254 History of Hingham. 



The peace was, at least in America, more nominal than real, 

 and the usual encroachments of each party upon the claimed 

 possessions of the other, with all the attendant barbarities of 

 border war, recommenced almost with the signing of the treaty. 

 Nevertheless, the fifty years' conflict between the civilization and 

 aims of the Saxon and the civilization and aims of the Latin 

 was drawing to its close, and the year 1754 saw the beginning of 

 the end. In the South its first notes were heard in the conflict 

 between the Virginians under Washington and the French on the 

 Ohio ; in the North the real signal was the march of an army of 

 eight hundred Massachusetts men, under Gen. John Winslow, to 

 secure by forts the passes from Quebec to New England, although 

 negotiations were carried on between France and England even 

 months later for an amicable settlement of all disputes between 

 them. General Winslow fortified several places on or near the 

 Kennebec. In his regiment, in Capt. John Lane's company, were 

 Sergeant Elijah Cushing, Ephraim Hall, and Isaac Larrabee, of 

 Hingham. 



Engaged in this same expedition probably, was the sloop 

 " Mermaid," of eighty -live tons, of which Samuel Lincoln was 

 master, Samuel Johnson mate, and Charles Clapp and James 

 White were sailors. Clapp's residence is unknown. The others, 

 as well as the sloop, undoubtedly belonged in Hingham. Samuel 

 Lincoln was styled Captain in later life. 



In the spring of the following year, negotiations having been 

 broken off in December, troops and transports began to arrive 

 from England, and in April Shirley and the other colonial gov- 

 ernors met Braddock in consultation. The events which fol- 

 lowed can be scarcely more than named. Parkman, in his 

 " Montcalm and Wolfe," has related them with a charm and 

 grace which give to the hard facts of history the enchantment 

 of romance. 



Yet with many, perhaps nearly all, of the occurrences in 

 the North and East, Hingham was so closely and intimately 

 connected, through the very large number of her sons Avho 

 participated in them, that some brief explanations, expanding 

 occasionally into narrative of what has elsewhere been better 

 told, may be allowable here. If the rolls of participants in the 

 first taking of Louisburg were incomplete, and the numbers 

 serving from this town were apparently meagre, the fulness of 

 the former and the length of names making up the latter, which 

 are to be found in the Commonwealth's papers, at once sur- 

 prise and gratify, although the task of eliminating repetitions 

 in the different returns, and crediting the men properly to the 

 places to which they belonged, is extremely difficult. After the 

 death of General Braddock, Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, 

 became for the time the commander of the British forces in 

 America, and among the several expeditions planned by him was 



