Laura Secord: What Happened Next?

A view of the back of the Secord homestead, Queenston, Ontario.

The story continues from last week's blog.

The press picked up the story of the prince's reward for Laura Secord's bravery, and in 1861 Niagara resident, Emma Currie, read those newspaper accounts.

Who was this woman, Laura Ingersoll Secord, and why had Emma Currie never heard the story of her heroism?

When the Woman's Literary Club was formed in St. Catharines in 1892, twenty-four years after Laura's death, Emma Currie, as its founder, wrote a paper to be delivered at the opening. The subject of her address was Laura Secord.

With further research, Currie's paper became a book that was published in 1900. The Story of Laura Secord and Canadian Reminiscences to this day remains a respected source of expert information.

If Laura Secord, at the age of eighty-five, had not been so determined to have her name included on a list of veterans of the War of 1812 that was to be presented to the visiting Prince of Wales, and if his subsequent gift had gone unnoticed by the press, the public might have continued to be unaware of the heroine who had lived among them for so many years.