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This presentation is based on a talk by historian Larry Doble as he explores the origins and early settlement of Brock Township in this presentation to the Durham Region Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society.

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Right Handle and Markings

Right Markings

Right Tip

Left Whole Sword

Left with Handle and Markings

Left Markings

Left Tip

Jim Bagshaw did on-line research on the www.vikingsword.com website. Experts in the Ethnographic Arms & Armour forum identified the following characteristics of this sword:
It is a classic Dutch style naval boarding or “scheepshouwer” cutlass.

It has a clamshell hilt with an open guard.

Dutch East India Company Flag

The East India House by Reinier Vinkeles, 1768

VOC-Amsterdam

The sword was produced for The Dutch East India Company (De Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) as evidenced by their symbol. This company was established in 1602 with the aim of sending ships to Asia to buy pepper and spices. It later supplied weapons to various countries.

The A, represents the kamer of Amsterdam, one of the chambers in the VOC hierarchy representing key ports.

The 1787 stamping indicates the year of manufacture. It is interesting to note that the other side of the sword is stamped 787. According to the experts, the missing digit on one side is fairly

Dimensions

• blade length – 24.25”
• blade width at the ricasso – 3.15 cm
• overall length – 28.75 “
• curvature – 1.8 cm
• thickness of blade – .7 cm at ricasso (Guard)

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William Bagshaw was born on February 13, 1783 in Alstonefield, England. He entered the British Army in 1804, and eleven years later found himself standing in the ranks of the 33rd Regiment of Foot on the field at Waterloo as Napoleon’s last great gamble broke against the allied line. For that service, in 1819, the Crown entitled him to two hundred acres in Upper Canada, a standard form of compensation extended to veterans of the period.

The entitlement was formalized in a Crown Patent dated April 10, 1833, when Bagshaw, by then recorded as a Yeoman of the Township of Brock, received title to Lot Number Four in the Ninth Concession, County of York, Home District. The patent carried the usual Crown reservations of gold and silver mines, white pine timber, and survey roads, along with a handwritten clause requiring him to erect a dwelling and take up residence within three years. Bagshaw remained in Brock Township for the rest of his life, where he died on May 12, 1861.

The grant is to William Bagshaw of the Township of Brock in the County of York in the Home District, Yeoman (Yeoman means a farmer or landowner.) Containing Two Hundred Acres being Lot Number Four in the Ninth Concession of the said Township of Brock

Several standard Crown reservations appear:

• Gold and Silver mines reserved to the Crown
• White Pine trees reserved to the Crown
• Survey roads reserved
• Conditions regarding settlement

Settlement Conditions
One important handwritten section states that within three years the grantee must erect and build a good and sufficient dwelling house and become resident. These were normal settlement requirements.

Chronology :

• 1804 – William Bagshaw enters the British Army.
• 18 June 1815 – Fights at the Battle of Waterloo (33rd Regiment of Foot).
• 20 October 1819 – Receives entitlement to 200 acres in Upper Canada for military service.
• 10 Apr 1833 – Crown Patent signed.
• 21 Apr 1833 – Entered by the Auditor.
• 24 Apr 1833 – Recorded and indexed in the land records.
  Book 46, folio 575
• 1833 – Crown Patent issued for Lot 4, Concession 9, Brock Township.
• Later becomes established in Brock Township, where the family remains.

William Bagshaw
200 acres
Brock Township
Recorded April 24, 1833
Book 46, Folio 575

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For four generations, the most cherished possession of the Bagshaw family of Brock Township was a small six-barreled pistol, handed down, like the name William itself, from father to son. By family tradition it had ridden at Waterloo in the hand of a British cavalryman, fortunate to come away alive from the great contest against Napoleon. It is a splendid story, and almost certainly an impossible one. The pistol itself says so.

The man at the head of the line was William Bagshaw, born in Staffordshire, England, on February 13, 1783. In the spring of 1817 he left for Upper Canada and took up two hundred acres of bush in Brock Township, in what was then the County of Ontario. He prospered there in the manner of the useful pioneer: “Squire” Bagshaw, justice of the peace and the township’s first postmaster, a man who married couples, buried the dead, surveyed his neighbors’ farms, and settled their disputes.

His wife, Sarah (Bolton) Bagshaw, born in 1786, was left behind in England while William broke ground on the homestead, and for two years his letters failed to reach her. Believing herself a widow, she went into mourning, until at last a letter arrived to report that her husband was alive and landholding in Canada. On Easter Sunday, April 18, 1819, she boarded a sailing vessel with eight children. The crossing took eleven weeks and three days. A broken leg kept William from meeting them at York (now Toronto), so Sarah set out on foot with the children and walked some forty-five miles to Quaker Hill, near Uxbridge. Reunited at last, the family was raising the walls of its log shanty, on Lot 5 of Concession 9, on Christmas Day, 1819. From that one-windowed cabin, its chinks packed with lime mortar and its roof laid up of basswood troughs, came seventeen children and a homestead that descended through the generations: a hewn-log house in 1830, and a fine stone residence in 1890 that was still standing when this story was first set down.

The heirloom that anchors the family’s memory is a percussion pepperbox revolver, roughly ten inches in length, its six barrels turned from bright steel and its engraved frame dressed with silver. Each barrel was charged from the muzzle with powder, wad, and ball, and fired by a percussion cap seated at the breech, so that six shots stood ready without reloading. Stamped into the metal are the words that settle the question of its age: “J. R. Cooper’s Patent.”

That mark belongs to Joseph Rock Cooper, a Birmingham gunmaker active from the late 1830s into the 1860s, and remembered above all for his pepperbox pistols. The design the Bagshaw gun carries rests on Cooper’s English patents of 1840 and 1843. The pistol was therefore made in the early-to-middle 1840s, a full generation after Waterloo, which was fought in June of 1815.

Here the cherished tradition meets two facts it cannot survive. The first is mechanical: the percussion cap that fires this gun was a technology of the 1820s and after, unknown on the field at Waterloo, and the multi-barreled pepperbox was a creature of the 1830s and 1840s entirely. The second is the family’s own chronicle. William Bagshaw was settled in Brock Township by 1819, fully two decades before this pistol was so much as filed and engraved on a Birmingham bench. Whatever a Bagshaw may have carried against Napoleon, it was not this gun, for this gun did not yet exist.

How, then, did it come to a pioneer farmhouse in the Ontario bush? The honest answer is that no document yet located will say, but the likeliest paths are not hard to imagine. A pepperbox of the 1840s might have been sent out from England to relations already established in Canada; it might have been purchased outright in York or Whitby, where British goods moved freely; or it might have come west in the hands of a later Bagshaw and, in time, drifted backward through the family’s memory until it attached itself to the founding patriarch and his Waterloo. Heirlooms gather such legends the way a barrel gathers patina. The wonder is not that the story grew, but that the gun beneath it is the more interesting object once the legend is lifted away.

For what the Bagshaw pistol truly belongs to is one of the briefest and most colorful moments in the history of the handgun: the crowded heyday of the multi-barreled pepperbox, a compact and affordable repeater that put six shots at an ordinary person’s fingertips in the years just before Samuel Colt’s single-barreled revolver swept the whole type into obsolescence. It is a creditable piece of English gunmaking at its mid-century best, and almost certainly it reached the Bagshaws in Canada, the prized possession of a prospering settler family rather than a souvenir of a European battlefield.

The gun never saw Waterloo. It saw something rarer: the long, ordinary endurance of a family that crossed an ocean, walked to its own front door, and kept one small thing safe for a hundred years.

The family narrative follows a 1950 account of the Bagshaws of Sunderland and Brock Township, corroborated against Ontario genealogical records. The firearm’s date rests on the “J. R. Cooper’s Patent” marking and the documented dates of Joseph Rock Cooper’s English patents of 1840 and 1843.

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Explore artifacts connected to the Bagshaw family, among the first settlers of Brock Township. Housed at the Sunderland Museum, these items provide a window into the region’s early history.

The Bagshaw Collection

The Sunderland & District Historical Society has archived a wealth of artifacts that reflect the community’s rich history.

Here is a glimpse of some of the treasures that can be found in our museum.

The museum has an image of the Bagshaw family crest on display.

The name Bagshaw is of Anglo-Saxon origin and is a habitational surname, from a place in Derbyshire, England.

The placename is derived from the Olde English, pre 7th century personal name “Bacga” and the Olde English word “sceaga” meaning wood or copse; hence Bacga’s Wood.

The family crest consists of three roses encompassing a hunter’s horn. The crest depicts a portion of the arm holding a hunter’s horn.

William Bagshaw was one of Brock Township’s earliest settlers.

Having fought for Britain in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, as compensation, William was granted a parcel of land in Brock Township which had been surveyed in 1817. William selected a lot on the gth Concession and travelled alone to Canada to clear the land and establish a farm operation.

After her husband, William Bagshaw departed for Canada, his wife Sarah Bolton waited for nearly two years fearing that he may have perished. Finally, a letter arrived reporting that her husband was well and had established a farm in Brock Township.

Sarah left immediately for Canada. Her ocean crossing lasted 11 weeks. She was to meet William in York (Toronto) but a broken leg prevented him from leaving the farm.

She and her eight children then walked from York to Quaker Hill near Uxbridge where she remained an additional two months before joining William on the farm.

The original copy of William Bagshaw’s land grant certificate is on file at the museum.

William Bagshaw’s survival at the Battle of Waterloo was significant. He served with the First Regiment of Foot Guards depicted to the left. During the battle, this unit suffered 1035 casualties out of a total of 1997 soldiers and officers.

You will find William Bagshaw’s military sword from the Battle of Waterloo on display at the museum. This naval cutlass had a clam shell hilt. It was made in 1787 by the Dutch East India Company.

The museum has William Bagshaw’s Cooper Pepperbox Pistol in its archives. The gun fired six shots and the barrel rotated. It was muzzle loaded and made after 1830.

One of the treasures of our museum is the Bagshaw Clock built in 1824 in Plymouth, Connecticut. This is a 30 hour clock which was run by two descending weights. All the gears are made of wood.

While difficult to confirm, it has been said that William Bagshaw traded 100 acres of land for this mantle clock.

The clock has been restored to working order by Maurice Blanchard.

To learn more about the rich history of the Bagshaw family, plan a visit to the Bagshaw Cemetery. It is located on part of one of the Bagshaw farm properties on the south side of Concession 9 Brock Township, just east of the Brock Road.

Your visit may spark an interest in other members of the Bagshaw family who have had a significant on impact on their community.

As an example, Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw was a famous pioneer in the fight for women’s rights during the depression. Concerned about women being unable to support large families she became a leading advocate for birth control support.

Dr. Bagshaw started the first birth control clinic in Hamilton and lived to be 101 years old.

As with Dr. Bagshaw, you could then find that your local historical society houses material that may inform your newfound interest.

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COMMUNITY Sep 09, 2010 by Scott Howard Peterborough This Week

Sunderland and District Historical Society president Larry Doble shows off the
clock once owned by William Bagshaw, one of the early settlers of old Brock
Township. – Scott Howard

An artifact from Brock Township’s early days has returned home.
The Sunderland and District Historical Society has received the ‘Bagshaw Clock’
on loan from the Sharon Temple, a national historic site and museum in East
Gwillimbury.

“The clock has come home after 186 years,” said Larry Doble, president of the
historical society.

The clock was named after its previous owner, William Bagshaw, who was one of
the first settlers in old Brock Township — which covered from Concession 14
south to Concession 1, with Regional Road 23 and Simcoe Street serving as the
borders to the west and east, respectively.

Mr. Bagshaw set sail for Canada in 1817 and was eventually joined by his wife
and seven children.

They family settled on Concession 9, moving into their first home — made of
materials cut from their property — on Christmas Day, 1819.

In the following years, eight more children were welcomed to the family, including
daughter Rachel who was the first white girl born in the township.

Mr. Bagshaw would later become Brock Township’s first postmaster. ‘Green
Pastures of Old Brock,’ a book published by the historical society on the
township’s beginnings, said Mr. Bagshaw was “renowned for his wisdom and
good judgement.” He later became a Justice of the Peace, marrying and burying
area residents, surveying farms and settling disputes.

Shortly after the family arrived in Canada, Mr. Bagshaw had acquired another
farm in the Wilfrid area and began clearing trees.

Although his motivation still isn’t clear, he traded the 100-acre parcel for a mantle
clock.

While the clock was donated to the Sharon Temple many years ago, it has not
been on display for some time. It was loaned to the Sunderland and District
Historical Society at the request of Jim Bagshaw, a descendant of William
Bagshaw.

The original land patent for William Bagshaw’s initial property — complete with an
Ontario seal made of beeswax — will also be available for viewing.

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Sunderland Museum and Historical Society – 14 Church St N

This structure was built in 1972 as the Brock Township Public Library and was opened by Governor General Roland Michener on June 11, 1972. Margaret Doble was the librarian here from 1975 to 1991. Other members of the Library board were Dorothy Sugget, Norma Doble, Vera Wilkinson and Donald Wetherell.

The building was constructed through a provincial municipal Employment Incentive grant, the work of the Sunderland Lions Club and many volunteers.

After 2001, the Sunderland Public Library was moved to the Sunderland Public School on Albert Street, and this building was used as a museum by the Sunderland Historical Society.

This society began in 1989 and 2009 is the 20th anniversary. In 2002 they received a $25,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium foundation to modernize the building to allow for proper care of the artifacts and old documents. A new computer system and photocopying facilities helped members put much of the historic information on a retrievable database. The museum now has thousands of archived artifacts and a detailed historical genealogy on early pioneer families. The Society works with other researchers and museums in Durham and York regions and genealogists from all over the world through their website.

In 2003 this site became fully accessible with the addition of a wheelchair access, washroom and elevator.

The walking tours were made possible through a federal New Horizons for seniors grant in 2008.

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Saint Andrews United Church – 10 Church St N

Originally this was the Wesleyan Methodist Church. The congregation was formed about 1852. The Methodists at first had circuit ministers who would ride about the countryside holding services in local homes and barns. About 1873 the Methodists built a white brick church here for their Sunday services. The land was owned by Henry Breathor, and he sold it for $150. Before that, meetings were held from 1871 to 1873 in the old frame town hall next door. In 1907 a red brick church was designed by George E. Turner, and it was opened on February 23, 1908. A foul supper was held the next night, and pledges were taken to pay off the $12,500 cost of the new building. Within nine years the church was free of this debt.

In 1924 Methodists and Presbyterians joined to form the United Church of Canada. The Methodist Church was to be used as the place of worship and some of the furniture and the organ was moved from the Presbyterian Church on Albert street to this site. In 1928 the Presbyterian Church was sold to the King Edward Masonic Lodge Branch 464 Sunderland for $825. Recently the St. Andrews United Church celebrated its 100th anniversary and many changes have occurred since 1908. In 1946 the present pipe organ was installed and finally in 1951 the sheds for the horses and buggies were removed from the back of the church property. New stained-glass windows were added to the auditorium, and the heating system went from wood to coal and then to oil. In 1979, the Narthex and the sanctuary were both completely carpeted.

For increased accessibility a chairlift was added in 1980 and just last year a wheelchair access elevator was added, thanks to a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. This building is the site of many community activities and is used by the Lions Club for the music festival and the annual Christmas bazaar.

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Sunderland Town Hall – 120 River St

This town hall was constructed in 1906 on the site of a previous wooden frame town hall dating back to 1871. The architect and supervisor was George E. Turner. It is correctly named the Town of Berkshire Town Hall, Sunderland. It took two years for the hall to be constructed, and the final cost was about $6,000. The fire insurance map from 1910 shows that the hall was used as a farmer’s market downstairs and an opera house upstairs.

For decades now the building has been the social center of the town and township. It has been used for plays, musicals, fundraisers during the wars and for over 50 years it has been the site of performances in the Sunderland Music Festival. The new structure has served not only Sunderland but the surrounding township with its clerk’s office, council chamber, banquet hall, jail and small library.

During the Great Depression the jail cells were a place to stay overnight for jobless men passing through town. On the south wall of River Street is the impressive circular rose shaped stained glass window of Gothic design. Behind this window is a large second floor balcony with the original seats that were provided by Robert Charter, the local furniture dealer and undertaker. Those fold up seats still have a rack underneath to hold a gentleman’s hat.

At the southwest corner is the four-story bell tower where an iron bell once rung. The entire ceiling is made of tin metal plates impressed with detailed patterns. In 1991 a town hall restoration committee worked with Brock Township and the Sunderland Lions to bring the building up to fire code. They did major restorations to the washrooms and added an elevator. The windows are Romanesque with their round arches. Inside is a vaudevillian stage with an old-fashioned ticket room and a sloped concert floor.

In front of the town hall is the cenotaph built in 1922 to honour the men killed serving Canada in the armed forces in both World wars.

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