52 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Markle is named as the leader of a foraging party which was sur- 
prised in the vicinity of Point Abino on October 1 and sustained some 
loss.! After the conclusion of peace he boasted to a former acquaint- 
ance that the government of the United States had rewarded his services 
by a grant of 3000 acres of land and had promised compensation for all 
his losses.” 
About the middle of October a band of refugees, supposed to be 
about thirty in number, who had for some time been committing depre- 
dations on the loyal inhabitants in the counties of Lincoln and Norfolk, 
surrounded the house of Captain William Francis of the Norfolk militia 
by night, called him to a window and shot him dead. The other 
occupants were then forced to leave the house when it was set on fire 
and consumed with the body. This was a cold-blooded murder of an 
old and unarmed man. A reward of £200 was promptly offered by 
General Drummond for the apprehension of the murderers, and the 
Governor General announced his intention of making a vigorous re- 
monstrance to the Government of the United States, which he had 
considered had made itself responsible by encouraging these incursions. 
John Dixon, the ringleader of this party, was mortally wounded in an en- 
counter with some militiamen near the Sugar Loaf and died shortly 
after arriving in Buffalo. 
The refugees from the Western and London districts who had fled 
to the American garrisons at Amherstburg and Detroit were less numer- 
ous but scarcely less active in their hostility, although not organized 
as a separate military force, being chiefly employed as scouts and guides 
for raiding expeditions. The most enterprising of these partisans were 
Andrew Westbrook, Daniel Norton, Samuel Doyle and James Pelton. 
The first named of these, a man of great strength and stature and ani- 
mated by an insatiable desire for revenge, was the most formidable 
and merciless. The policy of destroying the dwellings and property 
of the loyal residents, and disorganizing the militia by carrrying off 
the local officers, was relentlessly carried out by him. On the last night 
of January, 1814, a party under his guidance, captured a guard com- 
posed of Captain Daniel Springer and twelve men of the Middlesex 
militia, posted at Westbrook’s own house in the township of Delaware. 
The house and other buildings containing several hundred bushels of 
grain were set on fire with his own hand and consumed. Lt. Colonel 
Francis Baby, Captains Brigham, Dolsen and Springer were carried 
off by the raiders on horseback, bound hand and foot to prevent their 
escape. 

* Drummond to Prevost, October 2, 1814. 
? Affidavit of T. G. Simons. 
