Mary Beacock Fryer - John Graves Simcoe, 1752-1806

A Biography

Mary Beacock Fryer and Christopher Dracott

Copyright Mary Beacock Fryer and Christopher Dracott 1998

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press Limited. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Reprography Collective.

Editor: Dennis Mills

Design: Scott Reid

Printer: Transcontinental Printing Inc.

Front Cover photograph: John Graves Simcoe courtesy of the Ontario Government Art

Collection. Artist: George Berthon

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Fryer, Mary Beacock, 1929

John Graves Simcoe, 1752-1806: a biography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-55002-309-8

1. Simcoe, John Graves, 1752-1806. 2. Lieutenant governors Ontario
Biography. I. Dracott, Christopher. II. Title.

FC3071.1S55F79 1998 971.302092 C98-931572-X

F1058.S79 1998

1 2 3 4 5 BJ 02 01 00 99 98

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Book Publishing Industry Development Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on recycled paper.

John Graves Simcoe, the subject of this work, was a brilliant soldier and an imaginative tactician. He rose in rank from humble ensign to lieutenant general in the British Army. He was also an administrator of government, civil and military. His adult life divides into three phases.

The first, and probably the most heroic, was his service as a daring commander of the Queens Rangers, a regiment of Provincial troops (men who remained loyal to the Crown) during the American Revolution.

Second came his service as the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada (now Ontario). This province was established in 1791 in what remained of British North America after the Treaty of Separation of 1783, which gave the Thirteen Colonies their independence. In this role he was the imaginative innovator, whose plans were often frustrated by budget-conscious superiors.

The third phase was his command of the Western District of England (mainly the counties of Cornwall, Devon and part of Somerset) as the 19th century opened. Simcoe was responsible for the defense of these counties in the face of constant threats from France; in fact, he was the senior general on that part of the home front.

To tell the complete story of John Graves Simcoe required the work of two authors, one resident in Britain, the other in Canada. In the latter country, Simcoe is lionized as the founder of a province, but his military acumen is often overlooked; in the former he is less well known, beyond a certain fame in the vicinity of Honiton. He was a man of influence locally; his home, Wolford Lodge, was only a few miles outside the town. Christopher Dracott is the Briton, resident near Hemyock, Devon, not far from the site of the Simcoe house (that later burned down and was rebuilt). Mary Beacock Fryer is the Canadian, resident in Ontario.

Chris became fascinated by Simcoe after he retired as a Detective Chief Superintendent at New Scotland Yard. In 1979, two things happened. He purchased a home in Devon, and his son emigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto, Ontario. In both places Chris discovered John Graves Simcoe.

Mary, growing up in Brockville, Ontario, became acquainted with Simcoe somewhat earlier. One of Simcoes associates during the American Revolution was Christopher Billop, the colonel of the Staten Island Militia. Billop was a second cousin by marriage of Marys American Loyalist great-great-great-grandfather, Caleb Seaman. Caleb had enlisted in the cavalry troop of the New York Volunteers, a Provincial regiment Simcoe knew well.

Chriss strength lies in his knowledge of Devon, his perception of the countryside with its landmarks, and his access to records of Simcoe and his familys many friends who lived there. Some of the families still own the houses the Simcoes visited before and after the Canada years. Chris is the present chairman of the John Graves Simcoe/Wolford Chapel Advisory Committee. Mary is the author of several books on Provincial Corps of the British Army, American revolutionary era. One is Kings Men: the soldier founders of Ontario. She has also written of Simcoes wife, Elizabeth, and of their son Francis.

Throughout most of John Graves Simcoes life, a backdrop on the worlds stage was the conflict between Great Britain and France. The hostilities embraced both the rivalry between the two imperialist powers over North American colonies and the shifting alliances in Europe. Simcoes childhood saw the triumph of Britain over France on the Plains of Abraham, which ended with the loss of most of the French empire in the western hemisphere. That event set the stage for the mood of independence that surfaced within Britains own Thirteen Colonies. With the French menace largely gone, the colonists felt secure and ready to take control of their own governments.

The American success in turn helped spark the flame of republicanism in imperial France, and the revolution that ended the French monarchy. The instability that followed made France susceptible to the aspirations of a Corsican officer in the French Army named Napoleon Bonaparte.

Simcoe was directly involved in both the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars: as a regimental commander in the British Army that attempted to subdue the American rebels in arms, and as a defender of his home territory against French invasion.

John Graves Simcoe was not a native Devonian. He was born in the village of Cotterstock, Northamptonshire, on 25 February 1752, and baptized on 5 March in the parish church of St. Andrews. His parents were Captain John Simcoe, Royal Navy, and Katherine Stamford. He was their third child. Two elder brothers had died young. Pawlett William was baptized at Cotterstock on 28 April 1750, and buried on 29 May. The second son, John, was recorded as buried in 1751. A fourth son, Percy William, was born at Cotterstock in 1754.