=Source.=--A Memoir by his Grand-daughter, Mrs. Sophia Rowe, in the
_Transactions_ for 1899 of The United Empire Loyalists' Association
of Ontario.
The late Captain Samuel Anderson was born of Irish parents near
Boston on 4th of May, 1736. He was a lawyer in good practice and
married Miss Prudentia Deliverance Butts of Boston, who was born
1743 and died 1824. Samuel Anderson went to the West Indies early
in life for the benefit of his health. On his return he joined
the King's forces, probably as one of the contingent furnished by
the New England Provinces after the breaking out of the war with
France in 1756. He served under General Abercrombie in 1758, and
under General Amherst in 1759-60-61.... After the close of the
war, he settled on a farm near Boston, where he resided until the
breaking out of the rebellion in 1775. He was offered a company in
the Continental Service, which he refused. Some time after, he was
offered command of a regiment in the same service, which he also
refused. This caused him to be looked upon as a _King's Man_ and
led to an attempt on the part of some of his neighbours to convert
him from the error of his ways by one or other of the gentle means
of carting, flogging, or tar-and-feathering then in vogue amongst
the revolutionary party. Five or six of them started out to try the
experiment; they found him on his farm splitting rails; he politely
asked them their business, and, on being told they had come to
teach him a lesson, he invited them to "come and try." As he was
a very large and powerful man, they looked at him, then at the axe
in his hand, and moved off, evidently considering "discretion the
better part of valour." Several attempts were made to arrest him,
and he was at one time secreted on his own property, when a party
of Continentals billeted themselves at his house. The sergeant
read a proclamation offering a reward of five hundred pounds for
the body of Samuel Anderson dead or alive, after which the party
conversed in French, not thinking they would be understood by Mrs.
Anderson; but the brave woman, without betraying the slightest fear
or knowledge of what they talked of, heard all they purposed doing
to her husband, should he be found. She directed her servants to
prepare food and beds for all, had their horses stabled and fed,
then, waiting till all was quiet, went in the dark to her husband
and bade him fly for his life.
However, he with many other loyalists were captured and confined
in Litchfield jail, where they suffered all but death until the
beginning of 1777, when, having been told that all the prisoners
were to be shot the next day, Anderson wrenched the bars from a
window, and with his companions escaped to Canada, where he was
appointed a Captain in the 1st Battalion of Sir John Johnston's
corps, the King's Royal Regiment of New York. When General Burgoyne
was preparing to advance from Ticonderoga, Captain Anderson was
placed at the head of the workmen who were employed in making the
roads through the forest from the head of Lake Champlain towards
Fort Edward. He served in the battalion of the Royal Yorkers until
they were disbanded in the spring of 1784. From the time of his
imprisonment in Litchfield jail, his wife saw nothing of him until
late in 1778, when, after suffering terribly from the cruelty of
the Continentals, she abandoned all her property, paid the Yankee
Governor 2s. 6d. for a pass, and with her family made her way to
Sorel, where her husband was then stationed with his company of
the Royal Yorkers, where they remained till the spring of 1783,
when he with his two elder sons who had served under him were
put on half pay when peace was declared; and at the reduction of
the army, Anderson, with his family and the men of his company,
received their allotment of lands in Cornwall, then a wilderness,
the nearest settlement being Montreal distant 68 miles, and
Kingston 105 miles. They came up the St. Lawrence by batteaux, and
lived for some time under shelter of cedar boughs, until able to
erect log houses for themselves. A short time after their arrival
the "Dark Sunday" occurred, when at mid-day total darkness fell
upon all the land, and continued for about two hours. The rain
came down in torrents, flooding their temporary dwelling, causing
great discomfort, while the thunder and lightning were terrific. In
those days there were no merchants, no baker or butcher shops, no
medical men, no ministers to console the sick or dying or bury the
dead, and no means of instruction for the young. The Loyalists were
generally poor, having sacrificed their property to their politics,
and were obliged to work very hard. All was bush, hard labour and
pinching privation for the present and long toil for the rising
generation. The only mail in the early settlement of West Canada
between Kingston and Montreal was in the winter carried three times
by an old French Canadian, Jacques Morriseau, who travelled the
whole distance on snow shoes. His food was sea biscuit and fat
pork which he ate and enjoyed sitting on a snow bank, and would
afterwards puff away dull care in clouds of smoke curling from his
old clay pipe, the stem of which was just long enough to keep the
burning punk with which he lit it about two inches from his nose.
From Lachine to Cornwall, he was obliged to sleep out of doors
three nights--the settlers were then so few and far between, he
could not always reach a house--and the only bed he had on these
occasions was of green boughs under him and a blanket to cover him.
He always rested a night going either way under Captain Anderson's
roof. In 1785, Captain Anderson was appointed a magistrate ... and
drew half pay as a Captain until his death, which occurred in June,
1836 (born 1736), not from any bodily ailment, but accidentally
falling, his hip joint was broken, and from his great age the bones
would not unite.