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ing in England, settled in pro-revolutionary times in the Americl1n Colonies, and having "learned from their wistful mothers to call Old England home," they could not follow their fellow colonists in rebellion against the Crown which they had been brought up to revere. On the establishment of the United States they abandoned their own personal interests and came to Canada, where they formed an aristocracy of elements so pure that it was almost ideal. It was founded on honest pride of race, family achievement, rectitude of life, and on high ideals of public service.

 

The Whitmore family originated in the English Midlands, but the ancestors of the subject of this sketch emigrated to what is now the State of New Jersey, long before the revolt of the thirteen colonies. In colonial days they were prominent in the public service, and one member of the family scaled the heights of Quebec with Wolfe, and on that long-gone historic day saw the flag of Britain displace the royal standard of France over a Canadian territory so vast that no man knew its uttermost confines. During the revolutionary wars the Whitmores, true to their loyal principles, refused to join the Continental army, as the forces of the rebellious colonies were called. When hostilities were over they remained quietly in the family homestead in the Mohawk Valley, giving offence to none. But a surge of animosity, engendered by the teaching of Thomas Jefferson and others of his school, against all the older forms of government, swept through the country. All those who were known to have been British in their sympathies were classed as Tories and subjected to persecution and outrage. At the close of hostilities bands of masterless men, who had fought as irregulars during the war, often joined with the Indians and, lurking in the forest, when occasion offered descended upon unprotected settlers leaving behind them a trail of murder and rapine. It was not unnatural that these miscreants should single out for their attacks those whose loyalty

 

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Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan

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