Pontiac County has been not only a beautiful, historic county nestled between the Ottawa River and the Canadian shield, but a true melting pot of ambitious, hard working settlers from the world over.
Many of us can trace our ancestral roots to include German, French, English, Scottish, Swiss, Dutch, Algonquin and of course Irish blood. Some of our ancestors spent several generations south of the border before moving north, but many . . .
came directly from the old country.
Although there were a few violent murders in Pontiac, many of our ancestors died accidentally in bush accidents, farm accidents or drowned while driving logs on the river. There was only one hanging in Pontiac County.
Nowadays, in the 20th century, most disputes are handled in court where after several months of losing time in court, lawyers extracting money from both sides and the legal system deciding who gets the rest, both sides leave bewildered and broke.
We can remember when we were younger, many disputes were settled with a battle of fisticuffs on a Friday night after considerable inebriation on both sides. During the early 1800s and before, a more aristocratic way of settling a dispute when someone’s honour was in question, was by one person in question challenging the other to a duel with pistols. This was not like in the wild west when at high noon, two men met on main street and whoever could draw his gun from the holster and shoot the fastest and most accurate won. A duel was more official and planned with an official setting the rules.
The Municipality of Clarendon tucked between Bristol and Litchfield, with Shawville in its centre, was surveyed and lots allotted by James Prendergast who had previously been in the British Army in what is now Canada. After the war of 1812 was settled, most of the battalions were disbanded and some of the soldiers, some of who were engineers, were available to help survey new townships like Clarendon. Although most settlers arrived after Clarendon was surveyed in 1825, some families had already been squatted here for several years, like the Dales, Hodgins, McDowell, Armstrong, Stark, Telfer, Ebert, Sparling, Hobbs and Paul.
By the mid 1830s, James had gotten Clarendon surveyed, started a school, a saw mill, a flour mill, settled over 60 families and engaged a preacher. Then the government decided that no more free land would be allotted and James would not even be paid for all the surveying.
On one of his trips to collect some pay, he stopped at Bytown on his way home from Quebec and got into a dispute with a former soldier who got a little too big for his britches. The subject of James’ honour came up and James invited the soldier up to Clarendon to settle the dispute in an honourable fashion with a duel.
They decided that way out in Clarendon would be far enough away from the law that even though a duel was not totally a legal way to settle a dispute, the law might never find out. After some searching, James found a neighbour, Francis Armstrong, who knew a bit about how a duel was carried out and he was chosen as the officiant.
The Bytown officer paddled his canoe up the river from Bytown to the Martin Ebert farm on the banks of Ottawa, where the duel was to take place. The officiant had already checked out the two dueling pistols and because he didn’t want any blood to be unnecessarily shed in the new township of Clarendon, he loaded each pistol with only one round of powder. No bullet was in either pistol.
The two men, Lieut. Pendergast and the military officer from Bytown met in the field behind Ebert’s barn where no houses or buildings were close, just below where the old CNR railway now is. The duelers stood back to back and each were handed a pistol by Armstrong, walked 20 paces away from each other, turned and faced each other. When Armstrong gave the word “fire,” the two men fired their weapons. After a large amount of smoke blew away from both duelers, they were both still standing and unhurt. Armstrong declared that the duel was over and because both duelers were poor shots, no one was hurt and the best thing to do was for each man to shake hands and go home safe.
Although this duel, which was probably not legal anyway, was never officially recorded, but the story has been passed on from one generation to another. It took place on one of my ancestor’s farms. This story was told to me by several neighbours who lived very close to where the duel happened.
