Taken Prisoner in Queen Anne’s War: Sarah Randall Cole’s
1703 Travail
Sarah Elizabeth Randall: 1661-1713 (Maternal 8th
Great-Grandaunt)
Joseph Cole: 1659-1703
Deborah Marie Madeleine Cole: 1698-1744
Mary Marie Therese Cole: 1701-1761
Sometimes the oldest records I unearth can produce the most
surprising and fascinating stories. While working on my maternal lines
recently, I identified another of my 8th great-grandfathers, Richard
Randall II, born in New Hampshire colony in 1658. I added Richard, his parents,
and his siblings to the family tree. The siblings included a sister named Sarah
Elizabeth Randall, born just three years after Richard in 1661. Following my
usual practice, I looked at the Ancestry hints for Sarah, hoping to pinpoint
her birth and death dates, and the name/s of any spouse/s. That’s when I
noticed an anomaly in the hints: a 1704 baptismal record for an adult Sarah
from a Catholic church in Quecbec! Sarah was born to Protestant English parents
in an English colony. Why would she be converting to Catholicism in Canada? Why
would she be so out of place?
The answers were quite amazing. 1703 was a pivotal year for
Sarah and her family. In 1698 Sarah married a man named Joseph Cole from the
area near Fort Saco in Maine. They were rather old for a first marriage—if
Sarah’s birth date of March 24, 1661 is correct, she was nearly 38 years old,
and Joseph was a year older. The couple started their family quickly. Daughter
Deborah was born the year they married, and daughter Mary was born in 1701. Joseph also had a son from his first marriage, probably named John.
The northernmost English colonial settlements like Saco were
under continuous threat from the late 1600s through the early 1700s, as part of
a proxy war between England and France. The French manipulated the indigenous
tribes in the area, stoking their resentment of the settlers and encouraging
and financing raids on English settlers. The year 1703 saw a renewal of this
conflict. An article on fortwiki.com explains the situation:
“Queen Anne came to
the English throne in 1702 and renewed hostilities with the French. In August
1703 some 500 French & Indians attacked English settlements between Casco
and Wells. The assault at Fort Saco resulted in eleven killed and twenty-four
taken prisoner. In all, one hundred and thirty people were killed and taken
prisoner.”
 |
| Fort Saco, 1699 map |
It appears from the few records I can find that Joseph Cole and
his son were among the settlers killed in the raid, and Sarah was taken
prisoner along with her two little daughters. They were taken to Canada by the Wabanaki
warriors, where they were apparently ransomed by a French landowner, Pierre
Boucher, sieur de Boucherville. Sarah became his servant.
Sarah’s young daughters were given new French names and were
baptized into the Catholic faith just months after their capture. Deborah’s
baptismal record is below. The translation is as follows:
“The same day 8th of December of 1703 was baptised by me
priest Marie Madeleine (also named Deborah) (Coal) Cole English born at (?) in
New England on the 7th of October 1698 from the marriage of late Joseph Coal
English protestant from Sackow and Sarah Sara Randal kidnapped from said place
of Sackow on the 21st of August of this year and brought with her children to
Canada.”
As we see in the record, Deborah is now called Marie
Madeleine Cole. Little Mary becomes Marie Therese. The baptism records and
prisoner lists were compiled and translated in Emma Coleman’s book cited below.
Sarah was pregnant at the time of her capture, and on January
29, 1704 she gave birth to another daughter she named Priscilla. The baby was
baptized on the day of her birth. Priscilla did not survive, apparently dying
shortly after birth.
Sarah finally agreed to be baptized into the Catholic faith
some months later. Her baptism record bears the date April 27, 1704, and notes
her maiden name, Randall (although it was misspelled by the priest), her
marriage to Joseph Cole, and that she was “inhabitant of Saco in New England,
taken the 22 Aug. 1703, living in the service of Mr. Boucher…”
Unlike the records for her daughters, the record notes Sarah
“has made abjuration of heresy”, which implies she had to publicly renounce her
own faith. The other important thing to note is in regard to the witnesses to
the baptism:
“Her Godfather was Monsieur de la Perriere, son of Mr
Boucher and officer in the troops…”
I question whether Sarah’s conversion to the Catholic faith
was voluntary. The presence of her master’s son, possibly in his military
uniform, implies the threat of force. She was totally at the mercy of the
Boucher family, forced to work for them after they “ransomed” her—basically she
was purchased by them and was seen as little more than property.
 |
| Pierre Boucher |
The Coleman book notes that Sarah and her two daughters were
listed on the French government’s “Roll of 1710/11” as prisoners in Canada, so
they were still being held by the Boucher family seven years after their
baptisms.
The colonial governments continued to negotiate with the
Quebec government, trying to broker returns of prisoners. At some point
following the 1710 Roll, Sarah was offered the chance to return to the
English-held colonies. The records claim her daughters “chose” to remain in
Canada, but I question how much choice was involved. Both girls were minors,
who had spent most of their childhood with the Boucher family, speaking French.
They likely had no memory of their lives back in Maine. They no longer even had
their birth names. They had basically been absorbed into French society.
Accounts by other female prisoners who returned to the New
England colonies after captivity in Canada reported they were told that while
they could return to their homeland, their children could not. They had two
choices: give up their rights to their own children and return to the English
colonies alone, or to remain in Canada if they wanted to stay with their
children. This was a cruel, brutal choice. Sarah’s life in the Boucher
household must have been absolutely miserable to have induced her to abandon
her children.
But abandon them she did. Her husband dead and their Saco
home probably burned by the Wabanaki, Sarah did not return to Maine. Instead
she moved to Beverly, Massachusetts early in 1710, which is where her sister
Priscilla had settled with her husband William Preston or Presbury. Sarah
quickly entered into a marriage contract with a Beverly widower, Captain Thomas
West, on March 29 1710. Two months later, on May 25, 1710, the pair were married
by a Robert Hale, Esq. These records appear in the Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 database
cited below.
Sarah was widowed again when Captain West died in 1723.
Sarah and her sister Priscilla Presbury transferred land still owned by their
father in 1727. The Genealogical Dictionary cited below states,
“In 1727 Sarah West and Priscilla Presbury of Bev., widows, ch. And only heirs
of Richard Randall late of Cape Porpus, deeded a Cape P. town gr. Of 1681-2 to
Edward and Stephen Presbury of Newbury, shipwrights.”
Cape Porpus (or Cape Porpoise) was in Maine near Saco, where
Sarah lived with first husband Joseph Cole until the Wabanaki attack in 1703. Edward
and Stephen Presbury were two of Priscilla’s several sons, so Sarah’s nephews.
This land transfer was the last record I was able to find
for Sarah Randall Cole West. It is believed she died the same year as the land
transfer, but I have been unable to confirm this.
As for the daughters Sarah was forced to leave behind in
Canada, both were made French citizens just months after Sarah returned to New
England. The girls were only 12 and 10 years of age, so hardly able to make such
a decision for themselves.
 |
| Boucherville in 1724 |
Quebec notarial records cited below show they both married
Frenchmen from the Boucherville area. Marie Therese, born Mary Cole, married
Pierre Rougeau, son of Jean Batiste Rougeau (also Berger) on January 16, 1716.
She was 16 years old and Pierre was 21. Marie Madeleine, formerly Deborah Cole,
married Simon Seguin dit Laderoute on November 10, 1715. She was only 17, while
her husband was 31. Once again, I wonder whether she had any say about her
fate. The Boucherville records include the baptism records of Mary and Deborah’s
children; each woman had several offspring. I wonder if Sarah’s daughters were
ever able to communicate with their mother after she returned to New England,
or if even letters were forbidden between the warring colonies.
I am so grateful that I happened to notice a record that
seemed out of place, prompting me to research the tragic life of Sarah
Elizabeth Randall more thoroughly. Sarah and her daughters must have always
felt “out of place”—the trauma of 1703 must have haunted their lives, both in
Canada and back in New England.
Sources:
http://www.fortwiki.com/Fort_Saco
Ancestry.com. Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and
New Hampshire [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com
Operations Inc, 2007.
Original data:Libby, Charles Thornton. Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New
Hampshire. Portland, ME, USA: The Southward Press, 1928.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne%27s_War
New England
Captives Carried to Canada Between 1677 and 1760 During the French and Indian
Wars, Emma Lewis Coleman. Southworth
Press, Portand, Maine. 1928. Accessed via google.com/books.
Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital
Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com
Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data:Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and
Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).
Quebec Notarial Records: Bibliothèque
Et Archives Nationales Du Québec; Montréal, Quebec, Canada; Collection:
Fonds Cour Supérieure. District Judiciaire De Montréal. Cote Cn601. Greffes De
Notaires, 1648-1967.; District: Montreal; Title: Labeaume, Marien Tailhandier
(1699-1730)
