Parshall Terry

Parshall Terry, U.E., (February 22, 1756 – July 20, 1808) was a political figure in Upper Canada.

Parshall Terry was born in Matticuck, Province of New York, British America in 1756 and during the American Revolution served on the British Loyalist side with Butler's Rangers. In the aftermath of the Battle of Wyoming, a sensationalist and widely distributed newspaper account of the "Wyoming Massacre" falsely claimed that Terry “murdered his father, mother, brother and sisters, stripped off their scalps, and cut off his father’s head.[1] Although a retraction was published a few weeks later, this unfounded accusation would reappear in early published histories of the United States.[2]

After the war, he settled in Bertie Township near Fort Erie but later moved to York (now Toronto).[1] He was elected to the 1st Parliament of Upper Canada in the riding of 4th Lincoln and Norfolk. With his father-in-law, Timothy Skinner, and his two brothers-in-law, Isaah and Timothy Jr, he built and operated a large sawmill on the Don River north of York.[3] He drowned in 1808 while attempting to cross the Don River.[4]

Family

Terry married twice. His first wife, Melia Stevens, died in 1789. Four years later he married Rhoda Skinner, daughter of Timothy Skinner. Terry had five children with Melia and seven children with Rhoda.[3]

His son William later represented Lincoln in the Legislative Assembly. Other offspring opened a pottery warehouse and store — Terry & Sons — catering to train passengers that stopped at the Don Station in Todmorden Mills and giving a name to the winding road that snakes through the property - Pottery Road. That factory is now an art gallery. Only known descendants bearing the Terry surname continue to live in the Toronto area, Mark Terry, a professor at Toronto's York University, and his daughter, Mary Anne Terry, a commercial writer.

A portion of Terry's home has been preserved as part of the Todmorden Mills Heritage Museum near the former site of the mill.

References
  1. Smy, William A. (2004). An Annotated Nominal Roll of Butler's Rangers 1777-1784: with Documentary Sources. Friends of the Loyalist Collection at Brock University. ISBN 9780973538601. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  2. Tharp, William R. (2021). Savage and Bloody Footsteps Through the Valley: The Wyoming Massacre in the American Imagination. M.A. thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  3. Darke, Eleanor. A Mill Should Be Build Thereon: An Early History of the Todmorden Mills. East York Historical Society, 1995.
  4. Robertson, J. Ross. Landmarks of Toronto; A Collection of Historical Sketches of the Old Town of York from 1792 until 1833, and of Toronto from 1834 to 1914, Sixth Series. Toronto, 1914.

Further reading
  • Becoming Prominent: Leadership in Upper Canada, 1791-1841, J.K. Johnson (1989)
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