Section II, 1922 [65] Trans. R.S.C. 



Lieutenant-General Garret Fisher: A Forgotten Loyalist 



By W. D. LiGHTHALL, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 1922) 



Lieutenant-General Garret Fisher does not appear in any of the 

 lists of Loyalists of the American Revolution; his name and deeds 

 are now never mentioned unless perchance by occasional delvers in 

 the rarest corners of the history of old New York, or by one or two 

 historians of certain British regiments, or in the obscurest genealogies 

 of a few historical families. Yet in his day and generation he occupied 

 a place of considerable prominence, was a man of wealth, standing, 

 high connections and heroic personal record, and was the Loyalist 

 who attained the highest military rank. He was forgotten principally 

 because he left no direct descendants, and his representatives were 

 far from the scenes of his life. It has, therefore, appeared to the 

 writer to be a duty as one of his collateral descendants, and as one 

 who, though distant, owes something to his record and estate, to 

 resuscitate his memory, so far as may be, in a sketch of his career. 

 In my childhood certain interesting historical names were repeated 

 from time to time in our family circle, and among the others that 

 of the collateral ancestor whose fortune had contributed a certain 

 share to their immediate position. It was his money which had built, 

 in 1825, the beautiful house near Lacolle called " Rockliffe Wood, " 

 which I knew as the family centre; parts of his armorial silver were 

 treasured there and from it was assumed the coat-of-arms borne by 

 my father; parts of his uniforms and other personal articles were 

 among those of a similar kind there possessed ; the large-type original 

 orders relating his battle honours, though lost, were remembered ; his 

 great gold "turnip" of a watch had been worn and traded away by 

 an uncle in his youth; his fine old oil portrait and miniature were 

 described and traced to distant relatives; the events of the coming of 

 his fortune from England in 1812 were romantically told, lawsuits 

 concerning it were the subject of many confused references; it was 

 persistently stated that the scene of his chief military honours was 

 the Island of Guadaloupe; and it was erroneously alleged by one that 

 he was a colonel of Grenadier Guards having the honorary rank of 

 general, and by another, that he was an admiral, possibly a port 

 admiral, in the West Indies. Oral traditions, though of value, are 

 unreliable in details. 



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