|
|
VIDEO
#1: PART 2 The
Old Stage Road – Along the Detroit Trail The following is Copyright © 2020 by Clayton
Barker, all rights reserved. These pages are basically the script/narration
which I had prepared for my new video series, BURFORD – All Those Years Ago.
To watch the videos please follow the hotlinks below, either to my YouTube
channel or to each video – Thanks!
“Snowy footpath” by
Copyright © 2011-2020 by Clayton J. Barker My YouTube Channel is as follows: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWGbWGspBawZG9K-x5NmT4Q Here is the hotlink to video#1: PART1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgc8scwpkTI&t=45s Here is the hotlink to Video#1: PART 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo1E6c3q6Z4&t=54s NOTE: Links to other videos can be found off to
the left , thanks. INTRODUCTION: Welcome back to BURFORD – all Those
Years Ago and to PART 2 of this virtual walking tour. Our tour today will
take us down a 35 km (22 mile) section of the longer former trail route,
which I had outlined in Part 1, which part of it later became known as the
Old Stage Road. We will start at the east side of the
present-day Town of Ingersoll, Ontario, at the hamlet of “Centreville,” in
Oxford County, and will aim to end up at the present-day village of Cathcart,
in the geographic Township of Burford, in Brant County. So, get your comfortable footwear on,
at hat too, if you like, and please, if you are in the company of others, who
you do not live with, mind the social distancing protocols and restrictions. Enjoy the tour THE OLD STAGE ROAD - ALONG THE DETROIT TRAIL, PART 1 In Part 1, we left off after I had
introduced Governor John Graves Simcoe and his expeditionary party consisting
of some two dozen men, including servants and Mohawk guides and several
dignitaries who went on to become some of Upper Canada’s future “Top Brass.”
In this segment Part 2 and in Part 3 we will be continuing to look at the
history of The Old Stage Road as it evolved as a result of three major
upgrades, from a footpath in the 18th century...to a settler trail in
1797...To a military highway in 1810...To a stagecoach road in 1828 We will start at a place between
Ingersoll and Beachville Ontario, approximately where the original trail
crossed the Thames over 200 years ago, then follow the 19th Century Stage
Coach road through West and East Oxford and then part of Burford Township,
ending this segment at the West Quarter Townline, at The Stage Road. But first I will provide just a bit
more background information, in order to understand or visualize the way it
was here, 216 plus years ago: I will briefly describe: • The Governor’s mode of travel. • The weather conditions. • The conditions of the trail itself. • Their accommodation. • Their diet. So, carrying right along... The Governor and his men set out on
their return trip from Detroit Feb. 23rd, 1793 in 16 carioles, or sleighs,
because the travelling was good and the trail was much better down that end,
the closer you got to what they called “Sandwich,” which is now Windsor.
(OHS, Vol. 44, No. 1, 1952) There was a good dumping of snow and
it froze so hard that they could walk on the frozen Thames River, as it was
easier travelling that way. By the way, a “carriole” or “cariole”, is either
a light four-wheel open or covered one-horse carriage or a small, narrow,
open horse-drawn carriage or sleigh for only one person. Since the river was
frozen hard, both horses and carioles were ok to ride on the frozen river,
that is how cold it was...at least for a short time. The trail became too treacherous,
narrow and with such radical changes in elevation, having the carioles, or
that many horses, would have just slowed them down. So, they left the horses and
carioles and went on foot, but with only a couple pack horses. Some of the men had snowshoes,
however, the Governor only wore moccasins. They travelled much of their
journey on foot. By the night of March 4th, 1793, it poured rain and there
was a severe thunder and lightning storm. Their bedding material (consisting
of boughs of hemlock) was soaked right from the start. (Littlehales /
Scadding, Toronto, 1889) But what’s new - Welcome to Ontario,
Mr Simcoe. Their camp for the night of March 4th
was on the north side of the Thames River, opposite what is now Centreville.
The landscape in this area today has been completely removed by extensive
quarrying. According to Major Littlehales journal of the trip, they usually
stopped about 4 pm to allow the native guides to construct wigwams. Since
these wigwams were only large enough for about a half-dozen men or so, they
probably needed several of these built, for such a crowd. Major Littlehales describes how they
were constructed: “The dexterity and alacrity of these
people, habituated to the hardship’s incidental to the woods, is remarkable.
Small parties will, with the utmost facility, cut down large trees with their
tomahawks, bark them, and in a few minutes construct a most comfortable hut,
capable of resisting any inclemency of the weather, covering it with the bark
of the Elm. (Littlehales / Scadding, Toronto,
1889) As far as food was concerned, their
diet for the trip consisted of salt pork, venison (if they were lucky) and
venison soup and biscuit or hardtack, as it was called, too. However, they
also ate raccoons and porcupines, which were plentiful around here, at that
time: Bears, wolves, cougars and rattlesnakes were also plentiful back then. It is interesting to note that along
their way, Prior to reaching their March 4th stop-over, they had encountered
various totems at sacred burial sites deer fences and carvings and drawings
made with charcoal and vermilion, on the trunks of trees. At one location, a
tree carving depicted men with the heads of deer and at another location, a
tree had the carving of what looked like a cat or perhaps a cougar, but they
also saw drawings depicting men hunting bison, which you wouldn’t expect to
see anywhere around here. Lake Erie was named after the
indigenous tribe known as the “Erie” or the “Cat Nation,” who were an
Iroquoian, and it is possible that the carving of the cat had something to do
with them and their former territory. Just west of the present-day Folden’s
Line bridge is the approximate location where the Simcoe expedition crossed
the Thames River on logs or fallen trees, to the south side. In Major Littlehales' journal of the
trip, he said that it had rained “without intermission,” and that “the brooks
and rivulets were swollen considerably.” They crossed many of these
watercourses on the trunks of fallen trees or logs. After crossing the main
south-east branch of the Thames, which passes through what is now Woodstock,
Beachville, Centreville and Ingersoll, they still had many, many more creeks,
streams and flooded swales or runs of water, to cross, as there were no
bridges. The Thames isn’t such a wide river,
compared to the Grand River, but it could still be tricky trying to cross
when it was extremely flooded. The original Thames River was a natural
meandering and Navigable watercourse through what’s now the Beachville area,
however over the past 150 years limestone quarrying, in the Beachville area,
along with flood control measures, called for modifications and
channelization of the natural river course. Along the shore of this section
of the upper Thames River, the early European settlers found limestone and it
became a significant resource here. Basically, the river in the vicinity
of Beachville and Centreville is a completely different configuration than
what the early settlers and Simcoe would have known. Note: the Simcoe Party
may not have crossed the larger rivers in the same place coming back from
Detroit, as they did when they went, as unpredictable weather conditions and
the water elevation at the time of crossing played a big role in deciding
where and how to cross. This is why the place where they crossed and the
place where the local settlers later established a fording place, was about
600m (1,970ft) apart, according to land surveyors’ notes. The thing about fording a river, back
in the days before there were bridges, is that usually in order to get wagons
down to the river ford, they required a natural slope that wasn’t too steep, and
the same on the opposite side of the river too. This was done by selecting a
fording site near or adjacent to the mouth of a stream or creek that had
fairly uniform side-slopes, so they could just gradually climb a gradual
slope all the way up the stream from the river. The hill, or Ingersoll moraine, as it
is known, which runs parallel to the river along the south side of the
Thames, at Beachville, seems way too steep in most places, for wagons or
stagecoaches to travel up or down. This is also probably the reason why the
Governor’s party did not try going straight up the hill too after they
crossed the river. They gradually climbed the slope further along skirting
the more severe slopes, along a natural ravine. With this information and my
knowledge of early land surveying, cartography and of course physiography,
from dear Mr Harry Southam’s high school geography class, I can deduce the
likely route of the trail as it may have ascended/descended this moraine. This is a view of the present-day
village of Beachville. The orange dashed line represents the
approximate route taken by Simcoe’s group, based on the highly detailed notes
of D. W. Smith, who accompanied the Governor on that expedition. My
interpretation of the land features noted by Smith are transposed onto
21st-century mapping which has been produced by the Ministry of natural
resources and Forestry and the Oxford County GIS website. Just prior to the survey of
Oxford-on-the-Thames, as it was being called, the trail which brought the
settlers into the interior of the province was improved by a group of
settlers under the leadership of Thomas Ingersoll, between 1795 and 1797. [But more about Thomas Ingersoll
later]. If you look at the mapping that was
done by the early surveyors of the late 18th century, in this area, the trail
was shown as a dotted line which appears to cross the Thames River somewhere
between lots 9 and 10 of the broken-front concession, in West
Oxford-on-The-Thames. These variations will be shown in dark blue on my overlay. Immediately after crossing the Thames
River, the Simcoe party then crossed two runs of water and at 9:40 in the
morning of March 5th, they met the “winter express” which was the biweekly
courier en route between Niagara and Detroit. This
“express” consisted of three men on foot. The land surveyor Augustus Jones
was with them and instead of going on to Detroit, Jones joined the Simcoe
throng and went back to Niagara. The courier or express came through,
by way of the footpath every 14 days and since that is roughly the amount of
time it took to travel between Niagara and Detroit, the Simcoe party also met
the express when they were heading to Detroit, as well. A few more creek and stream crossings
then they crossed what is now called “Cedar Creek.” It is very distinct or
unmistakable physical features like this which held in piecing this sort of
puzzle together. D. W. Smith describes it as a “Large brook running to the
left and making a fork to the northward, with the River Thames.” As you can
see, Cedar Creek runs north into the Thames but before it gets there, it
makes several “forks” along the way. There are still cedars groves in the
area along the Old Stage Road, in Oxford, however, the British also called
them “Cypress.” According to major Littlehales, at
12:23 p.m. March 5th, they“...halted in a Cypress or
Cedar grove, where they were much amused by seeing Captain Joseph Brant and
some of his men chase a lynx with their dogs and rifle guns, but they did not
catch it.” (Littlehales / Scadding, Toronto, 1889) At 1:55 p.m. they arrived at what is
the upper end of what is now called the “Kenny Creek.” They found it very
much flooded and noted it as a “Mudhole creek.” Kenny Creek starts basically
in the middle of West Oxford-on-The-Thames and flows east into the County of
Brant a short distance east of the hamlet of Cathcart. Here, it merges with
the Horner Creek, Elliott drain and Whiteman’s
Creek, and eventually flows all the way to the Grand River. You will see a quote in the credits
of this film, which is one of my favourites quotes and it goes "The past
actually happened, but history is only what someone wrote down." By
Whitney Brown. I think it is fantastic that we have two versions of the same
expedition; One, by D. W. Smith with very accurate data that records the very
locations of the land features they encountered, and the other, from the
standpoint of a diarist in the person of Major Littlehales. Smith’s details
coincide very accurately with today’s mapping, but he does not elaborate on
what is going on in and around the expedition party itself. Between what is now Vandecar and Burford West Quarter Townline Road, Major
Littlehales mentions in his journal, on their way to Detroit, Feb. 12th.
—"We travelled through an irregular woody country and passed an
encampment said to have been Lord Edward Fitzgerald's when on his march to
Detroit, Michilimackinac, and the Mississippi.” This is very interesting. D.
W. Smith does not mention this in his journal. How Littlehales comes to know
this is not known, but Dr. Henry Scadding, who published Littlehales’ journal
in 1889, says...“This refers, no doubt, to an
incident in Lord Fitzgerald's journey through Canada, in 1789.” This is where the name of one of the
most colourful historical characters that had ever travelled through Burford
enters into the story. Only a few months earlier, in 1792 Fitzgerald had been
dismissed from the British army for publicly saying that "the speedy
abolition of all hereditary titles and feudal distinctions". Brave fellow, I say...I will
elaborate more about Lord Edward FitzGerald and his very colourful and
exciting story in Part 3. At 3:15 p.m. the Simcoe expedition
passed the place where they had encamped on the night of February 11th when
on their way to Detroit. It was described as being “close on a small swampy
spot, with long coarse grass.” This location is in the geographic township of
Burford at about 600m west of the West Quarter Townline, where the road
overlooks a small swampy spot that to this day still has long coarse grass. PLEASE
CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO PART 1 PLEASE
CLICK HERE TO PROCEED TO PART 3
DISCLAIMER The information contained on this
page represents the research findings and opinions of the author. The
material on this page reflects the author’s best judgement in light of the
information available at the time of compilation. Any use of this material
made by a third party, or reliance on, or decisions made based on it are the
responsibility of such third parties. The author accepts no responsibility
for damages, if any, suffered by any third party as a result of decisions
made or actions based on this work.
|
|
CLICK TOPICS BELOW |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
