Our earliest known Canadian ancestor was James Dixon who arrived in 1818 from Yorkshire with his then wife and seven of his nine surviving children. Although another son would choose to later join his father and siblings in Canada, eldest son James remained in England as a career soldier. During that career he would serve three sovereigns and participate in two important nineteenth century military campaigns.
In 1812, while still only eighteen, James Junior enlisted with the First Regiment of the Life Guards in London. The Life Guards is the most senior regiment of the British Army and now forms part of the Household Cavalry.
The mounted regiment of the Household Cavalry, sometimes known as the Royal Horse Guards or Royal Life Guards, carries out mounted ceremonial duties on State and Royal occasions and acts as the Queen’s mounted escort in protecting the Sovereign. Its ceremonial uniform is familiar from both photographs of such occasions as well as its role of mounted guard duty outside Horse Guards, a building near London’s Whitehall.
A clue as to James’ military experience first surfaced in a rudimentary Dixon family tree compiled, it is believed, towards the end of the nineteenth century by two distant cousins with an interest in family genealogy. The brief descriptor of James in the family tree after his name is:
“Major Farrier of the Royal Life Guards, fought at Waterloo”
With this clue, correspondence during the 1970s with the then curator of the Household Cavalry Museum in London yielded significantly more information from its well maintained archives. James, we learn, enlisted with the Royal Life Guards on October 5, 1812 at the stated age of eighteen years. (This accords with his christening record which suggests he would have been about eighteen years and five months.) We also learn that he was a blacksmith at the time of his enlistment. Physically he was five feet eleven inches in height with a fair complexion, grey eyes, and brown hair. He was assigned the regimental number 41.
The Household Cavalry Museum records confirmed, as the rudimentary family tree had earlier recorded, that James was a farrier for the entirety of his period of service. A farrier, one responsible for the hoof trimming and shoeing of horses, is a historical reference to someone in charge of a cavalry regiment’s horses. It is understood that a farrier’s duties also extended to killing those horses badly injured in battle which had to be put down. James’ blacksmithing skills were no doubt first learned and passed on from his father who had his own blacksmith shop in Yorkshire.
A note made during the 1930s by Rebecca (Dixon) Potter (1856 – 1938), granddaughter of the senior James and an inveterate collector and keeper of Dixon family records, attributes James Junior’s decision to join the Life Guards to a marriage disapproved of by his family. Her note reads:
“James Dixon, grandfather’s eldest son, married a girl who worked for grandfather. His family was very angry at him and he had some words. He went straight to London and enlisted, though but seventeen years old. He became a farrier major and shoed the King’s horses. He had learned blacksmithing from his father …”
Although James’s family may well have disapproved of his marriage, things did not occur exactly as stated. Firstly, as previously indicated, James was a bit beyond his eighteenth birthday when he enlisted. Secondly, archival records disclose that his first marriage to a Dinah Calvert did not occur until May of 1813, some seven months after his enlistment. The notion that James “shoed the King’s horses” may or may not be accurate. If so, it is no doubt premised on the historical role of James’ regiment acting as the King’s bodyguard and in having its barracks near his London residence.
After James’ 1813 marriage to Dinah in Romford, Essex, a daughter was said to have been born three months later. (No archival record has been found for this daughter who may have died as an infant.) This was followed by two daughters and two sons born between the years of 1815 and 1821. All four children were baptized at St. James’ Church near London’s Piccadilly Circus.
The fact that James was married in Essex was no doubt because he had been posted to a drafting depot formed there in 1812 for deployment of troops for service in the Peninsular War. The Peninsular War waged between 1808 and 1814 was one phase of the Napoleonic Wars that was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Great Britain, Portugal, and France who had occupied parts of the Peninsula. His marriage was probably with knowledge of his imminent deployment since records show that he was ordered abroad to serve in the Peninsular War just after he wed. He left Romford in late May 1813 and arrived by ship in Lisbon July 19, 1813 for a stay in Portugal lasted until July of the following year.
In April of 1814 year James’ regiment was again deployed to continental Europe. On this occasion James saw service in the Netherlands, France, and present day Belgium. His service record specifically notes that he was present for the Battle of Waterloo in June of 1815. This epic battle with some twenty-three thousand troops under the command of the Duke of Wellington marked the final historic defeat of Napoleon.
The 1st and 2nd Life Guards formed the front charging line of the Household Cavalry Brigade at Waterloo. The famous charge against the French Cuirassiers took place at the height of the battle and save the British centre from being overrun. Although James' specific role in all of his is unknown, there is the following interesting entry about the battle in the previously referenced Rebecca (Dixon) Potter notes:
“Uncle Jim stopped at one
time to shoe a couple of horses. After
shoeing them he jumped onto his horse and started to overtake the
regiment. He met a man, who seeing he
was a British soldier called out to him:
“You are riding right into the enemy’s ranks!” Uncle Jim whirled around and rode in the
opposite direction. He had two horses
shot out from him [in another incident it appears] and the great peaked hat he
wore was pierced in several places.”
It is of course always difficult to separate fact from embellishment in such oral family traditions. Whatever the truth, it makes for a somewhat compelling narrative. Equally compelling is the following additional note:
"He was one of the Queen's [was "Kings" at that time] Life Guards and one of the 100 who volunteered to go to the Battle of Waterloo. There were four ladies allowed in each regiment and his wife Dinah was one of them. She killed one man by sticking the spout of a teakettle into him for attempting to ill use another woman. ..."
The bulk of this second account is clearly suspect. Apart from the fact that James’ wife was seven months pregnant at the time, the curator of the Household Cavalry Museum considered it doubtful that James’ first wife was permitted to accompany him during any posting since “wives of other ranks did not accompany their husbands overseas during the Peninsula Campaign or at Waterloo”. Despite the apparent inaccuracy of this entry, it is tempting to speculate that the bizarre teakettle incident referred to or something similar may have occurred under different circumstances when the family was back together in England.
James, after remaining as part of the Army of Occupation following Waterloo, later returned to England in February of 1816. It appears that James’ first wife may have died five years after that, perhaps during the birth of her fourth child born in February of 1821, since James was a widower at the time of his August 1821 marriage to Jane Birket, herself a widow. The marriage took place in London at St. George’s Church in Hanover Square near Oxford Circus. It appears that Jane may have previously been married to William Birket, a fellow cavalryman of James. Although they would go on to have a son John born in 1831, James would again be a widower following Jane’s death in 1833.
James was discharged from service with the rank of Farrier Major on February 1, 1828 at the age of forty-two. The reason given for his discharge was on account of rheumatism. His character was assessed as good and he was awarded a pension of one shilling, one and one-half pence per day.
Little is known of James during his subsequent years other than that he was still alive in 1851. In a surviving 1852 letter to his half brother Anthony in Canada from James’ first cousin Ann Pickard it is stated:
“We had your brother from London here in
October. He came here with cousin John
William Dixon from near Harrogate where he had been staying for the good of his
health. He found much benefit. He is looking well and fat.”
James died in Ripon, Yorkshire during the last quarter of 1880 at the age of 80 having survived two wives and three of his five adult children. Although James never set foot in Canada, all three of his sons did, two of them staying permanently.
Son James was in Canada by 1851 when he is found living with relatives in Etobicoke Township. He subsequently married, moved to Barrie, and raised a family. The other two sons were apparently sent out to Canada as boys. Although such a move is hard to understand by to-day’s standards, Rebecca (Dixon) Potter writes:
"George was sent to Canada in care of a family who had a boy about the same age. George had a barrel and box full of good clothing which these people stole from him. Uncle Jim at the same time sent his saddle and cloak which he had used in the war."
This son also remained in Canada, married and raised a family. What became of the cloak and saddle is unknown. The last son, John, born of James’ second marriage was brought back to Canada by patriarch James. Rebecca (Dixon) Potter writes:
“After Dinah died Uncle Jim
married again and from this marriage had one son called John. When Grandfather went to England he brought
this boy back with him. He was very red
headed and stayed for [illegible] years and then went back to London,
England. It is supposed this son got all
the father’s property but neither his brothers or any of the other Dixons know
anything about him.”
Since it is known that patriarch James visited his mother and other relatives in England in 1851, it is following this visit that ten year old John would have been brought to Canada.
James, major farrier, Royal Life Guardsman, and Battle of Waterloo survivor stands out as a relative, although a remote one, with an interesting military career. As a member of an elite regiment who participated in perhaps the most famous battle of the time, his well documented career provides interesting historic insight into his storied military experiences during the nineteenth century.
David Arntfield
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