SAMUEL LOUNT 

Plaque - east side of Yonge Street, north of Mount Albert Road, in front of the Community Centre and Library, East Gwillimbury

The text reads: “A martyr of the Rebellion of 1837, Pennsylvania-born Samuel Lount (1791-1838) farmed and operated a smithy near Holland Landing. He was generous with help and advice to new settlers, and from 1834 to 1836 sat as a reformer in the Legislative Assembly. Hoping to expedite social and political change, Lount agreed to command forces in William Lyon Mackenzie’s uprising against the government. When rebels were soundly defeated on December 7, 1837, Lount attempted to flee the country. He was captured weeks later and convicted of treason along with another prominent rebel Peter Matthews. Disregarding petitions for pardon bearing thousands of signatures, the authorities hanged the two men at Toronto on April 12, 1838.” Earlier, a Samuel Lount plaque at Anchor Park near Holland Landing was vandalized. The group picture at its unveiling is of a number of Lount descendants including Dalton C. Wells, a Chief Justice of Ontario, and a supporting community group with its banner “Liberty or Death”.

The Lount homestead was on top of the hill to the south of Holland Landing. As a blacksmith whose work including forging axes, Lount’s trade was invaluable to new settlers, as an axe was essential in the bush. He was generous to the Indians, some of whom came to Toronto to try and save him when he was under sentence in jail. Some of Lount’s work is displayed at Sharon Temple, including an axe he would have fashioned for neighbours. Early in the summer of 1837, along with William Lyon Mackenzie, Jesse Lloyd and others, Lount helped to organize Reform Union Branch No. 1. It was a political party with a mass public membership, instead of reserving political membership to an elite group. Lloyd raised a force of some 2000 and Lount trained farmers in the use of arms and to march in an organized form. Peter Matthews, a prominent farmer in the Pickering area and father of 15 children, together with Lount (who had eight children) were Mackenzie’s chief military lieutenants during the Rebellion. Both were executed 12 April 1838 and are buried in the Necropolis, Toronto. It was a measure of the times that Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson, who had strongly opposed Lount’s election to the assembly, presided at the trials of both Lount and Matthews and pronounced the death sentence.

Lount left behind him a poem entitled “Samuel Lount’s Farewell”. The first verse reads:

Oh! All my friends and kindred dear,

Read o’er my sorrows with a tear;

Though all my foes may strive to stain

There is great honour in my name.