Abigail Becker
Abigail Becker | |
|---|---|
 Becker depicted c. 1856 | |
| Born | Abigail Jackson March 14, 1830 or 1831 |
| Died | March 21, 1905 (aged 75) Walsingham Township, Norfolk County, Ontario |
| Burial place | Simcoe, Ontario |
| Other names | The Angel of Long Point |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 17 (11 biological) |
Abigail Becker (née Jackson, 1830 or 1831 to 1905), known as the Angel of Long Point, was a Canadian woman credited with saving the lives of numerous people. This included two who had fallen down wells in separate events and sailors caught in storms along the shores of Long Point on Lake Erie from three different shipwrecks, risking her life multiple times.
She was an impoverished farmer and trapper, raised six children as stepmother, had eleven more biological children, and saved the lives of seventeen people in her lifetime. She was honored by the Government of Canada, Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, and ultimately ran her own successful farmstead.
Early life
[edit]Abigail was born on March 14, 1830 or 1831 based on conflicting reports, in Portland Township, Frontenac County, Upper Canada.[1][2] Her parents were Elijah Jackson, a United Empire Loyalist and Dutch immigrant to New York in the United States of America who migrated north to Canada, and the French-Canadian Marie Grozaine.[2] Noted for her stature and athleticism, Abigail stood six feet tall by the time she was a teenager.[3]
In her youth, Abigail twice risked her life to rescue people from wells: first pulling a child from a deep shaft, and later hauling a man to safety from another well.[4]
Angel of Long Point
[edit]The Beckers supported their family by trapping muskrats together and selling the pelts to passing sailors and boaters, eking out a subsistence living.[2][4] Abigail kept the home but also joined Jeremiah on hunting and trapping expeditions, assisting him in skinning and preparing the pelts for market.[4][2] They rarely saw or met visitors in their isolation.[5]
Prior to November 23, 1854, Jeremiah had traveled to the mainland to sell his pelts and buy winter supplies for the family, leaving Abigail, their children, and a lone keeper at the Old Cut Lighthouse as the only people reportedly on the island.[2][5]
Conductor shipwreck
[edit]On November 22–23, the Buffalo-based schooner Conductor, laden with grains, sailed past Long Point and ran aground in a storm during near midnight en route to Port Dalhousie.[5] The crew had clung to the frozen rigging in the darkness throughout the night until sunrise seven hours later, throughout the storm.[4]
At sunrise with the storm raging, Abigail came to the shore for a bucket of water, and found the grounded Conductor with her trapped sailors two hundred yards off the coast.[1][6] Abigail assembled a fire and supplies on the beach with her children, and spent most of the day attempting, over the noise of the storm, to coax the sailors to shore unsuccessfully, as they could not hear her.[5] Just at nightfall there was a slight break in the storm.[5] Despite her inability to swim, she waded shoulder‑high into the storm‑tossed water to help the stricken sailors reach shore.[1][4] Abigail had to physically carry several of the trapped sailors through the icy and stormy water, which reached her shoulders as she worked.[4][1]
She repeatedly entered the rough waters to save them one by one, having to save several twice, after undertows swept them back out further into the storm.[4] One sailor, who like Abigail could not swim, was the last to be rescued and had lashed himself to the rigging to avoid drowning and being swept away in the storm.[6] Abigail with some of the recovering crew finally created a makeshift raft of wood from the wreck of the Conductor, reached the last sailor, and saved him.[6] The storm continued for four days, with the eight-person Conductor crew stranded at the Becker homestead until Jeremiah returned.[2]
The rescue of the Conductor crew went unreported until retired Buffalo lake ship captain E. P. Dorr investigated the wreck near Long Point Island.[3] Dorr spoke with another lake ship captain and the keepers of the Old Cut Lighthouse, who recounted Becker’s rescue efforts.[5][3] When Dorr visited the Becker cabin, he found the family living in poverty and often barefoot and poorly clothed.[5] On being thanked, Becker replied, "I don’t know as I did more 'n I’d ought to, nor more 'n I'd do again."[5] In gratitude, Dorr sent clothing and supplies to the family and publicized her actions among Great Lakes sailors.[5]
Later shipwrecks
[edit]In another incident, four sailors reached the Becker cabin during a severe autumn gale and snow‑storm.[4][7] They were only four of six survivors from a schooner wrecked the previous night; the other two had collapsed about a mile away.[7] Abigail welcomed the men to warm themselves by the fire, then set out into the storm with two of her sons and spare clothing to find the missing pair.[4][7] Despite the low visibility she located both sailors, persuaded them to rise, and virtually pushed them back to the cabin. All six crew members survived.[2][7][4]
During another late autumn gale, a schooner laden with barley went ashore near the Becker cabin.[7] All hands were rescued and safely came to shore on their own, and then cared for by the Beckers, except for the cook, a woman, who went unaccounted for.[7] One morning, one of Abigail's daughters ran to the cabin, crying, "Mother! Mother! there’s a woman in the schooner waving her arms at me!"[4] Abigail, not really believing her child, went to investigate anyway.[4] She peered down the open hatch of the wreck to find the cook, floating upright, her arms waving gently as the level changed with the heave of the seas through the broken hull, and was rescued by Abigail.[7][8] The woman had been swept overboard and presumed lost by her crew.[7]
Public recognition
[edit]Abigail was awarded $535 by merchants and sailors from Buffalo but had to involve law enforcement to recover the funds after a customs official in Port Rowan diverted the money.[4] The New York Life Saving Benevolent Association struck a gold medal in her honour, and the Royal Humane Society awarded her a medal as well.[7] While meeting in Quebec City, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion granting her family 100 acres of land in Norfolk County as a token of gratitude.[3] The Governor General of Canada, John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, sent her a personal letter of commendation.[1] In 1860, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), while visiting Long Point on a duck‑hunting expedition, presented her with a gift.[2] Queen Victoria sent her a handwritten letter of congratulations and £50.[2] She was offered money to tour the United States but declined, not wishing to be exhibited.[2]
Later life
[edit]Their cabin and small farm on Long Point proved hard to work. Abigail was frequently hurt—once a horse threw her, breaking her foot, and on four separate occasions she broke an arm and set it herself.[4] In time the Beckers left the isolation of the Point, using her reward money to build a new farm in the hamlet of North Walsingham on the 100-acre grant voted by Parliament.[3][4] Jeremiah, no farmer by training, struggled with the land, and the holding faltered.[4] Tragedy followed when one of their sons drowned in Port Rowan Bay.[4] Jeremiah resumed trapping and fishing on Long Point, but he was lost in a storm on the lake.[4] Abigail raised their children alone.[4]
Despite the early hardships, she eventually made the Walsingham property a successful working farm.[2][3] Abigail later married Henry Rohrer, with whom she had three additional daughters.[7] She died on 21 March 1905, aged seventy-five, and was laid to rest in Oakwood Cemetery, Simcoe, Ontario.[3] She was interred wearing her medals, with the Bible presented to her decades earlier by Captain Dorr placed beside her.[3]
Legacy
[edit]The Abigail Becker Ward was established at Simcoe Town Hospital—now Norfolk General Hospital—where her portrait hangs.[3] Several songs and poems have been written about Abigail Becker, and Abigail Becker Parkway on Long Point bears her name. The Abigail Becker Conservation Area now encompasses the land on which her family farm once stood in Norfolk County.[1] On 10 September 1958, a plaque honouring Becker as the "Heroine of Long Point" was placed by the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario at Port Rowan.[2] Relics from Becker’s life are displayed in the Eva Brook Donly Museum of Art and Antiques in Simcoe, Ontario.[2]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f Augusteijn, E.E. (2008-01-21). "Abigail Becker". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 2024-09-10. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Pearce, Bruce M. (1999-12-24). "Historical Highlights of Norfolk County; The Heroine of Long Point". Norfolk Historical Society. Archived from the original on 2024-09-27.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Fleming, Roy F. (1946-10-01). "Abigail Becker: Heroine of Long Point, Lake Erie – October 1946". National Museum of the Great Lakes. Archived from the original on 2024-04-14. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Calvert, B.D., Rev. R. (1899). The Story of Abigail Becker (PDF). William Briggs, Toronto. ASIN B07QYZYDNH.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Greenleaf Whittier, John (1869-05-01). "The Heroine of Long Point". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2022-09-28. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ a b c Snider, C.H.J. (1932-11-26). "The Conductor". Naval Marine Archive. Toronto Telegram, Schooner Days LXIII (63). Archived from the original on 2023-03-20. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Boyer, Dwight (1971). True Tales of the Great Lakes. Dodd, Mead & Co. ISBN 9780396063728.
- ^ Townsend, Robert B. "Abigail Becker, The Heroine of Long Point" (PDF). Bob's Maritime. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-06-08.
