This is a true story of one family who suffered through extraordinarily difficult circumstances, but remained together. It illustrates the nature of and danger to true pioneers. I also reflect on how much more

interesting history would be if taught to the children through stories
such as the following rather than through dry textbooks that remove
every shred of humanity and boil it down to names, dates, and places. Teachers can bring life to history by researching biographies, autobiographies, and magazine articles for gems such as the following.

Robert Forbes was an Irishman who lived in Canada and fought for England against General Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Quebec. During the siege, he rescued four Americans who had been captured and were sentenced to be hung. Two of them, Colonel Matthews and Mr. Stenchfield, were Mainers who developed a friendship with Forbes.

Matthews was from Gray and Stenchfield from New Gloucester. It was most likely because of this friendship that Mr. Forbes decided to leave Canada and move to Maine.

On March 17, 1784 the Robert Forbes family began the long journey to Maine. Even though Mrs. Forbes was pregnant, she was eager to follow her husband to Maine with their five children who were ages fifteen months to thirteen years. They paid three Dutch men to lead them down what they had been told was the tolerable path that General Arnold and his troops had made. Unfortunately, travel was extremely difficult on the Chaudiere River and by the ninth day they had to leave the frozen river and travel by land down deep gullies and up steep mountains.

To expedite the trip, the guides persuaded Forbes to build a hut for his family and leave them there so that they could travel unhampered to find an Indian who knew a better way to travel the rest of the way. This seemed appropriate to Forbes, but once they were alone with him, the guides told him he was on his own. After stealing his money, they deserted him, leaving him just two small loaves of bread, one old ax, and a small firearm. The shocked man returned to his family, now destitute. After a long discussion late into the night with his wife,
beside the trail because they were too cumbersome to carry.

“At night they encamped weary and fatigues, and the next morning there came on a violent storm of rain, hail, and snow, which continued until Wednesday evening.”(Greenleaf, 120)
Hunger plagued the family for the two loaves of bread did not last long for seven people. They also suffered greatly from the penetrating cold and were not able to keep a fire going when they dared to stop to rest.

Five days after they made the decision to keep forging ahead, they reached the wigwam of John Baptist and his wife, Indian friends whom Mr. Forbes had known in Canada. After being fed, sheltered, and allowed to rest for many days, the Forbes were ready to continue their journey.

Baptist gave them moose meat and a detailed map written on birchbark, admonishing them to follow it carefully. On the eighth day of travel, provisions ran low and Forbes deemed it best stop and build a wigwam with stretched canvas on poles planted in four-foot deep snow. After leaving a supply of meat and firewood with his wife and young children, Forbes and his eldest son set out to get help. Their journey lasted longer than expected because they did not follow the Indian’s directions correctly. After crossing ice, climbing down a 20 foot cliff, and constructing a flimsy raft to travel through rips, they arrived in
the town of Anson where the citizens took them in.

Two men traveled back with Forbes to find his deserted family. Due to his frail condition, Forbes finally had to return to Anson, relying on the citizens’ promise that they would keep searching. On June 2nd, fifty days after being left alone in the woods, James McDonald and Jonathan Ames found just five-year-old Peggy and Mrs. Forbes alive. Shortly after her husband had left, the tent had collapsed and the family had been too weak to set it up again.

The now little family was sadly reunited five days later. They eventually settled in Augusta where they lived for one year before moving to Boston. After a short stay there, they returned for good to Maine to live in New Gloucester to be close to their friends Matthews
and Stenchfield.

(Fuller, Nathan C., ed. Down East. Camden, Maine. “Narrative of Robert Forbes and Family, 1784” by Ebenezer Greenleaf. Portland narrative of 1823 republished in 1975.)
by Shirley Minster © 2002