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“There was a battle here, in this place.” It is a point I make every time I do a battlefield tour or give a talk. And I always add, “Besides the soldiers and sailors and Aboriginal allies, there were women and children and old grandmas and grandpas here, and the war came to their town and most of them fled, like the refugees you see on a TV news report.”
On that Tuesday, 27 April 1813, old Robert Baldwin did not flee at the sound of guns firing the alarum at dawn or the crunching thump of musketry on the lake shore an hour or so later. He rose from his bed, dressed, picked up his musket and cartouche and headed west through York to join the fray. Aged seventy-two years, Baldwin was a son of Ireland who had brought his family to Upper Canada in 1799. One of his boys was William Warren Baldwin, a lawyer, doctor, teacher, growing in prominence at York. And one of William’s four sons was Robert, a nine-year-old, who would one day help carve a new government for the province and country.
There is no certainty about what part the senior Robert played that morning. Perhaps he met the group of militia assembling in town and ended up moving forward to the garrison. Maybe he advanced with Major General Sheaffe’s column along the lake shore path into the woods and saw the second defensive phase against the Americans. We do know, however, that before mid-morning someone from the household found him and dragged him home.
William Baldwin had already taken on the role of surgeon, dealing with the wounded retrieved from the battlefield and had advised his wife to seek shelter away from their residence at the corner of Front and Bay Streets. Phoebe Baldwin had already started organizing a retreat from their home which overlooked the dockyard where the new frigate, Sir Isaac Brock, rose in the stocks. She had teamed up with the family’s close friend Elizabeth Russell, loading Russell’s phaeton, a four-wheeled carriage, with necessities until there was no room left for anyone to ride in it. As a result, the party set out on foot, heading to a farm on Yonge Street owned by a close acquaintance, the old, German expatriate Frederick von Horn, commonly known as “Baron de Hoen.” There were Phoebe, her four sons, the two-year-old riding on the back of Mary-Warren Baldwin, William’s sister, one of Phoebe’s sisters, and the invalid Major Fuller who had been staying with them. Their servants joined them as did the spinster Russell and her servants. Perhaps the senior Robert insisted on hefting his musket and covering the rear. The young Robert might have told Canadians about the family’s experience, but if he did, the narrative has yet to come to life.
It seems that one of the only children who did record what he saw that day was the son of Quarter Master Bryan Finan of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment of Fencibles, a boy who has only ever been identified as P. Finan. “The vessels had commenced firing upon the garrison,” he wrote, “which obliged the females, children, &tc., to leave it; we therefore retired into the country, to the house of an officer of the militia, where we remained a short time.”
Young Finan snuck away from his mother and witnessed the explosion of the magazine and saw the Americans advancing on the battered garrison. “A soldier came to us with directions to proceed to the town as fast as possible,” he recollected. “We had foolishly entertained no apprehension whatever of being defeated… and walked from the breakfast table…[with] no clothing with us more than we wore at the moment.” Because of this most of the families who had accompanied the regular troops to the front set out on “a journey of 200 miles through the woods of America, at an inclement season, without an outside garment of any description, or a second pair of shoes.” It rained nearly every day of their horrendous trek to Kingston.
There were some town residents who joined Sheaffe’s retreat because they held government offices, but Prideaux Selby was not one of these and neither was his daughter, Elizabeth. She had married Captain William Derenzy of the 41st Foot in February and was worried about his situation at Fort George, but could not be with him since her father, the receiver and auditor general of the provinces, was seriously ill. When the American squadron had come into view the evening before, the leading justices, Thomas Scott and William Powell, had visited with her and arranged for a chest of £2500 and a bag of $600 to be removed to safer keeping. Elizabeth remained with her sick father as the Americans took over the town, forcing the £2500 to be turned over and allowing someone to get away with stealing the bag of cash.
Angelique Givins, wife of Major James Givins, superintendent of the Indian Department, also remained in the family home near modern Queen Street and Givins Street. Much to her surprise she became a medical attendant to a number of the warriors whom the major had led into battle. To avoid capture, James retreated with Sheaffe, leaving Angelique and their nine children to suffer days of plunder by group after group of intruders who stole carpets, curtains, sheets, knives and forks, clothing, a saddle and double set of harness.
Most of the families fell victim to vandals. Surgeon Grant Powell, son of Justice Powell, sent his wife and their daughter out of town to John McGill’s home near modern Church and Queen where they met with Ann Strachan and her son James. When Elizabeth Powell returned to her house she found the doors open and the place stripped of furniture, a bed, linen, dinnerware, kitchen utensils, her clothing, her daughter’s clothing, books and groceries.
Some women had held the post, Sheriff John Beikie’s wife, Penelope, being one. She was not willing to leave “with my two poor fellows [her husband and oldest boy] in the heat of the battle” and prayed with earnest conviction, repeating a favourite psalm and believing that “He who strengthens the weak gave me more strength and fortitude than all the other females of York put together; for I kept my Castle when all the rest fled.”
Their two-storey frame house stood at the future intersection of Front Street and Peter Street and was half way from the garrison to the town, so a regular target for plunderers. Penelope remembered, “I had the temerity to frighten, and even to threaten, some of the enemy, though they had the place and me in their power.” Her husband reported that, despite his presence, the American soldiers snatched up all his poultry and walked away with any thing else they could lay their hands on.
On the day after the battle Lieutenant Ely Playter of the 3rd York Militia, one of many who had eluded capture, snuck back into town to see what was happening. Along the way he came upon eighteen-year-old George Detlor, heading back to Playter’s father’s home two miles up the Don River. His mother Ferusha had fled there with her young family and when her husband had not shown up late Tuesday night like Ely did, she sent George to find out where he was.
Detlor had died because of a wound suffered when the magazine exploded. George was now the man of the family. A wife was turned widow and the children left without their main provider.
There was a battle on this spot. It fell upon the women, children, grandmas and grandpas. Their sorrow and suffering showed on their faces just as it does on the refugees we see on TV now.
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