A Last Word on Basile Boudrot

Whenever I recount a story at length, I like to add some new sources, connections, or interpretations. I don’t want to just repeat what other writers have said.

But when I started researching suspected murderer Basile Boudrot, I couldn’t find that sort of material. I felt so stymied that I thought I’d have to confine the story to my Ko-fi updates, where I’ve started to share loose ends and research in progress. 

Ultimately, I spotted enough sources to fill the past several postings. But like everyone else who’s written about this case, I hit a brick wall in August 1776, when the Continental Congress voted to send Boudrot to Massachusetts.

As my closing thoughts, I’ll offer this scenario for how the sources fit together. Bear in mind that this is only one possible reconstruction, perhaps tinged by a fiction writer’s search for plot twists, liable to be upended with a single new document. But here goes.

February 1772: Capt. Thomas Parsons and his eight-man crew sail a schooner (name unknown) out of Newburyport, headed for the Caribbean.

March 1772: Parsons’s ship founders in a storm that blows a lot of vessels north. Meanwhile, Basile Boudrot boards a ship in France, heading to Nova Scotia. Along the way he opens a letter from his relative Marguerite Landry to the D’Entremont family, describing where their relatives hid money as the British expelled Acadians almost twenty years before.

April 1772: Boudrot reaches Nova Scotia and registers for his land grant on St. Marys Bay. But first he follows the directions in the Landry letter and unearths “1004 pieces of money.” Meanwhile, people in Newburyport worry about Thomas Parsons’s ship; no one reports seeing it in the Caribbean.

May 1772: Boudrot visits the D’Entremonts in Pubnico, assuring them that Marguerite Landry and her family are in good circumstances in France. Then he takes off for the province of Canada, abandoning his land since he’s already found a fortune with much less work. Benoni d’Entremont gets suspicious and writes to Landry in Cherbourg.

Summer 1772: The D’Entremonts ask questions in Nova Scotia about Boudrot. Passing ship captains from Massachusetts, including Hector McNeill, ask questions about the missing schooner. Locals talk about Basile Boudrot suddenly having a lot of money and no good explanation for it.

Fall 1772: Folks in Newburyport piece together information and conclude that Basile Boudrot was behind the disappearance of Parsons’s schooner, that he got suddenly rich from plundering that ship after killing all its crew.

Spring 1773: Marguerite Landry writes to the D’Entremonts from Cherbourg, describing the buried money and reporting that French sea captains have spotted Basile Boudrot in North America. In Massachusetts, the Parsons family presses for an inquiry into the alleged attack on the schooner.

Late 1773: Basile Boudrot has spent through most of his windfall. He picks up whispers that the D’Entremonts and Yankee mariners are all hunting him. He adopts the alias “Dugan” to work on ships around Montréal, Lake Champlain, and points west.

Fall 1775: Americans invade Canada, besieging Québec. Massachusetts mariners Hector McNeill and William Farris leave the city and go to work for the Continental Army.

Spring 1776: As the Continentals withdraw to Montréal, McNeill spots “Dugan” working on another supply ship. McNeill identifies this man as Basile Boudrot and demands his arrest.

Summer 1776: The Continental Army holds Boudrot prisoner in New York City until the Congress endorses Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons’s plan to send him to Massachusetts to stand trial.

Fall 1776: Soon after Boudrot reaches Massachusetts, the authorities realize the accusation against him doesn’t hold water: he wasn’t even in North America when Thomas Parsons’s ship disappeared. Out of embarrassment, they drop the case and never mention it again. People in Newburyport persist in believing that Nova Scotians plundered the schooner. Basile Boudrot disappears once more.

[The photograph above shows Smuggler’s Cove park on St. Marys Bay, Nova Scotia. Nothing says “law-abiding maritime community” like naming a place Smuggler’s Cove.]

“The Villain that murdered Colo: Parsons Brother is here”

Back here I described the family of the Rev. Jonathan Parsons of Newburyport, including his fourth son, Thomas Parsons, who disappeared in 1772.

The third son, Samuel Holden Parsons, became an attorney in Lyme, Connecticut. He prospered, getting elected to the colonial assembly, and then moved to New London. At the start of the Revolutionary War Parsons raised a regiment and marched north.

Parsons served through the siege of Boston and in the spring of 1776 led his troops south through Connecticut to defend New York.

Soon after Continental officers detained Basile Boudrot (alias Dugan) on suspicion of murdering Thomas Parsons and his crew, someone sent the news to Col. Parsons.

The next trace of Boudrot that we have is therefore Gen. Philip Schuyler’s 12 June letter from Albany to Gen. George Washington:

The Villain that murdered Colo: Parsons Brother is here. The Colo: desired Me to send him to New York I wait Your Excellency’s Directions.

Washington replied on 24 June:

As Colonel Parsons has requested you to send the Person who is supposed to have murdered his Brother, I have no objection to your doing it, if you judge it necessary. He, from what I have been told, designs to apply to Congress, for instituting some Mode of Trial for the Offence.

Schuyler (shown here) proceeded on that course. On 11 July, John Holt’s New-York Journal reported:

Last Sunday [7 July] one Bazel Bonderot, a native of Nova-Scotia, was brought to this city from Canada, charged with being a principal in the murder of Captain Thomas Parsons, and eight other persons, in Nova-Scotia, in February 1772.

Soon after this murder was perpetrated, he fled his country, and has been wandering from place to place ever since, till last April, when he was providentially detected by Captain Hector McNeil, properly secured, and sent forward to receive the just reward of his crimes.

He was yesterday sent on from this city to Newbury Port, the place where Captain Parsons last lived, for examination and trial.

That article was reprinted in several newspapers, and eventually in the 19 July Essex Journal of Newburyport.

That same issue of the Essex Journal reported:

This Morning, between 6 and 7 o’clock, departed this life after a long tedious illness, the Rev. JONATHAN PARSONS, in the 71st year of his age, and in the 31st of his MINISTRY in the PRESBYTERIAN Church, in this Town—His remains to be interred on Tuesday next, at three o’clock in the afternoon.

It’s not clear whether the minister heard about the capture of his son’s alleged killer before he died.

TOMORROW: Deliberations in the Congress.

“He Now Passes by the Name of Dugan”

On 29 Aug 1775, Capt. Hector McNeill arrived in Québec on board another captain’s ship from Dominica. He brought false news of a battle at Roxbury where “most of the light horse were killed.”

Having been born in Ireland and raised in Boston, McNeill was then living in Québec with his daughters while carrying on trade with New England. His son Hector, Jr., based in Marblehead, had enrolled in Col. John Glover’s regiment.

A few months later, Col. Benedict Arnold and Gen. Richard Montgomery arrived at the walls of Québec with Continental troops. Lt. Gov. Hector Theophilus Cramahé ordered all able-bodied men to help defend the city or leave. The captain made his way to Arnold and started to carry supplies for the Continentals.

Though we usually tell the story of the American invasion of Canada with a climax and swift end in December 1775, the campaign went on for several more months, so McNeill had lots of work to do.

In the spring of 1776, the captain recognized a man aboard another ship, presumably also working for the Americans. On 25 April, McNeill at Pointe-aux-Trembles sent an urgent message to Col. Arnold, who was on the same island at Montréal:

This will be handed you by Major [Zachariah] Dubois, and is to Request the favour of you to Arrest, & Confine in Jail a certain acadian Whose proper Name is Basiell Boudrott, he Now Passes by the Name of Dugan and is the Mate of the Schooner Providence Commanded by Capt. Palmer,

I am bold to charge this fellow above named with the Murder of Capt. Thomas Parsons of Newbury Port, & his whole Crew at or near Cape St Mary’s in the Bay of Funda in the Month of March 177[2], I have been upon the look out for this chap ever Since & Now Providentially have found him, I am Sure he is the Principall of that gang of Villians who murderd Capt Parsons, & his crew, 9 in Number, & plundered first, afterwards burnt his Vessell—

I hope I need not urge you to Confine, & keep him close untill he can be Sent to New England, as Piracy, & Murder are Crimes which all good Men Should Endeavour to Prosecute & punish, I inclose you a Letter for the Owners of Capt Parsons his Vessell Which I beg you will read, Seal, & forward to the place of its distination—

My William Farris is Saild for you I hope you will be kind to him—as for your Capt Palmer—he has Sickened Me; of all Men to dispatch or manage affairs I Never Mett with worse hands then himself & his Lieut,—

I hear your wound is broke loose Which gives Me real Sorrow—you Must be Carefull of it or it may yet cost you dear

For heavens Sake do not Neglect to Secure the aforementioned Basiell Boudrot, for he is a Vile Murderer

May heavens preserve you in that Nest of Tory Scoundrels & grant you Wisdom & Fortitude to mannage them as they deserve

McNeill sent the same request to Gen. David Wooster. On 26 April, Wooster assured him: “I shall write Genl Arnold concerning the Acadien & also to arrest Palmer.”

TOMORROW: Sailing for Arnold’s army.

“Cast away upon the Isle of Sable”

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the disappearance of Capt. Thomas Parsons, his ship, and his crew in early 1772.

As colonial newspapers show, shipwrecks happened all the time. The rocky shores of Nova Scotia were notorious for their dangers.

For example, on 16 Sept 1773, the Massachusetts Spy ran this report from John Callahan, just arrived from London:

Capt. Callahan, last Thursday se’nnight, went on shore at Cape Sable, where he saw the Wreck of a Snow, New-England built, Pink Stern, called the Kitty, loaded with Lumber, had all her Cargo on board, but her Sails, Rigging and Crew gone.

That might seem mysterious, even suspicious. But back on 10 May the Boston Post-Boy had reported:

A Fisherman, who arrived here last Week, informs, that the Snow Katy, Capt. Major, from this Port for Newfoundland, is cast away upon the Isle of Sable: The Vessel and Cargo is entirely lost; the Captain and Mate, with great Difficulty saved their Lives, and the Remainder of the Crew, (five in Number) perished.

In the case of Capt. Parsons’s schooner, within a year New Englanders suspected he’d met with foul play. What led them to that conclusion? Unfortunately, our sources don’t say.

Those sources do raise some geographic questions about this voyage. One is why, if Capt. Parsons was heading from Newburyport to the Caribbean, he’d ended up far north. Perhaps that was a way of catching trade winds. Perhaps a storm had pushed his ship off course. Perhaps people didn’t remember his destination accurately. Or perhaps Parsons’s ship was returning from the islands and overshot Cape Cod because of weather.

The March 1773 news item quoted here said a schooner had been lost “near Cape-Sable,” which is the southernmost corner of the Nova Scotia peninsula. In Newburyport people came to believe Parsons had met his fate at “St. Mary’s,” which must mean St. Mary Bay’s at the westernmost corner. Was that close enough to count as “near Cape-Sable” to a New Englander?

Yet another mystery: Near the mouth of St. Mary’s Bay sits the village of Comeauville, where Basile Boudrot was granted 300 acres in May 1772. That was three months after Capt. Parsons reportedly left Newburyport, and in that season Boudrot was supposedly busy digging up buried money. Yet somehow the people of New England came to believe that Basile Boudrot was responsible for the death of Capt. Parsons and his crew.

TOMORROW: Spotting the culprit?

[The picture above is Bonaventura Peeters’s “Shipwreck,” ca. 1652, courtesy of the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art.]

“The supposed Plunder of the Cargo and burning of the Vessel”

Alas, the first newspaper printed in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Henry-Walter Tinges’s Essex Journal and Merrimack Packet, wasn’t founded until the end of 1773.

That means we don’t have published accounts of ships coming and going from that port in 1772, or stories on topics of local interest.

It’s possible a historian digging into the local sources like Alexander Cain will uncover a contemporaneous source on what happened to Capt. Thomas Parsons in 1772. But for now the closest he’s found is the lore published by Joshua Coffin in A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, from 1635 to 1845:

February 10th [1772]. Captain Thomas Parsons sailed from Newburyport, in a schooner, for the West Indies; was wrecked at St. Mary’s, Nova Scotia. It was supposed that he, with all his crew, eight in number, were massacred by the inhabitants there, after plundering the vessel, and setting it on fire.

We don’t know the name of Parsons’s ship or of his crewmen. Coffin also offered no sources—no indication of how the news got back to Newburyport, or when. I suspect that for months people thought the schooner had been lost at sea. Then something—the sight of a burned wreck, a bit of loot, seamen’s gossip—made people suspect there had been foul play.

On 11 Mar 1773, more than a year after Capt. Parsons’s departure, the Boston News-Letter ran this item:

We are informed, that the Accounts sent from hence of the Loss of a Schooner, belonging to Newbury, near Cape-Sable, and the supposed Plunder of the Cargo and burning of the Vessel if not the Murder of the Crew, had been received by the Governor of Nova-Scotia, and that there would be the strictest Inquiry and Prosecution by the Authority of that Province.

That was reprinted in the following weeks in the Essex Gazette of Salem and in Connecticut newspapers. (Capt. Parsons had brothers and other relatives in Connecticut who might be interested.)

It’s not certain that news item referred to rumors about Capt. Parsons’s ship, but the details are similar, and I’ve found no other possible cases. That suggests the suspicions about what happened in Nova Scotia built up over time until someone demanded an investigation.

Unfortunately, I also haven’t found any follow-up stories. Because of national boundaries, I can’t search the Halifax Gazette. Government archives in Nova Scotia might hold information. In early 1773 the royal governor, Lord William Campbell, was busy chasing smugglers and securing a better berth for himself in South Carolina, but maybe he did start an inquiry. Or at least file the “Accounts” from Massachusetts.

It’s also conceivable that some archive in the Caribbean holds a clue. Did Capt. Parsons sail to an island successfully only to run into difficulty on the way back? If he was on some sort of smuggling voyage, what sort of records would he have left?

TOMORROW: Probing the mystery.

Parson Parsons and His Sons

Jonathan Parsons was born in West Springfield in 1705, the son of a church deacon. As an adolescent he “worked at a trade,” but a Yale tutor named Jonathan Edwards persuaded him to try college.

Parsons graduated at the late age of twenty-four. He then studied more theology under Edwards, who had become the minister at Northampton.

In 1731 Parsons took the pulpit himself in the town of Lyme, Connecticut. He married Phebe Griswold, from a prominent local family, and they started having children—thirteen in all, but six died in infancy.

The children who grew up were four sons, born every two years from 1733 to 1739 (Marshfield, Jonathan, Samuel Holden, and Thomas), and three daughters, born 1748 to 1755 (Phebe, Lucia, and Lydia).

At Lyme the Rev. Mr. Parsons also got caught up in the “New Light” revival inspired by his old mentor Edwards and further inspired by the Rev. George Whitefield, who came through town in 1740. Parsons was soon known for his energetic preaching and evangelical outreach.

In 1745 the minister’s fervor grew too much for his congregation, and they decided on a separation. Parsons moved his family to Newbury to preach to a small “New Light” congregation that set itself up as Presbyterian, independent of New England’s independent network.

That meeting grew, erecting what’s now called the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport in 1756. Whitefield died during a visit to Parsons in 1770 and was buried in its crypt. The minister’s wife Phebe died later the same year. He married the widow Lydia Clarkson of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1771. 

Of the Parsons sons, Marshfield and Samuel Holden moved back to their birthplace of Lyme. Marshfield was a merchant and with his succession of four wives kept a tavern. Samuel Holden graduated from Yale and became a lawyer. Jonathan, Jr., and Thomas kept Newbury as their base and went to sea.

In particular, Thomas Parsons had a son by his first wife, Mary Gibson, and four daughters by his second wife, Sarah Sawyer. The New-Hampshire Gazette shows a captain named Thomas Parsons sailing out of Portsmouth harbor:

• on the Charming Sally to Guadaloupe in 1762.
• on the Success to Dominica and the West Indies in 1769.
• on the Three Friends to the West Indies and Guadaloupe in 1770.

In February 1772, according to secondary sources, Capt. Thomas Parsons took a schooner out of Newburyport for another voyage to the Caribbean. He never came home.

TOMORROW: Mystery off Cape Sable.