The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees Part 6

While serving an apprentices.h.i.+p with Thaxter & Son, he formed an intimate friends.h.i.+p with several other clerks who, in after years, became widely known, among them, Benjamin Thompson, afterward made Count Rumford, and Henry Knox, who later became the bookseller on Cornhill, and finally a general in the Continental army.

Swan was a member of the Sons of Liberty, and took part in the famous Boston tea-party. He was engaged in the battle of Bunker Hill as a volunteer aid of Warren, and was twice wounded. He also witnessed the evacuation of Boston by the British, March 17, 1776. He later became secretary of the Ma.s.sachusetts board of war, and was elected a member of the legislature. Throughout the whole war he occupied positions of trust, often requiring great courage and cool judgment, and the fidelity with which every duty was performed was shown by the honours conferred upon him after retiring to civil life. By means of a large fortune which fell to him, he entered mercantile business on a large scale, and became very wealthy. He owned large tracts of land in different parts of the country, and bought much of the confiscated property of the Tories, among other lands the estate belonging to Governor Hutchinson, lying on Tremont Street, between West and Boylston Streets.

His large speculations, however, caused him to become deeply involved in debt. In 1787, accordingly, he started out anew to make a fortune, and through the influence of Lafayette and other men of prominence in Paris, he secured many government contracts which entailed immense profit.

Through all the dark days of the French Revolution, he tried to serve the cause of the proscribed French n.o.bility by perfecting plans for them to colonise on his lands in America. A large number he induced to immigrate, and a vast quant.i.ty of the furniture and belongings of these unfortunates was received on board his s.h.i.+ps. But before the owners could follow their furniture, the axe had fallen upon their heads.

When the Reign of Terror was at its height, the _Sally_, owned by Colonel Swan, and commanded by Captain Stephen Clough, of Wisca.s.set, Maine, came home with a strange cargo and a stranger story. The cargo consisted of French tapestries, marquetry, silver with foreign crests, rare vases, clocks, costly furniture, and no end of apparelling fit for a queen. The story was that, only for the failure at the last moment of a plot for her deliverance, Marie Antoinette would also have been on the sloop, the plan being that she should be the guest at Wisca.s.set of the captain's wife until she could be transferred to a safer retreat.

However true may be the rumour of a plot to bring Marie Antoinette to America, it is certain that the furniture brought on the _Sally_, was of exceptional value and beauty. It found its resting-place in the old Swan house of our picture, to which it gave for many years the name of the Marie Antoinette house. One room was even called the Marie Antoinette room, and the bedstead of this apartment, which is to-day in the possession of the descendants of Colonel Swan, is still known as the Marie Antoinette bedstead. Whether the unhappy queen ever really rested on this bed cannot, of course, be said, but tradition has it that it was designed for her use in America because she had found it comfortable in France.

Colonel Swan, having paid all his debts, returned in 1795 to the United States, accompanied by the beautiful and eccentric gentlewoman who was his wife, and who had been with her husband in Paris during the Terror.

They brought with them on this occasion a very large collection of fine French furniture, decorations, and paintings. The colonel had become very wealthy indeed through his commercial enterprises, and was now able to spend a great deal of money upon his fine Dorchester mansion, which he finished about the year 1796. A prominent figure of the house was the circular dining-hall, thirty-two feet in diameter, crowned at the height of perhaps twenty-five feet by a dome, and having three mirror windows. As originally built, it contained no fireplaces or heating conveniences of any kind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SWAN HOUSE, DORCHESTER, Ma.s.s.]

Mrs. Swan accompanied her husband on several subsequent trips to Paris, and it was on one of these occasions that the colonel came to great grief. He had contracted, it is said, a debt claimed in France to be two million francs. This indebtedness he denied, and in spite of the persuasion of his friends he would make no concession in the matter. As a matter of principle he would not pay a debt which, he insisted, he did not owe. He seems to have believed the claim of his creditor to be a plot, and he at once resolved to be a martyr. He was thereupon arrested, and confined in St. Pelagie, a debtor's prison, from 1808 to 1830, a period of twenty-two years!

He steadfastly denied the charge against him, and, although able to settle the debt, preferred to remain a prisoner to securing his liberty on an unjust plea.... He gave up his wife, children, friends, and the comforts of his Parisian and New England homes for a principle, and made preparations for a long stay in prison. Lafayette, Swan's sincere friend, tried in vain to prevail upon him to take his liberty.[9]

Doctor Small, his biographer, tells us that he lived in a little cell in the prison, and was treated with great respect by the other prisoners, they putting aside their little furnaces with which they cooked, that he might have more room for exercise. Not a day pa.s.sed without some kind act on his part, and he was known to have been the cause of the liberation of many poor debtors. When the jailor introduced his pretended creditor, he would politely salute him, and say to the former: "My friend, return me to my chamber."

With funds sent by his wife, Swan hired apartments in the Rue de la Clif, opposite St. Pelagie, which he caused to be fitted up at great expense. Here were dining and drawing rooms, coaches, and stables, and outhouses, and here he invited his guests and lodged his servants, putting at the disposal of the former his carriages, in which they drove to the promenade, the ball, the theatre--everywhere in his name. At this Parisian home he gave great dinners to his constant but bewildered friends. He seemed happy in thus braving his creditors and judges, we are told, allowed his beard to grow, dressed a la mode, and was cheerful to the last day of his confinement.

His wife died in 1825, and five years later the Revolution of July threw open his doors in the very last hour of his twenty-second year of captivity. His one desire upon being released was to embrace his friend Lafayette, and this he did on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. Then he returned, July 31, to reinstate himself in prison--for St. Pelagie had after twenty-two years come to stand to him for home. He was seized almost immediately upon his second entrance into confinement with a hemorrhage, and died suddenly in the Rue d'echiquier, aged seventy-six.

In his will, he donated large sums of money to his four children, and to the city of Boston to found an inst.i.tution to be called the Swan Orphan Academy. But the estate was found to be hopelessly insolvent, and the public legacy was never paid. The colonel's name lives, however, in the Maine island he purchased in 1786, for the purpose of improving and settling,--a project which, but for one of his periodic failures, he would probably have successfully accomplished.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: "History of Swan's Island."]

THE WOMAN VETERAN OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY

Deborah Sampson Gannett, of Sharon, has the unique distinction of presenting the only authenticated case of a woman's enlistment and service as a regular soldier in the Revolutionary army.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEBORAH SAMPSON GANNETT.]

The proof of her claim's validity can be found in the resolutions of the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts, where, under date of January 20, 1792, those who take the trouble may find this entry: "On the pet.i.tion of Deborah Gannett, praying compensation for services performed in the late army of the United States.

"Whereas, it appears to this court that Deborah Gannett enlisted under the name of Robert Shurtleff, in Captain Webb's company in the Fourth Ma.s.sachusetts regiment, on May 21, 1782, and did actually perform the duties of a soldier in the late army of the United States to the twenty-third day of October, 1783, for which she has received no compensation;

"And, whereas, it further appears that the said Deborah exhibited an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful, gallant soldier, and at the same time preserved the virtue and chast.i.ty of her s.e.x unsuspected and unblemished, and was discharged from the service with a fair and honourable character; therefore,

"_Resolved_, that the treasurer of the Commonwealth be, and hereby is, directed to issue his note to said Deborah for the sum of 34, bearing interest from October 23, 1783."

Thus was the seal of authenticity set upon as extraordinary a story as can be found in the annals of this country.

Deborah Sampson was born in Plympton, Plymouth County, December 17, 1760, of a family descended from Governor Bradford. She had many brothers who enlisted for service early in the war, and it was their example, according to some accounts, which inspired her unusual course.

If one may judge from the hints thrown out in the "Female Review," a quaint little pamphlet probably written by Deborah herself, and published in 1797, however, it was the ardent wooing of a too importunate lover which drove the girl to her extraordinary undertaking.

Two copies of this "Review" are now treasured in the Boston Public Library.

In the first chapters, the author discourses upon female education and the like, and then, after a sympathetic a.n.a.lysis of the educational aspirations of the heroine (referred to throughout the book as "our ill.u.s.trious fair"), and a peroration on the lady's religious beliefs, describes in Miss Sampson's own words a curious dream she once had.

The young woman experienced this psychic visitation, the author of the "Review" would have us believe, a short time before taking her final step toward the army. In the dream, a serpent bade her "arise, stand on your feet, gird yourself, and prepare to encounter your enemy." This, according to the chronicler's interpretation, was one underlying cause of Deborah's subsequent decision to enlist as a soldier.

Yet her mother's wish that she should marry a man for whom she felt no love is also suggested as a cause, and there is a hint, too, that the death in the battle of Long Island, New York, of a man to whom she was attached, gave the final impulse to her plan. At any rate, it was the night that she heard the news of this man's death that she started on her perilous undertaking.

"Having put in readiness the materials she had judged requisite," writes her chronicler, "she retired at her usual hour to bed, intending to rise at twelve.... There was none but the Invisible who could take cognisance of her pa.s.sion on a.s.suming her new garb."

She slipped cautiously away, and travelled carefully to Bellingham, where she enlisted as a Continental soldier on a three years' term. She was mustered into the army at Worcester, under the name of Robert Shurtleff. With about fifty other soldiers she soon arrived at West Point, and it there fell to her lot to be in Captain Webb's company, in Colonel Shepard's regiment, and in General Patterson's brigade.

Naturally the girl's disappearance from home had caused her friends and her family great uneasiness. Her mother reproached herself for having urged too constantly upon the attention of her child the suit of a man for whom she did not care, and her lover upbraided himself for having been too importunate in his wooing. The telephone and telegraph not having been invented, it was necessary, in order to trace the lost girl, to visit all the places to which Deborah might have flown. Her brother, therefore, made an expedition one hundred miles to the eastward among some of the family relations, and her suitor took his route to the west of Ma.s.sachusetts and across into New York State.

In the course of his search he visited, as it happened, the very place in which Deborah's company was stationed, and saw (though he did not recognise) his lost sweetheart. She recognised him, however, and hearing his account to the officers of her mother's grief and anxiety, sent home as soon as opportunity offered, the following letter:

"DEAR PARENT:--On the margin of one of those rivers which intersects and winds itself so beautifully majestic through a vast extent of territory of the United States is the present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly absconded by reason of any fancied ill treatment from you, or disaffection toward any, the thoughts of my disobedience are truly poignant. Neither have I a plea that the insults of man have driven me hence: and let this be your consoling reflection--that I have not fled to offer more daring insults to them by a proffered prost.i.tution of that virtue which I have always been taught to preserve and revere. The motive is truly important; and when I divulge it my sole ambition and delight shall be to make an expiatory sacrifice for my transgression.

"I am in a large but well regulated family. My employment is agreeable, although it is somewhat different and more intense than it was at home.

But I apprehend it is equally as advantageous. My superintendents are indulgent; but to a punctilio they demand a due observance of decorum and propriety of conduct. By this you must know I have become mistress of many useful lessons, though I have many more to learn. Be not too much troubled, therefore, about my present or future engagements; as I will endeavour to make that prudence and virtue my model, for which, I own, I am much indebted to those who took the charge of my youth.

"My place of residence and the adjoining country are beyond description delightsome.... Indeed, were it not for the ravages of war, of which I have seen more here than in Ma.s.sachusetts, this part of our great continent would become a paradisiacal elysium. Heaven condescend that a speedy peace may const.i.tute us a happy and independent nation: when the husband shall again be restored to his amiable consort, to wipe her sorrowing tear, the son to the embraces of his mourning parents, and the lover to the tender, disconsolate, and half-distracted object of his love.

"Your affectionate

"Daughter."

Unfortunately this letter, which had to be entrusted to a stranger, was intercepted. But Deborah did not know this, and her mind at rest, she pursued cheerfully the course she had marked out for herself.

The fatigue and heat of the march oppressed the girl soldier more than did battle or the fear of death. Yet at White Plains, her first experience of actual warfare, her left-hand man was shot dead in the second fire, and she herself received two shots through her coat and one through her cap. In the terrible bayonet charge at this same battle, in which she was a partic.i.p.ant, the sight of the bloodshed proved almost too much for her strength.

At Yorktown she was ordered to work on a battery, which she did right faithfully. Among her comrades, Deborah's young and jaunty appearance won for her the sobriquet "blooming boy." She was a great favourite in the ranks. She s.h.i.+rked nothing, and did duty sometimes as a common soldier and sometimes as a sergeant on the lines, patrolling, collecting fuel, and performing such other offices as fell to her lot.

After the battle of White Plains she received two severe wounds, one of which was in her thigh. Naturally, a surgeon was sent for at once, but the plucky girl, who could far more easily endure pain than the thought of discovery, extracted the ball herself with penknife and needle before hospital aid arrived.

In the spring of 1783 General Patterson selected her for his waiter, and Deborah so distinguished herself for readiness and courage that the general often praised to the other men of the regiment the heroism of his "smock-faced boy."

It is at this stage of the story that the inevitable denouement occurred. The young soldier fell ill with a prevailing epidemic, and during her attack of unconsciousness her s.e.x was discovered by the attendant physician, Doctor Bana. Immediately she was removed by the physician's orders to the apartment of the hospital matron, under whose care she remained until discharged as well.

Deborah's appearance in her uniform was sufficiently suggestive, as has been said, of robust masculinity to attract the favourable attention of many young women. What she had not counted upon was the arousing in one of these girls of a degree of interest which should imperil her secret.

Her chagrin, the third morning after the doctor's discovery, was appreciably deepened, therefore, by the arrival of a love-letter from a rich and charming young woman of Baltimore whom the soldier, "Robert Shurtleff," had several times met, but whose ident.i.ty with the writer of the letter our heroine by no means suspected. This letter, accompanied by a gift of fruit, the compiler of the "Female Review" gives as follows:

"DEAR SIR:--Fraught with the feelings of a friend who is doubtless beyond your conception interested in your health and happiness, I take liberty to address you with a frankness which nothing but the purest friends.h.i.+p and affection can palliate,--know, then, that the charms I first read on your visage brought a pa.s.sion into my bosom for which I could not account. If it was from the thing called LOVE, I was before mostly ignorant of it, and strove to stifle the fugutive; though I confess the indulgence was agreeable. But repeated interviews with you kindled it into a flame I do not now blush to own: and should it meet a generous return, I shall not reproach myself for its indulgence. I have long sought to hear of your department, and how painful is the news I this moment received that you are sick, if alive, in the hospital! Your complicated nerves will not admit of writing, but inform the bearer if you are necessitated for anything that can conduce to your comfort. If you recover and think proper to inquire my name, I will give you an opportunity. But if death is to terminate your existence there, let your last senses be impressed with the reflection that you die not without one more friend whose tears will bedew your funeral obsequies. Adieu."