| | EPICUREAN NIBBLES Laura Secord | Every few weeks, this page will feature a food-related short. If you have a topic you'd like the community to know about, please email us. To read previous features visit our archive | In Canada, the name Laura Secord is linked with confectioneries, ice cream and chocolates. The company has been a leading chocolatier and purveyor of sweets in Canada since 1913. But Laura Secord, an actual figure in history, is considered by many to be the heroine of the War of 1812. 
Laura Ingersoll was born in 1775 to a wealthy Massachusetts family. Her father supported the patriot side during the American Revolution and his business prospered during the war. However after Independence and an economic depression, the family was left in dire financial difficulties. Laura's father succumbed to the lure of cheap land being offered in Upper Canada, the precursor of Ontario, and moved his family north across the border. Following her mother's death, Laura helped to raise her many brothers and sisters.
Laura met her future husband, James Secord, at her father's tavern in Queenston. Laura and James worked hard together and prospered. By 1812, they had five children, two servants, a modest frame house and ran a successful business selling clothing and household goods.
When war broke, James was a Sergeant in the 1st Lincoln militia. On October 13, 1812, Laura was awakened by the sound of cannon fire. American soldiers were crossing the river in small boats from Lewiston and they had scaled the steep bank of Queenston Heights. Since her husband, a militia sergeant, was already in action fighting back the enemy, Laura had to see her family to safety. Laura and her children fled to safety at a friend's house. When the battle ended, the enemy had been driven off the Heights and back across the Niagara River. Laura returned home with her children to learn her husband was missing. She climbed the Heights and searched among the dead and wounded on the battlefield to find her husband bleeding from gunshot wounds. Laura helped James return home and dressed his wounds herself. The house was no welcome sight, for enemy soldiers had pillaged it while she was away. Through the winter of 1812 and into the summer of 1813, the Niagara Peninsula became hostile territory and the war became a series of brief, but frequent skirmishes. Neither the Americans nor the British had firm control. The Americans held Fort George while the British held four outposts to the west. The nearest outpost was the DeCew house, which was on the escarpment south of present day St. Catharines. There, Lieutenant James Fitzgibbon had a special force of 50 men and deployed a force of 150 Indians In the spring of 1813, the Americans occupied the Canadian side of the Niagara River. All able-bodied Upper Canadian men were considered prisoners of war and were sent to the states. Because of James' infirmity, the Secords were spared this hardship and were rather ordered to billet three American officers. Captain Gyrenius Chapin was an American officer who became frustrated by Fitzgibbon’s capture of several Americans. He convinced his commanding officer to permit him to lead a surprise attack on the Fitzgibbon outpost and destroy the munitions held there, enabling American troops to push on through to British-held territory in Burlington and York (now Toronto). Permission for the surprise attack was granted. Captain Chapin underestimated the loyalty of the Secord family to the Canadian cause, and while commandeering Laura’s house for a meal one day in June, he carelessly let slip the plans of the surprise attack that the Americans, "shall move against FitzGibbon at Beaver Dams.". James Fitzgibbon was a well-reputed Upper Canadian guerilla leader, and an enterprising soldier. At one point, he disguised himself as a butter peddler in order to enter and observe an American camp at Stoney Creek. The group of devoted soldiers which he led, called themselves the Bloody Boys, and practiced what was considered unconventional warfare at the time. FitzGibbon rose in the ranks due in part to the attention of his commander, Isaac Brock. Brock taught FitzGibbon manners, diction and other forms of refinement, but he never lost his character. 
James, who was still incapacitated by his shattered leg, was unable to make the journey, so Laura set off on her own to warn Lieutenant FitzGibbon of the imminent American attack. She left before sunrise and walked for eighteen hours through swamp, brush and farmland to trek the 32 kilometres to the Decew house where FitzGibbon was staying. She told the American sentry she was going to St. David's to visit her sick brother. The Americans granted her request because she had been especially accommodating to the soldiers' needs. Her pass allowed Laura to be out after curfew. The next morning, June 22, 1813, to remove any suspicion of the motives of her walk, Laura first stopped at her half-brother’s house, who she discovered was indeed ill. Once there, Laura revealed the true purpose of her mission and her niece, Elizabeth, offered to accompany her. Elizabeth did not have the stamina of her aunt, and after tramping through fields and forest, she collapsed, leaving Laura to complete the most hazardous part of the journey alone. In addition to the dangers posed by the native wildlife, wolves, wildcats and rattlesnakes were common, Laura feared being questioned by American troops. A woman alone near enemy lines risked being arrested or even being shot, as the traditional punishment for spies was death by firing squad. The temperatures were exceptionally hot, but Laura persevered and hiked through thick woods, across streams and through swampy grounds. Laura followed the course of Twelve Mile Creek, which she knew flowed past DeCew’s house. By noon she had left the swamp and was ready to cross Twelve Mile Creek before climbing "The Mountain" , the name given to the Niagara Escarpment. Towards evening, after having come 19 grueling miles, she stumbled, weary and hungry into an Indian encampment. Stumbling through the woods into a clearing she was surrounded by Moahwks and Caughnawagas, loyal Six Nations allies. Laura pursuaded the warriors to take her to FitzGibbon. After relaying the crucial information of the impending American attack at Beaver Dams to the lieutenant, Laura fell fast asleep. FitzGibbon was amazed at the 38 year old woman's tenacity and later wrote: "Mrs. Secord arrived at my Station about sunset of an excessively warm day, after having walked about twelve miles which I at the time thought was an exertion which a person of her slender frame and delicate appearance was unequal to make." Two days later, on June 24, 1813, the British and Indians intercepted the Americans and forced their surrender at the Battle of Beaver Dams. By 1814 the peace treaty became a reality and the boundary between the USA and Canada has never since seen hostility. Fitzgibbon bluffed the Americans into surrender though their force was twice the size of his own. Had the Americans won at Beaver Dams they might have been able to take the entire Niagara region. Laura's contribution was not public knowledge at the time because the Secord family was still living behind enemy lines and feared revenge from American sympathizers in the community. 
Following the war, Laura and James filed several petitions to the government requesting either money or a government post in return for her services to her country. For many years, these petitions were ignored. Finally, at the age of eighty-five, Laura Secord was presented to the visiting Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's eldest son and the future King Edward VII. The prince went back to England but did not forget the frail grandmotherly figure who had altered the course of war. A few months later he sent Laura a hundred pounds in gold, the only financial reward she was ever to get, forty-eight years after her deed. After her death in 1868 writers and historians realized Laura Secord was a genuine heroine of the War of 1812, and two monuments were erected in her memory, one at Queenston by the Canadian Government and one at Lundy’s Lane by the Ontario Historical Society. The Laura Secord chocolate company was established in 1913 by Frank P. O'Connor and has become one of Canada's largest known chocolatiers. In 1913, the centennial anniversary of Laura Ingersol Secord’s journey to warn the British of an impending American Invasion, O’Connor set up shop, choosing the name Laura Secord out of a desire to indentify his products with wholesomeness, purity, domesticity, and cleanliness. Not content to merely sell candies made by others, O’Connor turned the flat above the shop into a kitchen and prepared his own products.
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