In May 1814 we had several days of heavy fog.  On the morning of the 13th, as the fog lifted, we saw seven or eight ships under the American flag anchored off Ryerse, with a number of small boats floating by the side of each ship.  As the fog cleared away they hoisted sail and dropped down three miles below us, opposite Port Dover.

Of course an invasion was anticipated. Colonel Talbot was then in Norfolk, and he ordered all the militia to assemble the next day at Brantford, a distance of thirty miles, which they did with great reluctance, as many of both officers and men thought that an effort should have been made to prevent the Americans landing; but no resistance was offered.

On the 14th, the Americans burnt the village and mills of Dover; on the 15th, as my mother and myself were sitting at breakfast, the dogs kept up a very unusual barking.  I went to the door to discover the cause; when I looked up, I saw the hill-side and fields, as far as the eye could reach, covered with American soldiers.

They had marched from Port Dover to Ryerse. Two men stepped from the ranks, selected some large chips, and came into the room where we were standing, and took coals from the hearth without speaking a word.

My mother knew instinctively what they were going to do. She went out and asked to see the commanding officer.  A gentleman rode up to her and said he was the person she asked for.  She entreated him to spare her property and said she was a widow with a young family.

He answered her civilly and respectfully, and expressed his regret that his orders were to burn, but that he would spare the house, which he did; and he said, as sort of justification of the burning, that the buildings were used as a barrack, and the mill furnished flour to British troops.

Very soon we saw columns of dark smoke arise from every building, and of what at early dawn had been a prosperous homestead, at noon there remained only smouldering ruins.

The following day Colonel Talbot and the militia under his command marched to Port Norfolk (commonly known as Turkey Point), six miles above Ryerse.  The Americans were then on their way to their own shores.

My father had been dead less than two years. Little remained of all his labours excepting the orchard and cultivated fields.

It would not be easy to describe my mother’s feelings as she looked at the desolation around her, and thought upon the past and present; but there was no longer a wish to return to New York.  My father’s grave was there.  And she looked to it as her resting place.

Not many years since a small church was built on a plot of ground which my father had reserved for that purpose; in the graveyard attached are buried two of the early settlers — my father and my mother.
  

Copyright 1994-2014 John Cardiff and Port Ryerse Environmental and Historical Society

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