SM
Nathaniel Burr and Margaret Graham. Also great-great grandparents of the author.
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The lineage: William Burr, son of Margaret and Nathaniel, married Isabella Davis, daughter of Squire Davis (of the Kanien'kehaka and Onyota'a:ka) and Jennet Ferguson.
Nathaniel Burr was the uncle of the notorious thug and murderer Robert Burr, leader of the Markham Gang. See Paul Arculus' book Mayhem to Murder The History of the Markham Gang: Organized Crime in Canada West During the 1840s
Bruce Emerson Hill's The Grand River Navigation Company and Paul Arculus's Mayhem to Murder The History of the Markham Gang: Organized Crime in Canada West During the 1840s should be on every senior high school's Canadian history curriculum, but no. In Hill's case, a great Indigenous injustice stays alive only because a small historical foundation keeps reprinting this lonely little book - a lonely little book of enormous historical import.
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To learn more about the Grand River Navigation scandal, the Markham gang, and the official clearance of "coloureds" from Brantford, Ontario, and pioneer life in the 1840s, see Sky Walker
Tehawennihárhos, the Mohawk trilogy. Your local library may have Book 1 on audio.
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"But there were aspects of white culture that [Thayendanegea] Joseph Brant shunned. ...He was well aware that among whites the laws could often be manipulated or bypassed by the powerful and that 'estates of widows and orphans' could be 'devoured by enterprising sharpers' – a thing that never happened among Indians."
Unfortunately, nothing went from Thayendanegea's lips to Shakoyen·kwaráhton's ears.
