Mary's friends

[Leon Greene]

(04-13-2017 08:17 AM)L Verge Wrote:  There is some historical story related to St. Catherines during the Civil War, but I can't remember what it is. A now-deceased member of the Surratt Society told me about it, but that was about 25 years ago -- like much of my brain, it is now gone with the wind.

St. Catharines played a few roles before and during the Civil War, in addition to being a health spa.

Clement Claiborne Clay, a lawyer and former United States Senator from Alabama, used St. Catharines as his base of operations for the "Canadian Confederacy." Clay was a close friend and confidant to Jefferson Davis, and Davis gave Clay a post in the spring of 1864 to be one of the "Canadian Commissioners," the other major Commissioner being Jacob Thompson. Though Thompson and Clay were unofficially the co-directors of the Canadian Confederate activity, Thompson was clearly the leader. Thompson worked out of Toronto, while Clay centered his activity along the border at the town of St. Catharines. These two men worked poorly together, so the geographic distance between them was an advantage. Perhaps Clay chose St. Catharines because he himself suffered ill health (asthma, mostly), and he utilized the spas at St. Catharines for his treatments.

Another story emanating from St. Catharines involved the meeting between Godfrey Joseph Hyams and Dr. Luke Pryor Blackburn, the co-conspirators in the plot to introduce yellow fever into the North in 1864 and 1865. Hyams had depleted all of the funds available to him for the germ warfare enterprise, and he returned to Canada from Baltimore, where he had stored the trunks allegedly filled with articles of clothing and bedding contaminated with yellow fever. His trip seeking more funding took him aboard the ship Silver Spray to St. Catharines to meet with Blackburn. There Hyams received a small infusion of cash to continue their diabolical plot.

Or perhaps you're remembering that Harriet Tubman used St. Catharines as a base of operations for the Underground Railroad in the 1850's. The people and churches in St. Catharines were welcoming to the escaping slaves from across the border.