Appealing for Aid

During and immediately following the war, women employed a variety of tactics when seeking recompense for lost property. Their efforts demonstrate a savvy awareness of their position within the patriarchal hierarchies of Upper Canada and how to best take advantage of the paternalism of aid organizations. Some of these efforts are found in the records of the Loyal and Patriotic Society (LPS). Founded in December 1812 by a group of wealthy, influential men in York, the aid organization “grew out of the peculiar circumstances of Upper Canada.”²²⁸ The LPS was initially intended to support the militia of the province, who were without proper clothing, equipment, or rations, but “it was soon discovered, that great distress must, unavoidably, in many cases, result to families, deprived of their sole support, the labour of fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers, employed in arms.”²²⁹ By raising money from subscribers and donors in Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, England, and even Jamaica, the LPS was able to distribute aid to inhabitants on a regular basis. The list of subscribers ranged in stature and commitment from the Bank of England’s £1000 donation to a few men who submitted only 10 shillings. Anyone with an annual subscription above one pound was considered a member of the society and was granted “the privilege of recommending objects to its charitable bounty.”²³⁰ Subscribers donating over ten pounds annually were considered directors, were eligible to attend the quarterly board meetings, and were assigned to local committees for accepting petitions in different districts.

Women who were suffering from losses or struggling to survive learned of the LPS and made petitions either themselves or through intermediaries. One of the first cases reviewed was Hannah Smith’s, whose husband had been killed in action and who was ill at the time she applied. Her petition was approved and she was ordered an immediate relief payment of £2/10s. Unfortunately, by the time the draft was prepared and the payment made, Smith had died from her illness, so her payment of ten shillings per week was given “to the person who has the charge of her children.”²³¹ During their tenure, the LPS directors reviewed over 815 claims of which 368 (45%) were submitted on behalf of or by women seeking immediate relief or compensation for losses.

Because the surviving record of LPS activities is a report prepared from the notes of its meetings, the precise methods that women used to apply for aid are not clear. In most cases, the record simply states that the society resolved to pay a certain amount to a person due to their unfortunate situation, with some details usually provided. The closest description of the process is the appointment of committees in each district “who may apply to the relief of cases of distress arising therein.”²³² Exactly how those committees solicited or collected information about these cases is unclear. After the Battle of York, Mrs. Dettor and Mrs. Murray were both given twenty-five pounds, split into two payments over two years, because their husbands were both killed during the battle.²³³ Perhaps the two women approached the committee directly to plead their cases, or perhaps their circumstances were already known to members who then applied on their behalf. In some cases, representatives from different districts or settlements appeared before the directors and petitioned for funds they could distribute to worthy and needy inhabitants. Colonel Talbot, for example, received £750 “for the relief of the inhabitants of Port Talbot […] who were plundered by the troops of the United States.”²³⁴ He also received payments for other sufferers in Norfolk District. Talbot provided lists of the people to whom he distributed aid, which included several widowed women. In these cases, such women were supported by the LPS without having to make their own petition and may not have known about the organization before receiving aid.

In other cases, the minutes refer to petitions submitted by individuals, suggesting that inhabitants had several different methods of seeking aid from the society. In April 1816, Ruth Marks and Betsey Johnson traveled from the Western District to York to collect pensions—likely awarded to them as widows—but due to “some difficulty preventing them, they were unable to get home” and were provided immediate payments of £10 each to help them return.²³⁵ Ruth Marks was a particularly persistent and ambitious petitioner: after receiving the standard £20 given to widows in May 1815, she then returned in December of the same year and “the Society not recollecting that she had already received twenty pounds, voted her that sum, by which she obtained double what the widows got.”²³⁶ Marks successfully received aid in each of her three journeys from the Western District to York, first by exploiting the directors’ lack of attention to details and then by appealing to their paternalistic support for travelers. Her negotiation of the bureaucracy does not suggest that the LPS was opposed to helping people and needed to be scammed but demonstrates the various approaches and appeals women could use to receive aid from the LPS, even if they were not strictly following the rules.

Although inhabitants of Niagara received few disbursements from the LPS in the first few years of its activities, the losses they incurred during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were so substantial that they eventually submitted more claims than any other district. Following the major battles throughout Niagara in 1813, the LPS was inundated with petitions from women whose husbands were either killed in action or imprisoned, leaving them and their children with few resources. During a meeting in February 1814, the society approved payments to Hannah Fry, Elizabeth Lawe, Mrs. Heward, Sarah Lawrence, Elizabeth McLelan, Elizabeth Wright, Phoebe Cameron, and Mary Grass, all residents of Niagara. These eight women were approved for £510 of aid between them but because the LPS report is compiled in different sections that do not correspond very well, it is difficult to determine whether they all received the monies awarded to them.²³⁷ Inhabitants of Niagara accounted for over nearly half of all claims made to the LPS and of those claims, 69% were submitted by or on behalf of women living in the district.²³⁸ The report includes some details of successful petitions, which provide insights into the variety of circumstances with which women had to cope during the war. Isabella Hill, “a lady of cultivated understanding and agreeable manners, having seen much of the world,” was given £50 to help her reach Jamaica. Hill had owned two houses in Newark and had continued to live there with her daughter during the American occupation in 1813 but abandoned her property when she learned that they planned to set fire to the town. While residing in York and determining what next to do, she applied for aid from the LPS, which often provided funds for sufferers traveling away toward refuge or returning to their former homes.²³⁹ Hill’s petition is one of the more detailed but many more were quite brief and opaque. Susannah McDonell of Niagara District was awarded £40 “on account of her great losses and meritorious exertions.”²⁴⁰ The report provides no explanation of the losses that McDonell experienced nor the exertions that earned the directors’ recognition. It is clear, however, that the directors of the LPS were assessing petitioners’ needs but also their worthiness.

Although the basic measures of need were similar for both women and men, worthiness was described (and likely defined) differently for female and male sufferers. Many women’s cases included descriptions of their male husbands, sons, or fathers.²⁴¹ The death, imprisonment, or disability of these men was often attributed as the cause of women’s suffering and justification for relief. When Abraham Aker died in November 1812, his mother Elizabeth Aker and his daughter, also Elizabeth, were both left without means of support and received aid from the society.²⁴² Conversely, the rationale for male petitioners often mentioned a wife and number of children as dependents that justified receiving aid. The underlying assumption was that women could receive aid when they had no male relative to provide for them, while men could receive aid for themselves or to provide for women and children. In a reflection of the hierarchy of family in the early nineteenth century, there were no cases of women applying for aid who had able husbands at home. Similarly, there were no cases in which relief was justified by the death of a woman, except when petitioners were orphaned by the death of both parents.

Despite the difference in determining and describing the worthiness of women and men, the language used by the directors indicates that their decisions were focused primarily on one criterion: was the petitioner in dire need of relief? This basic measure applied across lines of gender, race, and class. Descriptions of cases submitted by black and white women and men of elite and lower social standings all reference circumstances such as poverty, disability, and support of their families as justification for relief. Judith Knox was given £5/5d because she was “poor and distressed.” The same reasons were given for David Wills and Henry Frank, who both received £2/10d.²⁴³ The assessment of need was also applied equally across lines of race. By this era in Upper Canada, “free Blacks exercised the rights of full (albeit socially second-class) citizens.”²⁴⁴ The directors of the LPS made no note about race when assessing the petition of Peter Lee who while serving in the Coloured Corps of the 1st Lincoln Militia, “Hurt his arm in the king’s works, which is disabled, has seven children in great distress.”²⁴⁵ Nor did they comment on the race of Catherine Waters, whose husband served alongside Lee and who “was robbed and driven from the farm her husband rented.”²⁴⁶

The prominence of some petitioners within Upper Canadian society meant that their circumstances received more attention but did not necessarily entail that they would receive additional aid. Isabella Hill may have earned a lengthy and flattering account in the report due to her position as the widow of a respected military officer but she received no more aid than Thérèse McKee, who was simply “on her return to Amherstburg.”²⁴⁷ Taking advantage of the opportunity present in the society’s criteria for assessing need and awarding relief, white and black women may have recognized that emphasizing their need and distress was the most effective way to persuade the directors to grant payments that would allow them to survive and support their families. The blunt language of poverty and disability may have been intentionally crafted by women who were aware that men perceived them as vulnerable but could use that position to ensure personal and familial survival.