Settling The Prisoners

1780 Map Held At The LOC

EXTRACT: General Frederick Halimand To Lieutenant Mason Bolton

Quebec 29 August 1780

In regard to settling the prisoners from the Ohio at Detroit, it is so favourable to my determined scheme for agriculture (much approved and strongly recommended from home) that it must be encouraged, but at the same time I should think it unsafe to permit so many of them to remain together, and perhaps impolitic with the Indians who are naturally jealous and suspicious, and should any bad consequences result from settling those people on their lands they will attribute it to design. I therefore wish to have them divided between Detroit, Niagara, and Carleton Island. At Niagara, you will dispose of as many as the situation will admit of, and send the rest to Carleton Island. And as the season will be too far advanced for them to build after their arrival, you would do well, with the assistance of Colonel Butler, to choose proper situations and have log houses erected for them by the Rangers, and whatever men you may occasionally be able to spare from the Garrison...all of them who are artificers should be employed and reasonable pay allowed them.

British Library. Sloane and Additional Manuscripts, Add MSS 21764, Letters to Officers Commanding at Niagara, 1777-1783; National Archives of Canada, Haldimand Collection, microfilm reel number A-682.

In August of 1781 my ancestor, William Roark, was a prisoner "from the Ohio" who was marched to Canada. An excerpt from his Revolutionary War pension application explained his experience as a POW, from his capture at the site of Lochry's Defeat to his discharge on parole in New York:

"...the Ohio river where we were to join Gen. Clark, but he had gone on down the river."

"The general intention was to go to the falls of the Ohio, to get a reinforcement from the Kentucky settlements thence to proceed against the Indian towns.  We started under Col. Lochry or Laughery and had nearly overtaken Gen'l Clark, but got defeated by the Indians in June or July [August] about ten miles below the Big Miami as it was said, some said it was further.  All were killed but forty-seven who were taken prisoners among which I was also taken.  The Indians took us to their town and after some time we were taken to Detroit.  From Detroit we were taken to Canada and confined about forty miles from Montreal where we were kept ten months or upward.  Then we heard of the surrender of Cornwallis at York.  Then under British orders we were taken to Quebec and put on board of a ship and taken to New York where we were discharged on parole (17th March 1783) for there was not prisoners to exchange for us."