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January 19, 2015

Fenian Raids 1866 Meeting of Committee of Safety Online

Fenian Raids 1866 Meeting of Committee of Safety Online
The minutes of the Committee of Safety were found by Barbara Wilson Smith, a descendant of Isaac P. Willson (Secretary of the meeting). These unpublished and previously unknown documents from 1866 (6 numbered legal size pages plus 3 unnumbered letter size!)  had sat in an attic for over 130 years. 

They turned out to be the minutes of a 17 hour meeting (beginning at 5 p.m. June 1st, ending at 10 a.m. June 2) in the Welland area of Ontario in the 24 hours preceding the Battle of Ridgeway

These are extremely important historical documents from the Fenian Raids. 

See the full documents at Committee of Safety Meeting page on Olive Tree Genealogy website. These include 2 pdf files of the Committee Meeting of Safety and the list of men in the Volunteer Patrol Guards. 





1 comment:

Amy Floto said...

Thank you for posting these records. I want to learn all I can about the Fenian Raids of 1866. They played a very important part in my family history. My 3rd great-grandma and her French immigrant parents were living in the Welland area when they occurred. They fled in the middle of the night and hid in a cranberry bog. They hid their money in a tin can and almost didn't find it again! Eventually they made their way to Iowa to start over. We were confused for many years because my great-grandma wrote in a history that the "Finns" had attacked, but I finally did some research and figured out it was Fenians!