John Graves Simcoe

English military officer and administrator

• Born: February 25, 1752
• Birthplace: Cotterstock, Northamptonshire, England
• Died: October 26, 1806
• Place of death: Exeter, Devonshire, England

After military service in the American Revolution as commander of the Queen’s Rangers, Simcoe served as lieutenant governor of the new province of Upper Canada and was later the military commander of the west of England during the Napoleonic Wars.

Early Life

John Graves Simcoe was the third son of Captain John Simcoe of the Royal Navy and Katherine Stamford. The family lived at Cotterstock Hall until Simcoe’s father died at sea in 1759. His mother and her two boys moved to Exeter, near the residence of Captain Samuel Graves, a British naval officer and Simcoe’s godfather.

Simcoe studied at Exeter School and proceeded to Eton College in 1765. He disliked Eton and moved to Merton College, Oxford, in February, 1769. After only a few days he decided to take up legal studies at Lincoln’s Inn in London. These studies, however, did not suit him, and his mother procured him a commission as an ensign in the Thirty-fifth Foot (infantry) Regiment when he was eighteen.

Over the next four years Simcoe did garrison duty in England, Wales, and Dublin, Ireland. On March 12, 1774, he bought the commission of lieutenant, and a short time later his regiment shipped out for Boston, Massachusetts. He was still shipboard when the Battle of Bunker Hill took place but landed on June 19, two days after the battle was fought. He remained in Boston, buying a captaincy in the Fortieth Foot, until the British evacuated in March, 1766. The Fortieth played an active role in the New York campaign of the summer of 1776. Simcoe fought and was wounded at Brandywine Creek on September 11, returning to Philadelphia to convalesce.

Life’s Work

On October 15, 1776, Simcoe assumed, at the rank of captain, command of the irregular provincial regiment known as the Queen’s Rangers. He regrouped the unit following Brandywine, adding light cavalry and a Highlander company; he later recruited grenadiers, whose main job was to reconnoiter and skirmish, acting essentially as guerrilla troops who assisted the regulars. Simcoe was wounded in a skirmish near Philadelphia on June 27, 1777. The regiment was posted to Staten Island, New York, in July, and from this base it carried out actions in New York and New Jersey during the next two years. On May 2, 1779, the Queen’s Rangers was renamed the First American Regiment, one of three new provincial units, and Simcoe was given the field rank of lieutenant colonel.

In the early fall Simcoe was wounded and captured in a raid on Middlebrook, New Jersey, and held for exchange in Brunswick and Burlington. He was released on December 27 and returned promptly to his unit on Staten Island. That winter Simcoe tried to capture George Washington, commander of the rebel troops, but icy weather thwarted the effort. In April, 1780, the First American was sent to support the Siege of Charleston, South Carolina, but after the surrender on May 12 the regiment returned to Staten Island. After more patrols and an unsuccessful attack on Elizabethtown, Simcoe’s regiment fell under the command of General Benedict Arnold, who was softening up Virginia in advance of General Charles Cornwallis’s move north from the Carolinas.

Simcoe’s involvement in the American Revolution earned him a reputation as a daring and resourceful commander with a fertile imagination and a firm determination to accomplish the task at hand. However, old wounds and exhaustion caught up with him in Yorktown about the time the French and Americans did. Though Simcoe planned a breakout, Cornwallis insisted the British soldiers stay and surrender on October 19, 1781. Since Simcoe’s partisan regiment might fare badly at the colonists’ hands, he arranged to have many shipped out in a medical vessel. He returned to Devonshire via New York, arriving in early December.

Over the next decade Simcoe wooed Elizabeth Postuma Gwillim, a wealthy orphan, and the couple married on December 30, 1782. With her money they purchased and refurbished Wolford Lodge, where Elizabeth gave birth to eleven children. Simcoe played the part of the local landowner well and successfully ran for Parliament in 1789.

The fate of Canada became his greatest concern, for he feared that the newly created United States might seize Canada from the British, jeopardizing the thousands of colonial Loyalists who relocated there during and after the American Revolution. He also feared the large and powerful French contingent in Quebec that had not assimilated to British rule since 1763. In 1790, Simcoe was appointed lieutenant governor of the new province of Upper Canada, the peninsula bounded by Lakes Huron, Ontario, and Erie. He made extensive and detailed plans for his administration and, with Elizabeth and their two youngest children, sailed for Canada on September 15, 1791.

For the next five years the Simcoes moved between Newark (now Niagara), Kingston, and York (now Toronto), where Simcoe oversaw the development of the three towns and supervised land grants, road building, Indian affairs, the abolition of slavery in 1793, and provincial elections (first held in 1792). The Simcoes wrestled with primitive housing, horrible weather, American Indians, trappers, dissenters, and animals. They lost one child, but the population of the province nearly doubled during Simcoe’s tenure as lieutenant governor. Ill and homesick, the couple returned to England on October 13, 1796.

Simcoe was granted the rank of major general and, as a British military commander, was quickly posted to Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, in part to confront the revolution of Toussaint Louverture. He left England in January, 1797, but returned in August, disgusted with the lack of supplies and support and ill with the fevers of the tropics.

He resigned both the Santo Domingo and Canadian commissions after returning but in a few months became commander of the military in the west of England, including Devonshire and parts of Somerset. England reasonably feared an invasion by Napoleon I, the first consul of France, and Simcoe prepared for an active defense: arms and munitions, militia drilling, evacuation plans, and muster points. In March, 1801, Simcoe received full command of the southwest and now had to deal with food riots brought on by the effects of Napoleon’s Continental System and poor crops in England. He gained a respite during the yearlong peace with France in 1802 and 1803, but was, as usual, highly active in organizing and devising military plans. Otherwise his time was spent in inspections, field drills, and surveys. In 1805 he accepted a command post in India but fell ill from paint poisoning during a sea voyage to Portugal. He died in Exeter in October, 1806.

Significance

John Graves Simcoe was the type of individual who became indispensable to the growing British Empire. His boldness and acumen as both military commander and civil administrator made him the very model of the colonial officer. His exploits in the American Revolution never amounted to much, but his unit gained a reputation for dependability and fierceness that his commanding officers valued highly.

His greatest challenge and success were in organizing Upper Canada, where he truly was a pioneer in establishing the British presence. His wife, Elizabeth, did her best to bring some culture and grace to the rough frontier and largely succeeded in softening some of its rough edges. A disciple of abolitionist leader William Wilberforce, Simcoe was key in keeping slavery limited and setting a timetable for its oblivion in the province. His attitude toward the indigenous peoples was an enlightened one, and he established a positive relationship with them that long outlived his own administration.

Bibliography

Cruikshank, E. A., ed. The Correspondence of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe. 5 vols. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923-1931. Carefully crafted edition of Simcoe’s letters and other official materials from 1789 to 1796.

Fryer, Mary Beacock, and Christopher Dracott. John Graves Simcoe, 1752-1806: A Biography. Toronto, Ont.: Dundurn Press, 1998. Highly readable modern biography with material on Simcoe’s descendants and an updated bibliography.

Gellinor, John, ed. Simcoe’s Military Journal. Toronto, Ont.: Baxter, 1968. An edition of the journal Simcoe kept from 1777 to 1783, during his tour of duty in the Revolutionary War, and published for the first time in 1787.

Innis, Mary Quayle, ed. Mrs. Simcoe’s Diary. Toronto, Ont.: Macmillan, 1965. Modern edition of the diary kept by Elizabeth Gwillim Simcoe, John’s wife, during her stay in Upper Canada.

Scott, Duncan Campbell. John Graves Simcoe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1926. Prior to Fryer’s and Dracott’s works, this was the standard biography.

Van Steen, Marcus. Governor Simcoe and His Lady. Toronto, Ont.: Hodder and Stoughton, 1968. Biographical sketch that focuses on Simcoe’s relationship with his wife and family, especially during his governorship of Upper Canada.