The Night the Mice Danced

The Night the Mice Danced the Quadrille: Five Years in the
Backwoods 1875-1879 (Boston Mills Press) is a Muskoka
local history book written by a Thomas Osborne in 1934.
Osborne relates the events of his time spent in Muskoka as a
young man when the area was first being settled.

Thomas Osborne worked for Fawcett’s store at Port Sydney
and one of his duties was to travel by wagon to Bracebridge to
pick up provisions. On one of these trips a young man named
James Peacock hailed him from the side of the road and asked
for a lift with his luggage to Bracebridge. Osborne and Peacock
had quite a chat, as Thomas had previously seen James in a fight
in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. He states that the
match took place on a lot at Amber and Adams Streets.
Peacock’s opponent was named Devine.

James Peacock told Thomas Osborne that he had been staying
with an uncle in Muskoka during the previous year. It is probable
that the uncle was Thomas Peacock who would have been living on
his free grant land in the mid 1870s which was located south of Port
Sydney and north of Bracebridge.

There are three James Peacock’s in the 1880 Federal Census of
Pennsylvania:

James Peacock, 30, b. PA, Carpenter, parents born in Ireland
– Freeland, Luzerne, PA
- (wife Hannah, sister Mary Peacock, 18, dressmaker)

James Peacock, 35, b. PA living with a young Smith couple in
Philadelphia.

James Peacock, 26, b. PA, farmer (parents born Ireland)
with wife Lizzie and baby William J.
- in Cecil, Washington, Pennsylvania.

This anecdote is significant in that it reveals that there was
movement between the US and Canada, even from the remote
areas of settlement. And because Thomas Peacock’s eldest
son Frederick married in Philadelphia.