A RUMOUR AND A RIOT · 15–22 DECEMBER 1753
A rumour of a letter from London turned Lunenburg's settlers against their officials.
Halifax sent two hundred soldiers.
The film follows the families down the Rhine to the ships in 1750, across the Atlantic to Halifax, and on to Lunenburg in June 1753. Then it follows the rising of December 1753 through the town's streets, and John William Hoffman to his trial.
Every map, date and name in it comes from the record on this page. It is drawn from the same map as the live map below.
Map, research, script and animation by Joel Hirtle. Narration: a computer voice (Microsoft neural text-to-speech) reading Joel's script. Sound effects from freesound.org, credited at the foot of the page. The subtitles are part of the picture.
The film plays in YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.
Watch on YouTube ↗02THE LIVE MAP
Play the days yourself. Move the clock, read every recorded moment with its source, and hover the places on the plan of the town as it stands today.
The live map loads about 3 MB and draws in your browser, so it runs best on a fast computer. The film above is made from it.
Reduced motion is on: the map shows the last day. Play still runs the clock if you press it.
Charting the town…
MAP REFERENCES AND COMPARISON
03THE LETTER THAT NEVER WAS
On Saturday 15 December 1753 a report ran through Lunenburg. A letter from London, people said, told how Parliament had ordered food, rum, clothing, tools and five pounds in cash for every settler. The settlers went looking for the man said to have it, Jean Pettrequin, and locked him in the militia block-house.
It found ready listeners. The 1,453 foreign Protestants had landed at Lunenburg on 7 June. Supplies were short, and from their arrival many felt cheated of what the government had promised them.
What it had promised was printed in German in 1750: fifty acres each, free of rent and taxes for ten years, ten more acres for each member of a family, their keep for twelve months after they arrived, and arms and ammunition. A free passage was not on the list. The settlers who came from Britain in 1749 sailed at the Crown's cost; these families had to pay their own fares, and worked them off on the public works at Halifax.
The letter itself was never found.
WHAT THE LETTER WAS SAID TO PROMISE
From the town's own memo of December 1753, as printed by DesBrisay in 1895 (pp. 32–33).
04SIX PEOPLE
A carpenter from Montbéliard, born about 1724. He came to Nova Scotia in July 1752 aboard the Betty. The crowd locked him up on 15 December because he was said to have the letter. Under torture he named the magistrate; later, questioned by Monckton, he named Hoffman. He was buried at Lunenburg on 19 December 1764.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, which calls him a joiner. Murdoch spells him Petriquin; the 1753 memo, Peterquin.
Sent to Lunenburg as a magistrate in 1753. When Pettrequin said the magistrate had the letter, the crowd threatened to pull him limb from limb, and he took refuge in the Star Fort on Gallows Hill. The next morning they came to the gate and demanded him, dead or alive.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography; the 1753 memo; Murdoch (1866).
The officer commanding at Lunenburg. He freed Pettrequin once, had the Riot Act read, sent constables with a warrant, and talked to the crowd for nearly an hour. On the night of the shots he sent Lieutenant Adams to Halifax with a letter.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography; Murdoch (1866), who calls him colonel.
President of the Council, governing the colony. Adams reached Halifax on the evening of 17 December, and on 18 December Lawrence called the Council to his house. It sent two hundred soldiers to disarm the town. He wanted the ringleaders punished.
Lieutenant-colonel of the 47th Foot. He volunteered to lead the two hundred, landed on 22 December, and disarmed the town in two or three days without a fight. He told Halifax the settlers had mostly acted together, and advised a general pardon.
Murdoch (1866); Dictionary of Canadian Biography. The engraving is drawn after Benjamin West's portrait (public domain).
A former justice of the peace. On 28 December Pettrequin said Hoffman had shown him a letter on the parade and said a sailor had given it to him. Soldiers arrested Hoffman at Harshman's house on 31 December. Tried in Halifax in 1754, he was fined £100 and imprisoned for two years on George's Island.
The 1753 memo; Dictionary of Canadian Biography; Akins (1895); Cahill (1996).
05THE BLOCK-HOUSES OF 1753
Lunenburg was laid out in 1753 behind a picket fence that ran from the front harbour to the back, with block-houses for its defence. A memo of that year lists them, and DesBrisay printed it in 1895.
Two block-houses in the story are on no list: the militia block-house, where Pettrequin was held and the settlers kept their arms, and the guard house they fired on, which Murdoch calls the West log house and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography the lower block-house. No source says where either stood, so the map does not draw them.
The list also names a block-house at Jacob Hirtle's mills, outside the town. Where the mills were is not recorded.
| Block-house | On the map |
|---|---|
| Garrison block-house on Gallows Hill, the Star Fort | Approximate: the Lunenburg Academy's hill |
| Block-house on Windmill Hill, later Block-house Hill | Approximate: the official name point |
| Fort Boscawen, Battery Point. It cost £219 11s. 3d. | Approximate: the official name point |
| By the burial ground | Not located |
| Below Labroane's garden, on the back of the shore | Not located |
| On the Back Harbour, opposite Mason's | Not located |
| The picket line, front harbour to back | Approximate: the plan of c. 1753 |
| Outside the town: Mush-a-Mush, Morriott Brook, North-West Range, Lower and Upper La Have, Jacob Hirtle's mills | Not drawn |
06A TOWN DRAWN BY CARDS
The town plot, approved by Governor Hopson, was six divisions of eight blocks, each block fourteen lots of 60 by 40 feet (18 by 12 m). The divisions were named for their officers: Zouberbuhler's, Creighton's, Morreau's, Rudolf's, Straesburgher's and Steinfort's.
The lots were drawn before the settlers left Halifax, and they were drawn with playing cards. Some of the cards were later produced in court as evidence of title.
DesBrisay (1895), p. 43; Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Sutherland. The card DesBrisay saw in court was said to be from a later drawing, of 1767.
07WHERE THE SOURCES DISAGREE
There was no proof, however, that the French had instigated them.The page follows Murdoch.
08WHAT REMAINS
The plot of 1753 is still the street grid of Old Town Lunenburg, a National Historic Site since 1991 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Star Fort's hill is the Lunenburg Academy's. A survey there found traces that may be a palisade; the fort's outline is not proven, so the map marks the place, not the fort.
“We may fairly conclude that they had just causes of complaint, although their conduct may have been rash.”
09READING THIS PAGE
The story is the town's own memo of December 1753, Beamish Murdoch's history of 1866, which he wrote from the council minutes and Lawrence's letters, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Every moment on the live map carries its sources. A solid dot means two independent accounts agree; a hollow one, one source.
Times are given only where a source prints them. Otherwise the record shows the part of the day the source names.
Places are marked only where a source names them. Most are approximate and drawn with a dashed ring; places no source locates are listed, not drawn. The four vessels' track and the landing place are not recorded: the map draws them to show the arrival and says so. The shoreline and streets are today's, not the ground of 1753.
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