====== Jim, Yankee ====== (**Yankee Jim**) (1820s-c.1890?), shantyman, figure of legend. (James Grant?) He is said to have been born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and to have been captured in his early day by Indians of New York State, but to have escaped from them through guile after a period of slavery and captivity during which he learned many woodland skills from the Indians. Jim worked as a shantyman among the Glengarrians. He lived in the St. Elmo area, and afterwards in a log shack in the Brodie area. According to one legend, he left the St. Elmo area when a farmer who had been losing oats set a bear trap to catch the offender and caught a portion of a human hand. In his last years, this frontiersman lived, six months at a time for each, at Brodie in the homes of William Brodie and John McDougall. He is buried in the little cemetery of the Covenanter Church at Brodie, but there is no tombstone. He has traditionally been identified with Yankee Jim (also known simply as Yankee) who is one of the characters in Ralph Connor’s novel //The Man from Glengarry//. In the novel the name is also expanded to J. Latham. His name in real life has been given as James Grant. There appears to be no documentary proof that he was called Yankee Jim in his lifetime. And for whatever the observation may be worth, the word ”Yankee” was unusual and indeed virtually non-existent in the vocabulary of a later generation of Glengarrians (certainly, those from the 1940s to the 1960s). ---- “A History of the ‘Brodie Church’ as Covenanters Mark 100th Year,” //Glengarry News// 6 Dec. 1946 * //Butternuts and Maple Sugar// 318 * MacMillan, //Kirk//, 270-271 * //The Man from Glengarry//, New Canadian Library edn., 87, 99-103, 165 [<6>]