TRUMPOUR, Samuel Dorland: 1823 - 1903
Samuel Dorland Trumpour, grandson of original United Empire Loyalist Adolphustown settler Capt. Paul Trumpour (Tile # 29), brother of Thomas Trumpour (Tile # 58) and son of Joseph Trumpour and Lydia Dorland, was born in Adolphustown.
Samuel’s ancestors had moved from the Palatinate area along the Rhine River in the early 1700s and settled in the colony of New York. After the Revolutionary War, Samuel’s grandfather, who had fought in the War, was forced into exile and was with Capt. Van Alstine’s group of Associated Loyalists who landed in Adolphustown in June 1784.(1)
Samuel who grew up in Adolphustown, attended school in the village with John A. MacDonald, (later Sir John A.) who became the first prime minister of Canada. Samuel married Mary Losee in 1870, and settled in the township where he amassed considerable property. Samuel and Mary raised three children: Joanna Lazella (Zella), born April 23, 1872; Herbert Samuel, born September 1, 1874; and Harry Ralph, born September 20, 1879.
Samuel and Mary’s daughter Joanna Lazella married Walter Wanamaker and settled in Prince Edward County.
Samuel’s obituary describes his then twenty-nine year old bachelor son Herbert as “a prosperous and progressive farmer in Adolphustown.” At the age of forty-three, Herbert married twenty-eight year old Florence Nina Chard from the town of Lindsay. They continued to farm in Adolphustown and had two daughters, Mary Alice (m. Russell Vanvolkenburgh) and Helen Eva (m. James William Lewis).
Samuel and Mary’s son Harry graduated with honours in classics from the University of Toronto. He received honourary Doctor of Divinity degrees from the Union College of British Columbia and Wycliffe College, the Anglican Theological College at the University of Toronto.(2) He married Helen Frink and they settled and raised a family in British Columbia. Reverend Harry Trumpour was honoured in 2012 at the 100th anniversary of St. Helen’s, the church he founded in West Point Grey, Vancouver, where he subsequently served as a rector for 37 years.(3)
Samuel Trumpour led a long and industrious life in Adolphustown. Among the surviving veterans of the Fenian Raids of 1866, Samuel received a medal of recognition for his service. He was a lifelong supporter of the Conservative party. He worshipped in the old Quaker meeting house on the shores of Hay Bay, but with the breaking up of the Quakers as a distinct sect and the cessation of their meetings in 1897, Samuel transferred his loyalty to the Church of England.
Samuel Dorland Trumpour died on November 1, 1903 and is buried in the cemetery of St. Alban’s Anglican Church alongside his wife Mary who died in 1928.
1. Mark Trumpour, History, Genealogy and the Trumpour Family, Historic Kingston, No. 18, (Kingston: Kingston Historical Society, March 1970).
2. Ivy Trumpour, UE, “The Reverend Harry Ralph Trumpour, 1879-1947,” Edmonton Branch UELAC, accessed online June 2011.
3. St. Helen’s Centennial 2012.