Battle of Stoney Creek

After Fort George fell in late May 1813, about 3,500 American troops chased the retreating British west along Lake Ontario and camped for the night at the Gage family homestead in Stoney Creek. They were confident — the British were supposed to be finished. Lt.-Col. John Harvey disagreed. He had personally scouted the American camp, and around 11:30 p.m. on June 5 he marched out of Burlington Heights with just 700 regulars of the 8th and 49th Regiments of Foot. They reached the sleeping camp around 2 a.m. on June 6 — bayonets fixed, in near-total darkness — and what followed was chaos: both sides firing at muzzle flashes, shouted orders swallowed by the dark. The 49th's bayonet charge overran the American artillery on the knoll and captured two generals before dawn. The attack broke the American offensive: the invaders fell back to Forty Mile Creek and then to Fort George, and the British re-established their position on the Niagara frontier. Exactly how it unfolded in the dark is still debated — night actions always are — but the outcome isn't: 3,500 men advanced, 700 stopped them, and the 1813 invasion of Upper Canada ended right here.

The Billy Green story has a real core — the countersign he carried was “Wil-Hen-Har,” for American Major General William Henry Harrison — but the Paul Revere version is legend. Harvey had already scouted the American camp himself at sunset, and the Stoney Creek Historical Society's own researchers still argue about how much Green's ride actually mattered.

Two of the strangest prisoners of the War of 1812 were taken on a dark hillside in Stoney Creek. Brigadier-Generals William H. Winder and John Chandler were commanding the American camp when Harvey's attack hit — and in the pitch-dark confusion, both men wandered straight into the British line, apparently believing it was their own. They were captured before dawn on June 6. Winder, a Maryland lawyer commissioned in 1812, was held until a prisoner exchange freed him in 1814. His war wasn't over: he was given command of the Tenth Military District, and on August 24, 1814, he led the American forces at Bladensburg, Maryland — the disastrous defeat that opened the road to Washington and the burning of its public buildings. He was court-martialled afterwards and acquitted, dying in Baltimore in 1824. Chandler, a Revolutionary War veteran from Massachusetts, was likewise exchanged in 1814 — and traded the battlefield for the statehouse. He became the first president of the Maine Senate, then a U.S. senator from 1820 to 1829, before resigning to become Portland's customs collector. A Revolutionary, a prisoner, a senator — all because he walked the wrong way in the dark.

Battlefield House wasn't built for history — it was built by a widow starting over. Mary Jones Gage came up from New York State in 1789 with her children James and Elizabeth, after her husband was killed in the Revolutionary War. The frame house went up in 1796, grew to two storeys around 1830, and the farm became one of the most valuable in Saltfleet Township. Then, in 1813, the battle happened around it. By 1899 the old house was in danger of being forgotten — until Sara Calder, a Gage descendant, broke away from the Wentworth Historical Society, formed the Women's Wentworth Historical Society, and bought the house and four and a half acres by public subscription. It opened as a public park on October 21, 1899. Then came the bigger project: a 100-foot monument on the hill south of the house — the first sod turned by Lady Grey in 1908, the cornerstone laid by General Sir John French in 1909, and the unveiling on June 6, 1913, by Queen Mary pressing a button in Buckingham Palace. One correction worth making: the Gage house didn't serve as the field hospital. A Hamilton Historical Board marker identifies a 1794 frame building beside the neighbouring Nash-Jackson house — moved to Battlefield Park in 1999 — as the actual hospital, demolished in 1910.

Did the Battle of Stoney Creek save Upper Canada? The official plaque on this site is carefully worded: Harvey's night attack 'halted the American advance and allowed the British to re-establish their position on the Niagara frontier.' A real, limited claim — and a true one. The Americans never advanced that far into the Niagara Peninsula again. Tourism Hamilton goes considerably bigger: the British victory 'was crucial in preventing the Americans from seizing Upper Canada,' and the battle was 'the turning point of the War of 1812.' So which is it? Most likely somewhere in between. Stoney Creek did break the American offensive of 1813 — a 3,500-strong invasion force ended the campaign in retreat. But 'turning point of the whole war' is the kind of thing a town understandably puts on its festival posters. The cautious version is probably the truer one: one decisive night that ended one invasion. The grand claims came later, from the people who needed heroes.