The most notable is probably that
of old Adam Lymburner, the cleverest of the three Lymburners, all
merchants at Quebec in 1775.
[43] Adam, according to the historian
Garneau, was more distinguished for his forensic abilities and knowledge
of constitutional law, than for his robust allegiance to the Hanoverian
succession at Quebec, when Colonel Benedict Arnold and his New Englanders
so rudely knocked at our gates for admission in 1775.
According to Garneau and other historians, in the autumn of that memorable
year, when the fate of British Canada hung as if by a thread, Adam
Lymburner, more prudent than loyal, retired from the sorely beset fortress
to Charlesbourg, possibly to Chateau Bigot, a shooting box then known as
the "Hermitage," to meditate on the mutability of human affairs. Later on,
however, in the exciting times of 1791, Adam Lymburner was deputed by the
colony to England to suggest amendment's to the project of the
constitution to be promulgated by the home authorities. His able speech
may be met with in the pages of the Canadian Review, published at
Montreal in 1826. This St Peter street magnate attained four score and ten
years, and died at Russell Square, London, on the 10th January, 1836.
Another signature recalls days of strife and alarm: that of sturdy old
Hugh McQuarters, the brave artillery sergeant who, at Pres-de-Ville
on that momentous 31st December, 1775, applied the match to the cannon
which consigned to a snowy shroud Brigadier-General Richard Montgomery,
his two aides, McPherson and Cheeseman, and his brave, but doomed
followers, some eleven in all; the rest having sought safety in flight.
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