USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > The history of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 29
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Of the manual of arms we know but little, and that would be impossible to explain, except at length, without the aid of illustrations. It will be sufficient to state that the arms were carried in the left hand, and the manual of firing was com- plicated by the use of the flint and match. For a time there was no music but the drum, each company having two, the drummers being compelled to serve under a penalty. Gradu- ally, this monotonous tattoo was supplemented by the fife and bugle.
We now come to the great Puritan holiday, when the stern and dignified pilgrim unbent his rigid mien and sated his natural desire for display in the glories of training day. Here, gathered upon the town common, was the yeomanry of the village, with polished fire-arm, glittering corselets, and savage halberds. What a sight to thrill the incarcerated sensibilities
1 Archeologia Americana, 145.
2The prices of arms and equipments varied considerably, according to quality. In 1633 corselet and pike were rated at one pound ten shillings, and in 1680 a gun and loading staff was worth one pound and fifteen shillings. This was old tenor, and cannot be accurately computed now, although in general terms it may be stated to be four or five times greater value than our present currency.
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of the fair maidens of that extremely proper century, when "light conversation" between the sexes was prohibited by statute! It was a day of finery and bravery carefully sand- wiched between piety and pies. Beginning and ending with prayer the interval was filled with drills, sham battles, and inspections. The noon hours were devoted to attacks on the larder, bountifully supplied with tarts and cakes from the tempting cupboards of Vineyard housewives. The training day lingered in the affections of the people for more than two centuries, and many of our older citizens of the New England States can recall the dying brilliancy of the general muster of the militia. The compulsory train bands had perished by default, and the volunteer rifle corps, taking their places, merged the "fower dayes evry yeare" into one grand encamp- ment and muster of the heroic spirits of the time.
KING PHILIP'S WAR.
The isolation of the island, and the satisfactory relations established between the whites and the natives, all made for the maintenance of peace between the rival races. For a generation the settlers on the Vineyard, under the direction of the Mayhews, had dealt fairly with the Indians in land matters, bought their "rights," and paid them for work and material in trading. There was not an ideal relationship maintained, as the whites continued to regard the aborigine as a "heathen" and assumed the patriarchal attitude towards the red man in many ways. This was shown in the system of bondage adopted to liquidate indebtedness, as told elsewhere, whereby limited slavery was accomplished under forms of law. Al- though the island Indians were subject to the "kingship" of Metacomet, of Philip, of Pokanoket, Rhode Island, it is evi- dent from contemporaneous writings that they did not con- tinue entirely under his influence when he began his war against the English upon the mainland.
The Indians here were encouraged to adopt the custom of military training on the English plan, and before 1675 Japheth Hannit of Chilmark was made "Captain over a Com- pany of his own Nation." It is clear from allusions to this that they were under regular control, and when the war broke out, it became a subject of some concern to others. The peo- ple of Nantucket reported it to the Governor of New York, in which "they pretend an ill consequence may arrise upon the
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Indyans Trayning in Armes on Marthas Vineyard." But while it was undoubtedly a hazardous experiment, it caused no ultimate harm. The captain of their company was an ally of the governor. "In the time of that War, which began in the Year 1675," says Experience Mayhew, "and was commonly call'd Phillip's War, good Japheth was very serviceable to both those of his own Nation and ours on this Island; for being firmly set, if possible, to maintain and preserve Peace betwixt the English and Indians here; and being an Indian captain, as has already been said, he was imployed by the English to ob- serve and report how things went among the Indians."2 As a precautionary measure the governor of New York, in June, 1675, dispatched ammunition and arms to the Vineyard, with instructions how to manage the existing situation.3 At a sub- sequent meeting of the council in September, it was voted to send "a Great Gun" to the Vineyard and "the Proclamation concerning the Indyans of keeping Watches erecting Block Houses &c." This gun was sent in a sloop, which also carried one barrel of powder, fifteen muskets and four skeins of match for the use of the train band.4 The General Court of the island in the next month passed the following laws bearing on the subject: -
Ordered That every househoulder have in his house to everie person able to bear armes under his charge one pound of powder and four pounds of shott or Bullets, and every single person that shall not provide himself with powder and shott as aforesaid within one week after warning given him by the officer or Lieutenant or shall be found without shall be fined 5s for the first default Ios the second and so increasing as his default shall be: and shall keep a sufficient gunne well fixed: and it is hereby ordered That the Lieutenant shall have power to take all fines which shall be due By the Breach of this Order & dispose them according to order. And that all persons may be furnished as aforesaid it is here by ordered That no person who hath powder and shott more than thrice as much as he is Bound to keep by law shall refuse to deliver to each Inglish man belong- ing to this Iland who shall demand the same 25, 6d per pound for powder and 5d per pound shott in mony wheat or feathers.
Ordered That no persons presume to sell barter Give directly or Indirectly furnish aney man or persons whatsoever with any quantitie or quantities whatsoever of powder or shott without liberty and licenc first obtained from under the hands of the Govourner and of his Assistants: that they may have the same to shew when they may be caled to give an
1N. Y. Col. Mss. (Council Minutes), II, (2), P. 51.
2Indian Converts, 46. 3N. Y. Col. Documents, III, 254.
+N. Y. Col. Mss. (Council Minutes), II, (2), p. 51.
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account what they have done with such powder or shott they hadd in their custodie: uppon penaltie of paying for every charge so disposed of without licence the full and just summe of five poundes to the treasurie.1
It was further ordered that the lieutenant, "with the 'sar- gent, shall appoint dayes for exercising the companie in armes, and any person who shall not make appearance at time ap- pointed shall pay 12d, and if shal not appear during the day to serve shall pay 3s. to the companie." 2
The war was not a long one, though a terrible one while it lasted. Beginning in June, 1675, it was ended on Aug. 12, 1676, when the great son of Massasoit fell at Mount Hope dead from a shot leveled at him by a soldier under Benjamin Church's command. It caused no disturbance whatever at the Vine- yard. Experience Mayhew attributed this happy condition to Japheth Hannit. "To his Faithfulness in the Discharge of this Trust," he says, "I conceive that the Preservation of the Peace of our Island was very much owing, when the People of the Main were all in War and Blood." 3
Thus passed the first war, which was but the forerunner of a long series of conflicts between the natives and their allies, the French of Canada, lasting into the middle of the next cen- tury. As stated before, the distance of the island from the scenes of these campaigns gave but little opportunity for the men of the Vineyard to develop their taste for the glories of warfare. Until 1692, the authorities of New York had juris diction over such affairs, and they had got along better with the Indians than the governments of Massachusetts, and it was not till the second Indian war, beginning in 1690, that the former colony was called upon to defend her frontier settle- ments against the combined strength of the allied forces. Meanwhile the local militia organization was kept up, and on June 15, 1684, Matthew Mayhew was commissioned as cap- tain of the company at Martha's Vineyard, which is presumed embraced all the towns on the island.4 Situated upon the coast, the Vineyard was frequently the object of attack from French cruisers sent out from Canada to commit depredation on the commerce of the English settlements, and to inflict damage upon their sea-shore villages.
1Dukes County Deeds, I, 4. 2 Ibid. 3Indian Converts, 46.
4N. Y. Col. Mss., Vol. XXXIII.
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FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
On Oct. 20, 1690, Lieutenant-Governor Leisler wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury that "a French Barq Songo and 2 sloops crusing near Long Island, making some spoil on Mar- tins Vineyard, Nantuckett and Block Island Alarming the Inhabitants, having no ports of force."1 Rumors of this sally of the enemy reached the neighboring colonies to the south with the usual exaggeration of such tales. "Report here from Pensilvania," writes a Maryland gentleman, "says that seven French shipps of Warr have on Martins Vineyard and Block Island putt all to fire and sword without mercy or distinction."2 However, some of these dangers were real. The coast was infested with these sea marauders, and the only defence against them was a sort of breastwork, probably mounting the "great gun" sent thither during King Philip's war. On Aug. 20, 1691, Andrew Newcomb was reported as "Commander of the fortification: who had such number of men as occasionally were ordered by the Chief Magistrate."3 It is not known where this "fort" was located, but, considering the short range of guns in those days, it was probably set on Pease's Point to defend the village. The expedition to Quebec, in 1690, being a Massachusetts affair, did not concern the Vineyard, and no soldiers from the island were attached to this disastrous mili- tary operation under Phips. One soldier, who later came to reside here, Jonathan Lambert, was credited with service in it, and received the reward given to those who participated. At the time he was a resident of the Cape. The last connection the Vineyard had with the war at this period, when under the jurisdiction of New York, was to contribute to the defense of Albany, the object of assault by the French and Indians.4 By the charter of Oct. 7, 1691, the affairs of the Vineyard from that date, belong to the history of Massachusetts, but it was not for many months that it was known by the parties involved in the change. It made no difference with the activities of the fleet of war vessels constantly appearing in the sound. A contemporary document describes the annoyances to which the island was subjected. The writer tells of the "Continuall Charge not only for securing of themselves but mainey times
1N. Y. Col. Documents, III, 752. 2Maryland Archives, VIII, 199. 3N. Y. Col. Mss., XXXVII, 230. 4N. Y. Col. Documents, IV, 2.
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for succor and defence of such shipping from most partes hav- ing commerce and trade here," and that they had not only armed themselves, but the Indians, "supplying them with ammunition and provisions while the enemy hath been on the coast." He said that "all such charges hath since that tim been wholly on the inhabitants to the value of many hundred pounds and often more for securing the shipping laden with provisions and other shipping bound to boston & adjacent towns, it being beneath both an English and a Cristian spirit to suffer the takeing of such vessels when it might be by us hindred, beside the often charge of sendin botes to inform vessls coming in from sea of the enemies being on this coast."1 It will thus be seen that the Vineyard was a centre of maritime activity on the part of the French. Nantucket suffered in the same way during this period. But being now nearer the home government better protection was soon obtained.
Immediately upon his arrival as governor, Sir William took measures to defend the province from invasion by the French and Indians, who, encouraged by the failure of his expedition against Quebec in 1690, were renewing their in- cursions upon the out-lying settlements of Massachusetts. The two frigates, the Sorlings and the Newport, of the English Navy, detailed for constant duty on this coast, were not adapted to pursue small craft in shoal waters, and hence the project of fitting out an armed vessel of light draught for the protection of vessels in Vineyard Sound, was started by the governor and council as early as March 7, 1692-3. Five hundred pounds was voted for "building and fitting of a small vessel mounted with ten guns and a suitable number of oars." This act was passed Dec. 11, 1693, and by the first of June of the next year she was ready for service.2
Various expeditions "to the Eastward," meaning into the Province of Maine, or New Brunswick, were sent by the au- thorities of Massachusetts to assault the Indians and their allies in their haunts in the forest fastnesses of that region. It is not known that any men went from the Vineyard before 1700, but it was the custom to enlist "trusty" natives in the companies mustered for these campaigns, and we have the record of one Sam Quobiscum, alias Sam Nopye, "a Martin's
1Mass. Archives, LXX, 298.
2 Acts and Resolves of Mass., VII, 14. The ostensible purpose of their act was the protection of commerce, but see the letter of Governor Phips to Governor Fletcher of New York, in Documentary History of N. Y., IV, 5, 6.
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Vineyard Indian," who was under command of Jethro Church, also an Indian in Major Benjamin Church's regiment in 1696, on one of these expeditions.1 It was a common practice in all the towns of the colony to employ Indians for this pur- pose. These continual expeditions caused great expense to the towns, and none felt it more than the Vineyard, for under New York their taxes were very light. At the General Court, holden in 1695, an act was passed " to provide means for the support of the government, for a vigorous persecution of the War against the French and Indian enemy and rebels," and for other purposes. A tax of £2333, 9s., and 3d. was levied upon the polls and estates. Upon Edgartown £41, Chilmark £21, 6s., 8d., Tisbury £21, 6s., 8d. The whole was to be paid on or before May 29, 1696.
Nothing of interest to local annals occurred for ten years in the military affairs of the colony. In May, 1707, twenty- three transports and whaleboats, convoyed by the Deptford, Captain Stuckley, and the galley Province, Captain Southack, made an unsuccessful attempt against Port Royal (now Annap- olis), Nova Scotia. The land troops were under the com- mand of Colonel John March. This was unsuccessful, and two years later another expedition against that place proved similarly disastrous. In the last one John Skiff, probably son of Nathaniel Skiff of Chilmark, was attached to the company of Captain Matthew Austin of the New Hampshire contingent.2 On the 18th of September, 1710, however, a fleet of thirty-six vessels of war and transports, under the command of Captain Nicholson, sailed from Boston for a third attack on Port Royal, which place had been returned to France by treaty. The ex- pedition arrived before the town on the 26th of September, and on the first of October the forts were carried by storm. In honor of the reigning Queen of England the name of the town was changed to Annapolis. In the last of these three expeditions Nicodemus Skuhwhannan, a Tisbury Indian, lost his life.3 Flushed with victory, Nicholson went to England to urge further operations against the French, and as a result of his representations, a fleet of fifteen war vessels and forty trans- ports, under the command of Vice-Admiral Walker, appeared in Boston harbor in June, 1711, where it took aboard about seven thousand troops, regulars and provincials, and on the
12 Maine Hist. Soc. Coll., V, 507-9. 2N. H. State Papers.
3Sewall Diary, II, 432; comp. Indian Converts, 103.
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last of July cleared for Quebec. The loss of eight ships, with 884 men, in a fog, while ascending the St. Lawrence, caused the abandonment of the expedition, and the vessels of the navy made sail for England, while the colonial contingent steered away for Boston. This disaster plunged Massachusetts and the other provinces so deeply in debt, that for a generation they did not recover from the effects of it. In this unfortunate enterprise one of our Chilmark youth, Nathan, probably son of Nathaniel Skiff, "went out as Serjeant under Maj. Robert- son, and being in his return taken sick, which Sickness was so Greavious, that he got no further whomeward than Dorchester before he Lay wholy By it and of the same sickness thare Dyed."1 It is not known that there were any other Vineyard soldiers connected with the Port Royal campaigns, or the fruitless expedition to Quebec.
In 1740 an expedition against the Spanish West Indies was organized, under Admiral Edward Vernon, to which Massa- chusetts contributed five hundred men, and received back not more than fifty, the remainder having perished of tropical diseases. One company went from Plymouth county, but it is not known that any soldiers went from this island.
THE LOUISBURG EXPEDITION.
We now come to the great campaign in which New Eng- land valor found opportunity to display itself, under talented leadership, and the glory of it was celebrated in song and story for generations - the siege of Louisburg, Cape Breton. An old narrative poem thus begins the account: -
"Come all New England galant Lads And Lend to me an ear And of your Brthern mighty acts I will in short declar brave Peprell with three thousand men perhaps some hundreds more did Land the very first of May Upon Cape Briton Shore."
In a fleet of fourteen vessels of war and nearly an hundred transports, the troops commanded by Colonel William Pep-
1In the Dorchester burying ground is a stone erected to Nathan Sriffe(sic) who "Died Oct. the 17, 1711, in the 20th year of his age," probably erected by his uncle Benjamin, whose petition for his pay as a soldier, after his death, is among the Massa- chusetts Archives.
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perrell of Kittery, Me., embarked for the rendezvous at Cape Canso, Nova Scotia, under the charge of Captain Edward Tyng, as commodore of the sea forces. At the rendezvous the expedition was joined by an auxiliary force, detailed from the royal navy, consisting of six frigates and five ships. The . combined fleet arrived before Louisburg on the last day of April, 1745, having been detained by ice, and immediately began the investment of the place. It was the modern fortress of that region, and for a quarter of a century the French had been strengthening it until at this time it was called the second Dunkirk. It was garrisoned by sixteen hundred men, and armed with one hundred and one cannon, seventy-six swivels and six mortar, and the local conditions afforded such a natural aid to the artificial defenses that it was assumed it could be held by two hundred men against five thousand. Being with- out siege guns the provincials supplied this deficiency by cap- turing an outwork, called the grand battery, and when this was accomplished the investment was completed without bloodshed. For six weeks the besiegers hammered away at the fortress, without interruption, and on June 15, when the French commander learned of the capture of the long-expected relief ship Vigilant, of sixty-four guns, a flag of truce was sent out. On the 17th the fortress, with six hundred regulars and thirteen hundred volunteers, was surrendered, and the vic- torious Pepperrell and his raw New England troops marched in. Another verse of the ballad above quoted describes the joy of the besieged at their deliverance: -
"The gentelmen and Lades tou They did carress our men For having them delivered From worse than Lawyer's den."
The return of the troops to Boston, with the report of the fall of the last menace of the French to New England, was the signal for the most extravagant demonstrations of satisfaction. Pepperrell was knighted by the king, and thus became the first baronet of New England birth, while one of the captains of the fleet was commissioned with that rank in the royal navy. This combined campaign of the troops from New Eng- land, and the naval forces of England marked the high-water mark of the relations between the home government and the colonists. How many Vineyard men took part in this suc- cessful campaign is not known, owing to the absence of a
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complete set of muster rolls in the state archives 1 The name of Sergeant Joseph Luce has been found among those pub- lished, and there occur the names of Lieutenant Peter West and Thomas West, all Tisbury names, doubtless belonging to our island. According to tradition, young Peter Pease (afterwards the successful whaler), at the age of thirteen, was a cabin boy in the fleet which accompanied Pepperrell to Louisburg.2 That there were many more of our Vineyard men in this celebrated siege is probably true.3
The following years were not so full of activity. Syl- vanus Luce of Tisbury died at Cape Breton, between 1746 and 1748, probably one of the garrison left at Louisburg after its surrender. In 1748 William Jernegan served as a soldier in one of the "Northern" campaigns. In his autobiography he says "at the age of 19 I was impressed to go into the Army to defend the inhabitants of the state of Maine against the Indian savage of the then wilderness, who was daily killing and sculping the people there, and when I was impressed, a number of others was impressed in the town, but for some reason or other causes were chiefly discharged. I then com- plained very hard to the commanding officer, saying, 'I had no father, no mother, brother or sister, nor any friend to in- tercede for me; for this cause will you force me into the army ?' The officers reply to me was, 'You are the only person to go, for you have no one to cry for you.' (O, cruel sentence!) So I went into the army, and through the goodness of God, returned home the year following."
In 1748 the fortress of Louisburg was ceded back to France by England under a general treaty of peace, and ten years later the work of Pepperrell had to be done all over again. Thus matters went on for several years, without open conflict between the two great rivals for the colonial supremacy of this continent. The struggle could not be longer delayed. Every outbreak in Europe was a cause for some reprisal on this side of the Atlantic by one or the other of the belligerents. There was "fight" in the air. To the Puritans of New England
!The Society of Colonial Wars, in the Year Book of 1895, published a roster of officers, found in London. The N. E. Historic-Genealogical Register for 1870, printed some fragmentary rolls. The Mass. Hist. Society has published a number of the Pepperrell papers.
2Providence Journal, July 20, 1826.
3There was a Captain Mayhew, commander of the sloop Union, attached to the fleet of New England vessels taking part in this campaign. This is a name known only on the Vineyard at this period, and it undoubtedly belongs to one of our island men, but it is not possible to identify him. (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 2d series, XI, 442.)
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the Frenchman with his "Popish" religion was little better, if any, than his "heathen" ally, the Indian, and the average Yankee desired to drive both of them from the haunts of men on this continent. The return of Louisburg to the French did not please the people here, and they remembered that Quebec still sat in unconquered grandeur on the St. Lawrence, a monument to numberless failures of their troops. They began to gird themselves for the final assault all along the line. In the fall of 1755, Tisbury looked after the stock of ammuni- tion, and passed the following vote: -
Also at sd Meeting it was Put to Vote whether or no the sum of £6-13-4d Should be Raised by way of Rate to Defrey the Charges of the selectmen of sd Town for Procuring a Town Stock of Powder and other nesesary, as the Law Directs that Towns be furnished with & it Passed in the affermitive.
THE CROWN POINT CAMPAIGN.
At this time the militia of the Vineyard was better organ- ized than ever before, under the colonelcy of Zaccheus Mayhew of Chilmark as the ranking officer, John Norton of Edgartown as lieutenant-colonel, Gershom Cathcart of Tisbury as captain, of the combined company of foot for Tisbury and Chilmark. The martial spirit was dominant throughout the island, as it was elsewhere in New England, stimulated by the successes of recent years, and the conviction that one great task yet confronted Protestant institutions, - the expulsion of France from power in North America. This was no dream of enthu- siasts, but the sober purpose of men as religiously zealous as were their opponents. France was constantly encroaching on the northern frontier, and had already established her out- posts on the shores of Lake Champlain. Her vessels were continually ranging up and down the coast in a hostile attitude. In the fall of 1755, it was reported that "a vessel with French- men on board that had lately clear'd out from a port in New England for the West Indies has been in divers harbours at or near Marthas Vineyard with intent, as is suspected, to pro- cure provisions for the French inhabitants at Louisburgh."1 Doubtless every act of the French was under suspicion. They were led by an able officer, Louis Joseph Montcalm, just ap- pointed commander of the forces in Canada. The English army was directed by General James Abercrombie, a Scotch-
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