# Acadiensis/Volume 1/Number 1/David Owen of Campobello, N. B.

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David Owen. OF CAMPOBELLO, NEW BRUNSWICK.
In an old, closely written manuscript, have lately been found most amusing instances of illicit trading, and of the mock dignities of international complications, from March 27, 1812, to March 22, 1817. The pages are in the handwriting of David Owen, who administered, for his co-grantees, the island of Campobello, New Brunswick, which had been granted them by the English Crown in 1770.
In his diary, his refuge in hours of loneliness, he commits his records of aggrieved officialism, with which as English magnate he contended daily, and it was all so petty and miserable, and recriminating, those local vexations sustained on both sides through the embargo law of 1807 and the war of 1812, between the United States and Great Britain.
Yet had not nature herself foreseen these conflicts in authority, and, like a jealous philanthropist, provided her fogs for the welfare of smugglers, thus aiding the very law, which, supposed to injure both parties, really worked to the advantage of each. "Neutral voyages" were then short and safe, and men and vessels were transferred from one allegiance to another as often in the course of a single day as business required. Great was the boon thereof to Campobello, and well did its Snug Cove deserve the name. Goods were shipped to it from colonial ports, there put on board neutral vessels, which in an hour or two were legally cleared at Eastport, Maine, the cargoes eventually being sent to Boston or Portland, contrary to the intent of the embargo.
Then, when the war of 1812 broke forth and Major Putnam surrendered at Fort Sullivan, Eastport to the English, they, in their parlance, "recovered their own,' ​since such view of the question, the "restoration" rather than the "capture" of the American islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, alleviated the minor miseries of a bloodless warfare, for the Eastporters, as "subjects restored to their rightful sovereign," fared better than as prisoners of war.
Sir Thomas Hardy, Nelson's trusted friend, and Colonel Gubbins, were the chief English officers at Eastport, with whom David Owen, at Campobello, held friendly converse. At first David's subjects hoped to settle ancient scores with some of their old-time personal enemies, but they soon found that the new English masters forbade, as their American predecessors had forbidden, the use of threats or blows in getting one's rights. Then recourse was had to long, stately letters addressed by Owen to Gubbins, in which the former rehearsed the grievances of his people, for had he not a right to wax eloquent when he had urged that the County of Charlotte, New Brunswick, and of Washington, Massachusetts, (it was not then called Maine), should remain neutral, and had he not adjured the ndians, who fled to his woods for safety, to believe that the English would burn neither their wigwams nor their chapel? In spite of such protests, when Moose Island (Eastport) was actually taken by the British, with the self-complacency of a solitary magnate, David Owen wrote to his distant peers, "I could have taken it, Eastport, with a gun brig and my own militia. I am in possession of all except Moose Island."
However, after the "contemptible Americans" had been expelled, Owen's wrath became greater, since, without his knowledge, the Commanding Royal Engineer had explored ground for military purposes on Campobello, and had desired Owen's militia to help him. Moreover, his tenants were oppressed by a notice to drill off the island, which they regarded as an indignity, whereupon Owen had petitioned his Royal Highness, George, Prince Regent of England, that the "inhabitants of Campobello should ​not be taken off the land for militia duty," since if attempt were made to enforce such notice, or "fines should be imposed in consequence, it will be the signal," he wrote, for active defense against the very government (English) they have hitherto handsomely maintained."
Like private theatricals on a miniature stage, reads the rehearsal of Owen's grievances in his letters to the Admiralty, and to the Committee of Public Safety, on Moose Island. The "calamities of warfare" were not only to be "repelled from the doors of his people," and they themselves "protected from indignities," but he had his own private rights to defend. For when the British colors were displayed at Fort Sullivan, they also floated in the air from Dudley and Frederick Islands (termed then St. Croix Islands), where he claimed rights, accruing from the original grant of Campobello, which rights were strengthened by the actual possession of a tenant of his, through purchase of a claim, duly recorded in Massachusetts. This possession was, moreover, at that time acknowledged by him to be under the Crown of Great Britain, he "having affixed his name to the buildings for that purpose, and as a memorial of the same."
A vacant house on Moose Island had also been seized by officers of the Crown, and a similar entry was thereby included, though the additional ceremony of a discharge of musketry at the hoisting of a British flag upon a small vacant hut was reserved for Mark Island.
Owen's daily life and his real estate were becoming a burden to him. In vain did he offer to the Crown his lands for cash on hand, his duty still compelling him to worry his superiors with bristling letters. Regardless of British authority, woodcutters came on Dudley Island "to get a number of sticks to repair a vessel." Such a bold and vagrant act forced Owen to proceed there (less than a mile away), in person and "to take action to secure the rights of the Crown." Then the harbors ​round these islands "had been injured by ballast thrown overboard from American vessels." Yet with all his authority as magistrate and portwarden had he "warned the offenders to enforce his notice within the garrison district and to the limits usually claimed by a port, by a garrison order or otherwise," and had implored that another justice be appointed with him to enforce the law.
Again does Owen wax indignant that in subversion of provincial rights, the oaths administered on Moose Island to parties leaving it for a few days, that they should not bear arms, varied, for he argued that Moose Island was never escheated by the State of Massachusetts; that English people would not have settled on it unless sure it did not belong to the United States, and that its claim to other islands is a late affair, as in 1815 these same islands, Dudley and Frederick, paid their share of the quota of the parish of Campobello.
Neither the days of the embargo act nor the so-called capture of Eastport and its four years under martial law brought peace to David Owen. Under the Colonists' rule he had noticed a diminution in his flock of sheep, the skin of one being found a short distance from the cooking camp. Then a party from His Majesty's ship had occupied without permission and at various times one of his empty houses. Somebody else had made a fire in the loft of his rented store and had ill-used his tenant for putting it out. Another enemy had fired musket balls in every direction, and had killed one pig and wounded, either by musket ball or cutlass, a second pig, belonging to a poor man, who had at best but two swine for his winter's use. Worse still, five tons of hay had been "forcibly cut" on his domain, divers persons thereby being cheated of their property. Then when he expected to gather forty bushels of apples he found the "pickets torn down and one solitary apple only remaining," owing to the fishermen from Moose ​Island. Again he entered a deposition requesting that they "may be delivered over to the Civil power to answer for their offence." But the American Lieutenant-Colonel discovered that the alleged delinquents "had taken only a few apples," for which they promised to pay one-half dollar to the poor of Moose Island, and that it was Campobellians who had been the "great plunderers."
Nevertheless it was Owen's own hired man, an Englishman, who, "being in liquor," had abused an American officer and was more abused himself by that same dignitary, who presumably was in his senses.
Difficult of adjustment as were these evils, a more complicated problem arose through the marriage on Moose Island by a Justice of Peace, under the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, of a Campobello couple. Was such marriage illegal? Should the Justice pay fee to the Crown? Would the offspring of such marriage be legitimate, or would the parish be forced to maintain the children? This matter, declared Owen with all the official circumstance, must be decided by established law of the Courts, "for the law of a garrison is but the vibrating authority of a commission." Great also were the annoyances in removing a pauper from one place to that of his last legal settlement. "Surely there is much to be said," exclaims Owen, "about the liberty of the British Colonist."
With ardor did he remonstrate against the petty cannon directed at his Campobello, since some balls fell near a weir where men might have been fishing and others might have fallen on boats, and balls, sent by a ship's officer, did actually fall round the chapel he had erected at his own expense. When deserters crossed over the bay to him, and the American officer had come in search of them, had not Owen dined and reprimanded him, and given him "a copy of his Sunday-school prayers, with a few words on the title page!" What more could a grantee do, who was interested in religion? He had striven to defend his ​people from encroachments by the English and from assault by the Americans until "worn out with expectations," his stores and wharves, neglected during the war, remaining in ruins, he judged it improper to crowd the Secretary of State with "further communications" until he had "some assurance that they would be received without inattention."
But he soon resumed courage and again laid his views before government; "that the Crown alone without our consent had no right to tax us and no right to sever Campobello from Nova Scotia by the erection of the Province of New Brunswick, in which Campobello was included, and that no provincial act can oblige an inhabitant to go off his land for duty elsewhere." Valiantly did he defend the firing from Indian Island upon privateers, for were not the privateers equally subject to prosecution for having entered the narrow seas contrary to the intent and purport of their commission and for firing on an island without necessity for their defense or otherwise? Such firing was not more hostile than the firing of muskets from Eastport sentries on empty boats and should receive like indulgence. "Whoever did the first wrong must satisfy the other party," is his judicial decision.
With these words can well be left the honor of David Owen, who, in his rough, even-handed manner, did justice to friend and foe. To-day he would have contended with the joint commission of Canada and the United States for the settlement of the fishery questions and for reciprocity in trade on that basis, which would be best for Campobello without regard to the larger interests of either country.
Kate Gannett Wells.
From the year 1770–71 when Captain William Owen, R. N., the principal grantee of the Island of Campobello, and the founder of its first considerable settlement, resided there, the name of Owen has been associated with the history of the Island.
More than a century passed away before the Owen family finally withdrew, leaving a wealth of history and tradition behind them.
​The Campobello Owens were of Welsh origin, being descended from the Owens of Glansevern, with the family seat in Montgomeryshire, in Wales.
David Owen, the subject of this sketch, was a son of Owen Owen, a grandson of David Owen, who died in 1777. He was an M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1780, and for forty years lived in Campobello, as nearly as he could, the life of an English Squire. He was a scholarly man, and left many valuable MSS and maps, some of which are still in existence.
While in Florida, in 1882, the writer met there a young man who informed him of having seen a quantity of old papers, belonging to the Owen family, in a junk store at Eastport, and which seems to have included diaries, deeds, leases, agreements of various descriptions, and even family love letters. Many of the most important documents were subsequently rescued and carefully preserved.
Mrs. Wells, the writer of the foregoing sketch, had privately printed in Boston, in 1893, an historical sketch of Campobello, comprising 47 pages.
The journal of Captain William Owen, R. N., together with other notes and documents upon the history of the Island, edited by Prof. W. F. Ganong, of Smith College, Northampton, Mass., was published in the collections of the N. B. Historical Society, pages 193–220.—[Ed.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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