Chapter 1 Our “Estate”

When I awoke that May morning of 1790 the sky was still grey. The sun had not begun to rise, but I was too excited to sleep any longer. Today was special. Today we were going to explore our very own land. Because my father, Caleb Seaman, had been loyal to King George the Third during the American revolution, he had been given 208 acres of land by the District Land Board here in Canada.

Not quite a year had passed since the dreadful day when Papa and I had been arrested. We were thrown in jail in Schenectady, in New York State, after Papa had been recognised as a Loyalist. In dead of night, Papa, his friend Truelove Butler, and I broke out of the jail. We packed our wagon and fled to seek safety in Canada. In our party of fugitives were my mother, Martha, and my seven brothers and sisters—Cade, who was now sixteen, Sam, fifteen, Elizabeth, fourteen, Smith, six, Sarah, five, Stephen, four, and Robert, eighteen months. I was the third son, at thirteen not quite a year younger than Elizabeth.

The sun had begun to stream across my face when Papa's shout called us to breakfast. As soon as we had eaten, Papa could hardly contain his impatience.

“Hurry up, everyone!” he called. “So we'll be there before the light's gone.”

“Remember, you're going to have to row against the current,” Sam roared, at the top of his lungs as usual..

“Ned,” Mama called to me. “Smith and Stephen have vanished. Find them, please.”

I raced about outside our cabin and caught my two younger brothers who had escaped despite Mama's orders to stay inside. I could hardly wait to get started. At last we were all lined up and ready to walk the three miles to Buell's Bay, where the merchant and landowner, Mr. William Buell, was lending us his bateau. A journey of eighteen miles up the St. Lawrence would bring us to our land.

Anticipation made light of the hike along the rutted track hardly fit for a wagon—Papa and Mama in the lead, arm in arm, each with a basket of supplies. Behind them marched Cade, the eldest, carrying blankets and shepherding Smith, Sarah and Stephen. Elizabeth and I were in the rear, ready to catch anyone who eluded Cade. Around us capered our black and white dog Goggie, named by Robert, our youngest. Elizabeth had named him Samson when we first got him, but when we called him, my brother Sam answered. “Goggie” was really Robert's attempt to say “Doggie”, but soon everyone was using the name. Elizabeth and I took turns carrying Robert, who at eighteen months wanted to go on his own legs. He was not easy to hold either, he squirmed so.

“Walk! Me walk!” he shouted.

“No,” retorted Elizabeth. “If we have to wait for you, it'll be dark before we get to Buell's Bay.”

The only one not along was Sam, who had stayed home to take care of the horses—our much prized bay stallion, the bay mare, and the filly she had dropped in March. That filly was a gift, for at the time of our escape from the summer before, we did not know she had been bred. I wondered that Sam should be willing to miss out on the adventure of going to our land, but he was probably pleased to have the cabin all to himself. It stood near the centre of our village of Coleman's Corners, which lay inland by a waterfall. There, the father of Elijah Coleman, one of my friends, had built grist and sawmills. When we first arrived, Coleman's Corners already had a dozen houses, more than Buell's Bay. It seemed to us the best place to open our blacksmith's shop. People liked to combine a visit to the mills and other business.

We took scarcely an hour to reach Mr. Buell's store, exchange greetings, and carry our belongings to the small bateau tied to the jetty in the sheltered bay. The bateau was about half the size of those built by the government for use on the St. Lawrence. Government bateaux travelled in groups of about a dozen each that were called brigades. When a brigade arrived at a set of rapids that lay down the river from us, the crews of all the bateaux combined to haul each one upstream. The smaller boat we were borrowing, however, was plenty big enough for our needs.

Mr. William Buell was a small, neat man with laughing eyes and a person of standing in our community. A former officer, he was better off than most of our neighbours, and as a magistrate he dispensed justice and sat at Courts of Quarter Sessions. At first we stood in awe of him but he quickly took a fancy to Papa and Mama. They were Long Islanders, and Mr. Buell had been raised nearby in Connecticut. He thought New Yorkers were boring, except for Long Islanders. Since the first Seamans and the first Buells had come from England to the New World at the same time, he decided we must be related.

As we boarded the bateau we found that we were in luck. The wind was from the northeast and we would not have to row. Papa hoisted the lateen sail and we scudded up the bateau channel along the north side of the sparkling blue St. Lawrence and soon found ourselves passing through the Narrows, formed by a row of pine, oak and maple-clad islands from which pink granite poked. Now we had time and the breath to talk. Robert was no longer fretful, busying himself running on the flat floor of the bateau. Occasionally one of us would put a hand out to stop him climbing on the seat and trying to fall overboard. Then the sail began to flop and Papa showed Cade how to trim it.

“This is the life!” Papa fairly crowed. “A mere tub, not my father's schooner Whitewings, but it's nice to be sailing again.”

“You never told us about any ship, Papa,” Cade said, surprised.

“Hush, Cade,” Mama interrupted him. “You'll stir up sad memories.”

Papa shook his head. “Those memories have mellowed with time. I'd like to talk about it, Martha.”

“Was it something to do with your brother, Nehemiah, Papa?” I piped up, trying to conceal my eagerness to learn something about the man for whom I was named. “Who drowned at sea?”

At that Papa nodded. “Yes, Ned. He slipped on the deck and fell into Long Island Sound. We never found his body. Until we lost Nehemiah, I wanted to become the ship's master. Afterwards I hated the sea and decided to train as a blacksmith.”

“But he lives again in you, Ned. You're a lot like him,” Mama added.

For a few minutes no one spoke, but we were too full of our plans for this summer of 1790 to remain subdued for long. Mama's dearest wish was to start a school in her limited spare time, to teach our younger ones and the other children of Coleman's Corners. Even Mrs. Coleman, the miller's wife, could not read and write. Mama had agreed to become the teacher in return for flour and other foods. Papa had arranged for Cade and me to work for a farmer, Mr. Joseph McNish, to learn how to pioneer on our own land. The McNish farm was just outside Coleman's Corners, and we would be able to walk home to spend Sunday with the family. Papa himself had agreed to work for Captain Justus Sherwood, who for some years had been building timber rafts and sailing them to Quebec.

The captain was also the chairman of the land board, and he had helped Papa select a grant that had fine timber on it, right on the shore of the St. Lawrence. Hauling logs through a bush where there were no roads would be nearly impossible. Our brother Sam would stay at Coleman's Corners, taking care of what little work came to the blacksmith's shop, caring for the horses, and helping Mama and Elizabeth enlarge the garden. I knew why I had been chosen over Sam to go to Mr. McNish's. Cade and I got along well, while neither of us could avoid fighting with Sam.

“Selling timber is the best way to put us back on our feet,” Papa was saying.

“Let's hope so,” Cade agreed. “With the shop not doing well.”

Papa sighed, and I did not need to ask why. When we first arrived in Canada he expected to earn his living at his own trade. But he had found that he could hardly support us. Other blacksmiths had taken up land and were farming it. They did ironwork part time for their neighbours, and we had too much competition. Not only that, iron was scarce as hen's teeth and expensive. It came from the forges at Three Rivers, and the bateaumen who delivered it charged too much for carrying it. Besides, hardly anyone had any money—hard cash,—Papa called it. We got along by trading something we could make for something we needed. Papa was usually paid for his work in kind, sometimes food others could spare, or cloth or deerskin.

“Once I learn how to build rafts strong enough to survive the rapids downstream,” Papa continued. “We'll build our own, and then, when we've enough land cleared, we'll grow more food and have a proper farm.”

“And when we have good grass we can breed the horses everyone needs so badly,” Cade said.

“For the time being one foal a year is all we can feed, but I trust, by the time the filly's old enough to be bred, we'll have enough grass,” Papa said.

“And we'll need a small plot for some flax,” Mama added. “I do want to see all of you in new shirts, and Elizabeth, Sarah and myself with aprons and kerchiefs that are not so ragged.”

“And an orchard,” Elizabeth chimed in. “I long for our own apples again.”

Although we were as poor as church mice, we had felt at home in Canada since our flight from Schenectady in New York's Mohawk Valley. Like ourselves, most of the settlers in the Township of Elizabethtown, where Coleman's Corners lay, had been Loyalists during the American Revolution. Some of our neighbours had been living in Elizabethtown since the war ended. Most of the men had served in the Loyal Rangers. That was a regiment formed near Montreal from among refugee Loyalists. Such had fled their homes in the American colonies during the war. Others, like ourselves, had come to Canada later because former rebels kept molesting them. Our own troubles began in June 1789 when Papa and I were walking near the market in Schenectady. Zebe Seaman, a cousin from Long Island, where Papa and Mama had lived before the war, recognized him.

With Zebe was the villain of our story, one Captain Gilbert Fonda. Both men knew that Papa had been loyal to the King during the revolution. Zebe thought bygones should be bygones, but Captain Fonda wanted revenge and had us arrested. Recalling the danger and hardship that had followed our escape, I shuddered and tried to put the memory from my mind.

We had found our new neighbours friendly and willing to share what little they had. Like Mr. Buell, many of the settlers in Elizabethtown, and Augusta, just east of it, were Loyalists from Connecticut. They generally quarrelled with New York Loyalists but, like Mr. Buell, they warmed to Papa and Mama because of their Long Island background. Often the Connecticut men would gather in Papa's shop or Mr. Buell's store to argue and complain. They wanted to govern themselves, but Canada was ruled by a British governor, Lord Dorchester, and an appointed council.

Mama did not feel that way. She was relieved to be living in a country where politics were just so much hot air. With no elections and no fisticuffs around the hustings, she said she never had to worry about Papa coming home with a broken head. Home since our arrival had been the cabin we built for shelter as soon as we reached Coleman's Corners after being dropped at Buell's Bay. We had come from Johnstown, the Luneburg District seat, in a boat belonging to Captain Meyers, who had known Papa during the war. Captain Meyers lived on a farm by the Bay of Quinte, farther west. We had first seen Johnstown from the New York side of the St. Lawrence, before we crossed into Canada.

Until the cabin was ready we had stayed in a tent loaned us by the main landowner at Coleman's Corners, Mr. Joseph Jessup. Papa arranged to lease ten acres from him, and that season we also started the garden, where we planted seed potatoes given us by our neighbours. Before the cold descended, we had built a stable to protect the horses. We had dug a respectable crop of potatoes to help feed ourselves through the winter, and a root cellar in which to store them. We had also learned to brew spruce beer to ward off scurvy. With the odd deer shot by Papa or Sam, and fish caught with hook and line through holes we chopped in the ice near Buell's Bay, we did not go hungry though we tired of the same fare every day.

Our neighbours often told us we were lucky to have missed The Hungry Year. During the summer of 1787 no rain fell and the crops failed. Thus the winter of 1787–1788 had been a time of great famine along our part of the St. Lawrence. People ate all the seeds they had been saving to plant. They killed the few animals they had brought from the United States or near Montreal. Some they killed for food, others because they had nothing to feed them. The government came to the rescue, providing seeds to plant in the spring of 1788, but people still had few animals. A whole generation would never stop telling stories about that time of near starvation.

Now my remembering was interrupted when the boat picked up speed. We had passed the Narrows. Here the river, free of islands for a bit, seemed much wider. On we went and into the bateau channel along the north side of Grenadier Island, seven miles long and with farmhouses and cabins dotting its shore. We were getting close now. Papa had a paper on which Captain Sherwood had described the landmarks to watch for. His eyes were still moving between the notes and the shore when we heard a shout from behind and turned to see a canoe moving towards us.

“How convenient,” Papa said, smiling. “Captain Sherwood. Now he can show us exactly where our boundaries are. He surveyed this township.”

“I thought you said he built timber rafts,” Cade spoke up.

“By trade he's a surveyor, but like most people here he can turn his hand to anything. And so must we,” Papa replied.

“You mentioned township,” Mama said. “Is our land not in Elizabethtown?”

“No, dearest, in the next one west of it.”

“What's it called, Papa?” I asked.

“Township Number Nine,” he replied.

“Maybe we can name it after us. How about Seaman Township?” I added.

Papa thought this a huge joke, and we all joined in his laughter. “If Elizabethtown was named for Princess Elizabeth, and Augusta where Captain Sherwood lives, after Princess Augusta, do you think the government would allow a township to be named for nobodies such as us?”

“Why not?” Mama said, pretending to be indignant. “Once they run out of children of the King.”

By this time Captain Sherwood's canoe was drawing close. He was a tall and thin man with fair colouring sitting in the stern and dipping his paddle with long graceful strokes. Two boys were paddling at bow and centre thwart.

“You're just about there, Mr. Seaman,” Captain Sherwood called out with a Yankee twang stronger than Mr. Buell's. “My stake is just behind that point over yonder.”

“Let's down sail and row,” Papa said.

We had two pairs of oars, and I took my place at one set of locks with Smith, eager to man an oar, beside me. Papa and Stephen, as keen as Smith, took the other oars. As Papa sat on one side and I on the other, we kept the bateau going in a straight line. Cade, steering at the rear said he had little to do. Before long Sarah complained that she wanted to row and Papa had her change places with Stephen for a while.

“My, it seems a pretty spot,” Mama said, but we busy rowers facing the rear of the boat could see little.

“I can hardly wait to walk on our own property,” Cade agreed. “And those trees! They must be six feet thick at the base, some of them.”

“I hope you're not planning to cut all of them down,” Mama said. “That would ruin the look of the place.”

“Of course not,” Papa said., looking over his shoulder. “But we'll have to cut some in order to plant crops. We'll use them to build our raft, and we'll keep enough trees for plenty of shade.”

Mama was smiling as we beached the boat on a small crescent of sand. Meanwhile the canoe was being lifted from the water amidst Captain Sherwood's shouts to the boys with him not to damage the delicate birch bark. Once we were all ashore we were ready for introductions. Papa began with Mama, over whose hand Captain Sherwood gallantly bowed. Then he turned to smile at Elizabeth.

“My older son Samuel,” Captain Sherwood said as a lanky dark youth bowed to Mama. “And Levius, my younger son,” he continued as a slightly shorter fair-haired boy stepped forward. “It seems we have boys of about the same age, Mr. Seaman.”

“Caleb Junior, or Cade as we usually call him, is sixteen, nearly seventeen,” Papa said. Our Samuel, at home, is fifteen. Nehemiah, or Ned, is thirteen.”

“So'm I,” Levius broke in, sizing me up. “You're not very big.”

“Small but tough,” Cade answered for me, an icy edge to his voice, ever the protective older brother.

“How old is your other son Samuel, Captain Sherwood?” Mama enquired hastily. I knew she was hoping to distract Levius from trying to find where I'd fit in the pecking order.

“Samuel is fifteen but he seems older because of his height,” that officer replied.

Now the fun began as we started to explore! Mama set a slow pace, Stephen and Sarah capering around her as she guided Robert's steps beneath the tall white pines and overhanging oaks. Elizabeth trailed Cade, with Smith running to keep up. Because of a look Papa gave me, I played host to the Sherwood boys. Leaving them on their own would have been rude. While Captain Sherwood and Papa went to inspect the wooden stakes that marked our boundaries, Samuel, Levius and I explored the shore.

Cade's words in mind, Levius decided to be friendly. In fact I thought I could land him fairly readily for he was so slender. “You've got some nice beaches,” he said. “And the fishing's good. Lots of underwater grass where pike like to bask. And some bare rocks where you can dive into deep water.”

“I like what I've seen so far,” I agreed.

The shore was a delight, and we waded in shallows, the golden sand kind to our bare feet, minnows scattering as we moved. Goggie, who had left Elizabeth's side for once, was fascinated. He stood with one front paw raised, stock still. Then when the minnows swam close, he would lunge in a vain attempt to catch one. Up he came, muzzle dripping, a look of bewilderment on his black and white spotted face.

“We once had a dog that did that, too,” Samuel Sherwood said. “Never did catch anything.”

“Do you help your father with the surveying?” I asked them.

“In summer,” Samuel replied. “We have to go to school for part of the year.”

“School? Where?” I enquired in alarm. I did not know of any school within miles.

“At Kingston,” Levius said, pointing to the west. I reckon it's some thirty miles that way.”

“I suppose it's expensive,” I went on, still apprehensive.

“Yes,” Samuel agreed. “About the only folks who can afford schooling are the half-pay officers like our Pa.”

“Then I guess I won't have to go,” I said gleefully.

“I wish I didn't,” Levius added gloomily.

“By the bye, what do you mean by half-pay?” I asked now.

“The government sends him half the sum he received as a captain in the Loyal Rangers,” Samuel explained. “It's a pension, really.”

Now Papa called, and we made our way back to the canoe where the Sherwoods bid us farewell. They set off up the river in their canoe to continue surveying farm lots in the township.

“Look what we found!” Elizabeth looked triumphant.

“Apple blossoms!” I exclaimed as I looked into the fold in her apron. “Apple trees right here on our land?”

“Yes,” she replied. “The trees seem old and gnarled, and the fruit will be small and scabbed. But Mama thinks, if we take cuttings and plant them in a proper field, they'll grow into fine trees. I found these onion shoots, too,” she added, holding them up.

“I wonder how they got here?” I said, looking at Papa.

“The French must have planted them years ago,” he said. “They travelled along here often before Canada was captured by the British back in 1760. I bet, if we hunt some more, we'll find other vegetables growing wild like these onions.”

“This must be very good land,” Mama remarked.

“Part of it is,” Papa said. “A lot of the land near the shore hasn't much soil on it, and is only fit for pasture, but Captain Sherwood showed me some deep spots that will make fine fields. We'll have a good farm here in a few years' time.”

We stayed three more days on what Mama still maintained was our estate even though it was really a dark 208-acre forest. We slept each night in the open air, some in the bateau, others round a fire to discourage mosquitos. Stars winked down on us, and luckily it did not rain and the dew was not heavy. We swam, though the water beyond the shallows was still icy cold, much colder than in the swimming hole downstream from Coleman's Corners. What we enjoyed most was the fishing. Thick-bodied black bass were great fighters as well as better eating than pike. Once, while fishing from the bateau, Cade hooked a massive muskellunge that took my help and Papa's to land.

“He must weigh fifty pounds!” Papa exclaimed, breathless.

Mama picked a spot where she hoped our house would stand one day, with a fine view of the river and the many islands. “I can hardly wait to see them in their autumn colours,” she said. “All those maples and oaks will stand out against the pines behind them.”

Much too soon the holiday was over and we had to return to reality. Sadly we packed up and piled into the bateau and began to float back down the river to Buell's Bay. After a night in our cabin, Cade and I set off on foot for the McNish place while Papa took our stallion to the Sherwood farm in Augusta. The big, sturdy horse would be of great service in moving logs, and Captain Sherwood had agreed to pay Papa for the use of him. We had had a thin time for a year. Now we could glimpse an end to hardship, to making do with worn out clothes and a cramped cabin for shelter.

At the heart of all our dreams lay our expectations for the timber on our land. From it we would make a vast raft such as we had seen passing Buell's Bay. At Quebec, timber merchants would pay hard cash for our logs, and we would have the money to carry out our plans..