My earliest known ancestor to arrive in Canada was James Dixon, my maternal fourth great grandfather, who arrived over two hundred years ago in 1818. Born in 1771 in Hawes, Yorkshire, England, this interesting ancestor would marry four times and father fifteen children, ten of them surviving to adulthood.
James, first married to Barbara Tomlinson at age 22, found himself a widower by age 34. Next married at age 36 to Mary Parker, he was again a widower by age 42. Married four months later to Isabella Swinbank, he set out four years later with this wife to Canada in the spring of 1818 along with seven of his children of whom four were ten years of age or under, including a child who was a mere baby of one. Children travelling with him were George, Thomas, Betsy, John, Richard, Isabella, and Jane. There would later be three more children born in Canada, two of whom, Rebecca and Anthony would survive until adulthood. Two adult sons remained in England, one of whom, William, would join James in Canada some years later.
(The primary source of information regarding James comes from 1930s records of his granddaughter, Rebecca (Potter) Dixon, the daughter of James’ youngest daughter, also named Rebecca. Rebecca (Potter) Dixon was an inveterate documenter of family lore and much of her material can be independently confirmed by archival records.)
Prior to his immigration to Canada James worked as a blacksmith and additionally kept a hardware store and hotel as adjuncts to his blacksmithing business. Rebecca (Potter) Dixon writes:
"My grandfather was a blacksmith but kept a hardware store and hotel too and worked at his trade. Being badly in debt he left for Canada leaving all his possessions in the hands of a cousin, Jackson by name. He, this cousin, as soon as grandfather started to his far off western home, sold all grandfather's effects and pocketed the money never paying any of the debts. The sale lasted three weeks selling goods each day. Grandfather had more than enough to pay his debts, but some of his creditors were anxious for their money and he had not enough to pay them until his goods were sold. He started with what he had and they, the creditors followed him and he gave them all of the money he had with him."
So according to family lore, it was a very impecunious James who set out for Canada. One has to question, however, the accuracy of the account about giving all his money to his creditors. He obviously had sufficient funds for his passage to Canada with his wife and seven of his surviving children, including two young adult children. (Adult sons William and James at the time remained in England. William, however, would later choose to also join James in Canada, leaving eldest son James, a career soldier, as the only Dixon child who did not emigrate.)
Anthony Dixon (1819 - 1878), the Canadian born son of James and another early family historian writes:
"James Dixon ... emigrated with his family in the spring of the year 1818 and settled in the Township of Aldborough, Upper Canada when he removed in the Autumn of 1826 to his residence, Lot 21, 2nd Concession of the Township of Etobicoke."
Apart from James and his wife
Isabella, the family arriving in Canada consisted of five six children under
age 18 plus older son George, about age 22, and Thomas, about age 18. It is not known if had in mind a clear
destination in Canada when he set out on what in those days would have been an
ocean crossing of several weeks. Although
he may originally have had the Toronto area in mind, he initially ended up some
one hundred and twenty miles to the southwest.
Family historian Rebecca (Dixon) Potter further writes:
"My grandfather came over from England ... and as Toronto was no place at that time was induced to go on further to this Talbot possession as he had a division of the British army quartered there."
The "Talbot possession" was a settlement begun in 1803 and run by Colonel Thomas Talbot, a well connected member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Talbot had been given 5000 acres in Elgin County to be administered by him and given to settlers wishing to farm and willing to clear the lands. It seems reasonable to conclude that the attraction of free land had been the major inducement for James to settle in Elgin County’s Aldborough Township. The arrival of James and family was clearly at a time when the War of 1812 between the United States and Canada was fresh in the minds of many. Rebecca (Dixon) Potter goes on to write:
"The old settlers told them how cruelly the lawless Yankees had used them, cutting down their orchards, taking even their feather beds out of their houses and emptying the feathers and carrying the ticks away ... and devastating everything around ... and would have killed Colonel Talbot, but he, seeing them coming, disguised himself and he and another gentleman passed the lawless brutes as they were going to his house."
In 1818 when James arrived, Aldborough Township was still sparsely populated. Until 1812 in fact there had in fact been only one family there, a family that chose to leave after its home was destroyed by Indians. Six years later in the spring of 1818, James would be one of only seventeen other families, many of them Highland Scots, by then residing in the Township. Numbers would further grow with the arrival from Scotland of thirty-six additional families that same fall.
One can only imagine the challenges faced by James and family. He was 46 years of age and had no farming experience. Only two of his accompanying children were old enough to assist in land clearing. The privations in such an untamed part of the province were many. James and his two sons, George and Thomas, were each allotted 50 acres of land in the Settlement, all parcels fronting on Concession Road Thirteen. James was given the northwest corner of Lot 23, George, about age 22, the northeast corner of Lot 23 and Thomas, about age 18, the northeast corner of adjoining Lot 22. By 1820, according to an early assessment roll, George and Thomas owned no animals and had cleared no land. James on the other hand had managed by that time to clear one acre of land and to acquire one cow. Although these gains over two years may not seem impressive, there were in 1820 only eighteen of eighty-six men entered as landowners who had cleared any land at all. Of the Township's 4450 acres, only 105 acres had been cleared in total with the rest described as wild land. James' single cow was one of only forty-four in the Township together with twenty oxen and one horse.
The Dixon lands were just east of the present village of Eagle. Concession Road Thirteen with its sandy lands is quite close to the northern shores of Lake Erie, the irregularly shaped lots of the Broken Front Concession being all that separated the Dixon lands from the water itself. James Dixon’s lands would be the birthplace of his last three children, Anthony born in 1819, Roger who died in infancy, and Rebecca born in 1822. A visit to these lands in 1979 determined that the original 50 acre farm was still intact, there having been no additions of adjacent land to add to the original holding. Almost two hundred years after James’ arrival, the land of course had by then been mostly cleared (save for a small bushy area at the back of the farm through which ran a gully). Although the sandy land so close to Lake Erie was being used by this time to grow corn, the then owner advised me that, within the past twenty years, it had also been used at one time for growing tobacco and prior to that for mixed farming.
Pioneer life on these lands was difficult for James and family. Settlers were constantly faced with inadequate accommodation, wild animals, and often a poor supply of food. In a book entitled "Pioneer Days in Aldborough it is related that typical Aldborough pioneers would first sleep in the open or on the ground of very basic shelters until a small portion of land could be cleared for construction of a log cabin. In the fall of 1818 (James had arrived in the spring) families, after exhausting a meagre supply of corn and potatoes, subsisted on turnips and chestnuts until flour could be purchased some distance away. Wolves, bears, and wild turkeys were a constant threat to livestock and grain.
Illness was also a problem, in no small part due to the undrained and swampy conditions of many of the lands which provided ideal breeding grounds for disease carrying mosquitoes. High fevers and what has been described "the shaking ague" were common complaints. Medical assistance was non-existent. In September of 1819 alone (the same month James' son Anthony was born) there were fourteen adult funerals among the fifty-four Aldborough families.
Against this backdrop James and his family persevered for eight years. In the end, it appears that it was not the living conditions but the personality of the Settlement's founder Colonel Thomas Talbot that beat James. Talbot was well known for being autocratic and eccentric. Rebecca (Dixon) Potter further writes:
"Grandfather got in touch with Col. Talbot and he settled in Aldborough Township but quarrelled with him ... He gave it up and came down to Etobicoke where the three older boys had settled ..."
The older boys would include George and Thomas and likely older son William who came to Canada with his first cousin wife Margaret (our lineal ancestors) sometime after James. Although it is not known when George and Thomas left Aldborough Township for Etobicoke Township, it is assumed that they did not remain in the Talbot Settlement for very long since they never received title to their lands, an indication that settlement obligations requiring minimal land clearing had never been completed. On the other hand, James remained long enough to receive title to his lands. The paperwork was registered in 1825, the year before his reputed 1826 move to Etobicoke Township. Because James had essentially paid for the land by improving it with his labour, the purchase price from Talbot is set out nominally as one farthing. James would subsequently sell the land for 50 pounds or one pound per acre, its apparent fair market value at the time.
James’ move to Etobicoke Township saw him settling there on Lot 21 of Concession 2, property he would remain on until his 1862 death. His decision to settle in that area was no doubt the result of his wish to join sons George, Thomas, and possibly William who had already settled there. In due course, sons John and Richard would also own land there and daughters Betsy, Jane, and Rebecca, once married, would also for a time settle in the area. Given all the Dixon holdings now to be found on Concessions 1, 2, 3, and A, a cross concession road to the north of these lands would subsequently come to be known as Dixon Road on account of all the Dixon lands it passed. Dixon Road is a name which survives to this day near Toronto's Pearson Airport. Although Dixon Road and the former Dixon farmlands are now highly developed, they remained as farmlands until well into the 1950s.
Little is known of James' close to forty years in Etobicoke Township. What is known is that his third wife, Isabella, would die within four years of their arrival. It is also known that there was an ill-fated fourth marriage to one Hannah Reynolds in 1831. This marriage is briefly referenced my Adelaide (Potter) Stober, the younger sister of Rebecca (Potter) Dixon, in the following brief 1949 note:
"Grandfather Dixon was married four times ... his fourth wife was a widow with one daughter but she lived with him only a short time.”
(This marriage occurred April 18, 1831 at Toronto’s St. James Cathedral.)
The only real additional glimpse of James’ life during his early Etobicoke years comes again from Rebecca (Potter) Dixon:
"They first moved into a little log house as the house they were to live in was filled with hay. After the hay was taken out they moved into the other house mother (probably grandmother is meant) died in and kept hay in the other house they first moved into."
Apart from farming his lands, James also used his early blacksmithing experience to act as a sort of pioneer lay doctor and dentist since Rebecca further writes:
"Grandfather here too started a blacksmith shop and was kind of a doctor too. Would set bones and bled both people and horses. Made some tooth drawers himself and had drawn many teeth."
We also know that James' property also apparently once had several oak trees of some value since Rebecca also writes:
"John and Richard cut all the oak trees down on grandfather's place and had them sawed at the mills into staves which were shipped to England and other places."
Rebecca (Dixon) Potter, also describing her grandfather as a “strong Episcopalian”, adds that he had helped in the building of St. Philip’s Church in Weston.
It is additionally known that James made one trip back to England in 1841 to visit family with his son Anthony. This is not only referred to in the Rebecca (Potter) Dixon material but also confirmed by the 1841 census for Kettlewell, the enumeration having occurred during their visit there. James and Anthony are shown on census night residing with his widowed brother-in-law William Tennant. Also in the same household is James’ then widowed mother who was 90. So unlike most pioneers who never again saw relatives left behind, James had the opportunity to see his mother one more time before her death.
Following his trip to England Rebecca (Potter) Dixon tells us that James brought back to Canada with him his 10 year old grandson John. This John was a late born child of his eldest son, also James, the only one of the family to remain in England. It is hard to fathom the thinking behind letting so young a child being turned over to his grandfather to be taken out of the country away from his immediate family. (This grandchild would in fact eventually choose to return to England many years later as an adult.)
James made his last will and testament in 1860 before dying two years later. The will in which he unusually appointed four executors left the bulk of his estate to his second youngest son Richard. This included the 100 acre home farm on Lot 21, Concession 2 and all personal estate, subject only to a few bequests to others. These included a relatively stingy five pounds to sons John and Anthony, ten pounds annually for life to daughters Jane and Rebecca, and two lots of fifty pounds, one lot each to be divided equally among each daughter's children. Rebecca (Potter) Dixon writes that many of the family considered the will unjust.
James Dixon seems to in many ways personify the quintessential pioneer. He was 46 years of age when he decided to pull up roots in England. He set out on the long passage for Canada with a large family, three of whom were ten years of age or under including a baby of one year. Although he had no known farming experience, he managed not only to acquire those skills and flourish but also to successfully overcome the many adversities that awaited all pioneers. Eventually prospering along with his family, he lived to the full age of 91 as had his mother. For this descendant, he remains to-day over two hundred years later an enduring symbol of 19th century pioneer determination and endurance.
David Arntfield
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