- Luke Teeple, second son of Capt. Peter Teeple, was born 12 September 1791. He went to New Jersey on a visit to an uncle and was ordered to take the oath of allegiance or quit the country. His uncle had a mail route from New York to some point in New Jersey, believed to be Bordentown, and he put young Luke on this route, thinking that while thus employed he would not be molested. He was arrested, however, in the following February, and cast into prison with about a hundred other British sympathizers. These Loyalist political prisoners were sorely tempted to desert their first love and join the American forces. One by one they weakened until only fifteen remained, Luke being one of the faithful few. At the close of the war they were liberated, and the uncle, although a patriotic American, gave Luke a present in token of admiration of his pluck and endurance. When he returned to Canada he, on the 26th of December 1816, married Nancy, second daughter of Elder Titus Finch, already referred to, and settled at Vittoria, near Simcoe, purchasing the two-storey frame house built by Caleb Wood (also a Jerseyite, as the New Jersey Loyalists were called in those days), and which house still stands, dark and windowless and vacant in front of the Baptist burying ground, fit companions to the weather-beaten, mossy old grave stones which mark the background. On the flat opposite this house he built a tannery which was operated by his son Alexander, after his death in 1849. He had seven sons, Alexander, Jerome, Albert Gallatin, Thermos, Lysander, Titus Ridley and Peter Latimer; and four daughters, Mabro, Mobra, Clementine, and Almira. Alexander was accidentally crushed to death in 1867, while excavating a large boulder on his property.
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1791 - 1849 (58 years)
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