Abigail Becker
Abigail Becker | |
|---|---|
 Becker depicted c. 1856 | |
| Born | Abigail Jackson March 14, 1830 |
| Died | March 21, 1905 (aged 75) Walsingham Township, Norfolk County, Ontario |
| Burial place | Simcoe, Ontario |
| Other names | The Angel of Long Point |
| Occupation(s) | Farmer, trapper |
| Known for | Rescues of seventeen people over five different events |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 19 (11 biological, 6 step-children, 2 adopted) |
Abigail Becker (née Jackson, 1830 or 1831–1905), known as the Angel of Long Point, was a Canadian farmer and trapper credited with saving the lives of seventeen people across five unique incidents. These included rescuing two individuals who had fallen down separate wells, as well as sailors caught in storms along the shores of Long Point on Lake Erie during three different shipwrecks. She ran a successful farm and raised nineteen children, eleven of her own biological, three step-children, and two more adopted.
Becker was recognized for her extraordinary acts of bravery and self-sacrifice, often risking her life in hazardous conditions. She received national and international honors for her heroism, including awards from the Government of Canada, Queen Victoria, and King Edward VII. Becker later established a successful farmstead in Ontario, and remains widely known as the Angel of Long Point.
Early life
Abigail Jackson was born on March 14, 1830, in Portland Township, Frontenac County, Upper Canada, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia.[1] Other accounts, including a detailed biography by Bruce M. Pearce, give her birth date as March 14, 1831, to Elijah Jackson and Marie Grozaine, in the same location.[2] Elijah Jackson was a United Empire Loyalist and a Dutch immigrant to New York in the United States who migrated north to Canada, while Grozaine was French-Canadian.[2]
Abigail was noted for her stature and athleticism, standing six feet tall by her teenage years.[3] In her youth, she twice risked her life to rescue people from wells: first pulling a child from a deep shaft, and later hauling a man to safety from another well.[4] At age 17, Abigail Jackson married Jeremiah Becker, a widower with six children and poor trapper from Long Point, in 1848.[1]
Angel of Long Point
The Beckers lived in poverty, isolated on Long Point, with little access to supplies beyond what Jeremiah could carry from the mainland.[2] Abigail joined her husband Jeremiah in trapping muskrats on Long Point and helped prepare the skins for sale during the early years of their marriage.[4] Jeremiah sold skins to boatmen and small-craft skippers who occasionally landed on the island, sustaining the family in near-total isolation.[5] Abigail joined Jeremiah on trapping expeditions and helped skin and prepare the pelts for sale.[4] They rarely saw or met visitors in their isolation.[5] Prior to November 23, 1854, Jeremiah Becker had traveled to the mainland to sell pelts and purchase winter supplies for the family.[2] At that time, only Abigail, her children, and the Old Cut Lighthouse keeper were reportedly on the island.[2]
Long Point was notorious for shipwrecks; according to one tally, as many as seven vessels were lost off its shores in a single year, and some years saw even higher tolls, with ships and lives lost to violent fall storms that "usually left their bones, and sometimes those of their people, on the Point forever."[6]
Conductor shipwreck
On November 22–23, the Buffalo-based schooner Conductor, laden with grains, sailed past Long Point and ran aground in a storm during near midnight en route to Port Dalhousie.[5] The crew had clung to the frozen rigging in the darkness throughout the night until sunrise seven hours later, throughout the storm.[4] In the early afternoon, as the blizzard began to clear, Becker came upon the wrecked Conductor grounded roughly two hundred yards from shore, its crew still trapped in the rigging.[7] The storm had raged through the night, and by morning she was wading shoulder-deep into the freezing water to assist the stranded men despite her inability to swim.[1]
Abigail assembled a fire and supplies on the beach with her children, and spent most of the day attempting, over the noise of the storm, to coax the sailors to shore unsuccessfully, as they could not hear her.[5] Just at nightfall there was a slight break in the storm.[5] Despite being unable to swim, Becker waded shoulder-deep into the icy lake to assist the stranded crew, coaxing them to leave the rigging and make for shore.[1] Several of the sailors were nearly unconscious from the cold and had to be dragged or physically supported by Becker as they came ashore, with some unable to walk and others collapsing by the fire after she helped them from the surf.[4]
She repeatedly entered the crashing waves to reach struggling men, once rescuing both the ship’s mate and her own disabled son after they were swept underwater, pulling them out together and staggering up the beach with them.[4] Becker saved them one by one, having to save several twice, after undertows swept them back out further into the storm.[4] One sailor, who like Abigail could not swim, was the last to be rescued and had lashed himself to the rigging to avoid drowning and being swept away in the storm.[7] Abigail with some of the recovering crew finally created a makeshift raft of wood from the wreck of the Conductor, reached the last sailor, and saved him.[7] The storm continued for four days, with the eight-person Conductor crew stranded at the Becker homestead until Jeremiah returned.[2]
The rescue of the Conductor crew went unreported until retired Buffalo lake ship captain E. P. Dorr investigated the wreck near Long Point Island.[3] Dorr spoke with another lake ship captain, who recounted the rescue of the Conductor's crew.[5] He also spoke with the keepers of the Old Cut Lighthouse, who shared the same account of Abigail Becker’s actions.[3] When Dorr visited the Becker cabin, he found the family living in poverty and often barefoot and poorly clothed.[5] On being thanked, Becker replied, "I don’t know as I did more 'n I’d ought to, nor more 'n I'd do again."[5] In gratitude, Dorr sent clothing and supplies to the family and publicized her actions among Great Lakes sailors.[5]
Later shipwrecks
In another incident, four sailors reached the Becker cabin during a severe snowstorm after their ship had wrecked nearby.[4] They were only four of six survivors from a schooner wrecked the previous night; the other two had collapsed about a mile away.[6] Abigail welcomed the men to warm themselves by the fire, then set out into the storm with two of her sons and spare clothing to find the missing pair.[4] She found the missing sailors in the storm and persuaded them to return, ensuring that all six crew members survived.[4]
During another late autumn gale, a schooner laden with barley went ashore near the Becker cabin.[6] All hands were rescued and safely came to shore on their own, and then cared for by the Beckers, except for the cook, a woman, who went unaccounted for.[6] One morning, one of Abigail's daughters ran to the cabin, crying, "Mother! Mother! there’s a woman in the schooner waving her arms at me!"[4] Abigail, not really believing her child, went to investigate anyway.[4] Abigail found the schooner’s cook alive in the wreck after she had been presumed drowned by the crew.[8] The woman had been swept overboard and presumed lost by her crew.[6]
Public recognition
Abigail was awarded $535 by merchants and sailors from Buffalo but had to involve law enforcement to recover the funds after a customs official in Port Rowan diverted the money.[4] The New York Life Saving Benevolent Association struck a gold medal in her honour, and the Royal Humane Society awarded her a medal as well.[6] While meeting in Quebec City, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion granting her family 100 acres of land in Norfolk County as a token of gratitude.[3] The Governor General of Canada, John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, sent her a personal letter of commendation.[1] In 1860, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), while visiting Long Point on a duck‑hunting expedition, presented her with a gift.[2] Queen Victoria sent her a handwritten letter of congratulations and £50.[2] She was offered money to tour the United States but declined, not wishing to be exhibited.[2] On receiving public recognition, Becker typically dismissed praise, saying, "I only did my duty as any other would have done."[6]
Later life
Their cabin and small farm on Long Point proved difficult to maintain. Abigail was frequently injured: once thrown by a horse, breaking her foot, and on four separate occasions she broke an arm and set it herself.[4] She eventually left Long Point and settled with her family on a farm near North Walsingham, purchased in part with reward money presented in Buffalo, including a gold medal and a $1,000 purse from the New York Life Saving Association.[3] Becker used the funds to acquire a fifty-acre property but was forced to go to court to obtain the promised payment, ultimately receiving only $535 of the $550 collected.[4] Despite the financial strain, she expanded and maintained the homestead over time.
Jeremiah, untrained in agriculture, struggled with the land, and the holding soon declined.[4] Tragedy followed when one of their sons drowned in Port Rowan Bay.[4] Jeremiah later returned to trapping and fishing on Long Point but was caught in a storm and died on the lake.[4] In January 1864, after abandoning his line shanty because of rising waters during a winter gale, Jeremiah attempted to return home on foot. He stopped to rest on a log and died a half a mile from safety, and perished from exposure; his body was found still seated there three months later.[6] Abigail was left to raise their children alone.[4]
She later married Henry Rohrer, with whom she had three additional daughters.[6] Over the years, she adopted and raised two more children, raising a total of nineteen children.[6] Abigail lived the remainder of her life in Walsingham Township, remaining on the farm she had been granted and building a household there with her second husband.[2] She lived out her later years in modest prosperity, despite the hardships of her early life.[3]
Becker died on 21 March 1905 at the age of seventy-five and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Simcoe, Ontario.[3] She was interred wearing her medals, with the Bible gifted decades earlier by Captain Dorr placed beside her.[3]
Legacy
The Abigail Becker Ward was established at Simcoe Town Hospital—now Norfolk General Hospital—where her portrait hangs.[3] Several songs and poems have been written about Abigail Becker, and Abigail Becker Parkway on Long Point bears her name. The Abigail Becker Conservation Area includes part of the land where her family farm once stood in Norfolk County.[1]
On 10 September 1958, a plaque honouring Becker as the "Heroine of Long Point" was placed by the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario at Port Rowan.[2] Relics from Becker’s life are displayed in the Eva Brook Donly Museum of Art and Antiques in Simcoe, Ontario.[2]
References
- ^ a b c d e f Augusteijn, E.E. (2008-01-21). "Abigail Becker". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 2024-09-10. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Pearce, Bruce M. (1999-12-24). "Historical Highlights of Norfolk County; The Heroine of Long Point". Norfolk Historical Society. Archived from the original on 2024-09-27.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Fleming, Roy F. (1946-10-01). "Abigail Becker: Heroine of Long Point, Lake Erie – October 1946". National Museum of the Great Lakes. Archived from the original on 2024-04-14. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Calvert, B.D., Rev. R. (1899). The Story of Abigail Becker (PDF). William Briggs, Toronto. ASIN B07QYZYDNH.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Greenleaf Whittier, John (1869-05-01). "The Heroine of Long Point". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2022-09-28. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Boyer, Dwight (1971). True Tales of the Great Lakes. Dodd, Mead & Co. ISBN 9780396063728.
- ^ a b c Snider, C.H.J. (1932-11-26). "The Conductor". Naval Marine Archive. Toronto Telegram, Schooner Days LXIII (63). Archived from the original on 2023-03-20. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ^ Townsend, Robert B. "Abigail Becker, The Heroine of Long Point" (PDF). Bob's Maritime. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-06-08.