Joseph Willcocks-- Part 1: The Benedict Arnold of Upper Canada?

In the last post I mentioned that Joseph Willcocks and Stephen Champlin are buried in Buffalo, New York's Forest Lawn Cemetery with a lot of other notables.

I have also already written about Stephen Champlin and Joseph Willcocks, just click on their name labels below to see what I wrote.  But I haven;'t covered Willcocks as well a Champlin, so here goes.

From Wikipedia.

JOSEPH WILLCOCKS

(1773- September 4, 1814)

Was a publisher, political figure and ultimately, a traitor to Upper Canada.

Born in Palmerstown, Ireland, and came to York, Upper Canada, at age 27.  Once there, he lived with a distant cousin and fell in love with that cousin's half-sister and there was a bit of family problems over that.  Forced to move out, he moved in with Chief Justice Henry Allcock which proved good for his career.

He became sheriff of the Home District and then got into politics.  But some question arose about that and he was removed.  After that he moved to Niagara and began publishing a newspaper and used that to get elected to Upper Canada's Parliament and was later jailed for contempt.

On release, he was later reelected and he and a group resisted the efforts of Isaac Brock, British administrator, to prepare for a possible war with the United States.

And, the war had not even begun yet.

An Interesting Character.  --Brock-Perry