“What is all history but facts or falsehood”?

On 8 Sept 1845, the Exeter (New Hampshire) News-Letter and Rockingham Advertiser published an item signed “G.” and dated one week earlier.

Titled “Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction,” it told the story of how at age fourteen “Captain James Cochran” was captured by a Native couple, killed and scalped them, and returned to his family’s settlement on the Penobscot frontier.

The first two paragraphs and the last of this article were all about whether people should believe this story. “I have it only by tradition,” the writer said at the start before concluding, “But what is all history but facts or falsehood, having, at a time, a legendary existence?”

That article also made two claims about James Cochran’s descendants:

• His “second son, James,” was a ship captain, put in “command of the fort in Portsmouth harbor,” and “made prisoners of war by a company of volunteers under the command of John Sullivan” on “The day after the battle of Lexington.” 
• One of that man’s sons was “now high in office and renown in the British Navy, adorning the title of—Lord Admiral Cochran.”

The first item was obviously a garbled version of the story of John Cochran, commander of Fort William and Mary, as I’ve explored it this past week.

The second might be a wishful reference to Adm. Thomas Cochrane or Adm. Thomas John Cochrane, neither of whom had any discernible family connection to the New Hampshire Loyalist John Cochran.

Two months later, on 8 Nov 1845, the Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics published a new version of the tale:

ADVENTURE OF CAPT. JAMES COCHRAN.
“Truth Stranger Than Fiction.”

This newspaper assured its readers:

The statements published we have submitted to a daughter of Capt. John Cochran, who is a resident of Portsmouth, and we are enabled from these traditions, and from conversation with that lady, to present a more full account of the historical incidents of the family, which may be relied upon as accurate.

Unfortunately, this newspaper didn’t name that woman or say how she had come to live in Portsmouth seventy years after her father had been driven away. I haven’t found other mentions of her.

TOMORROW: The daughter’s story.

(The picture above shows Adm. Sir Alexander Inglis Cochrane, father of Adm. Thomas John Cochrane and uncle of Adm. Thomas Cochrane as well as brother-in-law of Maj. John Pitcairn. Born in 1758, this man served in the navy during the American War for Independence. That we can rely on.)