USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 20
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Elisha Hutchinson e
Samuelekwall. John Phillips John Halloy John Higginson 8 am Hogy? delleex
COMMITTEE OF 1706.
proceeded from Col. Römer, 't was not intended to countenance that, or encourage their imitation ; but observe his direction in things. wherein he was skilful and ordered to govern the work." This new fort was built of brick, and a slab was placed over the entrance with a Latin inscription, stating that the work was finished in 1703. It also called Römer "chief military engineer to their Royal Majesties in North America." (See Shurtleff, De- scription of Boston, p. 493; and further, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., January, 1879, p. 22.) Shurtleff says : " A small part of the old wall has been retained in constructing the rear portion of the present fortification,
John Higginson Sant appleton Ephratng Savage Sam. Browne Samuel Clasp
COMMITTEE OF 1704.
Fort Independence; but as it has been covered with large granite ashlers, the ancient relic is en- tirely hidden from sight." The committee acting in conjunction with Römer were Thomas Brattle and Timothy Clarke, who were appointed, in 1701, "to repair and make new fortifications at the Castle," and their signatures annexed are from their report. Clarke was, in 1704, commander of the " Sconce " or South Battery, under Fort Hill. In 1704, still another committee was appointed on the part of the Province to view the Castle after the works were finished ; and this committee
Bont Browne And"Belcher
consisted of John Higginson, Samuel Appleton, Ephraim Savage, Samuel Brown, and Samuel Clap, whose signatures here given are copied from their report. Still later, ir. 1706, another
IO2
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
In New England the war presented more alarming features than had the Pro Stoughton John ffagarwashio previous contest, since the Five Nations had now pledged neutrality, and by this act pro: tected New York, - so that the full force of the war came upon the New England colonies. Sant Sogg El Governor Dudley tried to secure a similar neu- trality from the Abena- kis, who seemed quite ready to promise it. And" Belcher " The sun," one of their chiefs said, " is not more distant from the earth than our thoughts from war." "Our Eastern In- Jimmi Planke dians," wrote the author of The Deplorable State of New England, " had no sooner, with all pos- sible assurance, renewed their League of Peace with us, but being moved by the instiga- tion of the French, 8 they Perfidiously and Barbarously Surprised Seven more of our naked and secure Plan- tations." 1
SIGNATURES OF THE GOVERNOR AND COMMITTEE ON FORTIFICATIONS.2
committee, with Elisha Hutchinson at the head of it, acted in this work of inspecting the de-
OHn. Prattle.
fences. (Massachusetts Archives, "Military," v. 216.) The town at the same time voted £1,000 to improve the defences. This same year Ben-
jamin Browne and Andrew Belcher were ap- pointed to treat with Captain John Bonner to go in command of a brigantine to Quebec to effect an exchange of prisoners ; Belcher was commissary-general. Massachusetts Archives, " Military," v. 247. - ED.] 1 " A Memorial of the present Deplor- able State of New England," in Sewall Papers, ii. 63.
2 [The French, during these years, as has been noted in the Introduction to the present volume, prepared various plans of Boston, in anticipation of making an at- tack ; and at one time information of the French plans reached the Bostonians in a letter from Cap- tain John Nelson, dated Aug. 26, 1692. Nelson,
103
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
Deerfield 1 and Haverhill were attacked and ravaged; many men, women, and children were killed or carried into captivity. The priests of Canada were now reviled as instigating these atrocities, now thanked for restraining the savages from cruelty. Worst of all, Governor Dudley had utterly lost the confidence of the people over whom he had been placed. In the Sewall Papers will be found a reprint of two anonymous pamphlets, the one published in Boston in 1707, and the other in London in 1708, both entitled, with some variations, The Deplorable State of New England. In both of these the Governor is accused of " dark designs," of " hellish malice," of " seeking to enslave " the colonies.2 A third pamphlet is reprinted in the same volume, and gives the arguments in the Governor's defence. It is now needless to enter into this controversy, but it is obvious that such a state of feeling must have greatly enhanced the alarm and suffering of that whole dark period.
who it will be remembered was instrumental in the overthrow of Andros, had been taken by the French while he was on a trading voyage to Nova Scotia, and imprisoned in Quebec. In consequence of this letter he was sent to France, whence, after an absence of some years, he re- turned to Boston. In the Massachusetts Archives is a petition of his, dated Nov. 30, 1698, asking
John foyo
lay,
Samhet hihite
compensation because of his seven years' deten- tion as a prisoner with the French, through re- prisal. The apprehension felt in Boston a little later found expression in the appointment by Governor Stoughton of a committee to repair the fortifications. Their signatures with the Gov-
ernor's (opposite) are from their report in the Massachusetts Archives. Their appointment was dated July 28, 1696, and their report was that the " new" battery should be enlarged, a platform built before the Castle, and the northeast bas- tion be laid anew. They recommended that on Governor's Island a battery of eight guns should be erected on the southeast part, and one of ten on the southwest. They found that for this purpose six guns could be spared from Scar- lett's Wharf, five from Greenwood's Wharf, two from the North Battery, two from the South Battery ; and they said that the Bos- ton merchants would supply the rest. As an additional precaution, a number of ships were moored in the harbor, "in line of battle, to annoy the king's enemies in case of an attack." There is on file at the State House a paper, dated 1697, detailing the stores wanted for these ships, signed as annexed in fac-simile ; and of the signers Foye, White, and Gwinn were commanders of the ships. - ED.]
1 [The Rev. John Williams of this place, whose story is so well known, was taken captive during this incursion, Feb. 29, 1704-5, and carried to Montreal, whence he returned to Boston, Oct. 25, 1706. Chong Swing Sewall records his preaching here, and the next year he carried through the press of Bartholomew Green, in Boston, his Redeemed Captive, containing the sermon Sewall mentions,- a book which in various early editions is among the treasures of SIGNATURES OF THE COMMANDERS OF THE SHIPS, ETC. Americana. (Sewall Papers, ii. 173, 182; Brinley Catalogue, No. 494, etc.) A con- temporary account of his death, 1729, from the New England Weekly Journal, is given in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1854, p. 174 .- ED.]
2 Sewall Papers, ii. 125 *. The same volume has a note on the authorship of these tracts.
104
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
To meet the covert designs of a powerful nation like the French, alien in race and bitterly hostile in religion; to dread the stealthy approaches and often merciless cruelty of a savage foe, - these anxieties were surely enough for the colonists without being compelled to distrust their own officials.
Part of this distrust, no doubt, came from that suspicious spirit which always furnishes a ready explanation of military failure; there is rarely a defeat which is not embittered by accusations against somebody. An expe- dition was sent against Port Royal in 1707. This small fort was supposed to be a headquarters for privateers and for the illegal trade with Indians, and Governor Dudley himself was supposed to have had a share in its unlawful profits. It was reported through a prisoner that at Port Royal they had not yet heard of the war; so that the Governor could not resist the popular
Benjamin Church february 27.1692
6 The Church
demand to "go and destroy that nest of hornets," as it was termed. The veteran Colonel Church,1 the hero of Philip's War, was accordingly sent against it, in 1704, but returned without touching the fort itself, having only devastated the country. Another expedition was sent, and returned still more ingloriously; so that the women of Boston met the soldiers in the streets, according to the pamphleteers already quoted, and derided them. " Says one of them: Why, our Cowards imagined that the Fort at Port Royal would fall before them like the Walls of Jericho ! Another answers : Why did not the Blockheads then stay out Seven Days to see? What ail'd the Traitors to come away in Five Days' time after they got there ?" 2
Three years later, in October, 1710, the " hornet's nest" was taken. A fleet sailed from Boston consisting of six English and thirty colonial vessels, carrying five hundred Royal Marines, two regiments from Massachusetts, and one each from New Hampshire and Connecticut. Hobby and Colonel
1 [Colonel Church gained much of his repu- tation at the eastward. There are numerous letters of his on file in the Massachusetts Ar- chives, and some are printed in Baylies' Old Colony, and elsewhere. His son Thomas was with him on some of his expeditions, and dressed up from the old soldier's recollections the book, Entertaining Passages, etc., which was printed in Boston in 1716, and which gives an account of this Port Royal expedition, - the same book as already mentioned, edited by Dr. Dexter, treating likewise of the expeditions of 1689, 1690, 1692, 1696. For this and other events of Queen Anne's war (1703-1713), Dr. Palfrey (iv. 257) considers Samuel Penhallow's Indian Wars (originally published in Boston, in 1726,
and reprinted in New Hamp. Hist. Coll., i, and again in Cincinnati, in 1859, with notes by W. Dodge) the great contemporary authority ; while the narrative of Samuel Niles, ". French and In- dian Wars," in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi., is chiefly filched from Morton, Church, Hubbard, Mather, and Penhallow. Cotton Mather's Duodecemiium Luctuosum, Boston, 1714, is interesting no further than that it is one of his summaries of events, detailed in a sermon before the Governor. On the French side we still have Charlevoix, Shea's ed., vol. v., with his references. - ED.]
2 Sewall Papers, ii. 129. [This expedition sailed from Boston, May 13, 1707, and Captain Cyprian Southack accompanied it as commander of the Province Galley. - ED.]
IO5
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
Tailer commanded those of Massachusetts. In six days they anchored before Port Royal; the fortress was besieged and its supplies cut off, and the garrison of one hundred and fifty - six Wiliam Tailer marched out with the honors of war. The in- habitants within a three miles' circuit, upon tak- ing an oath of allegiance, were to be protected for two years; but the inhabitants of the neighboring districts were harassed and plundered, and were threatened with being driven from their homes " unless they would turn Protestants." The name of Port Royal was changed to Annapolis Royal,1 afterwards to Annapolis, in honor of the reigning queen of England.2
1 Sewall Papers, ii. 293. [See the references pedition. Some papers pertaining to this service are in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p. 196.
in Shea's Charlevoix, vol. v. The ship "De- spatch " of Boston, owned by David Jeffries & - ED.] Co., was used as a hospital transport on this ex- 2 [Annexed are the signatures of the Royal
august 19: vyro.15 - Jobs Excellancing very humble
Sam
offre: nicholson bolth Charles Hobby-
Commissioners, who were in Boston at this time, calling upon the Governor to furnish provisions for the fleet about to sail for Port VOL. II .- 14.
Royal. The document is on file in the Massa- chusetts Archives, "Military," v. 693; and in the same collection will be found the proclamation
106
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Early in 1711 the agent of Massachusetts and Connecticut, Jeremiah Dummer,1 presented a memorial to the Queen asking her, "in compassion to her plantations, to send an armament against Canada," and representing that other provinces, even so far south as Virginia, were prepared to join in the enterprise. A Tory ministry was in power, under St. John, afterward Viscount Bolingbroke, the most brilliant man of his time; and he entered eagerly into the project. Fifteen ships of war, with forty transports, bring- ing five regiments of Marlborough's veterans, arrived at Boston in June.2
which they issued in 1709 at Boston, upon their arrival as bearers of instructions to the govern- ors of the colonies. The signatures attached to this document, with the Governor's in- dorsement,are here- with given. Massa- chusetts and Rhode Island were called Sâm on to raise fifteen hundred men. The levy was made, and the troops were in camp May 20, and remained so till September. In October word came to Bos- ton that the English force, intended to be joined to the expedition, had been sent to Portugal. The troops were accordingly disbanded. This was the year before the successful expedition of 1710 .- ED.]
1 [Dummer was the agent of Massachusetts from 1710 to 1721 .- ED.]
2 [The captain of the Castle at this time was Zechariah Tuthill. He was a militia officer,
Zet Juchill
and had been lieutenant of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1702. Sewall records how, during some court proceedings, June 8, "the drums put us to silence," and there was "an alarm at the Castle," which greeted the
. arrival of the van of the fleet. On the 12th Sewall says, "The proclamation for the war is passed. I carried it to the printer at noon." When the "Devonshire " frigate arrived, with General Hill on board, who was to command the land forces, Sewall was sent down the harbor to meet him. They came in pinnaces to the Castle, where Tuthill saluted with twenty-one guns, and then coming up to town landed at Scarlet's Wharf, and "went up King Street in front of the regiment to the Council Chamber." This was June 25. The general was enter-
tained at Mr. Borland's, one of the prominent merchants of the town and the Queen's agent. Later, July 7, the admiral had an interview with
for nicholson Veliki:
Letit be made Publick. pulley
Captain John Bonner, who brought him a chart of the St. Lawrence. Walker says of Bonner that he had "the general character of the best pilot, as indeed he appeared to me to be ; I told him he should be aboard that ship when I hoisted my flag; notwithstanding he was very instant with me to be dispensed with, and for an excuse alleged his age." In the News-Letter, No. 379, there was printed an account of the forces, and Walker reprints it in his Journal. The land forces were encamped on Noddle's Island, and the sick were put in hospital "on one of the is- lands near Nantasket Road." Walker says, " The generation then inhabiting Boston had never before seen so grand a military display as
John Borland/2
these veteran troops [they had served under Marlborough] made as they performed their evolutions on the fields of Noddle's Island." The troops re-embarked July 20, and on the 30th sailed. Sumner, East Boston, 341- ED.]
107
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
The fleet remained more than a month, offering in the harbor " a goodly, charming prospect," according to Sewall,1 and doubtless often disturbing the streets with revelry. So little notice had been given of their approach that delay was inevitable in collecting the land forces. Massachusetts furnished bills of credit for £40,000 towards provisioning the fleet; 2 New York issued £10,000; Pennsylvania, £2,000. Fifteen hundred men from Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey were sent to Albany for a land attack on Montreal, and they were joined by eight hundred Iroquois war- riors. Meanwhile the fleet sailed from Boston in July, carrying seven thou- sand men, half regulars and half provincials, under command of Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker.3
Nothing but disaster attended the brief career of the expedition. When St. John heard of the safe arrival of the fleet in Boston, he wrote to the Duke of Orrery, "I believe you may depend on our being masters, at this time, of all North America." But the expedition did not add an inch to British territory, while it did untold injury to the prestige of England with the French, the Indians, and even with the colonists themselves. On August 22, while the fleet was ascending the St. Lawrence, a thick fog came on at nightfall; the admiral disregarded all the pilots in his orders in respect to the ships, and for a time refused even to come on deck when the situation became perilous. Ascending from his cabin at last, he gave counter-orders too late ; eight of his ships were wrecked, and eight hundred and eighty-four men were drowned. A council of war decided to abandon the enterprise, and the fleet returned to England, not even stopping on the way, as had been ordered, to attack the French posts in Newfoundland. The land forces, destined to attack Montreal, were also withdrawn. There could scarcely have been a more ignominious failure.4 A year or two later (April, 1713), the war closed with the peace of Utrecht, which gave to England the possession of Hudson's Bay, of Newfoundland, and of Acadia, - this last province being, however, so imperfectly defined as to give a ready excuse for the renewal of war at a later period.5
1 Sewall Papers, ii. 317.
2 [The admiral at first treated with Captain Andrew Belcher, a rich merchant, with a view to
And Trekker
putting the charge of the provisioning in his hands; but he declined. He then entrusted the work to Andrew Faneuil. - ED.]
3 [The admiral had been lodging with Cap- tain Cyprian Southack, on Tremont Row, near Howard Street ; and Southack in the Province galley was to lead the van in ascending the St. Lawrence. The Captain, who was somewhat famous in his day, as a maker of charts, lies
buried in the Granary, with armorial bearings on his stone, which are given in the Heraldic Journal, ii. 138 .- ED.]
4 [Shea, Charlevoix, v. 252, cites the authori- ties. Walker printed in London, in 1720, A Journal or full account of the late Expedition to Canada. The London Gazette of Oct. 6, 1711, gives the news of the failure of this expedition against Quebec, as it reached the home govern- ment. There is a copy in the Cotton and Prince Papers, No. 16. - ED.]
5 [During the comparative security of the few following years, attention was occasionally directed to the Castle, and its defences were strengthened or repaired. In 1720 a committee reported on a plan for strengthening the east and west heads of the island. Shurtleff, De- scription of Boston, 494. - ED.]
108
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
As usual, the Indian disturbances went on, even while there was peace among the European nations. The colonists took advantage of supposed tranquillity to establish new settlements in Maine, and to build forts.1 The Indians were told by the French that they and the soil they held were not mentioned in the new treaty. "I have my land," exclaimed indignantly the Abenaki chief, "where the Great Spirit has placed me; and while there remains one child of my tribe I shall fight to preserve it." Vaudreuil, the Governor of Canada, was secretly intriguing to renew the contest; and thus Uundrene encouraged by French counsel, but even when not aided openly by French arms, the Christian Indians of Maine kept up their attacks. Their spiritual adviser and head was the venerable Père Rasle, of Norridgewock, for a quarter of a century the self-devoted missionary among the Eastern Indians. He had built a chapel in the forest, himself adorning its walls with paintings; he had trained a band of forty young Indians to assist, wearing cassock and surplice, in the rites and processions of the Church; and he had collected a village of " praying Indians " about him. A Protestant mission, set on foot by the government of Massachusetts, had no chance of rivalry with the more winning methods of Père Rasle; and the attempt was abandoned. But when the Indians, under his supposed counsel, met at Norridgewock for war, and, issuing forth, destroyed Bruns- wick by fire, the Puritans naturally denounced Rasle as an incendiary of mischief, and pledged themselves to the destruction of the Indian head- quarters. They proclaimed the Abenakis to be traitors and robbers, and offered for each Indian scalp a bounty of £15, afterward increased to £100.2 There was by this time a class of Indian fighters among the colo- nists, as hardy, as skilful, and as relentless as the natives themselves; and Père Rasle, knowing this, predicted that the Indians could not sustain them- selves without direct aid from the French. He sent many of his converts to Canada, but resolved to be himself the last to withdraw. Three times an
1 [In August, 1717, Governor Shute, with a number of gentlemen, left Boston by water to proceed to Arrowsic and make a treaty with the Indians. He was accompanied by the Rev. Jo- seph Baxter as a missionary, whose journal on this service for several years is given in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1867, p. 45. The treaty was made Aug. 9-12, and shortly after an account of it was printed in Boston, by B. Green. The treaty is given in Maine Hist. Coll., iii. 364; vi. 231. General Phillips, the Governor of Nova Scotia, was in Boston for a conference in 1719. He arrived on Sunday, Sept. 27, and Colonel Fitch, the commander of the Boston regiment, who had orders to turn out his command to greet the visitor, was in church when word was brought him. He turned inquiringly to Judge Sewall between prayer and singing. "I said ' No!'" records the diarist, exclamation point included ;
and the Colonel, " strengthened," kept his seat. The regiment, however, paraded next day, and Sewall tells how the Governor "stood in Mr. Phillips's balcony, hanged with a carpet, and the officers saluted him as they passed by." The field officers entertained him at dinner at the Green Dragon. Governor Phillips stayed till April, when he left Boston under salute from the Castle. Sewall Papers, iii. 229, 248. - ED.]
2 [A declaration of war against the Eastern Indians was published in Boston, July 26, 1722. The preceding September Governor Shute had given as a reason for a public thanksgiving that Providence had been kind, "particularly in succeeding the methods taken to prevent the insults of the Eastern Indians." See a fac- simile of the page of the Boston Gazette, Oct. 2, 1721, containing this proclamation, in Mr. God- dard's chapter in this volume. - ED.]
109
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
attempt was made to capture him; 1 and at last, on Aug. 23, 1724, a party of New England men reached Norridgewock unperceived, actually firing into the Indian cabins before any alarm had been given. The Indians fled, the settlement was destroyed, and the body of the priest was left upon the ground near the cross, bruised, scalped, and insulted.2 Never was there a more cruel issue of religious fanaticism against fanaticism. Père Rasle belonged to the race of devout martyrs, and with their merits had their frequent defects and their disastrous limitations; while on the other hand so false was the Puritan conception of his character, that when a half-breed Indian was once killed, having with him a devotional book and a list of Indian names, he was currently reported to be " a natural son of the Jesuit Ralle, by an Indian woman who had served him as a laundress." 3
The most cruel war sometimes tends toward peace; and this was unquestionably the result of the destruction of Jesuit missions in New England. For several years longer there was a running fire of hostilities, in the course of which the celebrated but ill-named Captain Lovewell went out again and again to follow the Indian trail, and always returned with John Lovewelly scalps. On one occasion his men dis- covered ten Indians asleep round a fire, beside a frozen pond; surrounding them stealthily, they killed them all in a few minutes, scalped them, and re-entered Dover bearing the ten scalps stretched on hoops and elevated on poles. After receiving an ovation in Dover, they went on to Boston, where they received £100 for each of their brutal tokens.4 This party was always accompanied by a surgeon, and also by a chaplain; and had prayers morning and evening. When it was finally routed and broken up, at the famous "Lovewell's
1 [One of these expeditions was despatched by Governor Shute, under the command of Colonel Westbrook; but two of Rasle's Indians
Sho Westbrook
discovered their approach. The Jesuit's flight, however, was so hasty that he left behind letters from Vaudreuil (which showed the Canadian governor's sympathy and assistance), and the MS. glossary of the Abenaki language, in Rasle's own writing, which is now in the Col- lege Library at Cambridge. - ED.]
2 [Jere. Bumstead, in Boston, makes this en- try in his Almanac : " Aug. 22. 28 Indian scalps brought to Boston; one of wc was Bombazens [an Indian chief], and one fryer Railes."-ED.]
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