Lamira Dow Billings, 1796-1879

Lamira Dow Billings was born in Cambridge, New York on March 1, 1796. She was one of six children born to Samuel Dow and Cynthia Harkness Dow, who were married in a Quaker ceremony at Smithfield, Rhode Island, in 1789.

A blacksmith by trade, Samuel moved his family to Upper Canada and settled near Merrickville in 1805. He passed away later that year. Cynthia re-married, but she passed away soon after in 1807, leaving eleven-year-old Lamira orphaned and in the care of her stepfather, John Scott.

In 1813 Methodist Minister Reverend William Brown hired Lamira to teach at Merrickville’s first school. She was one of the first schoolteachers, male or female, in Upper Canada.

That same year, Lamira met and married Braddish Billings. A minister was not available, so a Justice of the Peace presided over the wedding ceremony in Kitley on October 18.



TITLE Marriage License DATE 1813 ITEM NUMBER CA-001194 DESCRIPTION Braddish Billings and Lamira Dow married in October, 1813. They were married by a Justice of the Peace, as there was no parson or minister of the Church of England living within 18 miles of either Braddish or Lamira.

On October 24 they set out for Braddish’s homestead in Gloucester. The couple, along with a companion, walked and canoed for four days carrying “six chairs, one trunk, and a bed and a bundle of bedclothes. Although Braddish had recently built a new log house, Lamira found her new settings quite rustic:

[I]t was quite different from what I was used to for when he found me …I must say I was some disappointed but was not sorry for he was not to blame, and I was in hope to be better off by industry and prudence…and I was willing to share with him in his poverty.

So she began her life as Braddish’s wife and partner. Lamira was a hard worker, a devoted wife and mother, and a devout Christian who remained active well into her old age.

During the first twenty years of her marriage to Braddish, Lamira concentrated on raising their children, building a home, co-managing the farm, and cooking for the Billings’ many hired workers.

She was also known for her charity work, guided by the religious principals her parents instilled in her. Lamira was a Quaker as her parents had been, but she attended Presbyterian services because there were no Quaker Societies in the area. Nevertheless, people of various denominations held her in high esteem. As her son Charles remembered:

The Roman Catholics…are among the strongest in their declarations of her goodness. On one occasion I knew of an Irish Roman Catholic woman who, feeling her end approaching, sent for the nuns and also for Mrs. Billings.

In fact, the sick and dying may also have asked for Lamira because she was a well-known healer in the area. She read about botany and medicine and she had a vast repertoire of home remedies, which she used to cure people in the community, but which were not always able to save her own family. For instance, the Billngs’ second child, Cynthia, died from an illness (likely Spanish Flu) in 1818; Elkanah died from Bright’s disease four years before Lamira passed; and Braddish suffered from a lingering illness during the last 20 years of his life. Lamira’s cure for Cholera may have been helpful in the frequent epidemics that plagued the area.

In the 1830s, Braddish and Lamira’s hard labour had earned them a degree of comfort, giving Lamira some leisure time to pursue her interests. She produced prize-winning pieces of sewing and embroidery; read books on history, science, and theology; and took trips to visit friends and family.

Domestic duties occupied Lamira’s time once again as Braddish’s health began to fail. She cared for him until he passed away in 1864. Afterwards, Lamira remained at the estate with her spinster daughters Sally and Sabra, but she did not resign herself to old age. In 1867, she built a new schoolhouse and revived her teaching career. She was seventy-one years old.

In his 1877 memoirs, Charles Billings remembered his mother as a short, heavy-set woman who had dark eyes and hair “partly between black and auburn” along with “a coolness, a courage, and a nerve which would cast the bravery of many [men] in the shade.” After she passed away on March 5, 1879 at the age of 83, her daughter Lamira called her “a wonderful woman far ahead of the age in which she lived.”

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