[siebert] loyalists AND SIX NATION INDIANS 87 



Among the Loyalists who escaped to the fort during 1779 were 

 Daniel Servos, with his father and brother from Tryon County, 

 Jean Glasford and a number of her neighbors from the same county 

 after they had been plundered by the Revolutionists, Jacob Caven 

 with his family and John Middagh, both from Ulster County, and 

 Isaac Dobson from the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania. Middagh 

 enlisted in Sir John Johnson's regiment, and Servos was appointed 

 in the Indian Department, with a company of men under his command. 

 Robert Land, another of those arriving in 1779, relates that he was 

 welcomed at the Niagara River by the little band of refugees settled 

 there, and that he applied for and received 200 acres at the Falls. ^ 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NIAGARA SETTLEMENT, 1780-1784. 



The settlement which Land mentions could scarcely have been 

 the Loyalist colony formed on the west side of Niagara River under 

 Governor Haldimand's orders, since that did not come into existence 

 until late in the year 1780. It is true that the Governor had proposed 

 the establishment of a colony at Niagara nearly two years before, 

 and had requested Lieutenant Colonel Mason Bolton, commandant 

 at the post, to find out what leading men in his neighborhood thought 

 of the plan as a means of supplying part of the provisions for his fort. 

 On March 4, 1778, the Commandant had written that the scheme 

 might prove displeasing to the Six Nations, if carried out on the New 

 York side of the Niagara, and that it would be attended by great 

 expense, from which no advantage could accrue to his post for some 

 years to come. However, he had ventured the suggestion that the 

 distress of Loyalist families lately arrived might be relieved by locating 

 them on the west side of the river in the country of the Mississaugua, 

 where both the soil and situation were "by far preferable." Bolton 

 had explained further that, with the little stock these Loyalists had 

 brought in, they might possibly support themselves in the third year 

 after being settled. The problem of supplying large quantities of 

 provisions to the upper posts, in consequence of the numbers of 

 Indians and Tories collecting there, did not permit Haldimand to 

 overlook the desirability of procuring local supplies, if possible. Bolton 

 only furnished fresh proof of the pressing need by sending a new 

 contingent of Loyalist families down to Quebec in the middle of Aug- 

 ust, 1779; and conditions were certainly not improved in this respect 



Sketches and Local Place Names of the Niagara Frontier, 8," 36, 37; Haldimand 

 Papers, B. 105, p. 148; Carnochan, Niagara One Hundred Years Ago, 23, 24. 



1 Second Report, Bureau of Archives, Ont., Pt. II, 957, 1,112; Pt. I, 397; Pt. 

 II, 1,256; Niagara Hist. Soc, No. 8, 43. 



