Not many people choose where they are going to live by pointing to a spot on a map, but Major William Kingdom Rains became so engrossed with the wonders of the St. Mary’s River that he was determined to make the area his home. This decision led him to create a life in the wilderness from which his descendants thrived, some of whom still reside on St. Joseph Island today.
William Kingdom Rains was born at Milford Haven in 1789 at a naval base in Pembroke County, Wales to Stephen Rains and the former Ann Kingdom.
His father was a captain in the British Navy and William dutifully followed in his father’s footsteps by entering Royal Military College when only 14. By age 16 he was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery.
The years 1807 to 1813 were spent under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley in the Peninsular War. Wellesley would go on to become the 1st Duke of Wellington and served twice as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. This would not be the first notable person to cross the path of William Rains.
Also during the Napoleonic Wars, William Rains was lent to the Austrian government, and for his exemplary military service, the Emperor of Austria conferred upon him the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold.
Due to this honour, he was selected in 1814 to be one of the officers of the armies returning Pope Pius VII to the Vatican after four years of being held prisoner in France by order of Napoleon. He received a papal decoration for his efforts and his next assignment was to act as an aide-de-camp (or confidential personal secretary) to Marshal Murat who had assumed the throne in Naples and was Napoleon’s brother-in-law.
As peace descended upon Britain, Rains decided to retire in 1817 on half-pay. During this time he was involved in two interesting projects. He was tasked with investigating whether or not witnesses who were to testify against the wife of the King were reliable.
George IV, the King of England at the time, applied for a divorce from his wife Caroline and had her charged with unfaithfulness. Rains found the witnesses to be unreliable and thought the Queen to be a “virtuous woman, although more or less a mad-cap.” Around this time Major Rains also began to study engineering through his uncle Sir Marc Isambard Brunel who was most famous for devising a method to construct a tunnel under the River Thames, a groundbreaking feat at the time.
Finding engineering unsatisfactory William Rains returned to military life. In 1825 he attained the rank of Major and it was while he was stationed in Malta that he first laid eyes on maps of North America and was fixated by the St. Mary’s River which he believed would become incredibly important in the future.
In 1828 Major Rains was back in England and experiencing marital discord with his wife Ann Williams, the mother of his six children. Divorce was not permitted at this time, but a legal separation was. Ann and William separated and he soon would form a relationship with a young woman named Miss Frances Doubleday who, along with her sister Eliza, had been entrusted to his care upon the death of her father. According to Joseph and Estelle Bayliss (Estelle was the granddaughter of Major Rains and Frances Doubleday) in their book “Historic St. Joseph Island,” this arrangement was with the approval of their family and friends.
In June 1830 he sold his commission and embarked on a new life in Canada. Travelling with him were Frances and their son Tudor, and Eliza Doubleday. They took up residence on Lake Simcoe near Sutton, Ontario. The land and the house that Major Rains built are now a museum and part of the Sibbald Point Provincial Park.
Major Rains had built a two-storey house there which he called Penrains which was considered somewhat opulent in 1830s Canada. Poet Katherine Hale called the house a “venerable mansion on the shores of Lake Simcoe.” He had also chosen a gorgeous location on a point. While living at Penrains, Rains was the Commissioner of the Peace for the Home District which was Northumberland, York, Durham and Simcoe Counties, and also a Peace Commissioner for the Association for Upper Canada.
In 1834, Major Rains petitioned the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada to colonize St. Joseph Island. The hope was to settle one hundred families. With the assistance of his business partners, they built a boat in 1835 and filled it with the necessities for building a sawmill and setting up a store and set sail with some settlers for the island. According to the Toronto Recorder, “the whole party speak in rapture of the beauty of the scenery among the islands…which cannot be surpassed on the globe.”
They constructed the sawmill, and the Major named the spot Milford Haven after his birthplace in Wales.
The settlement did not prosper, however. Rains and his partner had hoped to lure settlers from England, but not enough could be compelled to venture into the wilderness. Major Rains had also planned to fund the colonization scheme with the 30,000 pounds he had acquired from selling his estate and army commission in Great Britain.
Unfortunately, it had been invested imprudently and his fortune practically vanished. As a result, his colonization attempts did not come to fruition. After a disagreement with one of his business partners, Rains moved 10 miles west to a spot he called Hentlan, that is also known as Rains Point.
It was here at Hentlan that people began to take notice of the Rains’ unconventional domestic situation. Due to the remoteness of their location, no other aristocratic families were in their vicinity, therefore, Frances’ sister Eliza could not find a suitable husband.
According to Joseph and Estelle Bayliss in their book “Historic St. Joseph Island,” “the three, isolated on this lonely frontier, solved the problem harmoniously. The Major formed an alliance with both girls, providing a separate domicile for each. Unconventional and contrary to the existing code? True. The two families grew up side by side, with the deepest respect and affection for each other. The Major gave his name to his children and they were proud to bear it, respecting him and adoring their mothers.”
Not surprisingly, their domestic situation was the subject of gossip and conjecture by prominent individuals passing through the region such as writer and feminist Anna Jameson, James Logan and American poet and editor of the New York Evening Post William Cullen Bryant. In his book Letters of a Traveller, Bryant had some particularly snide remarks.
“We coasted St. Joseph Island on the woody shores of which I was shown a solitary house. There, I was told, lives a long-nosed Englishman, a half-pay officer, with two wives, sisters, each the mother of a numerous offspring. This English polygamist has been more successful in seeking solitude than in avoiding notoriety. The very loneliness of his habitation on the shore causes it to be remarked, and there is not a passenger who makes the voyage to the Sault, to whom his house is not pointed out, and his story related.”
A much more positive account of Major Rains appeared in the book, Lake Superior by Harvard professor Louis Agassiz.
Agassiz found himself needing to take cover in a storm while on an expedition to examine Lake Superior. He chose to shelter his vessel right near the home of Major Rains, so the Major invited him into his home. Agassiz thought him to look a bit dishevelled but was impressed by his collection of literary works and his familiarity with Agassiz’ scientific endeavours. He provided the professor with a preserved specimen of the gar-pike of Lake Huron and would continue to send him other rarities over the years.
Similar to the experiences of Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Trail, the Rains family was trying to build a life in a harsh environment.
Despite the many practical difficulties of homesteading, Major Rains still managed to retain his cosmopolitan interests. He was capable of reading and conversing in French, Greek, and Italian and had a speaking knowledge of many others. He also had a treasured collection of books that included celebrated authors such as Shakespeare, Scott, Lytton, Milton, and Wordsworth. One of his particular favourites was the poetry of Lord Byron who had been his acquaintance during his time in Europe.
In October of 1860, Major Rains took up residence at the farm of his sons which was named Westfield. This would be his home until his death on Oct. 19, 1874.
In the book River of Destiny, Joseph and Estelle Bayliss explained that “his body, when he died, was taken by sailboat to Sault Ste. Marie for burial. There was no hearse in the settlement, but a wagon was in readiness, to which his casket was transferred. Covered by the largest British flag that could be procured, and with his officer’s sword laid upon it, he was accorded a military funeral.” The funeral seems to be of the highest calibre which could be possible in the remoteness of Northern Ontario, and a fitting tribute to an individual who lived a life that was far from ordinary.
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