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Gilberts: Merchant John McGregor played important role in Upper Canada

We are here to talk about merchant John McGregor, who owned the mill at the Forks (Chatham)

There were at least two John McGregors who lived in and around the lower Thames River settlement in the early days. Capt. John McGregor was involved with the Loyal Kent Volunteers in the War of 1812.

We are here to talk about merchant John McGregor, who owned the mill at the Forks (Chatham) which was burned during the retreat up the Thames in October 1813.

Gilberts: Merchant John McGregor played important role in Upper Canada Back to video

Some of the details of his life come from the book by Leslie Palimaka. We learned a few things we didn’t know about John from this book, and we thank Palimaka for doing this.

Merchant John McGregor was born in Scotland in 1751 and arrived in Upper Canada in 1784. He originally was connected with his uncle Gregor McGregor, who had a trading post in Detroit. In 1796, when folks in Detroit were given a choice about either becoming American citizens or moving across the river where they were given lots in Sandwich, John moved to Russell Street in that town.

By the time he moved, he certainly had met his wife Martha, because his first son, Duncan, was born in 1795. Together, the couple had seven children who lived to adulthood, four boys and three girls. We don’t know for sure when and how John and Martha met, but if her birth year of 1779 is to be believed, she was 16 when she had her first son. John and Martha were not officially married until Aug. 7, 1815.

John McGregor purchased the mill Thomas Clark had built on the creek at the Forks (as Chatham unofficially was named). This mill was mentioned in the journal kept by Maj. Edward Baker Littlehales, Lord John Graves Simcoe’s secretary, when the group came down the Thames River on the way to Detroit in February 1793. He called it “a mill of curious construction.” It seems Clark was not really a builder and he wasn’t really a businessperson either because he had to sell the mill for financial reasons.

John McGregor was not a miller either, and he hired a miller to do the work. It is said the miller was Martha’s brother. The fact of the matter is, even though John and Martha McGregor are said to be pioneer settlers in Chatham, Martha probably never lived there and John came only from time to time.

He did own other land in present-day Chatham-Kent though. In 1796, when the British left Detroit, they had to compensate the Loyalists living there. So it was that John McGregor acquired 600 acres in Dover Township, some or all of which he rented to Capt. John McGregor. He also acquired a lot in Amherstburg and another in Walsingham, in Norfolk County; he later sold this lot to Capt. McGregor.

Merchant McGregor was a man of some means. He owned quite a bit of land, and he was also a trader. He served as Kent’s Member of Parliament from 1805 to 1816. And by the time the War of 1812 arrived he already was 61 years of age, so it is perhaps not surprising he didn’t join the militia.

Nonetheless, he was affected by the war. His mill at Chatham was burned in the retreat. His home in Sandwich was plundered by the Americans when they occupied the town in 1812. Later, his home there was destroyed. He himself, according to Leslie Palimaka, was taken prisoner by the Americans in 1814.

Before you start feeling sorry for John McGregor for all his war losses, Palimaka writes “his claims were awarded some of the highest vouchers in Upper Canada from the British government.”

Merchant McGregor died on Feb. 1, 1828 and is buried in the graveyard at St. John’s Anglican, in downtown Sandwich. Martha died 14 years later.

John and Martha McGregor played an important role in the early days of Upper Canada.

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