Elizabeth Russell

Template:Userspace notes Template:Infobox person Elizabeth Russell was an United Empire Loyalist, who settled in Upper Canada, with her half-brother, Peter Russell, the Province's first Inspector General.

Russell was born into a disrupted family. Her father Richard Russell was cashiered over a scandal, and, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the stress drove her mother "violently insane". While he was able to secure employment with the Royal Navy in Harwich, the Dictionary reported "Elizabeth grew up with little education, in an atmosphere darkened by her mother’s insanity and her father’s debts, extravagance, ill health, and lawsuits."

Russell's father was alienated from her much older half=brother Peter, so she didn't meet him until she was 17 years-old, and he was 38. Russell cared for her elderly parents until her father died in 1786, when she moved in with Peter, at 31 years-old. Neither ever married. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography described them as a "devoted couple for the rest of their lives."

In 1791 Peter was appointed Inspector General of Upper Canada. When his superior John Graves Simcoe fell ill, Russell was appointed the temporary administrator of Upper Canada, when Simcoe returned to England for medical treatment. Peter had hoped to be appointed Simcoe's replacement, but he continued to be merely the administrator for three years. Peter continued to be part of the Provincial administration when Peter Hunter was appointed the second Lieutenant Governor in 1799.

While Peter's role in the Provincial administration faded, he had acquired ownership of 45,000  acre (  hectare), making him wealthy, on paper. He would have liked to have liquidated his landholdings, and retired to England, as his age caught up with him, and his health failed, but there was no one wealthy enough to buy him out.

Peter died in 1808. He left his entire estate to Elizabeth.

Peter and Elizabeth were slave owners, owning Peggy Pompadour, and her children Amy, Milly and Jupiter, from prior to their arrival in Upper Canada. Simcoe's act to limit slavery prohibited importing new slaves, it did not affect the slavery of individuals in captivity from prior to its imposition. They tried, for years, to sell the Pompadour family, due to their troubled relations with them, without success. Amy is known to have been given to John Denison's wife.

According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, after Peter's death, Elizabeth relied on William Warren Baldwin, a cousin. She found the War of 1812 troubling, and she began to show signs of mental instability. By 1814 members of the Baldwin family moved in with her, to help care for her. She would leave her considerable estate to Baldwin.

In the fall of 2018 Afua Cooper published excerpts from Russell's diary, as she described Peggy and her children.