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BEN COMEE
A Tale of Rogers's Rangers
1758-59
by
M. J. CANAVAN
[Illustration: "HE FIRED, BUT MISSED ME."--PAGE 117]
New York
The MacMillan Company
London: MacMillan and Co., Ltd.
1922
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1899,
by the MacMillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped October, 1899. Reprinted November,
1899; February, 1908; October, 1910; September, 1913; November,
1916.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
Ben is born in Lexington 1737--Schools and Schoolfellows 1
CHAPTER II
They trap Muskrats--Bishop Hancock and his Grandson John 14
CHAPTER III
In which are Details of a Great Fox Hunt 30
CHAPTER IV
Trading in those Days--Ben is apprenticed--The Enlisting
Sergeant--Court Day at Concord 51
CHAPTER V
Pigeon Tuesday and its Exploits 64
CHAPTER VI
A Pauper's Funeral--Ben's Friend the Minister, and Ben's
Victory in Wrestling 74
CHAPTER VII
Tales from the Frontier--Mr. Tythingman and his Services 88
CHAPTER VIII
Ben and Amos join Rogers's Rangers and march to the West 100
CHAPTER IX
In which the Rangers engage with the French and Indians 110
CHAPTER X
Lord Howe and his Death--The Loyalty of John Stark 120
CHAPTER XI
Fort Ticonderoga and the Assault 131
CHAPTER XII
The Fight at Fort Anne, and the Escape of Amos 142
CHAPTER XIII
Ben Comee Heap Big Paleface--Trapping Bob-cats in
Primeval Woods 163
CHAPTER XIV
A Scouting Expedition in the Dead of Winter 187
CHAPTER XV
Camp Discipline--Amherst's Angels--A Brush with the
French, and the Loss of Captain Jacob 197
CHAPTER XVI
The Rangers to the Front--Captain Stark's Tale of Capture--
To attack the St. Francis Indians 208
CHAPTER XVII
March to the Village--The Retreat 224
CHAPTER XVIII
Starvation--Drifting down the Ammonusuc--Fort No. 4, and
Good Fortune at Last 241
BEN COMEE
CHAPTER I
BEN IS BORN IN LEXINGTON 1737--SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLFELLOWS
If you have occasion to pass through or to visit Lexington, be sure to
put up at the tavern about a mile below Lexington Common on a little
knoll near the main road.
In front of it stand two large elms, from one of which hangs the tavern
sign. It is the best tavern in the place. You will find there good beds,
good food, and a genial host. The landlord is my cousin, Colonel William
Munroe, a younger brother of my old friend Edmund.
Sit with him under the trees. William will gladly tell you of the fight.
Lord Percy's reenforcements met the retreating British soldiers near
the tavern. Percy and Pitcairn had a consultation in the bar-room over
some grog, which John Raymond mixed for them, for John took care of the
tavern that day. After they departed, the soldiers entered and helped
themselves freely to liquor from the barrels in the shop. Some of their
officers knocked the spigots from the barrels and let the liquor run
away on the floor. The drunken soldiers became furious. They fired off
their guns in the house. You can still see a bullet hole in the ceiling.
William will show you the doorway where poor John Raymond, the cripple,
was shot down by the soldiers, as he was trying to escape from the
bar-room, and will point out the places near by, where houses were
burned by the British. And as you sit with William under the trees you
will see great six or eight horse teams, laden with goods from New
Hampshire, lumber along heavily over the road. Stages from Keene,
Leominster, Lunenburg, and other towns will dash up to the door and
passengers will alight for their meals. On Saturdays and Sundays herds
of cattle are driven through on their way to the Brighton cattle market.
All is bustle and activity.
[Sidenote: LEXINGTON IN EARLY TIMES]
I was born in this old house in the year 1737. In my boyhood Lexington
was a dull little village unknown to fame. But the 19th of April, 1775,
made the world familiar with the name. And since the bridges, which were
built over the Charles River a few years later, placed the town on the
main highway between Boston and the Back Country, it is now, in this
year 1812, one of the most thriving places in the county.
In my childhood we were remote from the main travelled roads. The Back
Country hardly existed. People were just beginning to settle the
southern part of New Hampshire, and were in constant fear of Indians.
Their time was fully occupied in cutting down the forests, fighting the
redskins, and raising a scanty crop for their own support. Occasionally
a fur trader, driving a pack-horse laden with furs, passed through the
town. The huts and log houses of the first settlers were still standing,
and some of the people kept up an acquaintance and correspondence with
their relatives in the old country.
My grandfather used to take me on his knee and tell me of events which
happened far back in the seventeenth century. His father was a Highland
lad, and during the wars between King Charles and Cromwell fought for
the king in a regiment of Scotch Highlanders. At the battle of Dunbar
the king's army was defeated, and several thousand Scotch soldiers were
taken prisoners. Among them was my great-grandfather, David McComee.
In a few days they were drawn up in a line, and each man was tied to his
neighbour by stout cords around their wrists. A guard of soldiers was
put over them, and they were marched to Plymouth.
There they learned that they were to be sent to the colonies, as slaves
or servants, with the right to buy back their freedom.
[Sidenote: DAVID COMEE, THE REDEMPTIONER]
David McComee and some two hundred and seventy other prisoners were
packed on board the ship _John and Sara_; and after a long voyage
arrived at Charlestown, where they were sold at auction. David's master
lived in Woburn, near Lexington, or, as it was then called, Cambridge
Fields. He was treated in a kindly manner. A little piece of land was
given him, on which he built a hut. He worked for his master on
alternate days. The rest of the time was his own. In a few years David
McComee had earned enough to pay back the price of his purchase money,
and was no longer a redemptioner, but a free man and his own master. By
this time, he was known as David Comee. He moved to Concord, and as he
was a thrifty, hard-working man, before long he was the owner of a snug
little farm.
In 1675 the terrible war with King Philip broke out. The Indians ravaged
the land, and boasted that no white man should dare to so much as poke
his nose out of his house. We had then but a little fringe of
settlements extending a few miles back from the coast. Concord was on
the frontier. Word came that the neighbouring town of Sudbury was
attacked, and David Comee and ten companions started out to help the
inhabitants.
My grandfather, who was then a small boy, said that after buckling on
his iron breast and back plates, his father knelt with the family and
prayed. Then he arose, kissed his wife and children, put on his steel
cap, and taking his long firelock, started off to join the other men.
That afternoon they were lured into an ambuscade by the Indians, and
most of them were killed. Reenforcements were sent to Sudbury. The
Indians were driven off; and the next day David Comee was found lying in
the water of the river meadow, scalped, and stripped of his armour and
clothes.
Another Scotch redemptioner, named William Munroe, who was shipped to
this country in the _John and Sara_, settled at Cambridge Fields or
Lexington. My grandfather married his daughter Martha, and bought the
place where my Cousin William now keeps the tavern.
Our family had no love for Indians. We hated them bitterly. At the
present day, as we sit in our homes safe and without fear, we are apt to
forget the constant dread in which the colonists lived. From 1690 till
the end of the French war in 1763, few years passed in which the men on
the frontier were not fighting the redskins.
[Sidenote: BEN'S UNCLE JOHN KILLED]
In 1707 my Uncle John went "to the Eastward" in a company of soldiers to
help drive off a body of French and Indians from the settlements in
Maine. He was killed there in a fight near the town of York.
He was my grandfather's eldest son, just arrived at manhood. I was a
small boy when grandfather died; but I can remember how he straightened
up, and a fierce fire came in his eyes, when the talk was of Indians. He
was a strict member of the church, and never swore, but on these
occasions he made use of some Old Testament phrases and expressions
which, I thought, answered the purpose very well.
You may pride yourself on your Latin and your Greek. I never got so far
in my schooling. But turn this book upside down and read it. You cannot
and I can.
I might have become quite a scholar, if I had been properly brought up,
for I learned to do this at Millicent Mason's dame's school before I
was six years old.
She sat in a chair and held a book in her lap. We stood in front of her.
She would point out the letters with her knitting-needle and ask, "What
is that letter? And that? And that?" Then she would ask us what the word
was. In this way, we learned our A B C's. Then one-syllable, and
two-syllable words, and finally to read a book held upside down. I can
do it now; and occasionally, if I find a friend reading, I surprise him
by glancing over the top of the page and repeating a few lines of the
text.
As I grew older, I went to the man's school and learned to read in the
ordinary way. It was kept in a little old schoolhouse about twenty feet
square, which stood on a knoll on the common. There was a great
fireplace at one end of it; and the teacher sat in a great chair on a
platform, with a table in front of him. We paid twopence a week for
being taught reading, and threepence a week for "righting and
siphering," as the town clerk entered it on his books.
[Sidenote: LEXINGTON COMMON]
Our teachers were young men just out of college, and the one who would
serve for the smallest pay was the one always chosen. We had a new
teacher every year.
At the lower end of the common was the old ramshackle meeting-house,
facing down the road.
In front of the meeting-house were a couple of horse-blocks, on which
the women dismounted as they rode to meeting on their pillions, behind
their husbands or brothers.
On either side of the door were tacked up notices of vendues, lotteries,
public proclamations, and the appointment of administrators. Between the
school and the meeting-house were two pairs of stocks, in which we
occasionally found some offender seated with his feet sticking out
through the holes.
On the opening day of school, there was a man in each of them. One was a
man who obstinately refused to go to meeting, and after being warned
several times was clapped into the bilboes by the tythingman. The other
was some poor vagrant who had tried to settle in the town, but because
he was needy and shiftless he had been warned out, and as he did not
go, was put in the stocks.
The school children gathered about them, seated on the hard boards, with
their feet sticking out through the holes in the stocks, and discussed
their crimes and punishment, and made bets as to the number of nails in
the soles of their shoes. William Munroe, the blacksmith, came over from
his shop with his leather apron on.
"Come, Sam, you want to get out of there, and sit in the seats with the
righteous. It's never too late for the sinner to repent."
"Oh, go away, Bill. Let me alone. It's bad enough to sit here in these
cussed stocks, till every bone in my body aches, and have the children
stare at me, without you coming over to poke fun at me. I'm sick of it."
"That's right! A change of heart will do you good. See you in meeting
next Sabbath."
The next day, Robert Harrington, the constable, drove up to the stocks
with his cart.
"See here, Bob. Let me out. I give in. I'll go to meeting twice a day
for the fifty-two Sabbaths in the year, and on lecture days and any
other days that they want me to go."
[Sidenote: VAGRANTS AND SINNERS]
"All right; I'll let you out, but they will expect an acknowledgment
from you of your wrong-doing, in meeting next Sabbath."
"Just let me out of these stocks, and I'll do anything they ask."
Mr. Harrington released him, and then turned to the vagrant and said,
"Come, old boy, you've got to move on. We can't have you on our hands."
He took him in his cart, carried him miles away, and dumped him in the
road, just as you would an old cat that you wanted to get rid of; and
warned him never to come back.
Next Sabbath the sinner made a "public relation" before the meeting, in
which he confessed his grievous sins and promised to amend.
My greatest friend was my cousin, Edmund Munroe, a sturdy, trustworthy
boy with great common sense.
Then there was Davy Fiske, a son of Dr. Fiske. Davy was a lean, wiry
fellow, not much of a boy for study, but full of knowledge of the
woods. He knew when every kind of bird came and departed. Could tell you
the best place to hunt foxes. He knew what they would do and where they
would go. If a wolf had been killed, Davy could give the whole story. If
a bear had carried off a pig or a sheep, Davy would go miles to be one
of the party to follow him up.
It must be admitted that, like many other hunters, Davy had imagination,
and did not allow dull facts to hem him in when he told a hunting story.
Edmund used to take his dinners with his cousin, William Munroe, the
blacksmith, whose house and shop were just below the common. I generally
brought my dinner to school in a basket, and ate it in the school at
noon time. After dinner, we would prowl about and explore. We used to
climb the stone wall of the pound, and look into it, to see what stray
cattle might be there; and wandered down Malt Lane to John Munroe's malt
house and watched him change the barley into malt, and looked at the
hams and sides of bacon that the people had brought to be smoked.
[Sidenote: THE BLACKSMITH'S SHOP]
The most interesting place to us was the blacksmith's shop. If an ox was
brought in to be shod, they drove him into a stall and fastened his head
in the stanchions at the end of it. A broad sheet of canvas hung down on
one side of the stall, and they pulled the free end of it under the
belly of the ox, and fastened it by hooks to a windlass on the other
side of the stall, about the height of one's head. William Munroe and
his son Will took a few turns at the windlass, and the ox would be
lifted off his feet. The sides of the stall were only eighteen inches
high, and were of thick plank, with a groove in the top edge. They bent
up the leg of the ox and rested his cloven hoof in the groove, and shod
each part with a piece of iron.
But beside shoeing horses and oxen, the blacksmith made all kinds of
implements, andirons, latches and hinges for doors. They fastened an
iron edge to wooden shovels, and made chains and nails.