Jarvis, William

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Robert J. Burns, “JARVIS, WILLIAM,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jarvis_william_5E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Office holder and militia officer; b. 11 Sept. 1756 in Stamford, Conn., fifth son of Samuel Jarvis and Martha Seymour; m. 12 Dec. 1785 Hannah Peters in London, England, and they had three sons and four daughters; d. 13 Aug. 1817 in York (Toronto), Upper Canada.
    • William Jarvis joined John Graves Simcoe’s Queen’s Rangers in 1777. He was wounded at the battle of Spencer’s Tavern in Virginia on 26 June 1781 and was commissioned cornet on 25 Dec. 1782. At the cessation of the American Revolutionary War he went on half pay and returned to Connecticut. There the hostility to the loyalists often resulted in violence, and on one occasion Jarvis was injured. In 1784 or 1785 he travelled to England where he secured Simcoe as a patron.
    • he was, however, rewarded with the more important, prestigious, and lucrative post of provincial secretary and registrar. In the summer of 1792 he arrived in Upper Canada as part of Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s entourage. Soon after he settled in the capital of Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake).
    • From its beginning Jarvis belonged to the province’s tiny governing circle, first at Newark and after 1798 at York. His career was marked by the internecine bickering which characterized this group as its members struggled to consolidate their positions and to secure places for their children. 
    • The social tension Jarvis endured within the civil administration can perhaps be understood from Mrs Jarvis’s comment that White and Chief Justice John Elmsley “think an American knows not how to speak.” Jarvis’s sometimes erratic behaviour may have been in part a response to the influence of his vituperative spouse, who once explained her husband’s stalled career by observing that Simcoe was surrounded by “a lot of Pimps, Sycophants and Lyars.” 
  • Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=4203
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60333728/william-jarvis