Communities of Support

To meet the exacting requirements of the commissioners reviewing claims for war losses, detailed lists were only as useful as the evidence that supported them. The witness statements solicited and submitted by female claimants demonstrate the complex social network of neighbors and friends that women relied upon to support their claims for compensation. Seventy-one of the women who submitted claims from Niagara included statements by other men and women whose testimony supported their case. Some claims include as few as one supporting statement while others include up to eight, with an average just under three (2.9) witnesses per claim. Like the claimant’s own statements of loss, the supporting statements range in content from basic certification of the facts involved to fully detailed eyewitness accounts of events that caused the women to suffer.

Isabella McNabb included a general statement signed by two witnesses that is typical of those found in many claims: “We the undersigned are perfectly aware of the above loss being sustained by the widow McNabb, and we consider the sum which she estimates the loss at, to be fair and reasonable.” She also provided a more personal statement by Reverend Robert Addison of Newark: “From the Respectability of this Claimant (whom I have known for many years) I have no Doubt that the loss stated above was sustain’d.”²⁷⁹ To make her case even stronger, McNabb submitted two additional statements with more specific details about her property and losses. John Fletcher attested to the size and condition of her house and identified the perpetrators responsible for burning it, and carpenter Theodore Brundage made a fairly unique claim that a house like McNabb’s “could not then or now be so built & furnished for the sum of fifty pounds.”²⁸⁰ Her claim was successful but the commissioners only awarded £40 instead of the claimed value of £50. With four different witness statements supporting the general and specific facts of her losses, McNabb’s claim included slightly more evidence than average among female claimants but demonstrates the various types of statements that women sought out to prove their cases to the Board.

A network visualization of connections between claimants and witnesses conforms to known settlement patterns but also allows two unique observations: first, many claimants relied on statements from men with influence or expertise. At the center of the diagram is a large cluster of connections between women who included more witnesses in their claims and men who provided supporting statements for several claims. The central cluster includes twenty-four women from across the Niagara District who are all connected to one another by witnesses who supported their claims. As might be expected, Niagara Township—in which the devastated towns of Newark, Queenston, and St. David’s are located—occupies much of the central cluster. Other townships such as Stamford and Willoughby are visible in small clusters of two or three claimants. Within the large group of claimants from Niagara Township, men such as David Secord, Richard Woodruff, Robert Addison, Thomas Dickson, and William McKean lent their support to at least three claims each. As merchants, magistrates, and ministers, these men held positions of influence in the district that gave their testimony significant weight. Another group of men, George Young, James Tinlin, and John Monro, appear in the cluster because they were carpenters who provided expert valuations of houses that were burned. Their statements were invaluable in claimants’ attempts to garner the highest possible compensation for their lost structures.

Second, physical proximity was not the only factor that determined who claimants sought as witnesses: race mattered also. The network visualization shows a lack of connections between claimants and witnesses who lived in close physical proximity to one another. Mary Lee, Mary Jupiter, and the witnesses on their claims form a cluster that is separated from all others. The people in this cluster lived in Niagara but all of them were black. Neither Lee nor Jupiter had white witnesses provide evidence for their claims. None of the white women relied on the black witnesses in this group. Despite living in the same town, interacting in daily life, suffering similar losses during the war, and being equal before the board of commissioners, the white and black communities of Niagara remained separate in requesting and providing support for war loss claims.

This is an interactive network visualization produced with Flourish. Each of the points representing claimants includes their township of residence and a link to additional information about the claimant. The points can also be manipulated to make the network connections more visible.

Learn more about the network visualization and date here: http://swroberts.ca/far/niagara-network