1884-]
��Lancaster in Acadie and the Acadiens in Lancaster.
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��First sealing it before you deliver it. The Council being informed that I had a Letter from you upon the subject of these Hardships of the Soldiers desired me to communicate it to them, which I did. What they will do upon it I know not.
" Octobr 31, 1755. To Abijah Willard."
" Boston, Oct. 31, 1755
" Sir : I have lately rec*^ a Letter from my Kinsman Cpt. Abijah Willard expressing his tender concern for his soldiers who are exposed to ly in Tents in this cold season now coming on and their cloath now worn out. I would fain use any Interest I could make that may contribute to the Relief of these and other the Provincial soldiers in Nova Scotia in the like circumstances, but I am a perfect stranger both to Governor Lawrence & Coll. Monkton. But the acquaintance I have of you & my knowledge of your compassionate •spirit, especially towards the soldiers under your command in like circum- stances, urges me to write to you on this occasion (not from any Distrust I have of your care in these matters, but possibly as your Distance from the Place where this Company is quartered may keep you in some Ignorance of the Difficulties these poor men labour under) to desire you would interpose your best offices for their Relief. It seems that these men can be of little service in act of Duty required of them while they are so destitute of the necessary Comforts & Refreshments of Life. You will excuse this Free- dom. With my earnest desires of the gracious Presence of God with you & particularly to prosper your enterprises for the Good of your nation & Countrey I am. Sir, Your very humble servt,
" JosiAH Willard."
��This was not Captain Willard's first experience of Nova Scotia, nor was it to be his last. Ten years before he enlisted in the expedition against Louis- burg, being first lieutenant of Captain Joshua Pierce's company, in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, of which his father, Samuel Willard, was colonel. He was there promoted to a captaincy, July 31, 1745, three days after his twenty-first birthday. Little more than twenty years had passed from the time when he had assisted in forcing the broken-hearted Acadien farmers into exile, and again he sailed for Nova Scotia, himself a fugitive, proscribed as a Tory, his ample estate confiscated, and his name a reproach among his life-long neighbors. As thousands of French Neutrals from Georgia lo Mas- sachusetts Bay sighed away their lives with grieving for their lost Acadie, so we know Abijah Willard, so long as he lived, looked westward with yearning heart toward that elm-shaded home so famihar to all Lancastrians. On the coast of the Bay of Fundy, not far west of St. John, is a locality yet called Lancaster. Colonel Abijah Willard gave it the name. It was his retreat in exile, and there he died in 1789.
Of the thousand Acadiens appor- tioned to the Province of Massachusetts, the committee appointed by General Court for the duty of distributing them among the several towns, sent three families, consisting of twenty persons, to Lancaster, These were Benoni Melanson, his wife Mary, and children, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, John, Bezaleel, " Carre," and another daughter not named ; Geoffroy Benway, Abigail, his wife, and children, John, Peter, Joseph, and Mary ; Theal Forre, his wife Abi- gail, and children, Mary, Abigail, Mar- garet. The Forre family were soon
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