Foreword

My life has brought me many experiences with the Bay of Quinte. My father was born and raised in what is now Belleville and in his lifetime we visited my grandparents there once or twice a year. My recollection of their Isabel Street home is quite clear. I recall my father wanting to buy hickory nuts at the Saturday morning market and my watching the loading of seemingly endless casks of cheese into a lake freighter at the wharf for export to the United Kingdom. The Spafford farm was a part of every visit and for me an introduction to pigs and cows. In the mid-1970’s we sailed through the Bay of Quinte several summers, mooring at the Belleville Yacht Club and visiting my first cousin, Ruth Spafford, and her husband. Finally, my eldest nephew, Doug Bell, moved to Belleville in the mid-1980’s and we have always been welcomed at his handsome home on the Bay of Quinte just west of Belleville.

Surely all these experiences are the cause of my undertaking studies of the family genealogy and the history of the Bay. But not so! I do not think they had anything to do with it. What did encourage me were grandchildren’s questions about our origins, the persuasion of Lisa Ashby, my nephew Jim Bell’s daughter, and my life long love of reading and writing. Contemporaries were playing golf or pursuing other hobbies while I  read more and more Irish, Quaker, American and Upper Canadian history. For me, it has been an amazing and thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Genealogy by itself can be tedious: it misses the events and the personalities that shaped the lives of our ancestors. In what follows, most of the record of our ancestors’ births, marriages, deaths is unchanged from that found in the booklet which I distributed in January 2009, ‘The Bell and Phelps Family Histories’. More cousins are now included but, while some had fascinating lives, they do not become a critical part of the story.

The more interesting new work is the description of the social and political events which were occurring during our ancestors’ lives, very clearly determining their political rights, vital decisions as to where they should live and their life style. Many pictures of family members and key figures in government are included as well as maps, documents and quotations from participants in this history and other writers.

The story starts with the first sight of a Phelps, then spelled Phyllyps, in Staffordshire, England, about 1460. From there the family moved to Gloucestershire and, in the Civil War in 1650, Thomas Phelps fought with Cromwell’s forces in Ireland. He stayed there and became one of the earliest Quakers in Ireland. With the growth of the linen trade, his descendants moved north to Ulster and profited handsomely from it. Our immediate ancestors moved to Upper Canada and the Bay of Quinte in 1823 and remained Quakers until my grandmother married into the Bell family in 1889.

The Bells came from the most southern part of Scotland and were forced out in 1772 by the widespread land clearances then underway. From their farm in upstate New York, their loyalty to the Crown meant they were again uprooted and forced to leave for Canada after the American Revolution. They arrived in the Bay of Quinte, were recognized as United Empire Loyalists and lived a largely rural life until my father left Belleville for Toronto in 1914.

Our Phelps ancestors moved from England to Ireland and then again, they moved between continents, from Europe to Canada and the Bay of Quinte. The Bells moved from a humble life in Scotland into the turmoil of the American Revolution and then into an unknown frontier. Very different forces obliged these moves but their stories were the norm in North America’s early days. Raised in relative stability and comfort, we find it difficult to imagine the lonesomeness, struggle and pain our ancestors endured as they made their way in totally foreign and primitive settings.

Publishing this work might imply that the project is finished. It is not at all over! History is endless and we will undoubtedly continue to come up with stories of our relatives and their lives wherever they were. It is my hope that anyone who has a thought or document to offer will share it with me and I will update this work accordingly.

In some quotations, the spelling and punctuation are unusual. I have endeavoured to show exactly what the original showed.

Sources are shown at the end of each chapter and are indicated in the text by a bracketed number.

 

Phelps Bell, U. E.

Toronto 2019