The New England Magazine/Volume 5/Number 1/The Brass Cannon of Campobello

by Kate Gannett Wells

THE BRASS CANNON OF CAMPOBELLO.

By Kate Gannett Wells.

THE history of the island of Camppobello, in Passamaquoddy Bay, off Eastport, Maine, still presents peculiar features of interest to those who cate for romance in history. It possessed singular picturesqueness, unproductiveness, and courtly rule, for here was maintained even till 1857 an almost feudal rule. William Owen of Wales, admiral, achieved distinction a century ago at the battle of Pondicherry in India, under Lord Clive, and when old and wounded asked for a pension or gratuity, Through the intercession of Sir William Campbell, governor general of Nova Scotia, the English government in 1767, granted Passamaquoddy Outer Island to the admiral and his cousins, for it was a larger territory than could be deeded to any one individual; and Owen in gratitude changed its name to Campobello. David Owen lived here as agent for the others, and as all of the original four owners died, the land became the property of William Fitz-William Owen.

The young admiral, as he was called, was the hero of the land, and of the hearts of the girls, during the first half of this century. He was a man of iron will, strong affections, and sundry caprices. As a boy he was isolated from his family by military rule, and brought up in barracks. When asked his name at five years of age, he answered, "I don't know; mother can tell you." From the barracks he went the round of boarding-schools, sometimes, when he had been very good, being allowed to wear a cocked hat and a suit of scarlet made from an old coat of his father's. Like all English boys he learned the catechism and collects. If wearied with repeating the Lord's Prayer, he wished he dared say it backwards, yet he feared that by so doing he might raise the devil, and that then it would be a long time before he would be allowed to wear again his favorite coat and hat.

He was a naughty boy in little ways, though full of fun and of generosity, liking to argue, and generally gaining his point in discussion with other lads, especially if it were about the subject of religion. When he had been unusually obstinate, he comforted himself by his faith that God would interpose on his behalf and make him have a good time after all, in spite of the punishments he was called upon to bear and the loneliness that crept over him. Moreover, his dreams assured him that he was a special favorite of the Almighty.

The Admiral's Chair and Other Relics

In 1788, the boy became a midshipman in a line-of-battle ship, and in due course of time cruised in the Bay of Fundy, helping in its survey. For three years his man-of-war must have been stationed at Campobello. His crew often went ashore in summer, tending a little garden in Havre de Lutre, and carrying the dahlias, for which the island has always been famous, to the pretty girls and the Owen ladies at Welshpool, who in return in the winter went to many a dance on board his ship.

The boy grew into the middle-aged man, and when sixty-one years old, with the rank of admiral, came back to Campobello to live. Somewhere in that long time he had captured two cannon from a Spanish pirate, and carried them away to his American home. Proud as he was of them, there is now no one living to tell who bled or who swore, or whether the Spanish galleon sank or paid a ransom. He placed them high on Calder's Hill, overlooking the bay, where they bid defiance to American fishing boats—for Campobello belongs to New Brunswick. He planted the sun-dial of his vessel in the garden fronting his house, and put a section of his beloved quarter-deck in the grove close to the shore. There, pacing up and down in uniform, he lived over again the days of his attack upon the pirate ship. He went back and forth over the island, marrying and commanding the people. He kissed the girls when he married them, and took fish and game as rent from their husbands. Now and then he gave a ball: oftener he held church service in what was almost a shanty, omitting from the liturgy whatever he might chance to dislike on any special Sunday.

Lady Owen was queen as he was king, and never did a lady rule more gently over storeroom and parlor, over Sunday-school and sewing-school. The brass andirons shone like gold. The long curving mahogany sofa and the big leathern arm-chair, with sockets in its elbows for candles, still tell the primitive splendor of those days. Religion was discussed over water and whiskey, and the air, thick with murkiness from the clay-pipes, recalled the smoke of the naval battles.

Remittances did not always come promptly from England, and money was needed in the island; so the admiral set up his own bank, and issued one-dollar certificates surmounted by his crest and his motto, "Flecti non Frangi." But somehow the time never came when he was called upon "to pay one dollar on demand to the bearer at Welshpool," and the certificates remain to be utilized perhaps under a new financial epoch of good will and foolish trust.

Admiral Owen
FROM A PORTRAIT PRESERVED AT CAMPOBELLO.

The island must have had some law and order before the advent of the admiral, for the town records for the parish of Campobello date from April 15, 1824, James M. Parker, town clerk. At the General Sessions of the peace holden at Saint Andrews, the shire town of Charlotte County, New Brunswick, thirty-two officers were chosen for the small population of Campobello. As in the old German principalities, every Welshpooler must have craved a title; there were commissioners and surveyors of highways, overseers of poor and of fisheries, assessors, trustees of schools, inspectors of fish for home consumption and for exports, for smoked herrings and boxes. There were cullers of staves, fence-viewers and hog reeves, and surveyors of lumber and cord-wood, lest that which should properly be used for purposes of building or export be consumed on andiron or in kitchen stoves.

In those days there was no poorhouse, though town-paupers existed, for one, Peter Lion by name, was boarded about for one hundred dollars and furnished with suitable food, raiment, lodging, and medical aid. No one kept him long at a time, whether because others wanted the price paid for his support, or because he was an unwelcome inmate is unknown. Prices depend on supply therefore it happened that the next pauper was boarded for fifty dollars. Again a lower price for board brought about a lower tax-rate for the householders, and in course of time another pauper was set up at public auction and the lowest bidder was intrusted with his care and maintenance. By 1829 the exports from the island justified the creation of harbor masters and port wardens, more titles to be coveted. A ferry was established from Campobello to Indian Island and Eastport. The ferryman was "recognized in the sum of two pounds, and was conditioned to keep a good and sufficient boat, with sails and oars, to carry all persons who required between the appointed places, to ask, demand, and receive for each and every person so ferried one shilling and three pence and no more." If any other than the appointee should have the hardihood to make a little money by transporting a weary traveller, such person was to be fined ten shillings, half of it to go to the informer and half to the ferryman, unless he had previously arranged with the licensee that he would afford him due and righteous satisfaction for each person so carried.

Campbello.

As the population grew, the swine began to abound, and soon it was decreed that " neither swine nor boar-pig should go at large unless sufficiently ringed and yoked, sucking pigs excepted, on pain of five shillings for each beast." Then the sheep began to jump fences four feet high, and their descendants have increased in agility. They ate the young cabbages, and standing at ease defiantly and lazily nipped off the dahlia buds. The town bestirred itself. Angry housewives, roused from their sleep by waking dreams of depredation committed, drove the sheep away with stock and stone. The following night the creatures returned, and the fisher-husbands, back from their business, sallied forth in vain. They could not run as fast as the women; and week after week the sheep took all they wanted. It became necessary finally to es-tablish the sublime order of hog-reeves, who were privileged to seize any swine or sheep going at Large which were not marked with the proper and duly entered mark of the owner, and to prosecute as the law directs.

Eastport, from Campobello

But how could sheep be marked when their fleece forbade their being branded! As notable house-keepers vie with each other in receipts, so did each islander try to invent striking deformities for his sheep only the sucking lambs retained their birthrights till their later days. Because Mulholland made two slits in the right ear and took off its top, Parker cut off a piece from the left ear of his sheep, and Bowers made a crop under the left car of his animal, close to its head. Yet the sheep ran loose until the people were directed to raise twelve pounds for building two cattle pounds, and William Fitz-William Owen, the admiral, was ap pointed to erect the same. The poor rates had again lessened; woe to the pauper boarders:—for the admiral wanted money for many another improvement on which his mind was bent. The General Sessions of the peace dared not neglect any suggestion which was made by a man who entertained all the distinguished guests who came to Passamaquoddy Bay; for his fame had spread far and wide as host, theologian, and magnate. If it were difficult to restrain sheep and swine, still more difficult was it to prevent the trespasses of geese. Though many a bird was clipped in its infancy, and in winter killed and put down amid layers of snow and sent to the admiral as a peace offering or as tribute, still the public troubles increased, until it was ordered that horses and cattle should be impounded. Then peace at midnight and safety by day rested over the island, for it was even resolved "that all dogs of six months old and upwards should be considered of sufficient age to pay the tax"; but in what manner they were compelled to offer their own excuse for being remains unsolved. Perhaps no legal quibble was ever raised concerning the wording of the statute.

Admiral Owen himself was overseer of the poor and school trustee. Whenever a roof-raising occurred, he knew how to send the children home to look after the chores, that their elders might join in

In the Fog at Campobello.

the merriment. He soon became resident magistrate, and signalized his authority by giving for three years certain wild lands as commons for cattle to those who should belong to the "Church Episcopal Congregation," when formed. The lease was duly signed by himself and by John Farmer, in trust for the people. Such privilege, even if actuated by worldly motives, proved of sacred benefit, for measures were immediately taken to form a Church Association and Corporation, with the proviso that such persons as had decided objections to profess themselves members of the church could by no means become a part of such corporation. The admiral's cattle ranged free in the commons, but on all other licensed and marked cattle were paid the fees which accrued to the benefit of religion,—and large must have been the income thereof,—Owen reading the church services till 1842, when a resident missionary came to live on the island.

The Church, School, and Rectory, at Campobello.

The church having been fairly established and on the way to growth, Admiral Owen became a builder of bridges, letting out the work at the rate of "$1.12½ per man, per day, the day being ten hours of good and conscientious work for man or yoke of oxen."

With all this progress under William Fitz-William, there still remained unlicensed boys who ran wild, who believed in the uncounted wealth of an iron chest buried deep in the woods by smugglers, and gave their help in finding it. If the chest were ever hidden, it disappeared in uncanny fashion; but the cannon on the hill still remained as sentinels, until some boys took them off "for fun" one dark night and hid them in a ship then in Friar's Bay. 'The captain discovered the theft after he had been two or three days at sea. His honesty and Admiral Owen's anger effected their return after a few months; for the vessel had to bear them to the West Indies and there re-ship them, amid kegs of rum, to Campobello. By that time the admiral's indignation had subsided, and he sent his son-in-law to apologize to the grandmother of the boys, whom he had maligned as special emissaries of Satan. The old lady refused to accept any regrets or apologies. Owen became more indignant than ever at her scornful words, and planted the cannon away from the hill overlooking her house, down on the point of land by his own home, and raised the British flag between them. His children and grandchildren played around them. There they stayed, every now and then greeting some English ship of renown, until the Owen family, some ten years ago, went back to England, when the two old brass pieces were sold at auction. One was carried away to Portland Harbor. The other was bought by George Batson, Esq., of Campobello.

The admiral died in 1857, at St. John, New Brunswick, where he had married a second time, and was brought back to the island for burial. His children and his grandchildren stayed in the primitive, ancestral home till 1881, when the island was sold to an American syndicate. As long as any of the Owen family lived there they were beneficent rulers of the people, and maintained a courtly standard of manners and morals, the grace of which lingers among the islanders. Tradition and fact still invest the Owen name with tenderness and homage, as was shown in July, 1890, when the great-grandson of the admiral revisited Campobello. Never has the old cannon belched forth its volume of sound more loudly than it did for Archibald Cochrane, who as a boy had often sat astride of it. A "middy," on board Her Majesty's flagship Bellerophen, he came back to his ancestral estates accompanied by the Metropolitan of Canada, Bishop Medley of Fredericton. The boy's sunny blue eyes and gentle smile recalled his mother's beauty to the old islanders. The Dominion flag and the English flag waved from every ship in port and from the neighboring houses, to welcome him back. As the steamer came in sight, the aged cannon, mounted on four huge logs of wood, gave forth its welcome. Each time the cotton had to be rammed down, and the cannon had to be propped up. Each time the match and the lighted paper were protected by a board held across the breach at arm's length; but the brass piece did its duty, and the people called "well done" to it, as if it had been a resuscitated grandsire. The steamer answered whistle for cannon blast, and the children's laugh was echoed back across the water.

It was dead low tide—and the tide falls twenty feet—when the venerable bishop came up the long flight of steps, slippery and damp with seaweed. Guarded on each side and before and behind, with umbrella in his hand for his walking-stick, the metropolitan of eighty-four years accepted the unneeded protection which Church of England reverence dictated. But as the boy ran quickly up the same steps, there was not a man who did not rush forward to greet him. The band played, while the women crept out from among the piles of lumber and waited for recognition. It came as the boy was led from one to another, bowing low in his shy, frank manner, cap in hand, to the women and girls, who had known him as a child, and shaking hands heartily with all the men, young and old. Away off stood two old ladies, who blessed the morn which had brought back their young master. Up to them he went with pretty timidity, and then boy-like hurried off to look at the cannon. He put his hand on it with a loving touch and a lingering smile, which to the older ones who saw it told of hidden emotion, which perhaps he himself scarcely recognized.

Silence fell as the metropolitan rose from the chair where he had been resting and thanked the people for their greeting to the boy, because of his grandparents. The midshipman's eyes shone as they fell on the faces, lighted up as they had not been for years, to see that the fair, five-year old boy who had left them had grown into the straight-limbed, graceful, manly, modest youth, whose greeting was as unaffectedly frank as their own. After a while midshipman and bishop stole silently away up to the graves of the old admiral and his wife, of the captain grandfather and the cousin, all of whom had been naval heroes. On to the Owen house went the boy and found his old haunts; first, the nursery, then his mother's room, and next his grandmother's; out among the pines to the places where he had played, on to the sun-dial and the quarter-deck; all were revisited, with none of the sadness which comes in middle life, but with the sure joy of a child who has found again his own. He clicked the uncocked pistols of the admiral, and took up the battered, three-cornered hat.

In the afternoon a game of baseball was played in his honor; and never did his great-grandfather watch more eagerly for victory over the pirates than did this descendant watch that the game might be won by the Campobello boys. At evening, in the little English Church, where the bishop blessed the people and told of Lady Owen's deeds of mercy, the boy bent his head over the narrow bookrest, where were holes for the candles which, in his grandfather's day, each parishioner brought along to light the darkness at the hours of service.

The next day the people gathered again at the wharf. The midshipman was a new old friend by this time.

Once more the brass-piece sounded farewell as he crossed the bay. It had been the playmate of his boyhood, his imaginary navy, his cavalry horse, his personal friend. By its side, he had never wanted to rest on chairs or sofas. Once more he turned to look at it as he went down the steps to the water's edge, and waved adieu to those who loved him for his mother's sake, with a fondness and pride, and a sense of personal ownership, unknown in "the States," where ancestry counts for but little.

The old cannon still stands upright in Mr. Batson's store. No one would ever steal it again. No one can ever buy it away. From father to child it will descend, to tell of the English-American feudalism of a hundred years ago, and of the happy, bright boy, who found his father's home turned into a modern hotel.