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Title
Date(s)
- 1800-1806 (Creation)
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147pp
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Archival history
Kerby A. Miller was provided photocopies of the Joseph Willcocks letters by the Toronto Central Library, Metropolitan Toronto Library. The original manuscripts are now held in the Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre, Toronto Reference Library, Toronto Public Library [call number S128].
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Scope and content
Reproductions, transcripts, and abstracts of 23 letters written between 1800 and 1806 by Joseph Willcocks, mainly to members of his family in Palmerstown, Dublin.
Per Kerby A. Miller: ‘Born c.1773; died 1814. Journalist and agitator. A native of Palmerston, Co. Dublin. According to W. S. Wallace,Dictionary of Canadian Biography, p. 709, Willcocks was implicated in the rising of 1798 and had to flee to America. However, his letters give no indication of any disloyalty to the Crown. In Upper Canada, he obtained the patronage of Mr. Justice Allcock, and in 1803 he was appointed
sheriff of the Home District. In 1806 he was dismissed from office for opposition to the government; and in 1807 he founded the Upper Canadian Guardian, or Freeman's Journal, the first party newspaper in Upper Canada. From 1808 to 1812, he represented Lincoln, Haldimand, and West York in the Legislative Assembly. During the 1808 session he was imprisoned by warrant of the speaker of the Assembly for making "false, slanderous, and highly derogatory" statements about the members of the Assembly. During the War of 1812, he went over to the Americans, received a commission as colonel, and was killed at the siege of Fort Erie on October 4, 1814. His Diary for 1799-1803 is published as an appendix to J. E. Middleton and F. Landon, eds., The Province of Ontario, vol. 2 (Toronto, 1927).
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Note
Further versions of reproductions and transcripts of the letters, as well as Kerby A. Miller’s compiled research on Joseph Willcocks, are located in P155/72/4. Letters from relative William Willcocks, also present in Upper Canada at this time, are located in the Hugh Hovell Farmar letters (P155/72/5).