As a means of escaping the law, eating your arrest warrant wouldn’t seem a likely solution. Yet it happened, in 1859.
We’ll let Norman Robertson tell this strange story. It’s from his “History of the County of Bruce”, published by the Bruce County Historical Society. Norman was there when the posse left Kincardine.
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In the early summer of 1859 an incident took place that created quite a talk throughout the southern part of the county, although the centre of disturbance most of the time was just over the county line in Bentinck.
A mile and a quarter east of Hanover, on the Durham line, lived a family by the name of Campbell, in whose veins must have run the blood of those Highlanders whose joy it was to make raids and forays on the lowlands. Certain it is that in many ways they set law at defiance and terrorized the neighbourhood on both sides of the county line. With them were associated some young fellows, several brothers named Baillie, Andrew McFarlane, and Wm. McMahon.
In 1858 a span of horses belonging to McFarlane were found at Vesta and seized for debt, removed by the Division Court bailiff, J. Benson, and placed in the stables of a Walkerton Hotel.
McFarlane and the Campbells were determined to retake the horses, even if the seizure had been under authority of the court. So they broke into the stables one night and decamped with the horses.
This was followed by an order to arrest from Judge Cooper. George Simpson and Caleb Huyck were the constables to whom the warrant was given to execute.
Word of the coming of the constables had reached the ears of the Campbell gang, so when the constables were crossing the bridge at Hanover they surrounded them. Every one of the gang was well supplied with fire-arms.
The warrant was ordered to be produced and was immediately torn up; but there being a full sense of humour in the Campbells, they ordered Huyck to eat up the torn fragments. A sorry meal it was to partake of, but it was a case of eat or be shot.
A meal of paper is not one to be rapidly finished, and Huyck, like many a greedy boy when he has a chance at a pile of cakes, pocketed a part of his fare, and these parts of the torn and dismembered warrant were afterwards pasted together and produced at the trial of Colin Campbell at Goderich.
Such an open defiance of law startled the community, and the necessity for vigorous and prompt measures was felt. Judge Cooper directed that a posse of constables be collected, sufficient in number to enforce the execution of the warrant.
The writer remembers seeing a wagon starting for Walkerton from Kincardine filled with constables, each one with a rifle or shot gun. The posse of constables on arriving at Campbell’s (June 8th, 1859) surrounded the building and demanded the surrender of all in the house, seven men in all.
The reply was a prompt refusal, with a warning that if they did not leave the premises they must take the consequences. Defiantly the seven armed men stood at the windows, pointing their guns at any who came too near.
Mr. Jamieson, the magistrate in charge, endeavoured to point out the uselessness of resisting the law, but his reasoning had no weight with the Campbells, or McMahon, who was very wild.
Some excited constables set fire to the house, but the wiser and more sober-minded knew that they neither had authority to do so, or yet to be the first to open fire upon these defiers of the law; but a second time the flames were started, and this time the Campbells, to save being burnt to death, were forced to make a break for liberty.
They came out of the building holding their rifles at full cock ready to fire if touched. The great bulk of the constables thought it best to be out of the way, and sought shelter behind the house, leaving a number, too few, however, to attempt the task of arresting the gang as they rushed down the side-line to the woods for shelter.
Colin Campbell and another of the gang, William McMahon, while on the run were shot in the back with a charge of buck-shot. Being unable to obtain proper attention in the woods, Campbell gave himself up and was tried at Goderich at the next Assize, and sentenced to a term in the penitentiary.
That concludes Robertson’s account, but the story does not end there.
Colin Campbell (1833–1916) had settled with his brothers at Campbells Corners, in Bentinck Township, Grey County and opened a tavern there.
For his role in the chewed-up-warrant affair, Campbell was charged with horse stealing and assaulting a constable, and served his time in the Pen. He later moved to Manitoulin Island, where he was Reeve of Burpee Township for 21 years.
It so happened that Joseph Walker, founder of Walkerton and its first mayor, was “rather careless in his business methods”, as Robertson put it, and also moved to Manitoulin Island, in 1870. There he erected a grist mill at Sheguiandah, where his partner was none other than Colin Campbell.
For Dr. W.M. Brown’s fully embroidered version of this story see his book “The Queen’s Bush: A Tale of the Early Days of Bruce County”, available from the Bruce County Historical Society.
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By Robin Hilborn
for Bruce County Historical Society
