This memorable lady—memorable for her eminent Christian goodness, as well as for her artistic skill and taste, and superior intellectual endowments—survived to the late period of 1850. Her maiden name is preserved among us by the designation borne by two of our townships, East and West "Gwillim"-bury. Her father, at the time one of the aides-de-camp to General Wolfe, was killed at the taking of Quebec.
Conspicuous in the group would likewise be a young daughter and son, the latter about five years of age and bearing the name of Francis. The château of which we have just given an account was theoretically the private property of this child, and took its name from him, although the appellation, by accident as we suppose, is identical, in sound at all events, with that of a certain "Castel-franc" near Rochelle, which figures in the history of the Huguenots.
The Iroquois at Niagara had given the Governor a title, expressive of hospitality—Deyonynhokrawen, "One whose door is always open." They had, moreover, in Council declared his son a chief, and had named him Tioga; or Deyoken, "Between the Two Objects;" and to humour them in return, as Liancourt informs us, the child was occasionally attired in Indian costume. For most men it is well that the future is veiled from them. It happened eventually that a warrior's fate befell the young chieftain Tioga. The little spirited lad who had been seen at one time moving about before the assembled Iroquois at Niagara, under a certain restraint probably, from the unwonted garb of embroidered deerskin, in which, on such occasions, he would be arrayed; and at another time clambering up and down the steep hill-sides at Castle Frank, with the restless energy of a free English boy, was at last, after the lapse of some seventeen years, seen a mangled corpse, one in that ghastly pile of "English dead," which, in 1812, closed up the breach at Badajoz.
Riding with the Governor, out to his rustic lodge, would be seen also his attached secretary, Major Littlehales, and one or other of his faithful aides-de-camp, Lieutenant Talbot or Lieutenant Givins; with men in attendance in the dark green undress of the famous Queen's Rangers, with a sumpter pony or two, bearing packages and baskets filled with a day's provender for the whole party. A few dogs also, a black Newfoundland, a pointer, a setter, white and tan, hieing buoyantly about on the right and left, would give animation to the cavalcade as it passed sedately on its way—
"Through the green-glooming twilight of the grove."
It will be of interest to add here, the inscription on General Simcoe's monument in Exeter Cathedral:—"Sacred to the memory of John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-General in the army, and Colonel of the 22nd Regiment of Foot, who died on the 25th day of October, 1806, aged 54. In whose life and character the virtues of the hero, the patriot and the Christian were so eminently conspicuous, that it may justly be said, he served his king and his country with a zeal exceeded only by his piety towards God." Above this inscription is a medallion portrait. On the right and left are figures of an Indian and a soldier of the Queen's Rangers. The remains of the General are not deposited in Exeter Cathedral, but under a mortuary chapel on the estate of his family elsewhere.
Our cavalcade to Castle Frank, as sketched above, was once challenged on the supposed ground that in 1794 there were no horses in Western Canada.—Horses were no doubt at that date scarce in the region named; but some were procurable for the use of the Governor and his suite. In a "Journal to Detroit from Niagara, in 1793, by Major Littlehales," printed for the first time in the Canadian Literary Magazine, for May, 1833, we have it mentioned that, on the return of an exploring party, they were met at the end of the plains, near the Salt Lake Creek, by Indians, "bringing horses for the Governor and his suite." The French habitans about Sandwich and Detroit were in possession of horses in 1793, as well as their fellow countrymen in Lower Canada.
After the departure of General Simcoe from Canada, Castle Frank was occasionally made the scene of an excursion or pic-nic by President Russell and his family; and a ball was now and then given there, for which the appliances as well as the guests were conveyed in boats up the Don. At one time it was temporarily occupied by Captain John Denison, of whom hereafter. About the year 1829, the building, shut up and tenantless at the time, was destroyed by fire, the mischievous handiwork of persons engaged in salmon-fishing in the Don. A depression in the dry sand just beyond the fence which bounds the Cemetery of St. James, northward, shews to this day the exact site of Castle Frank. The quantity of iron that was gathered out from this depression after the fire, was, as we remember, something extraordinary, all the window shutters and doors having been, as we have said, made of double planks, fastened together with an immense number of stout nails, whose heads thickly studded the surface of each in regular order.
The immediate surroundings of the spot where Castle Frank stood, fortunately continue almost in their original natural state. Although the site of the building itself is outside the bounds of the Cemetery of St. James, a large portion of the lot which at first formed the domain of the château, now forms a part of that spacious and picturesque enclosure. The deep glen on the west, immediately below where the house was built, and through which flows (and by the listener may be pleasantly heard to flow) the brook that bears its name, is to this day a scene of rare sylvan beauty. The pedestrian from the town, by a half-hour's easy walk, can here place himself in the midst of a forest solitude; and from what he sees he can form an idea of the whole surrounding region, as it was when York was first laid out. Here he can find in abundance, to this day, specimens, gigantic and minute, of the vegetation of the ancient woods. Here at the proper seasons he can still hear the blue jay; the flute notes of the solitary wood-thrush, and at night, specially when the moon is shining bright, the whip-poor-will, hurriedly and in a high key, syllabling forth its own name.