208 years ago, housewife
and mother Laura Secord learned plans
for a secret assault on a vital military instillation. After a sharp battle, an invading
army had occupied her town.
Enemy troops had been quartered
on the town, including her home. Her
husband, who had been severely wounded in an earlier battle was
recovering from his wounds and was allowed to remain in the home although men
and boys over the age of 14 had been arrested and deported.
Under the cover
of darkness Secord slipped out of her home in the wee small hours of the
morning and began a 20 mile journey on foot through several enemy
held towns and villages and then through virtual wilderness. Discovered by allied scouts, she was
escorted to the headquarters of the threatened garrison to
deliver the warning. Alerted, the
commander was able to prepare and deploy his forces so that they
were able to ambush and kill or capture almost the entire
enemy force. This battle bought time for
reinforcement to reach the area for battles that would ultimately expel
the despised enemy.
Although her brave
and daring mission would be ignored or forgotten for decades,
when it came to light more than 40 years later the now elderly woman was
proclaimed a national hero and she has been celebrated and memorialized
in numerous ways ever since.
What? You say that you never heard of Laura Secord
and her valiant actions during the War
of 1812? Perhaps that is because she
was Canadian, and the invaders were American troops. Laura, you see, is the Paul Revere figure of Canadian
history and lore.
Laura Ingersoll was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in September of 1775, just months
after the outbreak of the American
Revolution practically in her family’s back yard. Her father, Thomas Ingersoll was a member of a colonial family
stretching back five generations to 1639 in Salem, was a hat maker
and a Patriot. He served as a lieutenant in the militia during
most of the action in Massachusetts, including the Siege of Boston and remained in that service
through 1781. After his military service he was so well thought of by his
neighbors that he was elected magistrate.
As a major of the Great Barrington
militia, he was called upon to participate in the suppression of Shay’s Rebellion in 1786.
Meanwhile his
family grew, despite repeated personal tragedy. Laura was his oldest child. Three more daughters followed before her mother,
Elizabeth died in 1784. Her father remarried a widow
who took a shine to her stepdaughter and reportedly taught her to read
and write as well as domestic arts like spinning and sewing
before she died of tuberculosis in 1789. Thomas married yet another widow with a
daughter of her own. Together the couple
had a son and two more daughters by 1794.
The post-Revolutionary
period was hard in Massachusetts, which went through a prolonged depression.
Thomas’s business was badly hurt.
Thomas despaired of ever recouping his losses or returning
to previous prosperity. He was
also, by some accounts which may have been colored in retrospect,
unhappy with the continued persecution of those Loyalists who had not already fled.
For whatever
reasons, in 1793 he and three companions made their way to New York City for a rendezvous with Mohawk Chief Joseph Branch, a known ally of the English. Brant gave the men a pass to travel to
Upper Canada where they met with Lieutenant Governor John Simcoe. The English were eager to settle
largely vacant land near the Niagara
frontier both as a deterrent to American encroachment and to balance
the heavily French populations
of Quebec and adjacent areas. Simcoe offered the men handsome land
grants to establish themselves and bring more settlers with them.
Thomas was granted
66,000 acres in the Themes Valley. He had to settle and improve
his land and bring in 40 more New England families to take final possession
after seven years. It was an extraordinarily
generous offer that Ingersoll could not pass up.
After returning to
Great Barrington to wrap up his affairs, he took his family with him to his new
property in 1795. There he founded the
village of Oxford-on-the-Thames,
which was later renamed for him.
He built and operated a tavern while he tried to develop
his estate and find tenants.
He also renounced his American
citizenship and swore loyalty to the Crown.
He was now what
was bitterly called a late
Loyalist and as such was resented by long-time English settlers and
Loyalists who had escaped or been expelled during and immediately after the
Revolution, none of whom got such a sweet deal. When his patron Simcoe was recalled to
England, terms of his grant were slashed. Then the grant was abrogated entirely
because he failed to recruit enough of the promised settlers.
Embittered Thomas had to
resettle his family close to the provincial capital of York where he established another
tavern and inn.
He operated it until
his death in 1812 and his widow continued until her death in 1833.
Meanwhile Laura
had met a prosperous young man in Queenstown
and married him shortly in 1797. James Secord was the descendent
of the French Protestant Huguenots who
had founded New Rochelle,
New York in 1688. During the Revolution,
the family had divided between Loyalist and Patriot branches. The Loyalist proved their loyalty to the
Crown by Anglicizing the family name
from D’Secor. They fled to Queenstown after the war.
The young family
built a home in St. Davids, now,
like Queenstown a part of Niagara-on-the-Lake,
directly across the river from New York.
Laura gave birth to her first child, Mary, in St. Davids in 1799 followed by Charlotte in 1801, Harriet
in 1803, her only son Charles Badeau
in1809, and Appolonia the following
year.
James Secord
served in the 1st Lincoln Militia
under General Isaac Brock when the
War of 1812 broke out. His unit was among those that met the first American
invasion of Canada at the Battle of
Queenstown Heights in October 1812.
He was amongst those who helped carry away Brock’s body when he
was killed. Later in the battle James was severely wounded in the leg and
shoulder during.
Family lore has it that Laura
got word of his injuries rushed to his side where she supposedly found
him still on the field as three Americans were preparing to beat
him to death with their gunstocks.
She supposedly begged them to save her husband’s life. According to the lore American Captain John E. Wool, later a major
commander in the Mexican War and
the man who commanded the troops which suppressed the New York Draft Riots in 1863, arrived on the scene just in time to
save Secord, and perhaps his wife.
Laura was
permitted to take her husband home—a home which American troops had looted in
her absence. Putting her life back
together, repairing her home, and tending the children, she nursed her husband
through the winter and spring.
On May 27 a new
American army crossed the river, attacked, and captured Fort George. Queenstown, St.
Davids, and much of the frontier fell to the invading army. Troops were quartered on civilians like the
Secords as the American forces gathered their strength for a new offensive.
Sometime on the
evening of June 21, 1813 Laura somehow learned of the American plans to
attack troops under Lieutenant James
FitzGibbon at Beaver Dams, which
would have furthered American control in the Niagara Peninsula. Exactly
how she learned is open to question.
In later years she gave conflicting accounts. She told FitzGibbon that her husband had
learned about it from an American officer, but years later told her
granddaughter that she had overheard the plans directly from the
American soldiers billeted in her home.
One historian believes her reluctance to name a source
might have been to protect an American informant she knew still
to be living and who could have been charged with treason. The most commonly repeated story is that she
simply overheard idle chatter at her table.
At any rate, early
the next morning she began her trek.
Some accounts have here leaving with a cow so that incase
she was intercepted by American sentries or patrols she
could tell them that she was taking it to relatives. This, however, is likely one of many later
embellishments of the tale. Her
journey took her through Queenstown, St. Davids, Homer, Shipman’s Corners
and Short Hills at the Niagara Escarpment before she arrived
at the camp of allied Mohawk warriors who led her the rest of the
way to FitzGibbon’s headquarters at the DeCew
House.
Acting on
information received, FitzGibbon deployed his forces, a small
contingent of Regulars, Militia and a larger force of Mohawk
allies, and was able to defeat the 500 man American attacking force, virtually destroying
it and capturing most of the survivors.
In his official account of the action FitzGibbon reported acting on information
but did not identify Laura Secord as the source. Many years later this would lead to
controversy over whether Laura made the journey at all or if he had already
received intelligence from his Mohawk scouts.
After the war with
their shop in ruins and James unable to work because of his wounds, the family
was impoverished, surviving on James’s small soldier pension and rent for a couple of hundred acres of
farmland that they owed. Two more
children were born, both daughters. Her
eldest Daughter Mary and her two children moved back home after Mary was
widowed in 1821.
The struggling
family petitioned the government for some employment for
James. But he was judged too crippled
for any post. But Lieutenant-Governor Peregrine Maitland did offer Laura an extraordinary
opportunity—to become custodian of the Brock Monument then under construction with a modest emolument.
But Maitland’s successor reneged on the agreement and awarded
the plumb to the widow of a man who had died during its
construction. Yet another
disappointment.
Meanwhile in 1828
James finally did secure an appointment as registrar
of the Niagara Surrogate Court and
was promoted to judge in 1833.
In 1835 James got an even better position as collector of the Port of Chippewa, which came with a house. The
family moved their while their only son Charles
Badeau took over the Queenstown home and his father’s old job
with the courts.
This relative
prosperity ended in 1841 when James died of a stroke. Laura lost her home, her husband’s income as
collector, and his pension leaving her penniless. She had to sell of the remaining land she had
held onto.
With help from
relatives Laura moved to a small cottage on Water Street in Chippewa.
Her widowed daughter Harriet and her two daughters moved in with her in
1842 followed by her youngest daughter Hannah and her two daughters who also
was widowed in 1844. The crowed all
female household eked by on scant resources.
For a while Laura
ran a small school, but the establishment of a public common school brought that to an end.
In all these years
the story of Laura and her war exploits remained virtually unknown. Now, reluctantly, she began to tell the tale
in petitions to receive a pension in her own right. The story also began to be told
publicly. But official refused to act
because no mention was made of her in official records.
An 1827 statement
by FitzGibbon in support of a fruitless application from James Secord to
operate a quarry was unearthed in which he reported:
I do hereby Certify that on the
22d. day of June 1813, Mrs. Secord, Wife of James Secord, Esqr. then of St.
Davids, came to me at the Beaver Dam after Sun Set, having come from her house
at St. David's by a circuitous route a distance of twelve miles, and informed
me that her Husband had learnt from an American officer the preceding night
that a Detachment from the American Army then in Fort George would be sent out
on the following morning (the 23d.) for the purpose of Surprising and capturing
a Detachment of the 49th Regt. then at Beaver Dam under my Command. In
Consequence of this information, I placed the Indians under Norton together
with my own Detachment in a Situation to intercept the American Detachment and
we occupied it during the night of the 22d. – but the Enemy did not come until
the morning of the 24th when his Detachment was captured. Colonel Boerstler,
their commander, in a conversation with me confirmed fully the information
communicated to me by Mrs. Secord and accounted for the attempt not having been
made on the 23rd. as at first intended.
Ten years later Secord wrote another certificate affirming Laura’s message. Mohawk chief John Norton in a diary entry wrote of “a loyal Inhabitant [who] brought information that the Enemy intended to attack” but did not name her.
As these facts
emerged, public sentiment swung toward the now elderly woman, even if official
were unmoved. Then in 1860, when Secord
was 85, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII heard of her story
while travelling in Canada. He was so
moved he made an award of £100 to Secord. It was the only financial gain or recognition
she ever received in her life.
Secord died in her
home in 1868 at the age of 93. She was
buried next to her husband in the Drummond
Hill Cemetery in Niagara Falls.
Eventually a monument was raised there just yard from another
monument commemorating the Battle of
Lundy Lane. The inscription reads:
To perpetuate the name and fame of
Laura Secord, who walked alone nearly 20 miles by a circuitous difficult and
perilous route, through woods and swamps and over miry roads to warn a British
outpost at DeCew’s Falls of an intended attack and thereby enabled Lt.
FitzGibbon on 24 June 1813, with fewer than 50 men of the H.M. 49th Regt.,
about 15 militiamen and a small force of Six Nations and other Indians under
Capt. William Johnson Kerr and Dominique Ducharme to surprise and attack the enemy
at Beechwoods (or Beaver Dams) and after a short engagement, to capture Col.
Bosler of the U.S. Army and his entire force of 542 men with two field pieces.
After her death
Laura Secord’s modest fame took off when she was adopted by wealthy Empire Loyalist women who were seeking a national heroine and symbol
for their drive for suffrage.
Brave, noble, and Secord fit the bill.
Beginning with a hugely successful play in verse, Laura
Secord: The Heroine of 1812 by
Sarah Anne Curzon in 1887 there was
an avalanche of articles, children’s books, novels, and pageants
commemorating the heroine. Each one
seemed to elaborate on the very few bare bones of the known facts until
it became difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Naturally, such adulation
led in the 20th Century to debunkers
and then to a new round of defenders.
The consensus of modern historians is that Secord did,
indeed, make the journey with her information.
The main question is whether it was the first or only such
intelligence Fitzgibbons received. Some
believe his Mohawk scouts would have alerted him to American troop movements
and that Secord only confirmed the suspicion and pin-pointed the
target of the attack.
Secord has been
honored, twice, with postage stamps and
on a commemorative quarter coin. Her home has been restored and is
now a museum and gift shop at Partition and Queen Streets
in Queenstown. In 2006 Secord was one of
fourteen Canadian heroes memorialized with a statue dedicated at the Valiants Memorial in Ottawa.
And schools, parks, streets, and public
buildings are named for her across Canada.
But Secord’s most enduring
memorial is a commercial one. In
1913, the centennial year of her walk Frank O’Connor founded a chocolate
company and named it Laura Secord
Chocolates. Beginning with one shop
in Toronto, the company grew into a chain of shops across the
country, much like Fannie May in the
United States. It is now the largest
candy merchant in Canada and its boxes featuring an idealized
cameo of Secord are familiar in
almost every home.
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