After the Revolution, it took a minute for England and the United States to settle into a stable relationship. Officially, the end of the war was September 3, 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed, but some animosity continued. In my opinion, as much as everyone tries to pretend that we are all the best of friends today, I still feel contention between the two places.
Today, only Article 1 of the treaty is still in force: “Britain acknowledges the United States (New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) to be free, sovereign, and independent states, and that the British Crown and all heirs and successors relinquish claims to the Government, property, and territorial rights of the same, and every part thereof.”
In 1783, the new United States was essentially granted all land south of Canada, north of Florida (which the Spanish held onto), and east of the Mississippi. Both Great Britain and the United States were given the right of access to the Mississippi River in perpetuity. There was, however, a certain amount of vagueness and contradiction as to where some of the real boundaries were, which led to ongoing arguments.
Trading between the two countries resumed right away. The feeling in Britain was that whether they controlled the colonies or not, North America was still a very lucrative market and would be for the foreseeable future. In some ways, it was cheaper for them not to have to administrate them. In 1785, John Adams was received as the United States’ first envoy to the Court of St. James. It wasn’t until 1791, six years later, that George Hammond was sent to the US to represent Great Britain. During that gap, the Constitution was being written, argued about, and ultimately ratified.
The British, in their usual passive-aggressive way, drove the United States to distraction. They encouraged native tribes in the Northwest (which was then Ohio and Michigan) to revolt and supported them when they did. American sailors were kidnapped at sea and forced into service for the Crown. They still held a trade monopoly on goods from the east which meant that the Americans had to pay taxes to Britain on all trading they did in the area. These and many other issues escalated the tension.
New agreements and treaties attempted to diffuse this, and some worked for a short time, and some, not at all. While they worked, they allowed the new country to get on its feet, figure things out, and gain strength. Finally, America had had enough and in 1812, James Madison declared war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Congress was deeply divided over going to war. The British were willing to make concessions to help avoid it but notice of these didn’t arrive in Washington until a month after the fighting started. At that point, it was too late. The Royal Navy blockaded all maritime trade which completely hobbled the US economy. Battles were fought in different areas of the former colonies. In 1814, British troops burned the city of Washington including the White House and the Capitol.
On September 11, 1814, two British units, one on land and one on Lake Champlain, attacked the town of Plattsburgh, New York which sits on the shore of Lake Champlain. By the end of the day, however, their naval commander had been killed. Without control of the Lake, British troops could not be supplied, so their land commander retreated.
At the time of the battle, representatives from the two countries were already in Ghent, in the Netherlands, trying to hammer out a treaty.
On September 12, my 3rd great-grandfather, Thomas Van Buren, the grandson of the Revolutionary War major, Harman Van Buren, was drafted into service as a private. He was assigned to Captain Dodge’s unit under Colonel Prior. They were to defend Johnstown, NY which is to the south of Plattsburgh and just north of Albany from attack.
.The British loss in Plattsburgh coupled with a similar loss in Baltimore took away any leverage they might have had. The treaty was signed, and the war was over. Neither side really gained nor lost anything. Not much changed. On December 12, Thomas was discharged. For his three months of service, he was to be paid $26.
Three years later, Thomas and his brother, Harman, who was named after his grandfather, arrived in Gouverneur, New York. Thomas was 21 and Harman was 23. Three years after that, their seventeen-year-old brother Peter joined them. They settled on Johnstown Road, so called because many people had come up from the Johnstown area on the road looking for new places to live.
The 1834 census lists the three brothers and a fourth named Samuel. The family did well. Thomas became a farmer and married a woman named Betsy Ayres. Peter opened a hotel. Eventually, their parents moved up to Gouverneur to be near them and brought more of the family with them. Peter rose to be a prominent and visible member of the community.
A man named Milton Barney was born in 1808. His ancestors were all Welsh. When he was seven, his father drowned. At nine he was indentured to nearby farmers to earn his keep. When he got older, he became an apprentice at a chair factory in Watertown, NY. At 21, he moved to Gouverneur and opened his own furniture-making shop. He must have done well because a few years later he married Katherine Starr van Buren, the sister of Thomas, Peter, and their brothers.
When I found this out, I could suddenly see a possible path my great-great-grandfather, John McElhinny, Jr. might have taken to get to Brockville, ON.
John emigrated from Ireland in 1847 at the height of the Great Famine in Ireland. He came through what is now Ellis Island. He was 19 years old. My guess is that he made his way up to Gouverneur and got a job in Milton Barney’s factory. He must have done well because three years later, he married Harriet Van Buren, who was the daughter of Thomas Van Buren and the niece of Katherine Starr and Milton Barney.
John and Harriet moved to Brockville, Ontario where John opened his own horse-powered furniture factory. The Van Buren family stayed in Gouverneur where some of their descendants still live to this day. The local cemetery has an impressive section devoted to the family.
I suppose that John and Harriet could have gotten married against the family’s wishes and had to leave. To open his own business, however, would require some initial backing. It seems to me he must have gotten that from the Van Burens.
I wish I knew more about John’s parents, John McElhinny, Sr., and Frances McCrea. They were both born in County Tyrone, Ireland, and are both buried in Brockville. That’s all I really know. Something I read indicated that they had emigrated to Brockville in 1828 which seems unlikely. That would have been two decades before John Jr. came over and they would have been in their fifties. I have always assumed that they were a poor family, but maybe I am wrong.
John Jr., too, rose to prominence in his town. There’s a map of Brockville from 1874 on which his factory is clearly marked. It had already been there for some time, though, because there is a mention of a series of arches being put up along King Street to commemorate the 1860 visit of the Prince of Whales. One of those arches was set up on “John McElhinney’s corner.”
In 1864, John’s cabinet works supplied the new Victoria Hall with 350 chairs. The Brockville Museum has five of his chairs in its collection that one of the curators was kind enough to let me see. None of the chairs in the collection were from the hall, I don’t think, because according to a photograph, those each had a big VH on the back. The chairs are all similar in style. One is a rocker, but there are things that identify them as his. They all have four interior supports which are round. The seat is carved and shaped rather than flat. For the ones that haven’t been painted in later years, his mark is on the bottom. What I wouldn’t give to find one. I did scour through a local flea market while I was up there, but no luck.
At a town meeting in 1862, there was a discussion about what to do about orphaned children in town. A lame boy named Lansey had lost his mother and his father was neglecting him. A provision had been made to give him $1.25 a week but it was felt that this was becoming a burden on the townspeople. According to a report about the meeting, my great-great-grandfather asked, “…why the mayor had not advertised to indenture out the children kept by the town?”
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge. “Are there no prisons?” said the spirit turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
John McElhinny, Jr. was a man of his time. Dickens had published A Christmas Carol twenty years before when child labor was the norm. John must have started out as an apprentice somewhere, himself. Certainly, his wife’s uncle had. I can look at him with the eyes of a contemporary man and judge him harshly, but back in the day, this was likely viewed as a practical solution.
I couldn’t find any of the McElhinny gravestones in Brockville. They are meant to be buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery, but despite walking all through it, I couldn’t find any sign of them. It was only in the 1800s that it became common practice for the middle class to have stone markers carved. Before that burial grounds were often reused and sometimes even plowed over to grow crops. The McElhinnys passed away late enough that they should have had stones. I haven’t given up hope completely, there are still some offices that I can check with.
Brockville seems like a nice place to live. There are lots of restaurants and stores and the streets are full of people going about their days. It has its share of shuttered buildings, too. Gouverneur, on the other hand, is a bit bleaker. Most of the businesses are dark. There are few people out and about. A hotel still stands on the site of Peter Van Buren’s original one. Both towns have historical societies that are doing what they can to preserve the past. I’ve learned a lot from each of them.
It's all so fleeting. Our life spans are so short. We put great store in progress, and we keep moving forward burying the past in our wakes. Out of everything John McElhinny Jr. must have said over the course of his life, I have only found that one single second-hand report of a thought that he once had. Was he fed-up when he said it, or just musing out loud, or even making a joke? I am tempted to put far too much weight on that sentence simply because it’s the only one I have.
In a large history of Brockville book that I got at the museum, there’s an offhand line about John McElhinny, Jr. coming to Brockville in the 1840s from Kingston. That doesn’t line up with what I think I know about him at all.
Kingston, to the west, is where my great-grandfather William J. McElhinny would eventually go to Royal Military College. If that information is true, I would have to face the possibility that the 1847 John McElhinny I think emigrated during the potato famine is the wrong one who just happens to share the same birth year and birth town as my relative. If he and his parents indeed came over in 1828 then he would have been ten when he arrived. He still would still have needed to end up in Gouverneur to meet my great-great-grandmother, Harriet. In which case, I’d like to know, what brought them all to Kingston?
It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that is missing most of its pieces. I’m going to have to go to County Tyrone in Ireland to find out.
This is so fascinating, Richard! You should have been a sleuth!! You’re definitely showing how we simply can’t take anything as fact. Lots of thinking and connecting the dots needs to be done first. I hope Jo can give you another piece to this puzzle. Xx