Abigail Becker (original) (raw)

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Canadian woman credited with saving the lives of seventeen people across five unique incidents.

Abigail Becker
Becker depicted c. 1856
Born Abigail JacksonMarch 14, 1830 or 1831Portland Township, Frontenac County, Upper Canada
Died March 21, 1905(1905-03-21) (aged 75)Walsingham Township, Norfolk County, Ontario
Burial place Simcoe, Ontario
Other names The Angel of Long Point
Spouses Jeremiah Becker ​ ​(m. 1848; died 1864)​ Henry Rohrer ​(before 1870)​
Children 17 (11 biological)

Abigail Becker, the Angel of Long Point.

Becker wearing her medal.

Abigail Becker (née Jackson, 1830 or 1831 to 1905), known as the Angel of Long Point, was a Canadian woman credited with saving the lives of numerous people. This included two who had fallen down wells in separate events and sailors caught in storms along the shores of Long Point on Lake Erie from three different shipwrecks, risking her life multiple times. She was an impoverished farmer and trapper, raised six children as stepmother, had eleven more biological children, and saved the lives of seventeen people in her lifetime. She was honored by the Government of Canada, Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, and ultimately ran her own successful farmstead.

Abigail was born on March 14, 1830 or 1831 based on conflicting reports, in Portland Township, Frontenac County, Upper Canada.[1][2] Her parents were Elijah Jackson, a United Empire Loyalist and Dutch immigrant to New York in the United States of America who migrated north to Canada, and the French-Canadian Marie Grozaine.[2] Noted for her stature and athleticism, Abigail stood six feet tall by the time she was a teenager.[3] In her youth, Abigail twice saved the lives of people in separate incidents: a child and a man, who had both fallen down wells, and she rescued both.[4]

After marrying the widower Jeremiah Becker at age seventeen and taking on the care of his six children, she settled in his extremely remote wilderness trapper's cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie.[5] Becker hunted muskrats and sold the skins to sailors or boaters who happened by his home, eking out a subsistence living.[6] Abigail kept the home and would go on hunting and trapping expeditions with Jeremiah, helping prepare the skins.[6] They rarely saw or met visitors in their isolation.[6]

The Angel of Long Point

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Prior to November 23, 1854, Jeremiah had traveled to the mainland to sell his pelts and buy winter supplies for the family, leaving Abigail, their children, and a lone keeper at the Old Cut Lighthouse as the only people reportedly on the island.[2][6] 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.[6] The crew had clung to the frozen rigging in the darkness throughout the night until sunrise seven hours later, throughout the storm.[4]

At sunrise with the storm raging, Abigail came to the shore for a bucket of water, and found the grounded Conductor with her trapped sailors two hundred yards off the coast.[1][5] 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.[6] Near sunset, there was a small break in the storm, with the sailors having been trapped nearly a day.[6] Despite her inability to swim, she waded chin-high into the storm and water to help the stricken sailors reach shore.[1] Abigail had to physically carry several of the trapped sailors through the icy and stormy water, which reached her shoulders as she worked.[4][1] She repeatedly entered the rough waters to save them one by one, having to save several twice, after undertows swept them back out further into the storm.[4][6] 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.[5] 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.[5] 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 was not known widely, or reportedly at all soon afterward, until a retired lake ship captain from Buffalo named E.P. Dorr traveled near Long Point Island to research the fate of the ship.[3] Dorr met another lake ship captain and the keepers at the Old Cut Lighthouse, who told him of the rescue.[6][3] Visiting the Becker cabin, Dorr found the poverty they lived in, with the entire family barefoot and cold.[6] When he thanked Abigail for her actions, she replied, "I don't know as I did more ’n I'd ought to, nor more ’n I'd do again."[6] In his appreciation, Dorr sent the family clothing and other supplies upon his return to Buffalo, and began to spread the story of Conductor's rescue by Abigail.[6]

In another incident, four sailors arrived at the door of the Beckers' cabin, in the midst of a severe fall gale and snowstorm. Apparently they were only four of six survivors from a schooner that had gone ashore during the night, but two of them had given up and collapsed a mile or so from the cabin. Abigail invited the four in to warm up by the fire, and then set off in the snowstorm with two of her boys and some warm clothing, to find the other survivors. Miraculously, despite the severity of the storm and resulting limited visibility, she was able to locate the two and coerced them to get up and go on, practically pushing them back to her cabin. All six crewmembers were saved.[2][7]

During another late autumn gale, a schooner laden with barley went ashore near the Becker cabin. 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. One morning one of Abigail's daughter's came running back to the cabin crying, "Mother! Mother! There's a woman in the schooner waving her arms at me!" Abigail, not really believing her child, went to investigate anyway. She peered down the open hatch of the wreck to find the cook, floating upright, her arms waving gently as the level changed with the heave of the seas through the broken hull, and was rescued by Abigail. The woman had been swept overboard and presumed lost by her crew.[7]

Abigail was rewarded $535 for her efforts, raised by merchants and sailors from Buffalo, but had to involve law enforcement to collect the money after her reward found it's way to the hands of a customs official in Port Rowan and did not reach her.[4] The New York Life Saving Benevolent Association struck a gold medal in Abigail's honor, and the Royal Humane Society did likewise.[7] Abigail's actions were celebrated by the Canadian Parliament while meeting in Quebec City, and a motion was passed granting her family 100 acres of land in Norfolk County in thanks.[3] Then Governor General of Canada, John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, also praised Abigail and mailed her directly.[1] When on a duck-hunting trip to Long Point in 1860, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), made a point to meet with Abigail to present her with a gift.[2][7] Queen Victoria sent her a handwritten letter of congratulations and £50 as a reward.[2] Abigail was offered a large amount of money to tour the United States for performances, but she declined, not wanting to be 'exhibited'.[2]

Their cabin and modest farm on Long Point was challenging to work. Abigail was repeatedly injured, being thrown down by a horse and breaking her foot; and her arms were broken four times where she had to set them herself.[4] The Beckers eventually left the wilderness and isolation of Long Point, using her rewards to finance the construction of a farm in the hamlet of North Walsingham, on the land gifted her family previously by the Canadian Parliament.[3][4] Jeremiah Becker was not a farmer, and the farmstead struggled. One of her sons drowned in Port Rowan Bay.[4] Later, Jeremiah returned to Long Point on trapping and fishing trips to raise money for the family. On one trip south, Jeremiah died in January 1864 to a storm on the lake. Abigail was thirty-three years old, and raised their children alone.[4]

Abigail later married Henry Rohrer with whom she had three more daughters.[7] She died in 1905, aged seventy-five, and was laid to rest at Oakwood Cemetery in Simcoe, Ontario. Abigail was buried with her medals and a Bible gifted to her decades prior by Captain Dorr.[3]

The Abigail Becker Ward was established at Simcoe Town Hospital, now Norfolk General Hospital, where her portrait hangs.[3] Several songs and poems were written about Abigail Becker, and Abigail Becker Parkway on Long Point was named for her. The Abigail Becker Conservation Area today encompasses the area where her family farm stood in Norfolk County.[1] On September 10, 1958, a plaque honoring Abigail as the "Heroine of Long Point" was placed by the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario at Port Rowan.[2] Relics from Abigail's life are displayed in the Eva Brook Donly Museum of Art and Antiques in Simcoe.[2]

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g 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.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Calvert, B.D., Rev. R. (1899). The Story of Abigail Becker (PDF). William Briggs, Toronto. ASIN B07QYZYDNH.
  5. ^ a b c d 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.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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.
  7. ^ a b c d e Boyer, Dwight (1971). True Tales of the Great Lakes. Dodd, Mead & Co. ISBN 9780396063728.