Radio Script #375

Little Talks on Common Things

April 6, 1958

A few weeks ago I told you about a British engineer and military officer of the days of the French and Indian War a few years before the American Revolution.

Today I want to tell you about John Montressor. a British engineer whose carefully made map of the route between the City of Quebec and the Kennebec River made possible Benedict Arnold’s famous expedition in 1775. I believe Benedict Arnold had access to Montressor’s map and records. In 1761 Montressor had explored the route from Quebec to Fort Halifax. His journal has since been published in several historical records, notably by the Maine Historical Society and the Historical Society of New York. In that journal Montressor set down a day by day account of his journey from Quebec to the Chaudiere, then to Moosehead Lake, thence down the river to Skowhegan Falls and on to Fort Halifax. Montressor does not say that he made a chart of his journey, but he was a trained engineer and it is almost certain that he did so.

At any rate, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, Justin Smith, in his book “Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony”, at page 527 said: “At Pownalboro lived Samuel Goodins, surveyor for the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase. Major Benjamin Colburn, most prominent among the first settlers of Pittston, had informed Goodins that copies of documents in Goodins’ possession were needed by Arnold. Copies were made and were ready for Arnold when he arrived at Colburn’s place near Pownalboro. Besides delineating the seacoast from Cape Elizabeth to the Penobscot, the map showed the River Kennebec to the several heads thereof, and the several carrying places to Megantic Pond and the Chaudiere River, and the passes and carrying places to Quebec. The packet also contained a copy of a journal which described all the guide water. Was this Montressor’s journal and his map?

Many authorities feel sure both were the work of Montressor.In 1881 the New York Historical Society published the following statement: “Montressor made an expedition into Maine in June and July, 1761. He had suggested this expedition to the British Ministry in 1760, and his proposal had been accepted by Sir Henry Erskin and Major Dalrymple. The journal of Montressor’s expedition of 1761 fell into the hands of Colonel Benedict Arnold and suggested to him the route through Maine in 1775. Arnold’s letters and Montressor’s imperfect journal were published in 1832 in the Collections of the Maine Historical Society.”

At least we can say that the best guess about Arnold’s sources is that he received both a Montressor map and a Montressor journal from the hands of Samuel Goodins at Pownalboro.

The New York Historical Society, in addition to extracts from the journals, published an itemized list that Montressor had drawn up of what he called “extra services by me”. He wrote: “In the winter of 1759 I went with a party on snow shoes to the south side of the River St. Lawrence, where I swore to British allegiance 6,000 Canadians, and by their laying down their arms and the great supply of provisions, the garrison of Quebec remained in peace during a long winter. ”

The next item in Montressor’s list is even more interesting to us in Maine. He calls it: “My scout from Quebec to New England on snow shoes in 1760, to fix the plan for the junction of the armies at Montreal.” Before we look into the journal of that marvelous expedition in detail, let us see what Montressor wrote in a letter to Lord Jeffrey Amherst, dated February 26, 1760: “I have the honor of acquainting you of my arrival yesterday in Boston, after 31 days journey from Quebec, 26 of which were in the wilderness. My escort was one officer, two sergeants and ten rangers; all but two got in safe with me to the settlement of Topsham near Fort Brunswick on the Androscoggin River. I left Quebec on January 26, crossed the St. Lawrence by canoe, then over the ice to Point des Peres; from thence marched into the woods and cut through the village of St. Charles; then struck south by west on the Chaudiere River to the Falls of the Chaudiere, continuing on the southern branch until we arrived at Great Chaudiere Pond; passed the Height of Land down to Little Chaudiere Pond; passed the carrying place and struck on a stream or branch of the Androscoggin River, which I followed until I arrived at Topsham.”

Sounds simple and easy, doesn’t it? But that journey was made in the middle of the winter under most arduous conditions. When it was allover, Montressor stated what he called the five greatest difficulties of the expedition: “First, our ignorance of the country, known but to savages and to few of them; second, the danger of the enemy (French and Indians); third, the severity of the climate, the rudest seam in an inhospitable latitude; fourth, the want of provisions, as there was no subsistence except what we carried on our backs; fifth, fatigue, and extent of the excursion, it being from the River St. Lawrence to the Atlantic Ocean. Furthermore, I knew even in a milder season, Lt. John Butler had failed in a similar attempt.”

Now let us see just what happened on that expedition from Quebec to Brunswick, Maine almost 200 years ago. The purpose of Montressor’s trip was to carry dispatches from General Murray in Quebec to General Amherst in Boston, Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Forces in North America. The party left Quebec on January 26, 1760. Because the French and British were still at war, they had to be careful about being seen. Montressor recorded that on January 27, while crossing a road not far from the St. Lawrence, he was discovered by a woman whom he informed that he was headed for the village of St. Charles. A short time later he was again seen by people in Apliegh. “They seemed surprised to see us”, he wrote, “and at our approach they drove with all speed toward the village of St. Nicholas.”

Montressor found the snow deep and drifted, making the traveling difficult, so that they averaged less than 10 miles a day for the first five days. This party deliberately avoided the larger villages, for fear of capture by the French.

It was February 3 before they reached the Chaudiere, marched along it for 14 miles and camped on its eastern bank. On February 7 they crossed the river and, walking along the west bank, soon came to Megantic Pond. Then he says: “I marched S.W. to a point of land projecting into the west side of the lake, thence proceeded S by E, with the westernmost notch in a cluster or small range of mountains appearing very blue, and seeming to be about 20 miles from the south end of the lake. The mountains seemed to appear in one chain almost semi-circular.”

The next day the party left the lake and went immediately into the mountains.

At noon Montressor sent one of his men to climb a tall poplar on the south side of a mountain to observe how the notch bore, and found that it trended south. Montressor said this way of spotting a route was something he had learned from the Indians. It took them two days to get through the notch.

Off to the east he observed what he called a high sugar loaf mountain a mountain we still call Sugarloaf. He soon encountered a brook which ran south, proof that he had passed the Height of Land.

Provisions were getting very low. It was now February 11, and as early as the 7th Montressor had set down in his journal “This is the first day we have been short of provisions.” On the 10th he wrote, “Party very faint for want of food.” So on the next day, supposing he was already on a branch of the Kennebec, he sent two men to Fort Halifax to ask the commander there to send a relief party with provisions. But Montressor soon learned that he wasn’t on a tributary of the Kennebec at all. Here is his record for February 12: “At dawn continued along the creek, the land falling suddenly, a SW course to the creek’s mouth, where it empties into a pond or lake called the Great Chaudiere, to the great disappointment of my party that were in such expectations of being speedily relieved. On the way we had shot a few small birds and had eaten them raw. When we encamped by the lake, our party broiled their moccasins and snow shoestrings and ate alder berries, which purged us violently.

The next day the party crossed the portage to the Little Chaudiere. Montressor then wrote: “I kept my usual directions S and a bit E over a cluster of mountains, still attempting to strike that branch that ran into the Kennebec, being certain that I had directed my course too much to the westward. My party were now so reduced that they were scarce able to reach a camping place. Several got sick eating alder berries. They continued eating their moccasins and bullet pouches, snowshoe netting and strings.”

The next day the party had a bit of luck. As Montressor tells it: “We shot a sable, which with others had been devouring a deer. We found what was left of the deer to be entirely sweet so that it satisfied five of us for one meal.”

On the 16th they followed a stream which led them into what turned out to be the Androscoggin instead of the Kennebec. By that time he says “Everybody was ready to drop for want of food, gnawing away their bullet pouches and belts. ”

Starting down the Androscoggin on the 17th, they found the river gradually widening. They passed an abandoned Indian settlement. Here is his record for the 19th: “Nights and mornings extremely cold. Encamped on the east side, 1t miles south of the great falls of the Androscoggin. These falls have two regular ledges — the upper are 15 feet high, the lower 25 feet. About noon I saw two men walking toward me. They proved to be inhabitants sent out from the frontier house at Topsham with some provisions to the great joy of my party.” The two messengers Montressor had sent to Fort Halifax for help hadn’t reached Fort Halifax at all, but they had reached the trading post at Brunswick. Refreshed by the new provisions, the party finally reached Topsham on February 20, having been 26 days on the relentless, starving journey from Quebec.

That is the story. Here was a man — a Britisher of training and education — anything but a natural backwoodsman. In a space of two years he had made his way from Quebec to what is now Waterville via the Chaudiere and the Kennebec, after having already been from Quebec to Brunswick via the Androscoggin, and he made both journeys several years before Arnold’s expedition of 1775.

Let us close tonight with a reference to Maine railroads of 88 years ago, in 1870. In that year Prince Arthur of England visited Canada and the United States. Here is what the Portland Advertiser said about it on February 18, 1870: “At the depot of the Eastern R.R. we saw on Wednesday two cars of the train which conveyed Prince Arthur and his suite to Peabody. These cars of the monitor pattern are entirely new. They are superbly painted and the seats are covered with crimson plush. One of their most noticeable features is the patent coupling. By the use of this patent, the cars shackle themselves when brought in contact and are unshackled by a lever operated by a man standing on a platform. Thus a fruitful source of accident is removed.”

And with that reference to the first appearance in Maine of patented coupling railroad cars, we must say Good Night for Old Times’ Sake.

Year: 1958