The Journey to Canada Begins

The Journey to Canada Begins

Vaudreuil had the satisfaction of raising the lilied banner of France —fleur-de-lis — on the top of the fort for an hour or two before it was burned. Undoubtedly it was hoisted at the summit of the "great house" in the southeast corner of the fort. It seems queer to present denizens along the Hoosac, that the French flag should ever have floated even for an hour over its waters!

The contrast between the French officers, who spoke pleasantly and kindly to the prisoners, and the young Frenchman, whether native or Canadian, who practised the barbarities on the body of the dead Knowlton, is one that French society in Canada perpetually presented until its downfall. The exquisite manners of Paris, all the proverbial politeness of France, pitched its tent in and near the residences of the governors of Canada and of such courtly gentlemen as Montcalm, whether in Quebec or Three Rivers or Montreal, while close alongside this refinement, speaking the patois of the country, were the cruelty and falsity and barbarism of the habitans and fur-traders, surpassing, if possible, in degradation even the Indians themselves. The sight of Knowlton's blood dripping down from the watch-box to the ground, roused the Indians to a fierce desire to scalp and mutilate the body; and the same sight roused the young Frenchman to flay the arm, and roast and eat the flesh of the dead man.

We had been at their camp but a little time, when Mons. Doty, the General's

interpreter, called me aside, and desired me to speak to our soldiers, and persuade them to go with the Indians; for he said that the Indians were desirous that some of them should go with them; and said that Sergeant Hawks, myself, and the families, should go with the French officers. I answered him that it was contrary to our agreement, and the General's promise; and would be to throw away the lives of some of our sick and wounded. He said, no; but the Indians would be kind to them; and though they were all prisoners to the French, yet he hoped some of them would be willing to go with the Indians.

The French were in close alliance for peace and war with the Indian tribes of Canada and the West, but they were troublesome allies at the best, and in moments of excitement were utterly uncontrollable. Montcalm writes: "You would take them for so many masqueraders or devils. One needs the patience of an angel to get on with them." They could not be made to understand, still less to respect, the obligation of pledges. Vaudreuil had promised more than he could perform; he had bitten off more than he could chew. The Indians insisted on their claim to escort the bulk of the prisoners to Canada, to present them to the Governor-General themselves, and so be able the better to claim an expected reward. The spirit, if not the letter, of the capitulation put all the prisoners into the care of the French officers and men; and this was fully recognized by Vaudreuil in his sending his interpreter to Norton, and asking him to persuade the soldiers to go with the Indians voluntarily. Why did the General send Monsieur Doty to Norton rather than to Hawks, the proper officer? If an innocent conjecture may be hazarded, it may have been a religious scruple on the part of Vaudreuil, a sense at least of the sanctity of a promise, that would be violated if he sent the prisoners among the Indians; and so, if their religious leader would consent to it and get the consent of some of the soldiers, his own conscience would be the better satisfied. It was a compliment to the Chaplain at any rate, and no disrespect to the Sergeant; but the scheme, whatever its motive, did not work, and the General was left to settle it with his conscience the best he could; the Indians must be placated in any event and so the terms of the surrender were strained, even if not broken.

These were no fancied fears of Norton's in respect to the sick and wounded among the prisoners, for he was familiar with the story of the captivities to Canada that had taken place in Queen Anne's War, and particularly with the " Redeemed Captive," Rev. John Williams's account of the sack of Deerfield in 1704. Of the 112 captives taken from Deerfield at that time, seventeen were killed or died on the march to Canada, and among these was Mrs. Williams, wife of the minister, who was tomahawked at the foot of a hill in what is now Greenfield. Everybody in New England in 1746 was familiar with these facts from the popularity of Williams's little book with the above title, published in 1707, in which he gave an interesting narrative of the adventures of the captives, and which was soon in everybody's hands. Still, it must be owned, that in the present instance these vigorously expressed fears for the feeble captives proved in the issue to be groundless. These captives were extraordinarily well treated, as we shall see. Perhaps Vaudreuil's qualms of conscience, if he had any, over the terms of capitulation, made him all the more scrupulous that no harm should come to the surrendered from the Indians.

The reason why Rebecca Perry and her husband were placed in the care of the Indians, while the other two women with their husbands and the five children were taken charge of by the French officers, seems to have been that they had no children as impediments. The Indians were to go ahead in the march, and the French to bring up the rear. Eleven in all were put with the French, and nineteen were given over to the Indians. The Sergeant and the Chaplain were very honorably treated, for the two highest officers in command, next to the General, took these with them respectively, namely, La Corne took Hawks, and Demuy, Norton.

As the morning of the 21st of August, 1746, dawned upon western Massachusetts, gradually lighting up the gloom of the forests, and dispelling the mists that rolled up the mountain sides, the smoke from the fire still smoldering among the logs and debris which but a few hours before had constituted the defense known as Fort Massachusetts, curled sluggishly upward until wafted away above the desolate scene. Securely nailed to a charred post which still remained erect upon the western boundary, was a letter which contained the following words written in a bold determined hand: "These are to inform you that yesterday about nine of the clock, we were besieged by, as they say, seven hundred French and Indians. They have wounded two men and killed one Knowlton. The general, De Vaudreuil, desired capitulation, and we were so distressed that we complied with his terms. We are the French's prisoners, and have it under the General's hand, that every man, woman and child, shall be exchanged for French prisoners."

-- From “The Site of Old Fort Massachusetts,” by D.D. Slade, featured in “The American: Journal of Literature, Science, the Arts, and Public Affairs” – October 27, 1888

Josiah Read was from Rehoboth in the Old Colony. He was sick of the prevailing distemper before the fort was besieged, and was doubtless treated by the Indians after the surrender with all the consideration that was possible, an Indian carrying him on his back. He died at the place of the first encampment during this (Thursday) night; and though Norton suggests a little later a fear that he may have been murdered, it became perfectly clear after the return of the surviving captives that the man died of his malady. John Aldrich was of Mendon in Worcester County, and was one of the two wounded in the watch-box on the first day of the siege. When the rest of his surviving companions in captivity returned to their several homes the next year, John Aldrich and one other were left sick in Quebec, but these two also returned afterwards, and were paid their wages, twenty-five shillings a month, for the year and more, by the Treasurer of the Colony. The captives started Thursday morning for Crown Point from Vaudreuil's camp near the fort, the Indians in general in front and the French in the rear, though soon more or less commingled on the march, making their way as best they could "down the river in Hoosuck road" towards the first resting-place four miles to the west where there is a decided bend of the river to the north. Norton's use of the term, "road," here, shows that the immemorial Mohawk trail was even then much travelled back and forth. It was a road. After crossing the stream at Fort Massachusetts, it ran thenceforth along its northern bank

and usually near to the water, unless the interval were low and wet, in which case the Indians always hugged the edge of the higherland, or unless there were a considerable bend in the stream, in which case the Indians made the short cut as unerringly as a modern engineer. The place where Norton overtook John Perry's wife was near or at the place where her husband had built their house a short time before, and stocked it with the goods to which reference has been had already, and which the struggling Indians bringing up the rear burned in passing. The considerable confusion into which Norton falls in this paragraph concerning the Perrys, betrays the fact that he wrote out his narrative some time after the events, from notes taken at the time; for he tells us expressly a little way back that Perry and his wife, with the bulk of the soldiers, were distributed among the Indians, while here he twice expresses much surprise to find them in the company of the Indians — "for I thought till then she was with the French."

The Hoosac meadow in Williamstown, on which the band of captives rested for a while about noon of the first day's march, has been from that day to this an interesting place. "We went about four miles to the place where the army encamped the night before they came upon us." [The place was called the River Bend Farm in the 1890's, when Professor Arthur Perry's book was written.] There has been for many years a steam saw-mill where the river begins to bend northward, which has more or less disfigured the meadow, and the tracks of the Fitchburg railroad curving round the bend and requiring considerable cutting and filling, to say nothing of a deposit of gravel which has been carried off in large quantities for ballasting, have still further disfigured and transformed it; but when perhaps for centuries the Indians used to make a sort of camp and stopping-place upon this curve covered with primeval forests, of which enormous pines formed a part, it was one of the loveliest places in all New England; and when about twenty-five years after the present passage, the farm was fairly cleared up, it became, perhaps, the most fertile farm in Williamstown, and certainly the residence and tavern-stand of its most prominent and patriotic citizen. Next to Josiah Read, who died a few miles down the river a few hours later, the sickest of the captives was a lad named Benjamin Simonds, then twenty years old, who lived to own the broad meadow, and to build upon it the stately house still standing.

Here we sat down for a considerable time. My heart was filled with sorrow, expecting that many of our weak and feeble people would fall by the merciless hands of the enemy. And as I frequently heard the savages shouting and yelling, trembled, concluding that they then murdered some of our people. And this was my only comfort, that they could do nothing against us, but what God in his holy Providence permitted them; but was filled with admiration when I saw all the prisoners come up with us, and John Aldrich carried upon the back of his Indian master. We set out again, and had gone but a little way before we came up with Josiah Read, who gave out. I expected they would have knocked him on the head and killed him, but an Indian carried him on his back. We made several stops, and after we had traveled about eight miles we made a considerable stay, where we refreshed ourselves, and I had an opportunity to speak to several of the prisoners; especially John Smead, and his wife, who being near her time, was filled with admiration at the goodness of God in strengthening her to travel so far.

The cause of the shouting and yelling of the savages, here referred to by Norton, may very probably have been the burning of John Perry's premises, at that time the only house in the Hoosac valley till they came down to Dutch Hoosac, where they burned, the next day, seven houses and fourteen barns, and a large quantity of wheat, and slaughtered many hogs and cattle, doubtless accompanying the devastation with similar whooping and outcry. Every vestige of this already thriving settlement at the junction of the Little Hoosac with the Hoosac went up in flames; one of the proprietors named Samuel Bowen was killed, and the loss in that single neighborhood was estimated, at the time, as £50,000 New York currency. The French account of the doings of this party returning from the sack of Fort Massachusetts is not exaggerated as much as usual: "Barns, mills, churches, and tanneries were destroyed, and the harvest laid waste for a distance of thirty or forty miles." Indeed, the small party of French and Indians returning from the attack on Fort Massachusetts two months before, when Elisha Nims was killed, and Gershom Hawks wounded there, slaughtered, in Dutch Hoosac, nearly one hundred animals belonging to the Dutch and English farmers. The valley is this time trod by an army that leaves nothing of value movable or burnable behind it. But we are getting a little ahead of Norton's narrative.

Vaudreuil was true to his after promise, even if he had proved false to the exact terms of surrender. No captives in like circumstances ever had less cause to complain of their treatment on the whole. These conferences were had, and this result was reached, while the slow march was progressing through the present town of Pownal, Vermont, and approaching and passing the present line of the state of New York. The valley of the Hoosac narrows decidedly after passing into Petersburg, and the river turns sharply to the west, till the valley suddenly broadens to receive into itself the valley of the Little Hoosac at the junction of the two streams. These united valleys, at their place of union, are now called, for railway reasons, Petersburg Junction. They were formerly called, from the prevailing nationality of the farmers there, Dutch Hoosac. The meadows here are very broad, and have always been very productive. Here located himself in 1735, Bernardus Bratt, a Dutchman, who married in that year, Catharine Van Vechten, and who built his house very near the present railway station. He built the first saw-mill and the first grist-mill in this district. These mills, and a large quantity of grain, lumber, and other property, both his and his neighbors', were burned by our Indians at this time. "They went to look some buildings to plunder, and burn them." They went up the Little Hoosac and burned every farm-house and barn in what is now North Petersburg. They performed the same pleasing service for the Bovies and Brimmers and Bowens and Van Der

Vericks, on whose meadow, directly to the south of Bratt's, the whole army encamped for the night. Dec. 1, of this year, Norton notes in his diary the death at Quebec of Gratis Van Der Verick, who had been a captive for a year, and had been taken at Saratoga, and who may have belonged to the family then occupying what has since been called the "Joseph Case farm," and is now called (1887) from its present owner, the "Edward Green" farm, on which Vaudreuil, with his motley force and his prisoners, made their first night's encampment, after leaving the fort for good.

Also, on their first night's encampment, Mary Smead, the daughter of John Smead Sr. and Mary Smead, had a little adventure of her own, as is told below.

The first night after the capture, Mary was wrapped in a blanket by a French Soldier and soon fell asleep by his side. During the night, she awoke and crept out into the dark in search of her friends whom she expected to recognize by feeling the hair of the sleeper; after some searching she found two men lying together whom she took to be her brothers, John and Daniel, and she closely nestled down between them and was soon asleep again. The Frenchmen, missing her, went out with a blazing torch to find her. Who can picture the dismay of the child, when by its light she saw her companions to be two hideous Indian warriors instead of her brothers. She was quite willing to return to the tent.[8]

From Fort Massachusetts to Van Der Verick's place, the first day's journey towards Canada, was not far from fourteen miles as the river runs. Nature put her seal of beauty and bounty upon the spot, and Providence marked it with displays of graciousness, that doubtless came in answer to prayer; the French showed unwonted kindness to the sick women, bringing Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Perry to

the camp, carrying them; and when Mrs. Smead was taken in travail some two miles back from the camp, it was French officers and soldiers who tenderly tarried for her, made a seat for her to sit upon, and carried her in their arms to the camp on the meadow, which was then made memorable forever by the birth and baptism of a Christian child.

At least two canoes had been brought by the Indians from the head of Lake Champlain, where most of their boats were left to await their return, up to the junction of the Hoosacs, and here they took into these for the next stage of their journey homeward, the sick man, and the wounded man, and the invalid woman, all of whom had been in Indian charge from the start. Their birch-bark canoes and paddles were extremely light, and were easily borne over the shorter or longer carrying-places, which intermitted the waterways between Canada and the Colonies, by whichever of the usual routes these ways were attempted. There was less land-carriage by Lake George or Wood Creek to the Hudson, or by any one of the three routes over the Green Mountains to the Connecticut, than by the route chosen on this occasion by Owl Kill to the Hoosac.

John Hawks found little cause for complaint at the hands of his captors: "The French & Indians were very careful of the sick & wounded & kind to all of us. The gentleman that I went with was as kind to me as if I had been his brother." [7]

Scarcely less picturesque than the first was this second night's encampment at St. Croix, the junction of the Walloomsac with the Hoosac. The encampment was on the land of Garret Van Ness, whose acquaintance we have already made in connection with supplies for Fort Massachusetts. The horses obtained for the couriers to carry the good news to Canada, undoubtedly belonged to Van Ness, for he owned two miles or more of the land between the mouth of the Walloomsac and the mouth of Owl Kill, where is now the hamlet of Eagle Bridge. From Van Der Verick's to Eagle Bridge, the second day's more comfortable journey, is pretty nearly ten miles. Here all hands were to leave the line of the Hoosac, and push on nearly due north, into the then unsettled wilderness, now Washington County, to the head of Lake Champlain, where is now the town of Whitehall. The canoes, with the two or three sick ones, might, perhaps, be pushed up the Owl Kill a few miles above its mouth, and then all the rest would be land journey to the lake.

This paragraph is one of extreme importance both historically and geographically, and has been often heretofore, if not always, wholly misinterpreted. It is, in fact, no other than the Batten Kill. The proof of this, and the reason why Norton, following the usage of the time, called the stream "Sarratago River" will come forth into clear light as we go on. Once and again and again the present writer has gone carefully over every foot of ground covered by this passage, which was the third day's march of the captives, and satisfied himself by personal inspection, not only as to the exact spot of the lodging-place "between two ponds," which is the water-shed between the Hoosac and the Batten Kill, but also as to the exact place of their crossing the river, which is called to this day "the ford." Their route lay directly up Owl Kill on the west side of it, just as the public road now runs from Eagle Bridge to Cambridge, and thence north along the present road to Salem, through what is now Jackson Center, and then, after bending a little to the right between Long Pond and McLean Pond, found the "divide," and there was their camp for the night. Dead Pond, apparently without inlet or outlet, lies just upon the water-shed. Then from Big Pond (just north) there flows a tiny stream through Little Pond to reach the kill below. These are the so-called Jackson Ponds. The ground is low and swampy along this little tributary of the kill, and so the Indian path turned to the left, keeping the higher ground, and then went through a little pass between high hills, and came directly down to the present ford over the Batten Kill at East Greenwich. A substantial farmhouse now flanks the old Indian trail on the west just before the ford is reached. Much narrower now are mountain streams than they were 140 years ago, and Norton's "twenty rods" have shrunk to less than half that width.

Mr. Norton kept a good eye on all the members of his peeled and scattered flock, but he did not know all that was going on among the French and Indians, his companions. He reports when they all were south of the Batten Kill, that there was a considerable ruffle among them, on discovering the tracks of a scout from Saratoga, as if there might be an army after them. On the other hand, Vaudreuil reports to his superiors in Quebec, that he detached a party of Abenakis to proceed towards Fort Saratoga, that they met seventeen soldiers belonging to the fort, took four of them and scalped four others, and that the rest, pursued by the Indians, who killed some of them, threw themselves precipitately into the fort. Vaudreuil also reported in the same connection the success of about thirty Abenakis, detached by him immediately after the taking of Fort Massachusetts to go to Deerfield, who took, he said, five or six scalps. This was the Bars Fight in Deerfield, in which five persons were killed, one wounded, and one taken captive; two of the Indians were killed also. The fourth day's journey of the captives was the longest yet made by them, — eighteen miles. It is easy to trace the path on the spot, or even by a good map, such as Fitch's map of Washington County. It ran nearly due north from the Batten Kill up on the west side of McNob's Lake [Editor's Note: Now called Carter's Pond], where the present road runs to the little hamlet of Lakeville, and then up on the west side of the large and beautiful Cossayuna Lake, where there is no road at present, but are still "the several pieces of good meadow land," and thence between the hills of the present town of Argyle up into the more open land of the town of Hartford, and still up to the lodging-place for the night "where was a run of water which makes a part of Wood Creek," that is to say, Mud Creek, so-called, which is a branch of East Creek, which itself falls into Wood Creek, near Smith's Basin, on the present Champlain Canal.

This day's journey was the fifth from Fort Massachusetts, and the last performed wholly by land. Its topographical notices are extremely interesting, and enable one to follow the path with absolute certainty. Norton was mistaken, and Hawks was certainly right, in the little matter of geography in dispute between them. In the morning's start they left Mud Creek to the right, and still bearing northeast, they passed over some small slate hills and ledges in the modern town of Granville, and soon struck the Pawlet River in the present village of North Granville. The river runs here from east to west just as the Chaplain describes it, and they crossed it in a due northerly course. Two or three miles further they came to the same stream again in Guilder's Hollow, where it was then, and is still, nearly double the width it has at North Granville, partly because it was lower down in its course, and partly because it was shallower there. It has a course there from southwest to northeast. But the straight and best way to their night's camping-place at what is now East Whitehall, led them to cross the same stream the third time, and then to leave it on the west, just as Hawks said they did. The good Chaplain made his "minute" too soon, or else a bit carelessly, for after the second crossing it would have been simply impossible for him to reach his night's lodging on the hillside without crossing the third time also. Hawks, too, kept a careful journal of the captivity, which was extant well into this century, but never printed, and long ago disappeared. Both journalists alike supposed

the stream they crossed to be Wood Creek, while it was in reality the east branch of that historic stream, uniting with it a mile or so south of the head of Lake Champlain, and contributing, perhaps, as much water to that short stretch of stream as its far more famous fellow of the west. The Indians called the Pawlet River, "Mettowee", a beautiful name, which ought forever to supersede the more prosaic one, especially as it takes its rise in Dorset and not in Pawlet, through which indeed it flows. [Editor's Note: The name of the river, Pawlet River, has been reverted back to Mettawee River.]

The camp at the close of the last day's march was near to what is now East Whitehall, and "Herbert's Pond" [Editor's Note: Now called Dunbar Pond], so-named, is with very little question one of the "couple of ponds" by which they slept, and there is at the present time a considerable peat bog close by Herbert's, which may well have been the other of the two ponds. If any wonder why Vaudreuil led his force so far to the eastward of his objective, namely, the place where his boats had been left two weeks before in the mouth of the Poultney River, or East Bay, as it used to be called, just before its junction with Wood Creek and the united entrance into Lake Champlain, the ready answer is found in Norton's repeated reference to the "drowned lands." All around the head of Lake Champlain, both up the East Bay and also up Wood Creek for considerable distances, were low and swampy lands, liable to be overflowed, and such as the old Indian trails were always sure to avoid, when possible; by leaving the Mettowee at the west, and skirting along the highlands to the east, they found dry ground at all seasons of the year, and though the distance was decidedly greater, the going was decidedly better.

The writer has twice been over on foot the ground of this last morning's tramp of the captives. The present public road from East Whitehall to Whitehall undoubtedly follows in general the footsteps of General Vaudreuil. The old path, however, turned to the right from the present lay of that road a mile or more from the town, along a little lift of higher ground down to the place (or near it) where there is now a bridge over the Poultney River, or East Bay, and where "the stream ran from northeast to southwest." There most of the canoes had been deposited a fortnight before. The crowd embarked without ceremony, the stream quickly turned to the north, they rowed with the current the afternoon and evening, and encamped that night in what is now Benson, Vermont, and, perhaps, at what is now Benson Landing.

Lakes George and Champlain with their inlets are, of course, within the basin of the St. Lawrence, and formed the only natural route between the colonies and Canada for all their traffic in time of peace, and their military expeditions back and forth in war-time.

At the time of this enforced visit to Crown Point by Chaplain Norton in 1746, Fort St. Frederic was at the height of its military strength and political domination. Next to Quebec, it was the strongest post in New France. It had grown from a wooden stockade, authorized to be erected by the French king on the 8th of May, 1731, capable of accommodating a garrison of thirty men only, to a strong fortress built of limestone, with a tower of three stories, bomb-proof, capable in 1734 of holding 120 men in garrison, and subsequently strengthened and enlarged, containing within its walls a small chapel, whose vesper bell called to their evening prayers the scarred veteran of France, and the voluble Canadian, and the rude husbandman whose hut stood outside the fort. The very northern most point of the cape was occupied by this impressive fortification, from which the shore falls back a little on both sides, eastward to the deep channel of the lake, and westward to a broad bay of back

water constituting the cape on that side. This position explains the ceremony of the salute described by the good Chaplain here. Vaudreuil's boats had already passed in the channel of the lake the northeast point, where stood a stone windmill, serving also the purposes of a redoubt, and where there were also one or more good houses; but the main fort must be first saluted, and so "the sails were pulled down, and the canoes brought up abreast, and passed by the fort over to the northeast point, saluting the fort with three volleys as we passed by it, the fort returning the salute by the discharge of the cannon." The Chaplain was lodged with his custodian, M. Demuy, "in a house on the northeast point," where, evidently, the best quarters were in the neighborhood of the fort. The land is high and dry there.

This detailed description of Fort St. Frederic is the earliest in point of time that has come down to us from any quarter. The French officers were doubtless very glad to exhibit the great strength of the work to Norton and Hawks, in order that they might report the same to their constituent, the colony of Massachusetts, which then and afterwards had a deep interest in its construction and

approaches.

Captivity Smead, the baby born at the first encampment at the junction of the Little Hoosac with the Hoosac, was now just one week old, and the mother had with her three other children, all young; and Mrs. Moses Scott had two young children also; no wonder these were taken out of their tents into the house, that they might be more comfortable. The south and east winds have a fair sweep over northeast point, where the windmill was and the lighthouse is, and the cry of a new-born child appeals to the humanity of man always and everywhere.

This is an indirect but accurate account of the "Bars Fight," so-called, in the southwest Meadow of Deerfield, five days after the taking of Fort Massachusetts.

It is not certain whether any of these letters ever reached the English "frontiers".

We shall now no longer follow, in order and in detail, the copious diary of the Chaplain's journey to Quebec, and of what happened to him and his fellow-captives on the way thither, and after they arrived there; not because the entries are not interesting and instructive, but because comparatively few of them bear directly on Fort Massachusetts and the straight course of our story. The captives embarked with their victors at Crown Point, for Canada, on Thursday, the 4th of September, which was the sixteenth day from their capture. They encamped the first night on the New York side of the lake, in a cave so clearly described, that it might, doubtless, be easily identified at this day; and the next time on the Vermont side, at a place afterwards called Windmill Point by the English, a few miles below Burlington. In this voyage down the lake, they did not see an inhabited house on either side, or meet a living person, till on Sunday they entered the Richelieu River, and met a boat with

three men in it, who brought a packet of letters for the French officers, containing what the latter called "news," very favorable to the French cause in Europe, the accuracy of which, the bold Chaplain disputed to their faces, which led to a warm political debate between them, over the battle of Culloden Moor the preceding April, and over the House of Stuart and the Catholic religion in general. It seems odd enough in our time, to think of Celt and Briton hotly disputing in September, whether the Duke of Cumberland were killed at Culloden in April, and whether the House of Hanover — "Cromwell's faction'' — were about to yield to the young Pretender. The place, too, of the debate in the uninhabited wilds of Canada, and the uncertainty of both parties to it, as to the facts alleged, in which both were afterwards proven to be largely wrong and slightly right, add to the queerness of the scene.

Before night of this Sunday they reached the village and fort of Chambly, which is thirty-seven miles below the present boundary line of British America. The French officers were in high spirits. M. Demuy told Norton the next day another piece of news, namely, "that one of their men-of-war had taken an English man-of-war near Louisburg, after a whole day's engagement; that the blood was mid-leg deep upon the Englishman's deck when he surrendered." "They fought courageously," retorted Norton. "rue, but they were taken notwithstanding." "Moreover, they have taken three

hundred and twenty men out of her, who are coming up to Quebec,where you shall see them. "They got to Montreal two days later, where the Town Major and many former captives from New England came to visit the Chaplain. He was courteously entertained while there at the house of M. Demuy, who took him to see the Governor. The Governor said little to him, but told him that after a few days, he must send him with the rest of the prisoners to Quebec. The "few days" proved to be but two, when they embarked in boats, all but six men, who were yet with the Indians, and John Perry's wife, who had already gone on to Three Rivers, for Quebec.

"A Brief History of Fort Massachusetts with an Emphasis on the Siege of 1746"

was compiled, edited, and with an introduction by C.A. Chicoine. June 2017

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8. "History of North Adams, Mass., 1749-1885," by W. F. Spear -- Published 1885

9. "The Line of Forts: Historical Archaeology on the Colonial Frontier of Massachusetts," by Michael Coe -- University Press of New England, 2006

10. "Colonel Ephraim Williams, a documentary life," by Wyllis E. Wright --1970

11. "Williamstown: The First 250 Years 1753-2003," The First Fifty Years, by Robert R. R. Brooks -- 2005

    1. "Society of Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts"|Pub. No. 8 -- 1906

12. The "Bloody Morning Scout" references:

• • a. "Antiquarian Researches Comprising A History of The Indian Wars", by E. Hoyt -- published 1824|page 274

  • b. "Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, Volume X", by Brodhead, John Romeyn, Fernow, Berthold, O'Callaghan, and E. B. (Edmund Bailey). Published 1853|Page 342

  • c. "Colonel Ephraim Williams, an appreciation", by William A. Pew (William Andrews) -- Published 1919|page 21

18. "Historical Sketch of the Life and Character of Colonel Ephraim Williams, and of Williams College, Founded in 1793, In Consequence of His Liberal Bequest," from "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Volume VIII" -- Published 1802

19. "Antiquarian Researches Comprising A History of The Indian Wars", by E. Hoyt -- published 1824

20. "Interesting Facts in the Early History of North Adams," by A. H. Morris. The North Adams Transcript, North Adams, Massachusetts · October 17, 1896, page 2

21. U.S. News & World Report National Liberal Arts Colleges Rankings

All maps from Google Maps.