NEW ENGLAND

CAPTIVES

CARRIED TO CANADA

Between 1677 and 1760

During the French and Indian Wars

By Emma Lewis Coleman






196

THE THIRD WAR PARTY
CASCO BAY OR FALMOUTH



The two books were obtained on Interlibrary loan from the Toronto
Reference Library.  My local library had no trouble getting them.  I do not
have a copy of my own so please don't ask for details beyond these two web
pages as I do not have anything I can add.  If you are unable to get the books
for reference, I'd suggest trying to get someone in Toronto to do a lookup for
you.




16-20 May, 1690.

Here was "a village called Falmouth and a wooden fort," which was
Fort Loyal, built where now is the foot of India Street in Portland.¹

Le Sieur de Portneuf, with Courtemanche second in command, left
Quebec late in January with fifty Frenchmen and as many Abenakis
from the St. Francis Mission. By visiting Abenaki villages in
Maine he increased their number. Among them were certain leaders
of Philip's war who had been imprisoned at the fort and released
by Andros. Of course they knew the place well.²  Saint-Castin,
too, came with his Penobscot Indians, and all these with
Hertel's men made a body of four or five hundred who were ready
in May to attack what the French described as "A large fort well
supplied with ammunition and eight cannon, with four other small
forts near." Massachusetts had been too busy deposing Andros to
remember her far-away settlements. In the fall of 1689, however,
Captain Church was sent to the "poore Distressed province" and
in checking the enemy, aided by information given by Mrs. Leigh,³
it is believed that the State of Maine was saved to
Massachusetts and the United States. Fort Loyal had been
garrisoned during the winter of 1689-90, but most of the
soldiers from this and other eastern posts were withdrawn before
Phips sailed for Port Royal. Nevertheless, the people from the
Kennebec and beyond, deprived of their own defence, had hurried
to the fort. There had been "desperate need" among the soldiers
who, the commissary writes, "enquire for Cloathing, Shoes &
Blanketts, and if you (the Honored Governor and Council) think
good . . . Sumthing Suitable to make Straw beds."

¹ The authorities quoted are Willis. "History of Portland;"
Hull, "Capture of Fort Loyal;"  Goold, "Portland in the Past."

² It is Said that in 1690 there were 4,210 Indians between Boston
and Canso.  In 1726 the same territory was rated for 506.  Winsor's "Nar.
& Crit. Hist.," IV, 529.

³ See Dover. Chapter VI.



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Let us hope they did not have to wait for these until 1703, but
on July 28 of that year, in the House of Representatives, it was
"ordered that there be Twenty Suitable Beds and Bolsters with a
Blanket to each Bed, Procured at the Publick charge for the
Lodging of the Souldiers at the Garrisons at Saco and Casco,
there having been no Bedding hitherto Provided for that
Occasion." It is comfortable to know that this order was "Read
and agreed to." Among the needs of the garrison in 1689 was an
hourglass; clocks of course were few, and in a letter to the
governor the commander asks instructions concerning rum. He
requests their "honors to Intemate to me what allowance of Rum
the soldiers must have, as yet I have allowed them a pint among
Six men for each day they are upon a march. They expect the same
while they lie still, being tould by Some here present that the
Country will allow it."¹

A few days before Portneuf's attack Capt. Sylvanus Davis, who
depended for defence mostly upon the settlers of the region,
sent to Boston an urgent cry for help, he being "Greeved to see
our poore nabors Destroyed and soe Littel care Taken amongst our
folks to Indiver the discovery of the enemy," nevertheless he
assures the governor that "wee will hassard our lives upon the
place rather than Drawe of without orders naither have wee any
desire to be drawed off."

No help was sent. They gave their lives. To meet Portneuf's
large force Captain Davis had not more than seventy fighting
men. Seeking refuge within the fort were some two hundred more
of the inhabitants, old and young, weak and strong.

After Captain Davis's return from captivity he wrote a long
account of this "bloody Design by the French and their
Abettors," which was printed by the Massachusetts Historical
Society.² Therein he says "The 16th of May, 1690 about dawning
began our fight, the 20th at 3 o'clock afternoon, we were taken."

He, with seventy men and many women and children, surrendered on
the promise of "good quarter" for all, "both wounded

¹ Arch. 35, 2.

² Third Series, I, 101-112.



198



and sound," with liberty to march in safety to the next English
town, which the French commander "did solemnly swear to
perform;" but when they filed through the gate and laid down
their arms they were seized by the Indians who murdered many and
carried away the rest. When Captain Davis protested at the
breach of faith he was told that they were all rebels against
their King, James II, who was under the protection of the French King.

Destroying the fort and "All the houses within two leagues," not
even waiting to bury the dead, the triumphant allies departed.

After two years, during which time no white man lived east of
Wells, Captain Church stopped at deserted Casco and "buried the
bones of the slain as they were bleaching upon the soil."
Frontenac had ordered that no fort be attacked for fear of
losing too many men, the object being to devastate the country.
M. de Portneuf can hardly have been called rash; his losses
being thus reported: "One Frenchman had his arm broken . . . by
a cannon ball and an Indian was wounded in the thigh."¹  All the
people of the region who had escaped went to Wells - to Storer's
Garrison - where they were ordered by the Government to remain.


Captives


Few names are known. M. Ernest Myrand in "Phips devant Québec"
says that seventy were taken, exclusive of women and
children, but he names only four. We have:

Alexander, James
Brackett, Lieut. Anthony
Clark, The Family of Lieut. Thaddeus.
	Tradition names wife and daughter Rebeckah.  Local authorities
	give "Two Daughters," probably Elizabeth (Tyng) and Martha.
	Isaac, his son.
Davis, Capt. Sylvanus
Morrell, Peter
Parker, William

¹ Que. Docs., I, 498.



199


Ross, James
Swarton, Mrs. Hannah
	Samuel
	Mary (m. John Lahey)
	John
	Jasper
York, John
	Samuel

As of Casco, remaining in 1695, are Sara Davis and Thos. Baker,
and on the Roll of 1710/11, Zacha., Joshua, Grace and Mary Davis;
Two Jourdains; Elizabeth, Nathan and --- Webber; and --- Slew.

Of these, "Thomas Baker boy, Casco" may have been son of Thomas
of Scarboro and Falmouth; the son was living in Taunton in 1721,
when he sold land in Scarboro.  Folsom in his Saco (p. 33) says
that Thomas Baker was recaptured from the Indians in Sept., 1690.
This implies an error of the 1695 list. The Davises may
have been of Isaac's family who lived on the Purpooduck side of
the harbor. Grace Tucker and Mary Davis witnessed a Davis deed
in 1733, which implies two redemptions and one marriage.

The Webers were probably children of Michael of Purpooduck. See
Marie Weber, married to Paul Otis.  Leonard Slew may be found in
"Along Shore."

ALEXANDER, JAMES.

"James Alexander, a Jersey man," was, with John Gyles, tortured
at an Indian village on the St. John river.¹ Two families
of Cape Sable Indians, who had lost friends by some English
fishermen, came these many miles to avenge themselves on poor
captives.  They yelled and danced around their victims; tossed
and threw them; held them by the hair and beat them - sometimes
with an axe - and did this all day, compelling them also to

¹ "Tragedies of the Wilderness," 84.



200


dance and sing, until at night they were thrown out exhausted.
Gyles says it was the worst torture he had!  Alexander, after a
second torture, ran to the woods, but hunger drove him back to
his tormentors. His fate is unknown.

BRACKETT, ANTHONY, 3d.

B. 1699, s. of Anthony 2d and Ann (Mitton).
Lieutenant Brackett was kept four months in the Maine woods
until he escaped in September. He afterwards lived in Boston,
dying there in 1716.

CLARK. Some of the FAMILY OF LIEUT. THADDEUS.

Possibly his wife, ELIZABETH (Mitton). Isaac, his son, b. abt.
1666, d. 1768. "Two daughters." Rebeckah, a third daughter?
Thaddeus Clark came from Ireland. He married in 1663 the
daughter of Michael Mitton, then eighteen years old. Her
grandfather was George Cleeves, the first settler of Falmouth.
Lieut. Thaddeus was killed, leading a brave sortie from the
fort. "Two daughters" only are mentioned among those captured,
but his son Isaac was certainly taken. The story of the capture
of Mrs. Clark and the daughter named Rebeckah comes from Lieut.
Isaac's granddaughter, Mrs. Beulah Patterson, as printed in
Barry's "History of Framingham";¹ upon the authority of the
Rev. Joseph Allen of Northborough. This states that her
grandfather Isaac's "Mother and sister Rebeckah were carried to
Canada, where the mother died.²  Rebeckah was sold to the
French, among whom she lived so contented that when money was
sent for her ransom she refused to leave; sending word that the
money sent was not sufficient to supply her table for a single
day." This sounds more or less legendary. Another tale is that
one of Isaac's sisters married an Indian and remained in the North.

¹ Page 208.

² An error, she died in Boston in 1736, aged ninety-two.


201


Isaac.

Barry says that Isaac had a thrilling career. He certainly had a
long one. He escaped or was ransomed from his captivity and went
to live in Marlborough, where he learned the carpenter's trade
and where he married Sarah Stow. He was a captain in the Three
Years' War and was of such vigor that on his hundredth birthday
he rode a horse a long distance. "He lived seventy years with
the wife of his youth. His offspring that descended from him was
251." Thus is it written on his tombstone.

"Two daughters"
Elizabeth and Martha.

These with Isaac are the only children named as heirs of
Lieutenant Clark.
Elizabeth was the wife of Capt. Edward Tyng and the mother of
four children.
Captain Tyng was commander of the fort until 1688 when he was
appointed Governor of Annapolis by Phips, and it was on his way
home that he too was captured.¹
Martha, who married a Harvey and was a widow in Boston in 1719,
was probably the second daughter. The "two daughters" were among
the prisoners exchanged by Phips, and in that long "Relation of
1689/90 written by Monseignat and addressed probably to Mme.
de Maintenon² they are described as having been very well born.
He says, too, that: "The Count had ransomed them and had put
them in a place to board."

DAVIS, CAPT. SYLVANUS.

He bought land at Damariscotta in 1659; barely escaped death at
Arrowsick in 1676, and after the peace lived in Casco.
The complexity of his service is shown in a petition dated 22 d.
10th, 1690. Not only had he served his country until Casco fort
was captured but he says: "I did offitiate in the place and duty of
Chyrurgeon amongst the souldiers & sick men about Eleaven months

¹ See "From the River St. John."

² Que. Docs., I, 527.


202


time. Also I pformed the Duty of a Comesary for about four
months time. & Also I maintained a Drum and Drummer about
thirteen months for the service of the fourt, & all the Marching
fources that was sent to that place from time to time."¹

Of his captivity, he wrote: After they had "cruelly murdered our
women and children and especially the wounded men, the French
kept myself and 3 or 4 more and carried us over land to Canada .
. . about twenty four days we were marching . . . on land and
water carrying our canoes with us . . . I must say they were
kind to me in my travels . . . our provision was very short;
Indian corns and acorns - hunger made it very good & God gave it
strength to nourish. I arrived at Quebeck the 14th of June 1690,
where I was civilly treated by the gentry and soon carried
. . . before the governour the Earl of Frontenack."² He was
lodged in the château.

It was the Indian custom not to give up their captives until the
price of ransom was actually paid, but this time they consented
to let M. de Portneuf keep Captain Davis and the two daughters
of Lieutenant Clark during the journey on his solemn promise
that later the governor would pay for their redemption. They
relied not only upon this promise, but upon the knowledge that
Frontenac would pay them well.³ On October 15 Captain Davis
was exchanged for the Sieur de Granville, an officer captured by Phips.

He afterwards lived in Nantasket and died in 1703. Davis told
Frontenac that he grieved for his fellow-captives who had been
half-starved and tortured on the journey; and the governor
promised him that they "should be got out of the hands of the
Indians." Probably this was why a majority of the eighteen
captives who were delivered to Phips were from Casco.

MORRELL, PETER.

He came to Falmouth about 1681 and lived on "the Neck" now
India Street. After his return from captivity he joined his wife,

¹ "Maine Hist. Coll.," II, 5, 174.

² "Mass. Hist. Coil.," III, Ser. I, 101.

³ "Sir William Phips devant Québec." E. Myrand.



203


Mary, and their children in Beverly where they subsequently lived.

Is this the man who generously gave his shirt to redeem Juda Emerson?

PARKER, WILLIAM.

Captain Davis, after his return, petitioned for compensation for
his services as commander-in-chief and surgeon and asks "also
compensation for Wm. Parker who has been a soldier for ten months
and was now in captivity."

Ross, JAMES.

B. 1662, son of James and Ann (Lewis) of Falmouth. James was a
shoemaker living at Back Cove, and in 1690 was one of Davis's soldiers.

He had been captured with his father's family in 1676, so this
was his second captivity, from which he was redeemed by Cary in
1695. Among his fellow-captives he found his bride, Sarah Ferguson,¹
marrying her on December 19, immediately after their redemption.
In June, 1696, he petitioned for his soldier's wage "having recd
severall wounds in the body from the french & Indian Enemies wth
whom he was many Months a captive."² Thirty years later
he, "James Ross of Salem, Shewing" that by one of his "Several Wounds. . .
his Collar Bone was Split and Cut off. . . that he Suffered much Pain
& Trouble" during his captivity, " and was at last put to great
Charge for his Redemption" prayed for "Some Allowance" from the Court.
He received five pounds annually.

Sarah died before 1706, when James married Martha Darling of
Salem, where he had lived since his return from captivity.

In 1734, when aged about seventy-two, he testified in Salem
that "he lived at Falmouth in Casco Bay ever since he can
remember anything till drove from thence in the First Indian Warr &

¹See Kittery, Chapter XIII.

²Arch. 70, 277.


204


then he removed thither again betwixt the First & Second Warr and
lived there about Six Years until he was taken in the Second
Warr," when he was taken in the Fort with Capt. Davis.

This contradicts the story of captivity in 1676. Surely he would
have remembered that!

SWARTON, MRS. HANNAH or JOANNA.

(Ebal on Canadian Record) wife of John, and their four children.
SAMUEL (1674).
MARY (1675).
JOHN (1677).
JASPER (1685).

(Spelled on Canadian records: Soarre, Shiard, Shaken, Souarten,
Sowarten, Schouarden, Souard).

John Swarton of Beverly received in 1687 a fifty acre grant in
North Yarmouth. In his petition he said he had fought with
Charles II in Flanders. Charles, when Prince of Wales, went to
Jersey where he was proclaimed king and then went across the
Channel to fight. Perhaps Swarton went with him. When in 1689
Captain Church made his "First Expedition Eastward" he saw "One
Swarton, a Jersey man; . . . whose language he could hardly
understand." The old Norman French of the Channel Islands would
make his English difficult. During the attack a John Swarton,
living near the fort, was killed and his wife and children were
captured. Hannah Swarton's "Narrative" was first published in
1697 as an appendix to Cotton Mather's "Humiliations followed
with Deliverances," and was later collected in the Magnalia.¹
In it is the same story of cold, hunger, cruelty and pious
reflections. She says it lay heavy upon her spirit that they had
left Beverly, where they had had the privilege of the public
worship of God, to remove where there was no minister of the
gospel, which they had done for "large accommodations in the

¹The only perfect copy known of the original pamphlet was sold
in 1916 for two thousand dollars; a second copy is in the
Congressional Library.


205


world, thereby exposing their children to be bred ignorantly
like Indians."

She describes her Indian mistress as "one that had been bred by
the English at Blackpoint and now married to a Canada Indian and
turned Papist," and the squaw would say "that had the English
been as careful to instruct her in our religion as the French
were to instruct her in their's, she might have been of our religion."

At Norridgewock the captives were separated and no English were
left in Mrs. Swarton's company but one John York. Here she was
told that her eldest son had been killed. She says that by her
bleeding feet she could be tracked in the snow and she found it
"Very tedious to travel." Arriving in mid-February near Quebec
her master sent her to beg for food. On her second visit she
stayed over night with a French woman. The next morning two men
- one English - came to the house and advised her to go with
them to Quebec, four miles away, telling her that she would be
ransomed. The woman, too, advised her to go. The Englishman took
her to the wife of the intendant who fed and clothed her and
sent her to the hospital where she was "physicked and blooded
and very courteously provided for." Her Indian master and his
squaw came after her, but the lady bought her and she became her
servant "And I must speak it to the honour of the French," she
wrote, "they were exceeding kind to me at first even as kind as
I could expect to find the English." Soon new trials came;
snares were laid for her soul, which she describes at length.
"The lady, my mistress, the nuns, the priests, the friars and
the rest set upon me. . . to perswade me to turn Papist." Love,
promises and entreaties first they used, then finding her
obdurate, threats and hard usage. She was strengthened and
consoled by conversations with Colonel Tyng and Mr. Alden, and
esspecially with Margaret Stilson who was in the same house, but
those conferences were shortly forbidden. In 1695 she, with her
youngest son, Jasper, was redeemed, leaving Mary, whom she had


206


not seen for two years, and John from whom she had parted the
day after they were taken. Of him we have no trace.

Her last word is for her children: "I earnestly request the
prayers of my Christian friends that the Lord will deliver them."

Swarton, Mary, and
Lahey, John.

Among the "Nams of thos Remaining" (1695) is that of "Mary Swarton
Cascow gerl." In May, 1710, "Marie Swarton Englishwoman,
married to Jean Laha, Irishman, established in Montreal and
having three children," becomes a French citizen. Jean Laha's
name is first on the same list.

His abjuration is on the Montreal records: "On Monday, 19 March
1696, Jean Lahe born in 1670 at Tollo in Ireland of the marriage
of Thomas Lahé, Catholic, and of Catharine Williams, Protestant,
and baptized in his country in the Catholic religion & later
having professed the Puritan religion until last year, when he
was taken in the month of July among the Flemish of Corlar and
living now in the service of M. le ber, Merchant, solemnly made
abjuration of heresy into the hands of Mre Henri Antoine Meriel,
Priest of the Seminary of Vile Marie, authorized to receive it
by M. François Dolie priest, Grand Vicaire etc. And this in the
presence of M. Yves Priat, priest of said Seminary of Ville
Marie and of several others." (Signed by all herein named.)

"The 9th Sept. 1697, after the publication of 3 banns of
marriage made the 29th August last, the 1st and 3d of the
present month and year as above between Jean lehait Irishman,
son of Thomas lehait and of Catherine Guilloses, father and
mother of the town of boston in hirlands of one part and of
Marie Madeleine Souard, daughter of Jean Souard and Anne Ebal¹
of Selam, her father and mother of the other part, and having
found no obstade I, françois Dupré, curé de Québec have married
and given them la bénédiction nuptiale according to the form pre-

¹ Was not Anne Ebal daughter of Robert and Joanna Abel of
Weymouth?


207


scribed by our mother the Holy Church in presence" of several
French witnesses, all but one of whom signed.

The baptismal records of their eleven children testify to their
friendships with New England captives.

1698, Jean François, b. and d.
1701, Madeleine, m. 1724 Pierre Couleau.
1702, Jean-Marguerite, then living at Côte Saint-Laurent, m.
	1719, Pierre Normand.
1706, Marie-Anne, god-mother Christine Otis of Dover; m. 1729,
	Jacques Benoist, dit la guerre, at Saint-Laurent.
1708, Jean-Francois; Freedom French of Deerfield, god-mother.
1710, Jean Lahaye brought little twin babies to Notre-Dame; one
	to be buried, one to be baptized. Father Meriel wrote that the
	first had been baptized by the midwife. To the other, Mary
	Silver gave the name of Marie-Sylvie. She m. 1740, at
	Saint-Géneviève, J. F. Benoit.
1711, Marie-Joseph.
1713, Marie-Catherine.
1714, Joseph.
1715, Marie-Magdeleine.
1717, Claude-Jean-Baptiste.

With the Report sent to Versailles in September, 1714,
concerning the return of English captives, the intendant sent a
petition from Jean la Haye, who has lived for twenty-two years
at the Côte de la Chine, Montreal. La Haye had been arrested
with an Englishman named Jean Joublin for having counterfeited
and used card-money of different denominations,¹ as did later
Pendleton Fletcher of Saco. Joublin, being a prisoner of war, it
was thought might be ignorant of the law in regard to counterfeit money.

The Report says that because Monsieur de la Haye has rendered
the King and colony great service, criminal proceedings have been
suspended until further notice, and out of consideration for the

¹See Appendix.


208


envoys [Messrs. Stoddard and Williams] of the Queen of England,
who have demanded these two prisoners as being of their nation,
the Sieurs de Vaudreuil and Bégon [governor and intendant] have
promised to beg His Majesty to order their discharge without
trial. The long imprisonment that they have already suffered,
and which they must still endure until orders from His Majesty
are received, is a severe punishment; it being certain that
these counterfeit bills have simply been made and have never
been in circulation. They are besides so badly made that no one
could be deceived."¹

YORK, JOHN.
	SAMUEL.

John was probably son of John and Ruth (Graves). John, Sr., was
killed in the attack as John, Jr., was said to have been, but
Mrs. Swarton wrote that when the captives were separated she and
"One John York" were the only two at Norridgewock, and that they
"were both, almost starv'd for want." Their masters told them if
they "could not hold up" they would kill them. "And accordingly
John York, growing weak by his wants, they killed him."

Samuel.

The carpenter of the following memorial may have been brother of
John who was killed. His wife was Hannah and they lived in what
is now Topsham. Their son Samuel testified in 1726 that their
house was made a garrison where several other families were
entertained until driven off by Indians. York Ledge and York
Landing of Falmouth Foreside recall this family. Samuel, Sr.,
must have returned, as householder or soldier as shown by the
"Memorial of Samuel York, Carpenter addressed to his Excellency
the Earle of Bellomont at Albany the 2d of Septr 1700 sheweth:
That I was taken prisoner in Casco Bay... in the moneth of May
1690 and carried to Canada where and in

¹ "Que. Docs., III, 6.


209


the hunting Indian countries I have lived ever since till the
29th day of this last July that I made my escape to come hither
and during the last two years & half I was imployed in cutting
masts for the use of the French King's Navy."

He gives the governor much information about the Western
Indians; says that they and several bush-rangers who are with
them are discontented and wish to come and trade with the
English.¹ Before he returned to Casco Lord Bellomont sent him
and others with a message to the Dowaganhas Indians, but they
were stopped by "Indians of the Five Nations, who refused to
accompany them and who told them (York and his friends) to
return to Albany unless they meant to be knocked in the head by
the French or their Indians."² Samuel York died in March, 1718.

-snip-
¹N. Y. Docs., IV, 748.

²N. Y. Docs., IV, 768.