Part 16 (1/2)
In the month of January following, a tragic event took place at or near St. Anne's, an account of which has been left us by our early historians, Peter Fisher and Moses H. Perley, in substance as follows:
After the winter season had fairly set in, a party of the rangers at Fort Frederick, under Captain McCurdy, set out on snow-shoes to reconnoitre the country and to ascertain the state of the French settlements up the river. The first night after their departure they encamped at Kingston Creek, not far from the Belleisle, on a very steep hillside. That night Captain McCurdy lost his life by the falling of a large birch tree, which one of the rangers cut down on the hillside--the tree came thundering down the mountain and killed the Captain instantly, Lieutenant Moses Hazen[44] succeeded to the command, and the party continued up the river to St. Ann's Point (now Fredericton), where they found quite a town. They set fire to the chapel and other buildings, but a number of the French settlers gathered together, whereupon the Rangers retreated, and, being hotly pursued committed several atrocious acts upon the people who fell in their way, to prevent their giving information. By reversing their snow-shoes and making forced marches they got back safely to St.
John.
[44] Moses Hazen was an older brother of William Hazen, who settled at St. John. He distinguished himself under Gen. Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham. In the American Revolution he fought against the British, raised a corps known as ”Hazen's Own,”
and became a Major General in the American army.
This story, considerably modified in some of its details, finds confirmation from a variety of sources. (1) Sir Jeffery Amherst, commander of the forces serving in America, writes in a letter to Governor Lawrence, ”You will have heard of the accident poor Capt.
McCurdy met with as likewise of the success of his Lieutenant in demolis.h.i.+ng the settlements at St. Anne's: on the recommendation of Major Scott I have preferred Lieut. Hazen to Capt. McCurdy's Company.”
In a subsequent letter Amherst says: ”Major Morris sent me the particulars of the scouting party and I gave a commission to Lieut Hazen, as I thought he deserved it. I am sorry to say what I have since heard of that affair has sullied his merit with me as I shall always disapprove of killing women and helpless children. Poor McCurdy is a loss, he was a good man in his post.” In another letter Amherst describes this sad affair more fully. See Appendix.
(2) Further confirmation of the charge of barbarity is found in the journal of Rev. Jacob Bailey[45] of Pownalboro, Maine. This gentleman had occasion to lodge at Norwood's Inn, in the town of Lynn, Ma.s.sachusetts, on the night of Dec'r 13, 1759, and speaking of the company he found there says: ”We had among us a soldier belonging to Capt. Hazen's company of rangers, who declared that several Frenchmen were barbarously murdered by them, after quarters were given, and the villain added, I suppose to show his importance, that he 'split the head of one asunder, after he fell on his knees to implore mercy.' A specimen of New England clemency!”
[45] Rev. Jacob Bailey was a prominent loyalist during the American Revolution, and afterwards Rector of Annapolis. N. S.
(3). A statement is to be found in a dispatch of the Marquis de Vaudreuil, dated May 8, 1759, that a number of Acadians living at the River St. John were surprised on the night of the 27-28 January, 1759, by a detachment of New England troops who burned their houses, carried off twenty-three prisoners and killed two women and four children, whose scalps they bore away.
(4). Still further light is thrown upon this transaction by some notes appended to the names of certain Acadians, who had served as officers of militia in Acadia, and who were living in 1767 at Cherbourg. We learn that the Sieur Joseph Bellefontaine had once owned a large tract of land on the River St. John, near St. Anne's, and that he was appointed Major of the militia on the river by order of the Marquis de la Galissonniere, April 10, 1749, and always performed his duties with fidelity until made a prisoner by the enemy. At the time of the mid-winter raid on St. Anne's he had the misery of seeing one of his daughters with three of her children ma.s.sacred before his eyes by the English, who desired by this act of cruelty and the fear of similar treatment to compel him to take their side. On his refusal he barely escaped a like fate by his flight into the woods, carrying with him two other children of the same daughter. The young mother so ruthlessly slain was Nastasie Bellefontaine, wife of Eustache Pare.
The other victims of this tragedy of the wilderness were the wife and child of Michel Bellefontaine--a son of Joseph Bellefontaine. This poor fellow had the anguish of beholding his wife and boy murdered before his eyes on his refusal to side with the English.
The village of St. Anne's was left in a state of desolation. Moses Perley says that when the advance party of the Maugerville colony arrived at St. Anne's Point in 1762, they found the whole of what is now the Town plat of Fredericton cleared for about ten rods back from the bank and they saw the ruins of a very considerable settlement. The houses had been burned and the cultivated land was fast relapsing into a wilderness state. Nevertheless the early English settlers reaped some advantage from the improvements made by the Acadians, for we learn from Charles Morris' description of the river in 1768, that at the site of the old French settlement at St. Anne's Point there was about five hundred acres of cleared upland in English gra.s.s from whence the inhabitants of Maugerville got the chief part of their Hay for their Stock. ”They inform me,” says Mr. Morris, ”that it produces about a load and a half to an acre.” He adds, ”The French Houses are all burnt and destroyed.”
An interesting incident connected with the French occupation was related many years ago by the grandmother of the late Judge Fisher to one of her descendants. This good old lady came to St. Anne's in the fall of 1783 with the Loyalists. Not very many months after their arrival, there was so great a scarcity of provisions that the unfortunate people in some cases were obliged to dig up the potatoes they had planted and eat them. As the season advanced their hearts were cheered by the discovery of some large patches of pure white beans, marked with a black cross. They had been planted by the French, but were now growing wild. In their joy at this fortunate discovery the settlers called them ”the staff of life and hope of the starving.”
Mrs. Fisher says she planted some of these beans with her own hands and that the seed was preserved in her family for many years.
The close of the year 1759 brought its anxieties to Colonel Mariot Arbuthnot, who had succeeded Major Morris as commandant at Fort Frederick. Quebec had fallen and the long and costly struggle between England and France for the possession of Canada and Acadia had terminated in favor of England.
The Ma.s.sachusetts troops in garrison at Fort Frederick expected to be now relieved, as their period of enlistment had expired and the crisis of the war was over. But unfortunately for them, General Amherst at Crown Point found the force at his disposal insufficient, he could not spare a man, and Monckton, who commanded at Quebec, was in precisely the same predicament. Lawrence at Halifax had no troops at his disposal. Unless, therefore, the Ma.s.sachusetts men remained Fort Frederick would be left without a garrison. In this emergency the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature took the responsibility of extending the period of enlistment of the troops of their colony, at the same time voting money necessary to provide them with beds and other comforts for the approaching winter. General Amherst strongly commended the patriotic action of the legislature, and wrote to Governor Lawrence, ”They have judged very rightly that the abandoning any of the Garrisons may be attended with most fatal consequences to this country; and as they have made a necessary provision for the men to continue during the winter, if the men do not stay and serve voluntarily, they must be compelled to it by force.”
Evidently the men remained with great reluctance, for the following spring we find the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts writing to Governor Lawrence, ”I find our people who are doing duty in your garrison--notwithstanding the favor and attention this Province has shown them for continuing their services through the winter, and notwithstanding the great encouragement given to those who would continue--have worked themselves up to such a temper of dissatisfaction that they have long ago threatened to come off, if not relieved.”
This threat was not meaningless for the governor goes on to say ”already seventy men in one schooner and about eighty in another have openly come off from Fort Frederick at St. John's.”
The conduct of these Ma.s.sachusetts rangers was a source of mortification to Lieut. Governor Hutchinson, who speaks of ”the unwarrantable behaviour of the garrison at St. John's River, all of whom have deserted their post except 40 men and the continuation of those forty seems to be precarious.” Steps were at once taken to enlist a fresh detachment for service at Fort Frederick.
The conduct of the garrison was not unnatural, although from a military point of view it was inexcusable. The men had enlisted for a great and, as the event proved, a final struggle with France for supremacy in North America. With the downfall of Louisbourg and Quebec the crisis had pa.s.sed. The period of their enlistment had expired, what right had the a.s.sembly of Ma.s.sachusetts to prolong it? Why should they remain? So they reasoned. Meanwhile garrison duty at Fort Frederick was found to be extremely monotonous. The country was deserted, for the few habitations that once existed in the vicinity of the fort had been abandoned and destroyed when the French fled up the river, and no English settlers had as yet appeared. Amidst their privations and the loneliness of their situation the charms of their own firesides seemed peculiarly inviting. Most probably, too, the fort and barracks were little more than habitable in consequence of the havoc wrought by a terrible storm on the night of the 3-4 November, 1759. This storm was the most violent that had till then been known, and from all accounts must at least have rivalled the famous ”Saxby”
gale of 1869. The tide attained a height of six feet above the ordinary, and huge waves, driven by the storm, broke through the d.y.k.es at the head of the Bay of Fundy, flooding the marsh lands reclaimed by the Acadians. Much damage was done along the coast, thousands of trees were blown down all over the country, while near the coastline the forest was levelled as with a scythe. A considerable part of Fort Frederick was washed away by the storm and Lieutenant Winckworth Tonge, of the Engineers, was sent with a party of men to repair it and put it in the most defensible state the situation would allow, taking such tools and materials from Fort c.u.mberland as were needed. He found the condition of the fort even worse than he had antic.i.p.ated. Governor Lawrence consulted General Amherst as to what should be done, and in answer the general wrote: ”By Lt. Tonge's report to you of the state of the works at Fort Frederick, it must doubtless undergo great alterations to put it in a proper state of defence, but as this will require many more hands than you can provide at present, we must for the time being rest satisfied with the work you have ordered, especially as the line of strong Pallisadoes you mention will secure it against any insult for the present.”
Colonel Arbuthnot's anxieties were not confined to tidal waves and the discontents of his garrison. About the end of October a party of some two hundred Acadians came down the river to Fort Frederick and presented to him a certificate of their having taken the oath of allegiance to the English sovereign before Judge Cramahe, at Quebec; also an order signed by General Monckton giving them permission to return to their former habitations. Whether these Acadians were old inhabitants of the river, or fugitives who had taken refuge there at the time of the Expulsion is not very clear. Lawrence surmised that the certificates had been obtained from Judge Cramahe on the supposition that the people belonged to some river or place in Canada known as St. Johns, and not to the River St. John in Nova Scotia, and that they never could have had any sort of permission from Monckton to settle in Acadia.
The Abbe Casgrain comments severely on the course pursued by Governor Lawrence on this occasion: ”Not being able,” he says, ”to dispute the genuineness of the letters of Monckton and Cramahe, Lawrence claimed that the Acadians could only have obtained them by fraud, and he decided with his council, always ready to do his bidding, that they should be regarded as prisoners of war and transported as soon as possible to England. He took care not to disclose this resolution in order to keep them securely at the fort, and to have them ready to his hand when s.h.i.+ps should arrive to transport them. This precaution was almost superfluous for the Acadians, having exhausted their last resources, were no longer in a state to return to the woods where they would have died of hunger.”
Evidently it was part of the settled policy of Lawrence and his advisers to keep the Acadians out of the province and to people it with English speaking inhabitants, and with this policy General Amherst seems to have been in accord, for he wrote the Governor of Nova Scotia, ”The pa.s.s you mention the two hundred Inhabitants of St.
John's River to have from Mr. Monckton, was by no means meant or understood to give the French any right to those lands; and you have done perfectly right not to suffer them to continue there, and you will be equally right in sending them, when an opportunity offers, to Europe as Prisoners of War.”
And yet it was very natural that, after the surrender of Quebec, the Acadians should believe that upon accepting the new regime and taking the oath of allegiance to the king of Great Britain they would be treated in the same way as the French Canadians. The Abbe Casgrain says, not without reason, that the Acadians had an even greater right than the Canadians to clemency at the hands of their conquerors as their sufferings were greater: [”Ils y avaient d'autant plus de droit qu'ils avaient plus souffert.”]