I feel I have only scratched the surface of this story. The constraints of time forced me to leave out many memorable characters and events. “Fiery” Andrew, the strange man who lived in Gananoque and was rumoured to have set his wife on fire; the wandering jugglers expelled from Gananoque for not giving the Colonel their names; Stone’s postwar nemesis, Charles Jones, who represented the emerging political opposition to the old order in Upper Canada; Joel’s forceful (if somewhat hypocritical) morality, dragging young men to the altar for sullying the honour of a girl. Health issues played an important role for Stone and his family, as can well be expected in an age where there was little real medicine. Madness, deadly fevers, and some strange medical advice are found throughout the volumes of correspondence. Although his papers tell us so much about the early years of settlement in Upper Canada, I find myself continually drawn to the human stories that filter through.
Joel Stone accumulated a fair amount of folklore, both in his Connecticut homeland and in the Gananoque region, and stories continued long after his death. Just a week before this site was finished, I learned of a peculiar episode in which a group of schemers dug up the old Colonel and removed his head in hopes of winning a substantial, if mythical, bounty from the Americans. The skull, I am told, sat on the mantel of a local pub in Gananoque for decades before being returned to his grave.
This project was a long time in the making. I grew up in Gananoque, and during that time, for me and other young people, Stone was a two-dimensional pioneer, uninteresting and certainly only a name. He was the typical, faceless, town founder; nothing more than a bronze plaque. My idea of Stone changed one summer, when I had my first taste of working with history in the town’s little museum. Rummaging in the store rooms for hours, I came across an unmarked suitcase containing dozens of letters to and from Joel Stone and his descendents. For a 19 year old, aspiring to be an historian, it was an amazing discovery that lingered in the back of my mind throughout my university career. The cardboard cut-out of a man, suddenly became a living person.
During my MA work at the University of Western Ontario, the opportunity presented itself for delving back in to the story of my hometown’s founder, and I could not have been more surprised and more deeply enthralled by what I found. With the time to devote, and a degree behind me, I read the same letters with new eyes, seeing important things I had missed five years before and understanding so much of what perplexed me that one summer. The papers revealed a world that, for me, is simultaneously alien and familiar.
As part of the Public History Program, Dr. William Turkel introduced us to the world of digital media and its implications not only for the professional study of history, but also, and just as importantly, for the interpretation of history for a public audience. An American Refugee, The Story of Joel Stone, UE, is a combination of the paper I wrote for Dr. Nancy Rhoden’s “History of the First British Empire” seminar, a public lecture I gave on the same subject in Gananoque, and the methodology and rationale of Public and Digital History. It straddles many approaches, and whether or not it satisfies any is debateable. Yet, it is an attempt at an accessible, digital article. I believe strongly that such an approach, when fully refined, is the future of history.
Timothy J. Compeau
August, 2006
London, Ontario
I would appreciate any feedback, criticisms or suggestions at tcompeau@gmail.com