A Gentleman of Substance: The Life and Legacy of John Redpath (1796-1869)

Museum

Introduction

As we sit within our modern world, enjoying the benefits of our technological age, it’s very easy to consign the lives of previous generations to the dust of history. We forget that these were real people, living real lives and reacting to the realities of their world in the same way we have to react and relate to ours.

For the past twenty-five years, I have worked at the Redpath Sugar Museum, talking about the history of John Redpath, his family and the sugar company he established. As part of my tours, I stress that we cannot hope to understand who these people were and why they did what they did, unless we understand and accept that they lived in a world fundamentally different from our own. That what we take for granted and consider as normal, proper or politically correct in our daily choices was not necessarily defined by the same standard used by the people of the past. As a result, we cannot judge them according to our standards, nor impose our twenty-first century attitudes on individuals who lived centuries ago and still hope to make sense of the decisions they made.

John Redpath lived at a time when the foundations of our country and our national identity were being created and the forms of representative government we live by were still only concepts. He not only saw these things happen, in some cases he was involved in the decision making and even influenced their development. He worked on projects that stand today as a monument to the quality of his work and created a lasting and substantial legacy that goes well beyond a mere counting of his achievements. He was not one of the great men of history, who gained the status of filling pages in a history book. Instead, he was an ordinary man, but one with extraordinary vision and energy. He was a man who gained prominence and recognition during his lifetime, but did not seek fame or power. He was a man who lived his life the best way he knew how. He brought up and looked after his family, and worked with others to improve their society as best he could, according to his ethical, social and religious beliefs; and in so doing, he created part of the foundation of the Canada we live in today.

Richard Feltoe

Curator and Corporate Archivist

Redpath Sugar Museum

Legerwood Parish Church, Scotland, as it looks today.

CHAPTER ONE

From the Old World to the New

To the modern visitor, the quiet and peaceful village of Earlston, some 30 miles (50 km) south of the Scottish city of Edinburgh, would seem a pleasant place in which to be born, live and grow up. But, in 1796, although Earlston itself may have been tranquil, around it the world was being racked by huge unprecedented social, economic, and political changes.

Scotland was at war and, apart from short intervals of peace, had been so for as long as most people could remember. The oldest residents of the village could possibly recount seeing the passage of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the head of his army on its journey to a final defeat at Culloden in 1745. Less than fifteen years had passed since Great Britain had lost most of its colonies in the Americas with the creation of the so-called United States in 1783. More recently, political upheavals within Scotland’s old ally, France, had led to the execution of the French Royal Family in 1793, the aptly named Reign of Terror in 1794, and the wholesale use of Madame Guillotine by the Revolutionary leadership as an instrument to eliminate opposition and dissent. This government had also just appointed an up-and-coming general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte to head the army invading France’s neighbour Italy.

At home, threats and rumours of invasion by French revolutionary armies were rampant. In response, military recruiting parties beat up across Scotland, actively and successfully seeking likely recruits to join King George’s army as an alternative to starvation, the result of a disastrous harvest the year before.

Technology was also beginning to reshape lifestyles that had remained fundamentally unchanged for centuries. The cottage industry of spinning and weaving was being swept away by the introduction of large-scale machinery, such as Cartwright’s power loom and James Watt’s steam engine technology, prompting an anti-technology backlash from displaced and unemployed workers that became known as the Luddite movement. Coal-gas lighting had appeared in London, threatening the ancient trade of candlemaking. Throughout the country, canals were being cut across the countryside to improve transportation of goods to and from the growing number of factories that dotted the landscape. Simultaneously, in the wings, early experiments in the development of steam-driven railways were underway on the banks of the River Tyne, only 60 miles (100 km) south of Earlston.

Socially and politically, as well, things were changing. Huge numbers of the rural population were moved from the country to toil in … England’s dark satanic mills.…¹ thereby creating a true working class. Ruled by the daily factory whistle, their lives were marked by an increasing number of fatalities, the consequence of the crowded and unsanitary urban living conditions. On a more positive note, Upper Canada had officially limited the practice of slavery in 1793, the first part of the British Empire to do so. The Americans had published their Bill of Rights in 1791. And in England a vaccine for smallpox had been developed by Edward Jenner in 1795, thus heralding a possible antidote to a virulent killer of children. Meanwhile, the game of golf had become so popular across Scotland that the St. Andrews Golf Club had created a waiting list for new members, and in London, a Mr. John Etherington had recently been arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace, for wearing a new kind of headgear he called a Top Hat.

This was the world into which John Redpath was born, but of his own family roots far less is known with any certainty. Despite a comprehensive study of the original parish records for the village of Earlston, and all of the surrounding parishes for a radius of twenty miles, no official document can be found to corroborate either his birthplace or date of birth. However, as the formality of registration was not mandatory until 1830, and as many families could not afford the fees required or did not feel it necessary once the name of the eldest children had been entered, this omission is not an uncommon one. What has been deduced from the clues the records do show is that John was the son of Peter Redpath, a farm worker, who lived in the hamlet of Ledgerwood, a couple of miles outside of Earlston. Peter had married Helen Melross and together they had several children, including: Robert (1775, registered), James (1784, not registered) and Elspeth (1788, registered). Following Helen’s death in 1789, Peter remarried in 1791, this time to Elizabeth Pringle, from the neighbouring parish of Gordon. Peter and Elizabeth also had a number of children, including George (date not known), John (1796) and Ellen (1801), none of whom was officially registered.

Documentation for John’s earliest years is also lacking, but it appears that his parents died while he was still a youth. As a result, it is believed that John initially lived with his older half-sister Elspeth until he was apprenticed to Mr. George Drummond, a prominent stonemason and building contractor in Edinburgh. Living with the Drummond family, and under Mr. Drummond’s tutelage, John Redpath not only acquired the skills of a stonemason, but also developed the strong work ethic that would mark both his personal life and future career. By the age of nineteen, he had finished his apprenticeship and, in normal times, would have looked forward to a relatively secure career in the building trade. But, in 1815, the world changed when the wars that had ravaged Europe on and off for the whole of John’s life finally came to an end on the Belgian battlefield of Waterloo. On the surface, this would seem to be a cause for celebration. However, victory over the Emperor Napoleon came at a terrible price as tens of thousands of disbanded soldiers sought new employment, swamping the workforce, driving down wages and precipitating a catastrophic slump in the British economy.

To counteract growing social pressure and incidents of civil unrest, the British government initiated a programme designed to encourage emigration to British colonies abroad. In order to publicize the scheme, huge numbers of pamphlets and broadsides were published and distributed across the country, attempting to entice unemployed workers, just like John Redpath, to consider leaving their homeland. In one such document from that period, the plight of the people of Great Britain is clearly revealed:

Locations connected with John Redpath’s Scottish origins.

… After a war unusually protracted, which had desolated the fairest portions of the globe, which, in its progress, had been marked by the destruction of millions, and which had been productive of evils, the most terrible ever sustained by suffering humanity, the nations of the earth fondly contemplated the return of peace as an event which would, in some degree, compensate for the sacrifices which they had made, and the privations which they had so long and so patiently suffered.

Among those who had endured with unexampled fortitude the evils attendant on a state of warfare so protracted, were the British people … During the progress of the war … the commerce of England had covered the seas … London became the emporium of the globe, and the commercial monopoly of England was complete. The return of peace, therefore, by admitting the belligerent powers to a participation in the advantages of commerce … [as a result] the bankruptcy of our merchants and tradesmen occurred to the extent hitherto unknown. These failures involved the fate of thousands connected with the machine of trade and commerce; the rich became insolvent—many of the middling classes descended to poverty—the poor filled the workhouses—the local taxes pressed with intolerable weight upon those who were unable to pay, and the situation of many who were obliged to contribute to these was scarcely superior to the wretched inmates of the workhouse … ²

Having emphasized the problems at home, this paper then sought to present a vision of what awaited those with the courage to start a new life in the garden of North America…:

… The face of Lower Canada is remarkably bold and striking. The noble river St. Lawrence flows more than 400 miles, between high lands and lofty mountains, sometimes divided into large channels by large islands, and at other times intersected by clusters of small ones: numerous rapid streams rolling from the neighbouring mountains, breaking over steep precipices, and mingling their waters with the grand river; its bold and rugged shores, lofty eminencies, and sloping vallies, covered with the umbrageous foliage of immense forests, or interspersed with the cultivated settlements of the inhabitants, present altogether to the eye of the spectator, a succession of the most sublime and picturesque objects, that imagination can conceive .…

… The meadows of Canada, … are reckoned superior to those in the more southern parts of America. They possess a fine close turf, well covered at the roots with clover …

… The fish in the seas, gulphs, rivers, and lakes, of Canada, are innumerable; they consist, indeed of almost every species and variety at present known.… The two Canadas abound with almost every species and variety of trees, shrubs, and plants.… Such innumerable quantities of useful and beautiful plants, herbs, grapes, and flowers are also to be found in the forests, that where the botanist is presented with so rich a field for observation and study, it is to be regretted that so little is known concerning them .…

… The clearing of lands has of late been carried on to great advantage … for there is scarcely a tree in the forest but skill may be turned to some account … The trees of a resinous quantity supply pitch tar and turpentine. The maple furnishes sugar, and with the beech, ash, elm, etc. will also serve for the potash manufactory. Cedar is converted into glue for the roofs of houses, oak into ship timber, firs into deal planks and boards, and in short almost every kind of tree is brought into use for some purpose or other.… ³

Nor was the attraction of a potential full belly missed in praising the bounty of the New World for those used to going short in their daily diet in Britain. For example, some of the descriptions associated with food included a preservation technique that most of the people of Britain would never have experienced:

… The [French] Canadians, at the commencement of winter, kill the greatest part of their stock, which they carry to market in a frozen state. The inhabitants of the towns then supply themselves with a sufficient supply of poultry and vegetables till Spring, keeping them in garrets or cellars. As long as they remain frozen, they preserve their goodness, but they will not keep long after they have thawed.… Milk is brought to market in the winter time in large frozen cakes …⁴

Also new to the potential emigrant was the use of a novel form of sweetener:

…