Signature of Sieur de Freneuse
The seigniory included both sides of the St. John river in Sunbury county, and the most fertile portions of the parishes of Maugerville, Sheffield, Burton and Lincoln. The name Freneuse is found in most of the maps of that region down to the time of the American Revolution. The residence of the Sieur de Freneuse stood on the east bank of the St. John opposite the mouth of the Oromocto river.
Mathieu d’Amours, as already stated, died in consequence of exposure at the siege of Fort Nachouac. Sixty years later the lands he had cleared and tilled and the site of his residence were transferred to the hands of the first English settlers on the river, the Maugerville colony of 1763. His widow, Madame Louise Guyon, went to Port Royal, where her indiscretion created a sensation that resulted in voluminous correspondence on the part of the authorities and finally led to her removal to Quebec.
Rene d’Amours, during his sojourn on the River St. John, was much engrossed in trade with the natives. He made periodical visits to their villages and was well known at Medoctec, where Gyles lived as a captive, and it is not unlikely the Frenchmen living at that village were his retainers. He seems to have made little or no attempt to fulfil the conditions necessary to retain possession of his seignioral manor, for to his mind the charms of hunting and trading surpassed those of farming. His visits to Medoctec to purchase furs and skins when the Indians had returned from their winter hunts were of doubtful advantage to the poor savages, for Gyles tells us that “when they came in from hunting they would be drunk and fight for several days and nights together, till they had spent most of their skins in wine and brandy, which was brought to the village by a Frenchman called Monsieur Sigenioncor” (Clignancourt).
The latter portion of the narrative of John Gyles throws light on the course of events on the St. John during Villebon’s regime, and supplies us with a particularly interesting glimpse of domestic life in the home of Louis d’Amours on the banks of the Jemseg, where Gyles spent the happiest years of his captivity. The wife of the Sieur de Chauffours, Marguerite Guyon[12], appears in an especially amiable light. Her lonely situation and rude surroundings, the perils of the wilderness and of savage war, amidst which her little children were born, evoke our sympathy. Her goodness of heart is seen in her motherly kindness to Gyles, the young stranger of an alien race—the “little English,” as she calls him. But with all her amiability and gentleness she possessed other and stronger qualities, and it was her woman’s wit and readiness of resource that saved her husband’s fortunes in a grave emergency. The story shall be told in Gyles’ own words.
“When about six years of my doleful captivity had passed, my second Indian master died, whose squaw and my first Indian disputed whose slave I should be. Some malicious persons advised them to end the quarrel by putting a period to my life; but honest father Simon, the priest of the river, told them that it would be a heinous crime and advised them to sell me to the French.”
The suggestion of father Simon was adopted and Gyles, now in his sixteenth year, went with the missionary and the Indians to the mouth of the river, the occasion 60 of their journey being the arrival of a French man-of-war at Menagoueche with supplies for the garrison and presents for the Indians.