It was
just a matter of time before Ebenezer Stockwell’s son Joseph started keeping
company with Anna Maria Saxe, a young lady whose origins were not only
un-Puritan but scandalously unorthodox.
Her
grandfather John Saxe had been born into a prosperous Saxe-Gotha (principality of Hanover) family. His father
Godfrey owned eight acres of prime farmland and was known as a “stern man of
great strength and courage.” John left school at 13 after his father died, and
supported himself with odd jobs as he and a friend traveled around Europe.
Around 1750 they boarded a ship in Amsterdam, bound for the New World. After a
15-week voyage they landed in Philadelphia and John was apprenticed to a miller
to pay for his passage. Unlike William Stockwell nearly a century before, both
the voyage and the apprenticeship were his own choices.
The
first thing John did in America was to take an oath of allegiance to King
George II. This must have seemed a natural thing to do, because Saxe-Gotha was
located in the principality of Hanover, which George II also ruled as its duke.
Events were to prove that John didn’t take his oaths lightly.
Once his
apprenticeship was completed, John Saxe managed a flour mill in Valley Forge
and then moved to New York City. He
began to court Catherine Weaver, the daughter of German immigrants who lived in
Rhinebeck, New York, and after they wed he moved there to operate another mill.
John Saxe, Loyalist by George J. Hill, describes the
couple. “John was said to be nearly six feet tall, with broad shoulders, small
feet, light brown hair, blue eyes, an aquiline nose, and a firm mouth and
chin...His wife was described as a beautiful woman, somewhat below medium height,
with a fair complexion, black eyes, and dark curling hair.” She was praised as
an “excellent housekeeper, a faithful wife and mother”.
At the
onset of the Revolution, John declared himself to be a Loyalist. His sense of
honor left him no other choice. In 1779 he was arrested and jailed for his
“attachment to the Enemy,” but soon escaped and joined the Ansbach Jaegers
(Hessian mercenaries) as a scout.
After the
Revolution was over, his property was confiscated so he and his entire family
high-tailed it to Canada. They journeyed up the Hudson River until they found
themselves on Lake Champlain in an open boat, and finally found their way to
Missisquoi Bay, at a location now known as Philipsburg, Quebec.
About
three thousand displaced Loyalists joined the Saxe family and their associates
on the northeastern shore of Lake Champlain. But the precise location of the
international boundary line proved to be confusing. To quote from one
explanation of what took place, “he [John Saxe] settled in Philipsburg, P.Q.,
Canada, and built a grist mill on Rock Mill, cleared the land, and settled down
as a Canadian. However, when the government resurveyed the boundary line, he
found that his mill was in Highgate, Vermont”.
 |
| A Philipsburg, Quebec log cabin dating to the Revolutionary War period. Source: http://www.quebecheritageweb.com. |
John’s
fifth son Godfrey Saxe was the family black sheep. He fathered a daughter by an
unknown woman, possibly related to him, whom he didn’t bother to marry. This “wrong
side of the blanket” child was Anna Maria Saxe who married Joseph Stockwell.
She was born in Vermont in 1804 and died in Mooers, N.Y. in 1890.
