Day 3 - we are in Windsor, Ontario within spitting distance of the bridge to USA.

I thought I would actually post a map here - so you can see when I talk about Sandwich Street or tomorrow when we go to the University.

                  

Today we drove down Prince Rd to Sandwich Str. heading to St. John’s Anglican Church, which is on Sandwich Street.  On the map it is the dark gray area across the street from the Mackenzie Hall Cultural Centre.  It includes the Cemetery in the back.

               

We drove around the block looking for a place to park and then once finding one, looking for a gate that would open.  K asked the Rector as he tried to drive away and he told us about a side gate that only “looks” locked, but is not.

We are looking for Robert Mercer and his wife Sarah Hathaway Treacher and whomever else we can find.  K found the stones and it was scary!  They are a lovely white marble that has almost been obliterated by acid rain and smog.

           

We used the Spot Light to see if that would help and it did for several of the sides, but we found a couple sides were entirely too melted to read.

Had many people walk by (we were the row closest to the fence) and look at what we were doing until we looked up, then they would look away.  Several did say hello and tell me it was a beautiful day, which it truly is.  The sun is shining and it is in the high 60’s.

This is K with her 3 greats grand parents stone.

We took what pictures we could and K dug a few of the old footstones out of several inches of soft dusty dirt and we photographed them as well.  Several had initials she didn’t recognize and so her research continues as she tries to figure out who J B and D J R and several other initialized stones belong to whom.

As we walked back towards the car we also knew there were 3 find a grave requests for the Cade family.  However we searched and searched and never found them.  Some stones are missing and some stones are so badly melted as they are created from white marble, you can not read them.  So we weren’t able to help someone with their stones.

We tucked our cemetery bag and bench into the car then walked across the road to the Sandwich Public Library.  We asked the Librarian for information, and found that the library had moved all the local history books of Sandwich and Windsor and 1812 history to an area very close to the door (where K tells me someone could easily walk out with the resource book - not that she would do that).

We sat down and began meandering through books.  I started with the Register of St. John’s Church of England at Sandwich in the Wester District of the Province of Upper Canada 1802 - 1827.  This was way too far west for my family and might be too early for K’s family, but it made for interesting reading.

         

I did find a couple Collier family members listed and some of Peter Howard Church’s descendants were related to the Colliers, so we copied the pages for further research for me if I want to go that collateral.

K started with Carl Morgan birth of a city and found an old map with Robert Mercer’s name on it.

She then moved on to John Prince  A Collection of Documents written by R. Alan Douglas.  In his diary on 5 January 1839 he gave a good sound horsewhipping to our man Robert Mercer Esquire, because he was grossly insulted.

The more she read in the book the more she was convinced that Prince was was nut case.  She told this to the Hotel people as we signed up for another two nights stay.

Now, just in case you were wondering how the city of Windsor got it’s name, well part of it is K’s fault.

Robert Mercer, who settled on farm No. 86 in 1833 (the land between Glengarry and Crawford Avenues), called the land Richmond, after his favourite vacation spot in England. That same year, Joseph McDougall, another Scottish immigrant, purchased farm No. 85. In the autumn of 1835 he divided the farm into lots and called his development South Detroit (the centre of which was today's McDougall St.). However, many residents of Border Cities objected to this name, so a meeting was held on 6 September 1836 at Hutton's Tavern to settle the issue of what the new village at the Sandwich ferry terminus should be called.

Mercer and his supporters wanted to call the village Richmond, while McDougall and his supporters insisted that it be called South Detroit. James Dougall was called upon to break the deadlock; his suggestion, Windsor, was agreeable to both parties. Mercer was pleased because Windsor neighboured Richmond in England, and McDougall was satisfied because Mercer, an Englishman, did not have his way.

This version from here:

http://www.examiner.com/article/windsor-named-by-james-dougall-joseph-mcdougall-es tablished-framework

We finally finished with the library then found the Western Towne Grocery to pick up a few fresh veggies and fruit, then off to find a bank to change money over to Canadian. 

Then back to the Hotel for catching up my journal, writing the blog and K dropping off for a nap.  (could it be that staying up until at least 11:25 p.m. watching football has pooped us out?)  I think it did.

More research on the Mercers tomorrow.