“Nowhere to place their heads”

[Title from the New York Evening Post122]

On a cold December night in the town of Newark, two women and seven children stood in the snow watching as fire gutted the large brick house in which they had lived and consumed all their possessions. With nowhere to go, they were all “exposed for three days & nights upon the snow with the Canopy of Heaven for a covering.”123 Elizabeth Campbell and Charlotte Dickson had joined their households during the American occupation of their town in 1813, moving the Campbells into the larger Dickson home. They could not have expected that a sudden American retreat would force them out into the cold, destroy their property, and leave them without shelter. The entire town was made homeless in one fell swoop and the inhabitants fought desperately to keep their families alive by finding whatever shelter they could and salvaging what they could from the ashes. This moment was a turning point in the War of 1812 for civilians who lived in any region that became a battleground. Although the inhabitants of Niagara had suffered from military appropriations and looting during the previous year of invasions and occupation, the burning of Newark forced hundreds of women and children into the “severe frost and snow” to watch helplessly as their possessions and homes were reduced to ash.124 Those women and their families struggled to survive displacement and loss in the months that followed but were soon joined in their plight by thousands of other inhabitants on both sides of the border who suffered similar losses in a series of vengeful campaigns of burning. The first year of the war had been relatively mild for most inhabitants of Niagara and they perhaps had hope that the conflict would be short-lived and require only minor sacrifices. From May 1813 onward, however, they experienced severe deprivation and displacement resulting from extensive looting and burning that would shape public perceptions and memories of the war.

This module argues that women experienced more difficult circumstances in the Niagara District due to three interconnected and compounding factors. First, while Niagara was only one of three main targets in the American war strategy, it became the center of the northern theater when the other two campaigns stalled. The invasion from Detroit failed completely and attacks across the St. Lawrence River were delayed for months, increasing pressure on the American officers along the Niagara River to launch an invasion, capture key fortifications, and weaken the British position in Upper Canada. Their ability to accomplish that goal was hampered by internal conflict between regular and militia officers, disagreements over how best to conduct the war, and ideological differences. Once American soldiers were in British territory, the resulting lack of cohesion and control led to unauthorized looting and violence against civilians, accidental and intentional miscommunications that led to widespread destruction, and subsequent retaliation by the British.

The second contributing factor was the extensive reliance on militia to fill the ranks of both armies. On the American side, officers had difficulty organizing an invasion because many militiamen were determined that they would only serve on American soil in defense of their nation. When faced with the challenge of convincing New York militia to cross the river, the Secretary of War wrote, “What are you to expect from militia draughts with their constitutional scruples?”125 The British also called up significant numbers of local men to serve but had difficulty keeping men at their posts for a very different reason. Despite adopting a defensive posture that was more acceptable to militiamen, British officers struggled to balance the need for soldiers with the need for food and supplies provided by local farms. Once the fighting began in Niagara, local men were called away from their farms for extended periods, were sometimes forced to accompany the army in retreats, or were captured and imprisoned by the enemy. During this period, women provided the labor needed to plant and harvest crops in addition to their regular work of maintaining a household, producing and laundering clothes, and feeding their families. They were also left more vulnerable to looting and destruction, often forced to choose between defending their homes as best they could or fleeing to safety.

The third factor contributing to the great extent of loss and displacement in Niagara was widespread appropriation, looting, and burning that escalated as the war dragged on. Both the British and American armies were reliant on local farms to provide as much food as possible for military stores because transporting supplies to the frontier was slow and prone to disruption. The military took crops to feed troops, used homes and barns as barracks, pressed wagons and teams into service, and often could not or chose not to compensate inhabitants for their losses. Soldiers who were unhappy on army rations were also not above nighttime theft of unsecured food and animals from the residents they were supposed to be protecting. The extended periods of occupation by the British and American armies meant that many inhabitants of Niagara suffered losses to both sides. Following the first successful American invasion, lack of command authority led to increases in looting as foraging soldiers roamed the countryside undeterred by official orders protecting personal property. Similarly, a lack of regular soldiers and reliance on militia who were constantly deserting to return to their farms meant that American commanders offered commissions to disaffected locals who were given free rein to terrorize the district by looting, capturing, and imprisoning their former political enemies. These infamous Canadian Volunteers were also enthusiastic participants in the burning of Newark, which initiated a series of vengeful conflagrations on both sides of the border.

At the outset of the war, people in the Niagara District occupied a position of relative security within the province. The river created a natural barrier that could be easily defended, farmers produced sufficient crops to feed residents and soldiers, and the district boasted a large population that could take up arms to defend their land. The inhabitants also expected that their king and government would send additional forces to help repel an invasion. For the first year of the war, that security remained intact, and hopes were high that the British could easily defend the border and prevent the war from reaching the district. Despite causing the death of Major-General Brock, the first attempt at invasion was repulsed and the Americans kept at bay. But by 1813 external pressure began to build and the inhabitants of Niagara faced invasion and occupation. While few may have hoped to escape the war unscathed, none could have predicted the severity of looting and burning that they would experience in the final three years of the war. Any expectation of civility was lost when soldiers forced women and children into the night to endure freezing temperatures while homes were reduced to ash. Though the war brought suffering to the doors of people across Upper Canada, women in Niagara were at the epicenter of destruction.


  1. Taken from an excerpt in the New York Evening Post describing the burning of Niagara: “The destruction and misery which this dastardly conduct has occasioned is scarcely to be described, women and children being the principal inhabitants have nowhere to place their heads.” Quoted in Cruikshank, DHCNF 8:265.↩︎

  2. Alex Stewart to Alexander Wood, July 25, 1823, Niagara Historical Society & Museum, https://niagarahistorical.pastperfectonline.com/archive/8F51DFA0-0CFA-4103-A64A-489815560330.↩︎

  3. The description of “severe frost and snow” is taken from a published letter describing the purpose of burning the town, which was to deny shelter to an approaching British force. “National Intelligencer, January 22d, 1814,” in Cruikshank, DHCNF 9:57.↩︎

  4. Secretary of War to General McClure, November 25, 1813, in Cruikshank, DHCNF 8:235.↩︎

“Nowhere to place their heads”