(fl. 18th, 19th century), U E Loyalist and surveyor. Born probably in South Carolina. Son of the Loyalist William Fortune. In 1796 Joseph Fortune was granted a commission to practice as a land surveyor. With his father he did surveys (1797-1798) just outside GC in the Tps of East and West Hawkesbury and Alfred and Plantagenet. Also, without his father, he conducted surveys in the Tps of Cornwall (1803) and Caledonia (1808) and in the Seigniory of L’Orignal (1808) and the Gore of Hawkesbury (1816). “In the years 1816 to 1818 Joseph Fortune, a surveyor, divided the site of the present South Lancaster into lots and made a map of it; though the map has vanished his survey is still the basis of the hamlet.” (Ross, Lancaster, 64) In the War of 1812 he was a lieutenant.-colonel. in the Prescott County militia. He fled to Lower Canada in 1821 to escape the clutches of the Upper Canada House of Assembly in a dispute arising out of his role as returning officer in the Prescott and Russell provincial election of 1820.
Biog. by A.P. Walker in OLS No. 49 (1934) 128-130 * mentioned Dictionary of Canadian Biography VIII, 688-689 (1820 election)