JESSE LLOYD

Lloydtown plaque, mounted on a large cairn on the southwest corner of Little Rebel Road and Rebellion Way in Lloydtown, 1.7 km west of the intersection of Highway 27 and Lloydtown-Aurora Road, one concession line south of Highway 9.

Lloydtown was named for Jesse Lloyd (1786 - 1838), a descendant of Welsh Quakers who had come from Pennsylvania. He was a trusted supporter of William Lyon Mackenzie and acted as his emissary to Lower Canada during the months leading up to the Rebellion of 1837. In the Lloydtown area prior to the Rebellion, there were important gatherings of the political union organized by Mackenzie, complete with music, poetry and slogans calling for “Liberty or Death”. Lloyd raised some of the best trained detachments of the Rebellion in these parts. After the defeat of Mackenzie, Jesse Lloyd was forced to flee to the United States where he died in exile. Anthony Anderson, one of Mackenzie’s key lieutenants in the rising, hailed from Lloydtown; he was killed in battle.

The headstone of Phoebe Lloyd, “Beloved wife of Jesse Lloyd”, is in the nearby Lloydtown Pioneer Cemetery on land donated by Jesse Lloyd. She had been Phoebe Crossley and had become the “girl bride of a rebel of 1837”. She died at age 80. The Lloydtown Rebellion Association is still active in the area.