In the year 1827, Ahyouwaighs was appointed by the Earl of Dalhousie to the
rank of Captain, and also in the superintendency of the Six Nations. In
1832 he was elected as a member of the Provincial Parliament for the County
of Haldimand, but his election was contested and eventually set aside, upon
the ground that many of the persons by whose votes he had been elected were
merely lessees of Indian lands; and not entitled, under the law, as it then
stood to exercise the franchise. Within a few months afterwards, and in the
same year, he was carried off by cholera, and was buried in the same
vault as his father. He was never married, and left no issue. His sister
Elizabeth was married to William Johnson Kerr, a grandson of that same Sir
William Johnson who had formerly been a patron of the great Thayendanegea.
She died at Wellington Square in April, 1834, leaving several children, all
of whom are since dead. By his third wife Brant had several other children,
whose descendants are still living in various parts of Ontario. His widow
died at the advanced age of seventy-eight years on the 24th of November,
1837, being the thirtieth anniversary of her husband's death.
The old house in which Joseph Brant died at Wellington Square, is still in
existence, though it has been so covered in by modern improvements that no
part of the original structure is outwardly visible. Mr. J. Simcoe Kerr, a
son of Brant's daughter Elizabeth, continued to reside at the old homestead
down to the time of his death in 1875. It has since been leased and
refitted for a summer hotel, and is now known as "Brant House." The room
in which the old chief was so unhappy as to slay his son is pointed out to
visitors, with stains--said to be the original blood stains--on the floor.
Among the historical objects in the immediate neighbourhood is a gnarled
old oak nearly six feet in diameter at the base, known as "The Old Council
Tree," from the fact that the chief and other dignataries of the Six
Nations were wont to hold conferences beneath its spreading branches. Close
by is a mound where lie the bodies of many of Brant's Indian contemporaries
buried, native fashion in a circle, with the feet converging to a centre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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