22 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



be returned in exchange. * On July 4, the ship Carlton reported the 

 arrival of a flag of truce with families at Crown Point. The group 

 comprised twenty-five persons and was taken to St. Johns, f A month 

 later, other families received on board the Trumbull were sent in. X 

 The Quebec authorities now ordered the families and prisoners of the 

 enemy, detained in Montreal and other posts, to be assembled at St. 

 Johns for deportation to Skenesborough under Major Fay and Wil- 

 liam Marsh. It required six batteaux to carry Marsh's contingent of 

 one hundred and seventeen people, old and young, and he returned, 

 on September 14, with one hundred and thirteen in exchange, be- 

 longing to twenty-three loyalist families, eight being men, twenty- 

 three women, and eighty-two children.* Early in October, the Trum- 

 bull was dispatched to Crown Point to fetch in the Rev, John Stuart, 

 who was waiting there under a flag of truce with fourteen women and 

 thirty-nine children.^ At the end of May, 1783, two groups of fami- 

 lies were sent to St. Johns, one under a flag from New York State, 

 the other under similar protection from Vermont. It was officially 

 reported at the same time that ''about 200 more" were already 

 assembled at Skenesborough awaiting conveyance and that others 

 were "expected ever}^ day." ^ In the following November, Dr. George 

 Smyth and Mr. Man went to the States with a number of families and 

 prisoners for exchange, and the latter is known to have returned with 

 some.'' 



It would be easy to supplement the above list with many other in- 

 stances, but a sufficient number has been cited to indicate the frequency 

 of recourse to flags of truce along the shores of Lake Champlain, and 

 the facility thus afforded to loyalist families to reunite in the land of 

 their refuge. It is no exaggeration to say that these fatherless groups 

 took full advantage of their opportunities in the open season during the 

 greater part of the Revolution, flocking in like parties of summer ex- 

 cursionists, and sometimes braving the severities of a northern winter 

 in their eagerness to leave behind the land of their sorrows and fears 

 and reach the goal of safety and loyalty, where fugitive or exiled kin-, 

 dred were already awaiting them. 



However the white flag was not the only means of rescuing loyalists 

 from their land of bondage. Governor Haldimand ordered incursions 

 of the Mohawk Valley with the definite purpose of affording such persons 



*Can. Arch., 1887, 364. 



tibid., 1887, 499. 



jibid., 500. 



* Ibid., 322, 334, 502, 335, 360, 361. 



* Ibid., 503, 362; 1888, 808. 

 «Ibid., 1887, 506. 

 Mbid., .509. 



