The Baby House spotlights Canadian history and identity in Windsor, Ontario

There are many events commemorating the bicentennial of the War of 1812 in the U.S., but crossing the Detroit River from Michigan to visit Windsor, Ontario, offers a great way to learn about this war from a different perspective.

I don't recall learning much about the War of 1812 in school, beyond hearing about General Hull's humiliating surrender of Fort Detroit to the British and seeing monuments dedicated to Oliver Hazard Perry's victory over the British to regain American control of Lake Erie when I visited Ohio's Put-In-Bay and Pennsylvania's Presque Isle.

Visiting Windsor's Community Museum at the historic Baby (pronounced "Bobby") House this year to view the "Living in 1812: Life on the Sandwich Frontier" exhibit offers an intriguing look at the Canadian experience, the Canadian take on the War of 1812, and a look at how the conflict helped shape Canada's strong sense of national identity.

The French-Canadian Baby family was one of the richest and most powerful families in the Western District of Upper Canada, which included much of present-day southwestern Ontario.

Much early settlement along both sides of the Detroit River consisted of ribbon farms, narrow tracts of land with a short length of river frontage. Francois Baby, born in Detroit in 1768, purchased one of these farms from his mother, Suzanne Reaume Baby, for 10 shillings and one grain of pepper in 1800.

Francois was a militia officer, politician, and business person who joined the British forces during the War of 1812. He saw action in places like Detroit, Frenchtown (Monroe, Michigan) and Fort Meigs (near Perrysburg, Ohio) before his capture by Americans in 1814.

The brick house he built for his family, which included wife Frances and a dozen children, faced the Detroit River, making it strategically important to both American and British forces.

The Americans, under General Hull, occupied the property during the summer of 1812, with officers living in the house and hundreds of soldiers camping in Baby's orchards and gardens.

After Hull withdrew to Detroit on August 7, British Major General Isaac Brock led the bombardment of Detroit from Baby's property that resulted in Hull's infamous surrender on August 16.

Baby returned home in 1815 to repair heavy damage caused by the occupations in his absence. He tried resuming his political career, and spent time running a ferry and an inn from his property as what eventually became the present-day city of Windsor grew up around him.

The house was a battle site again in 1838 during a largely failed rebellion against the government of the British colony of Upper Canada, a fire that heavily damaged the house in 1850, and Francois Baby died in 1852.

Subsequent owners made many changes, and the house was an abandoned wreck during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ownership reverted to the City of Windsor for non-payment of taxes by the end of that decade.

There were no existing original plans for the house, so a 1948 restoration team renovated the site based on then-available research and speculation about the house's original appearance.

All that remains of the original structure is a rubble foundation, the back of a fireplace in the basement, the two end walls, much of the north wall and some supporting timbers at the north (or river side) entrance. It is now two-story brick Georgian Revival style home with a symmetrical design, a central hallway, and a front door that faces away from the river.

In 1950, Canada recognized the house as a National Historic Site.

Later in the 1950s developers building Cleary Auditorium wanted to move or destroy the house.

Preservationists prevailed, but at the cost of the home's expansive river view. Today, the St. Clair Centre for the Arts dwarfs the Baby house, standing between it and the river.

The house is home to the City of Windsor's Community Museum, opened in 1958, and its collection of more than 15,000 artifacts and archives concerning the history of Windsor and Greater Essex County.

Want to learn more? Check out The Invasion of Canada: Battles of the War of 1812 by Ronald Dale, Searching for the Forgotten War - 1812 Canada by Patrick Richard Carstens and Timothy L. Sanford, or Quebec During the American Invasion, 1775-1776: the Journal of Francoise Baby, Gabriel Taschereau, and Jenkin Williams edited by Michael P. Gabriel and S. Pascale Vergereau-Dewey.