This application is sponsored by the Town of Woodstock, New Brunswick and the Carleton County Historical Society.
John Francis Wentworth Winslow was the son of a prominent Loyalist, Judge Edward Winslow. He was named after John Wentworth, the Governor of Nova Scotia, and his wife, Frances, who was also the mistress of the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria’s father. As one of ten children of a large, but impoverished, prominent Loyalist family, Winslow sought a career in the British army, joining at the age of 16 on 14 December 1809. Perhaps it was through family influence that he was commissioned as a Lieutenant, first in the Nova Scotia Fencibles, and he later transferred to the 41st Regiment of Foot that was stationed in the Canadas.