by Enid Mallory
By June 16, FitzGibbon was perched in a bold position at DeCew’s, 11 kilometres inland from the army’s advance post at the mouth of the Twelve Mile Creek, where Major De Haren was in command with 200 of the 104th Regiment and 300 Caughnawagas newly arrived from Lower Canada. Colonel Cecil Bisshopp waited at Twenty Mile Creek with a larger force. Vincent, with the main body of the British Army, was back at Forty Mile Creek. The DeCew position put Fitz at the point of a triangle, 11 kilometres from Major De Haren and 16 kilometres from Colonel Bisshopp. It was an ideal spot from which to swoop out in any direction; in particular, to take the Mountain Road through St. David’s to Queenston and intercept the communication between Fort George and Fort Erie.
Dr. Cyrenius Chapin was the most hated man on the Niagara frontier. He led a troop of mounted men who swooped down on Niagara farmers, taking prisoners and plundering property. A doctor from Buffalo, he thought he was saving the Canadian settlers from British tyranny, but Fitz and his men were determined to save the settlers from the terror of Chapin.
Dr. Cyrenius Chapin
Dr. Cyrenius Chapin, a New England surgeon who moved to Buffalo in 1805, became notorious during the War of 1812. He led a band of horseback riders, who crossed the river to pillage homes and make settlers their prisoners.
With patients on both sides of the Niagara River, he had convinced himself that those on the Canadian side would be happy to join the United States. A few Canadians agreed with him; a group calling themselves Canadian Volunteers, led by Joseph Willcocks, who had served in the House of Assembly before turning against the government, often joined Chapin’s marauders.
Chapin is the man who will guide an American expedition in an attempt to wipe out FitzGibbon at DeCew’s.
Fitz’s granddaughter tells a story that demonstrates the quick, calculated thinking and wild sense of humour that made him suited to this type of warfare. On one of his forays into the woods, he and two men met 10 or 12 Americans almost head-on. An overhanging bank of earth with a tangle of wild vines gave them a hiding place in the nick of time. The Americans had been following a path that ended on the top of the bluff and were unsure which way to go. FitzGibbon signalled his men to remain still; they watched Fitz creep along the bank toward a cave they knew about. A large fallen tree blocked the cave’s entrance. The men saw him use his hand to pivot himself silently over the tree, at the same time getting a look at the enemy above him. Then an incredible bedlam of Native war whoops and wild Irish yells broke loose. Fitz was using the reverberations in the cave to sound like a horde of Natives and a pack of Green Tigers. Terrified, believing themselves ambushed, the Americans turned and fled. The two men under the vines could hear feet pounding on the path above them. They added some wild cries to the banshee voices of their leader and then, as Fitz emerged from the cave, his face lit up with glee, all three dissolved into well-earned laughter.
DeCew’s House
John DeCew arrived in Upper Canada in 1787, a young man in a loyalist family. He found work as a surveyor, which helped him choose and acquire a mill site on a small creek flowing over the escarpment into Twelve Mile Creek. He claimed he paid an axe and a Native blanket for 100 acres. Later, a gold doubloon bought him another 100 acres.
In 1792, he built his sawmill and log cabin on Beaver Dams Creek. By 1808, the sawmill was prospering with a grist mill and linseed-oil operation added, and he was able to build a grand house with large fireplaces and walls finished in black walnut.
During the war, DeCew was an officer in the King’s Militia in command of the 2nd Lincoln Militia. On May 29, 1813, after the Fort George battle, he was captured by the Americans as his regiment retreated.
Vincent wrote that he had established a depot of ammunition and provisions in a stone house belonging to a militia captain in a commanding position near the Beaver Dams. This impressive Georgian-style house on the edge of the escarpment, with its sweeping views and flourishing fruit trees, became FitzGibbon’s headquarters, an oasis of civilization in the chaos of war. The grist mill was still operating, providing flour for the army. Army supplies were stored in the buildings. Mrs. DeCew and her children crowded into the upstairs rooms of the house while Fitz’s 50 men, when they had time to eat or sleep, used the downstairs. She was delighted to harbour these “wild Irishmen” who might stop Chapin’s “vagabonds” and win her husband’s freedom from his Philadelphia prison.
But it wasn’t all a lark. The prolonged tension and lack of decent rest and food often wore them weary and gaunt. Merritt says that FitzGibbon never slept twice in the same place. Charles Askin, writing to his father, fur-trader John Askin, called Fitz “one of the most active and pleasing officers we have,” and said that he was “flying about in such a manner that the enemy did not know where to find him.”
Typical of the fast pace that Fitz kept up was a sortie made on June 21. With Merritt, McKenney, Cummings, and young Barnard, staff adjutant to Colonel Bisshopp, Fitz was sent to Point Abino on Lake Erie to bring back a Mr. Tyce Horn (Haun), who was helping the enemy. The entire area from Chippawa to Fort Erie was in American hands. Chapin was in the area, having passed by an hour before. The party would have to consider the possibility of meeting the Americans on the river road when they returned. The weather turned cold and it started to rain. Rain continued all night. At 2:00 a.m. they reached Horn’s house and surrounded it. They were so cold they could hardly dismount from their horses, but they managed to take Horn and one of Chapin’s men prisoners and in spite of their chilled condition, started the long ride back.
Merritt claimed he was back at Twelve Mile Creek by 9:00 the next morning, and went on to Forty Mile Creek to make out muster rolls, etc. — he didn’t say whether Fitz went home to DeCew’s for a rest, or onto his next escapade.
That June, Fitz received the only wound of his career. He had been walking noiselessly through the bush and stopped a moment to lean against a tree. Suddenly, he felt the presence of another person and turned in time to see a man fire at him. He felt the ball strike him and he staggered, but seconds later he was chasing the man. The man fell, dropped his rifle, and Fitz grabbed him. Ensign Winder had heard the shot and came running up. They took the man prisoner.
For two days, FitzGibbon was bruised, stiff, and sore. The prisoner was heard to tell people no bullet would kill “that damned Green Tiger,” for he had certainly hit him. Fitz began to wonder himself why he wasn’t dead. He and Winder went back to look and found that the ball had gone through a young tree before hitting him. That, combined with the thickness of his coat and the fact that he had turned in the nick of time, probably saved his life.
Many years later, in a letter to his youngest son, James, who was receiving his first commission in the 24th Regiment, Fitz passed on “advice for his guidance in woody warfare,” knowledge garnered from these day of bush fighting in 1813 and 1814. “The troops should be drilled in the woods. The soldier, when advancing, should not go straight forward, but at an angle to some tree to the right or left of the one he quits.” In the same letter, Fitz’s admiration for the skill of the Natives was evident:
I recommend that an intelligent Native be attached to each regiment for a sufficient time to teach all his lessons … to the officers and sergeants … One of the most efficient means of winning the highest degree of the soldier’s goodwill and confidence is by carefully keeping him out of every unnecessary danger, and often going yourself to reconnoitre, rather than to send another to do so.
The physical fitness of his soldiers also concerned Fitz. “Let them run races, jump, leap, wrestle, use the pike, sword, stick, cricket-bat, quoits, as each may desire or you direct. Swimming should also be practised.” Another of his favourite themes was fighting at night. “I think fighting at night has never been practised to one-tenth of the extent to which it is possible to carry it out.” Speaking proudly of his band in 1813, he wrote, “I had men who could rejoice in being able to accomplish what other men would not think of even attempting.”
Above all, an officer needed to have “knowledge of the comparative qualities of those he commands and those to whom he is opposed.” Fitz saw two opposing armies as possessing “a certain quantum of courage and confidence, usually unequally divided and always liable to fluctuation.” It was up to an officer “to so play his game that he shall from day to day and from one affair to another win from his adversary’s scales more or less of these qualities, and transfer the gain to his own scales.”[5] This was the distillation of his learning and experience, but in the summer of 1813, Fitz was still in the school of very hard knocks.
By June 20, he and Chapin were determined to get at each other. Fitz knew that Chapin, who did most of his raiding from Fort Erie to Chippawa, was in the area of Fort George. Several Green Tigers dispersed through the woods to locate him, while others removed the planks from the Chippawa Bridge to keep Chapin’s 49 men from fleeing home to Buffalo when they closed in on him. The Green Tigers thought they had him, until it was discovered that 150 American infantrymen from Fort Erie had come over the bridge before they removed the planks.
Fitz had his men gathered in Lundy’s Lane, ready to ambush Chapin’s men at Forsyth’s woods near the Falls. He had gone on ahead into the small village to reconnoitre, when a Mrs. Kirby, who lived on the corner, ran out waving at him to go back.
“There are two or three hundred men with Chapin and they just this moment passed by. For goodness sake,” she pleaded, “go back!”
Fitz should have taken her advice, but he had spied an American horse by Deffield’s Inn and, assuming there was only one American inside, decided he could take him. He rode over, dismounted, and entered the inn, where he found not one American but two, a rifleman and a soldier. Fitz soon had a rifle pointed at him. He summoned all his Irish charm and pretended to be an old acquaintance. This put the Americans off their guard for an instant. Merritt said Fitz proffered one hand in greeting and, with the other, seized the rifle.
The soldier was in the act of firing when he fortunately caught his gun, brought both of them under his arm, by which means the muzzles of each were pointing at his comrade, both cocked, the friction of the two enabled him to keep them so firm that they could not with every exertion break his grasp. In this position he pulled and pushed them both out of the house, the steps of which were two or three feet high, he swearing and demanding them to surrender, they retorting the demand on him.
The Montreal Gazette, which had discovered that the doings of FitzGibbon’s little band made good reading, got the story three weeks later and told it this way:
In this situation Lieut. F. called upon two men who were looking on to assist him in disarming the two Americans, but they would not interfere. Poor Mrs. Kirby, apparently distracted, used all her influence, but in vain. The rifleman finding that he could not disengage his piece, drew Lieut. F.’s sword out of his scabbard with his left hand with the intention of striking at Lieut. F., when another woman, Mrs. Danfield [Deffield?], seized the uplifted arm and wrested the sword from his grasp. At this moment an elderly man, named Johnson, came up and forced the American from his hold on the rifle, and Lieut. F. immediately laid the other soldier prostrate.[6]
These fireplaces and the foundation are all that remain of John DeCew’s beautiful house, once a haven for Fitz and his Green Tigers.
Gord Mallory.
Merritt said Fitz got on his horse, led the other horse, and drove the two gentlemen before him to his party. “He had not left the place two minutes before the [American] party returned. Upon the whole it was a most gallant, daring and miraculous proceeding.”
Whenever Fitz had to talk about such incidents he said he had been plain foolish. But miraculously, he had got away with them all. Tiger was an apt name to describe him. He was a cat with nine lives, nimble, lithe, quick, and cool — not yet a hero but about to become one.
He and Dr. Cyrenius Chapin were about to meet at Beaver Dams, where he would stake one of his nine lives and win fame and promotion at the Battle of Beaver Dams. At the same time, a woman named Laura Secord would gain immortal fame.
Chapter 8
Laura Secord’s Long Walk
And when the Yankees did surrender, we all wondered what the mischief he [FitzGibbon] would do with them.
— Judge Jarvis of Brockville, with FitzGibbon at Beaver Dams[1]
The Battle of Stoney Creek drastically changed the chess pieces in this war. The British were no longer on the run. The Americans, who had briefly been in command of the whole Niagara frontier, with Chauncey protecting them on the water, sighted Sir James Yeo on the water and scurried back to Fort George, pulling in their troops from Fort Erie and virtually trapping themselves in the fort.
When they tried to break out, a woman walked 32 kilometres to warn James FitzGibbon that the Americans were coming to get him. That walk made Laura Secord a Canadian legend. As with all legends, facts have been altered and embellished. Someone put a cow in the story and it has been hard to get out. Then the woman herself, clad in lacy bonnet, became forever associated with a delicious brand of chocolates, giving the story a special flavour.
James and Laura Secord’s house sat under the shadow of Queenston Heights. Portage (River) Road came down the Heights, running close to the Secord house, and along it clattered all the “going and coming” of whichever army held Fort George. The windows of the house looked toward the Niagara River and the Queenston Wharf, where the Americans landed in October 1812. On that October day when General Brock died on the Heights above Laura’s home, her husband James, a sergeant in the 1st Lincoln Militia, had been badly wounded in the shoulder and knee. Laura herself had gone to the Heights, searched among the dying for her husband, and with the help of “a Gentleman” got him down the hill into their own house.
She returned home to find her house a wreck, plundered by the Americans. Laura swallowed her tears and anger as she made her husband a bed in a corner of the chaos. She took James and their children to spend the winter with relatives in St. David’s, five kilometres west of Queenston. In June 1813, Queenston was still at the mercy of the Americans, and James was still unwell from the wounds in his shoulder and knee, but the Secords were back at their own hearth. Portage Road was an American thoroughfare these days, although it made James grin with pride to see FitzGibbon’s or Merritt’s horsemen dash along it now and again on some surreptitious errand.
Laura never knew when Americans would knock on her door and demand lodging or food. When they did she had to comply. Although she never put in writing exactly how she learned of the plan to capture FitzGibbon, legend and her grandchildren agree that American soldiers taking food in her home revealed the scheme. Her granddaughter, Laura Secord Clark, says that Laura gave them food and liquor, then listened outside the window.
Cyrenius Chapin started the agitation to “get FitzGibbon.” He and Fitz had been playing cat and mouse for over a month, and Chapin had a scheme to decide finally who was the cat. While Fitz and his friends were riding to Point Abino to capture Tyce Horn, Chapin was on his way to Fort George with his plan. He would convince Lieutenant-Colonel Boerstler that he had spied out the route to DeCew’s, and could guide Boerstler there with 500 men, taking out the 50 British and close to 100 Natives there with ease.
On that wet and unseasonably cold June 21, it’s possible that Chapin and his men would have stopped at the Secord house before riding on to Fort George. It is easy to picture them, warmed by food and drink, leaning back in their chairs to boast about getting those Green Tigers.
Laura often heard of FitzGibbon from her half-brother, Charles Ingersoll, a lieutenant in Merritt’s Niagara Provincial Light Dragoons. She knew that without his band and Merritt’s Dragoons they would be entirely under the American thumb. When the Americans had gone, she told her husband what she had heard, and added, “Somebody has to warn FitzGibbon.” Her crippled husband remarked wryly that if he crawled on his hands and knees he could not get there in time. Laura thought of Chapin at Fort George prep
aring to ambush the men at DeCew’s. She had no idea how quickly the force might move out. She made her decision. She herself would go.
At Fort George, Chapin was having his problems. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Boerstler had no respect for the doctor turned highwayman. He did have a healthy respect for the British Army and for Lieutenant FitzGibbon’s Green Tigers. He was not at all convinced that Chapin knew the roads, trails, swamps, and the British positions well enough to get him to DeCew’s and back alive. But it seems that Chapin got through to a higher authority, Brigadier-General John P. Boyd, the American officer in charge at Fort George. On June 23, Boyd gave Charles Boerstler orders to take 500 men to DeCew’s house and capture or wipe out the enemy stationed there. He was to march his men to Queenston in the evening and, with Chapin leading, reach DeCew’s the following day. Boerstler was shocked, but he got the operation under way.
Meanwhile, Laura had left the house at 4:30 in the morning on June 22. As the story is told by FitzGibbon’s granddaughter, Laura pretended to be trying to catch a cow to milk it when an American sentry questioned her. But Laura’s biographer, Ruth Mackenzie, says there was no cow and probably no sentry either. Anyway, Laura had another excuse for being abroad so early. She would tell any American she met that she was on her way to visit her brother, Charles, lying sick of a fever at Hannah Secord’s house near St. David’s. (Charles was engaged to marry Hannah’s daughter, Elizabeth.)
Charles was still sick in bed. Laura may have hoped that he would help her with the message but he was unable to get up. Elizabeth Secord offered to go with Laura and the two women set out. Afraid of American patrols on the Mountain Road to Beaver Dams, they took the Old Swamp Road west to Shipman’s Corners (St. Catharines), then turned south to DeCew’s. This way led over miry roads made worse by the all-night rain, through sloughs and muddy swamp that tugged at their feet and slowed their pace. They were often in the shadow of deep woods where mosquitoes rose in clouds to add to their misery. When not in the shade of trees, the day was becoming excessively hot.
