Tag: Maine

Passamaquaddy!?

I had only heard of Passamaquoddy in the old movie Pete’s Dragon (where, as you may remember, it is the name of the town, and the travelling quack doctor can never say it right), until I came across it the other day in the journals of the Continental Congress. I didn’t know it was a real place, so I looked it up, and sure enough, there’s a Passamaquoddy Bay on the border between the U.S. and Canada: specifically, between Maine and New Brunswick.

However, there’s not actually a town named Passamaquoddy, so I guess the screenwriters made that part up. On the other hand, the journals of the Continental Congress refer simply to “Passamaquaddy” (note the spelling difference), rather than “Passamaquaddy Bay,” so maybe there was a town called Passamaquaddy at the time, but I’m inclined to think that “Passamaquaddy” referred to the area around the bay, rather than a specific town.

“Passamaquaddy” Bay is in the upper left corner of this 1775 map of the New England and Canadian coastline.

At any rate, there were enough people in the area or town of Passamaquaddy (also spelled Passamaquady, or even Pesmocadie) to be politically active, and to send a petition to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Here’s the record from the journal of the Continental Congress on November 2, 1775:

The Inhabitants of Passamaquaddy in Nova Scotia, having chosen a com[mitt]ee of Safety, and having, by their petition, applied to the Congress to be admitted into the association of the North Americans, for the preservation of their rights and liberties,

On motion made, Resolved, That a com[mitt]ee of 5 be appointed to take this matter into consideration, and report what steps, in their opinion, it will be proper to take, in consequence of this application, for the preservation of the liberties of America.

The members chosen, Mr. [Silas] Deane, Mr. [John] Jay, Mr. [Stephen] Hopkins, Mr. [John] Langdon, and Mr. John Adams.

What steps did the congress decide to take regarding the inhabitants of Passamaquaddy? I haven’t found out yet, but if I do, I’ll let you know.

In case you’re wondering why the congress said that Passamaquaddy was in Nova Scotia, when I said that the bay was on the border of Maine and New Brunswick, it’s because the province of New Brunswick hadn’t been created yet, and that territory was considered part of Nova Scotia.

And in case you’re wondering why the Passamaquaddians (I just had to use that word) wanted to be allowed to join “the association of the North Americans,” it was surely at least partly a matter of business. The “association” was an agreement by the First Continental Congress in 1774, and it involved boycotting certain British goods and not shipping certain things to other British territories. Since the Passamaquaddians were out of Maine (which was actually part of Massachusetts at the time), they weren’t included in the association, which meant that they couldn’t do as much business with their New England neighbors as they used to. If the congress would allow them to join the association, then they would be able to go back to doing business as before.

Sources

A Plan of the coast from Cape Anne in north latitude 42⁰42ʹ & 70⁰33ʹ west longitude from Greenwich: … to Isle Scattery in long. 50⁰40ʹ & latitude 46⁰ 0ʹ north, … including the isle of Sable. [?, 1775] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/74694110/.

Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 3, p. 316.

British Ships Destroy Falmouth, Maine

“The Town of Falmouth, Burnt, by Captain Moet, Octbr. 18th 1775.”

For the most part, the British Royal Navy in America in 1775 was busy capturing American vessels and gathering food and supplies for the besieged army in Boston. But in October, British Admiral Graves sent Lieutenant Henry Mowat to “chastize” a number of New England towns — or, to put it more bluntly, to “lay waste burn and destroy such Seaport Towns as are accessible to his Majesty’s Ships”. Graves gave the order on October 6, and Mowat sailed with four ships — the Canceaux, Symmetry, Spitfire, and Halifax — to carry it out.

Mowat decided to go first to Falmouth (now Portland), Maine. It was the 17th when he arrived there and lined up his ships in position to bombard the town. He sent an officer on shore with a letter, telling the people that he would give them two hours to “remove…the Human Species out of the…town”, and then he would start firing. Three leading citizens went out to talk with Mowat aboard his ship, the Canceaux, and he agreed to wait until the next morning so that the people would have enough time to get out of the town. He also told them that if they would “surrender their cannon and musketry, and give hostages for their future good behaviour,” then he would try to convince the Admiral to change his mind about destroying Falmouth.

Not surprisingly, although the people were given until the next morning to leave, they didn’t surrender their firearms. The whole town was thrown into a panic, and people started working frantically to get themselves and their belongings out of town. The Reverend Jacob Bailey described what happened the next day:

The morning was calm clear and pleasant, without a breath of wind, and the town was crowded with people and carts from the country to assist in removing the goods and furniture of the inhabitants. At exactly half an hour after nine the flag was hoisted at the top of the mast [as a signal], and the cannon began to roar with incessant and tremendous fury. … The oxen, terrified at the smoak and report of the guns ran with precipitation over the rocks, dashing everything in pieces, and scattering large quantities of goods about the streets. In a few minutes the whole town was involved in smoak and combustion. … The bombardment continued from half after nine till sunset, during which all the lower end and middle of the town was reduced to an heap of rubbish. … In a word about three quarters of the town was consumed and between two and three hundred families who twenty four hours before enjoyed in tranquility their commodious habitations, were now in many instances destitute of a hut for themselves and families; and as a tedious winter was approaching they had before them a most gloomy and distressing prospect.

In some places where the buildings weren’t very close together, and so the fire wouldn’t spread very well, Mowat sent men ashore to set the buildings on fire. The British also destroyed some ships in the harbor.

Mowat moved his ships down the harbor the next morning, and reported that the fire was still raging in the town that evening.

The destruction of Falmouth was a forceful display of British military might, and an example of how the rebellious Americans could be punished. But while it might have made some Americans think twice about rebelling, it also gave them another reason to hate the British.

Fortunately, Mowat’s ships had used up most of their ammunition, and some of his guns and one of his ships were damaged, so he didn’t try to destroy the other towns that Admiral Graves had singled out.

Sources

Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 324, 471, 487-8, 500, 516.

Arnold’s March to Quebec: A Story of Daring…and Some Disaster

When the Revolutionary War began in Massachusetts, the Americans were defending their home turf. But only five months later, they were invading a colony that wasn’t involved in the war at all: Canada.

Canada had only been part of the British empire since the end of the French and Indian War in the previous decade, and most of the people who lived there (other than the Indians) were French Catholics, which made them quite different from most of the people in the other colonies. It wasn’t exactly a foreign country, but it wasn’t too far from it — and there were plenty of people alive who still remembered fighting the French. Now they were trying to convert the Canadians to their cause. As George Washington put it in a printed appeal to the Canadians:

We have taken up Arms in Defence of our Liberty, our Property, our Wives, and our Children, we are determined to preserve them, or die. We look forward with Pleasure to that Day not far remote (we hope) when the Inhabitants of America shall have one Sentiment, and the full Enjoyment of the Blessings of a free Government.

… The Cause of America, and of Liberty, is the Cause of every virtuous American Citizen; whatever may be his Religion or his Descent, the United Colonies know no Distinction but such as Slavery, Corruption and arbitrary Domination may create. Come then, ye generous Citizens, range yourselves under the Standard of general Liberty—against which all the Force and Artifice of Tyranny will never be able to prevail.

At first, the American revolutionary leaders hesitated to authorize an invasion of Canada, but finally they decided to go ahead with it. In New York, Generals Schuyler and Montgomery led the main invasion up Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. But a smaller force — about 1,100 men — took what was supposed to be a shortcut through Maine.

They were led by bold Benedict Arnold. If you think that Benedict Arnold was a traitor, you’re right — but not in 1775. He was dedicated and daring then and for years afterward. And he had a plan.

American colonel Benedict Arnold used this map to plan his expedition to Quebec in the fall of 1775.

Using a map that had been made around 1761 by a British officer, John Montresor, he planned to take a relatively small force in flat-bottomed boats called batteaux, and go up the rivers and through the wild, unsettled areas of Maine, and so take the city of Quebec by surprise.

It didn’t work nearly as well as they had hoped. For one thing, the “shortcut” — as often happens with shortcuts — wasn’t so short after all. Their batteaux had been hastily and poorly made; their food went bad and ran out. Sometimes they had to haul the batteaux up the swift, shallow streams with ropes and by holding on to the bushes along the banks. Sometimes they had to carry the batteaux (and all their equipment, including guns, food, ammunition and more) around waterfalls, or over hills from one river to the next. Nowadays we call that kind of thing a portage (which is a French word, pronounced por-TAWZH); back then they stuck with an English term and simply called it a “carrying place.” Arnold summed it up quite nicely when he said, “I have been much deceived in every Account of our Rout, which is longer, and has been attended with a Thousand Difficulties I never apprehended.”

Some of the companies in the rear decided to turn back, since food was rapidly running out (as I mentioned in my previous post). I won’t call them cowards, though; I wasn’t there, and I’ve never been in danger of starving to death. Some men did in fact die of hunger and disease.

At any rate, with great daring and perseverance, Arnold reached the St. Lawrence River with about 700 men in early November and looked at his goal — the city of Quebec — across the river. But it was just a little out of reach…

Notes

By the way, Maine was not its own colony, but there were some settlers there, and the region had its own name.

Sources

“Address to the Inhabitants of Canada, 14 September 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0358. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775 – 15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 461–463.]

Montrésor, John. A map of the sources of the Chaudière, Penobscot, and Kennebec rivers. [?, 1761] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/74692578/.

“To George Washington from Colonel Benedict Arnold, 27–28 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0224. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 244–246.]

Planning to Invade Canada

Jonathan Brewer proposes a plan to attack Quebec.

May 1, 1775

You may not have heard that the Americans decided to invade and take over Quebec early in the Revolutionary War. The first part of the invasion was led by Benedict Arnold in September 1775. The journey itself was quite an achievement, but you can see that it didn’t work out, by the fact that Canada is not one of the United States.

This map was made by a British officer in the 1760s. It shows the wilderness areas he traveled through to get from Quebec to Maine. The first American invasion of Quebec followed a similar route, in the opposite direction.

I’ve read a lot about Arnold’s trek along the rivers and through the woods of Maine and Quebec, but I didn’t realize until today that somebody else was itching to start such an expedition before the war was even two weeks old. Jonathan Brewer, Esquire, of Waltham, Massachusetts, submitted a petition to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, stating:

That your Petitioner having a desire of contributing all in his power for this Country’s good, begs leave to propose to this honourable House to march with a body of five hundred Volunteers to Quebeck, by way of the Rivers Kennebeck and Chadier, as he humbly begs leave to apprehend that such a diversion of the Provincial Troops into that part of Canada, would be the means of drawing the Governour of Canada with his Troops, into that quarter, and which would effectually secure the Northern and Western Frontiers from any inroads of the Regular or Canadian Troops. This he humbly conceives he could execute with all the facility imaginable. He therefore begs that this honourable Assembly would take this his proposal into consideration, and to act thereon as in their wisdom shall seem meet.

The plan he proposed was pretty much the same one that Benedict Arnold followed several months later. When he said he could “execute” his plan “with all the facility imaginable”, what he meant was that he could carry it out quickly.

I’m sure there was plenty of talk about invading Canada during the early months of the war, but I didn’t know it was formally proposed as early as May 1, 1775, which is when this petition was evidently submitted.

Sources

American Archives, Series 4, Volume 2, 462.

A Map of the Sources of the Chaudière, Penobscot, and Kennebec Rivers, by John Montresor, ca. 1761. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3730.ar083800