Zimmerman- Somerville

Nancy (Stewart) Kavuk just sent me this picture along with a story. Click here to see it. In the picture are Edith Ellen (Gram) Somerville with her mother Nancy (Hall) Zimmerman and Hazel (left), Jean (right), and Norma as a baby. Click "read the whole story" to read the story.

Following received from Alex Cooke, Halton Regional Museum, in Milton Ontario, Canada---(I copied it from Webb/Bolling Family, Dorothy Webb web page Ancestry .com)

In the latter part of August 1793 a group of families loyal to the English crown, left Paulins Kill Creek in Knowlton Township, Warren County, New Jersey, to undertake the five hundred mile journey to Upper Canada by covered wagon. This journey was to take them six weeks, and to see them face a Canadian winter with little enough time to make adequate preparation.
Among those who came, was Peter Zimmerman, a man who was already fifty-one years of age, with nine children. His oldest son Adam, although only eighteen, petitioned for land along with his father. The youngest, Elizabeth was a baby only four months old. His wife Margaret needed the courage typical of the pioneers, to bring her family over rough trails in a farm wagon.
Of that early journey probably the only item that remains, is a dinner horn made of a large sea shell, carried on the front of the covered wagon. This shell was later given to a son, James. It passed from James to his son Peter J. to his son James, to his daughter Eliza, and from her to her sister Fedora's son James Bain in Cameron Texas, where it still remained in 1960.
The party, consisting of John Linnaberry, Chirstopher Linnaberry, Adam Fris, George Book, William Mingle, and James Dawdy Junior, as well as the Zimmermans arrived safely and "pitched" upon a piece of land between the Twenty Mile Creek and the place commonly called the "Hurricane" - part of a tract called the Upper Settlement on the Twenty Mile Creed in Lincoln County, just south of Beamsville, Ontario. It was, no doubt, a winter of considerable hardship, but the following spring on the 28th of June, they petitioned John Graves Simcoe, the Lieutenant Governor, for 200 acres of land each. Their petition was granted and they settled down to make their farms.
Peter settled on Lot 15 Con. 9. In May of 1797 he petitioned for more land because his location was, in his words, "too small for so large a family." By this time there was another baby, little Mary Ann. However, this petition was not granted. (Note Henry was the last born in Halton )
On July 1st 1798, Peter welcomed his younger brother Mattias (Tice) to Canada. Matthias and his wife Mary nee Snyder brought with them their six children. Like Peter, they had named their eldest son Adam. This Adam was 12 years old and their youngest, Joseph, was only two. The rest of their children would be born here.
Matthias was 12 years younger than Peter, and was a soldier. In August 1777 he was a private in the 5th Battalion of the New Jersey Volunteers. From 7th May 1778 to 1780 he was a private in the 1`st Battalion, and from 11th Sept. 1780 until his discharge on 3rd Sept. 1783 he was a corporal in the 1st Battalion.
We wonder why he tarried so long in the U.S.A. when United Empire Loyalists were so badly treated. Whatever the reason, he lost no time in petitioning for land as a military claimant as soon as he arrived here. As a dowdier he could claim 400 acres, twice as much as Peter had received. The land he received was not in the Beamsville area, but consisted of "the broken lot #25 in the broken front upon Lake Ontario in the township of Trafalgar, 136 acres, and Lot 9 and the front part of lot 10, Con. 4 in Uxbridge Township, 264 acres. He and Adam (probably Peter's son Adam) cleared 5 acres of land on Lot #25 and fenced it. They built a frame house, 18 feet by 20 feet, and made declaration of it before Robert Nelles on the 6th day of Nov. 1809. But there is no evidence that Tice ever lived on that land. He seems to have spent the rest of his life on lot #21 and 22 Con. 2 in Clinton.