On the eve of the War of 1812, the British colony of Upper Canada was a sparsely settled frontier, with Kingston being the only settlement of more than 1,000 people. In fact, in 1806 the region which was to become Brantford and Brant County was described as “a howling wilderness.”
Joseph Brant and the Six Nations of the Grand River were established at Mohawk Village, founded after their arrival in the Grand River territory in 1784. By 1811, Six Nations and other groups who had joined them numbered fewer than 2,000 individuals. This area was just being opened up to white settlers who were arriving from previously settled regions such as Niagara, and from the new American Republic. By 1812, two thirds of Upper Canada’s population were actually Americans, many of whom who retained strong ties with the United States and moved easily back and forth across the border visiting family and conducting business.
(This painting, "Mohawk Village on the Grand River [1793]" is by Elizabeth Simcoe. Courtesy of the Archives of Ontario, F 47-11-1-0-109.)
The present day Brant County did not exist as such. The site of the modern city of Brantford, then known as Brant’s Fording Place, was undeveloped and as late as 1820 still had only approximately 100 residents, a few homes and several commercial establishments. The rural townships were actually surveyed and settled first, beginning with Burford Township, surveyed in 1793, followed by Oakland Township in 1796, and the Mount Pleasant Tract, surveyed in 1800.
As the threat of war increased some people, fearing attacks from south of the border, left the more vulnerable border regions and the lakeside region between Burlington and Lake Erie to move inland as far as the Grand River area. But even with this influx of new settlers before and during the war, the local communities remained relatively small.
The British civil and military leaders of Upper Canada had been concerned about the impact of American influence in the colony from the start. This uncertainty about the loyalty of the large American element of population was intensified by the war, leading General Isaac Brock in July 1812, to call for loyalty and support for the militia, declaring that the population lacked loyalty to the crown and “ a full belief possesses them all that this province must inevitably succumb.”