Glimpses of the Past: History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784

by W. O. Raymond

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 demolishing 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, Massachusetts, 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!”

(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 136 on St. Anne’s he had the misery of seeing one of his daughters with three of her children massacred 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 grass 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 Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts men remained Fort Frederick would be left without a garrison. In this emergency the Massachusetts legislature took the responsibility of extending the period of enlistment 137 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 Massachusetts 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.”