Below is a story about the Mabee and Teeple UEL families of southwestern Ontario. Peter Teeple was the son-in-law of Frederick Mabee and Lavinia Pelham. The author, W. B. Waterbury, is a descendant of the Teeple branch of the family. Frederick Mabee was the half-brother of my 4th great-grandfather Silas Mabee. You can find them in my Mabee Family Tree.
Loyalists came to Canada during the American Revolution for various reasons, not only because of allegiance to the British Crown. Members of the Teeple family have a horse to thank for winding up in Canada.
During the war, American soldiers stole young Peter Teeple’s horse. He was so angry that he headed north and joined the British forces. This, despite the fact that his brothers were fighting on the American side.
After the war ended, Capt. Teeple met the Frederick Mabee family in Saint John NB. There he married Lydia, one of the daughters, in 1785. The Mabees had left New York because they did not agree with the war against the British Crown. Life had been made intolerable for them in the new republic.
Here are excerpts from Mr. Waterbury’s story, originally published in 1899. You can enlarge the newspaper pages to read it in its entirety. It’s available online at the Elgin County Archives.
Next week I’ll highlight another part of it – the crossroads.
Mabee and Teeple Families | The Aylmer Express, Dec. 7 1933
Interesting Sketch of First Pioneers to Arrive in Norfolk, Oxford and Elgin Counties
- By W. B. Waterbury –
The following Sketch by W. B. Waterbury, was published in the Southern Counties Journal, St. Thomas, in 1899, a copy of which has been provided us by Mr. Wm. Secord, of Orwell… It is a real sketch of pioneer life of 150 years ago, and you will enjoy reading it.
Captain Peter Teeple was born near Trenton, New Jersey, July 14th, 1762. Bordentown is believed to be the locality. His parents were settlers from Holland in New Jersey and he was the youngest son of a well-to-do and fairly numerous family. He had at least three brothers – John, James and George – all of whom were in the Continental Army in the War of Independence which raged from 1776 to 1783. After the close of the war some of John’s descendants came to Norfolk and Elgin Counties, the late Lyman Teeple, barrister of St. Thomas, being of that line.
About the year 1779 Peter was still living at the old home [in New Jersey] and then in his 18th year. Being possessed of a very handsome horse, he kept it carefully hidden from view of the contending armies, rightly fearing it might be confiscated for war purposes. One day, however, whilst leading it to water, he was surprised by the Patriot cavalry and forced to give it up. He afterwards stated that, being at that time unable to speak English (his family, as mentioned before, being Hollanders), he was taken at a great disadvantage.
So handsome a horse…
The occurrence so angered the boy who prided himself on the possession of so handsome a horse that he immediately tied up a bundle of clothing and started on foot for New York, then occupied by the British, which he reached safely, and there joined the British cavalry. Having a good education and being naturally bright and intelligent, he soon acquired a fluent use of the English language, and being of tall and commanding presence and a good soldier, he rapidly rose to the rank of captain, and placed in command of a troop of cavalry of the body known as “The New Jersey Volunteers.”…
At the close of the war in 1783, Capt. Teeple’s cavalry troop was disbanded at Halifax, and, owing to his fine physique, being six feet four inches in height, he was offered great inducements to proceed with the British army to England and accept a commission in His Majesty’s Life Guards. He declined the offer and later expressed his misgivings as to the wisdom of his choice.
He then left Halifax, proceeding with a large number of other disbanded soldiers, and many refugees, to New Brunswick, where Loyalist settlements had been established at Saint John and other points.
Lydia Mabee
From being a captain of horse, he now became captain of a trading vessel plying between Saint John and New York. At Saint John he met and married, in 1785, Lydia Mabee, one of the five daughters of Frederick Mabee, a prominent Loyalist, whose father, Simon, a Hollander, and mother Marie Landrine, a French lady, had settled near Sing Sing in the State of New York.
Frederick Mabee was a United Empire Loyalist, whose home had at the the British evacuation of New York, been confiscated, and himself and family subjected to indignity by many of his former neighbors because he declined to swear allegiance to the New Republic, holding as he no doubt conscientiously did, that the grievances of the colonists should be settled by constitutional means rather than by the sword.
The Long Point country in Upper Canada
Having heard of the wonderful fertility and natural advantage of the Long Point (or as it was first called, the Turkey Point) country in Upper Canada from his cousin, Peter Secord, a U.E. Loyalist who had accompanied him to Saint John from New York, and who, being an old hunter, had already penetrated the wilds of Upper Canada with one George Ramsay, an Englishman, on a hunting and exploring trip, he resolved to form a small colonization party to open a permanent party at Turkey Point.
Gathering many of his relatives together, including his son-in-law, Capt. Teeple, the “Mabee Party,” as they were afterwards called, set out in the fall of 1792, but they wintered at Quebec and did not reach Turkey Point until some time in 1793. They brought some household goods, drove several cows, rode horses and employed an Indian guide to pilot the way through the wilderness. The men drove the animals along the shore, the women came in boats, going ashore at night to camp. During the journey through the wilds they sustained themselves largely on cornmeal and milk from the cows.
The party consisted of Frederick Mabee and wife Lavinia (nee Pelham or Pellum); Oliver Mabee, their eldest son, aged about 19; Simon, the second son, aged 17; Pellum, the youngest son, aged about 5; three single daughters, Polly, Betsy and Sally, and two married daughters, Nancy, with her husband, John Stone and Lydia, with her husband, Capt. Peter Teeple. and their four children. His cousin, Peter Secord and Thomas Welch, also came with the Mabee party.
Settlement at Turkey Point
Frederick Mabee at once erected the first log cabin ever built at the new settlement, at the foot of the hill overlooking Turkey Point. Their corn was pounded in the stump of a walnut tree, the beetle being attached to a “sweep” like the “Old Oaken Bucket.”
One year after the arrival of the party he [Frederick] died of apoplexy, and was buried in a hollowed-out walnut log coffin. He was the first white man buried in the new settlement, and a large boulder marks his tomb near Turkey Point. His widow subsequently married Lieut. Wm. B. Hilton, a New York Loyalist of the “King’s American Dragoons,” but he died three years after the marriage….
Polly and Sally Mabee, two daughters who came to Turkey Point single, married respectively Capt. David Secord, of “Butler’s Rangers.” and Silas Montross, both U. E. Loyalists. The former was a miller at Niagara, but later settled on Catfish Creek, west of Orwell; the latter lived at Turkey Point. The Mabee, Teeple, Secord, Montross and Stone families became prominent factors in the early days of settlement, but now their descendants are very widely scattered…
I had heard the story of the Mabee family cross-country trek before I read it here. It astonished me. So many people and animals to wrangle through who knows what! Bravery or lunacy? The artist Charles W Jefferys depicted such journeys in a series that included Loyalists Camping on the St. Lawrence 1784, shown above. He wondered about it too:
They have left scanty records of their feelings and experiences but from a few old letters and diaries we can see that for the most part they faced their difficulties with cheerful courage. Rarely do we catch a word that gives us a realization of the first heart-breaking years of their exile, such, for instance, as fell from the lips of the grandmother of Sir Leonard Tilley – “Such a feeling of loneliness came over me that, though I had not shed a tear through all the war, I sat down on the damp moss with my baby in my lap and cried.”
