Isaac Gilbert was born in Connecticut in 1742.
Isaac was only 16 when he participated, as an ensign, in the Siege of Louisbourg. When the Revolutionary War broke out, he joined the Queen’s Rangers as a Sergeant. The Rangers did not surrender their colours, when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. The colours were smuggled out and sent to England. Later they were returned to Canada and are now displayed under protective glass in the College Street Library in Toronto.
Isaac Gilbert and his family trekked to New Brunswick after the American Revolutionary war. They settled in Upper Canada in Lieutenant Colonel Simcoe’s “Long Point Settlement”.
During the 1814 American Raids when so many homes and mills were destroyed, the Americans sought to capture Isaac, who was by that time 70 years old, but considered a former enemy. He remained hidden in a cave until the danger was past.
At the end of that senseless war better days returned for the Loyalists.
Gilbert lived to be 80 years old. His remains are buried at the Woodhouse United Church Cemetery on Highway #24, 4 miles south of Simcoe.
Submitted by Jean Baker