Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35. Rosemary Sadlier
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plans she became determined to “put the British troops under FitzGibbon in possession of them, and if possible to save the British troops from capture or perhaps total destruction.”
After the British had evacuated Fort George and gone to Burlington Heights, many inhabitants of Queenston had sent their families to the safety of homes of relatives living elsewhere. There really was no one else in the neighbourhood the Secords knew whom they could ask to relay the information now in their possession. There was no alternative; Laura would have to go.
Although deeply concerned for Laura’s safety, James was well aware of how resolute the mother of his five children was. She was competent, too. The horror of the previous October and the Battle of Queenston Heights were never far from his mind. Laura had told him how she’d whisked the children off to a safe place, how she’d scoured the battlefield on Queenston Heights until she found him, and James would never forget how she’d gotten him down off the escarpment and home. Once she’d made up her mind to do something, there was no stopping her.
It was decided that Laura should leave early the next morning, June 22. In case the American attack was imminent, she had to get to De Cew’s in time for FitzGibbon to mount a counterattack.
She would go first to St. Davids, three miles from Queenston. Her half-brother Charles Ingersoll was sick and was staying at Hannah Secord’s house in the little village. Charles was engaged to Hannah’s twenty-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and the women in the house were doing what they could to nurse him back to health.
James suggested Laura might find her brother well enough to deliver the information to FitzGibbon himself. On the other hand, he pointed out, she might be able to persuade one of Hannah’s sons to take over her mission.
There would have been little sleep for Laura that night. Convinced she was doing the right thing, she’d still be mulling over in her mind the safest route to take, well aware that if she were captured the penalty for spying was death by firing squad. She wouldn’t let herself think about that.
Before dawn on June 22, she got up, and in the dark readied herself to leave the house, putting on the clothing she’d carefully chosen the previous evening: a brown cotton house dress that she’d made herself. The long straight skirt of the dress fell from a high waist, and with its elbow-length sleeves it would be cool enough. Over her shoulders she knotted a kerchief of light muslin, and slid her feet into her usual pair of low-heeled, kid leather slippers, tying them securely at the instep.
Before leaving the room she plucked a cotton sunbonnet off the peg to protect her fair complexion from the sun later in the day. For a moment Laura stood looking at her sleeping children, wishing she could say goodbye to them. But there’d been so much coming and going in the house since the occupation that it seemed as if even the walls had ears. She couldn’t risk any noisy chatter at this hour. She tiptoed from the room without waking her brood and creaked open the door.
After the door had closed softly behind her, Harriet, who had turned ten that February, slipped out of bed and went to the window. She was the only one who saw Laura leave. It was about 4:30 a.m.
“I remember seeing my mother leave the house on that fateful morning,” Harriet told author Sarah Anne Curzon in 1891, “but neither I nor my sisters knew on what errand she was bent.”
Laura had assumed there would be American sentries posted ten miles out from Fort George, and for this reason she chose to take a roundabout route to St. Davids. It was her good fortune that the sentries were actually no farther out than two miles, and she never did run into them. Still, she had prepared an excuse for being on the road at dawn and would be confident in repeating it if she were stopped. She was going to visit her sick brother.
Charles was her favourite brother; the younger ones she barely knew. Thomas had been born just prior to the Ingersoll family’s move from Queenston to the log house at Oxford-on-the-Thames, and Laura had remained behind to marry James. Two other half-brothers, Samuel and James, were born after Laura and her three sisters from her father’s first wife were already married.
It had been Charles who’d told Laura everything she knew about Lieutenant James FitzGibbon. FitzGibbon’s Green Tigers had much the same mandate as William Merritt’s Provincial Dragoons in which Charles was a lieutenant.
At daybreak Laura arrived at St. Davids. The light breeze in which she’d first set off had disappeared, and already the air felt warm and humid. As soon as she reached Hannah Secord’s house, down the lane and past the mill, she asked about Charles. The news was not good; he was still very sick and definitely not well enough to leave his bed.
Laura agreed to sit down for a short rest; she loved and trusted these people. She told her dear friend Hannah, Hannah’s daughter Elizabeth, and Charles what she intended to do with the information she and James had unwittingly acquired. Charles may have been the one who suggested that Laura head farther north, take the long way around to Shipman’s Corners (today’s St. Catharines), rather than going directly to De Cew’s. There was a good chance that if she went the way he suggested she might run into Captain William Merritt who lived at Twelve Mile Creek. He would be sure to help her. Certainly Merritt would leave immediately for Beaver Dams if she told him of the American plan to attack.
Hannah Secord’s two oldest boys, who might have delivered the message to FitzGibbon had they been home, were both away with the militia. There was nothing anyone could say to dissuade her; Laura was determined to carry on. To her surprise, her niece Elizabeth offered to go with her. It might be safer to travel with a companion. But would the girl, who had never been very strong, be able to keep up?
Assuring Hannah and Charles that they would look out for each other, Laura and Elizabeth set out from St. Davids. By taking the roundabout route to Shipman’s Corners they were less likely to encounter American sentries on the road. However, it greatly increased the distance they had to travel. It also meant having to follow the old trail through the dreaded Black Swamp with its many stories of mysterious disappearances.
Laura Secord on Her Journey to Warn the British. Artist C.W. Jefferys, circa 1921.
Courtesy of Archives of Ontario.
The air between the dense cedars was filled with mosquitoes, and as they made their way toward the swamp, the ground under their feet became spongy. In the lowest areas, amidst the cattails, the black muck sucked at the light slippers the women wore, pulling them off their feet at every other step. They had to stop frequently, and Laura was growing concerned about Elizabeth. Laura herself, though small and appearing to be delicate, was wiry and strong, and she did not tire easily.
As the morning wore on, the temperature rose. By the time they reached Shipman’s Corners it was obvious to Laura that Elizabeth was near exhaustion. She knew the girl must go no farther. Family records indicate that Elizabeth, never robust, died the following year. She and Charles Ingersoll were never to marry.
Fortunately, the Secord family had friends at Shipman’s Corners, and Laura left her niece in their capable hands to continue on her journey alone.
On blistered feet, Laura turned south, heading toward De Cew’s, wishing she could be certain that by this time she was in British-held territory. By avoiding the road and any American sentries, she now ran the risk of encountering wild animals. She tried not to think about the wolves and wildcats that prowled the area, nor the masses of rattlesnakes that might be hiding from the blistering sun amongst the rocks.
She crossed fields of long grass and thistles that plucked at her skirts before she reached the woods. She didn’t believe half the stories she’d heard about atrocities committed by the Indians, but she knew there were hundreds of them camped in these woods. Although she knew that the Natives in these parts were friends of the British, she was a woman out here on her own. She pushed her sunbonnet off her damp forehead and carried on.
Laura was using Twelve Mile Creek as a guide, never going far from it for fear of getting lost. If Hannah had provided her with some food for the journey it would be gone long before this. At least the water of