Читать книгу Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35 - Rosemary Sadlier - Страница 21

Eight-year-old Laura Ingersoll kept her eyes squarely on the middle of her aunt’s back as the woman left the house carrying the baby.

“This is best, child,” Papa had said when he told Laura, right after her mother’s funeral, about the arrangement for Abigail to be adopted by the Nashes. “I know you think you can look after your baby sister, but she’s still an infant. Believe me, Laura, this is what your mother wanted.”

How could that be? Over the past few days Mama had told her again and again how proud she was of the way her eldest daughter had taken over the care of the baby when she herself got sick. “A real little mother, that’s what you are, Laura dear.”

Was it only a week ago that Laura had sat beside the big four-poster bed, squeezing cool water from a rag and laying it on her mother’s fevered brow? “There, child,” Elizabeth had said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You’ve done enough.” Gently, she took Laura’s hand away. “You’ve rocked Abigail to sleep. Just leave the cloth in the wash dish; I can reach it. Take the little girls out for some air. Please, dear. Papa’s home now.”

“It’s cold this morning.” Laura’s father spoke from the doorway.

“The girls all have warm scarves and mittens, Thomas.” Elizabeth gave a rasping cough. “Bundle them up, Laura dear, and take them out. For a little bit.”

Mrs. Daniel Nash made her way down the path to the front gate where the horse and cart were waiting. Papa had gone out first to load Abigail’s cradle, and now he stood in the road, talking to Uncle Daniel.

Laura snatched her shawl off the peg. If she hurried she could say one last good-bye to her baby sister, kiss again the rosy lips, and breathe in the baby’s sweet, milky scent.

“Run up and check that we haven’t forgotten anything, Laura.” Papa came striding back, turning her around, steering her inside, and closing the door.

But the corner that had been Abigail’s for six short months in her parents’ upstairs bedroom was bare, and when Laura came back down, the horse and the cart and its three occupants had left.

On February 28, 1775, in Great Barrington, Berkshire County, in the colony of Massachusetts, Thomas Ingersoll had married Elizabeth (Betsy) Dewey, who was just seventeen. Seven months later, on September 13, 1775, Elizabeth gave birth to the couple’s first child, a baby girl they named Laura.

Thomas Ingersoll, the father of the girl who would be Laura Ingersoll Secord, was the fifth generation of his family to live in the colony of Massachusetts. The first Ingersoll to set foot on the shores of North America was Richard, coming from Bedfordshire, England, to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1629.

Thomas was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1749, moving to Great Barrington the year before his marriage to Elizabeth. The town, close to the border of the colony of New York, had been settled in 1724 by one hundred families from Westfield. The family of Laura’s young mother had also come from Westfield, and Elizabeth, born January 28, 1758, was the daughter of Israel Dewey.

In 1775, Thomas Ingersoll bought a small piece of land with a house on it that, according to some sources, had been built by a man named Daniel Rathbun. Other sources state that the property had been left to Thomas by his grandfather, and that the building on the land had once been a family cottage that young Thomas had enjoyed visiting while he still lived in Westfield.

Already a successful merchant, Thomas Ingersoll set up business in Great Barrington as a hatter — making, selling, and repairing hats. In 1782 he would buy another strip of land to increase the size of his property, and he built a larger home to house his growing family. The house sat on the crest of five acres that rolled gently down to the Housatonic River.

The Housatonic, meaning “place or river beyond the mountains,” had been given its name by the Mohicans, a Native American tribe that came over from the Hudson River Valley to use the area as a summer hunting ground. Later, English settlers harnessed the river to power sawmills, gristmills, and to run the furnaces for the working of iron.

The Housatonic River begins its journey of 149 miles in southwestern Massachusetts. As it flows toward Great Barrington it is narrow and swift, dropping several elevations before emerging from the Berkshire Hills.

The Ingersoll home on the main street of the town was a large house, and it was filled with comfortable furnishings befitting a family of privilege. Photographs show the house shaded by mature trees. There is a porch along the right side with a single window above it. A kitchen and servants’ quarters for the elderly couple who had worked for the family for many years were later added to the back of the house, and off to the right sat Thomas’s shop.

In April 1775, a few months before Laura’s birth, the American Revolution had erupted in Massachusetts, with battles in Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill.

At the time, America consisted of thirteen colonies: Massachusetts and Maine being one, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In every colony the conflict divided families, some siding with the “colonial patriots” and others with the British Loyalists. It was impossible to remain neutral.

Thomas Ingersoll had no grudge against his Loyalist neighbours, but because he wanted to protect his property and his business from harsh British laws, he chose to fight on the side of the patriots. Before long his young wife would become used to having him march off to daily arms drills while the drums of war grew louder.

One of Thomas’s relatives, David Ingersoll, a magistrate and lawyer in Great Barrington, remained a Loyalist, and like many who sided with the British he was victimized by unruly mobs of patriots who took the law into their own hands. After being forcibly driven from his home, he was seized and taken to prison in Connecticut. His house was vandalized, attacked by both swords and hatchets, and all his property destroyed. Eventually, David Ingersoll fled to England.

Anyone caught helping a Loyalist to escape was himself fined or imprisoned, and citizens were paid to turn in their neighbours. Some Loyalists suffered the cruel humiliation of tarring and feathering or were forced to ride a rail through town, which meant sitting upright astride a narrow rail that was carried on the shoulders of two men.

The records of Great Barrington for the year 1776 list Thomas Ingersoll as the town constable and tax collector. When Great Barrington’s militia was consolidated into one company in October 1777, Thomas was commissioned second lieutenant under Captain Silas Goodrich. He became captain of the company in October 1781, after marching forty of his men out in response to an alarm raised at Stillwater, New York, the town where part of the Battle of Saratoga had taken place in June of that year.

During Laura’s earliest years, spent amidst the noise and confusion of war, her father was often away from home, and the little girl grew close to her gentle mother. A second child, Elizabeth Franks, was born October 17, 1779, and two years later a third daughter, Mira (also spelled Myra), was born. Daughter number four, Abigail, would arrive on the scene in September 1783.

Britain’s national debt had doubled after its victory over France and Spain in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Now that those two countries no longer posed a threat to the Americans, Britain felt the grateful colonists should help pay more of the cost of colonial government.

The British parliament passed the Revenue Act of 1764 to raise customs revenues, and the same year the Currency Act prohibited the use of colonial paper money. Revenue collectors were appointed to enforce the tax laws, and trade with foreign countries was restricted.

The Stamp Act was passed by British parliament in 1765 to levy internal taxes, and the Quartering Act forced Americans to pay for housing British troops. It went on and on.

The colonies opposed these policies that were set by a government three thousand miles away, and the cry went out: “no taxation without representation.” American merchants joined forces to boycott British businessmen.

The Tea Act of 1773 reduced the tax on imported British tea, giving it an unfair advantage. The act allowed the almost-bankrupt British East India Company to sell its tea directly to colonial agents, bypassing American wholesalers. Now those powerful wholesalers had been handed a burning issue.

The American colonists condemned the Tea Act and planned to boycott tea. The end result was the infamous Boston Tea Party. When three British tea ships docked in Boston Harbor, men disguised as Indians boarded the vessels and threw all the tea overboard. Punishment was swift.

The Intolerable Acts of 1774 (so-named by the Americans) temporarily closed the port of Boston until compensation was paid, “royalized” the Massachusetts government, expanded the Quartering Act, and changed the Justice Act so that Americans charged with crimes had to be tried in England. These actions served to unite the colonies, and a call went out from the Virginia Burgesses to convene a continental congress in Philadelphia in 1774 to discuss their grievances.

Among the factions present at that First Continental Congress were those who believed that in the end force would be necessary; the moderates, who urged a peaceful solution; and those who felt Britain must soften its policies but who opposed the use of force and would never approve of independence.

In Congress, the colonists came close to declaring dominion status. They continued to recognize the Crown as necessary to hold them together, and they petitioned King George III for a remedy to their grievances. On the other hand, they asked the French Canadians to join them in their demands and again adopted an economic boycott of Britain.

The Suffolk Resolves of Massachusetts, declaring the Intolerable Acts void and advising the training of a militia force, received the backing of the colonists. When the British government refused to budge, the Americans knew they must come up with a more active resistance.

The local government in Massachusetts had been dissolved by the British, and yet it continued to operate. To remedy this, British general Thomas Gage set out to seize the colony’s government leaders, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, as well as the ammunition that was being stored in Concord, just outside Boston.

On April 18, 1775, British troops advanced on Concord. Before the British soldiers reached Lexington, Adams and Hancock managed to escape, having been alerted by Paul Revere. The British were met by the Massachusetts “minutemen,” and the American Revolution began.

In May, the Second Continental Congress adopted the poorly organized but growing New England Army outside Boston and chose as its commander General George Washington. Still uncertain about complete independence, Congress petitioned King George to restore peace.

The June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, near Boston, was a British victory won at a terrible cost in lives. Nine months later, when General George Washington fortified the heights above Boston Harbor with cannons, British general William Howe, the successor to General Thomas Gage, feared a repeat of the carnage. He decided against attack and retreated, withdrawing his ships from Boston Harbor. When the British pulled out, 1,100 Loyalists left with them.

During the long siege of Boston the patriots had come to realize that the only means of safeguarding their liberty was going to be through complete independence from Britain.

Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Now the patriots had a firm commitment: they were fighting for the freedom of the country. It is estimated that about seventy thousand Loyalists fled to Canada, where the women and children found shelter and the men joined the Loyalist regiments.

The American patriots raised a small army of state regiments — the Continental Army — that could be counted on to provide most of the resistance, and it made use of state militia if and when it was available. In the later years of the war the patriots were joined by thousands of French troops, more than happy to help the Americans against their old enemy. For their part, unable to raise enough men at home, the British hired German troops and counted on additional support from the Indians and Loyalists.

After evacuating Boston, British general William Howe seized New York, most of New Jersey, and was not stopped until he reached Trenton at Christmas 1776. The following summer he retaliated by taking Philadelphia.

In the autumn of 1777, British general John Burgoyne led his army in an overland march from Canada toward New York, where he planned to join up with General Howe. They were cut off and captured at Saratoga, New York, in October 1777 by American general Horatio Gates. Burgoyne’s surrender of his army of over five thousand men was a huge victory for the Americans, and because it prevented the British from separating New England from the southern colonies, it was a turning point in the war.

Also surrendering with Burgoyne at Saratoga was Baron Friedrich Adolph Riedesel, commander of a regiment of soldiers from the Duchy of Brunswick, one of the German units hired by the British. Following the surrender, American general Horatio Gates treated Burgoyne as a gentleman, refusing to accept his sword and inviting him to his tent.

The allied army had left Canada feeling confident of an easy victory, and many of the officers’ wives had accompanied the men, promising themselves a pleasant trip to New York. Also in the party of wives was the Baroness Riedesel, along with the couple’s three children.

Although Burgoyne and Gates had agreed to a convention after the surrender of the British that would allow Burgoyne’s troops to return home, this was subsequently revoked and his men were taken prisoner.

The citizens of Great Barrington had only just heard of the British surrender to General Gates when Laura Ingersoll’s hometown found itself the scene of an encampment for the prisoners of war.

Elizabeth Ingersoll would have been accustomed to the sight and sound of the men of the militia tramping past her Main Street house, as they made their way to and from the various skirmishes. Perhaps she also witnessed, with two-year-old Laura clinging to her skirts, the spectacle of General Burgoyne and thousands of captured British and allied soldiers being led down the main thoroughfare of town.

The American officers and their long line of captives had followed an old trail from Saratoga, New York, through Kinderhook, and down into Great Barrington, where they would camp en route to Virginia and prison.

General Burgoyne would eventually return to England to defend his conduct. He never received the trial he had hoped for, and he was deprived of his regiment. Baron Riedesel, his wife, and their three daughters, along with the army of British and allied troops captured after the Battle of Saratoga, were imprisoned in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they engaged in subsistence farming. The Riedesels were later allowed to move to New York City, and finally, in 1781, they were permitted to journey to Canada and subsequently return home to Germany.

When Washington’s army besieged the British under the command of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, and the French fleet cut off his escape, Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781. He tried to get a promise of protection for those Loyalists who had been part of his army. When that failed, he secured an armed ship for their escape.

Negotiations for peace began. After an eight-year struggle, the Treaty of Paris in 1783 recognized the independence of the United States and set out its boundaries.

Fifteen months after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1784 and the departure of baby Abigail, Thomas Ingersoll provided his young family with a new mother. On May 26, 1785, he married Mercy Smith, widow of Josiah Smith who had been killed in the American War of Independence.

It was said of Laura’s second mother that she taught Thomas’s daughters to read and introduced the fine art of needlework and drawing into a home that had been filled with too much sadness. But the joy was to be short-lived. Four years later Mercy would die of tuberculosis, and once again the three Ingersoll girls would be motherless.

Although Massachusetts had, as early as 1647, mandated that every town with a population of more than fifty families support elementary schools, Laura most likely received what education she had at home. One source suggests that Thomas had hoped to send her to a boarding school for young ladies in Boston, one of the few large towns where secondary education was available. No doubt he was aware how quick she was to learn. But by the time Laura might have been of an age to attend a boarding school, conditions in the state were so out of control that it was unwise for her to leave home.

Family members later described Laura Ingersoll as having a fair complexion, dark eyes, and masses of light brown hair. She was a delicate-looking young girl with a slim build. But she was far from fragile. At thirteen, she was already capable of looking after her younger sisters and managing the Ingersoll household in her father’s absence, providing direction to the two family servants who tended to the more menial tasks.

Now that the war was over, Thomas, who had risen through the ranks of the state militia, was appointed magistrate upon his return to Great Barrington. There had been no children from his marriage to Mercy Smith, and four months after her death, on September 20, 1789, he married Sarah (Sally) Backus, daughter of Lieutenant Gamaliel Whiting and the sister of General John Whiting. Sally, a widow, already had one daughter, and Harriet quickly became part of the Ingersoll family. At ten, she was the same age as her stepsister Elizabeth.

Sally and Thomas Ingersoll subsequently had seven more children, four boys and three girls. The first, Charles Fortescue, was born in Great Barrington on September 27, 1791. Laura had just turned sixteen.

Although Laura may well have missed Mother Mercy’s art instruction, there were new babies to look after, and Sally proved to be a robust and cheerful ally, more like an older sister than a parent.

Times were hard after the war ended. Many people were destitute, and there was no work to be had. The United States was gripped by a severe depression. English merchants were dumping goods in America, but allowing Americans to sell in Britain only those goods the English couldn’t get anywhere else.

The colonists’ paper money was useless, and even law-abiding citizens were jailed for lack of funds to pay their taxes. The editor of one Massachusetts newspaper, the Worcester Spy, accepted salt pork for subscriptions. When Thomas Ingersoll had difficulty collecting the fees due him for his magisterial duties he took feed and grain for his horses as payment. Massachusetts was close to bankruptcy.

Shay’s Rebellion, a citizens’ revolt against these difficult conditions, broke out in the state in 1786, led by Daniel Shay, a veteran of the war. Thomas helped to put down the rebellion, and it was at this point that he was promoted to the rank of major. Although the revolt had been a failure, it had caused more and more people to recognize the need for stronger government.

The Loyalists, having lost the American War of Independence, found themselves aliens in their own country, with no jobs and their land and possessions confiscated. Those Loyalists who didn’t flee the country were at risk of being tortured or even murdered.

With the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, the British had been generous to the Americans in terms of settlement, with the understanding that the individual states would return the Loyalists’ land or compensate them for it. Congress had no power to force the states to do right by the Loyalists, however, and except in the case of South Carolina, where some compensation was made, it didn’t happen. Wagonloads of Loyalist women and children left their homeland, moving north through New York State to find refuge in settlements at Cataraqui (Kingston) or Niagara.

Thomas Ingersoll was disgusted by the continued persecution of the Loyalists after the war was over and the fact that such criminal behaviour went unpunished by the American courts. In better times he had borrowed heavily, hoping to grow his business, but by that time he had realized that no matter how hard he worked, he would never be as prosperous as he once was. He heard there was land available on generous terms in Upper Canada and, deeply in debt, he began to think of leaving the country.