Making and Maintaining Communities

In addition to providing financial security for their families’ futures, women in Niagara also helped their children find opportunities for both marriage and careers, which had the added benefit of stabilizing the growth of the district. Women’s involvement in finding suitable partners for their children—or at least their daughters—was common throughout the early settlement of the province, as “parents had considerable influence over their daughter’s choice of a mate.”³⁰⁴ Once a possible husband or wife was found, “the courtship was also supervised by neighbours, friends, and sometimes employers.”³⁰⁵ For women whose husbands had died during the war, there was twice as much effort needed and likely additional pressure to identify possible marriages for their children to relieve financial burdens and create a more extensive support network for the family.

Without access to women’s own accounts of their involvement in their children’s future, we are left to examine family histories and make reasonable inferences about how women’s actions shaped their family’s legacies. Family genealogies sometimes provide details that hint at women’s involvement in identifying and negotiating marriage opportunities. An examination of the Corwin family provides insight into how marriages were arranged within a specific context of social connections. Lydia Corwin was born into the Swayze family, a large clan of German immigrants who settled in New Jersey and Long Island before relocating to Upper Canada after the Revolutionary War. Her husband Joseph Corwin’s family were United Empire Loyalists also from New Jersey. Joseph died at age thirty-two in 1807, so Lydia was without his support when she was looted during the war, instead relying on the support of Joseph’s twin brother Benjamin, who “advanced the money to redeem the goods & horses.”³⁰⁶ When the war ended, Lydia had four children under the age of sixteen and would have relied on her extended family of Swayzes and Corwins for support. As her children reached marrying age, she would have played a part in finding suitable unions. Sometime before 1821, Lydia’s second child Abigail Corwin married Jacob Garner. In 1828, her eldest daughter Mary married James Willson, whose family had also relocated from New Jersey. That same year, her eldest son John married Catharine Upper, whose father Jacob S. Upper had been born in the same town in New Jersey as Joseph Corwin Senior. The three families had relocated to the Thorold area after the Revolutionary War and their long connection likely played a role in their intermarriage. In normal circumstances, two parents would have shared the work of identifying suitable partners, making the appropriate connections with the other family, and possibly negotiating a dowry. In the aftermath of a war that took the lives of hundreds of local men, widowed women were solely responsible for ensuring the successful union of their children.

Women’s involvement in finding suitable marriages for their children also benefited their own futures. John and Catharine Corwin had ten children together and provided a home for Lydia in her later years. According to the 1851 census, Lydia was living with John, Catharine, and six of their children. In 1861, she was eighty-three and still living with six members of the family, now the responsibility of her grandson Benjamin Corwin as the head of household. The Corwin descendants of Joseph and Lydia spread far and wide with branches from Niagara to California.³⁰⁷ The surviving evidence of Lydia’s family tree should not be taken to suggest that she is solely responsible for the subsequent success and expansion of the family. However, her role as leader of the family during and after the war undoubtedly shaped the lives of her children and her actions helped ensure that they found suitable marriages that would benefit themselves, their family, and the rest of the community. Corwin’s life is more visible than other women’s in part because she lived a long life and was documented in mid-century censuses but provides an insightful example of how the women of Niagara created and reinforced community connections through family marriages.

There is some limited evidence that during the postwar period women also identified and negotiated work opportunities for their children—a role that was more likely filled by fathers throughout the nineteenth century. The case of Elizabeth Campbell and her son Edward is the most insightful example of the long-term results of women’s career-making but also demonstrates why so little evidence of these activities has survived. When the War of 1812 was ended in 1815 by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, Elizabeth Campbell and her four children were on their way to Nova Scotia, where her parents and other relations still lived. Considering that Campbell had lost her husband, her home, and her youngest child in Niagara, most people would have understood if she had decided to leave the district and never look back. Once she reached Nova Scotia and found stability for her family, however, Campbell maintained relationships with former neighbors and friends in Upper Canada. Those connections proved valuable in making her war loss claim in 1823 but were also useful to her goal of providing a career for her son.

A pair of letters preserved in the Niagara Historical Society and Museum between Elizabeth Campbell, Edward Campbell, and Robert Dickson demonstrate the community connections she used to create an opportunity for her son and show that she used her war loss compensation to fund his future. After Edward graduated from King’s College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, Campbell arranged an apprenticeship with Niagara lawyer Robert Dickson, son of her friend Charlotte with whom she had sheltered during the war. With help from his father, Dickson was helping to rebuild the town after its devastation during the war.³⁰⁸ Instead of the usual procedure of charging a high initial apprenticeship fee, Dickson proposed to take Edward into his home and make him part of the family and business in return for an annual fee. He also discussed the close connection between the two families, writing, “I mentioned my intended proposition to my father and he approved it from a partial recollection of your son and his acquaintance with you.”³⁰⁹ In the only letter undeniably written by Campbell herself, she wrote to Edward, “I am sensible it is much to your advantage to be in Mr D family & I the more cheerfully accepted his offer on this account.”³¹⁰ Despite the years and distance separating them, Campbell was able to draw on existing relationships with the Dickson family to provide an opportunity for her son that would ultimately shape the regrowth of the community, town, and district during the mid-nineteenth century. It also appears that Campbell arranged to pay for the apprenticeship with the money awarded to her as compensation for her war losses, as she wrote, “now that I see a prospect of the Board being paid by the losses, I am quite satisfied.”³¹¹ The money may also have been drawn from Edward’s own claim, which was separated from his mother’s and included only the value of the property that he would have inherited as eldest son.

Like many other women of Niagara who persevered through suffering during the war, Elizabeth Campbell deserves credit for her role in the survival, recovery, and success of her family, including her son Edward’s influence in the Niagara region throughout the nineteenth century. Although she died in 1825, Campbell’s efforts to provide financial security and career opportunities allowed her son to find success in his return to Niagara and create a legacy for the Campbell family. The only surviving letter—and possibly their final correspondence—from Elizabeth to Edward shows her love and determination to provide for her family. “I hope you will continue to write me often,” she wrote, “Write me all the news. I hope to see your hand improve. I wish I could set the example of improvement. Affectionately, your mother, E. Campbell.”³¹² Launched by his mother’s efforts into a career in law, Campbell was called to the Bar in 1829 and joined Dickson’s partnership in 1832. Like Dickson, Campbell built a new house on the lot where his family home had stood before its destruction in 1813. When Dickson retired, Edward took over the law firm and trained apprentices of his own. Throughout his life, he actively participated in shaping the community in Niagara, serving as officer in the local militia and a volunteer fireman in addition to his work as a barrister.

The results of Elizabeth Campbell’s effort to provide opportunities for her son also appear in Edward’s ambitious but unsuccessful political career. His campaign activities indicate that he continued to rely on connections within the community that had lived in the district for decades and survived the war together. In 1836 and 1841, he ran for election to represent the town of Niagara in the provincial assembly with campaign ribbons that displayed both his family’s loyalty to the Crown and recognition of the changes taking place in the province, reading, “Campbell for the Town of Niagara. The Sovereign’s Privileges. The People’s Rights.”³¹³ After losing the 1836 election by only seven votes, Campbell entered a heated race in 1841 that was marred by controversy.³¹⁴

Traditionally, franchise was granted to male freeholders of land—even vacant lots—valued at 40 shillings yearly. However, once the town was given legislative representation separate from the surrounding county, owners of lots in the town were unable to vote in the election unless they dwelled on the property. Campbell attempted to remedy the disfranchisement of freeholders living outside the town limits by helping them erect buildings on their lots that would qualify as dwellings and enable them to vote (presumably for him).³¹⁵ He won the election by two votes and took his seat in the legislature on June 14, 1841. The next day, however, electors from Niagara brought a petition before the assembly to challenge the election results on the basis that Campbell’s scheme had illegally padded the voter lists.³¹⁶ The committee appointed to investigate determined that Campbell’s opponent had won the election after they discounted the votes submitted by freeholders of lots with suspicious construction activity, such as “a small building 12 x 18 ft. erected for the voter at the Expense of the Candidate, a week before the Election.”³¹⁷

Why would Edward Campbell attempt to manipulate the election results in such a blatant and flimsy scheme? The most obvious answer is that it served his goal of becoming elected. But this strategy relied on the cooperation of freeholders who lived outside the town, the only people besides Campbell who would benefit. It is plausible, then, that this plan was a collaboration between Campbell and men from families with long histories in the Niagara District who owned property in town but lived elsewhere. Campbell was a son of Niagara, born in the early years of settlement to parents who were respected friends of families across the district. His mother’s efforts to return him to that community after the war had successfully reestablished those connections and ensured that Campbell could find support in those longstanding relationships. During early settlement of the region, petitioners often received land grants in the township as well as lots in the town. Depending on where they built their homes, they might have been ineligible to vote in town elections, despite having interests there to protect. Other inhabitants who owned property in the town but moved away to other districts were similarly ineligible.³¹⁸ Campbell may have worked with these freeholders to develop the solution of regaining the franchise by building simple houses on their vacant lots. Although the attempt failed when the assembly overturned the election results, Campbell’s political bid was emblematic of the deep connections to the original families that settled Niagara that Elizabeth had worked to develop and maintain during traumatic displacement and loss.

The house that Edward Clarke Campbell built in Niagara, originally two stories, was later owned by Senator Josiah Plumb, who added a story and other rooms. View of the Plumb House (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario). Owen Staples, 1910. JRR 1242 Cab IV (Staples). Courtesy of Toronto Public Library

The Campbell legacy that Elizabeth helped establish in Niagara was defined not only in terms of personal success but also through Edward’s involvement in the growth of the region during the nineteenth century. In addition to his work as lawyer and judge, Edward helped establish many local organizations and institutions, serving as president for the regional and provincial horticultural, fruit-growers, and mechanics societies and the local library.³¹⁹ He contributed to the building fund for a new Presbyterian church to replace the one burned by Americans during the War of 1812, and helped establish a telegraph office in nearby Queenston.³²⁰ Upon his death in 1860, “an immense concourse of people from all parts of the County” attended his funeral, including all the members of the library, the Niagara Mechanics’ Institute, and the Niagara Fire Department, and a resolution of sympathy was read in the Town Council.³²¹ A lengthy obituary printed in the Niagara Mail and reprinted in The Upper Canada Law Journal described Edward as “a man such as Canada possesses few equal, and the like of whom is not often found.”³²² It also praised his contribution to horticulture and floriculture, “which he cultivated with unwearied industry, devotion and success.” Having fled the town with his mother to seek refuge amongst relatives, Edward Clarke Campbell returned to his birthplace, helped rebuild the community, and had a lasting effect on the district. His prominence in Newark also ensured that Elizabeth’s role was made visible when objects, documents, and letters from his life were preserved by the local historical society. Without her influence in making the opportunity and Edward’s own success, Elizabeth’s story might have remained hidden like so many others. Instead, Elizabeth’s persistence and resourcefulness brought her family back from the brink of disaster and resulted in circumstances that preserved evidence of her role in the family’s remarkable journey from the low point of a terrible night filled with flames to a restored place of influence and respect in the Niagara District.