Samuel Lount
Samuel Lount (September 24, 1791 – April 12, 1838) was a blacksmith, farmer, magistrate and member of the Legislative Assembly in the province of Upper Canada for Simcoe County from 1834 to 1836. He was an organizer of the failed Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, for which he was hanged as a traitor. His execution made him a martyr to the Upper Canadian Reform movement.[1]
This article is about the Canadian politician and rebel. For the film, see Samuel Lount (film).Early life[edit]
Lount was born in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, United States, in 1791. He was the first son of English immigrant Gabriel Lount (1759–1827), who arrived in Philadelphia in 1773 as an indentured servant, served in the Pennsylvania Militia 1777–1778, then moved to Cape May, New Jersey, about 1782. Samuel's mother Philadelphia Hughes (1765 – c. 1827), was of an early Cape May Presbyterian founding family, the granddaughter of Revolutionary-era Patriot James Whilldin and a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley. The Lounts and the extended Hughes family emigrated from Cape May to Catawissa, Northumberland, Pennsylvania, about 1790, then to Whitchurch Township in Upper Canada in 1811. Gabriel Lount and his sons Samuel, Gabriel and George became surveyors and extensive land-owners in Upper Canada. Gabriel Lount served as a Member of Parliament from Upper Canada, as did his son Samuel.
Lount never appears to have been a Quaker, or a member of the closely related Children of Peace in nearby Sharon.[2] He was trapped in Pennsylvania during the War of 1812, and returned to Whitchurch only in 1815. That year, he married Elizabeth Soules, with whom he had seven children. He briefly kept a tavern in Newmarket while doing work as a surveyor, but spent most of his adult life as a blacksmith in Holland Landing. Lount was also on the Committee of Management for the company that built the first steamboat on Lake Simcoe, The Colborne. In much of his business, he worked as an agent of his youngest brother, George Lount, a prominent Newmarket merchant; their partnership ended in 1836.[3]
Political activity[edit]
Samuel Lount first became politically active after the expulsion of William Lyon Mackenzie, the elected Reform representative for York County from the Provincial Assembly by the "Family Compact." The "Upper Canada Central Political Union" was formed on 21 January 1833 in Toronto to organize petitions to the Crown on Mackenzie's behalf. The Simcoe County branch was organized by Samuel Lount in Holland Landing, and the Fourth Riding of York branch was organized by Sam Hughes, an elder of the Children of Peace in Sharon.[4]
In 1834, he was elected to the 12th Parliament of Upper Canada representing Simcoe County. In the Legislature, he sat on the committee to incorporate Canada's first farmers' co-operative, the "Farmers Storehouse Company", managed by Sam Hughes.[5]
Lount, like many reformers, was defeated in the election of 1836 but claimed widespread electoral fraud and intimidation. Charles Duncombe, who was another leader of the Rebellion, carried a Reform petition on the electoral irregularities in Lount's case to London but was refused an audience by the British Colonial Office.[6]
Samuel Lount Drive (Holland Landing)
In popular culture[edit]
Samuel Lount, a 1985 film by Laurence Keane and Elvira Mary Lount (a great-great-grandniece of Samuel), starred R. H. Thomson as Lount.[15]