I think it was in 1802 that I first saw Colonel Talbot, a distinguished settler, who had a grant of land seventy miles further up the lake, at a place afterwards called Port Talbot, where he had commenced building mills.

People were full of conjecture as to the cause that could induce a young gentleman of his family (the Talbots of Malahide) and rank in the army to bury himself in Canada.

He and Sir Arthur Wellesley had been at the same time on the staff of the Duke of Buchingham, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and it was said the field of glory was equally open to both.

Colonel Talbot afterwards came to this country and was on the staff of General Simcoe when he made a tour through the Upper Province.  At that time he selected his future home.

Some said that he left the army in disgust at not getting an appointment that he felt himself entitled to; others, again, said that neither Mars nor Venus presided at his birth.  But one thing was certain: he had chosen a life of privation and toil, and right manfully he bore the lot he had chosen.

When in the army, he was looked upon as a dandy; but my first impression would place him in a very different light.

He had come to Port Ryerse with a boat-load of grain to be ground at my father’s mill. The men slept in the boat with an awning over it, and had a fire on shore.

In front of this fire, Colonel Talbot was mixing bread in a pail, to be baked in the ashes for the men.  I had never seen a man so employed, and it made a lasting impression on my childish memory.

My next recollection of him was his picking a wild goose which my father had shot, for my mother to dress for dinner.  Thus commenced an acquaintanceship which lasted until his death in 1853.

Continued... >

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