The Frontier Mission of Robert Addison

As submitted by me to Professor Mark McGowan, March 18, 1993

A Frontier Mission
Rev. Robert Addison of Niagara on the Lake

Had Robert Addison known how his life would unfold, he could not have chosen a more illustrative poem than his first literary purchase in his new home of Canada. Arriving in Montreal in late October 1791, where a frozen St. Lawrence River prevented safe passage to his mission in Newark (later Niagara on the Lake), Addison was compelled to stay the winter. There he purchased at Jones’s Auction the slim collection of James Thomson’s Works, which contained the famous poem “Winter,” in which the season is a metaphor for human existence. The seeming meaninglessness of winter’s destruction tests the poet’s faith in an all encompassing order, and reflects his own melancholy mood. Nature’s King (God) calms the first storm after which the poet makes a meditative prayer requesting to be taught peace.

The next storm is faster and more furious than the first, but the God who sends the storm is a teacher and the storm a test, not a rebuke. The way to learn peace, says Thomson, is through suffering, to drink the “cup of baleful grief or eat the bitter bread of misery.” After building up images of horror of wild hunting wolves and smothering avalanches, the poet finds he must retreat into the classical world of his books in order to elevate his soul, but conquests and problems beset classical heroes, too.

The winter ends, frost turns to thaw, rivers swell, the earth is muddy slime. All is vanished, then spring turns to summer, summer to autumn, then autumn fades into age.

“Whither the dreams of greatness? Those unsolid hopes of Happiness? Those longings after Fame?… virtue sole survives….comes the second birth of Heaven and Earth… awakening earth heras the new creating word….the great eternal scheme….perfect Whole.”

Winter passes and “one unbounded spring encircle all.”

Addison: The Early Years

One might well imagine Robert Addison exploring the lakes and streams in the Lake District, where he was born in 1754, the fourth of six children to a grocer and his wife in Heversham, Westmoreland County. He was educated at both the Heversham and nearby Kendal schools, before going to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1777.

Since at 23 he would have been much older than most sizars, it is conceivable he worked with his father for a while before going on to university, perhaps even paying his way. In 1781, he obtained his B.A. andon the 11th of March the same year was ordained deacon at Norwich. Soon after, he was appointed curate at Upwell, Norfolk, where it appears from the registry that he solemnized marriages until at least May 15, 1783. (Geneological information corroborates this: in 1780, Addison married Mary Atkinson, at Whittlesea, where her father had been curate some 40 years; their first child William was born and died in Whittlesea in 1781; their second child Mary born 1782 was baptized in Upwell.)

By 1783/4, the Addisons returned to Cambridgeshire, where Robert commenced work as a tutor (aka university crammer) for Cambridge hopefuls. Since he also received his M.A. from Cambridge in 1785, he was probably tutoring and studying simultaneously.

Addison was probably quite ambitious. With a master’s degree from Cambridge, experience as both teacher and preacher, and with his father-in-law Richard Atkinson, already well established as rector of Whittlesea, he might have been assured of a steady, if not noteworthy, future. He had married into a family which at least had connections – Mary’s mother came from the Northumbria Ridleys of Unthanke Hall, which also spawned the martyred Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley (1500-55). In addition, Atkinson may have been in a position to pass on the Whittlesea curacy as he did the magnificent library of fine 16th, 17th and 18th century books and manuscripts that Addison brought to Canada. But Atkinson died in 1781 at age 75 while Addison served as curate in Upwell. By all accounts, life as a village curate was mean and poor. Lower clergy in England were pathetically underpaid and generally did most of the parish work. Bishops and higher clergy by contrast were well-paid, but scarcely evident in their parishes.

Secular philosophy and scepticism had taken a toll on the spiritual life of the people; privatization of belief led to disregard for external worship, and church buildings were neglected and in disrepair. Perhaps the status quo had been different in Addison’s native Westmoreland and he was not prepared for the state of affairs closer to London. Perhaps Addison had not initially planned on a divine vocation until being drawn into the fascinating theological and intellectual issues fermenting at Cambridge at the time. One might be tempted to see from Addison’s personal journey a man who avails himself of an opportunity when it presents itself.

The First Storm “See winter comes, to rule the vary’d year”

The storm clouds gathered on Addison’s promising horizon with the onset of his wife’s mental illness in the mid-1780s. The records are likewise rather cloudy; certainly Addison himself never revealed anything personal in correspondence that survived. On thing is clear from genealogical charts: after Addison left for Canada, the children were left in the care of his sister in Westmoreland. A tombstone in Heversham bears the sad information that Addison’s young son Robert was buried there at age five, having died of smallpox. The maiden aunt soon after brought the two elder daughters to Canada.

In any event, Mary Addison’s illness probably made it impossible to assume responsibilities of parish life., From the time he graduated with a master’s degree in 1785 to sometime in 1790 when he applied to the Society of the Propogation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (herein SPG), Addison continued as a tutor in the classics, preparing young men for entry to Cambridge and there seems to have been no further attempt to obtain a clerical position. The life of a university “crammer” could not have held much long-term appeal, though financial reward could not have been Addison’s primary consideration since England’s curates and deacons were notoriously underpaid. Perhaps vocational stability was what he desired more – university tutoring may have proved too temporary and a man of 30 in those days would have to be more established.

Like both the poet Thomson and his narrator in “Winter” Addison was a classical scholar. And as for the narrator, the particular reflected the universal, particularly in his collection of books which aptly reflected the times in which he lived. The 18th century was a tumultuous time in England, both for the national church and secular philosophy. Several problems beset the English church: philosophical currents, such as the right of private judgment on matters of faith, challenged orthodox Christian views on revelation and tradition and the subordination of everything to the test of reason had its effect on faith. As well, close connection of church and state made it difficult for the church to establish autonomy on doctrinal or social issues.

Addison’s library reflects those divergent views through its wide mix of works by authors such as John Toland, Jeremy Taylor and Matthew Tindal, and the noted Arian Samuel Clare, as well as collections of sermons and dissertations by Archbishop Tillotson, who focused on the practical side of faith and not on the mysteries. The library also contains works by Daniel Waterland who opposed the Arian views embraced by the Latitudinarian movement of which Tillotson was a fair representative. Althouth latitudinarian views were largely a response to the “narrow dogmatism” (1) of the Puritans and the rigid exclusivity of the Arminians, it brought religion to the test of reason and focused on the practical side of the Christian faith – in other words ethics subordinating dogma. Waterland’s middle approach perceived the Anglican church as arbiter of the true doctrine of the eucharistic sacrament as being neither natural flesh nor mere commemoration, (2) and illustrates the struggle the Church of England was undergoing in holdings famous “via media” as somewhere between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Religion is there too which, while responding to the Deists, draws an analogy between natural religion and revelation. Erasmus, the humanist, and Samuel Johnson, a noted evangelical, are also represented.

Among the clergy, deism and unorthodox opinions spread; some scholars believe it was the theological controversies so engrossing the clergy that caused the decline in parish work. A general spiritual malaise had set in and there seemed little interest in the esthetic or symbolical side of public worship. Few new churches were erected; those that needed a lift got a coat of whitewash. Frequently, wine and light refreshments would be served between prayers and the sermon to “vary the monotony” (3). There was strong preference for private baptism but that could have been due to a high infant mortality rate and desire for immediate baptism following birth rather than waiting for an available Sunday for corporate baptism.

Abuses within the clergy did nothing to inspire the laity. Desire to enhance social position ran high, especially since bishops were elected to the House of Lords and the disparity between a bishop’s income and that of the lower clergy was enormous. This impinged directly on the other problem of too close a connection of church and state; promotion depended upon one’s politics. To compound problems and exacerbate divisions, or at least to give no chance to heal such divergence of opinion, convocation was not held for 133 years in order to silence supporters of the House of Stuart. (4) This gave the Church of England no forum to discuss issues openly and decide upon any consensus of opinion.

Addison can be held up as a mirror of these times with a brief glance at the sermon he preached to his congregation just after the War of 1812 appealing for assistance to a young widow and her children. By then he had experienced many setbacks and had seen the horrors of war. One assumes he has grown more philosophical, though his views are still a hangover from this earlier mingling of theological thought seen in the English church, a mix of orthodox trinitarianism, Calvin-like social teaching of reward and punishment, and an evangelical concern for the poor. For example, “the best way to avoid the deserved punishment of our sins … is to humble ourselves before Him.” He cites St. Matthew’s gospel, 19th chapter, the story of the young man who could not give up his earthly possessions to follow Christ. He warns that at the day of judgment we will be held accountable for our stewardship, and if one is not aware of this, “he is ignorant of the great word of truth, the Bible.” He admonishes those who indulge in “superfluities that are unnecessary to their comfort or happiness [and which] would be sufficient to support many poor, honest and industrious families.” Not only does giving offer an “inward satisfaction” but the giver will be blessed for it. Addison then turns sociologist when he warns the congregation that desperation drives people to do desperate things: “Might not the kind assistance … at the critical moment of need severed destruction from them and saved them to the community as good and honest members of society?” (5) He offers his congregation the option of being compassionate father to the children and husband to the widow in a persuasive conclusion to the sermon.

There can be no doubt that, despite Addison’s scholarly background, he was affected by the evangelical stream. Revivalism may have been started by John Wesley, but it was inherited by the evangelicals within the Church of England and resulted in the emergence of two churches – low and high. State patronage favoured clergy with Whig and Latitudinarian views, those most likely to be found in the Low Church, odd considering the low church would also have been the most anti-hierarchical.

High churchmen, on the other hand, were often evangelical, the inheritance of Wesleyan revivalism within the establish church. An evangelical of the 18th century was quite different from one of today’s definition. While 18th century evangelicals venerated scripture (similar to the Puritans), they loved liturgy, ceremony, vestment and hierarchy. Evangelicals were also moralistic, encouraging the ascetic life, banning theatre and such entertainment, and contrasted to the “orthodox” divines who despised anything that smacked of enthusiasm. But there were many in both camps who shared some views of those in the other; in this manner, Addison then was probably no different from his fellow clerics.

If Addison were mildly ambitious, however, as Michael Power suggests in Niagara: The Capital Years, he would likely have been a Whig-leaning low churchman to ensure promotion. From what is known of his conduct in Upper Canada, this seems quite accurate. He was reported as being “no ritualist, nor formalist; no incense or candles burned at midday and service was simple and unadorned.” (6) He seems top have had a broadminded acceptance of most religious views. On the other hand, he attended the “evangelical” university, Cambridge, at the same time noted evangelical Charles Simeon was appointed incumbent of Trinity College’s church. As well, the SPG to which Addison turned for work was a society certainly resulting from the work of men of evangelical bent; it was after all, a missionary society.

The Calm of the Storm

Though it is not known how involved he was in the major issues of the day, Addison sought refuge from the various tempests in his life in the SPG. Exactly what prompted his decision to apply to the SPG for a missionary posting is another matter for speculation. Since his bi-annual reports to the SPG once he was at his post were always filled with concern over the evangelizing of the Mohawks, it is possible he had some romantic notion of the spiritual needs of the “noble savage;” he may also have been influenced by the growing ranks of evangelicals under Simeon at Cambridge. One hopes he felt called by God. Whatever the reason, Addison made what seems a providential application to the SPG sometime in 1790. Bishop Inglis of Nova Scotia had recently requested the services of a cleric of “broadly based views on doctrine and liturgical practice” to fill a newly created mission at Newark in Upper Canada. (7) Inglis was writing on behalf of Colonel John Butler (of Butler’s Rangers fame) and Robert Hamilton, an influential trader, who urgently desired a Church of England clergyman for Newark (now Niagara on the Lake). They told Stuart that the Niagara region had a total of 3000 inhabitants of whom an overwhelming majority were Church of England members. They promised that 12 principals would provide a glebe (farmland), house, and pledged construction of a church building. They would raise another L100 per year to which the SPG would add its usual L50 yearly payment. And so it was, that after securing letters of recommendation from Edward Montagu, Esq and Mr Humphreys, lecturer of Hampstead, which were endorsed by Bishops of Ely and Peterborough, Addison set out for his new life.

“Teach me Peace”

Addison’s life in Upper Canada was marked by a series of setbacks and gains. He never set eyes on his only son, Robert, who was born in the winter of 1791/2 as Addison waited for the St Lawrence to thaw, and who died five years later. In spite of repeated attempts, he was not paid as promised by his parish, and scrambled for funds in a variety of ways, an act he found demeaning, believing that dependence on other people for fund took away a man’s liberty. (8) Nor was he given much encouragement to evangelize the Mohawks.

By the end of the century he had turned to the secular pursuit of most Canadians, acquiring vast amounts of land. Perhaps the years of scrounging had caused him to be overly security-conscious. By 1806, his secular endeavours backfired – he was embroiled in an affair which resulted in charges of extortion. During the War of 1812, he had been plundered and kept POW in his own home, and observed as the “enemy” burned and occupied the recently constructed and beautiful church he had waited to long to build.

Whatever Addison anticipated of his new home, the reality must have been quite different. Themes of nature and its enormity abound in 18th century literature; in fact, one of Robert’s distant relations Joseph Addison wrote in Pleasures of the Imagination about the great size of English mountains and lakes. That perspective would be overwhelmed by the Canadian landscape. One Richard Cartwright of Kingston wrote in 1810 that 26 years before “this province was a …. Howling wilderness, little known and less cultivated.” (9) Addison, however, seemed affected only by the difficulty in getting to far parts of his parish which stretched from York to London; in 1796, he was content to winter in the woods where it would be warmer and firewood more readily available. (from a report to SPG)

What did come as a depressing reality, as he revealed to the Kingston missionary John Stuart shortly after arriving, was the “primitive atmosphere and crude society” of Newark (10).

That crude society also refused to support their clergyman. In the first seven years, he received a total of L200 from the parishioners, nothing from the government, and L50 per annum from the SPG. When he requested an additional L20 to provide for a horse to carry him to the mOhawk reserve 70 miles away, it was only reluctantly given a year later at the urging of Stuart.

According to the compilers of his library, Addison must have anticipated from the outset close ties with the Mohawks, for during his 1791 winter in Montreal, he purchased several books on French grammar and one explaining Christianity in French, since that would be the other language the Six Nations people would have spoken.

Upon arriving in Niagara, it must have come as a surprise to him that the Mohawks 70 miles away from him were not easily accessible, since parish boundaries in England would have been no more than 10 or 15 miles. In 1792, the route to the Mohawks by all accounts would have been little more than an “Indian path” through the woods. As for Addison’s opinion of the Mohawks, we can glean something from his SPG reports. As early as 1793, he informed the SPG of his willingness to learn the Mohawk language, but there seems to be a lack of certainty in his desire, perhaps unsure of how long he would be staying. (Shortage of funds prompted several requests to remove to Nova Scotia.)

In April 1793, he wrote that Mr Stuart thought the Mohawks did not want the restraint of a resident missionary and that three or four visits per year had no lasting effect. His greatest concern was lack of funds to convey him to the mission by horseback.

If it had not been for private means and a few subscriptions taken up by London friends, Addison would have been hard-pressed to feed himself. He would certainly not have been able to provide for a family either here or in England. Some accounts say that his drive for land acquisition during the mid-1790s was fuelled by his concern for his children’s future while Power writes that it was Addison’s “dignity that could not stand the poverty,” (11) Though thousands of acres sounds to us nowadays as excessively greedy, at the time it may have been relatively worthless without a harvest to sell. Soon after receiving his first plot of land at Four Mile Creek he sent for his children.

Addison looked everywhere for funds. In his June 27, 1796 report to the SPG, he stated he was paid $100 per year as chaplain to the House of Assembly and L10 per year as regiment chaplain. Another reason for Addison’s desire for security may have had to do with the tenuous status of Niagara as a Canadian holding even though he was kept on as chaplain after Simcoe moved the assembly to York when it was chosen as Upper Canada’s capital. One reason given was to remove the capital away from the border in case of an American invasion; another had more to do with British fears of growing colonial oligarchical power in the centres of Newark and Kingston. But in his June 22, 1796 letter to Governor Simcoe, the Duke of Portland stated that the Bishop of Quebec (Mountain) requested L150 per annum for the four missionaries in Upper Canada, except for Mr. Addison, whose “services cannot be employed up” since the “possession of Niagara must now be very shortly delivered up by us to the United States.” (12)

Addison’s position, too, was always tenuous in the first years. He was “vicar of everything and of nothing.” (13) Expected to be the embodiment of English established religion, he was given no money and no church. During this time, he persevered with his ministry to the Mohawks, the congregation increased even though divine service had to be held in the Freemason’s Hall, and a private school was begun since the government had not yet made provision for education. Power credits Addison with perseverance and self-reliance as a result of early hardships. Expected to perform a certain role and duties without support, he was alone, carving out a mission niche in uncharted territory. It is no wonder he expressed joy when a Presbyterian minister arrived in the mid-1790s to “help him with the spiritual needs of the settlers.” (14)

To further compound his mission difficulties, the Church of England was not the religious mainstay of the colony nor was it in a prestigious position except among British-born officials and colonial leaders wishing to be “respectable” in British eyes. When he arrived, his congregation was large but the communicants were only 17, which might indicate that a large proportion of his congregation was unconfirmed in the Anglican communion, possibly because no bishop was available to officiate or because they belonged to different denominations. The Church of England was a minority but, as he reported to the SPG, Colonel Butler was sure a man of Addison’s talents “would doubtless increase their numbers.” (15)

By the first decade of the 19th century, Addison reported larger congregations to the SPG, with many members of other denominations coming to divine service. Robert Hamilton and Colonel Butler, for example, were members of the Anglican church even though they had also purchased pews in the Presbyterian church. Hamilton was a “son of the manse” but membership in the Church of England brought greater social prestige, even if there was no church building. (16)

As late as October 1803, Addison was still complaining to the SPG about the stinginess of his congregation: “the parishioners gave $500 per year for three years to a minister who’s since turned trader, but refuse to give him one shilling.” (17)

Addison waited 17 years for a church to be built, holding service “sometimes in the Chamber of the Legislative Council and sometimes at Free Mason’s Hall, a house of public entertainment” (according to Bishop Mountain in a letter to Henry Dundas Sept. 1794, Simcoe Papers). Some historians think this must have been embarrassing for the educated divine to do so long without a church. One supposition was that Addison had pretensions to building a fine, stone English church and had to wait until his “stingy” congregation put up the money. If that was the case, he showed remarkable patience, but clergy of 18th century England had become accustomed to derelict buildings, given the state of the church in England and it lack of regard for outward symbols. Perhaps he waited, knowing his parish would in time build a church, but that they were not people be pushed. (Another of my ancestors, Adin Beebe arrived in Newark with Butler’s Rangers about 1778 or so, a Congregationalist if anything. One of his grandsons, however, was baptised Robert Addison Beebe in 1820. Since the two families were not connected until a 1915 marriage, Addison obviously was well regarded. The jocular style in which he quipped in the pages of the registry also suggests an easy familiarity with his parish.)

For several reasons the parish was not inclined to give money outright. The Church of England, as an arm of the state, had always been paid for out of the state’s coffers. In England, Tenths and First Fruits were given, not to the church, but to the government out of which clergy would be paid. Addison himself was not accustomed to being paid by his parishioners and when his parish breached their contract of financial commitment he grew discouraged: “A man seems to lose his liberty and consequence in proportion to what he thus received from the Public.” (18)

In Canada, the Constitutional Act of 1791 had given the Church of England special privileges, such as one-seventh of crown lands reserved for benefit of Protestant clergy (the definition of which would later give rise to bitter debate); the monarch would authorize the governor or lieutenant governor to erect parsonages and give land, distinct from these clergy reserves and senior clergy could be appointed to Legislative and Executive councils. But the Church was established in name only. (19) When Simcoe arrive in 1792 for his five year tour of duty as governor, he was firm on the role of the church. But colonial leaders complained that the government was unfair patronizing a church to which “19/20ths of the people did not attend.” (20) Fearful of sectarian strife, Simcoe eventually softened his stand, especially with the great numbers of Dissenters (Quakers, Moravians, Presbyterians and Methodists) coming in from the United States.

As with the divergent views that informed the national English church, and the ensuing struggle to keep a pluralistic church as homogenous as possible, a Canadian ideology based on opposing views was developing. Several historians have identified the power struggle between the two leading English-Canadian groups as laying the groundwork for a divisive Canadian ideology. Most early settlers, though English speaking, were no British, and had come from the American colonies. A false assumption was that these settlers brought with them British conservatism and anti-American sentiments, but many settlers not only had emotional and personal ties to their former home but had developed republican ideals regarding the rights and liberties of individuals. The Loyalist leadership, which comprised the merchant colonial oligarchy, espoused these American ideals which British-born officials, imported to Canada, saw as disloyal, rebellious, and betrayal. (21)

The early settlers, however, took much for granted with British military protection. Without constantly looking to their backs, settlers could raise livestock, harvest crops, build homes and raise families free from fear of wilderness terrors and lawlessness. (22) They also took for granted that Britain would provide them with the services of a clergyman. Though many were American settlers long separated from England’s protective mantle, they would have grown accustomed to the services of itinerants paid (if at all) by the home church. Though British born and availing himself of all that the British government offered in the way of land, Addison had some sympathy for these colonial sentiments since this was the stuff and substance of his parish. Nor should it be forgotten that Addison’s broadly based theological views had developed in an England divided between conservatism and reform so that this divisiveness can be seen as not solely a colonial phenomenon.

Addison too was a product of Canadian insecurity regarding status, and allowed himself to be seduced into the colony’s favourite secular pursuit of land acquisition. Although the Constitution Act of 1791 clearly stated provision of land for clergy, the 1200 acres he was allowed to claim made up a small portion of the 31,000 acres he eventually accumulated. During the mid-1790s he appears very unsettled: in 1795-6, he asked to move to Nova Scotia because his income would not buy the basics in the expensive Newark; he asked for leave to visit home; at the same time he was petitioning for the old mill seat with log house to live in; and was sending for his children to join him.

It was a time of tensions between church and state. In the colonies, belief in the separation of church and state was growing, fostered by Puritan notions of congregational autonomy. Perhaps out of fear that the colonial Canadian church would follow suit, Canterbury refused to allow a colonial episcopate. But as mentioned before, the English church itself was experiencing difficulties keeping its hold on the people even though it still wielded influence in affairs of state.

Perhaps because of changing views in Britain with regards to ecclesiastical influence among the people, the British government was slow to back up a colonial church. For example, though Nova Scotia was British by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the SPG only sent its first missionary there in 1749. Or it could be that the political will with respect to settlement was just not there, if the treatment of clergy is any evidence. The presence of troops might have had more to do with keeping enemy nations at bay, than with protecting settlers. For most colonial administrators, except possibly Governor Simcoe, Canada was merely a posting until return home to England.

Two events occurred that perhaps humbled Addison and may have even taught that peace comes through suffering as the poem “Winter” suggests: the War of 1812 and the salt mine affair. In 1798, Addison obtained from the government the lease of a salt spring in Louth Township (close to Newark) as long as he continued in his capacity as clergyman. After putting some of his own money in to improve the facility, he sublet it to Solomon Moore in 1802. In 1807, probably after the salt spring proved lucrative Addison received notice from the executor for the Angus Macdonell estate (the salt springs’ former operator) that Addison owed for improvements Macdonell had made. Three years later Moore petitioned to the Executive Council for ownership of the spring and, to strengthen his case, accused Addison of misrepresentation and extortion.

The council was not well disposed to Addison but after three years of court, the dispute was settled in his favour. A cloud hung over Addison’s name, however, possibly exacerbated by the fact that he owned so much land scattered throughout the province. Tensions between the colonial oligarchy and British officials were high; Britain favoured establishing an aristocracy based on landed gentry and the Church of England. Land grants were given out almost indiscriminantly, an action that led to a surge in speculation and a land rush into all townships. Just prior to the War of 1812 the colonial administration tried to control this by an act demanding a house be built on the land and five acres cleared. (Addison may have lost some of his land because of a failure to fulfil this obligation.) As well, resentment over the definition of Protestant as being solely Anglican in the Constitution Act of 1791 with regards to clergy reserves might have served to put Addison in a peculiar position.

The cloud had not been lifted when Addison again became the focus of attention. For some reason, Lieutenant-Governor Gore suspected him of complicity with Robert Thorpe and William Weekes (outspoken critics of the British administration) and labelled him a dangerous radical. When Joseph Brant attacked the superintendant of Indian Affairs, William Claus, at a Six Nations council at Fort George (Niagara), for his autocratic handling of the Mohawk lands and autonomy, Addison was in attendance. So were Thorpe and Weekes. Gore believed Addison was similarly in opposition to the government, but in all likelihood he was there in support of Brant, whom he respected greatly and from whom he may have been trying to buy more land. Evidence does suggest that Addison was in favour of the colonial oligarchy since he guarantored Willcocks, Thorpe’s crony, as Sheriff of the Home District.

Though Addison had his problems in securing financial remuneration from the government, it seems highly unlikely he would have thrown his lot in with such dissenters. In spite of his financial guarantee of Willcocks he said in an 1807 letter to Thorpes’ wife that “like all Irishmen [Willcocks] lacked no restraint” and that he had to struggle against “the jealousy of power and all the malignity of rank opposition.” (23) Addison made other and similar hard sounding judgments. After Joseph Brant’s death in late 1807, he wrote the SPG that Brant was a man of “uncommon intellect” but that he had fallen to drink, which other reports say is an exaggeration. Upon Dr. Young’s arrival from Montreal as a minister, he wrote in 1803, that Youn was poor from being a slave to liquor. Addison sounds a moralizer, but it might also be well to remember that in the 18th century darts such as these were common, both in the public and the private arenas. The poetry of the likes of Alexander Pope and John Dryden and the prose of Jonathan Swift are sprinkled liberally with acerbic comments that would be considered invitation to litigation today.

It was probably the War of 1812 that had the greatest affect on Addison. Not only was he witness to “scenes of wickedness and destruction” and put on parole in his own house, which was plundered and used as American headquarters, but his newly built church was desecrated with flames, then covered for us first by British then American troops. After the battle of Queenston Heights, at which Sir Isaac Brock fell, the British used St. Mark’s as a hospital. When the Americans took possession of Niagara, the church was used as a barracks. One can still see the marks of cleavers and hatchets used for cutting meat on the front stones. (24)

After the War of 1812, Addison seems focused less on acquiring land and more on the people of his mission. His daughters married in 1815 and 1816; he would be a grandfather soon. In 1811, he married Rebecca Plummer, a distant cousin of his first wife, who died in 1809.

Both he and Rev Dr. John Strachan volunteered to distribute clothes and money among the needy who had lost homes, family members or household goods during the war. In a sermon rpeached shortly after the way, he made an appeal to the people of Niagara to give generously to a particular family in their parish whose primary breadwinner had been killed in action and who had come to Canada in the first place in hopes of “bettering his circumstances by honest and laborious industry. But alas! Such is the uncertainty of human life.” (25) Addison knew well the uncertainty of life. Addison seems reflective in this sermon: “Is it in the power of man to avoid or avert the wise dispensations of Providence?” comes from the core of human experience.

Judging from the SPG reports, he seems also to have renewed his efforts to administer to the Mohawks. Although he was not young, nor was he in good health, he made repeated appeals to the SPG for prayer books or funds to publish Mohawk translations of the Bible. Since this was some 20 years after arriving in Canada, presumably Addison was under no romantic illusions of native peoples. The notion of “noble savages” (though not actually coined by Rousseau til later) amidst a wilderness landscape probably appealed to the younger Robert Addison tutoring schoolboys at Cambridge in their classics. But he had since made friends with Joseph Brant, whom he said was a man of uncommon intellect and was constantly being discouraged from thinking too highly of First nations people.

Through the 1790s and early into the new century, Addison’s references to the Mohawks are intermittent. His attention was elsewhere, on getting paid, acquiring land and getting his church built. In 1799, he wrote that Capt Joseph Brant was threatening Bishop Mountain with turning the reserve Methodist if he did not ordain Davenport Phelps as the Mohawk resident missionary. (see endnote)

He wrote of the increasing Mohawk congregation in 1803 and 1804 and he commended Joseph Brant for bringing the “wandering tribes” (Cayugas and Onondagas) for baptism and Christian instruction. In 1809, he wrote that the Mohawks seemed “sober and well-disposed.” After the War of 1812, references to natives increase and the reports are filled with requests for Prayer Books. Addison also seemed quite obsessed with translating the New Testament into Mohawk. A Major Norton, stationed on or near the reserve and a close friend of Brant’s, had promised to do the translation, although halfway through the Gospel of Matthew, Norton seemed to be of the notion that this was a waste of time, and that national schools (with English instruction) would be more productive. Addison was insistent, and offered to pay press expenses. Prior to this endeavour, Norton was engaged by Brant to seek resolution to the Haldimand grant problem whereby Mohawks could not sell or lease their lands.

In 1818, Addison asked for SPG funds to be directed to Mr. Leeming, the missionary at Ancaster, who was closer and better able to administer to the spiritual needs of the Mohawk people. In 1822, he reported that Norton claims the Mohawks “pay little attention to their own language… they have retrograded.” Norton wanted assurances his efforts would not be wasted. Another translator seems to have been located, a Mohawk named Aaron Hill. By 1826, Addison was growing seriously, so ill in fact that he held divine service in his own home, Lake Lodge, at Four Mile Creek. He was unable to visit the Mohawks and expressed concern that they had gone so long without the sacrament of Eucharist or baptism. In 1827, Addison happily reported his health improved and that Aaron Hill was nearly finished the translation of Corinthians.

By the 1820s, Robert Addison had achieved the accoutrements that would have made him influential in his early career, but he seems to have cared much less for these things as time went on. As a major landholder, close friend of John Strachan, and reportedly the best-educated person in the province he was a good candidate for membership in the Family Compact, and yet he was not. When Strachan asked him to be the first principal of King’s College, did Addison decline merely on the basis of being too old and too sick to fill such a position? Or did he come to see the real substance of life not in the “dreams of greatness, those unsolid hopes of happiness” as Thomson wrote of but in the charity for neighbour and development of community as he preached in his 1815 sermon?


End note: according to Stuart Hotchkiss’s geneology website, http://www.rootsweb.com/~nywayne/history/zionrectors.html Rev. Davenport Phelps was a fascinating individual, and my biography for him runs 7 pages. Phelps was born in Hebron, CT 12 Aug. 1755, and died 27 June 1813 in Pultneyville, NY. Davenport Phelps is sometimes confused with his brother, George Davenport Phelps. I could not find any evidence that his brother, George D., was clergy. In addition to being a missionary and ordained Episcopal minister he was a student, military officer, lawyer, printer, merchant, farmer and active Masonic leader. He was the first permanent Missionary in Western New York. His mother, Theodora Wheelock, was the daughter of Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, a Congregational minister and founder and first president of Dartmouth College. One of his projects was the recruitment of Indian boys in New England, New York and Canada to attend the Moor Charity School for Indian Children. His first contact with Western New York was in 1792 when he and his uncle visited Upper Canada (now Ontario). Through his association with the Moor school he became a friend of Mohawk chief Joseph Brant who was a Moor graduate. He was an active Episcopal Missionary in Western New York in 1801 and 1802, and settled at Geneva, NY where he organized Trinity Parish. A Tavern Account book kept by Samuel Throop, Pultneyville, records his presence there in August 1805, and in correspondence in August 1806 he makes it certain that he had by then visited Palmyra. Between 1804 and 1813 he organized a dozen Episcopal parishes in Northern and Western NY.


FOOTNOTES:
1) Carter, G/ Sydney, The English Church in the 18th Century, p 22.
2) Ibid, p 33
3) Ibid, p 120
4) Moir, J.S. Church in the British Era, p 4
5) Addison, Robt, An old-time sermon, p 3
6) Power, Michael The Capital Years: Niagara on the Lake, 1792-1796, p 110
7) Ibid, p 111
8) Smith, C.H.E., Reverend Robert Addison, M.A., p 64
9) Errington, Jane The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, p 3
10) Power, M., p 111
11) Ibid, p 113
12) J. G. Simcoe, The Simcoe Papers, p 318
13) Power, M., p 115
14) Ibid, p 122
15) Smith, CHE, p 62
16) Power, M., p 123
17) Extracts for the SPG Journals, October 1, 1803
18) Smith, CHE, p 64
19) Power, M. p 112
20) Ibid, p 114
21) Errington, Jane, p 12
22) Ibid, p 23
23) Turner, H.E., Dictionary of Canadian Biography, p 5
24) Carnochan, Janet, History of Niagara, p 61
25) Archives, Addison, Robert, “sermon”, p 2

BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES:

------ “An old-time sermon” [by Robt Addison] Niagara Historical Society [pub.] no. 5 (1899)

Cameron, William James, Robert Addison’s Library: a short title catalogue, McMaster University for the Diocese of Niagara, 1967

Strachan, John, Bp. Documents and opinions, McLelland & Stewart, Toronto [1969]

Young, A.H., ed. “The Rev’d Robt. Addison: extracts from the reports and (manuscript) journals of the SPGFP” Ontario Historical Society #19 1922; and the Seaborn Collection, abridged looseleaf notes from the SPG Extracts, Baldwin Room, Metro Toronto Reference Library.

SECONDARY SOURCES:

BOOKS AND MONOGRAPHS:

Armstrong, Anthony The Church of England, the Methodists and Society, 1700-1850 University of London Press Ltd., London England, 1973, [Part III]

Careless, J.M.S. Canada: A Story of Challenge, Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1970. [chapter 8]

Carnochan Janet, History of Niagara, W. Briggs Co., Toronto, Canada, 1914

Carrington, Philip Archbishop, The Anglican Church in Canada, Collins 1963. [chapters 1,3,4,5]

Carter, G. Sydney The English Church in the 18th Century Longmans, Green and Co., London 1910

Clark, S.D. The Developing Canadian Community, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1968 [chapter 4, conclusion]

Cruikshank, Earnest The Story of Butler’s Rangers and the Settlement of Niagara, Tribune Printing House, Welland, Ontario, 1893.

Errington, Jane, The Lion, the Eagle and Upper Canada, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987.

Fahey, Curtis In His Name: The Anglican Experience in Upper Canada 1791-1854 Ottawa; Carleton University Press, 1991. [chapters 1,2,3]

Johnson, J. Keith Historical Essays on Upper Canada, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto Canada c1975

Moir, J.S. Church in the British Era McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972

Simcoe, John Graves, The Simcoe Papers, Published by The Society, 1923-1931 5v (Ontario Historical Society)

Slesser, Henry, The Anglican Dilemma, Hutchison, London [1952].

Stuart, H.C. Church of England in Canada 1759-1793, Montreal, Published for the author by John Lovell and Son 1893. (vanity press)

----- The Capital Years: Niagara on the Lake, 1792-1796 Dundurn Press c1991, [chapter on religion by Michael Power]

JOURNALS, ARTICLES, ETC.

Addison, A.P. “Robert Addison of Niagara” Canadian Journal of Religious Thought, Toronto, 1924, pp 420-426

Green, Earnest, “The search for salt in Upper Canada,” Ontario Historical Society [pub.] v.26 1930, pp 406-31

Smith, C.H.E. “Reverend Robert Addison, M.A.” Ontario Historical Society

Turner, H.E., “Robert Addison,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto Press, 1966

Young, A.H. “The Reverend Robert Addison,” Ontario Historical Society (19?)

In Search of Mary Beebe

I became a genealogist-cum-historian about 15 years ago by my 88-year-old great-aunt who had several ancestral lines on the go. But she was far more interested in painting historical pictures and personal stories than in documenting who begat whom and the stories took flesh.

Of the several intriguing ancestral possibilities, Mary Secord Beebe was the most fascinating. An ordinary woman who could neither read nor write, she embodies the migrations, violence, and upheaval that characterized colonial Canada. Living to be at least 100 years old, she survived three husbands, a multitude of epidemics, the American Revolution, a land-dispute war, a wilderness march with six children under fifteen, refugee camp, and resettlement. This is her story.

Mary’s great-grandfather was Ambroise Sicard, a salt farmer near La Rochelle, a port on France’s Bay of Biscay. A Huguenot, he enjoyed the religious freedom guaranteed to Protestants by the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which ended religious persecution at the time of the Reformation.

In 1685, during a period of political instability, Louis XIV revoked the edict in an attempt to unify the country under one religion. Refusing to sign an allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, some 400,000 Huguenots fled France, Ambroise Sicard among them. He sought sanctuary first in England; then, under the sponsorship of a London church that considered his family “persons of middle quality” sailed to the New World.

By 1689, Ambroise and other Huguenots founded New Rochelle, now a bedroom community of New York City. That same year, he appeared on the census (age 67), and pledged allegiance to England; and England and France went to war. Colonial life reflected the enmity between the two countries with newspaper reports critical of all things French. Around 1709, according to New Rochelle records, the Sicards became Anglicans.

By the time Marie Sicard was born in 1736, the eighth of eleven children, the family name changed to Secord. Two years later, town records were in English, Marie became Mary, and by 1790 no French was spoken.In these early years, New Rochelle and its inhabitants prospered. Ambroise had purchased ninety-five acres a few years after arriving, and in 1701 his will made provision for a sixteen-by-twenty-eight-foot wood-and-stone gable house that still stands.

Sarah Kimble Knight, a New Englander who traveled through New Rochelle in 1704, wrote that it was “a very pretty place well compact and good handsome houses, clean, good passable roads, and situated on a Navigable River, abundance of land well fined and cleared."

As was common, Mary was a young bride. At twenty, she married John Crookston, the son of an English émigré living in Eastchester, five kilometres from New Rochelle. It was 1756, the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, the final act in a long-running worldwide imperial struggle between England and France that had started in 1689.

The hostilities in North America – called the French and Indian Wars by American historians – began two years earlier, in 1754, in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Ohio Valley. There, twenty-two-year-old George Washington was forced to accept a humiliating surrender after ambushing a small French detachment. Alarmed at French activity at their back door, the British ordered two regiments to America, and began raising colonial regiments. Among those colonials who died fighting was 23-year-old John Crookston, leaving behind Mary and their infant son, John.

Two years later, Mary, a twenty-four-year-old war widow and mother, was poised to marry twenty-two-year-old Joshua Beebe, a Connecticut Yankee.

How they met is a mystery. He wasn't a soldier though his family name peppers the musters. And he lived 160 kilometres away from Eastchester in Ashford, Connecticut, a long journey in eighteenth-century terms. But family ties and the push for land may explain it. The Beebes were a large Connecticut family and had spread into New York. Joshua’s cousin Ephraim Beebe, for example, lived in Cortland County, New York. So did Mary’s brother Daniel. Joshua’s uncle Richard Brockway was one of the first men in the Susquehanna Land Company, which in 1753 purchased land from the Six Nations in the Wyoming Valley, on the north branch of the Susquehanna River, in northeastern Pennsylvania. The same company also lured Mary’s older brothers Peter, John James, and Daniel Secord.

The Seven Years’ War continued. Quebec fell to the English in 1759. The next year, the French formally surrendered in Montreal. 1763 saw the end of war and British control of North America official under the Treaty of Paris.

Mary and Joshua rode out the war in Connecticut. Their first child, Adin, was born in 1761. The next two, Secord and Charlotte, were born in 1764 and 1767 respectively. However, sometime before the 1769 birth of their fourth child, Amasa, the family joined the others moving to the Pennsylvania frontier.

The population of the American colonies was exploding and the Pennsylvania frontier was proving irresistible to land-hungry colonists. But both Connecticut and Pennsylvania claimed land along the Susquehanna due to charters granted simultaneously by Charles II in the 1660s.

When the Connecticut settlers arrived in 1762, Six Nations natives drove them out. Undaunted, the pioneers returned in February 1769, Joshua and Mary Beebe among them, todiscover Pennsylvania settlers had already moved in. Predictably, violence broke out, marking the beginning of the first Pennamite War, which lasted until 1772.

The Beebes’ exact whereabouts in this period are difficult to determine. Records show that two children were born at York. So perhaps they stayed in that town while Joshua cleared some land and built a log cabin fartherup the river. Tax lists from 1776 and 1777, farther up the Susquehanna, in northern Pennsylvania, in the Wyoming Valley, include Joshua Beebe. As well, two more children born to Mary are recorded atSusquehanna.

A letter, dated 1871, from John Secord Beebe of Quebec to William Beebe of Nebraska supports this: The Secords with your grandfather Beebe moved to the Susquehanna some fiew years before the revolution they had located themselfes on the river just where the river after winding throug the mountains came into a flat country called Wyoming leading down to the Chesapeak Bay. they wher amongst the first that settled on the [illegible word] lands amongst the mountains, one of there farms was the first as they came to the mout that is to say the country was flat or more level from that toward the Chesapeak each one of the four of them had taken as heads of family one of those [illegible word] flats being “A large flat on one side and mountainson the other, opposite your grandfathers farm in the river was an islan by some Called long Island whilst others called it Peach Island owing to A quantity of Peach trees growing on it."

This mythical island could be anywhere since the Susquehanna is so wide in places there's room for long narrow fertile islands. There is one near the present town of Towanda, though nobody knows whether it was ever called either Long Island or Peach Island.

Wherever they were, the Beebes experienced only a brief period of peace. The second Pennamite war had erupted in the frontier lands by 1773 and the revolution brewed in the east as early as 1774.

The Seven Years' War, largely fought by and paid for by the colonists, accomplished two things. It gave colonists a taste of independence and a sense of ownership of their youngcountry, plus they saw the fertile lands tantalizingly beyond reach in the frontier. Further, they bitterly resented Parliament's order to pay taxes for which they were not represented, and to refrain from exploiting frontier lands in respect of aboriginal claims.

In April 1775, war between Britain and its American colonies began with a skirmish at Lexington, Massachusetts. In July 1776, the American colonies declared themselves an independent nation. New England troops moved into the frontier, forcing settlers to sign the Articles of Association against the British government, persecuting those who refused.

The Beebes appear to have made an early choice to remain loyal to the Crown. Records from April 1777 show Joshua and his sixteen-year-old son Adin enlisting in Butler’s Rangers, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Butler, and by June, father and son were drawing four shillings a day army pay.

The Rangers headquartered at Niagara but set up temporary encampments in the frontier, for easier access to the hotbed of military action in the New York and Pennsylvania frontier. Mary’s family was in the centre of it.

In May 1777, Sir Guy Carleton, governor at Quebec, eager to maintain the allegiance of the Six Nations, ordered the invasion of the colony of New York where settlers were burningMohawk villages and taking the land. In August, the rangers left their headquarters in Niagara in pairs – one ranger and one Indian scout – surprising rebel troops at Fort Stanwix, east of present-day Syracuse, and decimating their army.Two months later, Britain's fortunes plunged. General John Burgoyne, marching south from Quebec to sever New England from the other colonies, was forced to surrender at Saratoga, New York.

Preparing for the worst, Butler arranged to have the Susquehanna settlers’ cattle driven north to Niagara to supply the garrison. He despatched a ranger party from Oswego, led by Mary’s older brother James, to Susquehanna. The rangers were attacked, and thirty were captured, while the rest fled for the Wyoming valley homes, probably Joshua and Adin among them.

Meanwhile, many from the Wyoming Colony had already escaped northwards. In 1777, refugees arrived in Niagara with letters from seventy Susquehanna inhabitants, all being pestered by rebels and all wanting to enlist with Butler’s Rangers.

In an 1861 letter to Dr. Egerton Ryerson, Elizabeth Bowman Spohn describes the experience of her grandparents, the Bowmans who were neighbours of the Beebes: my grandmother … suffered so much through want and anxiety … in the fall the commander of the British forces at Niagara, … brought in five families: the Nellises, Secords, Youngs, Bucks, and our own family (Bowman), five women and thirty-one children, and only one pair of shoes among them all. Mary Secord Beebe was not among the earliest arrivals.

Though rebel persecution escalated and many settlers were captured or driven from their homes in the winter of 1778, Mary appears not to have left her Wyoming Valley home until the late spring of that year. Her United Empire Loyalist land claim states “corn, turnups [sic], potatoes and wheat” were left in the field – crops ready for harvest in late May or June. She left behind: 300 acors of land on grants but not paid for; 9 acors cleared and fenced with logg house 43; stable, 2 large corn cribs; 2 cows and 2 heffers; 10 hogs large and small; 20 pound lining yarn; 1 crop of flax flock 1 acor; all the crop left on the ground wheat, corn potatoes and turnups; plow irons 2 logg chains sett Iron torcien; 1 ax 4 haws hand saw 1 Atchet 2 iron potts; 1 tramil pails tubs and other furniture; 1 rifle copper tea kettle; 1 large dish basin and tin plates; 2 pewter tea potts; hooking yarn; churn.

Fighting in the Susquehanna intensified. That May, Butler left Niagara to headquarter at Unadilla, New York, to more easily attack rebel forts in the Wyoming Valley. By the end of June, he was well down the river’s north branch to Tioga Point, near present-day Athens, Pennsylvania.The 1871 letter suggests the same, describing the Beebes "on there march up the river on there way to Canada they came to A place called Tioga Point being a point of land formed by another river coming into the main river. there they encamped for several days there your grandfather bade his wife and family farewel, bound to N. Y. on business of importance from which he never returned. there also was your father born 3 or 4 days after his father left. "

Tioga Point was where Mary’s brother John Secord had large land holdings, and was, according to Cruikshank'sbook, where the Rangers had an encampment. So it was a logical place for Joshua to leave his family in safety and return to his station. Their last child, Joshua Jr., was indeed born there on July 1.

But Joshua Sr. was not heading to New York as the letter suggests. On July 2, the Rangers descended the Susquehanna in boats and rafts, landing a few miles above Forty Fort, at Wyoming, where a major rebel force was holding out. After a fierce battle, the rebels surrendered. It wasn't until three months later that Joshua was on his way to New York. There he died of smallpox while carrying a message. Meanwhile the family would have headed to Niagara, along with hundreds of other refugees in the wake of George Washington’s 1779 sweep through central New York, burning villages and destroying crops.

It was a terrible year. British supply ships were blocked on the lake – only one got through in November – and the refugees were starving. A pitiful corn harvest provided no relief, and a group left for refugee camps near Montreal to reduce consumption at the fort, most likely Mary among them. It was a good thing – conditions at the fort worsened. The winter of 1779-80 was one of the coldest on record. Entire native families living outside the garrison walls froze to death in their lean-tos and those inside the garrison didn’t fare much better.

The next evidence of Mary is in 1781 at the Machiche refugee camp, near Trois Rivieres north of Montreal. She married Christopher Pearson, the camp rations officer and former Susquehanna neighbour, had her children baptized, and, over the five or six years there, grew in reputation as an excellent midwife and seamstress, helping to supplement her family income.

But by 1783, Machiche was so crowded that Sir Frederick Haldimand, governor of Quebec, put a notice in the Quebec Gazette offering free land in Gaspé and passage for Loyalistsettlers. About four hundred people answered the advertisement, including Mary.

In June 1784, she, Christopher and six of her children sailed for Chaleur Bay, eventually settling on land near New Carlisle.

But Gaspé was no Eden. In an 1809 letter, Mary’s daughter Sarah wrote to her older brother Adin who'd settled in Niagara with his fellow Butler's Rangers: "most of the time Spent at Saling and fishing, growing tired of Both and inclining to folow the farming which is Not Very Comfortebel in this Northing Climet…. Cannot do anything about lands or trespass to rilate the rached state of the districk of Gaspe would be endless."

Though many eventually left Gaspé for more hospitable climes, Mary never did. In 1838, Adin wrote to his brother Amasa: “In yours of 1836, I find that our mother is still living. O what gratitude, love, thanks, adoration, ” which would put Mary at 100 years old. His 1843 letter, referring to an earlier one of Amasa’s, laments the “demonstrated frailty of man” and thanks to those “whom I esteem for the attention they paid our deceased mother.”

If Mary had died that year, her age was a remarkable 106.

No amount of research can ever piece together every part of someone's life, but the quest through scant historical and genealogical accounts is an exhilarating and educational one. My only regret is that my aunt, who died in 1998 at age ninety-five, isn’t here to reap the rewards of our improved Internet resources. But I can well imagine her now communing with the spirit of Mary Beebe and getting the real scoop.

This article appeared in the June/July 2005 issue of The Beaver