Abigail Becker | |
|---|---|
 Becker depicted c. 1856 | |
| Born | Abigail Jackson (1830-03-14)March 14, 1830, or(1831-03-14)March 14, 1831 |
| Died | March 21, 1905(1905-03-21) (aged 75) Walsingham Township, Norfolk County, Ontario |
| Burial place | Simcoe, Ontario |
| Other names | The Angel of Long Point |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Rescuing seventeen people over five different events |
| Spouses |
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| Children | 19 (11 biological, 6 step-children, 2 adopted) |
Abigail Becker (née Jackson; 1830 or 1831–1905), known as theAngel of Long Point, was aCanadian farmer and trapper who saved the lives of seventeen people across five unique incidents. These included rescuing two individuals who had fallen down separatewells when Becker was a child, and later as an adult, sailors caught in storms along the shores ofLong Point onLake Erie during three differentshipwrecks. She ran afarmstead inOntario and raised nineteen children: eleven biological children, six step-children, and two that were adopted.
Becker was recognized for acts of bravery and risking her life multiple times in hazardous conditions. She received national and international honors, including awards from theGovernment of Canada,Queen Victoria, andKing Edward VII. Becker remains widely known as the Angel of Long Point.
Abigail Jackson was born on March 14, 1830, inPortland Township, Frontenac County,Upper Canada.[1] Other sources give March 14, 1831, for the same place of birth.[2]: 1 Her father, Elijah Jackson, was aUnited Empire Loyalist and aDutch immigrant toNew York who later settled inCanada, while her mother, Marie Grozaine, wasFrench-Canadian.[2]: 1
Becker was noted for her height, reportedly standing 180 cm (6 ft) tall as a teenager.[3] In her youth, she twice rescued people fromwells: first pulling a child from a deep shaft, and later hauling a man to safety from another well.[4]: 10 At age 17, she married Jeremiah Becker, a widower with six children who was a trapper fromLong Point, Ontario, in 1848.[1]
The Beckers lived in poverty, isolated on Long Point, with little access to supplies beyond what Jeremiah could carry from the mainland.[2]: 1 Abigail joined her husband Jeremiah in trapping muskrats on Long Point and helped prepare the skins for sale.[3] Jeremiah sold skins to boatmen and small-craft skippers who occasionally landed on the island, sustaining the family in near-total isolation.[5] They rarely saw or met visitors.[5] Prior to November 23, 1854, Jeremiah Becker had traveled to the mainland to sell pelts and purchase winter supplies for the family.[2]: 2 At that time, only Abigail, her children, and the Old Cut Lighthouse keeper were reportedly on the island.[5]
Long Point was known for shipwrecks; according to one tally, as many as seven vessels were lost off its shores in 1851.[6]: 97 Ships and lives were regularly lost to violent fall storms in the area; historianDwight Boyer wrote that ships who pressed into the rough autumn storms "usually left their bones, and sometimes those of their people, on the Point forever."[6]: 97
On November 22–23, 1854, theBuffalo-basedschoonerConductor, laden with grains, sailed past Long Point and ran aground in a storm around midnight en route toPort Dalhousie.[5] The crew clung to the frozen rigging in the darkness throughout the stormy night, until the sun rose seven hours later.[4]: 6 In the early afternoon, as the blizzard began to clear, Becker came upon the wreckedConductor grounded roughly two hundred metres/yards from shore, its crew still trapped in the rigging.[7]
Abigail built a fire on the beach with her children and spent most of the day shouting over the storm, trying to coax the sailors to shore.[5] Just at nightfall there was a slight break in the storm.[5] Despite being unable to swim, Becker waded shoulder-deep into the icy lake to assist the stranded crew, coaxing them to leave the rigging and make for shore.[1] In B.D. Calvert'sThe Story of Abigail Becker (1899), Becker's stepdaughter Margaret Wheeler (née Becker) described the crew as weakened by cold, with several needing her mother's help to reach shore and recover by the fire.[4]: 6–7
Becker repeatedly entered the crashing waves to reach struggling men. At one point, she rescued both the ship's mate and her own disabled son who attempted to assist, after both men were swept underwater, pulling them out together and staggering up the beach with them.[4]: 6 Roy F. Fleming of theNational Museum of the Great Lakes recounted that Becker rescued the sailors successively, even re-entering the surf to save men pulled back by theundertow.[3] One sailor, who like Abigail could not swim, was the last to be rescued and had lashed himself to the rigging to avoid drowning and being swept away in the storm.[7] Abigail with some of the recovering crew finally created a makeshift raft of wood from the wreck of theConductor, reached the last sailor, and saved him.[7] The storm continued for four days, with the eight-personConductor crew stranded at the Becker homestead until Jeremiah returned.[2]: 2
The rescue of theConductor crew went unreported until retired Buffalo lake ship captain E. P. Dorr investigated the wreck near Long Point Island.[3] Dorr spoke with another lake ship captain, who recounted the rescue of theConductor's crew.[5] He also spoke with the keepers of the Old Cut Lighthouse, who shared the same account of Abigail Becker's actions.[3] When Dorr visited the Becker cabin, he found the family living in poverty, all barefoot and thinly clothed for the cold winter.[5] On being thanked, Becker replied, "I don't know as I did more 'n I'd ought to, nor more 'n I'd do again."[5] In gratitude, Dorr sent clothing and supplies to the family and publicized her actions among Great Lakes sailors.[5]
Fleming attributed Becker's identity and naming as the "Angel of Long Point" to the sailors she rescued in 1851.[3] They said to Becker upon their departure from Long Point, "...to you, the Guardian Angel of Long Point Bay, we owe our lives."[3]
In another incident, four sailors reached the Becker cabin during a severe snowstorm after their ship had wrecked nearby.[4]: 11 They were only four of six survivors from a schooner wrecked the previous night; the other two had collapsed about a mile away.[6]: 92 Becker welcomed the men to warm themselves by the fire, then set out into the storm with two of her sons and spare clothing to find the missing pair.[6]: 92 She found the missing sailors in the storm and persuaded them to return, ensuring that all six crew members survived.[4]: 11
During another late autumn gale, a schooner laden with barley went ashore near the Becker cabin.[6]: 92 All hands were rescued and safely came to shore on their own.[6]: 92 They were cared for by the Beckers, except for the cook, a woman, who went unaccounted for.[6]: 92 One morning, one of Becker's daughters ran to the cabin, crying, "Mother! Mother! there's a woman in the schooner waving her arms at me!".[6]: 92 Though she did not initially believe the child, Becker went to investigate anyway.[6]: 92–93 She found the schooner's cook alive in the wreck after she had been presumed lost by the crew.[6]: 92–93
Abigail was awarded $535 ($18,723 in2024) by merchants and sailors from Buffalo, but had to involve law enforcement to recover the funds after a customs official inPort Rowan diverted the money.[4]: 8 The New York Life Saving Benevolent Association struck a gold medal in her honour, and theRoyal Humane Society awarded her a medal as well.[6]: 95 While meeting inQuebec City, theCanadian Parliament passed a motion granting her family forty hectares (100 acres) of land in Norfolk County as a token of gratitude.[3]
TheGovernor General of Canada,John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, sent her a personal letter of commendation.[1] In 1860, thePrince of Wales (laterKing Edward VII), while visiting Long Point on a duck‑hunting expedition, presented her with a gift.[2]: 3 Queen Victoria sent her a handwritten letter of congratulations and £50 (equivalent to £5,932 in 2023).[2]: 3 She was offered money to tour the United States but declined, not wishing to be exhibited.[2]: 3 On receiving public recognition, Becker typically dismissed praise, saying, "I only did my duty as any other would have done."[6]: 95
The Becker family's cabin and small farm on Long Point proved difficult to maintain. Abigail was frequently injured: once thrown by a horse, breaking her foot, and on four separate occasions she broke an arm and set it herself.[4]: 10 She eventually left Long Point and settled with her family on a farm nearNorth Walsingham, purchased in part with reward money presented in Buffalo, including a gold medal and a $1,000 ($34,996 in2024) purse from the New York Life Saving Association.[3] Becker used the funds to acquire a twenty-hectare (50-acre) property but was forced to go to court to obtain the promised payment, ultimately receiving only $535 of the $550 ($19,248 in2024) collected.[4]: 8 Despite the financial strain, she worked to sustain and improve the homestead through her own labor.[4]: 8–9
Jeremiah, untrained in agriculture, struggled with the land, and the holding soon declined.[4]: 96 Tragedy followed when one of their sons drowned in Port Rowan Bay.[4]: 9 Jeremiah later returned to trapping and fishing expeditions on Long Point.[4]: 9 In January 1864, Jeremiah fled rising waters during a winter gale on foot.[6]: 96 He perished from exposure; his body was found three months later.[6]: 96 Abigail was left to raise their children alone.[4]: 9–10
She later married Henry Rohrer, with whom she had three additional daughters.[6]: 96 Over the years, she adopted and raised two more children, raising a total of nineteen children.[6]: 96 Abigail lived the remainder of her life in Walsingham Township, remaining on the farm she had been granted and building a household there with her second husband.[2]: 1 After the hardships of her early life, Becker lived out her later years in modest prosperity.[3]
Becker died on 21 March 1905 at the age of seventy-five, was honored with a civil funeral, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery,Simcoe, Ontario.[2]: 5 [3] She was interred wearing her medals, with the Bible gifted decades earlier by Captain Dorr placed beside her.[3]
The Abigail Becker Ward was established at Simcoe Town Hospital—nowNorfolk General Hospital—where her portrait hangs.[3][8] Abigail Becker Parkway on Long Point, as well as a parking lot, bear her name.[8] The Abigail Becker Conservation Area includes part of the land where her family farm once stood in Norfolk County.[1]
On 10 September 1958, a plaque honouring Becker as the "Heroine of Long Point" was placed by the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario atPort Rowan.[2]: 5 Relics from Becker's life are displayed in theEva Brook Donly Museum of Art and Antiques in Simcoe.[2]: 5 Becker has been part of an exhibit at theSmithsonian Institute.[9]
Songs and poems have been written about Becker.[9] Poet and inventorAmanda T. Jones wrote in her poemAbigail Becker:[3]
Sped Mother Becker, 'Children, wake;
A ship's gone down, they're needing me;
Your father's off on shore; the lake
Is just a raging sea'She sought the men, she sought them far,
Three fathoms down she gripped them tight,
With both together up the bar
She staggered into sight.
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