Samuel Hughes (Quaker)

Samuel Hughes (4 February 1785 – 11 December 1856) was a prominent member of the Children of Peace, a reform politician in Upper Canada, and the president of Canada's first farmers cooperative, the Farmers' Storehouse Company. After the Rebellions of 1837 he rejoined the Hicksite Quakers and became a minister of note.

Early life & immigration

Hughes was born in Catawissa, second son of noted Quaker minister Job Hughes and his second wife Eleanor Lee. In 1804-5, the extended family moved to Upper Canada. Two daughters married Friends in the West Lake area; the remaining six children, including Samuel, all settled with their parents in the Yonge Street settlement, where they married and established their own farms and businesses. Job Hughes was the leading minister in the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting, and his wife Eleanor was an elder. Job died in 1810 on a trip to attend New York Yearly Meeting. Samuel Hughes was twenty years old when the family moved to Upper Canada. He was married for the first of three times in June 1811 to Sarah Webster, daughter of Abram and Anna Lundy Webster. Sarah died 24 December 1815.

He married secondly, Mary Doan, in 1819, daughter of Ebenezer Sr. and Anna Savilla Sloy Doan born 7 December 1762, died childless on 5 April 1827. He married lastly, Anna Armitage, daughter of Amos and Martha Doan Armitage, widow of Isaac Wiggins, and niece of his second wife on 21 June 1829.

The Children of Peace

Main article: The Children of Peace

The Temple of the Children of Peace, Sharon

The Farmers' Storehouse Company

Main article: Farmers' Storehouse Company

Fish Market, Toronto, 1838 with Farmers' Storehouse in the background

Reform politician

Main article: The Reform Movement (Upper Canada)

Samuel’s First political participation came in August 1831, in a public meeting of 150 to 200 people for the township of East Gwillimbury held in the “chapel” of the Children of Peace. The meeting was one of a series organized by Mackenzie that summer to petition the British parliament to address a number of abuses. Samuel was elected one of five members of a committee to prepare the petition, seeks signatures, and correspond with other township committees on the matter.

Upper Canada Central Political Union

A public meeting was called on the 5th of June in Newmarket to establish a second branch of the Central Political Union - for the townships of Whitchurch, East Gwillimbury and Brock, the newly established Fourth Riding of the County of York. Samuel Hughes chaired the meeting, and William Reid was secretary; both were elders of the Children of Peace. This meeting, on a motion from Hughes, established “Committees of Vigilance” for each township in the riding, “to secure the return of an independent Member to the ensuing Parliament.” The use of committees of reformers to nominate candidates, rather than open nonpartisan public meetings, was innovative and led to the proposal for a district wide convention. These committee members met in Hope the next month to elect an executive for the riding. This ten member executive contained five members of the Children of Peace: Samuel Hughes was unanimously elected president, William Reid, secretary.

The Grand Convention

The members of the convention were not, however, so easily swayed by Willson’s call for a “permanent convention.” After the delegates had selected their candidates and prepared a ten point platform to which those candidates had to pledge themselves, Samuel Hughes “proposed that the convention should resolve to continue its sittings from time to time during the continuance of the next ensuing parliament, and proposed a Constitution for its adoption.” Although the original call for the convention had emphasized that once assembled, its members should assume the responsibility of nominating an executive to reconvene the convention for the next year, a majority of the delegates reacted negatively to Hughes’ proposed constitution, because they “had not been appointed for any such purpose, and that their power should cease would cease immediately after the next general election.”

The Canadian Alliance Society

The Children of Peace immediately formed a branch of the Canadian Alliance Society in January 1835, and elected Samuel Hughes its president. This branch met every two weeks during the parliamentary session to discuss the bills before the assembly. One of their more interesting proposals was to create a petitioning campaign for a written provincial constitution; Hughes was appointed to the committee. A constitution would be the means by which “the proceedings of our government may be bounded - the legislative council rendered elective, and the government and council made responsible - and that all Eccliastics be prohibited from holding seats in the council and that no officer of the government should be irresponsible.”

The Toronto Political Union & Rebellion of 1837

The second meeting of the renewed Political Union was called to order by Samuel Hughes three days later, on the 3rd of August in Newmarket. Mackenzie regaled the crowd for more than an hour, reviewing the complaints listed in the Declaration of the Toronto Reformers. Samuel Hughes proposed a motion which castigated “the conduct of Sir Francis Bond Head… for he has tampered with our rights at elections – disposed of many thousands of pounds of our revenue without our consent – and governed us by the strong hand of arbitrary and unconstitutional power – depreciating our currency, and pretending to maintain cash payments, while the Bank, immediately connected with his government, was flooding the colony with the notes of a Bankrupt Bank in another province.” The meeting appointed Hughes, Samuel Lount, Nelson Gorham, Silas Fletcher, Jeremiah Graham and John McIntosh, M.P.P. as delegates to the convention (and all, with the exception of Hughes and MacIntosh, leaders in the Rebellion); they also appointed 23 men to a “Committee of vigilance” to organize local political unions. David Willson then addressed the crowd, similarly attacking the “gross obstructions in the way of political improvement, or the administration of good government, equality, justice and peace.” The first of these obstructions was no less than the “principal magistrate, the King” who was “not possessed of that freedom and liberality of sentiment and expression, with which every impartial MONARCH or magistrate ought to be endued.”

Published work

A Vision Concerning the Desolation of Zion; or, The Fall of Religion Among the Quakers, set forth in a similitude or vision of the mind: particularly dedicated to the captives, or scattered tribes of that body, now commonly called Orthodox and Hicksites (W.H. Lawrence, Guardian Office, Toronto, 1835), 12 pp.

[Remarks on Intemperance] (W.J. Coates, Toronto, [1836]), 40 pp.

An Epistle to my Friends, and all that Love the Truth in Mariposa (Newmarket, n.d. [1846]), 8pp.

A warning to the Society of Friends everywhere (Printed at the Homestead Journal Office, Salem, Ohio, 1850), 8 pp.

To the Children and Youth of Friends’ Families, Constituting Yonge Street Monthly Meeting; and to all others in similar circumstances. (Enoch Harris, Mount Pleasant, Ohio, 1851), 8 pp.

Last Will and Testament of Samuel Hughes, on religious subjects. For Friends and relations everywhere (1856)