Page:George Bryce (1907) Laura Secord A Study in Canadian Patriotism.djvu/14

 Equally worthy of note was the family of Laura Ingersoll, James Secord's wife. The Ingesoll family came as Puritans from England, and settled in Salem, Massachusetts. A family descendant, Thomas Ingersoll and his family journeyed to Canada about 1793 on the invitation of Governor Simcoe, who was in the habit of receiving new settlers as they crossed the Niagara river; "Aye! Aye! I will give you land, you are tired of the Federal government. You like not any longer to have so many kings.  Come along we love such good royalists as you are." True the Ingersolls had not been loyalists, but like tens of thousands of others they followed the loyalists to the new land. Ingersoll took on the Thames in Upper Canada—sixty-six thousand acres—undertaking to place a thousand settlers from New York upon it. On account, however, of the fear of encouraging so large an alien element, the Imperial government cancelled the agreement. Ingersoll was compelled to leave his great reserve and settled near Toronto. Already eighty or ninety families were on his grant, and the town of Ingersoll in Western Ontario commemorates him to this day. Laura was the eldest daughter of Thomas Ingersoll, and she was married to James Secord seemingly between 1795 and 1800, the date being uncertain.

The marriage contains the element of romance. James Secord was a determined loyalist. Thomas Ingersoll maintained that he had never been a loyalist. Feeling ran high on this subject in Canada. The loyalists rather despised the later settlers. To this fact may perhaps be traced the cancellation of Ingersoll's grant. But as in the case of the Montagues and Capulets in "Romeo and Juliet" it was shown that "Love laughs at locksmiths," and can beat down even what are stronger than stonewalls—the barriers of race, caste, politics, or creed. Accordingly being loyal to one another, to God, and truth, they made their truce an everlasting one. But how? Laura Secord became a loyalist—a greater loyalist and patriot than her husband ever was.

No brighter name shines forth in Canadian annals than that of the heroine of Queenston Heights and Beaver Dams—this young Canadian woman.

THEIR FAME

While it may be said that our Canadian literature has not done justice to our National life and our national heroes, yet the name of Laura Secord has received no inconsiderable attention from our Canadian writers. Mrs. S. A. Curzon has given us a drama and a ballad also, in which the story of the heroine of 1812 is graphically and imaginatively told. Mrs. L. A. Currie of