USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 21
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3 [Belknap, New Hampshire, ed. 1862, p. 204. Shea, Charlevoix, v. 280, gives full references. Rev. Convers Francis wrote the Life of Rasle in Sparks's American Biography. For an account of his monument, see Historical Magazine, June,
1871, P. 399. Palfrey (New England, iv. 438) says : " His death was a great relief to the bor- der settlements. Men of this century, not in danger from the tomahawk which his zeal lifted against the wives and children of a hundred years ago, can afford to be just to his good qual- ities, such as they were, and to be sentimental over his grave." - ED.]
4 [Belknap, New Hampshire, p. 209. The Journal of Lovewell, signed by himself, detail- ing the events of this expedition, Jan. 27 to Feb. 27, 1724, is preserved in the Massachusetts Archives, vol. 1xxxvi. Mr. Frederic Kidder printed an account of Lovewell's adventures in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., January, 1853, p. 61, and gave this Journal entire. Lovewell's company for this expedition was organized at Dunstable, and the men were raised in that and the neighboring towns. The Journal says of the close of the expedition: "26th [Feb.] we marched down to Captain Knights, at Newing- ton, and (27th) went on board a sloop to come to Boston, where we arrived the 9th current, - Mar. 10th, 1724."- ED.]
IIO
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Fight," in 1725, the descriptive ballad of the period says, in plaintive verse : -
" They wounded good young Frye, Who was our English Chaplain ; He many Indians slew, And some of them he scalped, While bullets round him flew." 1
But even after this disaster to the colonists the power of the Eastern Indians steadily declined; and Dec. 15, 1725, the Abenaki chiefs signed at Boston, in the Council Chamber, a treaty of peace,2 which was long maintained.3
1 [Thomas Symmes printed, in 1725, at Bos- ton (" B. Green, Jr., for S Gerrish "), the original edition of a sermon entitled Lovewell Lamented, which had an account of the " Battle at Pigg- wacket " annexed, and which has become one of the books most sought for by collectors of Ameri- cana. Brinley Catalogue, No. 422. 423. A second edition, corrected, appeared in Boston the same year ; and it was reprinted in Farmer & Moore's
Historical Collection, i., and with annotations by N. Bouton, at Concord, N.H., 1861. - ED.]
2 [This parchment is preserved in the Massa- chusetts Archives. - ED.]
8 [In the years immediately succeeding the town was seldom free from fear of sudden irruptions by hostile fleets. They had learned the insecurity of treaties, and they had experi- enced that wars, in remote corners of the English
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III
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
In 1744 came another war between England and France, known in Europe as "the War of the Austrian Succession," but in the simpler American nomenclature called only "King George's War," or perhaps
dependencies, broke out without due proclama- tion. There is on file in the office of the City Clerk a petition to the Selectmen of the town, signed by some of the prominent merchants and other citizens of Boston, dated Feb. 19, 1733, and asking that a town-meeting be warned to consider if steps should not be taken to fortify the town and its approaches. The signatures are of interest, as showing the names of leading citizens. See pages 110-112. The command- ers of the Boston regiment at this time were :
Edward Winslow, Colonel; Jacob Wendell, Lieutenant-Colonel ; and Samuel Sewall, Major. In 1735 a movement was made to strengthen the works, and a committee on the matter, consisting of Spencer Phips, John Quincy, and Benjamin Bird, reported that the masonry of the main work was in poor condition, owing to bad mortar. A new battery was at this time built at the end of the island, to be connected with the older work by a platform and palisades. (Shurt- leff, Description of Boston, 495.) A few years
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II2
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
oftener "Governor Shirley's War."1 As before, the first outbreak of the war involved the colonies, but, as before, the central colonies had the shield of the Iroquois Confederacy, - once the "Five Nations," but now the "Six Nations," the Tuscaroras having been added, - so that the main shock came, once again, on the New England settlements. They first later (1739-40) the ruinous condition of the north and south batteries instigated Edward
Winslow, Daniel Henchman, and other citizens
II, 1723, - a position which gave him the im- mediate command, the captaincy falling, by virtue of his commission, to the Lieutenant-
In. Thaysweathis John Awards John Phillips John Holbear Jonath Jackson-
to take steps to secure the remounting of the guns. The subject of the defences nearly every year engaged the attention of the town. Late
- Pups John Quincy. Benjo Bing
Governor for the time being. In 1732 he is styled Lieutenant and Victualler. The Evening Post of Feb. 15, 1762, says: " Last night died here, in an advanced age, John Larrabee, Esq., for many years past Captain at Castle William, where he mostly resided." (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., January, 1862, p. 60; also, April, 1865, p. 124, where the account of him from
John Brock
in December, 1744, a vessel arrived at Boston, bringing from the home government twenty forty- two pounders and two mortars for Castle Wil- liam. During these years a well-known officer at
John Larabee
the Castle was John Larrabee. He succeeded John Gray, as Lieutenant of the Castle, Sept.
the News-Letter is copied.) The Castle Gunner during this period was John Brock. - ED.]
1 [" June 3, 1744. There was a great shock of an earthquake about ten o'clock A.M., while we were singing; many people went out, but soon returned again. War was proclaimed but the day before against the French by an alarm, P.M. ... June 28, 1744, was a publick Fast Day on account of the war; Dr. Colman prayed and Mr. John Walley preached. Mr. Walley prayed in the afternoon."-Colonel John Phillips, MS. Diary .- ED.]
-
113
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
learned of the existence of the war through the capture of the small Eng- lish garrison at Canso by the French; but the contest is chiefly memorable through the capture of Louisburg in 1745.1
In one of Hawthorne's early historical papers there is a sketch of this expedition and its leader, - a sketch marked by that fresh picturesque- ness which belonged to all that came from his then obscure pen. In this he reminds us that "the idea of reducing this strong fortress was conceived by Wil- Maughan liam Vaughan, a bold, energetic, and imaginative adventurer, and adopted by Governor Shirley, the most bustling, though not the wisest, ruler that ever presided over Massachusetts."2 The enterprise was carried by only one vote in the Legislature; but the other New England colonies gave their aid, and left to Massachusetts the selection of a commander. The choice seems to have been made in very much the same manner as was the selection of officers for our volunteer service during the Civil War. In the absence of men of experience, there was an effort to secure those of local prominence, who would command respect and bring recruits. Colonel Pepperrell,3 of the York County Militia, was a prosperous merchant, in middle life, was Chief- If Thepurrel Justice of the Common Pleas Court, and a landed proprietor in three provinces ; he was also a man of high character, and was so far under the influ- ence of the celebrated preacher Whitefield as to go to him for advice in regard to accepting the offered position. Whitefield, with a good deal of worldly wisdom, cautioned Pepperrell that if he failed, the blood of the slain would be laid to his charge; and that if he succeeded, he would be pursued by the envy of the living. He accepted the appoint-
1 [The prisoners taken at Canso were, in the autumn, exchanged and brought to Boston, when the authorities learned the first definite intelli- gence of the strength of the fortress. They had got the first news of the capture of Canso from a fisherman, who saw the burning fort, and sailed for Boston. The French, upon the sur- render of Canso, had pushed for Annapolis, and were besieging the English garrison, when Cap- tain Edward Tyng, in the Province snow, arrived with succor, and the besiegers dis- persed. Tyng, with some seventy or eighty newly-raised volunteers, including Indian sav- ages, had sailed from Boston July 2, and on the 13th he was back in Boston with the news of the fort's relief. - ED.]
2 Fanshawe and Other Pieces, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Boston, 1876, p. 197. [It is also claimed that the incentive came in large measure from the sanguine spirit of a Boston merchant, - Colonel James Gibson, - who contributed £500 VOL. II .- 15.
to the undertaking ; and from the zeal of Robert Auchmuty, of Roxbury. Hutchinson seems to give the credit to Vaughan. See S. G. Drake's Five Years' French and Indian War, Albany, 1870, - a collection of various narratives and documents concerning this war. - ED.]
3 [The annexed cut follows a full-length por- trait in the hall of the Essex Institute, at Salem. It was obtained from Kittery by George A. Ward, who was connected by marriage with the daughter of Sir William. It has been in the rooms of the Institute fifty or sixty years. The artist is not known, - so Dr. Wheatland informs me. An engraving after Smibert's picture, 1751, is given in Parson's Life of Pepperrell, in Drake's Boston, and in the N. E. Hist. and Gencal. Reg., January, 1866. Dr. Parsons contributed a Pepperrell genealogy to the Register, January, 1866. In the same volumes various Pepperrell papers, then in the possession of J. Wingate Thornton, Esq., are printed. - ED.]
2
LT. GEN. SIR WM. PEPPERRELL Bart. The Victor of Louisbourg A. D. 1745.
115
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
ment, nevertheless.1 It was considered essential that the French should be taken unawares, and an oath of secrecy was therefore imposed on the mem- bers of the Legislature. But Hawthorne tells us that " this precaution was nullified by the pious praying of a country member of the lower House, who, in the performance of domestic worship at his lodgings, broke into a fervent and involuntary prayer for the success of the expedition against Louisburg."
The material for this expedition undoubtedly presented the curious com- bination of religious fanaticism and strong common-sense which marked all the actions of the Puritan colonists. Those who entered upon it were doubtless sustained by the intense Protestant feeling which had made the destruction of Father Rasle's mission appear a good service to God. They were also actuated by a double pride - as Englishmen and as colonists - to take their part in resisting that great French domination which was known to have already stretched a line of forts from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and might yet, if unresisted, sweep the whole English popula- tion into the Atlantic Ocean. Mingled with all this was a profound dread of the Indian foe, -an enemy whom Christianity had only better organ- ized, and civilization had only better armed. Peace, safety, English pres- tige, colonial self-respect, religious enthusiasm, - these were the aims and motives of the attack. There was no strict discipline, no uniformity of · drill, no fixed military tradition; the troops were only to meet courage with courage, and Roman Catholic zeal with Protestant ardor. One en- thusiastic chaplain is said to have carried a hatchet, as he marched, with which he proposed to hew down the idolatrous images in the French churches. Whitefield himself, on being asked for a motto for the expe- dition, answered, " Nil desperandum, Christo Duce."2 Thus the fleet sailed from Boston, bearing three thousand men, to attack a stronghold which had been called the Gibraltar of America, and whose very fortifications were said to have cost five million dollars. It seemed an enterprise as daring as that of Sir William Phips, and as hopeless.3
1 [Pepperrell was not without kin as well as friends in Boston. His sister Mary, now a widow, was soon to become the wife of Rev. Benjamin Colman, of the Manifesto Church. Another sister, Miriam, had married Andrew Tyler, a Boston merchant, whose brother Wil- liam was the husband of Pepperrell's youngest sister, Jane. In 1723 Pepperrell himself had married, in Boston, Mary, daughter of Grove Hirst, a Boston merchant, and granddaughter of Judge Sewall. This made him brother-in- law of the Rev. Charles Chauncy of the First Church, of Addington Davenport rector of Trinity, and further linked him collaterally with other Boston families. Such relations, his busi- ness pursuits, and his duties as a member of the General Court and of the Governor's Council had often brought him to Boston, and made him
a familiar figure in the streets. Whitefield's somewhat curious letter describing his interview with Pepperrell is given in Tyerman's Life of Whitefield, ii. 150 .- ED.]
2 [" Feb. 28, 1744-45. There was a publick Fast through the Province about the Expedition to Cape Breton." - Colonel John Phillips, MS. Diary. - ED.]
3 The siege train was mostly taken from the Castle. One of the vessels accompanying the fleet was the " Massachusetts " frigate, Captain Edward Tyng. Shirley had directed Tyng, says Preble, in
his "Notes on Early Ship-Building " (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., October, 1871, p. 363) to find the
116
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
When the fleet sailed, it was quite uncertain whether any aid would come from the mother country, but an English fleet, under the command of Sir Peter Warren,1 joined the ex- pedition at Canso; and ves- sels bearing the New Hamp- shire and Connecticut forces also arrived, the Rhode Island force being too late. On April 30, 1745, the fleet came in sight of Louisburg, and found its strength not exaggerated. The walls were twenty or thirty feet high, and forty feet thick ; they were surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, and were defended by one hundred and eighty-three pieces of artillery, besides sixty more in the two. outlying batteries. Against this the New England forces had but eighteen cannon and three mortars and their hands, which, like Wamba's in Ivanhoe, were not used to making mammocks of brick and mortar. Even when the French, in a panic, had abandoned the "royal battery" on the shore, - a work so perfect that it was afterward said that two hundred men could have held it against five thousand, - the main fort seemed equally beyond the reach of attack. Seth Pomeroy, of Northampton, who superintended the work of drilling out the guns spiked by the retreating enemy, wrote thus to his family at home: " Louisburg is an exceedingly strong place, and looks impregna- ble. It looks as if our campaign would last long; but I am willing to stay till God's time comes to deliver the city into our hands." And it marks the feeling of the time that his wife should have written in reply : "Suffer no anxious thought to rest in your mind about me. The whole town is much engaged with concern for the expedition, how Providence will order the affair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained. I leave you in the hands of God." 2
For six weeks Louisburg was besieged; and much work was done by the besiegers, in an irregular and disorderly way. Under Colonel Richard Gridley,3 of Boston, a battery was erected near the north cape of the harbor ;
largest ship he could to accompany the Massa- chusetts contingent. One was found on the stocks, nearly ready for launching, and under Tyng's supervision she was strengthened and pierced for twenty-four or twenty-six guns. T'yng was a grandson of the early settler in Boston of the same name; had earlier com- manded the snow " Prince of Orange," and in
Mofis Bonnet
her had captured, in June, 1744, a French priva- teer on our coast, which caused some Boston merchants to give him a piece of plate. He died in 1755. (See Alden, Epitaphs, ii. 328; Drake, Five Years' French and Indian War, 246.)
The "Massachusetts " was later commanded by Captain Moses Bennet. Captain John Rouse, who was next in command to Tyng, had the pre- vious year, in a Boston privateer, played havoc among the French fishing fleet on the Grand Banks. Drake, Five Years' French and Indian War, 240.
1 [Warren was not unknown in Boston. He had been in port in 1735, in command of the "Squirrel " frigate. The autograph here given is from his reply to the congratulations of the council and representatives, preserved in the Mas- sachusetts Archives, " Letters," iii. 295. - ED.]
2 Bancroft, United States, revised ed. ii. 591.
3 [Gridley was a currier by trade ; and he had been a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, in 1695, and a captain as early as 1707. In the Belknap list of commis-
II7
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
and under Colonel Meserve of New Hampshire, a ship-carpenter, sledges were built to drag cannon over boggy morasses. The presence of ingenuity and the absence of discipline again remind the reader of early scenes in the War of the Rebellion. Meanwhile the English Roich: Gridley fleet, now reinforced from home, kept up a strict blockade and captured a French store-ship. Five or six attempts to take the "Island Battery " had failed; when one day, to the general surprise, a flag of truce was sent from the fort, and this was followed on June 17 by a surrender.1 The troops marched in, and the French chapel was occu-
sioned officers he is called "lieut .- colonel captain of ye train [of artillery] and company." Par- sons, in his Life of Pepperrell, P. 334, says a few cart-loads of hewn tufa-stone almost alone mark the site of Louisburg, and these are near the grand battery where Gridley was stationed. On one of these stones he found the words "GRIDLEY, 1745," deeply chiselled. In the following year, 1746, Gridley was employed by Shirley to fortify Governor's Island, and to strengthen the Castle ; and there is a paper in the Massachusetts Archives, " Military," viii. 14, showing that he was allowed, in 1751, £45 for his services and expenses. - ED.]
1 [Colonel John Phillips's diary has the fol- lowing entry under May 2, 1745 : "The Thursday Lecture was turned into a Fast by the ministers on account of Cape Briton Expedition. Mr. Prince began with prayer at ten o'clock. Mr. Webb preached. P. M., Mr. Checkley prayed and Dr. Sewall preached. Mr. Welsteed prayed last,' [added later] and this day the Grand Bat- tery at Cape Briton was delivered up to us."
There are in the Cabinet of the Historical Society various original papers relating to this expedition, - the Belknap Papers, vols. ii. and iii .; the Pepperrell Papers, 2 vols. 1699-1779, but chiefly concerning this expedition ; the Proceed- ings of the Council of War during the expedition. There are others in the Massachusetts Archives. The printed authorities are numerous. The notes to Barry's Massachusetts, ii., cite them. Belknap, History of New Hampshire, gave the earliest careful account. Bancroft cites a MS. journal of Seth Pomeroy. Governor Shirley wrote a letter to the Duke of Newcastle about the expedition, which was accompanied by a Journal. This was printed in London, and re- printed in Boston. Pepperrell's account is in the appendix of Curwen's Journal, and in Hunt's Merchant Magazine, July, 1858. See also Cur- wen's Letters in Essex Institute, Hist. Coll., iii. ; and in vol. iv, p. 181, is Craft's Journal. An elaborate Life of Pepperrell, by Usher Parsons, was published in 1855 (third edition, 1856), and some of Sir William's letters are given in Hist.
Mag., January, 1868. Wolcott's Journal of the siege is in the Connecticut Hist. Coll., i. An account by Colonel James Gibson, published in London in 1745, was reprinted in Boston in 1847, with the misleading title A Boston Merchant of 1745. Plans of the works will be found in Ban- croft's United States; Usher Parsons's Life of Pepperrell; Shea's Charlevoix, v., and in Brown's Cape Breton, etc. To supplement the general historians see also Magazine of American His- tory, November, 1878, and Mr. John Russell Bartlett's "Naval History of Rhode Island," in Hist. Mag., 1870.
Mr. Charles Hudson has printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., October, 1870, from the Belknap Papers, a list of all the commissioned officers in the expedition. The colonels of the Massachusetts regiments were William Pepper- rell, Samuel Waldo (who though living at the eastward was the son of Jonathan Waldo, a wealthy Boston merchant), Jeremiah Moulton, Samuel Willard, Robert Hale, Sylvester Rich- mond, Jr., Shubael Gorham, John Choate, and Joseph Dwight, -the latter gentleman also com- manding the train of artillery, with Richard Gridley, a Boston man, his lieutenant. Barthol- omew Green, the Boston printer, was a second lieutenant in this artillery service. Ebenezer
Prout is put down on the roll as assistant store- keeper of his Majesty's Ordnance, but signs a document at the State House as commissary. We recognize one Boston physician, William Rand,
among the surgeons. The interpreters were the Rev. Nathaniel Walter, minister of the second Roxbury parish, and Andrew Lemercier, a son of
118
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
pied for religious services,1- perhaps not by the iconoclast who carried his hatchet, but by one of the same faith and nation.
Voltaire, in his Siècle de Louis XV., ranks among the great events of the period this capture of a strong fortress by the husbandmen of New England. Parkman, on the other hand, thinks it the result of "mere audacity and hardihood, backed by the rarest good luck." 2 At any rate, the fort surrendered,3 with six hundred
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SIGNATURES AT A COUNCIL OF WAR, JUNE 3, 1745, ON BOARD THE " SUPERBE," OFF LOUISBURG.
the Huguenot pastor in Boston. Moses Bennet commanded the sloop "Bonetta," in the pay of Massachusetts. Benjamin Greene was secre
Bery Greene
tary of the expedition, and register of the Court of Admiralty.
In the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., for July, 1871, Mr. Hudson gives various lists of persons who were in the expedition. In April, 1873, there is the Journal of the Rev. Adonijah Bid- well, chaplain of the fleet. The poor parson succumbed to sickness on the return voyage, "bereaved of my senses thro' the violence of my distemper," and knew nothing of his arrival at Boston, October 6; but two days after he "was carried to Doctor Rand's, where he was eleven weeks and four days.". He gives also an enumeration of the vessels in the expedition. Rev. Thomas Prince of the Old South preached a Thanksgiving Sermon, July 18, which affords some historical details. In the Pepperrell Pa- pers, i. 257, there is a letter of Daniel Hench- man the printer, which accompanies a copy of this sermon, Aug. 6, 1745, to the hero of the hour.
Drake, in his Five Years' French and Indian War, p. 187, mainly reprints it. The news had arrived in the night of July 2, by a packet bring- ing despatches from Pepperrell. His brother- in-law, Chauncy, in writing to him under date of July 4, 1745, speaks of the news having arrived " Yesterday, about break of day." He adds: "The people of Boston before sunrise were as thick about the streets as on an election day ; and a pleasing joy visibly sat on the countenance of every one you met with. We had last night the finest illumination I ever beheld. I believe there was not a house in the town, in no by-lane or alley, but joy might be seen through its win- dows. The night also was made joyful by bon- fires, fireworks, and all other external tokens of rejoicing." This letter is in the Pepperrell Papers, and another of similar tenor dated July 27. - ED.]
1 [A cross from this chapel, brought home by the Massachusetts troops, is now placed over the main entrance of the College Library at Cambridge. - ED.]
2 The Old Régime in Canada, p. 400.
8 [When Shirley, who had gone hence in August, returned in November, a splendid recep- tion awaited him. He came in the " Massachu- setts" frigate, and landed at the Castle. The
119
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
and fifty soldiers and thirteen hundred inhabitants of the town. To the colonists this gave a feeling of devout exultation, with important lessons as to the value of mutual union. All the New England colonies JacobMendel 000 had been represented at Louis- burg; and New York, New Jer- sey, and Pennsylvania had con- tributed money for the purpose.
Flushed with success, the provinces, as far south as Vir- ginia, began to plan nothing less than the conquest of Can- ada, - they to furnish the land forces, and England the fleet.1 The plan failed through the non-concurrence of England, -the Duke of Bedford, then at the head of the British Marine, objecting to it because COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL COURT.2 of " the independence it might create in those provinces when they shall see within themselves so great an army, possessed of so great a country by right of conquest."
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