Sergeant John ASHBY (1769-after Jun 1843)

Progress through the Ranks

• On 17 December 1810 John was appointed Corporal.
• By 6th of January 1813, John’s had attained the rank of Lance Sergeant.
• By the 27th of October 1813, John was a Sergeant.
• In 1817, John is listed in the British Army Service Records with the Royal Regiment of Veterans, 4th Royal Veteran Battalion, pension payable in the colonies.
• After settlement in 1819, John participated in the local militia group under Col. Playfair. In later life, he served with the 3rd Battalion Incorporated Militia between 1838-1843.

First Marriage

John Ashby married Susanna Payne in 1795 in Cambridge, England. When he  enlisted in the military in 1805, John left a young family in his wife’s care. Susanna Payne died in 1806 in Surrey England at the age of forty-one. John and Susanna had five children, three of whom are known to have survived to adulthood. Little more is known of this family.

At the time, the military was severely limiting the number of families who could accompany soldiers when they were posted, especially when posted outside Britain. In many cases, only commission officers could be accompanied. The quota was six to twelve women per one hundred men. As a result, men sometime partnered as they moved from station to station, leaving abandon families in their wake. These abandoned families sometimes became a burden for parishes and various attempts were made to address this issue. On the other hand, life for women and children in a military garrison was often grim.

Second Marriage

On the 6th of January 1813 John Ashby, Lance Sergeant of the 10th Veteran Battalion, a widower, was married by license of Sir George Prevost, to Dorothy ?, (Preston) of Quebec, a widow. A daughter, Ann Ashby, was born about 1814 and it seems that both Dorothy and the baby died at this time.

Third Marriage

On 26th February 1816, in St. Andrew’s Church, Quebec, Sergeant John Ashby, of the 4th Royal Veteran’s Battalion, aged about 45 years, widower, married a widow, Susanna Andrews, widow, (previously married Shields  (7 Apr 1800) and Bird (7 Mar 1808), of Quebec, by license of Sir Gordon Drummond at Quebec.

John and Susanna’s Story

Susanna Andrews outlived two previous military husbands and throughout her lifetime bore eight children. Joseph, the first son of John and Susanna Ashby, and Susanna’s seventh child, was born August 1817 and was baptized in Perth Ontario, but did not survive. William Ashby, Susanna’s eighth child, and my 2nd great grandfather, was born July 1819 near Fallbrook, Lanark County, Upper Canada. He was the only child of Susanna’s to survive to adulthood.

Five of Susanna’s previous children died as infants. A sixth, a daughter, was accidently shot and died of a pistol wound at age seven. Living conditions in the garrison were not sanitary, food supplies were scarce, medical care was limited and with weapons everywhere, it was not a favorable environment for children.

Garrison Life

Daily rations for the men offered little variety and often had to be supplemented by the soldier. Every morning at nine o’clock the men were served bread, milk, soup, tea and occasionally butter. Dinner was served at noon and consisted of soup well thickened with meal, flour or rice, meat and vegetables. No supper was allotted for single men, but broth might be saved from the noon meal.

Women could live in the barracks if they provided cleaning, laundry, and cooking services for soldiers. They would receive full rations and be paid a wage. Others wives would be housed in a common barrack room or live outside the garrison. They would receive half rations. Children would be housed outside the garrison in the community. Children would receive one-quarter rations.

Soldiers eating with their families, apart from their comrades, typically would have milk and bread for breakfast, meat, vegetables, salt and bread for dinner, and milk and potatoes or broth with bread for supper. Beef, both fresh and salted, was available to the garrisons from local farmers, while mutton was usually reserved for celebrations.

Some men supplemented rations with privately purchased cheese or pork. Salt pork was also available. Cabbage, peas and beans were favored vegetables. Fish was used with caution as it spoiled quickly and could lead to outbreaks of dysentery. Hunting allowed a soldier to add grouse, pigeons etc. to his diet. Wild fruit was added to the diet when available. Locally grown and milled wheat was used for flour and the local bread was deemed better than that available at home!

The struggle to survive garrison life was good training for survival as a settler!

The Search for a Home

In 1817, Sgt. John Ashby (Ashley) received an initial location ticket for all of lot 24 in concession 2, Front of Yonge Township, Leeds County, Upper Canada. This property is slightly to the north west of the village of Mallorytown. An investigation of this property reveals that it was all swamp land draining into Jones Creek which flows through the southern end of the property. Early maps indicate much more open water on the creek than is visible on today’s GIS maps. This suggests that the water table has changed.  Today this area remains undeveloped. Farmland in the township begins in concession 3.

A second location ticket was obtained in Leeds County near Frankville but was abandoned in favor of a ticket issued for lot 19 SW concession 10 in the newly surveyed Bathurst township in the District of Bathurst.

The Bathurst lot – concession 10 Lot 19 W – was a remote property located on Bolton Creek where water flows out of Bennett Lake, about two miles from the future site of the village of Fallbrook.

The Ashby family settled on their lot about 1817 and John received his crown patent on the 8th of September 1820, having completed his settlement requirements. As in other communities, a senior officer in the community would organize military settlers into work crews to share the work of building a shanty and clearing the required land on each lot to meet patent requirements. Col Playfair was most likely the organizer in this community. When one considers the nature of the land that these families settle upon, Colonel Playfair is quoted as saying that he, “came far back from the frontier to avoid the horrors experienced during the war of 1812.” Other joined Col. Playfair in share this sentiment and followed him into the backwoods, onto the borders of the surveyed land available at that time.

The Early Years

Finding a home in Upper Canada was a challenge for John and Susan but imagine their delight when they arrived at their allotment in Bathurst Township. Tall trees covered the hillside although some oak harvesting may have already occurred. Blue lake waters sparkled in the sunlight. Wildlife abounded in the forests and fish in the lake. Birds flew overhead and wild geese migrated through in the spring and fall. Berry bushes could be found in forest openings.

During that spring or summer of 1817, John aged 48, and Susanna aged 42, prepared for winter in a log shanty on the hill overlooking the lake. John, accustomed to hunting for birds and game, and Susanne who had survived life as a garrison wife, had knowledge of food preservation and of edible and medicinal plants. Other supplies were carried from Perth, or even Brockville during the first few years. First Nations people who lived in the area often befriended the settlers and taught additional survival skills.

Impact of the Timber Trade

When John and Susanna arrived at their new home, timber was already being harvested along the Ottawa river and it was not long until trees in the Mississippi watershed were sought. The Mississippi, and the Mattawa, a river a short distance to the north, made this a choice area for the timber trade in the early 1800s. These river highways were made famous by the exploits and conflicts of the Caldwell and McLaren timber concerns.

On the 17th of September 1831 John sold a piece of his property for a mill site to Benjamin and Samuel Bolton, a United Empire Loyalist family. Logs were floated down the lake and it was an ideal location for a sawmill to service the needs of the settlers. A road between Fallbrook and Watson’s Corners ran along a portion of the Ashby lot. A simple bridge was built to cross the creek. This quickly became a major route servicing timber shanties located to the north of the lake.

As settlement progressed and the land under the trees was revealed, many settlers decided to move on. There was little potential for agricultural activities on the land they had settled. in 1835, Mr. C. Rankin, who was commissioned to report on the situation of 1820-21 assisted settlers in the vicinity, described the land as “a continuous succession of rocky knolls with scraps or bits, seldom exceeding an acre in extent, of good land between.” Along the creek, the rocky knolls drained into low-lying swamp.

The Neighbourhood

Some of the lots nearby were second or third grants to officers and remained patented but vacant land for many years. Often squatters lived on these properties for a time and then moved on. John and Suzanne’s home continued to be somewhat isolated as few land owners chose to live or to remain on their lot. The village of Fallbrook developed quickly. Additional saw mills were built, a grist mill and a shingle factory were added to the mix. The village became a stopping place for teamster travelling to and from the logging camps. Several hotels were built.

On the north side of the 10th line of Bathurst, the Foster’s from Ireland received their patent in 1826 and lived nearby. Richard Jones, Wentworth Winslow and William Matheson received patents in 1820. These were probably military grants and some unoccupied for a number of years.

On the south side of the 10th line only Robert Moore, Charles Duncan, James Warner receive patents in1820-21. Theophilus Bartlett, James Ward and Henry Watts received their patents in 1824.The Watt and Foster families intermarried with Ashby descendants but the other names soon disappeared from records. Today the Ashby property is a “country property” in “cottage country.”

Although their early lives had been difficult, I like to think that, after settlement on the 10th line, John and Susanna Ashby lived a good life, with plentiful food gained from the land.

Life was to become more complex for later generations.