“Died leaving a memory respected”

In the fall of 1845, as I described yesterday, New Hampshire newspapers published a pair of articles printing Cochran family lore, particularly the story of young James Cochran’s brief and bloody captivity by Natives.

Neither article named its source, but both contained clues.

The first, published in the Exeter News-Letter, described a daughter of James Cochran this way:

well remembered by many of the surviving inhabitants of Derry and Londonderry. She is particularly recollected as a “maiden lady,” highly celebrated as a beauty and a wit, when at an age she was not averse to own, and even delicate and shrewd when far advanced in the “sear and yellow leaf.” Her tongue was a two edged sword, and woe to him who recklessly called forth its exercise. She was for many years a distinguished Mistress of the rod and ferule and died leaving a memory respected, and was gathered to her fathers—for, husband, ”she ne’er had ony.”

I take that as a hint that the writer “G.” had personally known this woman as a schoolteacher (“Mistress of the rod and ferule”). He may well have heard the family stories from her but didn’t write them down until after her death and thus had no way of assaying this ”tradition.”

In contrast, the editors of the Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics dropped that character sketch entirely from their version. Perhaps it didn’t sit right with their new source: a living granddaughter of James Cochran through his son John, and thus a niece of the teacher.

That granddaughter said she had known her grandfather in his old age:

Capt. James Cochran removed to St. Johns, New-Brunswick, where he closed his life in 1795, at 84 years of age. This lady was with him several years, watched over him in his declining years, and attended his dying bed. She says, he never used to speak of the Indian adventure with exultation. The anniversary of that day he ever observed with a melancholy, grateful feeling—regarding it as a merciful providence, than as an achievement of personal heroism.

Thus, she might have heard James Cochran’s story of captivity and escape from the man himself, decades later.

However, instead of getting that granddaughter to tell the story as she had heard it, the Portsmouth Journal mostly reprinted the earlier article, now with her endorsement. The second version includes a little more detail about James getting out of his bonds and his canoe sinking, but that’s it. Otherwise, the second account is a word-for-word replication of the first.

We’re thus presented with a story that appears to be one remove from James Cochran (James —> granddaughter), but was actually in some respects multiple steps away (James —> daughter —> “G.” —> granddaughter?).

The Portsmouth Journal also ran an expanded version of the Exeter News-Letter’s anecdote about James Cochran’s son at Fort William and Mary. It offered important corrections like:

• That man was John Cochran, not a second James.
• He “was a cousin and not the father, as has been stated, of Lord Admiral Cochran.”

(That had to be a distant cousinage at best.)

Nonetheless, the second telling once again adopted some sentences word for word from the first. John Cochran’s daughter told her own story in part through the voice of “G.,” whom she had apparently never met.

TOMORROW: Those anecdotes from the fort.

(The picture above, courtesy of Find a Grave, shows a stone in East Derry, New Hampshire, carved “In Memory of James Cochran…,” who died in 1795 “in ye. 85th. year.” Given the granddaughter’s description of his death in St. John, this would be a cenotaph, not a gravestone.)

“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.)

“An Act to Authorise Sarah Cochran…”

As I wrote back here, John Cochran died in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1790.

Though he’d been in ill health for years, he didn’t leave a will, and the probate court appointed his widow Sarah to administer his estate.

Back in 1779 the New Hampshire legislature had passed a law empowering the state to confiscate John Cochran’s property and sell it to defray the costs of the ongoing war.

However, the 1783 Treaty of Paris urged states to repeal such laws and allow Loyalists to return. Some Americans objected to that provision. It took until 1786 for any state to follow that path, but New Hampshire was the first.

Thus, when John Cochran died, his estate included some property he’d left behind in New Hampshire, apparently unsold. Sarah petitioned to be able to sell that land.

On 20 June 1793, the state assembly, still meeting in Portsmouth, passed a law authorizing her to do so:

Whereas Sarah Cochran of Saint-Johns in the Province of New Brunswick in British America, hath petitioned the general Court, representing that she is Administratrix of the estate of her late husband John Cochran of said Saint Johns decd., that she hath taken out letters of Licence from the Judge of probate of wills & within the aforesaid Province To sell and convey all the Estate of said decd., more especially a certain tract of land, situate in said Londonderry Wherefore she prayed that she might be enabled to make and execute, by herself or her Agent, duly appointed a good and valid deed of the land aforesaid in said Londonderry — The prayer of which petition appearing reasonable.

Therefore be it enacted by the Senate and house of Representatives in General Court convened, that the said Sarah Cochran, be and she hereby is authorised and impowered to sell, and make and execute by herself or her Agent duly appointed a good and valid deed of the lands aforesaid, situate in said Londonderry, she the said Sarah or her Agent giving bonds with sufficient surety to the Judge of probate for the County of Rockingham, to account to the said Judge for the money arising on such sale, or to the creditors of said deceased or his heirs when they shall arive to full age or otherwise to such person or persons, to whom of right it may belong.

That’s the last trace of John or Sarah Cochran that I’ve found. Of course, it’s likely that Canadian sources that I’m unfamiliar with have more to say.

John’s father James evidently moved to St. John, New Brunswick, to be with that part of the family. He died there in 1794, aged eighty-four.

TOMORROW: The child who came back.

The Cochrans of New Hampshire

The Cochran family came to New England from northern Ireland. They settled in towns named to attract such migrants: Belfast in what would be Maine and Londonderry in New Hampshire.

At least that’s according to a family history recorded in Lorenzo Sabine’s American Loyalists, based on the account of a daughter of John and Sarah Cochran living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1845.

However, some details of that account don’t match what contemporaneous documents tell us about the confrontations over Fort William and Mary in 1774 and 1775. That daughter might have been too young to grasp the details and chronology.

It’s also not clear how the daughter (never named, alas) came to be in Portsmouth when her parents had moved with four of their children to New Brunswick, Canada, in 1783.

Multiple Cochran households settled in the region in the early 1700s. Leonard A. Morrison’s History of Windham in New Hampshire (1883) has an extensive genealogy for one family, but focuses on descendants that remained in the U.S. of A. The Cochrans I’m interested in may have been related, and they certainly used the same common given names, but I have no hope of sorting them all out.

The best I can say is that it looks like John’s father James was born in Ireland about 1710 and made the trip across the Atlantic. John was born in America in 1730. He went to sea for some years. The New-Hampshire Gazette reported a captain of his name in charge of the Berwick in 1762, the Onondaga in 1763, and the Londonderry in 1769 and 1770.

John Cochran then returned to the family farm in Londonderry. His wife Sarah and their children lived there—possibly as part of an extended clan. They ultimately held deeds for well over a hundred acres of land.

In 1770 John accepted the post of commander of Fort William and Mary from Gov. John Wentworth, which took him back to the sea—or at least to an island in Portsmouth harbor. On St. John’s Day in 1771 and 1774, Brother Cochran hosted a Freemasons’ dinner at the fort.

As I recounted here, John and Sarah were in the fort on the afternoon of 14 Dec 1774 when John Langdon led in a militia force that took away all but one barrel of gunpowder.

James Cochran joined his son at the fort, perhaps brought by news of that confrontation. He was still there the next night when John Sullivan, recently returned from the First Continental Congress, showed up with more militiamen to collect artillery pieces and ordnance.

According to Gov. Wentworth, the older Cochran laid into Sullivan:

The honest, brave old Man stop’d him short, call’d him and his numerous party perjur’d Traitors & Cowards, That his Son the Capt. Shou’d fight them two at a time thro their whole multitude, or that He would with his own hands put him to death in their presence, Which the Son readily assented to, but none among them wou’d take up the challenge, relying on and availing themselves of their numbers to do a mischief which they never wou’d have effected by Bravery.

Sullivan had been struggling all day to figure out how to handle this event, pushed by more radical militiamen while trying not to go too far in defying the king. He probably didn’t care to hear James Cochran’s opinion.

But the New Hampshire forces left the Cochrans alone. John continued to command the fort, soon protected and probably rearmed by the Royal Navy. Sarah and their children, and probably James, continued to farm in Londonderry, even as war began down in Massachusetts.

On 23 Aug 1775, as I said yesterday, Gov. Wentworth and John Cochran sailed away from Fort William and Mary for Boston. That left Sarah and the children behind. And the environment had changed.

TOMORROW: Cochrans on the move.