http://www.bartleby.com/65/he/Head-F.html
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.
Head, Sir Francis Bond
1793?1875, British administrator in Canada. A soldier (1811?25) and
unsuccessful mining adventurer in South America, he had had little
experience to prepare him for the post of lieutenant governor of Upper
Canada (Ontario), to which he was appointed in 1835. Sir Francis?s
reactionary policy in Canada and his alliance with the Family Compact
estranged Robert Baldwin and the moderate reformers and drove William
Lyon Mackenzie and other radical reformers into open rebellion in
1837. Head, who had resigned but had not yet been replaced in his
post, quelled this uprising. He left Canada in 1838, never again to
hold public office, and devoted his later years to writing.
http://26.1911encyclopedia.org/H/HE/HEAD_SIR_FRANCIS_BOND.htm
HEAD, SIR FRANCIS BOND, B~utT. (I 7931875), English soldier, traveller
and author, son of James Roper Head of the Hermitage, Higham, Kent,
was born there on the 1st of January 1793. He was educated at
Rochester grammar schol and the Royal Military Academy, whence in 1811
he was commissioned to the Royal Engineers, lie was for some years
stationed in the Mediterranean, and he served in the campaign of 1815,
being present at the battle of Waterloo. He went on half-pay in 1825,
when he accepted the charge of an association formed to work the gold
and silver mines of Rio de La Plata. In connection with this
enterprise he made several rapid journeys across the Pampas and among
the Andes, his Rough Notes of which, published in 1826, and written in
a clear and spirited style, obtained for him the name of Galloping
Head. On his return in 1827, he became involved in a controversy with
the directors of his company, and in defence of his conduct he
published Reports of tile La Plala Mining Association (London, 1827).
He was soon afterwards restored to the active list of the army as a
major unattached, mainly owing to his efforts to introduce the South
American lasso into the British service for auxiliary draught. In 1830
he published a life of Bruce, the African traveller, and in 1834
Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, by an Old Man. In 1835 he was
knighted, and in the following year created a baronet. In 1835 he was
appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, and in this capacity he
had to deal with a political situation of great difficulty, being
called upon in 1837 to suppress a serious insurrection. Shortly
afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with the hou~e government, he
resigned his post and returned to England, via New York (see Quarterly
Review, vols. 63-64). Thereafter be devoted himself to writing,
chiefly for the Quarterly Review, and to hunting. He rode to hounds
until he was seventy-five. In 1869 Sir Francis Head was made a privy
councillor. He died on the 20th of July 1875, at Duppas Hall, Croydon.
Head was the author of a considerable number of works, chiefly of
travel, written in a clever, amusing and graphic fashion, and
displaying both acute observation and genial humour. His principal
works, beside those mentioned above, and a narrative ofhis Canadian
administration (1839), were The Emigrant (1846); Highways and Drywavs,
t~ie Britannic and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849); Stokirs and Pokers,
a sketch of the working of a railway line (1849); The Defeneeless
Stale of Great Britain (1850); A Faggot of French Slicks (1852); A
Fortnight in Ireland (1852); Descriptive Essays (1856); comments on
Kinglakes Crimean War (1853); The Horse and his Rider (l86u) The Royal
Engineer (1870); and a sketch of the life of Sir John Burgoyne (1872).
His brother, SIR GEORGE HEAD (1782-1855), was educated at the
Charterhouse. In 1808 he received an appointment in the commissariat
of the British army in the Peninsula, where he was a witness of many
exciting scenes and important battles, of which he gave an interesting
account in Memoirs of an Assistant Commissary-General attached to the
second ~olurne of his Home Tour, published in 1837. In f8I4 he was
sent to America to take charge of the commissariat in a naval
establishment on the Canadian lakes, and he subsequently held
appointments at Halifax and Nova Scotia. Some of his Canadian
experiences were narrated by him in Forest Scenery and Incidents in
tile Wilds of North America (1829). In 1831 he was knighted.
He, published in 1835 A Home Tour through the Manufacturing J),slrucls
of England, and in 1837 a sequel to it, entitled A Home Tour through
various parts of the United Kingdom. Both works are amusing and
instructive, but his Rome, a Tour of many Days, published in 1849. is
somewhat dull and tedious, He also translated Jiustorical Memoirs of
Cardinal Pacca (1850), and the Metamorphoses of Apulezus (1831).
http://www.canadiana.org/citm/reference/biographies_e.html
Head, Sir Francis Bond (1793-1875)
British soldier, author and colonial administrator;
lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada from 1835 to 1839. When he took
his post as governor, he selected several moderate reformers to the
Executive Council. When he did not consult them, however, they
resigned. After this, the relationship was increasingly hostile. In
the election that followed, Head became personally involved in the
campaign. The result was a victory at the polls, but also ultimate
contributed to the extremism that led to the 1837 rebellion. In 1836,
he made moves to end the tradition of British gift giving to those
Aboriginals covered in the Niagara Treaty. He also tried and failed to
set up an Aboriginal colony on Manitoulin Island in present northern
Ontario. |
