Mary Jones and Elizabeth Gage Westbrook

  
Before and after pictures of Mary Jones Gage's house in Stoney Creek, Hamilton, Ont.
77 King Street West, Stoney Creek

Pictures courtousy of Niagara Parks Commission:  Link to the Battlefield House Museum in Hamilton, Ontario

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Mary Jones was at the time of her coming to Canada the widow of a loyalist officer, John Gage who had been killed during the fighting. Even at this early day she had relatives in Canada and her brother, Augustus Jones, was a well known surveyor who had taken a bride among the Six Nations. Their son Peter was afterwards the well known missionary chief.
More information on Peter Jones

The young widow resolved to come to the Dominion with her two children, James born in 1774 and Elizabeth, born in 1776. Placing them and a few belongings in a canoe she made her way along the old time water route to Canada; traveling up the Mohawk, past Fort Stanwix, (now Rome, N.Y.) across the short portage to Wood Creek, down Oneida Lake and the Oswego River and thence along the Southern shore of Lake Ontario to Niagara and the head of the lake at Stoney Creek.

She settled in Saltfleet Township and cleared the land and tilled the soil until her son James was old enough to shoulder the responsibilities of the farm. This heroic woman died about 1839 in Hamilton at the home of her son, when she was nearly a hundred years old. The marriage of her daughter to Major Westbrook took place in 1796. They had a family of sixteen children, their numerous descendants constituting many prominent and well know families in the city and the county.

Mary's difficulties with the Americans was not over, for in the War of 1812, they invaded Stoney Creek and commandered her house. She and her two children were locked in the basement until the Loyalist Forces freed her.

Alexander moved to what is now Brantford, in 1817. He resided on a hill near Lorne Bridge, in a log hut overlooking the river Waterford and for some time carried mail on foot and on horseback between Anacaster and Oakland. He finally settled in Oakland. Haggai, another brother, also lived in Oakland.

NOTE FROM WEBMASTER
The interesting thing here is that this branch of the Jones family is linked to me through the Westbrooks on my mother's side and the Jones family on my father's side. Mary Jones who maried John Gage, a British Officer, had a daughter Elizabeth who married Major John Westbrook. Her brother was Augustus Jones whose son Peter by a Objibwe bride, became a great missionary chief. John Westbrook was the brother of my ancestor Andrew Westbrook, and so they are not in my line of descent. My branch of the Jones family appears to descend from Cornelius Jones who moved to Orange county.

I received the following from Laurie Pardee who is descended from Augustus Jones and his second wife, Sarah Tekarihogen.

I was reading your webpage and there is some erroneous information. Augustus Jones had an Ojibwa woman named Tuhbenahneequay, but married my ggggg grandmother who was a Mohawk named Sarah Tekarihogen. He had children with BOTH women at the same time. Tuhbenahneequay did not want to settle into a white way. Don't worry, there is much confusion because of the times. Peter Jones would just say his father was married in 1798. There is a statue of Augustus Jones in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada.

Laurie Paradee