A number of Acadians too were loyal to the government of Nova Scotia and should be mentioned in this connection. Louis Mercure and his brother Michel Mercure rendered good service to the Governor of Nova Scotia in carrying dispatches to and from Quebec during the war period. Of the Martin family, Jean, Simon, Joseph, Francois and Amant were warmly commended by Major Studholme for their fidelity and active exertions on various occasions. Members of the Cyr family also rendered important services as guides or pilots, Oliver, Jean Baptiste and Pierre Cyr being employed in that capacity by Major Studholme and Lieut. Governor Michael Francklin.
At this distance of time it is difficult to determine the number of people on the river who were disposed to be actively disloyal. That they had many inducements to cast their fortunes with their friends in Massachusetts is undeniable. At Maugerville the powerful influence of the pastor of the church, Rev. Seth Noble, and of the leading elders and church members was exerted in behalf of the American congress. Jacob Barker, who presided at the meeting held on the 14th May, was a justice of the peace and ruling elder of the church. Israel Perley and Phineas Nevers were justices of the peace and had represented the county of Sunbury in the Nova Scotia legislature. Daniel Palmer, Edward Coy, Israel Kinney and Asa Perley were ruling elders of the church. Moses Pickard, Thomas Hartt and Hugh Quinton were leading church members. The gentlemen named, with Asa Kimball and Oliver Perley, were appointed a committee “to make immediate application to the Congress or General Assembly of Massachusetts Bay for relief under the present distressed circumstances.”
At the Maugerville meeting it was unanimously agreed that the committee, whose names have just been mentioned, should have charge of all matters civil and military until further regulations should be made, and that all who signed the resolutions should have no dealings with any person for the future who should refuse to sign them. The tone of several of the resolutions was that of open defiance to the constituted authority of Nova Scotia, the signers pledging themselves to support and defend the actions of their committee at the expense, if necessary, of their lives and fortunes. One of the resolutions reads:
“Resolved that we will immediately put ourselves in the best posture of defence in our power; that to this end we will prevent all unnecessary use of gunpowder or other ammunition in our custody.”
Asa Perley and Asa Kimball, two of the committee, were sent to Boston to interview the Massachusetts congress on behalf of the people living on the river. The commissary general there was directed to deliver them one barrel of gunpowder, 350 flints and 250 weight of lead from the colony’s stores; they were also allowed to purchase 40 stand of small arms.
So far all seemed favorable to the promoters of rebellion, but bitter humiliation was in store, and within a year the vast majority of those who had pledged themselves to the people of Massachusetts as “ready with their lives and fortunes to share with them the event of the present struggle for liberty, however God in His providence may order it,” were compelled to take the oath of allegiance to His Majesty King George the Third for the defence of the province of Nova Scotia against all his enemies.
An impartial review of the situation on the St. John at this stage of the American Revolution would seem to show that the sympathies of a large majority of the settlers were with the revolutionary party, at the same time many of the people were much less enthusiastic than their leaders and if left to themselves would probably have hesitated to sign the resolutions framed by their committee. The presence of the privateersmen, who came up the river at the time the meeting at Maugerville was held, was an incentive to many to sign the resolutions and the attitude of the Indians was a further inducement to stand in with the people of Massachusetts, who had lately entered into an alliance with the savages.
During the autumn of this year (1776) the Bay of Fundy was so infested with pirates and picaroons that the war vessels Vulture, Hope and Albany were ordered around from Halifax. They were not entirely successful in their endeavor to furnish protection, for the privateers frequently managed to steal past the large ships in the night and in fogs and continued to pillage the defenceless inhabitants.
Another hostile act was now undertaken by the people of Machias of a more ambitious kind than the destruction of Fort Frederick. This was nothing less than an attempt to capture Fort Cumberland, where Lieut. Col. Joseph Goreham was in command with a detachment of the Royal Fencible Americans. This attempt was in the end a miserable fiasco, but it occasioned much alarm at the time and was the cause of some distress to the loyal inhabitants of that region.