Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35. Rosemary Sadlier
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following year the prince, the future King Edward VII, sent Laura a gift of £100 in gold. It was a reward for her service to her country and the Crown, an act of courage in June 1813 when she had walked nineteen miles (thirty kilometres) — alone and through dangerous territory — to warn a handful of officers at a British outpost of an impending attack by five hundred American soldiers.
When the press picked up the story of the prince’s gift, everyone wanted to know more about the woman who’d been the recipient of the royal generosity. Among those who read the newspaper accounts in 1861 was Niagara resident Emma Currie. She would later become one of Laura Secord’s earliest and most respected biographers.
Born Emma Augusta Harvey, Mrs. Currie had spent more than a quarter-century in the little village of St. Davids, near Queenston. There she’d been surrounded by Secords, had listened to numerous stories of the War of 1812, but had never heard any mention of Laura’s name. Now curious, she questioned an elderly resident and learned that what the newspapers were reporting about this woman’s bravery was true.
Meeting Between Laura Secord and Lieutenant James FitzGibbon, June 1813. Artist Lorne K. Smith.
Courtesy Library and Archives Canada, C-011053.
When the Women’s Literary Club was formed in St. Catharines in 1892, Emma Currie, as its founder, wrote a paper to be delivered at the opening, choosing as her subject Laura Secord. During her research, Currie had been surprised to discover that Laura’s ancestors, like her own, had come from Great Barrington, Massachusetts. That paper inevitably grew into a book.
Emma Currie had earlier corresponded with Sarah Anne Curzon, the British-born feminist and the author of poems, a play, and a short biography of Laura Secord. Curzon’s play, Laura Secord, the Heroine of 1812, generated enough interest in Laura that stories and articles about her began to appear in Canadian history books and school texts.
Currie had hoped to be able to access Curzon’s research collection for her book, but Sarah Curzon had died in 1898. Janet Carnochan, a respected local historian and co-founder of the Niagara Historical Society, provided Currie with information about the history of Niagara, and she was most fortunate to be able to interview Laura’s great-niece and granddaughter.
Emma Currie’s book, The Story of Laura Secord and Canadian Reminiscences, was published in 1900. It contains a copy of the only known autograph of Laura Secord, and the portrait in the front is taken from what is believed to be the only authentic portrait of the heroine. Even today, Currie’s book remains a respected source of expert information.
If an old lady had not been so determined to be included on the prince’s address, and if his gift had gone unnoticed by the press, the public might have continued to be unaware of the heroine who’d lived among them, unheralded, for forty-seven years.
1
Child of the Revolution
Eight-year-old Laura Ingersoll kept her eyes squarely on the middle of her aunt’s back as the woman left the house carrying the baby.
“This is best, child,” Papa had said when he told Laura, right after her mother’s funeral, about the arrangement for Abigail to be adopted by the Nashes. “I know you think you can look after your baby sister, but she’s still an infant. Believe me, Laura, this is what your mother wanted.”
How could that be? Over the past few days Mama had told her again and again how proud she was of the way her eldest daughter had taken over the care of the baby when she herself got sick. “A real little mother, that’s what you are, Laura dear.”
Was it only a week ago that Laura had sat beside the big four-poster bed, squeezing cool water from a rag and laying it on her mother’s fevered brow? “There, child,” Elizabeth had said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You’ve done enough.” Gently, she took Laura’s hand away. “You’ve rocked Abigail to sleep. Just leave the cloth in the wash dish; I can reach it. Take the little girls out for some air. Please, dear. Papa’s home now.”
“It’s cold this morning.” Laura’s father spoke from the doorway.
“The girls all have warm scarves and mittens, Thomas.” Elizabeth gave a rasping cough. “Bundle them up, Laura dear, and take them out. For a little bit.”
Mrs. Daniel Nash made her way down the path to the front gate where the horse and cart were waiting. Papa had gone out first to load Abigail’s cradle, and now he stood in the road, talking to Uncle Daniel.
Laura snatched her shawl off the peg. If she hurried she could say one last good-bye to her baby sister, kiss again the rosy lips, and breathe in the baby’s sweet, milky scent.
“Run up and check that we haven’t forgotten anything, Laura.” Papa came striding back, turning her around, steering her inside, and closing the door.
But the corner that had been Abigail’s for six short months in her parents’ upstairs bedroom was bare, and when Laura came back down, the horse and the cart and its three occupants had left.
On February 28, 1775, in Great Barrington, Berkshire County, in the colony of Massachusetts, Thomas Ingersoll had married Elizabeth (Betsy) Dewey, who was just seventeen. Seven months later, on September 13, 1775, Elizabeth gave birth to the couple’s first child, a baby girl they named Laura.
Thomas Ingersoll, the father of the girl who would be Laura Ingersoll Secord, was the fifth generation of his family to live in the colony of Massachusetts. The first Ingersoll to set foot on the shores of North America was Richard, coming from Bedfordshire, England, to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1629.
Thomas was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1749, moving to Great Barrington the year before his marriage to Elizabeth. The town, close to the border of the colony of New York, had been settled in 1724 by one hundred families from Westfield. The family of Laura’s young mother had also come from Westfield, and Elizabeth, born January 28, 1758, was the daughter of Israel Dewey.
In 1775, Thomas Ingersoll bought a small piece of land with a house on it that, according to some sources, had been built by a man named Daniel Rathbun. Other sources state that the property had been left to Thomas by his grandfather, and that the building on the land had once been a family cottage that young Thomas had enjoyed visiting while he still lived in Westfield.
Already a successful merchant, Thomas Ingersoll set up business in Great Barrington as a hatter — making, selling, and repairing hats. In 1782 he would buy another strip of land to increase the size of his property, and he built a larger home to house his growing family. The house sat on the crest of five acres that rolled gently down to the Housatonic River.
The Housatonic, meaning “place or river beyond the mountains,” had been given its name by the Mohicans, a Native American tribe that came over from the Hudson River Valley to use the area as a summer hunting ground. Later, English settlers harnessed the river to power sawmills, gristmills, and to run the furnaces for the working of iron.
The Housatonic River begins its journey of 149 miles in southwestern Massachusetts. As it flows toward Great Barrington it is narrow and swift, dropping several elevations before emerging from the Berkshire Hills.
The Ingersoll home on the main street of the town was a large house, and it was filled with comfortable furnishings befitting a family of privilege. Photographs show the house shaded by mature trees. There is a porch along the right side with a single window above it. A kitchen and servants’ quarters for the elderly couple who had worked for the family for many years were later added to the back of the house, and off to the right sat Thomas’s shop.
In April 1775, a few months before Laura’s birth, the American Revolution had erupted in Massachusetts, with battles in Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill.
At the time, America consisted of thirteen colonies: Massachusetts and