"For her children's benefit"

[Title from Mary Shaw's will²⁸⁴]

In 1824, Elizabeth Campbell and her children were living in Nova Scotia, thousands of miles from the community they had left behind and home that they had lost. Despite the time that had passed and the distance between them, Campbell contacted Niagara lawyer Robert Dickson to ask whether he might take her son Edward as an apprentice. She knew Robert from her time in Newark, having been close friends with his mother Charlotte and living in the Dickson home during the occupation of the town. Even though Dickson would have been seventeen when six-year-old Edward left Newark in 1813, they too lived together during that traumatic period and endured the bitter cold when soldiers set their town ablaze. Dickson replied with an offer to “receive the young gentleman for 5 years, take him into my own family and make him an inmate of the same during his apprenticeship” due to the “very high recommendation given of your son together with the former acquaintance of the two families.”²⁸⁵ That same year, Edward Clarke Campbell returned to his place of birth to start his apprenticeship, which led to an illustrious career as lawyer and judge, a family of his own, and a lasting impact on the regrowth of the town and district. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died in 1825 and so did not live to see the fruits of her effort to make a future for Edward. Her perseverance during the war and determination to make opportunities for her children is a notable example of how the women of Niagara were involved in the recovery of the district during the postwar years even from afar.

Although the War of 1812 caused extensive destruction and displacement throughout the Niagara District, women began to rebuild their homes, families, and communities as soon as the flames died, playing an important role in the large-scale effort to raise the district and province from the ashes. The previous modules have all focused on the experiences and efforts of women during the years surrounding the War of 1812, from the early settlement of the region through the distribution of compensation for wartime losses. This module argues that women’s participation in male-dominated activities and additional work to preserve and support their families and communities did not end with the war but continued in the decades that followed. During this period, women contributed to the regrowth of the Niagara District in two main ways. First, women who petitioned for pensions and claimed compensation for losses participated in the postwar redistribution of wealth in the provincial economy by spending their reimbursements on rebuilding homes and farms, negotiating land deals to provide either growth or profit as needed, or pursuing other work in the widening variety of employment deemed acceptable for women. Second, many women used their personal connections to find opportunities for themselves and their children, ensuring that their communities—tested and strengthened during the war—would not only survive but thrive.

While most women in early nineteenth century Upper Canada had less representation in economic and political records than their fathers, husbands, and sons, the War of 1812 created circumstances and unique sets of official records that brought women’s participation in economic and social growth to light. However, the records of the Board of Claims for Losses and the Report of the Loyal and Patriotic Society that offer a unique insight into women’s experiences during the war provide only small glimpses into the postwar period.

Fortunately, some evidence of women’s postwar activities can be found preserved in the claim records due to the lengthy delay between those events and the period in which documentation was collected. Fragments like an 1816 letter documenting Elizabeth Campbell’s move to Nova Scotia provide threads and avenues of inquiry from which to reconstruct some women’s experiences after the war. These few surviving pieces suggest that the end of the war did not bring an immediate return to safer and happier times for the inhabitants who had suffered grievous losses. Instead, the decades after the war were transitional as each person evaluated the circumstances in which they were left, determined the best way forward for themselves and their families, and then did the work necessary for recovery and growth.