Chronic debtor left his mark in nature
Charles Fothergill was not going to follow in his father’s footsteps. No, he wasn’t going to craft ivory brushes and combs.
Born to a well-to-do and highly regarded Quaker family in England, he had absolutely no business sense. None.
That’s not to say he didn’t have some talent and success. He was considered the leading voice for conservative reform in the crucial period surrounding the 1837 rebellion. Rev. Henry Scadding, an author and historian, said Fothergill had been born too early and many of his ideas and views would have found more acceptance a few decades later.
His true inclination leaned more toward studying and recording things he saw in nature.
He published his first work, Ornithologia Britannica, which classified 301 species of British birds, at the age of 17.
He later published a second work, which was more about morals. He tried acting but he didn’t like being an understudy. He tried to get into the navy with a commission but that didn’t work out.
By the time he was 35, in 1817, he was married and had demolished his credit in England. He decided to head to Ontario.
He presented himself to Lt.Gov. Francis Gore, telling Gore he was the first wave of a settlement of English gentlemen. As the vanguard he was given a chunk of land in Monaghan Township for the settlement and his own hunk of 480 hectares on Rice Lake.
Fothergill set up house at Smith’s Creek, at what’s now Port Hope.
He opened a store and accumulated more land, intending to develop a harbour, among other grand ideas.
He impressed the political leaders — the next lieutenant-governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, also took to him.
Fothergill was made the first postmaster for Port Hope (he wanted to call it Toronto before Toronto was Toronto), and then a magistrate. He also became a member of the district land board. He was one of Newcastle District’s wheels.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t manage his money or his investments, and was soon back in debt through businesses he had in Peterborough and Port Hope.
He moved to Toronto and became the printer to the Crown in 1822.
Within two years he was elected to the colonial assembly as Durham County’s representative. While he started out as a Tory and supporter of Maitland, he eventually found himself on the side of the Reformers.
Because of this, coupled with the skyrocketing costs to the government of the print facility Fothergill was running for the Crown, he earned the lieutenant-governor’s anger. One of the Reform leaders, William Lyon Mackenzie, didn’t like Fothergill, but he did admire the improvements he saw in the press Fothergill ran (Mackenzie being a fellow ink-stained wretch).
When Fothergill lost the government-appointed Crown printer position, he had to sell his home in Toronto. Mackenzie published an ad on the front page of his paper, The Colonial Advocate, detailing its size and prominent gardens, and suggesting it would make an “excellent tavern or genteel boarding house.”
Back in Port Hope, Fothergill started an anti-government paper but it folded. By then he’d sort of wandered back to his conservative ways and that caused his Reform buddies to walk away from him. In 1840 he died, broke. He was remembered not just for his influence on politics, but also as a talented chronicler of nature — one of his earliest interests. — Tom Villemaire is a writer based in Toronto and the Bruce Peninsula. tom@historylab.ca