Went to Sleep in Sail-Hung Bed: Schooner Days MCV (1105) Happier Bride's Diary - 8

By C.H.J. Snider

Young Mrs. Anne Smith MacDonell started from Etobicoke to visit her parents in Long Island, New York State, on May 30, 1805. She reached her ultimate destination after 34 days. Anne MacDonell went by the "shortest water route" to New York from Oswego, but this was vastly more primitive in her time than it is now. Then it was only slightly improved over its crudity of 1756-63, when it was the war-path for the British and colonial American forces for the conquest of Canada.

Her diary, which we have been privileged to study, brought the young lady, with her Toronto friends, Capt. and Mrs. McGill and Mr. McLean, as far as Oswego on June 5. The next 150 miles was to Albany, now two or three hours from Oswego by motor, but to reach took longer than her journey from Toronto. It had to be made by rowboat.

With characteristic independence in the matter of spelling, Anne's pen pursues:

STUCK IN OSWEGO

"June 6th - A bad night's rest, very unwell, partly owing to the fatigue of the walks yesterday. No boat to be had, and no probability of our leaving this today. Spent the morning writing Mr. McDonell and Mrs. Smith." - her husband, the High Sheriff of Upper Canada, and her sister-in-law, wife of Col. The Hon. Samuel Smith.

"June 7th - Mr. McLean went this morn to the Falls with the hope of getting a conveyance for us to Utica but could not succeed. He therefore this eve. agreed with our Landlord, who is to furnish us with a boat and four men to take us to Schenectady for $50 Doll. 'Tis perhaps too much but it was the only alternative. We are to be off at five tomorrow morning, the weather permitting. 'Tis this evening raining, thundering and lightening. Mrs. McG. and I dining alone we did not forget to drink to our absent friends. Indeed we often talk of them and I believe oftener think on them. After dinner I wrote Miss Cameron."- her hostess when leaving Toronto.

"June 8th - A rainy morning and the wind contrary and we fixed for the day. It is dull indeed, neither work or reading will do when one is anxious to go on a journey.

"June 9th - Sunday and still rainy unpleasant weather. I read a sermon from the Columbian Orator, and took my prayer book for an hour, read a little in Witicar's vindication of Queen Mary, and so spent the day."

Anne and her party were staying perforce, at McNair's Tavern in Oswego. Matthew McNair owned the Oswego Peggy, which had brought them hither from York, and had already laid the foundations of his transportation system which took them to Albany. McNair's Tavern was part of the system, and not exactly Royal York [referring to the hotel in Toronto].

It was a pity Fenimore Cooper was not to write The Pathfinder for another forty years or more, for he wrote it in Oswego -- it is about Oswego and the French, English and Indians - and within a hundred yards or so of where poor Anne had to console herself with "Witicar," the liturgy, and the Columbian Orator. The house where Cooper wrote The Pathfinder is still standing above the river. One of the scenes in the book describes the shooting of the rapids up which Anne was destined to toil.

RISE AND SHINE

But even wet Sundays in strange villages came to an end. On the dark dank Monday morning they got away on the McNair "50 Doll" Transportation Line." As the diary says: 10th - Left Oswego at six o'clock in the morn. It was dull and soon began to rain, which made it very unpleasant, besides I was unwell with a pain in my side so much I was at times quite in an agony tho I really and am much better than when I left York."

"The river is very rapid to the Falls, 12 miles, the boat polled or pulled by a rope. Stoped a short time at the Falls, rode a mile in an ox cart across the carrying place. The houses were miserable on either side and the carrying place filled with boatmen, &c. So we determined to go on, the just [first?] night, as the rain had (ceased).

"We walked a mile to avoid some bad rapids, the falls we stood to view are pretty enough tho scarcely deserve that name, the fall not higher than 6 or 8 feet. The large body of water forms all their beauty.

"We went two or three miles, and put up at a widow's. It was a hut, only one room, a frame house boarded that you might put your hand between every board, but the old woman was alone, her sons being out, and she was obliging.

"We had a comfortable cup of our own tea, with the ets [eatables]. We hung up the sails around our bed, and though the log floor was a little rough we slept tolerable. The want was, we had neglected to bring candles, the only thing I believe which we forgot."

So we leave Anne and Mrs. McGill in their sail-hung bed in the place were Moses was when the light went out.

BIRTHPLACE OF THE PATHFINDER--24 West Second Street, Oswego, N.Y. Here Fenimore Cooper wrote The Pathfinder in Oswego--but thirty-five years after the visit here described. Cooper was, however, in Oswego as a young midshipman, before the War of 1812.