riddell] upper CANADA A CENTURY AGO 11 



Illegal celebration of marriage got many ministers and elders into 

 trouble; the Church of England was tenacious of its valuable 

 privileges. 



The claim recently advanced that the Indians on the Grand 

 River Reserve were allies and not subjects of the King makes its 

 appearance and is disposed of adversely to the Indians. 2** 



Leaving the criminal law, we find many reminders of the War of 

 1812. 



Mary Livingston, of the District of Niagara, is the widow of 

 Peter Lee, who was a private soldier in the Coloured Corps raised 

 by Captain Robert Ranchey. He was injured in the war and died of 

 the injury. She asks for a pension and is granted it.^^ 



Richard Pierpont, "a man of colour, a native of Africa and an 

 inhabitant of the Province since the year 1780," petitions Sir Peregrine 

 Maitland, setting out that he was a native of Bondon in Africa; at 

 the age of 16 he was made a prisoner and sold as a slave; sent to 

 America and sold to a British Officer, he fought through the Re- 

 volutionary Wars on the side of the Crown in Butler's Rangers, and 

 also fought through the War of 1812 in the Coloured Corps raised 

 at Niagara. He is old and poor and asks relief by being furnished 

 means to go to England and thence to a settlement near the Gambia 

 or the Senegal Rivers, from which he could return to Bondon, or "in 

 any manner Your Excellency may be graciously pleased to order." 

 It does not appear what disposition was made of this petition, but as 

 "Captain Dick" is vouched for by Adjutant-General Coffin, it may 

 be taken for granted that he obtained relief.-'' 



Certain Indian land on the Grand River had been leased for a 

 long term to Benajah Mallory, Member of the House of Assembly for 

 Oxford and Middlesex in the Fifth Parliament, 1808-1812. Mallory 

 proved himself a traitor and joined the enemy in the War of 1812. 

 His land was forfeited and, after inquest found, was sold to Mr. 

 Sheldon. But it was claimed by William Johnson Kerr for the heirs 

 of Elizabeth Kerr, wife of Dr. Kerr and daughter of Molly Brant 

 (William Johnson Kerr himself married Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph 

 Brant). Augustus Jones, the Surveyor who married an Indian 

 woman, swore that the land had been given to Dr. Kerr's family by 



''^See my judgment in the recent case, Sero v. Gault (1921) 50 Ontario Law 

 Reports, 27; the opinion of John Beverley Robinson, Attorney General of Upper 

 Canada cited therein; also the case of The King v. Esther Phelps (1823), Taylor's 

 K.B. Report, U.C. 47, and the argument of Henry John Boulton, Solicitor-General 

 for Upper Canada, afterwards Chief Justice of Newfoundland, at pp. 53, 54. 



2*See petition and endorsement, March 1, 1822. 



^^Petition and endorsement, July 21, 1821. 



