TRUMPOUR, Capt. Paul: 1757 - 1813
Tile ordered and paid for by S.W. Trumpour and Thos. Trumpour, Adolphustown, Ontario, June 1889
The family originally named Trombauer (becoming Trumpour in Canada) had first emigrated to America from the Palatinate along the Rhine and settled in Dutchess County, in the Colony of New York around 1709. Paul, one of nine children, and the fourth son of Johannes Trumboor (1719-1785) and Christina Fiere, was baptized in Katsbaan, New York on May 31, 1757.(1) He married Deborah Emery on August 9, 1780. Paul and Deborah had two sons and six daughters.
At the time of the American Revolution, only their sons Paul and Haunt sided with the British and left for Canada. Paul was an officer in Lieutenant De Lancey’s brigade and later came to Adolphustown by way of Sorel, Quebec with Peter Van Alstine’s group of Associated Loyalists in June 1784. Around the same time, Paul’s brother Haunt settled in what is now Prince Edward County at Green Point just across the Bay of Quinte from Paul.
After landing almost destitute, as one of the earliest settlers, Paul was entitled to 2000 acres of land and must have begun to develop his property very quickly. Only eleven years later, Mrs. John Graves Simcoe, wife of the first Governor of Upper Canada, reports of a visit to the Trumpour residence in 1795, on a voyage from Kingston, taken purely for pleasure, traveling by sleigh on the ice of the Bay of Quinte. Elizabeth Simcoe wrote in her diary:
“We set out at eleven [they had spent the previous night at Cartwright’s Mills on the Appanee River near Napanee which Elizabeth described as “a romantic spot”] and drove 14 miles to Trumpour’s Point, so named from a man of that name who lives there. He was formerly in the 16th Dragoons, and lives by selling horses; his wife gave me some good Dutch cakes, as I could not wait to eat the chickens she was roasting in a kettle without water. This house commands a fine view.”(2)
Paul Trumpour played a prominent role in early Adolphustown. He served as a magistrate and as Captain of Militia in the War of 1812, both at Kingston, under the Hon. Richard Cartwright and as commander of Trumpour’s Dragoons, a troop of horse of the 1st Regiment, Lennox Militia.
The eldest son of Paul and Deborah, John (1784 -1846), married Elizabeth Dorland (1788-1869), the daughter of Loyalist settler John Dorland. Their second son, Joseph (1785-1850), married Elizabeth’s sister Lydia Dorland (1792-1868). Both John and Joseph had large families. Their six daughters, Elizabeth, Christeen, Deborah, Catharine, Charlotte and Sarah, all married. Most relocated to Prince Edward County but retained strong ties with their Adolphustown roots.
Paul Trumpour died of sickness in 1813, aged sixty-five years. No one knows where he is buried.(3)
1. Mark Trumpour, “History, Genealogy and the Trumpour Family,” Historic Kingston, No. 18 (Kingston: Kingston Historical Society, March 1970).
2. Katharine J. Lamont, Adolphustown 1784-94 (The Adolphustown: Bicentennial Committee, 1984), p. 19.
3. Many Trumpour residents of the area are buried in the Trumpour Cemetery, Staples Lane, Adolphustown.