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From: "Sherry Kaseberg" <>
Subject: [SD&G] Letters from Rhodes C.M. Grant - Part One
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 10:49:24 -0800


Letters from Rhodes Grant of Martintown, Ontario to
Sherry Kaseberg of Wasco, OR from 1963 to 1968, excerpts, unverified except as Rhodes gives sources:
PART ONE:

"To make the picture clear, let me mention that Glengarry is the farthest east county of the Province of Ontario. Glengarry (named after the Parish of Glengarry in Invernesshire, Scotland) is divided into four townships: Charlottenburgh, Lancaster, Kenyon and Lochiel. Martintown is a village of 640 population in Charlottenburgh and is the center of a good farming district."

"The townships of Lancaster and Charlottenburgh and the southern townships of the counties of Stormont and Dundas were first settled by United Empire Loyalist families from New York State at the close of the American Revolution. The Highland Scotch settling in Glengarry and Stormont, and the Germans settling in Dundas. All the families that you mention are United Empire Loyalist families, originally from Johnstown, New York State. A few years after their arrival in this country a thin stream of settlers from Scotland, directly from Scotland, began arriving. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, Father Alexander MacDonell, who became the famous bishop (Red Alex) brought the whole regiment of the Glengarry Fencibles from Glengarry in Scotland. Most of them were MacDonalds and MacDonells; also Chisholms, MacPhails, MacPhees and many others. Later, up to say 1860, a stream of emigrants from the Highlands kept coming to settle in Kenyon and Lochiel townships. In the 186!
0s people began leaving Glengarry, Ontario to pioneer all over Canada and the USA, and even elsewhere. Charlie Grant, a cousin of my father, was postmaster in Singapore, Malaya, at one time. The drain of people leaving to settle elsewhere and the losses in the wars hit Glengarry and Martintown hard in so far as the Scottish people were concerned. More than half the population today is French Canadian."

"I do not know or remember any of the children of Archibald and Margaret (Grant) McCallum (my grandfather's sister), but Duncan (Dunk Archie) was brought up largely at my grandfather's (Angus Grant, Laird) and Angus was his uncle. My father was a boy then and often talked of him. During the Fenian Raids a large Fenian army camped at Malone, New York State. It was expected that they would raid across the frozen St. Lawrence River, so patrols kept moving on every road. One afternoon, Grandfather and all the family were down in the stable doing chores and Grandma sent my father, then ten years old, to the house to fetch something. He looked out of the kitchen window to see two armed men in civilian clothes riding into the yard. He concluded that they were Fenians as it was expected that they would try to infiltrate in disguise. So he took the old sword down from the wall and backed behind the kitchen door with the sword raised, ready to bring it down on the head of the first ma!
n. The door opened, but the man paused and said to the other, in Gaelic, "There doesn't seem to be anyone home." Father recognized Dunk Archie's voice and lowered the sword and stepped out. The two men laughed when they saw the small warrior but Grandfather gave them a good scolding for patrolling the road without having their uniforms on. They were, of course, soldiers in the Glengarry Regiment and were out on patrol. Dunk Archie (McCallum) afterwards worked for my mother's brothers: William, Richard and Alex Smith in Manitoba. My mother's father was John Rhodes Smith."

"Some of the descendants of Duncan Grant and his wife, Mary McMartin, live around Apple Hill and Maxville in Kenyon. John and Daniel McKay lived at Grant's Corners. John McMartin married Ellen Cameron, a sister of Isabella Cameron who was my great-grandmother and wife of Peter Grant, Laird. There were several families of McMartin. John Cameron was the father of Ellen and Isabella and I always heard that he was captured by the American soldiers and shot on his own doorstep at Johnstown in 1783-84. Ida McMartin was a descendant of Big Malcolm McMartin."
---to be continued.




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