[riddell] practice OF COURT OF COMMON PLEAS 55 



Sept. 17th a defendant Joseph Barron of St. Anne got 15 days 

 delay "on account of his family being in a bad state of health." Sept. 

 24th Isabella Maholm (almost certainly " Malcolm ") complains that . 

 her husband James Donaldson detains £50 sterling in his hands sent 

 to her by her friends in Scotland. Mr. Roe for the husband "denies 

 to detain any sum of the plaintiff's whatever " and " the Court ordered 

 a Rule for trial in eight days " — The same day a case was postponed to 

 get the evidence of Simon Girty, * Isadore Chene f and Captain Caldwell. J 



♦This is the well known Simon Girty, about whom so much has been written, 

 most of it wholly untrue. Born in Pennsylvania in 1741, of an Irish father and 

 English mother, he was in 1756 taken prisoner by the Indians with his mother and 

 brothers. He lived with the Senecas for some three years when he was with the rest 

 of the family delivered up. He took part in the border warfare and when trouble 

 began brewing between the Colonies and the Mother Country, was counted on as 

 well-disposed to the latter. He was for a time Lieutenant in a Virginia Company, 

 but in 1778 finally cast in his lot with the loyalists. With McKee and Elliott who 

 were afterwards to take no small part in Border history, he left Pittsburg, and made 

 his way to Detroit. He became a Lieutenant in the Indian Department (a fact 

 which has escaped Butterfield — History of the Girtys by Consul Willstine Butter- 

 field, Cincinnati, Robert Clarke & Co., 1890 — who gives the most accurate account 

 of him, but which is attested by the proceedings of the Land Board of the District 

 of Hesse: see Archives Report, Ontario, 1905, pp. 88, 281). He acted as interpreter 

 but not as leader of the Indians as has been represented. He was present at some 

 scenes of torture but there is no well-authenticated instance of his causing or directing 

 it. He was a hardy, brave and indefatigable border warrior whose name has suffered 

 from his being on the losing side of a civil war. He lived in Detroit and after its 

 surrender in 1796, on the other side of the River, where he received a grant of land. 

 He died there in 1818, about two miles below Amherstburg. 



flsidore Chesne was present v/ith Girty and others at the Council held at 

 Detroit in June, 1778, with the Indians, when a plan of campaign was arranged 

 against the rebellious Americans. He seems to have been of a family of original 

 concessionaires who were in 1734 granted lands near Detroit — and he was an ardent 

 supporter of the British cause. Under the name J. Chisne he was awarded Lot 6, 

 not far from Girty's lot. 



JCaptain William Caldwell was by birth an Irishman, but was at the outbreak 

 of the Revolution living in Pennsylvania. He took the loyalist side and made his 

 way to Detroit. There he was given the command of a Company of Rangers who 

 with a number of Indians under Captain Elliott went in 1787 to the help of the 

 Wyandots, who had been threatened by an American force under Col. Crawford. 

 The enemy met at Upper Sandusky, and Crawford was vanquished and his force 

 driven back. Crawford and others were taken, prisoners by the Indians and 

 Crawford tortured to death in Girty's presence. 



Caldwell was wounded and afterwards falling sick went back to Detroit, invalided. 



After peace was declared he applied for and obtained a grant of land in Upper 

 Canada — his petition was the first filed with the Land Board of the District of Hesse 

 — his "fenced field" is spoken of more than once as a starting point. 



In a memorandum by Patrick McNiff, Deputy Surveyor, dated at Detroit, 

 September 30th, 1791, he is mentioned as having received 800 acres of the 3,000 

 acres to which he was entitled, and is called a reduced officer on half-pay. 



