266 History of Hingham. 



the point of abandoning the expedition. Colonel Bradstreet, how- 

 ever, opened the way for the array and it reluctantly followed his 

 lead. In the mean time Montcalm, on the seventh, threw up a 

 wonderfully strong defence, and here with thirty-six hundred men 

 he awaited the English. At one o'clock on the eighth the attack 

 commenced. At half-past seven the French general had won his 

 great victory, and the British army, after losing two thousand men, 

 was in full retreat, covered by the provincials. In this disastrous 

 attempt Captain Ward's company probably participated, as Colonel 

 Lincoln mentions a number of men as engaged at Lake George 

 whose names occur on the above roll. He speaks also of William 

 Russ as a soldier of his regiment on the same service. 



After the defeat Abercromby reoccupied and refortified the 

 camp which he had left but a few days previously. Colonel Brad- 

 street obtained, after much persuasion, three thousand men, mostly 

 provincials, and with these and a small number of Oneidas he 

 embarked, August the twenty-second, in his fleet of whaleboats 

 and pushed out onto Lake Ontario. His destination was Fort 

 Frontenac, and as Thomas Burr, who was in this expedition, says 

 in his diary, the troops came in sight of the French works on the 

 twenty-fifth., and landed about dusk, and to quote the diary, 

 "pitched against the fort " on the twenty-sixth. The next day 

 the garrison surrendered, together with nine armed vessels and a 

 large amount of stores and ammunition. 



Forming a part of Colonel Bradstreet's command, and partici- 

 pating in his triumph was Captain Ward's company of Hingham 

 men, — if indeed, the whole of Colonel Williams' regiment was not 

 in the expedition. Subsequently many of them were at the Great 

 Carrying Place. This latter was the name of a post upon the 

 Mohawk, then being fortified by General Stanwix, with whom 

 Bradstreet left a thousand men on his return from his victory. 

 Among them were Beza dishing, Noah Humphrey, John Neal, 

 Isaac Gross, Isaac Smith. James Hay ward. David Tower, Jona- 

 than Farrow. Townsend Smith, Joseph Carrel, Robert Dunbar, 

 Solo. Whiten, William Garnett, and Thomas Lothrop. Not pre- 

 viously named, but at Frontenac, in addition to others, were Ralph 

 Hassell, and John Sprague : they would seem to have enlisted in 

 other companies in Colonel Williams' regiment. 



May 4, 1750, Gov. Thomas Pownall sailed from Boston with 

 a regiment commanded by himself, and constructed a fort 

 upon the Penobscot. Among Colonel Pownall's captains was 

 Jotham Gay, with a company from Hingham. Captain Gay's 

 company seems however to have been sent to Halifax somewhat 

 earlier, and a return sworn to by him indicates that it formed 

 part of the garrison of that post from March until November of 

 that year. Capt. Jotham Gay was born in Hingham, April 11, 

 1733, and as already seen, was in the king's service from 1755 

 until near the close of the last French war. Subsequently he was 

 a colonel in the Continental army, and a representative from 



