The following item was printed in the Strathroy Age Dispatch
"Among the recent additions to the [Strathroy] Museum are a Pistol, Sabre and Medal which date from the Napoleonic Wars, the property of Colonel Arthur William Freear, who as Captain ( he was a Lieutenant according to my sources...Stan Freer )under the Duke of Wellington, fought In the Second Battalion, 50th Foot Regiment (according to my sources this should be 30th Battalion... Stan Freer ) the Battle of Waterloo. Despite the loss of some 30,000 allied soldiers, a deceive victory was achieved on June 18, 1815, the date inscribed on Colonel Freear's Medal."
Following the war, Colonel Freear was sent to Ireland as part of the Occupational Forces and there, he met and married the daughter of the Earl of Ormond. In 1831, with a grant of land being given by the crown to encourage settlement in Canada, Colonel Freear received and accepted two hundred acres of land near Warwick Village. An interesting observation is that Colonel Freear originally came from Warwickshire in England. Shortly after his arrival, he established a saw and grist mill on Bear Creek which, at that time was the only facility of this kind located west of Kilworth.
Ironically, after a lengthy career when exposed to many more apparent dangers, Colonel Freear met with an accidental death on his own farm at Warwick after being thrown from his horse."
It was Colonel Freear's great grandson, the late Clifford Freer of Norwood, my brother, who donated the Colonel's War Memorabilia to the Museum, He in turn, had been given these artifacts by James F. Elliot of Warwick, whose wife had found them in her father's attic. Mrs. Elliot was an Eccles and her father, J.D. Eccles was a close friend of Colonel Freear.
Reta [Freer} Cran [1990]