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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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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