A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography: Brief biographies of persons distinguished in the professional, military and political life, and the commerce and industry of Canada, in the twentieth century
History
A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography: Brief biographies of persons distinguished in the professional, military and political life, and the commerce and industry of Canada, in the twentieth century
Canada -- Biography
=Cole, Wilmot Howard, ex-M.L.A., Colonel= (Brockville, Ont.), was born
at Brockville, February 16, 1834. The patronymic Cole is of very ancient
Saxon origin: It appears in the “Domesday Book.” The public records show
that in the year 1640, Sir John Cole, of Shenley, in Hertfordshire,
England, was a landed proprietor. His son, Adam, married and had issue a
son, Cornelius. This Cornelius Cole emigrated to America in the year
1708; in 1711 he became a justice of Albany County comprised within the
limits of what was called “Livingston Manor.” His land was next to that
of W. T. Livingston, and extended from the Manor House road to Jansens’s
Kill, or creek, and was one of the finest farms in the Manor. He had
three sons, named Nicholas, John and Adam. On the breaking out of the
rebellion, Cornelius Cole and his sons, John and Adam, espoused the
cause of England, and the sons joined the Royalist forces. As the war
proceeded the feeling ran so high against the “Tories,” as the Royalists
were called, and Cornelius Cole, although an old man, was seized and
imprisoned, where he died a victim of fidelity to Motherland. His
property was confiscated, and his sons forced to seek a home in the
wilds of Canada. In 1773 John and Adam Cole with his wife and her two
brothers, Jonathan, Jr., and Abel Fulford, left with other United Empire
Loyalists for Canada, and passing up the St. Lawrence, they landed and
settled in the County of Leeds, in that part now called the Township of
Elizabethtown, at a point on the River St. Lawrence about five miles
west of the present town of Brockville, which place is still called
“Cole’s Ferry.” Here Adam Cole settled, being, as he was frequently
heard to say, the first person to begin a settlement in the Township of
Elizabethtown. Some years after the close of the war, Peter, a son of
John Cole, returned to his grandfather’s old home in Ulster County, to
ascertain whether he could recover some of the family estate, which had
been confiscated, but failed, as the authorities had granted the
property to other persons. Adam Cole’s wife was Thankful Fulford, also
descended from Loyalist stock. Her father, Jonathan Fulford, sen., with
the rest of his family came in 1784, and settled in the same
neighborhood, and left numerous descendants. Adam Cole’s family, in
1812, consisted of nine sons and seven daughters, besides four who died
in infancy. Five of the sons served in the War of 1812, the eldest,
Peter, having assisted in the capture of Ogdensburg, and subsequently
held the rank of captain. The house of Adam Cole was the general
headquarters of the military, when they were in that section of country,
or when moving between Montreal and Kingston. It is related of Peter
Cole, the eldest son, that in the year 1810, the mail carrier was taken
sick at his father’s house, and Peter took the mail to Kingston, where
he received that from Toronto and carried it back to Montreal. At
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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