The Following Respecting Press Gangs And The Presence Of Lord
Nelson, Whilst At Quebec In 1782, Was Contributed By One Of The
"Oldest Inhabitants" To QUEBEC PAST AND PRESENT, But Reached Too
Late For Insertion:
-
MY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PAST.
J. M. LEMOINE, Esq., Spencer Grange.
DEAR SIR, - I have much pleasure in acceding to your request to
send you a note of some circumstances connected with the city, in
which seventy-one years of my life - now verging towards eighty -
have been spent. I am familiar with no part of Nelson's career,
except what I heard from my mother's own lips respecting this
brave man. My mother was gifted with a remarkable memory, and
recollected well having herself seen Captain Nelson, when in 1782,
he commanded at Quebec the sloop-of-war Albemarle. "He was erect,
stern of aspect and wore, as was then customary, the queue
or pigtail," she often repeated. Her idea of the Quebec young lady
to whom he had taken such a violent fancy, was that her name was
Woolsey - an aunt or elder sister, perhaps, of the late John W.
Woolsey, Esq., President for some years of the Quebec Bank, who
died in 1852, at a very advanced age. According to her, it was a
Mr. Davidson who prevented the imprudent marriage contemplated.
As to the doings of the press gangs in the Lower Town and suburbs,
I can speak from what I saw more than once. Impressing seamen
lasted at Quebec from 1807, until after the battle of Waterloo.
The terror these sea-faring gentlemen created was great.
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