Maritime Monday - Walter Green: Boat Builder of Wick - Bain Line

Pulteneytown Harbor
By W. J. Renney, 1886

Walter Green (1786-1860) and his family were boat builders, net weavers, and herring fishermen in the herring industry centered at Wick on the eastern coast of Scotland throughout the nineteenth century—and probably even before that in the Canisbay region.  Though herring fishery had been a part of life in Caithness for hundreds of years, it began to boom in the 1790s, spurred on partly because of the distressing Highland Clearances, which forced thousands of Scots from their villages in order to expand government-sponsored, sheep-based agriculture.

Many Highlanders, forced out of their homes in droves, emigrated to America, but there were also many who moved toward the east coast of Scotland where they could begin new lives as fishermen and boat builders.  Though marine industries were well-established in the town of Wick, it was too small to accommodate the massive numbers displaced by the Clearances.  Therefore, Sir William Pulteney, governor of the British Fisheries Society, commissioned Thomas Telford, Britain’s leading civil engineer of the day, to design and establish a fishing town and harbor at the estuary of the Wick River, a place which came to be called Pulteneytown (see image below left).

 The rapid expansion following the establishment of Pultneytown south across the river from Wick is borne out by the fact that from 1808 to 1814, the number of boats using Wick Harbor shot up from 214 to 822.  By 1850, the herring fleet at Wick had 1,000 boats so closely moored together that one could cross from one pier to another dry-shod.[i]  My third great-grandfather, Walter Green, was very much a part of this expanding industry.

Wick Harbor, 1860s

 Walter was actually born in Canisbay, which is also in Caithness but farther to the north where the North Sea joins up with the Pentland Firth.  At the age of 28, Walter appears in Wick where he married Margaret Sutherland on July 1, 1815. 

26 Bank Row (second black door, left)

 Scottish census records are a bit thin on Ancestry.com, and I have found no second record of Walter until he appears at age 55 in the 1841 census, where he is identified as a boat builder by trade.  The family resided at 26 Bank Row, where son Robert was still living at the age of 70 in1901.  Four of Walter’s five sons worked with their father as boat builders and continued the family business after Walter’s death in 1860. 



Herring Buss, Dutch Style

 Walter’s business was greatly affected by Scotland’s competition with the Dutch, who were, early on, the leaders in herring fishery. Copying the successful Dutch, the Scots built boats called “herring busses,” which were outfitted with sails to carry the Dutch far into the North Sea (see above).  But Scotland had a geographical advantage in that every summer the herring would migrate into the Orkney area.  Realizing they were better placed than their Dutch rivals to exploit this situation, the Scots decided  they could operate more quickly and efficiently with smaller open boats, a change which kept Walter and sons quite busy as they responded to the growing demand for open boats (see below). Soon, the Scots moved ahead of the Dutch in the herring fishery business.



Open Herring Boat
Wick Harbor

Fish Net Hanging on a Stick

 In addition to the work of boat building, the Green family were engaged in other related trades.  For example, two of Walter’s daughters, Rose and Margaret (but not my direct ancestor, Helen),  were employed as net weavers in Wick.  Net weaving was a centuries-old occupation in Caithness and was largely done by females.  Near the end of the 18^th century, as the Age of Industrialization was underway, looms were invented which would relieve the weavers of some of their tedium.  By the late 19^th century, more than 2000 people, mostly women, were employed at nearly 600 looms in Scotland.  Surprisingly, Wick, “the metropolis of the herring fishery,”[ii] was one of the last places to industrialize, so Rose and Margaret kept themselves employed on the old looms for longer than most, which could be viewed negatively by those who like to keep up with the times but perhaps more positively by those who enjoyed the peaceful hand work at the water’s edge (see photo above). 



Fish-Curing Building
in Pulteneytown

By 1851, when Walter was 65, he had cut back a little from building boats, leaving that in the hands of his able sons, and taken up another Wick-based trade, that of fish curer, which probably required less physical strength.  Fish curers received the herring from the boats, gutted them, and packed them in barrels.  The best would receive the stamp of the crown on the lid and would bring high prices in the European market. 

Bank Row

Walter Green passed away on February 20, 1863, at the age of 73.  His sons Robert, William, John and Walter, Jr., kept up the boat building business, and Rose and Margaret continued with their net weaving.  Daughter Hellen married Donald Bain, a shoemaker of Wick, and lived with her husband on Bank Row, the same street on which she had been born and raised. 

---

[i] “Old Pulteney Whiskey.” 

[ii] “Industries of Scotland: Manufacture of Fishing Nets.”

 http://geneabloggers.com

Sources

Coull, J. R.  “Herring Fishing in Scotland.”  HistoryShelf.org. Learning in Scotland Project.  n.d. Web. 13 Apr 2013. <http://sites.scran.ac.uk/secf_final/silver/coull.php>

_______. “Silver Darlings: The History of Herring Fishing on the East Coast of Scotland.”  HistoryShelf.org.  n. d. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. <http://www.historyshelf.org/secf/silver/coull.php>

“Industries of Scotland: Manufacture of Fishing Nets.” Electric Scotland. n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. http://www.electricscotland.com/history/industrial/industry13a.htm

“Old Pulteney Whiskey.”  Whiskey.com. n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. <http://www.whisky.com/brands/pulteney_brand.html>

Images

Bank Row photograph by Gordon Mackay.

         http://www.gordonmac.com

          Fish Net Hanging on a Stick.

          http://www.public-domain-image.com/full-image/objects-public-domain-images-pictures/fishing-net-hanging-on-a-stick.jpg-copyright-friendly-picture.html

           Herring Buss.

         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herring_Buss

 Nineteenth-Century Fish-Curing Building in Pulteneytown. http://rls.org.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-505-017-C&searchdb=scran

Open Herring Boat in Wick. 

          http://www.historyshelf.org/secf/silver/links/linkk.php

Ordnance Survey of Pulteneytown.  http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/index.php?service=NLS&id=7830&view=full

 Pulteneytown Harbour.  Painted by W. J. Renney. 1886. http://www.historyshelf.org/secf/silver/02.php

26 Bank Row.  GoogleEarth.  http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=26+Bank+Row+Wick&ll=58.439861,-3.088629&spn=0.000792,0.002411&sll=58.439858,-3.088671&layer=c&cbp=12,263.94,,0,12.45&cbll=58.439861,-3.088629&gl=uk&hnear=26+Bank+Row,+Wick,+Highland+KW1,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=19&iwloc=A&panoid=T-cMXJYRcfet-00ePfNHBg 

Wick Harbour, 1860s.  Alan Calder Writing.

         http://alancalderwriting.blogspot.com/2011/07/up-in-caithness-3.html

        

        

Tartan Day - Clan Munro

The Munros are a highland clan with their seat at Foulis Castle, which is in the parish of Kiltearn near Evanton in the shire of Ross & Cromarty.  The castle was given to the Munros in the eleventh century, by the Earl of Ross, who wished to thank the Munros for having defeated Viking invaders.  Still today, one can see the remains of the eleventh-century motte, which is a defensive, man-made mound topped by a wooden palisade.

The name Munro is derived from the Gaelic Mac an Rothaich, which means "man from Ro."


http://geneabloggers.com

Wishful Wednesday - John de Bostock of Whethamstede - Part 1 - Gard Line

This is the first of three parts.

 

If I could meet with one person on our family tree for an afternoon of conversation, I think it would be John de Bostock of Whethamstede (1383-1464), abbot of St. Albans in England.

For the record, our common ancestor is Sir William de Bostock (b. 1225).  By his first wife, Elizabeth, he had a son named Edward (b. 1245). By his second wife, Amice, he had a son named Gilbert (b. 1255).  We are descended from Edward, while John de Bostock of Whethamstede is descended from Gilbert.  (Gards, take note: the Bostocks are ancestors of Elizabeth Johnson, who married Jeremiah Gard in 1740.)

John de Bostock of Whethamstede’s life provides a window onto many aspects of medieval life: religious, political, military, cultural, and familial.

Part I: A Window on Medieval Family and Religion

Mackeyre's End

Let’s begin with familial.   The Bostocks were a Cheshire family, owning land near Macclesfield 36 miles northeast of Chester.  The John de Bostock who became Abbot John is regularly designated as John Whethamstede because he inherited the Manor of Mackeyre in Whethamstede upon the death of his mother, Margaret Makary. [Spelling was very fluid in this time period.] Whethamstede is in Hertfordshire, and though the Bostocks were Cheshire men, Hugh de Bostock, father of John, seems to have resided at Mackeyre’s End with his wife and children.  Since John Whethamstede’s name is inextricably linked to the history of St. Albans Abbey, it is worthy of note that St. Albans is also in Hertfordshire.

 At this point, the familial thread begins to blend in with the religious. John’s uncle, also called John Whethamstede, was the prior of Tynemouth.  The Priory of Tynemouth, though in Northumberland, was associated with St. Albans Abbey, a religious house much closer to London, because when the priory of Tynemouth had been decimated by the Danes in the tenth and eleventh centuries, William II had transferred monks from St. Albans to re-populate Tynemouth, which has remained in St. Albans’ jurisdiction ever since.  With his uncle as the prior of Tynemouth, then, it is perhaps not surprising that John de Bostock of Whethamstede became a monk of St. Albans sometime after 1401. 

He also became prior of Gloucester College, a Benedictine house at Oxford, where it is believed he eventually received a doctor of divinity degree.  In 1420, John was elected abbot of St. Albans.  As abbot, John broadened his horizons by trips to the continent on church business.  In 1424, he attended what was billed to be the Council of Pavia in Italy, but because the plague was raging there, the site was changed to Siena.  At that council, John spoke out on behalf of the Benedictine abbeys, arguing that they should be allowed to retain their exemption from papal authority.  In this debate, Abbot John was pitted against Richard Fleming, bishop of Lincoln, who was the pope’s man, so to speak.

St. Albans Cathedral

This would not be the only time in John’s career when he had to take a stand.  Though said to be “shy” by some who knew him, he was assertive enough to take on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Chichele, the following year regarding some jurisdictional issues.  When the case was decided ultimately, it turned out to be in Abbot John’s favor.  Another case arose which pitted John against other clerics of the age on behalf of others.  There was a “troublesome quarrel” in 1433 in which he opposed William Alnwick, bishop of Norwich, on behalf of the prior of Bynham, Norfolk, which was one of the St. Albans cells.  The matter finally made its way to the king’s court in the hall of the Blackfriars in London.  The Dictionary of National Biography states that “the result of the trial is not recorded, but the abbot considered that he had been successful in it.”  There were other such disputes throughout John’s time at St. Albans, which gives us some insight into the politics of the religious houses of medieval England.

 We see in these events that John would speak up when necessary, especially when he spoke on behalf of others, but that is not to say that John was attracted to anti-clerical movements that sprang up in England in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.  He would have been a child when Wycliffe got into a world of trouble for translating the Bible into English, and though he may have heard discussion about Lollardy (a pre-Reformation movement to return Christianity to Biblical standards), he was not attracted by it.  The DNB records, “He held a synod at St. Albans in 1426, before which he cited some persons suspected of heresy, inflicted penance on one man, and caused an [sic] heretical book to be burnt.”  From this, we can only conclude that in these early English challenges to papal authority, John aligned himself with Rome.

Sources:

Alston, George Cyprian. “The Benedictine Order.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton, 1907.  Web.  27 Mar. 2013. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02443a.htm   

Galbraith, Vivian H., ed. The Abbey of St. Albans from 1300 to the Dissolution of the Monasteries: The Stanhope Essay, 1911.  2008.  Web. 29 Mar. 2013.  http://www.archive.org/stream/abbeyofstalbansf00galbrich/abbeyofstalbansf00galbrich_djvu.txt

Hunt, William. “WHETHAMSTEDE or Bostock, JOHN.” Dictionary of National Biography. 1885-1900. Vol. 60.  31 Aug. 2012.  Web.  30 Mar. 2013.

      http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Whethamstede,_John_(DNB00)

 Riley, Henry Thomas, ed. Registra quorundam abbatum monasterii S. Albani, qui saeculo XVmo floruere: Registra Johannis Whethamstede. . . London: Longman, 1878. 15 Jan. 2008.  Web. 30 Mar. 2013. http://books.google.com/books/about/Registra_quorundam_abbatum_monasterii_S.html?id=8RsUAAAAYAAJ

 

Images:

 

John de Bostock of Whethamstede. http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeoithb/st.albans.html

 

Mackeyre's End.

http://mediasvc.ancestry.com/image/a7e1fcaf-1053-4bc0-aa3e-76f473d43b4a.jpg?Client=Trees&NamespaceID=1093

St. Albans Cathedral. 
http://mediasvc.ancestry.com/image/b1040224-1d7f-41ba-b8d0-f8b029a23e61.jpg?Client=Trees&NamespaceID=1093

	http://geneabloggers.com

© Eileen Cunningham, 2013

 

John de Bostock of Whethamstede: Part 2 - Gard Line

This is the second of three parts.

If I could meet with one person on our family tree for an afternoon of conversation, I think it would be John de Bostock of Whethamstede (1383-1464), abbot of St. Albans in England.

For the record, our common ancestor is Sir William de Bostock (b. 1225).  By his first wife, Elizabeth, he had a son named Edward (b. 1245). By his second wife, Amice, he had a son named Gilbert (b. 1255).  We are descended from Edward, while John de Bostock of Whethamstede is descended from Gilbert.  (Gards, take note: the Bostocks are ancestors of Elizabeth Johnson, who married Jeremiah Gard in 1740.)

John de Bostock of Whethamstede’s life provides a window onto many aspects of medieval life: religious, political, military, cultural, and familial.

Part II: A Window on Medieval Warfare



Humphrey,
Duke of Gloucester

To the windows on medieval family and religion can be added a window on medieval English warfare—dynastic warfare, to be specific.  As indicated above, the Bostocks were Cheshire men, and as such, had sided with Richard II when he had been challenged by Henry Bolingbroke (later King Henry IV).  However, Abbot John, as a friend of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was more attached to King Henry, who was the father of his friend Humphrey.  The early fifteenth-century dynastic struggles led later to the series of conflicts known as the Wars of the Roses.  The complicated web of alliances and treasons in the fifteenth century are beyond the scope of this narrative, but suffice it to say, that the fortunes of John of Whethamstede rose and fell with those of Duke Humphrey, who fell afoul of Queen Margaret of Anjou in 1441. (Queen Margaret was the wife of King Henry VI and often led her husband’s cause during his bouts of periodic insanity.) 

Now, Humphrey, who would have been in line to be king had Margaret’s son died, fell from favor in 1441 when his wife, Eleanor of Cobham, was convicted of witchcraft and imprisoned.  The DNB indicates that Humphrey’s fall from power might have contributed to Abbot John’s resignation as abbot of St. Alban’s, even though that happened in 1440, a year before the charges were brought against Eleanor.  According to the DNB, “On 26 Nov. 1440 he resigned the abbacy. The reasons alleged for this step are that he was suffering from ill health; that, being of a nervous temperament, he found his work and anxieties too much for him; and that he was painfully bashful.”

Today those symptoms might lead to a diagnosis of agoraphobia, a disorder characterized by reclusiveness and anxiety.  Such a condition could in and of itself lead to a person’s resignation from a somewhat “public” position, and, his friend’s fall from favor—which did certainly happen in 1441—could well have been a contributing factor and might help to explain why the abbot switched from support of the Lancastrian cause to that of the Yorks, who opposed Queen Margaret.

In 1447, Humphrey was arrested and died a few days later, though to this day it is unknown whether he died of a heart attack or stroke brought on by the distress of his captivity—or was murdered by Lancastrians in Queen Margaret’s party. Probably due to his close association with Abbot John, Duke Humphrey was buried at the abbey of St. Albans. (Readers of historical fiction may like to know that Margaret Frazer’s novel The Bastard’s Tale concerns this event, and Abbot John makes a brief appearance in Chapter 25.)

When Whethamstede had retired in 1440, John Stoke had replaced him as abbot; however, upon Stokes’ death in 1451, John Whethamstede was re-elected as abbot and resumed his duties, which meant that he would be in St. Albans where the Wars of the Roses broke out into violence in 1455 at what is called the First Battle of St. Albans, a victory for the Yorkists.  The Lancastrians Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset; Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland; and Thomas, lord Clifford had perished in the struggle, and Abbot John requested permission from the victorious duke of York to bury the three at the abbey.  He was personally affected later on by the Second Battle of St. Albans (1461), which was a defeat for the Yorkists.  The victorious Lancastrian army “plundered the Abbey and horribly ravaged the surrounding country.  The Queen [Margaret of Anjou] even condescended to rob the Abbey of its most precious jewels and treasures.  The result was sheer famine; the convent were dispersed, and the Abbot retired to his native town.  Thus for the only time in its history the continuity of conventual life at St. Albans was broken” (Galbraith).

Sources:

Alston, George Cyprian. “The Benedictine Order.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton, 1907.  Web.  27 Mar. 2013. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02443a.htm  Galbraith, Vivian H., ed. The Abbey of St. Albans from 1300 to the Dissolution of the Monasteries: The Stanhope Essay, 1911.  2008.  Web. 29 Mar. 2013.  http://www.archive.org/stream/abbeyofstalbansf00galbrich/abbeyofstalbansf00galbrich_djvu.txt

Hunt, William. “WHETHAMSTEDE or Bostock, JOHN.” Dictionary of National Biography. 1885-1900. Vol. 60.  31 Aug. 2012.  Web.  30 Mar. 2013.

      http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Whethamstede,_John_(DNB00)

Riley, Henry Thomas, ed. Registra quorundam abbatum monasterii S. Albani, qui saeculo XVmo floruere: Registra Johannis Whethamstede. . . London: Longman, 1878. 15 Jan. 2008.  Web. 30 Mar. 2013. http://books.google.com/books/about/Registra_quorundam_abbatum_monasterii_S.html?id=8RsUAAAAYAAJ

 

Images:
 

Bolton, J. The Second Battle of St. Albans, 1461. http://tuckdb.org/postcards/70596

 

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/gloucester.htm

	© Eileen Cunningham, 2013

 

John de Bostock of Whethamstede: Part 3 - Gard Line

This is the third of three installments on John of Whethamstede.

 

If I could meet with one person on our family tree for an afternoon of conversation, I think it would be John de Bostock of Whethamstede (1383-1464), abbot of St. Albans in England.

For the record, our common ancestor is Sir William de Bostock (b. 1225).  By his first wife, Elizabeth, he had a son named Edward (b. 1245). By his second wife, Amice, he had a son named Gilbert (b. 1255).  We are descended from Edward, while John de Bostock of Whethamstede is descended from Gilbert.  (Gards, take note: the Bostocks are ancestors of Elizabeth Johnson, who married Jeremiah Gard in 1740.)

John de Bostock of Whethamstede’s life provides a window onto many aspects of medieval life: religious, political, military, cultural, and familial.

Part III: A Window onto Medieval Cultural Life

 In addition, then, to the familial, religious, and military matters of the age, Abbot John’s life is also instructive regarding the cultural life of the times.  The Benedictines were well known for the establishment of libraries, so Duke Humphrey appears in the picture once again.  An avid book collector, Duke Humphrey would eventually bequeath his vast personal library to the University of Oxford, where it is still housed at the Bodleian.  Duke Humphrey made regular visits to St. Albans to meet with the abbot, and over the years helped him to found a substantial library at the abbey.

Education was the province of the monks in the Middle Ages, and during the time that John of Whethamstede was taking his hiatus from the monastic life, the quality of the teaching function of the monastery had sunk to a very low standard.  When John began his second term as abbot, there was virtually no one in the Abbey any longer who could teach grammar [the rudiments of each subject], and at Oxford’s Gloucester Hall there were “hardly any students from St. Albans.”  What is more, it was very slim pickings when it came to finding someone who would take on “the burden of preaching” (Galbraith).  It shows something of Abbot John’s ability and devotion when the DNB reports that the monastery greatly improved once he undertook his second abbacy.

Whethamstede himself was a writer, keeping a chronicle for the period between 1440 and 1460, which still serves today as a source of information for this period.  In his verse, Galbraith reports, “It is impossible not to see in the florid verses of Whethamstede and in his prose (loaded with classical allusion and metaphor) an early appearance of the Renaissance spirit in England. Verse and prose are alike worthless, but show a striving after something better than mediaeval monastic writing. The tendency becomes more marked in his work after his visit to Italy in 1423, where he
was certainly influenced by the early Humanist movement.” The DNB lists the following as writings of Abbot John:

Granarium de viris illustribus (4 vols.)
Palearium Poetarum
Registrum Abbatiae Johannis Whethamstede, Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Albani
     (Register to the seventh year of his abbacy, with various letters)
Super Valerium in Augustinum de Anchona
Super Polycraticum et super Epistolas Petri Blesensis (a commentary on the epistles of Peter)
Cato Commentatus
Cato Glossatus
De situ Terræ Sanctæ
Propinarium
Pabularium Poetarum
Proverbiarium
Letters (“verbose and flowery”) in the Chronicles of St. Albans Abbey
Latin verses for many occasions (“mere doggerel”)
A small book with metres and tables

(Note: Cato Commentatus and the Granarium are probably the two books he presented to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which Gloucester later donated to the University of Oxford. Others are in the British Museum.)

Whethamstede’s chamberlain at St. Albans, a lay clerk named Richard Fox, was also interested in books and writing and is known for having created an expanded version of the Brut Chronicle and seeing to its printing by William Caxton, who set up the first printing press in England. In addition, Fox wrote an account of the death of the abbot’s friend, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.  

One more aspect of medieval life remains: hospitality.  When one thinks of a medieval abbey, one doesn’t necessarily think of it as a hotel for travelers, but in the Middle Ages abbeys and convents often hosted dignitaries who passed through the area. The boy-king Henry VI and  his mother (Catherine of Valois) are known to have stayed at the abbey in 1428, and, in fact, Henry VI frequently visited the abbey during his reign.  Queen Johanna, the widow of Henry IV, who was Whethamstede’s tenant at nearby Abbots Langley, was hosted by the abbey as were  Henry de Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, and his wife Cecily Neville, Countess of Warwick.  The fact that the Duke and Duchess of Bedford once arrived with a retinue of three hundred people shows the level of entertaining the abbey was charged with doing.

In summary, then, we can say that the life of John de Bostock Whethamstede provides a window into the world of medieval England in all its array.  Abbot John died at the age of 81 on January 20, 1465, and was buried in the abbey church at St. Albans in a tomb that he had had made for himself years earlier.  Requiescat in pace.

Sources

Alston, George Cyprian. “The Benedictine Order.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton, 1907.  Web.  27 Mar. 2013. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02443a.htm 

Galbraith, Vivian H., ed. The Abbey of St. Albans from 1300 to the Dissolution of the Monasteries: The Stanhope Essay, 1911.  2008.  Web. 29 Mar. 2013.  http://www.archive.org/stream/abbeyofstalbansf00galbrich/abbeyofstalbansf00galbrich_djvu.txt

Hunt, William. “WHETHAMSTEDE or Bostock, JOHN.”  Dictionary of National Biography. 1885-1900. Vol. 60.  31 Aug. 2012.  Web.  30 Mar. 2013.

      http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Whethamstede,_John_(DNB00)

Riley, Henry Thomas, ed. Registra quorundam abbatum monasterii S. Albani, qui saeculo XVmo floruere: Registra Johannis Whethamstede. . . London: Longman, 1878. 15 Jan. 2008.  Web. 30 Mar. 2013. http://books.google.com/books/about/Registra_quorundam_abbatum_monasterii_S.html?id=8RsUAAAAYAAJ

© Eileen Cunningham, 2013

Private Charles Duncan, Fort Abercrombie, Dakota Territory, 1864-66 - Gard Line

Charles Duncan’s life is a microcosm of the frontier experience in nineteenth-century America.  Born in Iowa County, Wisconsin, in 1847, to Robert and Rachel (Gard) Duncan, he moved with his family to New Auburn, Minnesota, at a time when Minnesota was still a territory, not a state.  The Sioux Indians (also referred to as the Dakota) were dominant in the area.  Treaties between the Dakota and the United States had sometimes been broken by the government, and finally, roused with anger, the Indians entered upon violent attacks not only on military sites such as Fort Abercrombie, but also on white settlers, including women, children, and even infants.

            Mrs. Justin Kreiger, an eyewitness to some of the violence, told what the settlers were up against:

"Mr. Massipost had two daughters, young ladies, intelligent and accomplished. These the savages murdered most brutally. The head of one of them was afterward found, severed from the body, attached to a fish-hook, and hung upon a nail. His son, a young man of twenty-four years, was also killed. Mr. Massipost and a son of eight years escaped to New Ulm. . . . The daughter of Mr. Schwandt, enceinte [pregnant], was cut open, as was learned afterward, the child taken alive from the mother, and nailed to a tree. The son of Mr. Schwandt, aged thirteen years, who had been beaten by the Indians, until dead, as was supposed, was present, and saw the entire tragedy. He saw the child taken alive from the body of his sister, Mrs. Waltz, and nailed to a tree in the yard. It struggled some time after the nails were driven through it! This occurred in the forenoon of Monday, 18th of August, 1862."

Fortunately, Charles’s father, Robert Duncan, had made friends with some of the Sioux, who warned him to leave the area before the all-out assault began in what would come to be called the Dakota War of 1862.  This allowed Robert to get the family to the relative safety of Fort Snelling in eastern Minnesota and almost certainly saved their lives.  In December, thirty-eight Sioux were hanged at Fort Snelling for rape and murder of settlers.  More than 300 had actually been sentenced to death, but President Lincoln had commuted all the death sentences except for the thirty-eight. 

            About a year later in the fall of 1863, the U.S. soldiers operating out of Fort Abercrombie attacked Little Crow and a band of warriors near the Pembina River, resulting in the surrender of the leader and about 200 of his warriors, who were held at Pembina, a military outpost at the confluence of the Red River and the Pembina River very close to the Canadian border.   Early in 1864, Little Six and Medicine Bottle were also captured and delivered to Pembina, and late in February Major Joseph R. Brown set out with the captive Indians (all except Little Six and Medicine Bottle) for Fort Snelling.          

The records show that at about this same time, on February 27, 1864, still four months shy of his sixteenth birthday, Charles Duncan fudged on his enlistment papers, saying he was seventeen (the required age for military service) and enlisted with the Independent Battalion Volunteers, Cavalry Co. D (Hatch’s Company).  In March, he was mustered into the Army and in August was sent with his company to Fort Abercrombie where they were under orders to patrol the area near Red River (today the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota).  According to Fort Abercrombie’s web site, “Minnesota Volunteer soldiers manned the fort when area settlers sought shelter there. The ‘regular’ U.S. Army soldiers had been withdrawn during the Civil War and had been replaced by the Minnesota Volunteer Infantry.”

Winter conditions in the area were (and are) extremely bitter, and in February 1865, a year after his enlistment, the records show that Charles had to be treated for exposure to the elements.  In November of that year the monthly muster documents show that Charles was assigned to be on “Special Duty” to Fort Abercrombie’s quartermaster, a position he held until April, the same month when President Lincoln was assassinated.

The Civil War over, Charles Duncan, who had initially enlisted for a period of three years, continued to serve at Fort Abercrombie until his honorable discharge in May 1866.  The Fort Abercrombie web site lists the various activities the fort supported.  It “guarded the oxcart trails of the later fur trade era, military supply wagon trains, stagecoach routes, and steamboat traffic on the Red River. It also was a supply base for two major gold-seeking expeditions across Dakota into Minnesota . . . and served as a hub for several major transportation routes through the northern plains.”  The Dakota War and these various activities all typify the America of the 1860s and give us a glimpse, through Charles Duncan’s eyes, of what life was like at those times.  And in those eyes it is possible to catch a glimpse of both the terror and the hope of the times. 

Sources: 

 

“Charles A. Duncan’s Service: Hatch's Independent Battalion, Minnesota Cavalry Dakota Territory, February 1864-June 1866.”  Ancestry.com.  n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. http://o.mfcreative.com/f4/exports/9/9a64eb43-b388-4a5f-a541-8df56de63f16/Charles%20Duncan%20during%20Civil%20Wa.pdf

“Dakota War of 1812.” Wikipedia.  2013.  Web.  21 Mar 2013.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War
 

Fort Abercrombie State Historic Site. 2013. Web. 21 Mar 2013. http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/abercrombie/index.html

“Fort Abercrombie State Historical Site.”  Wahpeton-Breckenridge Chamber of Commere. n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. http://www.wahpetonbreckenridgechamber.com/visitor_fort.ht

 

“Fort Snelling.”  Wikipedia.  22 Mar. 2013.  Web.  22 Mar. 2013.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Snelling

Hubbard, Lucius Frederick, et al.  “Hatch’s Independent Battalion of Cavalry.” Minnesota in Three Centuries: 1655-1908. Vol. 3. 1908. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. http://archive.org/details/minnesotainthree03hubb 


© Eileen Cunningham, 2013