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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:
From Salem Marriages
Dawson, John, and Sarah Whitford,
November 26, 1764
From Salem Deaths
Dawson, John, of Guernsaey Island1, h[usband of] Sarah (White)
Whittemore 2, at the charity house, aged,3 January 14, 1816, age 86
years. [East Church Records]
From The Diaries of William Bently , Pastor of the
East Church, Salem, Massachusetts.
October 8, 1786
John Dorson & wife & prayers for son at Sea.
[In index: Dawson, see Dorson]
Sunday. January 21, 1816
Sarah Dawson, death of her husband, pr[ayed] for her
children... If character deserves to be contemplated, Uncle Dawson
deserves to be remembered as a uncommon example of a long habit
of indulgence in intemperance & actual intoxication without
loss of health, good temper, willing labour & kind affections.
He was as much lamented & as tenderly caressed by his wife
without reproach in his last as in his first days. He lived
16 years in the Pest House 4
and 15 months in the Charity house 5 & in
this he died. John Dawson was born in Gurnsey in March 1730,
and died aet. 86. He escaped seven times from a British
Man of war 6 & in 1757 was taken by the Indians at Crown point
when in the British service 7. At 33 he married his wife, the widow Whitford, alias
White 8.
He was five years in British service after marriage &
has left two children. For 32 years I have known him at labour
at the wharves, afterwards with a small cart & last beyond
labour. His intoxication seemed to be easy and constant.
At the pest house he was often in my path, silent, when alive
enough, cheerful & finally died of the mere old age by a
collapse of the bowels but without any loss of his senses, his
memory or things around him. I never thought he could
bear much, but his calm temper balanced evils of his habits. In
the last period of his life he was deaf, but gradually as is
common in age. He was honest, kind, affectionate,
generous, & not uncommonly prophane or licentious. I notice
it a rare case of uniform indulgance.
Footnotes
1 Guernsey Island is the westernmost of the Channel
Islands in the English Channel (close to Britany, France).
2 Whittemore
is an error, her married name was Whitford.
3 'aged'
is the cause of death.
4 The
Pest House was a hospital for those with pestilent diseases (contageous).
Why live there 15 years?
5 According
to Bentley "Our charity house relieves only the humblest
class, most often the most vitious."
6 A
combat ship in the British Navy (escaping what? if he was in
the British service?)
7 March 14, 1757 at a Salem town meeting
108 Pounds Sterling was appropriated to encourage enlistments
at four pounds per head to fight in the French-Indian War. In
August, the French leader, Montcalm, had assembled an army of
six thousand French and Canadians and sixteen hundred Indians,
and launched an attack on Fort Ticonderoga. Despite the reinforcements
which included these troops from Salem, the British were outnumbered
by more than two to one. After the fort had fallen
to Montcalm's troops, the French began to escort the English
from the fort, but the Indians who had taken the fort with Montcalm,
fell upon the captured English, killing many, and carried off
two hundred prisoners. At least six Salem soldiers were carried
away to Canada by the Indians and two or more were among the
killed. The captured were John Oakman, John Dawson, Peter
Smith, Moses Atwood, John Knapp, and Jonathan Morrison. The latter
was carried to Quebec and then to France and died there. Richard
Butman and Daniel Robertson were among the killed. (From Salem
in the Eighteenth Century pages 205-208)
8 White is his wife's maiden name.
Footnotes 1-7 : NHC,
10/2001
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REFERENCES:
Vital Records of Salem, Mass
Vol. 3,4- Salem Marriages
Essex Institute [Salem, Ma] 1916
US/Can 974.45/S1 V2e v.4
Vital Records of Salem, Mass
Vol. 5 Salem Deaths
Essex Institute [Salem, Ma] 1916
US/Can 974.45/S1 V2e v.5
The Diaries of William Bentley
Essex Institute [Salem, Ma] 1906
JSMB US/Can 921.73 B446b v.2
Salem in the Eighteenth Century by James D. Phillips
[Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1937] |