lucas Gillam's sons except Simon
and Joshua. Joshua was too young to be challenged by military service
in the American Revolution. His brother Simon's losses by distraint
for muster and substitute fines were reported to the Meeting for
Suffering of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, but Lucas Jr. "left in
a disorderly manner and joined a military body" in 1778. He was
a Loyalist. Militia fines bore heavily on poor young men and distant
places appealed to those with few prospects at home. Joseph "eft
his master and these parts" in 1781 as an apprentice or hired man.
He later went to Ontario, according to family tradition. James and
John mustered with the militia in peacetime in 1786. Thomas "left
these parts as a soldier" in 1794 and joined his brother in Niagara
a year later. The other Gillam brother, Jeremiah, married a wife
who was not a Quaker. Daughters of the family all remained Friends;
the eldest moved with her husband to Sadsbury Monthly Meeting in
Lancaster County in 1787.(5)
Establishing new communities evidently ranked high in the priorities
of Friends who came to Niagara. Nearly all of them chose to settle
in a compact Quaker rural neighbourhood; only a few selected lands
in isolation from other Friends. They came to Niagara in extended
families, so the religious community had a strong family base. Quite
a few unmarried young men migrated, but usually in company with
older parents, married sisters and brothers. There were not many
isolated individuals among the Friends or any of the other migrants.
The typical Quaker settler in Ontario belonged to a network of more-or-less
closely related families who had moved at least once in the Colonies
before coming to Upper Canada. The settler's immediate family included
a United Empire Loyalist, usually a brother or brother-in-law disowned
for taking up arms in the King's defence. Some Quaker settlers sold
a profitable farm or mill before leaving for Ontario, but the typical
Quaker migrant owned insufficient land for profitable farming and
many were landless or farmed someone else's acres as a tenant. Movement
to the Niagara frontier in these years began what is called a chain-migration,
with other family members and former neighbours following the first-comers
a few years later. In some cases this involved migration in two
stages. Friends from Bucks County, Pennsylvania and Sussex County,
New Jersey were also going to the upper Susquehanna valley in Pennsylvania
in the 1780s and 1790s, establishing meetings at Catawissa, Roaring
Creek, Muncy and elsewhere. Some of them later moved to Ontario
joining kin in Pelham and Yonge Street meetings.(6)
This chain migration of extended families included men and women
of Quaker background who had been disowned in New Jersey or Pennsylvania
or never associated themselves with the meetings in Upper Canada.
Settlements of Friends in Niagara as elsewhere had families with
only this tenuous link to the Society of Friends who nonetheless
participated in the life of the community. Other convinced Friends
carried unfamiliar surnames into the meeting. The Quaker settlements,
while compact, were not isolated from their neighbours.(7)
Settlement Patterns
Friends, like other settlers, took their time in locating lands
at Niagara. This enabled them to select not only fertile acreage,
but land close to other Quaker settlers. Philip Frey received an
appointment in December 1784 as deputy surveyor "for making surveys
in the Upper District of the Province of Quebec" and began surveying
in the settlements at Niagara in 1786. Major Campbell, commanding
at Niagara, wrote Frey in July 1786 urging him to "come down" and
begin "making a regular survey of the whole settlement" which was
needed "from the number of people daily coming in from American
States.Ó In October 1788 Frey sent "a plan of the settlement of
Niagara" to the surveyor general, but he was asked to make a new
plan with the names of each settler on his lot. Frey replied that
this was difficult to do:
With respect to my insertion of each Propietor's name in his Lot
be pleased to allow me to observe that the change of property &c
is as yet so frequent that it would convey but a very uncertain
acco't of each man's settlement, therefore could not be depended
upon to stand on recordÉ the people being allowed to roam about
and choose situations in every respect suitable to them makes this
Settlement very much scattered and it would employ ten surveyors
to follow them in order to lay out their lands .(8)
Irritating as this may have been to the deputy surveyor, Friends
who came to Niagara over a period of years were enabled to locate
or relocate Crown grants side by side in two major settlements.
Ezekiel Dennis may have been the first Quaker to settle on the Niagara
peninsula. When he petitioned for additional land in 1797, Dennis
presented an order dated 12 October 1786 from Major A. Campbell
to Philip Frey, deputy surveyor, requesting that "Ezekiel Dennis
being intitled to 500 acres for himself and Family as a Loyalist
you'l please direct him to any ungranted Lands." He came up from
Richmond township in northern Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Tax records
there indicate that Ezekiel Dennis owned 15 acres of land, a horse
and a cow. In 1784 the assessor noted that Dennis had a dwelling
house and a family of nine. The 1786 tax list indicated that he
had gone away. He evidently returned for his family and recruited
others. Richland Monthly Meeting gave certificates dated 25 5th
month 1788 and addressed to Friends at Niagara to Ezekiel Dennis
and his brother Joseph Dennis and their families. On June 3, 1788
Ezekiel and Ann Dennis deeded their land in Richland Township to
Robert Penrose. Joseph and Deborah (Webster) Dennis, their three
children, and Ezekiel and Ann Dennis and their nine children traveled
to Niagara in the summer of 1788 to settle on lands Ezekiel Dennis
had chosen.(9)
When he settled, Ezekiel Dennis located 200 acres at Point Abino
on Lake Erie in what was to become Bertie Township. Since this represented
less than his original grant, he was awarded 500 acres in 1797 for
himself and his family. Ezekiel Dennis may have been the first settler
in what was by 1789 "the Quaker township." On the same day as his
brother Ezekiel's request, Joseph Dennis petitioned for confirmation
of his lands fronting Lake Erie in Lot 15 of Humberstone Township
and additional family lands.
John Hill Sr. stated in his 1796 petition that "he came into the
Province in the year 1787 and was desired by Colonel Hunter to locate
lands on Black Creek" and asked to be "confirmed in 400 acres which
were allowed for himself and family." John and Elizabeth Hill belonged
to Buckingham Monthly Meeting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but
were living in Bertie Township in 1797 when their daughter Elizabeth
married Nathan Havens. The tax lists of Buckingham Township credited
John Hill with 180 acres, two dwelling houses, five outbuildings
and a family of six whites in 1784. He was assessed for only 100
acres the following year and in 1786. His land petition is evidence
that Hill was one of the earliest settlers in Bertie after Ezekiel
Dennis.
The Dennis family network is a good example of the patterns of Quaker
migration. Ezekiel's grandfather was Joseph Dennis who sold his
land in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and moved to Sussex County, New
Jersey where he died in 1770. His oldest son John Dennis, a wheelwright,
remained in Rockhill Township in Bucks County and later acquired
land in neighbouring Richland Township. (He conveyed 16 acres of
that land to his son Ezekiel, the first Dennis in Ontario.) Charles,
the second son, eventually moved to Muncy; his son Levi settled
in Pelham Township.
Joseph's third son moved to Sussex County with his father. Richland
Friends gave a certificate in 1767 to Joseph Dennis Jr., his wife
Hannah Lewis Dennis and their seven children to Kingwood Monthly
Meeting Their eldest son, also an Ezekiel Dennis, accepted a commission
as Ensign in a Loyalist regiment, the New Jersey Volunteers; he
came to Niagara and settled by 1790 in Clinton Township with other
Sussex County Loyalists and died there in 1810. A sister (Anne)
and brother (Lewis) of the Loyalist Ezekiel Dennis also came to
Ontario. Anne Dennis married Daniel Willson in 1780. They moved
with their nine children to Pelham Township with a certificate from
Hardwick Monthly Meeting in Sussex County.(10)
Nathaniel and Obadiah Dennis came from Sussex County, New Jersey
and settled in Humberstone. Obadiah Dennis indicated in his petition
in 1797 that he came to Niagara with his wife and three children
in 1787. Obadiah and Prudence Dennis were among the original members
of Black Creek who were included in a 1799 list of "all those who
have a right of membership" but some of the others who came in 1787
had been compromised by wartime activities and no longer belonged
to any meeting of Friends. John Moore, although of Quaker background,
had been fined and imprisoned in Sussex County, New Jersey for helping
recruits get to the British lines. Benjamin Willson had also helped
recruit for the British in Sussex County as his former neighbour
Nathaniel Pettit testified. John Harrit came from Sussex County,
New Jersey in 1787, according to his later land petition. He brought
his wife, who was a daughter of Friends, Asa Schooley, and their
one child. Abraham Webster, who was one of the original overseers
of Pelham Monthly Meeting in 1799, came with his wife Ann Lundy
and their nine children in 1787. All of them were from New Jersey
and all of them settled on lands in Bertie Township and Humber stone
Township fronting on Lake Erie.(11)
Friends formed part of a growing migration from New Jersey. In September
1787 Robert Hamilton compiled a list of "Families who have this
Season Come into the Settlement of Niagara" and, of 48 settlers,
he identified 44 as from Jersey. None of the settlers just named
appeared on Hamilton's list or a companion "Return of Loyalists
and disbanded troops" already in the Niagara district. It is probable
that they came later in the year. Adam Burwell arrived in 1787 but
made his first improvements only in 1788, an indication that he
did not live on his land through the winter. Some migrants did come
very later in the season. A group of Baptist Families left Mansfield
Township in Sussex County, New Jersey in mid-November 1788 to settle
in Clinton Township in the Niagara peninsula.
Some early settlers located their lands and then returned home for
their families. A second migration of Friends came in 1788. Asa
Schooley and his family brought a certificate with them from Hardwick
Township in Sussex County affirming that "he is an orderly and peaceable
man, and is a member of the Society of The People called Quakers"
and dated in April 1788. They were following their married daughter
and others might have come with them from Sussex County. The Dennis
families from Richland Monthly Meeting cannot have left Bucks County
until June 1788.(12)
These Friends formed a reasonably compact settlement within Bertie
Township and adjacent parts of Humberstone Township by 1793 when
Jacob Lindley, Joseph Moore and other Friends from Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting visited them. Moore mentioned Benjamin Willson, Asa
Schooley, John Harrit, John Cutler, Daniel Pound, and Joseph Havens
as among Friends he met in Bertie Township. The visitors "went to
Ezekiel Dennis's, up the side of Lake Erie about six miles, to Point
Ebino" and next day continued "on the lake shore, about ten miles,
to what is called the Sugar Loaf," and called on seven Quaker families.(13)
The Quaker settlement stretched in contiguous farms on either side
of the later town of Ridgeway. Joseph Marsh lived on Lots 16 and
17 Third Concession on the Garrison Road and the road from Fort
Erie to Sugar Loaf. Adam Burwell was his neighbour on Lot 18. Joseph
Havens, Benjamin Willson, Daniel Pound, Joel White Morris, John
Harrit, whose petition suggested he had settled on Lots 28 and 29
as early as 1787, Asa Schooley, Jehoiada Schooley, John Hill, and
Azaliah Schooley owned adjacent farms to the Humberstone line. John
Moore, Joseph Havens and John Cutler all owned land across the township
line. Ezekiel Dennis was located at Point Abino.(14)
Ezekiel and Nathaniel Dennis, Jehoiada and Azaliah Schooley, Joseph
Havens and his son Nathan, John and Crowell Willson, sons of Benjamin
Willson, Thomas Doan and John Cutler were among signers of a petition
from settlers at Point Abino in 1793.(15)
Not all Friends lived in this neighbourhood. Abraham Webster settled
much closer to Fort Erie on Lot 8 fronting on Lake Erie. Another
group of Friends lived in Humberstone Township closer to Sugar Loaf.
Abraham Laing, Wilson and Elijah Doan, Titus and Enos Doan, Joel
White Morris, Joseph and Nathan Havens, Asa Azaliah, and Jehoiada
Schooley, John Harret, John Cutler, Amos Morris, James and Samuel
Wilson were among the signers of another 1793 petition, this one
from "Inhabitants settled round the Point called Sugar Loaf." Some
of them, as we have seen, lived closer to Point Abino. There was
another cluster of Friends in Humberstone Township. Joseph Dennis
patented Lots 14 and 15 fronting on Lake Erie, Benjamin Schooley
had a grant for Lot 18 Second Concession, and Thomas and Aaron Doan
patented Lots 16 and 17 Third Concession.(16)
When Pelham Monthly Meeting was established in 1799, members of
these families formed Black Creek Preparative Meeting. Abraham Webster,
Asa and Sarah Schooley were the first overseers. John Cutler and
his children, Abraham and Ann Lundy Webster and family, Obadiah
and Prudence Dennis and family, Joseph and Deborah Webster Dennis,
Joseph and Ann Havens with daughter Sarah, son Nathan, his wife
Elizabeth Hill Havens, and their son Daniel and Prudence Pound and
family, brothers Abraham and Isaac Laing, Titus and Deborah Willson
Doan and son Wilson Doan were on the initial list of those at Black
Creek with a right of membership among Friends. Ezekiel Dennis brought
his certificate from Richland Monthly Meeting for himself and his
family. Anna Morris, widow of Joel White Morris, and Joseph Marsh
each brought certificates from Rahway and Plainfield Monthly Meeting
for their families. Adam Burwell and his children requested to be
joined among Friends.(17)
Other members of these same families evidently shared in the life
of the Quaker community, for example, as witnesses at family weddings,
but never held membership in Pelham Monthly Meeting.(18)
The Doan, Harret, Havens, Moore, Schooley, Webster, Willson families
and some of the Dennis family were from Hardwick Monthly Meeting
in Sussex County and Kingwood Monthly Meeting in Hunterdon County.
The Laings came from Shrewsbury Monthly Meeting in Monmouth County,
and the Marsh and Morris families from Rahway and Plainfield Monthly
Meeting in Morris County. Ezekiel Dennis and his family from Richland
Monthly Meeting and John Cutler and his children from Buckingham
Monthly Meeting were the only settlers from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Cutler, a widower, brought his nine children in 1789 from Buckingham
Township where he was taxed for 117 acres. Adam Burwell may not
have been a Friend before coming to Upper Canada in 1788, as he
said he had served under the British standard as a Loyalist and
married the daughter of another Loyalist Nathaniel Veal. Daniel
Pound, who served in the Engineers Department with the British Army
on Staten island during the war, and was originally from Mendham
Monthly Meeting in New Jersey.(19)
Conclusion
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