warfare. Emigration may well have been an attractive alternative to providing cannon fodder for the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria.
After he made his way north, young Johann Peter was registered as a member of the German Reformed Church in Mount Pleasant, New Jersey. He eventually married and his wife bore him three children, one of whom a boy, born in 1773, was named Peter after his father. By this time the original spelling of Badenheimer had become more phonetically pronounced as Bawtenheimer, and so it was spelled.
Young Peter Bawtenheimer married a woman identifiable only as Grace and the first two of their ten children were born in New Jersey. In 1800 Peter and Grace Bawtenheimer made their way to Upper Canada along with Peter’s brother, John. Although nothing is known of their activities, if any, in the Revolutionary War, many families who had not actively supported the revolution, finding themselves socially and commercially ostracized over a period of time, came north to what remained of British North America. They were not given land grants as United Empire Loyalists had been, but were able to bring whatever fortune they possessed and to buy land. A descendant recorded the brothers’ account of the journey, in part, “coming with horses and on foot, there being no vehicles, by way of Niagara crossing the river on a ferry boat following Indian trails and deer tracks westward till they arrived in what is now the city of Hamilton which was only a few huts at the time. Peter took 200 acres at the Cold Springs, lot 36, 1st Concession, township of Ancaster. John settled on a bush lot of 200 acres south of what is now Copetown.”
Those who had supported the British in the War of Independence which ended in 1776, or who had remained obviously neutral, were made to feel less and less welcome in the new United States and were still arriving as loyalists. Peter and Grace settled down on their lot and their third child, Daniel, Samuel Edward’s great grandfather, was born in 1803, to be followed by seven more children. In time the Ancaster and Blenheim townships of Wentworth and Oxford counties respectively were well populated by Bawtenheimers. So much was this the case and so popular was the name of Peter, that one Peter Bawtenheimer changed his name to Beheimer so that his mail and his real estate dealings should not be confused with those of a same named cousin and their transactions end up in considerable confusion.
Good farmers all, the Bawtenheimers prospered and in the early years of the 1800’s Peter went back to New Jersey to buy a wagon and horses. When war broke out between British North America and the United States in 1812, Peter put his Yankee bought wagon and his teams of horses to work hauling supplies for the British troops. It was known that his wartime activities had brought him “a good deal of wealth.”
In time young Daniel married (Catherine) Katy Chrysler, whose father, Henry, had died in the war of 1812. The couple settled on a farm given to Daniel by his father Peter, on lot 4, Concession 6 in Blenheim Township. Daniel, William, Peter, John, James and David, all sons of Peter, farmed near to one another. On Sundays the brothers took turns visiting one another back and forth making their roundabout way by boat on the Nith River. Daniel’s younger brother, Peter, married Rachel Chrysler, Katy’s sister. As in the Weir family, there were double cousins aplenty.
Daniel’s second son, Henry, the grandfather of Samuel Edward, apparently felt the call to preach from his childhood. Born in 1826, he studied for the Wesleyan Methodist Ministry, became an itinerant preacher in his early twenties and was given his first charge at the age of thirty. He began his career in Wellesley, a village west of Kitchener in 1856. The following year he was based in Kincardine. In 1858 he began the year at Bayfield and later was moved to Stratford. After his ordination in 1859, while he held the charge of Morris Township in Huron County, Henry established himself in Blyth. In the year of his ordination, he married Martha Amanda Barber, whose parents had come to settle in Upper Canada from the United States. A petite and high spirited young beauty of sixteen, Martha Amanda was born in 1842. Henry, who was thirty-seven at the time, is reported to have remarked that he deliberately chose a young wife that he might mold her into the proper attitude and behaviour of a minister’s wife. Henry, it would appear, took his responsibilities and himself with great seriousness as a god fearing minister of the gospel.
According to family lore, while still in Blyth in 1860 the Bawtenheimers’ first child, Sarah, Samuel Edward’s mother, was born over the blacksmith’s shop. Then, in 1861, it was on to Teeswater where in the following year the Reverend Henry was declared supervisory minister. From 1863 until the year of Confederation in 1867 the family was quartered in Clinton where Charles was born in 1864, followed two years later by another daughter, Frances, known as Frankie. By 1868 the family was on the move again, this time to Oil Springs and Petrolia, about twelve kilometres apart, where Henry’s health “failed.” The poor roads, mud and winter weather which made travel between the two charges daunting undoubtedly contributed to symptoms brought on by exhaustion. In 1869, another daughter, Mary, was born in the new charge at Paris where the family remained until 1873. Eva Jane, who later married Alexander Thompson, a lawyer, was born in Paris in 1872.
In 1874 the family was sent to Toronto for one year and, in 1875, the Reverend Henry received a call to take charge of the Cape Croker Indian Reserve near Wiarton. There to “convert the heathen” he took great pride in being the first Methodist minister to be so appointed. After two years of preaching and ministering to the Ojibway on the Reserve and establishing a thriving religious community, the Reverend Henry and his family were moved again. This time it was to Kilsyth, not far from the Reserve and close to Owen Sound, a charge that would last for three years until 1879. In 1881 the Reverend Henry was moved back again to minister to Cape Croker, where he preached to his growing flock until his death in 1882. The last child, Laura Alberta, known as Bertie, was born in 1881, the year before Henry’s death.
Upon their arrival at Cape Croker, the Bawtenheimers found their home, the manse, [which,] according to one account written for the Methodist Conference of 1875, was, “…an old Indian house, damaged furniture, loss of garden, an old dirty Indian house which was being repaired…Mrs. Bawtenheimer’s health was so very poor. Rev. Henry built a small barn and kitchen, put up out-houses and fenced fifteen acres, planted trees, levelled and cleared the yard. He built a church with contractors from Owen Sound with a spire.” A dismaying experience it must have been for Martha Amanda and the children.
Henry Bawtenheimer born 1822; married 1859; died 1882, Samuel Edward’s maternal grandfather.
Nevertheless it was all part of the custom of the Methodist Church of the time that each minister must present himself, his wife, his family and all their belongings to the Methodist Conference in Toronto, held each year in June at which time assignments were decided and announced for the following year. Thus a preacher, his wife, pregnant or not, did not know from year to year where they would be located for the following twelve months. Sarah was fourteen when the Reverend Henry arrived at the newly created charge of Cape Croker. Even before they could clear out the debris and filth from the ‘manse,’ a highly inappropriate word for their shelter, the garden had to be dug and prepared for the seeds to be planted to ensure that the family would, hopefully, have sufficient food to keep them alive over the winter.
To profess the word of God under such circumstances demanded strong commitment from both minister and wife. Henry, a strict taskmaster with himself as well as with his family, was described as being very pious and very narrow in his views. Descendants of Henry and Amanda tell family tales of the children having to stand behind their chairs at mealtimes while the Reverend Henry ate his meal first. Then the children would be allowed to seat themselves after their father had finished his meal. Martha Amanda waited on Henry and ate with the children. The Reverend Henry took himself and his position with great seriousness. In 1881, he ended a letter to his daughter, “Yours very truly, Father,” hardly the outpouring of a loving parent.
Martha Amanda (Barber) Bawtenheimer born 1842; married 1859; died 1930, Samuel Edward’s maternal grandmother.
Sarah is reported to have told her children that as a young girl, she played with the Indian children of the Reserve, but she was at least fourteen when she arrived and as the eldest would have had a great deal of responsibility