Being quartered at Fort Erie, he met and married at the
house of one of the earliest Canadian merchants a daughter
of Mr. Erskine, then on a visit to her sister, and by
her had eight children, of whom I am the oldest and only
survivor. Having a few years after his marriage been
ordered to St. Joseph's, near Michilimackinac, my father
thought it expedient to leave me with Mr. Erskine at
Detroit, where I received the first rudiments of my
education. But here I did not remain long, for it was
during the period of the stay of the detachment of Simcoe's
Rangers at St. Joseph that Mr. Erskine repaired with his
family to the Canadian shore, where on the more elevated
and conspicuous part of his grounds which are situated
nearly opposite the foot of Hog Island, so repeatedly
alluded to in "Wacousta," he had caused a flag-staff to
be erected, from which each Sabbath day proudly floated
the colors under which he had served, and which he never
could bring himself to disown.

It was at Strabane that the old lady, with whom I was a
great favorite, used to enchain my young interest by
detailing various facts connected with the seige she so
well remembered, and infused into me a longing to grow
up to manhood that I might write a book about it. The
details of the Ponteac plan for the capture of the two
forts were what she most enlarged upon, and although a
long lapse of years of absence from the scene, and ten
thousand incidents of a higher and more immediate importance
might have been supposed to weaken the recollections of
so early a period of life, the impression has ever vividly