Praught, Frederick

From: An Island Refuge- Loyalists and Disbanded Troops on The Island of Saint John, The Abegweit Branch of UELAC, 1983

  • FREDERICK PRAUGHT came to the Island of Saint John, in the spring of 1782 as a soldier, a private, in James Rogers’ King’s Rangers First Battalion. The troop was posted to the Island of Saint John in March, 1782 under the command of Captain Samuel Hayden to relieve Major Hierlihy’s troop, that had guarded the Island since 1778 against American privateer at- tacks during the American Revolution.
  • Fred’s troop had been raised mainly from settlers in the New England States who were sympathetic to the British, and in a 1785 land grant registration Fred is referred to as from Monmouth County, New Jersey. In the June, 1784 Muster Roll of his troop taken on the Island, Fred had a wife and two children under age ten and his name was spelled Prout. Fred was of German ancestry, and family tradition gives surname spelling Pracht mean- ing “splendid”. However, in his land grant Fred’s surname is spelled as to- day, Praught.
  • As a Loyalist soldier, Fred was granted one hundred acres by Gover- nor Patterson on Lot 50 between Lieutenant John Throckmorton and En- sign Joseph Beers in the area that became known as Cherry Valley. A few years later, in 1788, Fred traded this land grant for another nearby, beside Joseph Beers. Fred prospered as a farmer and in 1794-95 made transactions with Beers and Throckmorton to add one hundred and fifty acres to his farm. Finally, in 1801 he purchased two hundred acres in Pownal and relocated there, allegedly because his relatively younger wife, Susannah Wagner, wanted to be close to the Jenkins, also of German ancestry. The Cherry Valley property was sold to David Irving and his son William, and in more recent times was known as the “old Irving place”.