First
Published September 5, 2015
Last Revised March 7, 2021
Copyright by
Fred Blair
How to
Find War of 1812 Related Documents for Your Ancestors
Part 5: Militia Land Grants
This is
a series of blogs on how to find Upper Canadian documents from about the time
of the War of 1812, but some of these strategies could be applied to other
British provinces. This discussion will
focus on documents from before, during, and after the war.
Some militia men and volunteers were
entitled to a land grant by the terms of their enlistment in selected military groups
in Upper Canada. If your ancestor served
in one of these selected groups you can learn specific details about them from
their land grants.
The
Land Book Register of Grants to Militia Veterans of the War of 1812 is at
the
Ontario
Archives in Toronto on Microfilm 693, Reel 140, Volume 132. My index to this register, with some
transcriptions, is now online at
http://images.ourontario.ca/TrafalgarTownship/3327485/data?grd=7032
Additional transcripts are available from me upon request.
The register itself is
online at
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS54-4SF6-Q?i=288&cat=283269
The early pages 1 to 288 of this
register record land grants to British military pensioners.
The 4781 grants were in order by their
new registration number and were not alphabetical. The grants were issued from March 10, 1820 to
1850. There were 14 columns in the
initial pages of the land register. The
first column was the new register number and the second column was the old
register number. The next ten columns
included name, occupation, place of residence, militia service, acreage
received, lot number, concession number, township, and date. The last three columns included reference
numbers, dates, and comments.
Men who served in the militia flank
companies in 1812, provincial regiments, and various corps were entitled to a
land grant for their service. The flank
companies were dissolved in 1813 and the Incorporated Militia was formed that
year. Members of the flank companies
were encouraged to join this new militia which served in 1813 and 1814. Privates in both groups were entitled to a
100 acre grant by the terms of their enlistment. Additional acres were granted to men of
higher rank. Some men had served in two
or more regiments during the war but could only make one militia land
claim. Other war veterans could present
claims for land as residents of Upper Canada but not for a militia land grant. The grant recipients did not always settle on
their assigned land and a number of men soon sold these locations. Most men were already well settled and the
grants were usually too far away from their homes to be of use to them. By the end of the grant period most men
received scrip in lieu of land and a number of claims were made by their heirs,
as some of the men were by that time deceased.
There were often additional details
in the register, including other dates with document numbers, but I have not
been able to ascertain what events occurred on the later dates. This may require comparing the reference
numbers to the land records. Quite often
there were additional names associated with these documents. These people may have been heirs, agents, or
the new owners of the land.
The
names in this register were not always the same as those in Wilfred R. Lauber’s
An Index of the Land Claim Certificates
of Upper Canada Militiamen who served in the War of 1812-1814, Ontario
Genealogical Society, Toronto, 1995, transcribed from RG9 IB4. The actual certificates are filed in boxes at
Collections Canada in Ottawa.
End
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