Small World

I just sent this as an e-mail, but it worked so well I decided to use it as an entry here, too:

My dad’s grandmother, Ruby Hill, was born in Michigan.  Her mother, Susanna (Annie) Bassett was born in Gananoque, Ontario in 1876.  Susanna’s parents, John Bassett and Elizabeth Anne McCullough, married in Gananoque in 1871.  Elizabeth was born in Ireland in 1845, daughter of Andrew McCullough and Isabella McLaughlin.  They, or at least Isabella and her daughter, immigrated to Canada in 1847 and on 3 April that year, aboard ship, she gave birth to a daughter, also named Isabella.  After her arrival in Canada and widowhood (I haven’t yet found out if her husband died in Ireland, at sea or in Canada), she remarried to Thomas Davey, who also died young, leaving her with two further daughters.  Her McCullough daughters were raised Catholic and her Davey daughters were raised as Methodists.

The elder of these two daughters from the second marriage, Sarah Davey, born in 1853, married in Gananoque in 1872 to David Petch.  One of the two witnesses at the wedding was Phoebe Bryant, also born in 1853 and also of a Methodist family.

Phoebe Bryant was the daughter of Daniel Bryant and Sarah Ward from Frontenac County in Ontario – Daniel had been born at Kingston in 1810 and later removed to Beau Rivage Island near Gananoque where he was the lighthouse keeper.  His father was John Bryant, who had been born in 1774 at Navy Hall, Fort George, Niagara-on-the-Lake.  John was the son of Lt Patrick Bryant, an officer in the Provincial Marine, and Sarah Ashmore.

Sarah Ashmore had been born in King’s Norton, Warwickshire in 1751 and as a young woman in her early 20s had journeyed to New England in the company of John Steadman (possibly a relative of hers, as I am not certain what society would have thought of a young woman travelling with someone not her relative or husband), accompanying him to the western frontier of the English colony near Niagara Falls to the British Fort Schlosser.  Steadman ran a coach house near the fort and was under contract to the army to build and operate a portage around the falls.  He was also one of only two white men who survived the “Devil’s Hole Massacre” in 1763 when the Seneca ambushed a British wagon train in the Niagara River Gorge.  It was during her stay at Steadman’s house that Sarah met and married Patrick Bryant.

Bryant was the skipper of a small unarmed sloop that ran fright along Lake Ontario for the British.  His vessel, the Charity, ran aground off the southwest end of Wolf Island, just outside Kingston, and the shoal is still marked as Charity Shoal on maps.

Fort George, at the western bank of the Niagara river near Lake Ontario, was built by the British after the 1783 Treaty of Paris handed Fort Niagara to the Americans.  Navy Hall was at the river’s edge below the wooden stockade, a large structure and wharf, as well as serving as the headquarters, meeting place, office and official residence of Governor General Lord Simcoe.  Navy Hall was also where Patrick and Sarah spent the early years of their marriage and where their sons John and George were born in 1774 and 1782 respectively.  Sarah was the first white woman settler on the western shore of the Niagara, now part of Canada.

Patrick retired from the Provincial Marine during the reduction in the mid 1780s and the couple tried their hand at farming with their friend James Lyon at what is now Lyon’s Creek on the western side of the Niagara.  They were not successful and Patrick died young, aged just 45, in 1789.  Sarah was 38.  Another friend of theirs was Captain James Richardson, a naval man from Scamblesbury in Lincolnshire who had become a commander in the Provincial Marine on Lake Ontario, stepped in and married the widowed Sarah shortly afterwards and three children followed very quickly: Robert, Sarah Ann and James.

Richardson, aged about 38 at the time of his marriage, had led an eventful life already: he had served as a British naval quartermaster in the West Indies during the American Revolution.  In 1782 his ship, the Ramillies, on its way to England, was damaged in a gale and had to be destroyed.  He and the rest of the crew were taken aboard a merchant vessel which was subsequently captured by an American frigate and he was taken to France as a prisoner, returning to North America three years later.  By the time of his marriage he was becoming involved in ship-building (as an investor) for the fur and supply trade between Kingston and Niagara for the North-West Company, and he and the family removed to Kingston.  In 1793 he and his partners challenged the monopoly the North-West Company held on Lake Ontario trade and, although ultimately unsuccessful, they did launch the Kingston Packet as a rival company, and Richardson used his position both as an ex-officer of the Provincial Marine and as part-owner of the Packet to petition for large amounts of land, most of which succeeded, including sites in York (Toronto) and Newcastle (Presqu’ile Point). 

The Packet lasted only about 5-6 years and Richardson left his business partners on bad terms.  He re-invented himself as an importer of US goods and tried his hand as a merchant-miller.  He was unsuccessful at this occupation and reconciled with his former partners from the Kingston Packet, one of whom had previously described Richardson’s business style as “so universally abnoxious [sic] that I shall not be very sorry to get rid of him”.  They resumed their trade on Lake Ontario, with Richardson at the helm of the Governor Simcoe. 

It was at this time that the War of 1812 broke out and Richardson and the Governor Simcoe carried the gunpowder to Niagara on the eve of the Battle of Queenston Heights and then returned to York with the prisoners and the news of General Sir Isaac Brock’s death.  Less than a month later he steered the ship past the American fleet into Kingston, but the boat had been damaged and sank at the wharf.  Richardson took over command of one of Sir James Lucas Yeo’s fleet, and was discharged in late 1813, whereupon he once again reinvented himself, this time as a Kingston merchant, going into business with his son Robert and with James Lyon Jr, son of his old friend – and by now Richardson’s son-in-law, having married Sarah Ann Richardson. 

By 1818 he removed to his land at Presqu’ile Point with his second wife, Mary Louisa McDonald, whom he had married at Kingston in August of 1809, four months after Sarah Ashmore Bryant had died.  He had one more vessel under his command, the Charlotte, one of the first steamers on the upper St Lawrence and Bay of Quinté, but suffered a stroke during the first season and retired to the life of a country squire.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography sums up his career thus: “Richardson had been a generous benefactor and controversial churchwarden of the Church of England congregation in Kingston. When, in 1795, he proposed the rather radical step of abolishing pew rentals, the Reverend John Stuart was incensed, describing Richardson as a 'little blustering Sea Captain' and 'a turbulent ambitious man . . . willing to try his Power & Influence.' Turbulent and ambitious Richardson certainly was, with a mean streak for good measure. Twice he was found guilty of assault by the Midland District assizes. Yet Cartwright [one of his business partners], a year after being 'rid of him,' described his replacements as 'destitute in a great measure of that Energy, or perhaps Violence of Temper, which enabled [Richardson] to get the Duty better done by the People under him.' From the introduction of private enterprise on the lower lakes to the first years of steam, these qualities made Richardson one of the most successful, though certainly not loved, captains on Lake Ontario."

He was not, however, the Kingston merchant who traded with his sons, the other James Richardson, whose name graces the Winnipeg International Airport.  No, this James Richardson, the step-grandfather of Phoebe Bryant who witnessed the wedding of Sarah Davey in 1872, did not leave Ontario and his sons and grandsons remained in the Toronto area, while his step-sons and their families stayed in Loyalist Country for generations.

In fact, I guess the next time these families all got together, it was at another wedding, this time at Hedingham Castle in Essex, England in August 2004 when James Richardson’s great-great-great-great-grandson -- my husband -- married the great-great-great-granddaughter of Sarah Davey’s half sister Elizabeth -- me!