A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SHERIDAN POLLARDS IN WHAT IS NOW PEEL, HALTON AND TORONTO, ONTARIO by David L. Pollard, August 1991 (updated February 2000)
[email protected] Purpose of this History One of the objectives of this report is to fill in the gaps in the family genealogy prepared by Maurice Pollard and updated since by several of the Sheridan Pollards, most recently Earle Brock Pollard of Winnipeg, Paul Plante of Brampton (
[email protected]) and Chris Landry of Burlington (
[email protected]). The genealogy file is stored on the Family Tree Maker site at http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/p/o/l/David-L-Pollard/. More importantly, however, I wanted to convey something of the personalities and lifestyle of the Sheridan Pollards, since so many of the family and area histories tend to be long on glorification of individuals (notably Barnett's history of the Clarksons) and on quaint quotations, and short on honest portrayal of just what pioneer life in Upper Canada was really like. The Sheridan Pollards can be credited with some notable "firsts" in this part of Canada, but otherwise lived unspectacular but courageous and typical lives for the times. Their story is the story of most of the pioneer families of the times: a struggle against a harsh and heavily-forested wilderness, and a life of resettlement in a strange new land where community life and cooperation was not only the only alternative to loneliness and isolation, it was essential to their very survival. The Sheridan Pollards are the descendants of Joshua Pollard Sr., a United Empire Loyalist who left his parents and siblings in the Billerica, Massachusetts area (near Boston) near the turn of the 18th century.