Secord, Mary (Beebe, Pearson)

  • From: https://thehistorysleuth.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/in-search-of-mary-secord-beebe/
  • Wiki Biography:
    • Mary Secord Beebe was an ordinary woman who could neither read nor write, she embodies the migrations, violence, and upheaval that characterized colonial Canada. Living to be at least 100 years old, she survived three husbands, a multitude of epidemics, the American Revolution, a land-dispute war, a wilderness march with six children under fifteen, refugee camp, and resettlement. This is her story.
    • The Beebes appear to have made an early choice to remain loyal to the Crown. Records from April 1777 show Joshua and his sixteen-year-old son Adin enlisting in Butler’s Rangers, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Butler, and by June, father and son were drawing four shillings a day army pay.
    • In May 1777, Sir Guy Carleton, governor at Quebec, eager to maintain the allegiance of the Six Nations, ordered the invasion of the colony of New York where settlers were burning Mohawk villages and taking the land. In August, the rangers left their headquarters in Niagara in pairs – one ranger and one Indian scout – surprising rebel troops at Fort Stanwix, east of present-day Syracuse, anddecimating their army.
    • Two months later, Britain’s fortunes plunged. General John Burgoyne, marching south from Quebec to sever New England from the other colonies, was forced to surrender.
    • Though rebel persecution escalated and many settlers were captured or driven from their homes in the winter of 1778, Mary appears not to have left her Wyoming Valley home until the late spring of that year. Her United Empire Loyalist land claim states “corn, turnups [sic], potatoes and wheat” were left in the field – crops ready for harvest in late May or June. She left behind: 300 acors of land on grants but not paid for; 9 acors cleared and fenced with logg house 43; stable, 2 large corn cribs; 2 cows and 2 heffers; 10 hogs large and small; 20 pound lining yarn; 1 crop of flax flock 1 acor; all the crop left on the ground wheat, corn potatoes and turnups; plow irons 2 logg chains sett Iron torcien; 1 ax 4 haws hand saw 1 Atchet 2 iron potts; 1 tramil pails tubs and other furniture; 1 rifle copper tea kettle; 1 large dish basin and tin plates; 2 pewter tea potts; hooking yarn; churn.
    • Fighting in the Susquehanna intensified. The 1871 letter suggests the same, describing the Beebes “on there march up the river on there way to Canada. But Joshua Sr. was not heading to New York as the letter suggests. On July 2, the Rangers descended the Susquehanna in boats and rafts, landing a few miles above Forty Fort, at Wyoming, where a major rebel force was holding out. After a fierce battle, the rebels surrendered. It wasn’t until three months later that Joshua was on his way to New York. There he died of smallpox while carrying a message.
    • Meanwhile the family would have headed to Niagara, along with hundreds of other refugees. It was a terrible year. British supply ships were blocked on the lake – only one got through in November – and the refugees were starving. A pitiful corn harvest provided no relief, and a group left for refugee camps near Montreal to reduce consumption at the fort, most likely Mary among them. It was a good thing – conditions at the fort worsened. The winter of 1779-80 was one of the coldest on record.
    • The next evidence of Mary is in 1781 at the Machiche refugee camp, near Trois Rivieres north of Montreal. She married Christopher Pearson, the camp rations officer and former Susquehannan eighbour, had her children baptized, and, over the five or six years there, grew in reputation as an excellent midwife and seamstress, helping to supplement her family income.
    • But by 1783, Machiche was so crowded that Sir Frederick Haldimand, governor of Quebec, put a notice in the Quebec Gazette offering free land in Gaspé and passage for Loyalistsettlers. About four hundred people answered the advertisement, including Mary. In June 1784, she, Christopher and six of her children sailed for Chaleur Bay, eventually settling on land near New Carlisle.
  • United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=480
  • Find A Grave: Cannot locate