[siebert] loyalists AND SIX NATION INDIANS 117 



Ancaster, and Flamboro townships, and were placed under the com- 

 mand of Captain Samuel Hatt. Captain Hatt, together with his 

 brother, Major Richard Hatt, had settled in the village of Ancaster 

 only the year before. For the next two decades this community 

 must have continued its growth, for there were twenty flourishing 

 shops there during the years 1815 to 1818. Then, Ancaster had 

 to share its prosperity with Dundas, Hamilton, Brantford, and 

 West Flamboro, and later still with London, Simcoe, Ingersoll, 

 and other towns that were growing in importance as business centers.^ 

 The most remote habitation of an American exile on the lake 

 shore was that of Roger Conant, once a student of Harvard College, who 

 acquired a Crown grant of 1,200 acres in 1778 at what is now Darling- 

 ton, some fifty miles beyond Toronto. Fleeing from the vicinity 

 of Boston in 1777, Mr. Conant left his family in Geneva, New York, 

 while he sought lands and built a log house on the lake front at the 

 place named. It is related that he spent some time subsequently 

 with Butler's Rangers, and that he did not bring his family to their 

 new home until 1794. He then engaged in the fur trade with the 

 Indians, and accumulated considerable wealth through the disposal 

 of his peltries in Montreal.^ 



THE INDIAN SETTLEMENT ON GRAND RIVER. 



The purchase of the great tract of land between the three lakes, 

 Ontario, Erie, and Huron, May 22, 1784, did not result in the immedi- 

 ate removal of the Mohawks to the Grand River. During the summer 

 of this year they still maintained their temporary village near the 

 Lower Landing, or Lewiston, where they were visited by the Reverend 

 John Stuart, former Anglican missionary at Fort Hunter in the Mo- 

 hawk Valley. Mr. Stuart preached in the church which the Indians 

 had themselves erected, besides baptizing a few adults and over 100 

 children. Towards the end of July the authorities at Quebec began to 

 be alarmed over the difficulty of supplying the village and the people 

 at Niagara with provisions during the ensuing winter. Haldimand's 

 secretary wrote that the number of Indians near the post now num- 

 bered 1,257, that the Indian Department contained 66 persons, 

 and that the troops and Rangers were to be provided for, besides 

 144 Loyalists. As it appeared impossible to furnish provisions for 

 all these, Butler was given the strongest injunctions to reduce immedi- 



1 Canniff, Settlement of Upper Canada, 226; Journals and Transactions, Went- 

 worth Hist. Soc, 1908, 16; Hamilton Branch, U. E. Loyalists' Assoc, of Ont., March 

 10, 1903, 3. 



2 Conant, Upper Canada Sketches, 27-34. 



