With a name like "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks," I think there is an unspoken expectation that one will write about 52 different ancestors. I appreciate that. I'm not going to abide by it.
I wrote before about Elizabeth Calder Thomas in the post about Translation, in which she, an aging widow, politely but firmly demanded that the Governor of Canada address her land ownership frustrations. Her skill at persuasive letter writing is only one reason I find her to be such a compelling person, however. The world changed dramatically during her considerable lifetime; did those she left behind fully appreciate everything she had experienced?
Elizabeth Calder was born in Ireland, most likely in Dublin, in about 1769. She was 28 when she married 41-year-old Richard Higeson Thomas in that same city on 25 February 1797. I don't know for certain that this was her first marriage, but I do know that the name "Calder" was very important to her, as all but one of her children had it as their middle name, and it is the surname on her marriage record. It's unusual but not unheard of for a woman to be unmarried at age 28. What was she doing in the meantime? I think at least some of her youth was spent in school. If she didn't write the entire letter to the Governor, herself -- the handwriting in the body is subtly different from that of the signature -- she did sign it rather than using the mark of one who is illiterate. Could the main portion of the letter look different because it was being copied from a draft, or being written more thoughtfully and painstakingly than a dashed-off signature? That also seems possible. Literacy was definitely very important to her son, my great-great grandfather, whose children were all well-read despite their frontier upbringing.
I inherited this English Grammar, originally belonging to Elizabeth's granddaughter, Rebecca . It must have been dear to purchase. Members of the family must have carried this book across half a continent although I'm sure there were times when every ounce of baggage had to be justified, and occasions when it could have been sold or traded.
Richard and Elizabeth had three children in Ireland: John Calder Thomas, Richard Calder Thomas, and Jane Calder Thomas. John died soon after birth. About 1802, the small family took ship for Philadelphia. Most of the people leaving Ireland at this time were Catholics, fleeing religious persecution by the English crown, but Richard and Elizabeth adhered to the Protestant faith. Their mature age at marriage and measured departure for the former colony feels idealistic in nature to me. I think they were looking for land to call their own, a place where their labors could benefit themselves and their children rather than enrich someone who had been lucky enough to be born into the land-owning class. In the birthplace city of the new-born United States of America, the couple had six more children: William Higeson Thomas, Harriet Calder Thomas, Maria Calder Thomas, Elizabeth Calder Thomas, George Calder Thomas and Rebecca Ann Calder Thomas. Sometime after Rebecca Ann's birth in 1817, they became "Late Loyalists," British-born immigrants who were actively recruited to move to Canada with offers of inexpensive or free land and lower taxes than the U.S. could offer given the new Republic's extensive war debts. Canada was basically advertised as 'that place you thought you were moving to originally.' Recruiters actively sought the poorly educated and the just plain poor, feeling they were less well positioned to cause trouble to the government.
British officials defined the province [of Upper Canada] as a set of absences - as lacking the social and political pathologies that prevailed in the United States. Imperial officials and Loyalists celebrated Upper Canada as a province without the land jobbing, higher taxes, Indian warfare, republican electioneering, libelous newspapers, majoritarian intolerance, and mob violence that blighted the American states. In 1792 the British officer Patrick Campbell insisted that the American migrant to Upper Canada would "get lands for nothing, be among his countrymen, and run no risk of being ever molested by the Indians, tarred or feathered." The British promoted Upper Canada more for what it was not than for what it was. from "The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic" by Alan Taylor
The Thomas family chose to settle along the Grand River, petitioning for Loyalist land grants from "The Indian Lands." The British government had purchased 950,000 acres that surrounded the Grand River from its mouth at Lake Erie up into what is now Ontario, west of Toronto, and had given the land to The Six Nations indigenous peoples who had fought alongside the British during the American Revolution. The leader of The Six Nations, Joseph Brant, gave a considerable amount of land away to friends, many of them British-born, and members of the tribes were able to sell portions of the land, as well. Richard Thomas and the two oldest boys were all granted land as Loyalists, and purchased more. Richard Thomas was 79 years old when he died in 1834, leaving a land transaction incomplete, which led to 64-year-old Elizabeth's testy letter to the Governor of Canada. After a bit, Elizabeth moved in with her son, George, George, on a farm outside of Brantford. When George and family decamped to Ft. Atkinson, Iowa, about 1852, Elizabeth moved in with her daughter, Harriet, who had married a mason, James Leach, and lived in their household in the town of Caledonia until her death on September 12, 1871 at the age of 102, not from 'old age' but from cholera; Harriet predeceased her by a year.
Elizabeth had lived on two continents, across the change of the century. Born in the venerable city of Dublin, she made the dangerous voyage across the ocean and raised a family in Philadelphia, where she missed Benjamin Franklin, the Continental Congress and the U.S. Capitol (it's true!) by only a couple of years. Then she left the conveniences of markets, streets (even if they were composed of dirt), and the company of neighbors behind for the primitive frontier in Ontario, where, as a 64-year-old widow in a world where women had few rights, she stood up for herself and asked/told the Governor to do his job. She sounds like such a remarkable person. I think that's why her funeral notice makes me so angry.
I know that "relict" is a Latin leftover that effectively means "widow" but... really? Did that word not strike anyone else as objectionable? However, I expect she would have appreciated the reminder that the ceremony would occur at 9 o'clock sharp.
I hope whomever wrote the funeral notice was merely being formal, perhaps giving a nod to the time from which Elizabeth originated. And I hope they all realized how special she was, someone who had lived through so many extraordinary things and thrived... the last one of her era standing.
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