The Resilient Mr. Wales

Our ancestors were no strangers to hard work and difficult experiences. There are numerous reports of people who faced extreme difficulty and hardship as they first began to settle this county in the early 19th century. One such tale belongs to John Wales. Mr. Wales was born on March 17, 1757 in the village of Union, Connecticut, to Solomon Wales and Lucy Strong. He was the second son of four children, and his mother died when he was only fifteen. Beyond these small details, his early life is lost to the past.

The village of Union in which John was born was remarkable in that the town, located in northeast Connecticut on the Massachusetts border, was one of the last towns in the state to be settled east of the Connecticut River in 1734. Because of its rough terrain and poor soil, it was always the smallest town in population in this region. In the first Connecticut census of 1756, one year prior to John Wales’ birth, the population of Union numbered 500 citizens. The town sat on hilly and rocky land full of excellent timber and a cluster of lakes. The primary businesses of Union in its earliest years included forestry, agriculture, and the manufacture of charcoal. In 1803, Solomon Wales reported that Union had “seven useful sawmills, one very useful grist mill and one fulling mill”. For a town of 500 souls, nine mills was extraordinary.

Pionners attacked by wolves Missisquoi Museum

John Wales fell in love with a local girl named Jerusha Derby, and they married in Union on December 2, 1779, when they were both in their early twenties and when the American Revolution raged around them. It is not known if John, his father, and his older brother participated in the war or what John Wales did for a living, but it would seem that for most young men in Union, work was likely found in one of the mills. Records are also scant for the life Jerusha and John made for themselves. It is not known if they were prosperous, well-liked, pillars of their community or in any way affected by the American Revolution as they made a home for themselves. Documents do reveal that they had eight children – four sons and an equal number of daughters. Perhaps it was a long thought-out plan or perhaps a sudden decision, but sometime between 1799 and 1800, the Wales family packed up their belongings and made their way to Lower Canada. What made them leave the only home they had known and head north is also unclear, but John Wales was considered to be a “late Loyalist” or an emigrant from the United States to Canada who came after 1789, when land was made available to settlers on advantageous terms. Many American settlers were attracted to Lower Canada when the government offered cheap land and other kinds of assistance, such as food, clothing, building materials and seeds for crops. Many historians now agree that most of these immigrants remained somewhat sympathetic to the ideals of American republicanism well after their arrival, and came not out of loyalty to Britain, but out of forwarding their own self-interests. With Union full of mills, employment opportunities for a young man would have been numerous, so perhaps John did feel sympathy for the political ideal of King and Crown so much so that he was willing to move many miles north into the wilderness of Dunham, Quebec, at the age of 43 and begin again.

John and Jerusha were granted a lot and built a log cabin where they lived in the woods of Dunham for approximately two years. Then they sold their land for a profit and moved to Ely Township in Shefford County in the Eastern Townships. Perhaps seeing better land for farming, John and Jerusha moved to their new wilderness tract by cutting their own trail stretching many kilometres through heavy bush. They re-established their family with a new log home and renewed the process of clearing land for crops. John and his family were considered among the first inhabitants of Ely Township. John’s life in Ely was difficult and he was, as historian Cyrus Thomas expressed, “harassed by all the perplexities incident to a backwoodsman’s life.”

Part 2, continued in the next issue...

Sources: Cyrus Thomas, Contributions to the History of the Eastern Townships; Joseph Bouchette, A Topographical Description of the Province of Lower Canada; Mrs. C. M. Day, History of the Eastern Townships

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