William Jarvis

William Jarvis (September 11, 1756 – August 13, 1817) was a civil servant, militia officer, and the Connecticut-born head of the Jarvis family in what is now Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Life and career Jarvis was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Samuel Jarvis, who was the town's clerk, and Martha Seymour. William Jarvis joined John Graves Simcoe’s Queen's Rangers in 1777. He was wounded at the Battle of Spencer's Ordinary in Virginia in 1781 and was commissioned cornet in late 1782. At the cessation of the American Revolutionary War he went on half-pay and attempted to return to Connecticut, however, hostility to the Loyalists remained strong, and after an encounter with angry Patriots, fled to England. In 1791, Simcoe, who had been appointed as the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, recommended Jarvis to the Home Secretary, Henry Dundas, for the positions of Provincial Secretary and Clerk of the Executive Council of the newly established province. Jarvis was instead given the positions of Provincial Secretary and Registrar. Jarvis arrived in Canada with his wife and three children in 1792 and settled in Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake). When Simcoe moved the capital from Newark to York, Jarvis reluctantly followed. In York, he was granted a town lot and a 100 acre park lot. Jarvis built his home on the town lot, while the park lot was left largely undeveloped.