“We had quite a time imagining what it might mean. I was thrilled and my imagination worked overtime.” Muriel (Hillier) Frame
In the early 1920s, young Muriel May Hillier was playing along a creek bed in what is now Sarnia’s north end. She found a very intriguing object. It was a small lead sheet with a faded message carved into it. With the help of her companions, she deciphered the message on the spot. Over 50 years later, in 1979, Muriel (Hillier) Frame donated the lead sheet to Lambton Heritage Museum. Museum staff have puzzled over this mysterious object ever since.
Sarnia’s Playground
In the 1920s, the area where the lead sheet was found was home to Camp Wawanda and Lake Huron Park. Today this is a residential part of Sarnia near Lakeshore Road and McMillen Parkway. According to Frame, “We hiked through there a lot, it was all bush at the time. The creek was dry and I sat down under this old tree. I was just poking around when I saw the lead sheet up under an old root.” Lake Huron Park marked the northern end of the Sarnia Street Railway. It linked downtown Sarnia to the beach. The nearby Lake Huron Hotel was a popular vacation destination from 1907 to 1935. It was located where Grant Street is today. The surrounding area was dotted with hotels, cottages, and recreational facilities.
An Unusual Object
Lead sheets were used to make ammunition for muskets and rifles from the 1600s to 1800s. A one-inch square piece was cut from the sheet, melted over a hot fire, poured into a shot mold, and allowed to cool. This resulted in a round piece of lead shot. The lead sheet found by Frame is 10 cm x 13 cm. It has one corner missing, likely enough for one piece of shot. The process was time-consuming but necessary for soldiers or hunters that lived in the bush. You can watch a video from the Museum of History New South Wales demonstrating a British soldier making a musket ball here.
The Message
The words carved on the lead sheet are hard to read. Taking a rubbing of the message makes the letters clearer. One interpretation is shown here:
MAR 11 1791
TEALUCK SHOT
SO IF THEY GET
ME TAKE MARY TO
YORK
G.R. REED
CAR.
The ‘S’ in “SO” could also be a ‘J’ for “JO.” This changes the interpretation to: “Tealuck shot Jo. If they get me, take Mary to York.” The message stirs up many questions. Why was someone shot? Who is Mary? Who did G.R. Reed Car. think was out to get him, and why? To date, research has failed to connect the names Tealuck, Mary, Jo, and G.R. Reed Car.
The 1791 date is tricky to decipher. None of the modern towns and cities of Lambton County existed then. The Anishinaabe, soldiers, explorers, traders, missionaries, and a few settlers lived in a relative wilderness and travelled along waterways, portage routes, and trails. Little documentation survives to tell their stories. Few European settlers were recorded in Lambton County until the 1830s. The 1851 Census of Canada is the earliest census that is widely available. In spite of limited resources, it is still possible to piece together a blurry picture of Lambton County in the late 1700s.
Lambton County in 1791
First Nations have gathered for thousands of years where Lake Huron flows into the St. Clair River. French explorers and traders arrived in the early 1600s. René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, sailed on the Griffon through the St. Clair River in 1679. In 1686, French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, built Fort St. Joseph on the St. Clair River to bar English traders from the upper Great Lakes. The fort was abandoned in 1688. Its exact location is unknown. In the 1700s, the village of Petagwano stood where Point Edward is today. Port Huron was settled about 1790.
In the early 1700s, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi largely displaced the Iroquois in southwestern Ontario. This included Lambton County. In 1796, Treaty #7 ceded land to the British that became the former Sombra Township. This was the first of multiple treaties covering the land of Lambton County.
Flint and chert were valuable commodities collected by Indigenous people around Port Franks and Kettle Point. A mission called St. Francis may have been built near modern-day Port Franks. It shows up on maps from 1656 and 1657, but the location is disputed by historians. In 1828, fur trader Edouard Petit provided a detailed description of a ruined house near the Ausable River. A huge oak tree was growing inside the ruins. At 3 feet in diameter and 60 feet tall, it was likely 150 years old. This suggests the ruined house dated to about 1678.
Further afield, Fort Detroit was founded by the French in 1701 as a trading post. Petite Côte was settled by 1747 at Windsor. Fort Detroit was taken over by the British in 1763. It was a strategic intelligence post and provisions depot during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). It remained in British hands, along with other forts including Fort Niagara and Fort Mackinac, until 1795. In 1796, the British established the towns of Amherstburg and Sandwich.
Politically, the 1791 British Constitutional Act separated the Province of Quebec into Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Founded in 1781, Niagara-on-the-Lake was the original capital of Upper Canada. At the time, large numbers of Loyalists were moving there from the United States. In 1793, John Graves Simcoe selected the site for a new capital, further away from the border. Simcoe picked the name York for the site, rather than Toronto, the Indigenous name. York became the seat of government in 1796. The reference to York on the lead sheet is confusing. If 1791 is the correct date, it seems too early to be a reference to this York.
How Did It Get Here?
How does the mysterious lead sheet connect to this early history? Did our donor Muriel Frame find the lead sheet where the message was originally dropped? The lead sheet was discovered nestled within the roots of a tree along a creek. Could it have been created elsewhere and then carried to this area by the waves of Lake Huron? Powerful storms have affected this area in the past such as the Great Storm of 1913.
A final consideration is whether the object is authentic. Does it really date to 1791? Is the message deciphered correctly? Is it something else entirely, such as an elaborate prop in game played by vacationers at the lake in the 1800s or early 1900s? There is a lot to speculate. Unless a new clue is found, we may never know. No doubt the lead sheet will continue to intrigue visitors and staff for years to come.
You can also read a newspaper article about the lead sheet featuring former Curator Robert Tremain’s theories, Two-century-old message mystery to museum curator.
Contact Us
Subscribe to this page