Thomas Jackson UE (1767 - 1816)

Born 1767 in England [uncertain]

Ancestors

Died 19 Dec 1816 at about age 49 in Amherst Island, Lennox and Addington, Ontario, Canadá

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Biography

Thomas Jackson UE (1767-1816) joined Jessup's Loyal Rangers as a 15-year-old and served alongside his father. He later settled on Amherst Island, Prince Edward County, where he was found murdered at the age of 49.

Thomas' birthplace is thought to be England, as his father claims to have arrived in North America in 1770. Thomas' childhood was spent in Skenesborough, New York (today Whitehall, on the Vermont border) where his father James Jackson settled and farmed.

Thomas, his father James, and his uncle David appear on war muster rolls and UEL land records, in this case sharing lots:

• https://herkimer.nygenweb.net/loyalist/loyaljk.html

UELAC entry for Thomas:

• http://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Info/detail.php?letter=j&line=12

Timeline

1782-83: Thomas was a private in Capt. John Jones' Company of Col. Edward Jessup's Loyal Rangers. Recorded as age 15 on 1 Jan 1783:^[1]

• Gavin Watt, "Service History & Master Roll of Major Edward Jessup's Loyal Rangers," Global Heritage Press, Ottawa, 2017, p.158

1784: Thomas, James (father), and David (uncle) were all recorded as present in Cataraqui, near today's Kingston, Ontario.

1784: Thomas Jackson & James Jackson are listed among the "First Lot Owners" of Ernestown Township, from the Lennox & Addington County Museum & Archives.

1791: Land certificate issued by LBM on 9 Dec 1791 to Thomas Jackson for "Land 320" [?]^[2]

1797: Thomas Jackson "praying to have his military lands as a private completed. Recommended for 300 acres inclusive as a soldier.^[3]

1811: Ernestown, Concession VI, Lot 16, east part: Crown grant to Thomas Jackson, 1811, 150 acres being the east half, plus half of the west part. Thomas Jackson sold the 150 acres to William Fairfield and his wife.^[4][5]

Family

Thomas was witness at marriage of his sister Nancy/Anne Jackson to John Howard UE on 2 Oct 1788, and later at marriage of his sister-in-law Mary Howard to Colin McKenzie Jr. on 15 Apr 1794.^[6][7]

Both Thomas Jackson and his sister Anne Jackson Howard settled on Amherst Island.

Thomas' 4 known children were born in the first decade of 1800s:

• The well-known Reid book^[8] lists that Thomas Jackson of Ernestown & Leeds had 3 living children in 1834-36: Margaret (married Mr. Fairfield of Bath), Mark of Pittsburgh, and Vincent of Pittsburgh.

• A note in the Burleigh Family Files ("Jackson") indicates that Thomas' wife name was Hannah, and reveals an earlier daughter "Nancy" (named for her aunt) baptised (24 June 1806) and buried (31 Aug 1806) on Amherst Island. A 2nd daughter, Margaret, was baptised (15 Feb 1808) on Amherst Island.^[9]

Murdered on Amherst Island

Thomas Jackson was murdered on 19 December 1816 and found that evening in a field on Amherst Island.^[10] The Montreal Herald reported the murder on 4 Jan 1817 (see image), transcript as follows, with questionable information indicated by [?]:

• Shocking Murder. On Thursday morning, the 19th (December), Thomas Jackson of Amherst Island, in the Bay of Quinte, went into the field for the purpose of foddering his cattle. Not returning as soon as was expected, his family became uneasy. Search was made, and his body found about 9 o'clock in the evening, murdered in a most shocking manner, having received a severe cut across the right eye, which occasioned it to drop out, and two large cuts on back of the head, the whole apparently done with an axe. The Coroner's report was "willful murder by some person unknown." A young man by the name of McGinnis^[11] has been arrested on suspicion and was committed to prison in this city [?]^[12] on Thursday night last. We are told that Mr. Jackson was much esteemed by his neighbors, and has left a wife and one child [?]^[13] to lament his untimely end. His age was 49 years.

"Anne Jackson's brother, Thomas, lived at Emerald just below the bridge and was found one morning murdered in his field." Emerald is on the water, near the NW corner of the island.^[14]

In the early 1830s, it came to light (see image) that the murderer might have been Joseph Huffman, possibly the same Joseph Hoffman who lived in nearby Ernestown.^[15]

Thomas Jackson is mentioned in the Amherst Island Beacon of December 2001: "Brutally murdered with an axe ... He had been a wealthy landowner."^[16]

Notes from a 2015 talk given by Tom Sylvester in Napanee, Ontario, titled "Early Residents of Amherst Isle":^[17]

• "The axe-murder of Thomas Jackson in 1816 ... his significant estate was left to his daughter. The young heiress ... died at a suspiciously early age."

• "The early community of Amherst Isle was very different from the other Cataraqui settlements. The Crown planted the Loyalists in organized townships on the mainland in 1784. Water was the only form of transportation and the Bay of Quinte linked all of these Cataraqui settlements. The highly prized water-front frontier of Amherst Island must have tantalized potential settlers. The Island never was a Loyalist settlement. It was not designed and regulated by government, nor did it respect regimental boundaries. Consequently, no government sources exist for the settlement of Amherst Island. The Crown granted the entire Island to Sir John Johnson in 1788 and was not involved, nor interested, in any of the subsequent business. The absence of a recorded lot system, usually developed by Crown Survey, created considerable confusion in the County Land Registry Office. Further, 3/4 of the Island was occupied by tenants; their leases and names were never recorded in the Land Registry. Anyone researching the early community of the Island or simply tracing family roots has had to rely on composite or alternate, scarce, sources."

Sources

1. ↑ "Rolls of the Provincial (loyalist) Corps, Canadian Command, American Revolutionary Period" (compilers Mary Beacock Fryer & William A. Smy, 1981):
   • https://books.google.com.ua/books?id=w64dKXtyIQMC&dq
2. ↑ Burleigh, p.30
3. ↑ Alexander Fraser, Grants of Land in Upper Canada 1796-98, p.90:
   • https://static.torontopubliclibrary.ca/da/pdfs/hss-1947618_v20.pdf
4. ↑ Discrepancy: The notes say "W.J. Fairfield", but W.J. was born in 1800 and therefore too young to have a wife and be engaging in land transactions between 1811 and 1816, the year of Jackson's death. Therefore: The purchaser was possibly W.J.'s uncle William Fairfield (1770-1816), and W.J. most likely inherited the land after his uncle's death. By coincidence (or as evidence of family connections), W.J. married Jackson's daughter Margaret in August 1822. Records indicate that Fairfield in turn sold the lot to James Madden in 1829.
   • Source: The Lennox and Addington Historical Society, 2007, based on Ontario Land Registry Records
     • https://web.archive.org/web/20200208134305/http://www.lennoxandaddingtonhistoricalsociety.ca/ErnC6.html
5. ↑ It is likely that Thomas Jackson never lived on this specific piece of land (Ernestown, Concession VI), since he appears to have settled on Amherst Island in the early 1800s, where his parents were buried (ca.1808-1809) and where he was found murdered in 1816.
6. ↑ Anglican Parish Records of Rev. John Langhorn
7. ↑ Family connections: The groom's father, Sgt. Colin McKenzie Sr, had been the commanding officer of Thomas' father James Jackson UE during their time serving in Col. Jessup's Loyal Rangers.
8. ↑ William D. Reid, The Loyalists in Ontario: The Sons & Daughters of The American Loyalists of Upper Canada, Hunterdon House, Lambertville, New Jersey USA, 1973:
   • http://web.archive.org/web/20030515041003/http://qschooner.com/reid/d0001/g0000006.html#I2457
9. ↑ Herbert Clarence Burleigh, Jackson Family Files, p.28:
   • https://archive.org/details/hcbjackson/page/28/mode/2up
10. ↑ Amherst Island Beacon (newsletter), Issue 407, June 2012
11. ↑ Possibly referring to William McGinnis, who had married Thomas Jackson's niece several years earlier and lived on Amherst Island.
12. ↑ "This city" would logically mean the Belleville jail and not Montreal.
13. ↑ If there was just one child (presumably Margaret, the most famous, who later married William J. Fairfield), were Thomas' 2 supposed sons Mark and Vincent wrongly attributed to this family in the Reid book? ("Loyalists in Ontario")
14. ↑ "Captain John Howard UEL & Descendants",
    • http://www.uelac.org/Kingston-Branch/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/John_Howard_by_Henry_Roenke.pdf
15. ↑ Their family trees were connected several generations later, when George Walter Fanning (his great-grandmother Susannah Mabie was Joseph Hoffman's half-sister) married Georgianna George (her grandmother was Thomas' sister Catherine).
16. ↑ http://www.amherstisland.on.ca/Beacon/AIBDEC01.pdf
17. ↑ http://www.amherstisland.on.ca/Beacon/Beacon15-10Oct.pdf

• William D. Reid, The Loyalists in Ontario: The Sons & Daughters of The American Loyalists of Upper Canada, Hunterdon House, Lambertville, New Jersey USA, 1973.