BEN COMEE
A Tale of Rogers's Rangers1758-59
by
M. J. CANAVAN
"HE FIRED, BUT MISSED ME."--PAGE 117]
New YorkThe MacMillan CompanyLondon: 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 PressJ. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & SmithNorwood 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 toput up at the tavern about a mile below Lexington Common on a littleknoll near the main road.
In front of it stand two large elms, from one of which hangs the tavernsign. 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 WilliamMunroe, 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 nearthe tavern. Percy and Pitcairn had a consultation in the bar-room oversome grog, which John Raymond mixed for them, for John took care of thetavern that day. After they departed, the soldiers entered and helpedthemselves freely to liquor from the barrels in the shop. Some of theirofficers knocked the spigots from the barrels and let the liquor runaway on the floor. The drunken soldiers became furious. They fired offtheir 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 thebar-room, and will point out the places near by, where houses wereburned by the British. And as you sit with William under the trees youwill see great six or eight horse teams, laden with goods from NewHampshire, lumber along heavily over the road. Stages from Keene,Leominster, Lunenburg, and other towns will dash up to the door andpassengers will alight for their meals. On Saturdays and Sundays herdsof 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 Lexingtonwas 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 werebuilt over the Charles River a few years later, placed the town on themain highway between Boston and the Back Country, it is now, in thisyear 1812, one of the most thriving places in the county.
In my childhood we were remote from the main travelled roads. The BackCountry hardly existed. People were just beginning to settle thesouthern part of New Hampshire, and were in constant fear of Indians.Their time was fully occupied in cutting down the forests, fighting theredskins, and raising a scanty crop for their own support. Occasionallya fur trader, driving a pack-horse laden with furs, passed through thetown. The huts and log houses of the first settlers were still standing,and some of the people kept up an acquaintance and correspondence withtheir relatives in the old country.
My grandfather used to take me on his knee and tell me of events whichhappened far back in the seventeenth century. His father was a Highlandlad, and during the wars between King Charles and Cromwell fought forthe king in a regiment of Scotch Highlanders. At the battle of Dunbarthe king's army was defeated, and several thousand Scotch soldiers weretaken 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 hisneighbour by stout cords around their wrists. A guard of soldiers wasput over them, and they were marched to Plymouth.
There they learned that they were to be sent to the colonies, as slavesor servants, with the right to buy back their freedom.
[Sidenote: DAVID COMEE, THE REDEMPTIONER]
David McComee and some two hundred and seventy other prisoners werepacked on board the ship _John and Sara_; and after a long voyagearrived at Charlestown, where they were sold at auction. David's masterlived in Woburn, near Lexington, or, as it was then called, CambridgeFields. He was treated in a kindly manner. A little piece of land wasgiven him, on which he built a hut. He worked for his master onalternate days. The rest of the time was his own. In a few years DavidMcComee 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. Bythis time, he was known as David Comee. He moved to Concord, and as hewas a thrifty, hard-working man, before long he was the owner of a snuglittle farm.
In 1675 the terrible war with King Philip broke out. The Indians ravagedthe land, and boasted that no white man should dare to so much as pokehis nose out of his house. We had then but a little fringe ofsettlements extending a few miles back from the coast. Concord was onthe frontier. Word came that the neighbouring town of Sudbury wasattacked, and David Comee and ten companions started out to help theinhabitants.
My grandfather, who was then a small boy, said that after buckling onhis iron breast and back plates, his father knelt with the family andprayed. Then he arose, kissed his wife and children, put on his steelcap, and taking his long firelock, started off to join the other men.
That afternoon they were lured into an ambuscade by the Indians, andmost of them were killed. Reenforcements were se
nt to Sudbury. TheIndians were driven off; and the next day David Comee was found lying inthe water of the river meadow, scalped, and stripped of his armour andclothes.
Another Scotch redemptioner, named William Munroe, who was shipped tothis country in the _John and Sara_, settled at Cambridge Fields orLexington. My grandfather married his daughter Martha, and bought theplace where my Cousin William now keeps the tavern.
Our family had no love for Indians. We hated them bitterly. At thepresent day, as we sit in our homes safe and without fear, we are apt toforget the constant dread in which the colonists lived. From 1690 tillthe end of the French war in 1763, few years passed in which the men onthe 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 tohelp drive off a body of French and Indians from the settlements inMaine. 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 asmall boy when grandfather died; but I can remember how he straightenedup, and a fierce fire came in his eyes, when the talk was of Indians. Hewas a strict member of the church, and never swore, but on theseoccasions he made use of some Old Testament phrases and expressionswhich, I thought, answered the purpose very well.
You may pride yourself on your Latin and your Greek. I never got so farin my schooling. But turn this book upside down and read it. You cannotand 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 Iwas 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, "Whatis that letter? And that? And that?" Then she would ask us what the wordwas. In this way, we learned our A B C's. Then one-syllable, andtwo-syllable words, and finally to read a book held upside down. I cando it now; and occasionally, if I find a friend reading, I surprise himby glancing over the top of the page and repeating a few lines of thetext.
As I grew older, I went to the man's school and learned to read in theordinary way. It was kept in a little old schoolhouse about twenty feetsquare, which stood on a knoll on the common. There was a greatfireplace at one end of it; and the teacher sat in a great chair on aplatform, with a table in front of him. We paid twopence a week forbeing taught reading, and threepence a week for "righting andsiphering," 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 wouldserve for the smallest pay was the one always chosen. We had a newteacher 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 whichthe women dismounted as they rode to meeting on their pillions, behindtheir husbands or brothers.
On either side of the door were tacked up notices of vendues, lotteries,public proclamations, and the appointment of administrators. Between theschool and the meeting-house were two pairs of stocks, in which weoccasionally found some offender seated with his feet sticking outthrough the holes.
On the opening day of school, there was a man in each of them. One was aman who obstinately refused to go to meeting, and after being warnedseveral times was clapped into the bilboes by the tythingman. The otherwas some poor vagrant who had tried to settle in the town, but becausehe was needy and shiftless he had been warned out, and as he did notgo, was put in the stocks.
The school children gathered about them, seated on the hard boards, withtheir feet sticking out through the holes in the stocks, and discussedtheir crimes and punishment, and made bets as to the number of nails inthe soles of their shoes. William Munroe, the blacksmith, came over fromhis shop with his leather apron on.
"Come, Sam, you want to get out of there, and sit in the seats with therighteous. 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 thesecussed stocks, till every bone in my body aches, and have the childrenstare 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 meetingnext Sabbath."
The next day, Robert Harrington, the constable, drove up to the stockswith his cart.
"See here, Bob. Let me out. I give in. I'll go to meeting twice a dayfor the fifty-two Sabbaths in the year, and on lecture days and anyother days that they want me to go."
[Sidenote: VAGRANTS AND SINNERS]
"All right; I'll let you out, but they will expect an acknowledgmentfrom 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 theroad, just as you would an old cat that you wanted to get rid of; andwarned him never to come back.
Next Sabbath the sinner made a "public relation" before the meeting, inwhich he confessed his grievous sins and promised to amend.
My greatest friend was my cousin, Edmund Munroe, a sturdy, trustworthyboy with great common sense.
Then there was Davy Fiske, a son of Dr. Fiske. Davy was a lean, wiryfellow, not much of a boy for study, but full of knowledge of thewoods. He knew when every kind of bird came and departed. Could tell youthe best place to hunt foxes. He knew what they would do and where theywould go. If a wolf had been killed, Davy could give the whole story. Ifa bear had carried off a pig or a sheep, Davy would go miles to be oneof 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, theblacksmith, whose house and shop were just below the common. I generallybrought my dinner to school in a basket, and ate it in the school atnoon time. After dinner, we would prowl about and explore. We used toclimb the stone wall of the pound, and look into it, to see what straycattle might be there; and wandered down Malt Lane to John Munroe's malthouse and watched him change the barley into malt, and looked at thehams 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 wasbrought in to be shod, they drove him into a stall and fastened his headin the stanchions at the end of it. A broad sheet of canvas hung down onone side of the stall, and they pulled the free end of it under thebelly of the ox, and fastened it by hooks to a windlass on the otherside of the stall, about the height of one's head. William Munroe andhis son Will took a few turns at the windlass, and the ox would belifted off his feet. The sides of the stall were only eighteen incheshigh, and were of thick plank, with a groove in the top edge. They bentup the leg of the ox and rested his cloven hoof in the groove, and shodeach part with a piece of iron.
But beside shoeing horses and oxen, the blacksmith made all kinds ofimplements, andirons, latches and hinges for doors. They fastened aniron edge to wooden shovels, and made chains and nails.