Buell, William

DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Ian MacPherson, “BUELL, WILLIAM (1751-1832),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/buell_william_1751_1832_6E.html
DCB profile notes:
- Miller, jp, and politician; b. 5 Oct. 1751 in Hebron (Marlborough), Conn., son of Timothy Buell and Mercy Peters; m. first 10 March 1782 Martha Naughton (Norton), and they had ten children; m. secondly 31 March 1827 Margaret Barnard, née Berkley, and they had one child; d. 8 Aug. 1832 in Brockville, Upper Canada.
- William Buell was a member of a moderately influential family which lived for several generations in Hebron. In the early 1770s Timothy Buell moved to Fort Ann on the Hudson River in New York.
- When the American revolution broke out, he initially refused to take sides and, when his family was persecuted for his neutrality, he went to Charlotte (Washington) County on Lake Ontario. William Buell, a cooper like his father, supported the British and moved to Montreal shortly after the start of the revolution. He held the rank of assistant quartermaster in Major-General John Burgoynes army when it surrendered at Saratoga (Schuylerville, N.Y.) on 17 Oct. 1777. Subsequently Buell joined Robert Rogers’s King’s Rangers, raised in 1779, as an ensign; he was later promoted lieutenant. During the war, he also served as a courier and was captured twice, although in both instances he escaped.
- Following the revolution, Buell was joined by the remainder of his family, then in New York, and located briefly at Lachine, Que. In 1784 he moved to Township No.8 (Elizabethtown) in western Quebec and claimed 505 acres on the bay shore where Brockville ultimately emerged. There he built the first house in the vicinity. Buell, in 1793, also added 1,200 acres of land, to which he was entitled for military service, in Oxford Township near present-day Kemptville. William Buell farmed the land in the Brockville area and during the 1790s opened a mill.
- He also became involved in a series of quarrels with the families of Justus Sherwood and Daniel Jones, both settled in the same area and both competing for economic and political influence.
- In 1823 Buell helped his son William to purchase the Brockville Recorder, a newspaper that became an important organ of reform in eastern Upper Canada, and a financial success for the family. During the 1820s he spent most of his time attending to his mill or working on a farm north of the village, owned by his son William. Rather remarkably he fathered his last child in 1828 when he was more than 75 years of age. He died from cholera during the epidemic of 1832.
Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=992
Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/116931991/william-buell