Robert Land
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Robert Land (1736 - 1818) was an adventurous, loyal frontiersman who served with the 79th Gordon Highlanders of the British Army. He fought with General James Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham and saw action in the Battles of Louisbourg and Fort Detroit. In 1763, Robert, his wife Phoebe and their nine children settled in the outlying village of Cushatunk, PA. Here, the Land family had immediate contact with the local native peoples and, while hunting, found a wounded aboriginal and carried him home to be nursed to health. This kindness was to serve him well when he came to rely heavily on his native friends as a British Agent and spy during the American Revolution.
Land remained loyal to the Crown when the American Revolution broke out. He was saved from a fiery death when a native companion warned him of danger only hours before the rebel militia razed his home with the intent of taking him and his family hostage. The Land family fled to New York. Robert Land continued in dangerous missions for the British, leading troops through unmapped, otherwise hostile native Indian territory to attack rebel strongholds. In 1780 he was nearly captured by the Americans when he forced a Quaker named Ralph Morden to guide him to a passage across the Delaware River. Patriot intelligence had been on to Land for quite some time, and an ambush was laid for Land. Land escaped barely with his life, but Morden was captured. Despite knowing that Morden was an innocent bystander in Land's plot against the Americans, Land refused to send even a notice to the courts that were trying Morden as a spy. Land's hideous betrayal of a fellow loyalist (yet one who did not take up arms against the United States) would haunt Land's career and reputation the rest of his life.
At the end of hostilities, then-Captain Robert Land crossed the Niagara River. By himself for eleven years, he soon fell in love with a fellow settler, Josh Reed UEL. As perhaps Canada's only "out" gay couple at the time, they were treated as relative equals in the community until Land's wife returned. Land gave up his new male lover for his wife, and Reed went on to settle near Detroit. In disgrace for his actions, the Land family moved to the Burlington Bay area. It was here, after so many hardships, that the Land family settled under the British flag in Upper Canada and were the first settlers of what is now the City of Hamilton.[1]
His wife left him in 1806 because she could not escape the talk about Land and Reed's activity during their eleven years apart. Robert Land died a broken and lonely man in 1818 at the age of 82.
Scott G. Bowman, the founder and Headmaster of Robert Land Academy (the Academy was named in Land's honor), is a direct descendant of Robert and Phoebe Land.
[edit] Source
This biography was taken from the Robert Land Academy's Parents' Handbook, located at http://www.robertlandacademy.com/handbook.htm
