CHAPTER XXIV.
Affairs on the St. John During the Revolution.
In the year 1775 armed vessels were fitted out in several of the ports of New England to prey on the commerce of Nova Scotia. Many of these carried no proper commissions and were manned by hands of brutal marauders whose conduct was so outrageous that even so warm a partizan as Col. John Allan sent a remonstrance to congress regarding their behaviour: “Their horrid crimes,” he says, “are too notorious to pass unnoticed,” and after particularizing some of their enormities he declares “such proceedings will occasion more Torys than a hundred such expeditions will make good.”
The people of Machias were particularly fond of plundering their neighbors, and that place was termed a “nest of pirates and rebels” by General Eyre Massey, the commandant at Halifax.
Early in the summer of 1775 it was rumored that Stephen Smith of Machias, one of the delegates to the Massachusetts congress, had orders to seize Fort Frederick, and the Governor of Nova Scotia recommended the establishment of a garrison there to prevent such an attempt. But the military authorities were too dilatory and in the month of August a party from Machias, led by Smith, entered St. John harbor in a sloop, burned Fort Frederick and the barracks and took four men who were in the fort prisoners. The party also captured a brig of 120 tons laden with oxen, sheep and swine, intended for the British troops at Boston. This was the first hostile act committed in Nova Scotia and it produced almost as great a sensation at Halifax as at St. John. The event is thus described by our first local historian, Peter Fisher, in his Sketches of New Brunswick:—
“A brig was sent from Boston to procure fresh provisions for the British army, then in that town, from the settlements of the river Saint John. The same vessel was laden with stock, poultry, and sundry other articles mostly brought from Maugerville in small vessels and gondolas, all of which had been put on board within about fifteen days after the brig had arrived. While she was waiting for a fair wind and clear weather an armed sloop of four guns and full of men from Machias came into the harbor, took possession of the brig, and two days after carried her off to Machias; the first night after their arrival the enemy made the small party in the Fort prisoners, plundered them of everything in it, and set fire to all the Barracks, but at that time they did not molest any of the inhabitants on the opposite side of the river.”
The burning of Fort Frederick seems to have been made known at Halifax by James Simonds and Daniel Leavitt, who went to Windsor in a whale boat to solicit to protection of government. Their report caused a mild sensation on the part of the military authorities, and they began to take measures for the defence of the province, although it was more than two years before any adequate protection was afforded the settlers at St. John. Being apprehensive that the company’s effects 266 in the store at Portland Point might be carried off by marauders, Mr. Simonds a few weeks afterwards carried a portion of the goods to Windsor in the schooner “Polly” and disposed of them as well as he could.
The next year was a decidedly uncomfortable one for the people living at Portland Point. In the month of May two privateers entered the harbor, remaining more than a week. Their boats proceeded up the river as far as Maugerville and informed the people that the province would soon be invaded from the westward, that privateers were thick on the coasts and would stop all manner of commerce unless the settlers joined them. They threatened, moreover, that should the Americans be put to the trouble and expense of conquering the country all who sided with the mother country must expect to lose their property and lands. About this time some Indians arrived with letters from General Washington, and it was believed that the whole tribe was about entering into an alliance with the Americans, as they showed a decided predilection in their favor and even threatened to kill the white inhabitants unless they would join the “Boston men.” There can be little doubt that the majority of the people on the River St. John were at this time not indisposed to side with the Revolutionary party. A public meeting was held on the 14th of May, 1776, at the meeting house in Maugerville, at which a number of highly disloyal resolutions were unanimously adopted. One of the leading spirits at this meeting was the Rev. Seth Noble, who had already written to Gen’l. Washington to represent the importance of obtaining control of western Nova Scotia, including the River St. John. Jacob Barker, Esq’r., was chosen chairman and a committee, consisting of Jacob Barker, Israel Perley, Phineas Nevers, Daniel Palmer, Moses Pickard, Edward Coy, Thomas Hartt, Israel Kinny, Asa Kimble, Asa Perley, Oliver Perley and Hugh Quinton, was appointed to prepare the resolutions which were subsequently adopted by the meeting. One of the resolutions reads:—
“Resolved, That it is our minds and desire to submit ourselves to the government of Massachusetts Bay and that we are ready with our lives and fortunes to share with them the event of the present struggle for liberty, however God in his providence may order it.”
The resolutions adopted were circulated among all the settlers on the river and signed by 125 persons, most of them heads of families. The committee claimed that only twelve or thirteen persons refused to sign, of whom the majority lived at the river’s mouth. If this statement be correct, the resolutions certainly could not have been submitted to all the inhabitants, for there is evidence to show that at least thirty families outside of the township of Maugerville were steadfastly and consistently loyal to the government under which they lived. The names of these people are as deserving of honor as the names of the Loyalists, who came to the province from the old colonies in 1783. In the township of Maugerville the sentiment of the people was almost unanimous in favor of the Revolution and we have no data to determine who were loyalists—if any. But at St. Anns we have Benjamin Atherton and Philip Weade; in the township of Burton, John Larley, Joseph Howland, and Thomas Jones; in Gagetown Zebulon Estey, Henry West, John Crabtree, John Hendrick, Peter Carr and Lewis Mitchell; on the Kennebecasis Benjamin Darling; 267 in the township of Conway, Samuel Peabody, Jonathan Leavitt, Thomas Jenkins, John Bradley, Gervas Say, James Woodman, Peter Smith, and Christopher Cross; at Portland Point, James Simonds, James White, William Hazen, John Hazen, William Godsoe, Lemuel Cleveland, Robert Cram, John Nason, Moses Greenough, Christopher Blake and most of the men in the employ of Hazen, Simonds & White.