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22. Samuel CHAFFEY (Benjamin2, Richard1). 5 Born on 4 Feb 1793 in Somersetshire, Eng. Samuel died in Ottowa, Canada, on 26 Jul 1827; he was 34. Occupation: Mill, Lumbering, and a distillery. Religion: Baptized 4/3or 4/1793.
Samuel and brother Benjamin arrived in Brockville in 1817 and went into the mercantile trade. They set up a distillery and a mill. They were also soon into debt and brother Benjamin left for the U.S.A. Where he remained for a number of years. By 1820 Samuel had moved into farming and finishing the construction of a Milling Comples at what was to become Chavvey’s Mills about thirty miles north of Kingston on a small creek between Indian Lake and Mosquito Lake. At first most of his products must have been consumed locally as, for a good while there was no good transportation system to ship materials out. As a result of the distrust toward the Americans after the war of 1812 and the desire to build a water transportation route that bypassed the St. Lawrence River along the New York Border, the canadians decided to build the Rideau Canal. By 1828 work on the Rideay Canal was progressing with a lock to be build at Chaffey's Mills, destroying the Mills as no alternative route was found. Unfortunately, this area was seriously troubled with malaria at the time and the death toll was heavy among the Irish workers who were buried in unmarked graves. Samuel himself was one of the victims and died on July 26, 1827 leaving his widow, Mary Ann to continue with his affairs. This was complicated by the return of Benjamin who contested the ownership of the property. Through court decisions Mary Ann retained posession in a compromise with Benjamin.
Thery are extensive notes on Samuel at the Chaffey’S Lock and area Heritage Society and he has an entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
According to the records of the Chaffey's Lock and area Heritage Society Samuel's unmarked grave has been located next to his wife in the rural cemetery dedicated in 2002. Many unidentified Irish are also burried there. 17
When Samuel was 29 he married 25 Dec 1822 in , Brockville, Canada, Mary Ann POOLE, daughter of Simon Joseph POOLE (1767-1825) & ANN NIESS (1771-1855) She was born 12 November 1805 in Chillington, Somerset, England. and died 17 October 1888 in South Crosby, Leeds, Ontario, Canada, at the age of 82. 18
She was buried in Chaffey's Lock, formerly Chaffey's Mills, as Mary Ann Scott, her second husband's name after Samuel Chaffey's, death Mary Ann, according to Douglas Chavvey, married John SCOTT, a merchant, and bore him a daughter. SCOTT died in a drowning accident shortly there after. Mary Ann then became the housekeeper for her brother, John Niess POOLE, and lived with him ungil her death.
At the death of Samuel Chaffey, Mary Ann was left with an infant son and major problems. The first was that Chavvey's Mills was destroyed for the building of the Rideau Canal. Colonel John by, the leader of the Rideau Canal Project, had valued the property at 2000 Pouhds. Mary Ann felt that this was an extremely low estimate and informed Col. by as much. Eventually her settlement was for the aforesaid 2000 pounds. The second problem was a claim against the settlement by her brother-in-law, Benjamin CHAFFEY, who actually held the lease on the property though he had left for the United States and didn't seem to have any interest in the property until there was the possibility of a cash settlement. Mary Ann called in help from her sister Julyanna's husband, Benjamin TETT (see appendis D). He was a large land holder and powerful figure in Ontario. He and Benjamin Chaffey came to some settlement as Mary Ann stayed in the area with control of the land. The third problem was the unwanted Americans who were ther attempting to get work. Originally know as sloping brother Johnathans, they were pressing Mary Ann to give them jobs at a time when possible American aggression was feared by most Canadians. to this day those Americans are known as the slope shouldered yankees, a name Mary Ann was known to have called them. 17, 19They had one child:
66 i. SAMUEL BENJAMIN (1826-1893)"Samuel Chaffey was the fifth (?) son of a Somerset wool-stapler and woollens manufacturer. The economic slump in England which followed the Napoleonic Wars was probably a factor in the immigration of Samuel and his brother Benjamin to Upper Canada in 1816. They settled for a time at the Perth military settlement, but about 1817 located in Brockville (then called Elizabethtown) where they entered mercantile trade as B. and S.Chaffey, set up a small distillery, and rented (under Benjamin's name) the nearby farm and mills of Daniel Jones, Sr. While preparing these mills for operation, the Chaffeys were asked by settlers from the rear township of South Crosby to erect a mill there. The brothers agreed and in April 1820 Benjamin secured a lease to lot 17, concession 8, a clergy reserve lot with a suitable mill-seat. Construction began that summer under Samuel's direction.
The Chaffeys were in business in Brockville for about three years, dealing frequently with wholesalers and lumber merchants in Montreal and Quebec City. The firm soon was seriously indebted, principally to the estate of Daniel Jones. Benjamin fled to the United States in late 1820 to escape prosecution but Samuel remained behind to extricate their interests, in which effort he was not altogether successful. Creditors won judgments against him for £155, seven shilling and sixpence in 1822 and for £186 nine shillings and tuppence the following year; yet in 1827, the former partnership was still owed more than £1,060 on outstanding notes. Samuel nevertheless retained, in his brother's name, the interest in the mill-seat in South Crosby, where, by the time of Benjamin's flight, a sawmill had been partially erected.
About 1822 Samuel moved to the township, began farming, and pushed ahead with the construction of a large milling complex, which by 1827 contained the sawmill, a grist-mill, a distillery, and carding and fulling machinery. Although he had attempted with others in 1823 to have a road surveyed to Chaffey's Mills in South Crosby, there was no efficient system of roads or water-ways to serve this "barren and rocky country"and his products were probably consumed locally. Nevertheless, reports in 1829-30 of the annual income of the Chaffey enterprises by Mary Ann Chaffey (£205), Lieutenant-Colonel John By (£300), and the township assessor (£457) revealed an operation of moderate value. John MacTaggart, clerk of works on the Rideau Canal, estimated the total worth of this self-sufficient industrial hive to be at least £5,000.
In 1828 work had begun near Chaffey's Mills for a lock on the proposed Rideau Canal. The site was one of the unhealthiest on the entire water-way because of the prevalence of malaria, known also as swamp fever or ague (note: British troops who had formerly served in India brought this disease into Canada with them, infecting mosquitos). ---- Many survived such attacks, but Samuel Chaffey did not - he died of the fever on 26 July 1827. (Note from Neil Patterson, Chaffey's Locks: Samuel died at Edmunds Lock, while returning from a trip to Bytown where he was endeavouring to obtain a contract for canal construction. The Brockville Recorder and Advertiser lists his funeral under a heading of 'At Chaffey's Mills.' He was interred in the family burial ground at Chaffey's Mills.)
His widow and Benjamin Chaffey, who returned from the United States in 1828, contested the rights to the mill complex. Benjamin claimed ownership by virtue of the lease and his former partnership with Samuel, Mary Ann by possession and the claim that her husband had made the improvements. She was supported in her claim by two other immigrants from Somerset, John Rowswell, a neighboring settler (his daughter, another Mary Ann, had married Mary Ann Chaffey's brother, Samuel Poole), and Benjamin Tett, her future brother-in-law (and her first cousin). After much dispute, a compromise was announced in June, 1829 and Mary Ann and Benjamin Chaffey submitted a joint payment on the lease. Meanwhile the mill-site had been incorporated into the plans for the canal in order to simplify its layout, and to effect savings in construction costs. After negotiations with By similar to those he engaged in for other lands along the canal route, in October 1829 Mary Ann and Benjamin Chaffey assigned the lease and other lands in the township to By for £2,000. Over the next two years, the mills were dismantled and replaced by a lock-station, named for Samuel Chaffey, which soon formed the nucleus of the present-day community of Chaffey's Locks."
CHILDREN of Samuel CHAFFEY and Mary Ann POOLE:
+ 1. SAMUEL BENJAMIN b: 21 Apr 1826; Chaffey's Mills, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.
md: 14 Nov 1849; Newboro, Leeds, Ontario, Canada.
Mary Elizabeth KILBORN
d: 25 Jan 1893; Novar, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.
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