She died in , aged Canadians are familiar with the Laura Secord candy company, but are uncertain of its association with her. In , Frank P. O'Connor, the founder of a small candy business in Toronto selling hand-made chocolates, chose Laura Secord as the name for his company because she "was an icon of courage, devotion and loyalty. See also related online learning resources. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia.
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I forgot my password. Accessed 19 December In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Article published March 24, ; last modified June 15, Article by Laura Neilson Bonikowsky. Thomas helped suppress Shays' Rebellion in , which earned him the rank of major. In the years following, he witnessed and was offended by the continuing persecution of Loyalists in Massachusetts.
He realized that in the depressed economic conditions that followed the Revolutionary War, and with his own deep debts, he was unlikely to see his former prosperity again. After winding up their affairs in Great Barrington, the Ingersoll family moved to Upper Canada in Thomas Ingersoll supported his family in their early years in Upper Canada by running a tavern in Queenston while land was being cleared and roads built in the settlement. The family stayed in Queenston until a log cabin was completed on the settlement in The grants were greatly reduced, and Thomas's contract was cancelled for not having all of its conditions fulfilled.
Feeling cheated, in he moved the family to Credit River , close to York present-day Toronto , where he successfully ran an inn until his death following a stroke. Sally continued to run it until her own death in Laura Ingersoll remained in Queenston when the family moved.
She married the wealthy James Secord, likely in June At the time of the American Revolution, Loyalist members of the family anglicized their surname to Secord. The Secord couple lived in a house built in St. Davids , the first floor of which was a shop. Secord gave birth to her first child, Mary, in St. Mary was followed by Charlotte , Harriet 10 February , [17] Charles Badeau —the only male child and Appolonia He was among those who helped carry away Brock's body after Brock was killed in the first attack of the Battle of Queenston Heights in October James himself was severely wounded in the leg and shoulder during the battle.
Laura heard of his predicament and rushed to his side.
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Some sources suggest that she found three American soldiers preparing to beat him to death with their gunstocks. She begged them to save her husband's life, reportedly offering her own in return, when American Captain John E. Wool happened upon the situation and reprimanded the soldiers. Spending the winter in St.
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Davids, [23] Laura spent the next several months nursing her wounded husband back to health. Men of military age were sent as prisoners to the U. That June, a number of U. According to tradition she overheard a conversation among the billeted Americans as they ate dinner. As her husband was still recovering from his October injuries, Secord set out early the next morning to warn the Lieutenant. Based on her warning, a small British force and a larger contingent of Mohawk warriors were readied for the American attack.
They defeated the Americans, most of whom were casualties or taken prisoner in the Battle of Beaver Dams on 24 June. After the war, with the Secords' Queenston store in ruins, [32] the family was impoverished.
Only James's small war pension [33] and the rent from acres of land they had in Grantham Township supported them. The Secords' sixth child, Laura Anne, was born in October , and their last child, Hannah, was born in Mary had another daughter, also named Mary, in Jamaica. Following her husband's death, Mary returned to Queenston with her children in The struggling James petitioned the government in for some sort of employment. Lieutenant-Governor Peregrine Maitland did not offer him a position, but offered something to Laura. He asked her to be in charge of the yet-to-be-completed Brock's Monument.
At first, she turned it down, but then reluctantly accepted it. On 17 July , Secord petitioned Colborne to honour Maitland's promise, and included another certificate from FitzGibbon attesting her contribution to the war.
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She wrote that Colonel Thomas Clarke had been told by Maitland, "it was too late to think of [the committee member's widow] Mrs. Nichol as I have pledged my word to Mrs. Secord that as soon as possible she should have the key. In , the Secords' daughter, Appolonia, died at 18 of typhus , [36] and James was appointed registrar of the Niagara Surrogate Court. His is the only line of Secords that survived into the 21st century.
James became a customs collector in at the port of Chippawa. Charles Badeau Secord took over the Queenston home. James Secord died of a stroke on 22 February When his war pension ended, , [46] she was unable to maintain her land as profitable and sold off much of it. Possibly with help from better-off members of the family, Secord moved to a red brick cottage on Water Street [d] in November The three shared quarters with Secord for the rest of her life.
This venture came to an end when the public common school system was introduced [44] in the s. Over the years, the Secords unsuccessfully petitioned the government for some kind of acknowledgement. In , when Secord was 85, the Prince of Wales heard of her story while travelling in Canada. It was the only official recognition that she received during her lifetime. Laura Secord died in at the age of To perpetuate the name and fame of Laura Secord, who walked alone nearly 20 miles by a circuitous difficult and perilous route, through woods and swamps and over miry roads to warn a British outpost at DeCew's Falls of an intended attack and thereby enabled Lt.
FitzGibbon on 24 June , with fewer than 50 men of the H. William Johnson Kerr and Dominique Ducharme to surprise and attack the enemy at Beechwoods or Beaver Dams and after a short engagement, to capture Col. Bosler of the U. Army and his entire force of men with two field pieces. In his report of the battle, FitzGibbon stated only that he "received information" about the threat; it is possible he omitted mention of Secord to protect her family during wartime.
He first wrote of Secord in a certificate dated 26 February , in support of a petition by her husband for a licence to operate a stone quarry in Queenston. Brock could do this because, at the outset of the war, only Britain possessed a navy on the Great Lakes, which granted him the advantage of mobility, and Brock made good use of it.
These early victories on land were unfortunately balanced by defeats at sea. In the years since Trafalgar the RN had become overconfident, convinced that its ships could defeat any possible opponent. British sailors failed to realize that the U. Navy, although very small, possessed excellent warships and seamen. The result was that American sailors won an impressive series of single-ship encounters. Britain had not suffered such a series of defeats at sea for more than a century.
This did much to restore morale in the U. In the autumn of , the enemy made another invasion attempt. On the night of Oct. Brock, who was at Fort George outside Newark modern Niagara-on-the-Lake , proceeded to Queenston with all available troops. Realizing that the key to the American position was the high ground behind the village, he led an assault against it, only to be killed.
More regular troops arrived and pushed the invaders, now surrounded and with no means of escape, to the edge of the Niagara River. Realizing it was hopeless, the enemy commander surrendered, and more than Americans became prisoners of war. The victory at Queenston Heights had a dramatic effect on British North America and morale was high when the onset of winter brought an end to active military operations.
Two major invasions had been repelled and there was confidence the war would be brought to a victorious end. Canadian optimism disappeared in the spring. An intensive building program during the winter gave the U. Pushing a far weaker British, Canadian and aboriginal force before them, the invaders were approaching the town when the ammunition magazine in the military depot at York was ignited to prevent its contents from being captured.
This was the beginning of a renewed American offensive against British North America. On May 27, , an invading force crossed the Niagara and captured Fort George. Badly outnumbered, British and Canadian troops withdrew to the area of the modern city of Hamilton, but were pursued by an American force commanded by generals John Chandler and William Winder. In the early morning of June 6, , it was attacked at Stoney Creek by a smaller British force and during a hard fought but confusing night action, the Americans managed to beat off the assault, but both Chandler and Winder were taken prisoner.
This expedition also came to an inglorious end, however, on June 24 when, forewarned by a housewife named Laura Secord, a force of warriors surrounded the Americans and forced them to surrender in what was later called the battle of Beaver Dams. After this, the invaders did not venture in strength beyond their lines at Fort George and the war in the Niagara became a stalemate.
The same Sunday, June 6, , which witnessed the American defeat at Stoney Creek was also the occasion of a glorious event in Halifax. The evening service at St. The RN now began to exert its far superior strength by blockading the U. The most successful of these sea raiders was the schooner Liverpool Packet which took 50 prizes valued at nearly a million dollars before being herself captured.
Other notable maritime privateers such as the brig Sir John Sherbrooke, and the schooner Retaliation took fewer prizes, but helped to depredate the American coastal trade; disrupting communications and, inevitably, causing higher prices on all types of goods. To the west, the war came to life again in the autumn of , following an American victory at the naval battle of Lake Erie fought on Sept. It resulted in the capture of the entire British squadron on that body of water. British Major-General Henry Procter decided he could no longer maintain his position on the Detroit River and ordered his army to retreat east.
Tecumseh was killed while leading his men, but his followers managed to spirit his body away and bury it in a secret location. The disaster on the Thames, however, spelled the end of British ambitions in the American northwest.
…except not really. More like bits and pieces.
At about the same time, U. Secretary of War John Armstrong came north to re-invigorate the American war effort.
He planned a two-pronged offensive against Montreal with one army to move against that city from Lake Champlain, while another larger force would move down the St. Lawrence in an armada of small boats. These plans went awry when the army from Lake Champlain was defeated at the battle of the Chateauguay, a few miles south of Montreal, on Oct.
This victory was earned by entirely francophone troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Charles de Salaberry. The waterborne prong of the U. Annoyed by this irritant snapping at its heels, the enemy turned and attacked on Nov. The British and Canadian troops were deployed on good defensive ground near the farm of John Crysler, but the approach of the much larger American force caused some trepidation in the ranks.