With all due respect to your family's history, those comments by Ross do not sound authentic. In the summer of 1814, Ross was still recovering from a serious wound he had received in the Peninsula, he was very worried about his wife whom he had to leave ill in France, and he was not at all happy about his mission in the Chesapeake, to the point where VAdm Cochrane, the RN commander in N America, complained about his attitude to London. Far from being a fire breather, Robert Ross was a very unhappy soldier.

I have encountered these family legends before and, while they are hard to prove or disprove, where the evidence can be found, they usually turn out to untrue or, at best, great exaggerations built around a kernel of truth.

If it is any comfort, as a child I was told by my great-Aunt that "Great-great-grandfather Springer drew his sword and cut the heads off three thieving Yankees" who tried to loot his farm near Delaware, Upper Canada, in 1813. Further research revealed that Major Daniel Springer, the man in question, was not my direct ancestor (that was his brother), that he did not kill any Americans; that he was taken prisoner by a raiding party of Canadian renegades from the Detroit area; and that his farm, which was also the headquarters of his own militia regiment, was under guard by his own men who ran away.

I prefer it the way my great-Aunt told it, but such is life.

dg