William Pittman Lett (12 August 1819 – 15 August 1892) was an Irish Canadian journalist, bureaucrat and poet.Ottawa Journal – 15 August 1892 – Death of W.P. Lett – After a Long Illness The Late City Clerk Fades Away – A Sketch of His Life and Career – A Man Who was Universally Liked and Respected, and Who did Good Service to Ottawa viewable on https://www.ancestry.ca search William Pittman Lett, obituary He arrived in Upper Canada as a 10-month-old baby in the family of Captain Andrews Lett, a veteran of the 28th Cameronian Regiment of Foot and a pioneer of the settlement of Richmond. A journalist for the Orange Order, a Tory and loyal to the British Crown, William Pittman was a founding father and chronicler of Bytown, subsequently the City of Ottawa, and its first and longest-serving civic clerk (1855–1891). He promoted theatre in Ottawa and its learned societies and was a prolific commentator and poet of public affairs throughout the second half of the 19th century.Cook, Bryan D. Introducing William Pittman Lett, Ottawa's First City Clerk and Bard 1819–1982, April 2015, pp. 412.
Early life William Pittman Lett was the great-great-grandson of Thomas Lett (1600–1665), a puritan English captain in the New Model Army, who had moved from Worcestershire to Ireland when Oliver Cromwell invaded in 1649 to conquer an alliance of the Irish Catholic Confederation and English Royalists. William's father, Andrews Lett, continued the family's military and Protestant traditions in the British Imperial Army's 26th Cameronian Regiment of Foot,"A Roll of the Succession of Officers of the 1st Battalion of the 26th Regiment, commencing at Gibraltar on 25 December 1813", p.3 at British Regimental Registers of Service, 1756–1902, Ancestry.comCarter T. Historical record of the Twenty-sixth, or Cameronian Regiment, 1867, W. Mitchell, London (155pp), p. 148. first mustered in 1689 from the Covenanters to fight for William of Orange to prevent any dilution of the Presbyterian faith. Andrews served under Sir John Moore in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the Spanish Peninsular War. He married Rebecca Lett, a distant cousin from Ballyvergin, County Wexford and William Pittman was born in nearby Duncannon on 12 August 1819.
Andrews Lett had taken advantage of a land grant afforded pensioned soldiers by the British army which was establishing a reserve force"Historical Sketch of the County of Carleton…Military History" in the Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Carleton, Ontario, H. Belden & Co., Toronto, 1879, p. 6. The Carleton Militia, in which Andrews Lett was a Major, was likely the 2nd Carleton Militia commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Lyon; viewable at https://archive.org/details/cihm_12020 in three Upper Canada townships, Lanark (1815), Perth (1816) and Richmond (1818), to deter and defend against American invasion of the colony at the end of the Anglo-American War of 1812–1815. William was 10 months old when the family stepped ashore at Richmond landing below the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa River in June 1820 and trekked to the Richmond military settlement to clear land for a farm near Huntley."How Capt. Andrew Lett Made History Here; Family Have Served City for Sixty-Nine Years; Unique Story of Pittman Lett and His Sons" in "Old Time Stuff", Ottawa Citizen, circa 1924. Andrews died in the Spring of 1824 and the farm was taken over by his son Andrews Lett with whom William stayed until moving with his devoutly Methodist mother to Bytown in 1828. She had remarried to Dr. James Stewart, Bytown's coroner from 1845 to 1858.
William was well educated at public and grammar schools in Hull and Bytown and the monitorial High School in Montreal, where his principal was the Reverend John Bethune (1791–1872), masonic master, Anglican Dean of Montreal and founding Principal of McGill University. He was subsequently tutored in the classics by an ex-university teacher, the Reverend Dr. Alexander Fletcher of South Plantagenet.
With his military ancestry and his Protestant loyalty to the Crown and Canada, William joined a regiment of volunteers mustered in 1837 in response to the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions. William rose through the ranks of the militia to become captain of the Fourth Battalion of the Richmond Volunteer Military Company in July 1858. He did not see active service during the Rebellions or against the Fenian raiders (1866–1871).
Orangeman journalist In 1841, Dawson Kerr hired classically-educated Lett as editor- in-chief of an early Bytown Newspaper, The Advocate.Elliott, Bruce S., Irish migrants in the Canada – A New Approach, McGill–Queen's University Press, 2nd edn, 2004, , p. 231. In July 1849 he used this platform to found and print The Orange Lily and Protestant Vindicator,Early Canadiana Online The Orange Lily and Protestant Vindicator. a semi-monthly literary newspaper devoted to the Protestant cause of the Orangemen, in which Lett wrote anti-Catholic editorials and posted some of his earliest poetry.
The Orange Lily circulated for several years during the sectarian strife in Canada of the late 1840s and early '50s. In his poem 17 September,Lett, W. P. "17 September", poem printed in The Orange Lily, 1849, transcript at Cook, op.cit., p. 288. published in the Orange Lily, documenting the 1849 'Stoney Monday' riot in the ByWard Market of Bytown, Lett sides with the Tories and Protestants against the Reformists and Catholics.
Although he moderated his views later in life, Lett remained an active and lifelong member of the Orange Order becoming Secretary for the Bytown District of the Royal Scarlett Lodge of Orangemen Number 119 in 1850.
By 1862, Lett had also risen to third degree standing in the Grand Doric (Ottawa) Lodge of the Masons of Canada and graduated as Master Mason in 1888.
His memberships in the Orange Order and the Freemasons were not only expressions of his Protestantism, temperance and loyalty to the British Crown, but also provided the contacts and networks important to furthering his career.
Theatre pioneer The first recorded theatrical performances in Bytown were by the Garrison Club of the 15th Regiment staged in the barracks on what is now Parliament Hill. However, this was followed by 13 years of thespian silence until, in 1850, Lett organised and presided over Bytown's first drama club in the town hall.
In 1854, he promoted his anti-slavery agenda with a staging of Uncle Tom's Cabin by a professional troupe from New York. The 12 performance reception prompted the building in the same year of Her Majesty's Theatre on Ottawa's Wellington Street with a seating capacity of one thousand people; one seventh of the city's population. Ottawa's boom in theatre construction and play production followed for the remainder of the century.Watt, Mrs. R. M. Ottawa's Heritage of Theatre 1837–1955, a talk given to the Historical Society of Ottawa in January 1956, and reproduced as Bytown Pamphlet Series No. 5, September 1982, 17pp.
Marriage, home and church Thirty-year-old Lett married twenty-one-year-old Maria Hinton on 22 October 1849."William Pittman Lett and Maria Hinton 22 October 1849", Ancestry.ca, Marriage Notices of Ontario 1813–1854, Globe, Toronto, 1844–49, 1 November 1849, p. 339: "1st Nov 1849: At Huntley, on 22nd ult., William Pittman Lett, editor of the Ottawa Advocate, Bytown, to Maria, second daughter of Joseph Hinton, of Richmond. (Rev. J. Loverin)" She was born on 29 October 1828, the second daughter of Joseph Hinton (1798–1884) and Anna Mills (c1797-1876).Marriage record for Maria Hinton in Ontario, Canada marriages, 1801–1928, cites her mother as Jessie Hinton, and father as Joseph Hinton. However the Canada Censuses of 1851 and 1861 cite his wife as Ann/Anna/Annie Mills born in ireland circa 1797. Her burial is recorded as Anna Mills, 1876, in the records of the Beechwood Cemetery, Ottawa.
Joseph Hinton had arrived in the Richmond settlement in December 1818 with the first contingent of retiring soldiers from the 100th Prince Regent's County of Dublin Royal Regiment of Foot,Dale, R., and W. Cross, The Regiments of the Richmond Military Settlement The 37th, 99th and 100th Regiments. to make his fortune as the storeowner. He had risen in social standing to become a justice of the peace, a coroner, and councillor, reeve and Warden in Carleton County. His father, William Hinton, had escaped being burned alive in a barn in Ireland during the Scullabogue Massacre of 1798, thanks to a warning by a faithful Catholic maid who lost her own life in the fire. Joseph deplored the fanatical strife in Ireland stoked in part by the Orange Order. He supported the alternative Protestant Benevolent Society of Ireland which was not anti-Catholic; thus he had little time for Lett, the Orangeman journalist.
Maria and William had to elope to be married in the Methodist chapel in Huntley.Wm. Pittman Lett and Maria Hinton, Ontario Marriage Registration, 21 October 1849", Ancestry.ca, "Ontario, Canada Marriages,1801–1928". Maria was ostracised until her sister convinced Joseph Hinton to visit the Letts and their first baby at their rental home in Ottawa under a false pretense of accompanying her to the dressmakers.A typed memoire (City of Ottawa Archives MG 037-9-4) by Louisa Shillito Cranston (born 13 July 1901, the daughter of William Shillito Cranston and Maria Dulcibella Lett, the daughter of WPL and Maria) A forgiving Joseph built them a large house, 'Richmond Place', at 12 Dalhousie Street in a wealthy enclave of Ottawa's Lowertown overlooking the Ottawa River on the same bluff as the 'Earnscliffe' home of Lett's future friend and political ally, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. Richmond Place became home to William and Maria's nine children.
William relied heavily on Maria to anchor the home and family while he pursued his career and many interests. His poetry reflects their abiding love. She was also a philanthropic woman, known to the poor, to society and to friends as wise, unselfish, dignified, kind, concerned for the happiness and welfare of others, energetic and of "stability of character".Hooker, Rev. L. In Memoriam – Funeral Sermon of the late Mrs. W.P. Lett, newspaper clipping, City of Ottawa Archives MG 037-7-19 She promoted the rebuilding of the Carleton General Protestant Hospital in 1875 at the corner of Ottawa's Charlotte and Rideau Streets.Heritage Ottawa News vol. 19, no. 2, Autumn 1992.
Although a Presbyterian, Maria supported William's lifelong Methodist conviction and service. As President of the Ladies Aid Society she led fund raising to rebuild the Dominion Methodist Church in 1875-76, located on Ottawa's Metcalfe Street at Queen Street and destroyed by fire in February 1961.Dominion Wesleyan Methodist Church – Ottawa, Carleton County.
City clerk In January 1855, Tory Mayor, John Bower Lewis (1817–1874), appointed Lett as Clerk to the newly incorporated City of Ottawa. Lett learned quickly the arts of neutrality, circumspection and diplomatic persuasion necessary to be a successful Clerk for the next thirty-six years.Historical Sketch of the County of Carleton…Ottawa, Municipal Matters in an Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Carleton, Ontario, H. Belden & Co., Toronto, 1879, p. 28.How Capt. Andrew Lett Made History Here; Family Have Served City for Sixty-Nine Years; Unique Story of Pittman Lett and His Sons in "Old Time Stuff", Ottawa Citizen, circa 1924"Lett was the first Clerk of the City Ottawa. He was preceded by the Town Clerks of Bytown: John Aikins, Francis Scott, John George Bell and Edward Burke. He in turn was succeeded by John Henderson, his son Norman H. W. Lett and Nelson R. Ogilvie." From Ottawa Old and New, Lucien Brault, 1946, p. 95.Lett, W. P. Autobiography on Lett's 25th Year of Service, 5 January 1881, 5pp. typed, City of Ottawa Archives /MG 037-9.