The French and Indian War lasted from 1754 to 1763 and was the North American phase of the Seven Years' War.
The first European settlements in Ontario were after the American Revolution when 5,000 loyalists left the new United States.
Hazard Wilcox, Sr. was born about 1746. He was the son of Edward Wilcox (1709-1774) and Mercy Robinson (1716-1746) of Exeter, Washington County, Rhode Island.
He married Mary Eunice Babcock around 1760 in Rhode Island.
Hazard and Eunice's children included:
Sarah Wilcox (1762, married Freeborn Watson),
Sabra Wilcox (1766, married Amos Wright and William Purdy),
William Wilcox (1769, married Sabra Fairfield),
and
Hazard Wilcox, Jr. (1775, married Sarah Seeley, daughter of Augustus Seeley).
Hazard and Eunice moved to the Hoosic Valley from Rhode Island after the end of the French and Indian War.
In 1771, Hazard received a grant of a twenty-one-year lease for four hundred acres in Albany, New York.
During the American Revolution he remained loyal to the crown.
Hazard died on February 14, 1780 at White Plains. He had been wounded nine days before.
On February 16, 1780 the Royal Gazette reported Hazard's death:
On Monday morning died of the wounds he received on the 3rd inst. in the attack on the rebels near the White Plains, Capt. Hazard Wilcox of the Royal Refugee Volunteers. Same evening his remains were interred, attended by a numerous acquaintance, who lamented the loss of this truly brave subject.
He was an inhabitant of the County of Albany, where he improved a valuable farm, on which the action of 1777, under the command of Col. Baum, happened, from whence he retreated with a number of loyalists who had escaped the fact of that day to Lieut. Gen. Burgoyne's camp, where he acted during that campaign as Captain of Pioneers, and after the convention retired to Canada, from whence he proceeded to this garrison by sea.
From the most early period of this rebellion, he manifested the most unshaken loyalty, and in many instances braved the insults of the rebels. Supported by feelings of conscious rectitude, he never repined or regretted at the sacrifices he made of his property: when public service required he was always ready to hazard his life in its promotion.
This disposition and ardor of his wish to suppress rebellion excited him to attach himself to the gallant corps of Mounted Refugees, under the command of Col. Deleancey [sic], when with the Royal Guard they charged a large body of rebels and routed them; in this attack he received three wounds, under which he languished nine days leaving a disconsolate widow and five orphans, who came to him a few hours before he received his wounds, and who, during his absence of near three years, had suffered every species of distress from the insulting rebel.
Eunice died in 1780.
In 1782 Hazard's estate was confiscated.
Their children were granted land in Canada because of his service.
Leeds County, Ontario, Canada was first surveyed in 1792 in preparation for the United Empire Loyalists settlers. In 1850, Leeds County merged with Grenville to create the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville.
The Petition of Sarah Willcox, wife of Hasard Willcox, of Loughborough in the Midland District, Yoeman, Humbly Shewith…That you Petitioner is the daughter of Augustus Seeley deceased, a U. E. Loyalist, that she is if the age of twenty one years, and that she has never received any land, or order for land from the Crown. Your Petitioner, therefore, prays your Excellency will be pleased to grant her 200 acres of the Wasteland of the Township of Earnest Town [now Bath] and permit William Willcox of the Twp of Earnest Town, Yeoman, to…take on this…when completed… Ernest Town, Jany 30th 1811…Sworn before me at Etnest Town …William Faifield JP William Willcox maketh oath and saith that she is the person she describes herself to be…signed by Wm. Willcox.
