The Carp Review April 15 1920

Aged March Resident Dead

An aged and highly resident of the township of March passed away last Friday

in the person of Mrs. Joseph Davis, aged 77 years. Deceased who had spent

the winter with her daughter, Mrs. Edmund Reid, had been in poor health for

some months. She was born in March township and had lived there her entire

lifetime, her maiden name being Fanny Gleeson. Her husband died in 1892 but

she is survived by two sons and two daughters, namely Benjamin and Elliott

of March and Mrs Reid and Miss Annie, also of March.

The funeral to St. John's Church and cemetery, South March on Sunday was

largely attended. Rev. Mr Fairbairn conducted the services and preached a

comforting sermon. The pallbearers were Smith Davis and Harry Reid, two

grandsons, and H Richardson, John Wilson, Walter Younghusband and Harold

Reid.

From the Hamnet Pinhey Foundation:

It is unfortunate that Pinhey referred to many of his employees only by Christian name or nickname. 

Sometimes it is possible to discover who is meant (for example, Joe Sligo's account is referred 

onward to that of Joseph Davis, who was a native of Co. Sligo, Ireland), but more often their identities

remain a mystery. Unidentified people are listed at the beginning of the index.

Davis Joseph (see also Sligo) B50,60,71,75

Sligo Joseph B41; see also Davis

Looking back : pioneers of Bytown and March, Nicholas ... . Heydon, Naomi Slater, 1909-

Showing 1 - 4 of 4 Results for Davis

• p.159 - 5 matching terms

• p.130 - 1 matching term

• p.431 - 1 matching term

• p.533 - 1 matching term

March was unsurveyed when its first inhabitants took up lands along
the river bank. General Lloyd and Captains Monk, Edwards. Street, ■
Weatherly, Lieut. Reed, fthe Admiral) and his brother James, with Dr.
Christie, Daniel Beatty and others covered the front of the township on
the south shore of the river from the line of Torbolton to the line of
Nepean about 1818. The ist concessions of March and Huntley begin
on the town line between them. A post was planted in the centre of ''
lh3 line and one at each side; thirty-three feet from the central post |
to each side post. Every fiive double lots, fifteen furlongs, a road allowance
was laid out as wide as a concession and at right angles with it. Settlers
came to the front of March about the time the others occupied the river
bank. Frederick Richardson, Thomas Apres, Thomas Wiggans, George
Clarke, Thomas Morgan, James Armstrong, Samuel Milford, A. Harper,
Cassidy, Scarf, Sparrpw, Wilson, Christy, Jamieson, Draper, McMurtroy, V ,
John Armstrong, Killeen, Gardiner, Burkes, Bouchers, Walls, Edge, and
settled along the south of March. John Sparrow purchased from
Cassidy. My father bought but Harpeif and Milford in March and
Roberts and Hyde in Huntley. Anthony Summerville, Jacob and John
Graham, Hugh McCaughan, Wm. Nesbitt,' Capt. Logan, Robert Duncan
and Joseph Davis filled in along the 2nd and 3rd concessions.

Captain John Benning Monk HM 97th Regiment - one of Joseph Davis' neighbors.

June 14

Brig Ann

Wilford

53 days

Cork

Colonel Lloyd and Lady, Captain Monk, Lieutenant Garet and family, [?]land, and three in steerage

to [?] / general cargo

Colonel (later General) Arthur LLOYD, born in Limerick Ireland about 1775, was one of the original half-pay British officers
who settled in March Township. He married Ann(e) Dering MONK  (sister of Captain John Bening MONK, another very prominent officer settler)
in Halifax, N.S. in March 1811. The Lloyds and the Monks arrived together in 1819 (somewhere in my notes I have the exact date!)and settled
on the Ottawa riverfront. The Lloyds built 'Bessborough' (see p. 258/259 Carleton Saga for story/picture) and 'Beechmount' (see p. 247/248).


Arthur Lloyd and his wife had no children of their own but they did 'adopt', raise and educate (in Ireland) James Campbell USHER, b. Boston 1808.
His parents were actors who acted with/were friends of Edgar Allan Poe's parents.  Thus the story "The House of Usher"!!  
Both his parents died in 1814 and 'somehow' JCU became a member of the Lloyd family. Lloyd had hoped that Usher would join the British army to
follow in his footsteps and become his heir but JCU eventually convinced him that he wanted to become an Anglican minister, ordained c1833.

C.P. Champion: How the Crimean War of 1853 helped shaped the Canada of today

Republish Reprint

C.P. Champion, National Post | October 28, 2014 6:24 AM ET

More from National Post

Jon Murray/ProvinceCanada's Victoria Cross medals still contains bronze smelted down from Russian cannons captured during the Siege of Sevastopol in 1855.

A resurgent Russia’s annexation of the Crimea last spring should call to mind, among other things, a major turning point in Canada’s military history. It was the Crimean War of 1853-56, and the resulting realignment of British forces in North America, that forced the Province of Canada to establish, or perhaps it is more accurate to say “reorganize,” its own military forces. Nor did the impact on Canada stop there. The war in Crimea was far away, but was felt at home in North America … and its impact still can be felt in many subtle ways today.

As Britain and France dispatched troops and arms in aid of Ottoman Turkey in its war with the Russians, Canadians soon began to experience their first brushes with the far-off fighting. The war engaged the interest of the entire British Empire. It was the world’s first “media war,” with extensive reporting on the battles, and therefore quite interesting to follow in the newspapers. Thousands of Canadians did exactly that.

Canadians felt a more direct impact when the British withdrew over 4,000 troops from the Province of Canada, leaving only 1,887 by 1855. In the Maritimes, 1,300 troops were pulled out, leaving a garrison of 1,397. To fill this comparative void in its defence preparedness, Canada in 1855 created a commission “for the purpose of investigating the state of the Militia of Canada” and “of re-organizing the said Militia.”

Canada had been effectively self-governing in its internal affairs since 1841. Thus in 1855 the Assembly in voted to establish 18 military districts of “Active Militia” — paid soldiers with uniforms — and, as George Stanley wrote in his book, Canada’s Soldiers, “from 1855 we may date the beginning of the volunteer system” that was fundamental to Canadian defence policy until 1917.

The Act allowed for a maximum of 5,000 soldiers. But Canadian enthusiasm for the Crimean War ran so high, and so many Canadians put themselves forward for service, that in 1856 the Province amended the Militia Act to enable unpaid volunteers to form units too.

Canada’s army was not the only beneficiary of the war’s effects. It was in response to the high casualties from the Siege of Petropavlovsk (in the Pacific theatre of Kamchatka in 1854) that the Royal Navy enlarged its presence in Esquimalt, B.C. They created the Esquimalt Royal Navy Dockyard, now officially Her Majesty’s Canadian (HMC) Dockyard Esquimalt, the home of our Pacific Fleet. Britain also added new hospital buildings to treat wounded soldiers evacuated to Vancouver Island.

The Crimean War was an economic boon to Canadians as it drove up the price of wheat. The British banned the import of Russian wheat and bought Canadian wheat at a higher price. “It was the time of the [Crimean] war,” wrote Elizabeth Norrish of Nassagaweya Township, west of Toronto. “Wheat went up in price. … This enabled us to pay all expenses, buy a good span of horses, harness, sleigh and a good many other things.” With the Baltic timber trade blocked by the Royal Navy during the war, Canadian timber exports and Maritime shipbuilding also got a boost. These added to the prosperity brought about by reciprocity (free trade) with the United States, negotiated by Canada’s governor-general, Lord Elgin, in 1849, and a contemporaneous boom in railway building.

In general, Canadians and Maritimers shared in the wider Imperial enthusiasm for the war. Their war was our war, as Sir Allan Napier MacNab, an 1812 veteran, implied when he moved in the Assembly in 1854 that in view of “a series of brilliant victories gained by the combined fleets and armies of England and France,” the Assembly should “testify its high gratification” by adjourning for the day. Members were thus liberated to celebrate accordingly. The war effort even “mustered some limited financial support among French-Canadian elites, anxious to convey ‘the sympathies that our former colony conserves still towards France,’” wrote historian Phillip Buckner.

As for Maritime sentiment, Sir Samuel Cunard, the Halifax-born shipping magnate, put his considerable fleet at the disposal of the war effort. Eleven of Cunard’s ships served as troop transports and delivered horses and supplies, while two served as hospital ships.

No Canadian military units participated in the fighting. But Canadian volunteers served in British units. According to Toronto of Old, a collection of early history by Henry Scadding published in 1873, Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Wells, the son of an English settler at Davenport, “was highly distinguished in the Crimea” and “on revisiting Toronto after the peace with Russia, was publicly presented with a sword of honour.” Augustus P.M. Corbett, born in Kingston, attended the St. Lawrence School of Medicine in Montreal, graduated from McGill in 1854, and promptly volunteered for the Army Medical Department in which he “saw much service” in the Crimea, according to theCanadian Medical Record.

Canada’s best-known volunteer was Lieutenant Alexander Roberts Dunn, born in York (Toronto) in 1833 and educated at Upper Canada College, who served in the 11th Hussars. He received the first Victoria Cross awarded to a Canadian for his part in the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854. He was cited for having saved the life of a wounded straggler, Sergeant Robert Bentley, during the harrowing retreat — as the official citations says, “by cutting down two or three Russian Lancers who were attacking [Bentley] from the rear, and afterwards cutting down a Russian Hussar, who was attacking Private Levett.” The charge of the Light Brigade was a fiasco. “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre,” said General Bosquet. But rescuing wounded men in the scramble of a frantic retreat made Lt. Dunn the only officer honoured that day with a VC. Today, Canada’s own Victoria Cross, established in 1993 and unveiled by governor-general Michaëlle Jean in 2008, includes metal from three sources: an original Confederation medal, ore from each region of Canada, and bronze from the original Russian cannons captured in the Siege of Sebastopol in 1855.

Among the settlers who built the nascent Dominion in the 19th century, a lengthy roster of Crimean War veterans could be compiled. James Baker, who played a major role in the development of the B.C. interior in the 1880s, was a veteran. Born in England, he retired from the British Army and settled in Skookumchuck and later Cranbrook, served in the B.C. Legislature, and helped extend the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Crowsnest Pass.

Major A.F. Welsford and Captain W.B.C.A. Parker of Halifax were killed in the battle of the Great Redan, part of the Siege of Sebastopol in 1855. A monument to them in Halifax, inscribed “SEBASTOPOL,” was built in 1860 and restored in 1989. It is described as the only Crimean War monument in North America, and this is true if one is referring only to stone monuments. Numerous other monuments include the names of towns in Ontario such as Inkerman, an allied victory in 1854 prior to the Siege of Sebastopol; and Kars, where the Russians in 1855 besieged the British garrison under the command of Gen. Sir William Fenwick Williams, born in Nova Scotia. Many cites and towns in Canada are named or have streets named Varna, Odessa, Kertch, Alma, Sebastopol, Balaclava, etc. Numerous places are named after the commander, Lord Raglan, who died at Sebastopol. B.C. even boasts a Balaklava Island off the north coast of Vancouver Island. Florenceville, New Brunswick is named after Florence Nightingale, whose legendary battlefield nursing inspired the Canadian nursing sisters who travelled with Gen. Middleton’s expeditionary force in the Canadian North West in 1885.

A significant number of Crimean War veterans settled on land grants in such disparate places as Cornwall, Ont., and New Westminster, B.C. Roderick Campbell received a land grant near Berwick, northwest of Cornwall. Corporal Peter John Leech worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company, became a city engineer in Victoria, discovered gold at Leechtown, and settled in New Westminster. Sapper Henry Bruce, a Crimean War veteran, had a photographic business in London, England, but settled in B.C. in 1870 as a carpenter.

Canada’s military forces played no direct role in Crimea in the 1850s. But it is a fact that the Militia Act of 1855 — establishing the voluntary “Active Militia” that is the direct ancestor of the present-day Canadian Army — came about, as historian John Castell Hopkins put it, “as a result of the feeling aroused by the Crimean War.” Many of the other changes in Canada were not quite so dramatic. But they still helped shape the country we call home today.

National Post  http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/28/c-p-champion-how-the-crimean-war-of-1853-helped-shaped-the-canada-of-today/

C.P. Champion, a former policy advisor, is the author of The Strange Demise of British Canada, has taught at the University of Ottawa, and edits The Dorchester Review. A version of this article appeared in Esprit de Corps military magazine.