72 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. 



NEWARK IN 1792. 



By D. B. Read, Q.C. 



{Read 3rd July, 1890.) 



Newark, the first capital of the Province of Upper Canada, had but a 

 brief existence under its English name, and then relapsed into the Indian 

 name of Niagara. Its successor, York, had a similar experience. After 

 sporting for a time the Rojal name of York, it too, after a time, fell back to 

 its old Indian name of Toronto. The first place in which we find Newark 

 named in the old Records is in the Crown Lands office at the capital of 

 the Province. There will be found there an old map made by Acting 

 Surveyor-General D. "VY. Smith in 1794, in which is set apart the Town 

 Plot of Newark. Newark had its name from Newark, a borough and 

 market-town in Nottinghamshire, England, in which market-town are the 

 ruins of a fine castle built in Stephen's reign, and dismantled in the 

 Cromwellian period. 



In 1789, Newark was called Niagara, the name it bears to-day. In 

 the early history of the Province, indeed before Upper Canada and 

 Lower Canada were formed into separate Provinces, there was a Land 

 Board formed principally for the purpose of allotting to the original 

 settlers the land to which they were entitled by virtue of the instructions 

 issued by the King to Lord Dorchester m 1783 — the parties entitled to 

 lands being officers, non-commissioned officers, privates and others who 

 adhered to the King's cause during the Revolutionary war. This Land 

 Board, it is recorded at the Crown Land office, met at Niagara (not 

 Newark) on the 26th October, 1789. There were present, Lt.-Col. Harris, 

 Lt.-Col. Butler and R. Hamilton. The Board took into consideration 

 the King's commands, and determined what number of acres each of 

 the above named class of persons should receive for their services during 

 the Revolution, and awarded to loyalists who were non-combatants a quota 

 of the land set apart by the King; each head of a family securing fifty 

 acres for himself and fifty acres for each of his children. Mr. Surveyor- 

 General Smith's Report of 1789 is very interesting reading at the present 

 day, as in that report we come across so many names familiar to Canadian 

 ears. It was perhaps a fortunate thing that Lt.-Col. Butler of Butler's 

 Rangers, should have complained to the Governor that certain of the 

 original settlers were trespassing on his lands. This complaint caused 



