After the raid on Gananoque, Colonel Stone was more determined that ever to defend his home and adopted country. He was fully aware of the fate that awaited him if the British were to be defeated: another homeland lost and another exile. At 63 years of age it must have been a terrifying prospect.
Even though Stone was the first man of the area - military commander, magistrate and merchant – he was in the minority. Unlike Stone’s steadfast support for the war effort, most people simply wanted to stay out of the fighting. Whether the Union Jack or Stars and Stripes flew above them mattered little to the settlers so long as their families were fed and safe.
Even though the eastern portion of Upper Canada was free from the total war experienced in the Niagara and Detroit areas, the St. Lawrence was the vital artery for the British war effort. Every musket ball and every ounce of salt pork used by the British Army and Navy had to pass by Gananoque.[1]
In order to prevent any further loss to enemy raids, Colonel Stone proposed to build a blockhouse in Gananoque. A blockhouse was a two story military structure, built of either logs or stone, with the second story overhanging the first by 18 inches to allow the defenders a line of fire below. The Gananoque blockhouse was completed in March of 1813 and held an elevated position overlooking the reconstructed bridge and the main harbour area.[2]
Gananoque, 1815, Courtesy National Archives of Canada, Larger Image
Along the St. Lawrence other blockhouses were built to defend the convoy route and the authorities transferred control of these operations from the Corps of Voyageurs, an experienced group of Northwest Fur Traders, to the Provincial Commissariat. The main staging points were strengthened and consolidated at Cornwall, Fort Wellington, Brockville and Gananoque before arriving at the heavily defended port of Kingston. Nine gunboats, some as much as sixty feet long, were deployed as convoy escorts and routinely exchanged fire with their American counterparts. With the massive garrison at Kingston housing over 5 000 army and navy personnel, the military situation seemed favourable for the eastern Upper Canadians.[3]
The 2nd Leeds Militia, however, reveals a textbook example of the serious problems facing the defence of the Upper Canada. Colonel Stone’s command included 386 militiamen and officers. The reality was that Stone could rely on only a small fraction of these men to actually show up for service, since “so many desertions and vile elopements have taken place.” Joel Stone seemed to have had a friend in Colonel Nathaniel Coffin who was based out of Kingston, and the two corresponded in an official and private capacity. The letters that passed between the two men reveal the challenges of frontier defence. In a set of lengthy letters from 13 and 27 March, 1814, Stone reveals the serious issues plaguing his command. He wrote: “I have been in the interior in order to collect the fines exacted from delinquents in my Regt…a refusal of payment will become general unless examples are made…” Furthermore, it appears Stone was fearful of a general mutiny as two of his militiamen had “circulated a very mutinous writing called a petition and procured many signers to it.” Stone believed his own officers were undermining his authority, as he wrote that, Lt. Benoni Wiltse, a loyalist, permitted “some of the men of his own company to institute a suit at civil law against me to recover some money delayed by his neglect which conduct I consider very unbecoming the character of an officer.” Wiltse appears to have been something of a thorn in Stone’s side, as he reported to Coffin that Wiltse treated “my orders with contempt…and publicly making use of words tending to prevent the men in my Regt from obeying the said orders…[and] for making use of unbecoming language and improper conduct as an officer to myself…which time I placed him in arrest.”
The fluid nature of loyalties in Upper Canada is highlighted in a curious episode related by Stone. A tailor living in Gananoque was commissioned to make uniforms for the militia and like so many others, he deserted. Stone acted at once, confiscating the man’s property for the use of the crown, but when the tailor was captured and brought back to Upper Canada, he sued Stone for his property. To the Colonel’s absolute astonishment, the tailor won and was awarded £15. Stone, of course, refused to pay. [4]
The war was unpopular in the east, both for the fear of destruction by the enemy and the privations of the garrisoned British troops. In a rare show of desperation, Stone wrote to Coffin to demand compensation for the actions of British soldiers stationed in Gananoque. They had pilfered the Colonel’s property to the point where he threatened to shut down his operations. The matter was addressed by General Drummond himself, but “hooking” or theft by soldiers was known to be tolerated by British officers as an inevitability and this served to turn many people against the British cause.[5]
Loyalty and allegiance, just as in the American Revolution, served to wrench families apart. Stone was cut off from his family in Connecticut, but they at least were safely removed from the conflict. Abigail’s daughter Abia faced a much harsher reality. She had married Benajah Mallory, a “late loyalist” of dubious allegiance who came to Upper Canada and rose to some prominence as a local assemblyman in Burford. When the war erupted, Mallory, still smarting from being dismissed by British authorities, joined the Canadian Volunteers, a mounted militia unit within the American Army. They served as guides and partisans in the bitter guerrilla conflict that raged in the Niagara district. The turncoats became infamous for their ruthless destruction of the town of Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) in the winter of 1813, an act which led to a series of reprisals ending in the burning the Presidential Mansion in Washington D.C. Abia and her young daughter Henrietta followed her husband into exile, but within a few months she had renounced her husband and travelled to stay with her mother and step-father in Gananoque. She remained there for the rest of her life.[6]
The conflict could not have ended soon enough for Stone and his family. To Joel, apathy and the creeping republican influence had nearly taken his home from him again, but the final peace seemed to give Stone satisfaction that he had done his duty yet again for “the true liberty of his country and just cause of his rightful Sovereign.” After the war the ties with his Connecticut family were re-established and The Colonel would never have to see the face of war again.