The Vermont Years

"I have at length arrived at headquarters. In coming from New Caledonia to this place, which is a distance of at least three thousand miles, nothing uncommon has occurred."

Nothing uncommon indeed, in making a transcontinental wilderness journey with a nine-months' pregnant woman and two small children. Nothing uncommon, in a marriage performed two days before a birth. After the free and easy days of the fur trade, what would soon seem uncommon to the Harmons was the life ahead of them.

Lisette was twenty-eight when she arrived in whitewashed Yankee Vermont. Half her life had been spent with Daniel, who was as much father as husband to her. She would spend the next twenty-four years in the young United States, raising ten children often alone, when Daniel took short assignments with the NorthWest Company.

Daniel's brothers Argalus and Calvin Harmon were comfortable Vergennes farmers turned land speculators. In 1820, they purchased a remote township in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, a burgeoning wilderness of some 300 families. An experienced trader with some capital on hand, such as retirement pay from the NWC, was just the thing to grow the town.

Daniel soon found himself developing the first sawmill for Harmonville, later renamed Coventry. The mill on the Black River swiftly turned forests into farmland and timber into lumber, and the Harmon brothers were ardent in their land clearing efforts. Deacons of the church, they also took a dim view of drinking.

"Harmon, being much opposed to the use of alcohol and having given the land for the town common, set the penalty for drunkenness at the clearing of one stump from the common. This proved to be more effective at clearing land than at preventing drunkenness. Thereafter, one pint of rum was justly considered the fair price of pulling out one stump." (Vermont Historical Gazetteer)

Little is known of the Harmons' Vermont years, as the Coventry records perished in a fire in the mid-1960s. A contemporary journal, since lost, apparently makes some reference to the death of "the widow Harmon," indicating that Daniel's mother Lucretia lived with her sons after their father's death. Daniel eventually built a frame house for the growing family, as Lisette bore six more children in Coventry. Almira Amelia was born May 16, 1821; Henry Norman on March 13, 1825; Frederick Mortimer on January 4, 1828; Stephen on July 28, 1831; Susan Elizabeth on March 29, 1833; and Abby Maria on July 27, 1838.

In 1843, the Harmon family moved again, returning to Montreal. Recent research in Montreal and New Hampshire archives has unearthed a surprising reason for the move, which has long been inexplicable to Harmon scholars.

The Harmons' eldest daughter Polly had married a blacksmith from East Haverhill, NH by the name of Calvin Ladd. It seems that in 1842, Calvin Ladd purchased land on the island of Montreal from a well-known Montreal merchant Pascal Persillier. His son, Pascal Persillier-Lachapelle, had long feared that British merchants were overpowering (French) Canadian commerce. In 1837, Persillier had proposed a motion in the Saint Lawrence Patriots assembly to "liberalize commercial exchange" with the United States so that together they might "seize the economic and political jugular" of Great Britain. With his father, Persillier was elected a permanent member of the Patriot committee of Montréal.

Who better for the Montrealers to recruit for their patriotic purposes than the merchant son-in-law of a prominent NorthWest Company trader, whose wife was bilingual in French? Calvin Ladd had worked at the Fairbanks Scale Company in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and was aware of the potential of the growing Industrial Revolution. While there is no direct evidence linking these events to the Harmon's move, it is certain that the Daniel Harmon family departed Coventry in the late winter of 1843 for Sault-au-Récollet, Quebec on the Rivière Des Prairies on l'Ile de Montréal (incorporated into the City in 1906).

The move was to be the death of Daniel. There is a record of an erysipelas (swine fever) epidemic in Coventry that winter, and its symptoms can mimic those of scarlet fever in humans. Frederick Mortimer, aged 15, was the first to die in March of 1843, perhaps weakened by a long winter journey on the frozen rivers that made travel more possible in the era before roads. Daniel also died in March, barely 65 years old; on May 26 he was followed by daughter Sally, now 26.

Polly was now the only one left who remembered Lisette's homeland. Her husband Calvin sued on Lisette's behalf for custody of Daniel's estate and the remaining children, and family records from this point bear the name of Ladd. Harmon descendant Joseph Betz notes that on the 22nd of February, 1861, Calvin Ladd's foundry and machine shops were destroyed by fire, and he sold out what property remained at Sault-au-Recollet and returned to the States. He accepted a position in the chief engineer's office at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Polly died September 27, 1861 in Montreal, and Calvin married Charlotte E. Welsh on November 10, 1864 in Brooklyn, NY.

Lisette lived on in Montreal until February 14, 1862, the age of 72, when she was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery. Her life began in the year of the division of Upper and Lower Canada (b. 1791), and spanned the continent and the century to end on the eve of the American Civil War (d. 1862) and Canadian Confederation (1867). Her youngest daughter Abby Maria (who died a suicide by drowning in Ottawa) was buried in her mother's grave. The stone to both Harmons in Mount Royal Cemetery was probably a gift of Abby Maria's friends.

1819: "If She Is Willing to Continue the Connection"

On February 28, 1819, Daniel wrote in his journal of his decision to return to Vermont. Faced with the choice made by so many men of his era, he could not follow through on his original intention:

"to place her into the hands of some good honest Man, with whom she can pass the remainder of her Days in this Country much more agreeably, than it would be possible for her to do, were she to be taken down into the civilized world, where she would be a stranger to the people, their manners, customs & Language."

It was her choice to make, and they would face the strangers together as man and wife.

"...I design to make her regularly my wife by a formal marriage...Having lived with this woman as my wife...and having children by her, I consider that I am under a moral obligation not to dissolve the connexion, if she is willing to continue it. The union which has been formed between us, in the providence of God, has not only been cemented by a long and mutual performance of kind offices, but also by a more sacred consideration...

"We have wept together over the departure of several children, and especially over the death of our beloved son George. We have children still living who are equally dear to both of us. How could I spend my days in the civilized world and leave my beloved children in the wilderness? How could I tear them from a mother's love and leave her to mourn over their absence to the day of her death? How could I think of her in such circumstances without anguish?"

Lisette and Daniel achieved Harmon's stated ideal of a relationship (1800), to "live in harmony together." Their partnership was lifelong, devoted, and based on mutual respect. Their relationship was a practice of cross-cultural exchange. Each gained entry into the other's milieu, as well as a dynastic union which satisfied both Harmon's deep need for family connection, and the custom (which he often observed among Indian women) of cheerfully choosing large families. Harmon wrote "I cannot conceive it right for a man and woman to cohabit when they do not agree," and clearly they did agree. Lisette was evidently "willing to continue the connexion," for his lifetime and for the remaining 29 years of hers.

Sixteen Years in the Indian Country: an Overview

In 1800, Daniel's first assignment was as a clerk on the "voyageur's highway" from Montreal to Grand Portage, and thence to Fort Alexandria, Saskatchewan. He worked a total of five years in the Swan River Department, as central Saskatchewan was then known, with sojourns (assignments, or tours of duty) at Fort Alexandria, Bird Mountain, and Lac la Pêche.

From 1805 to 1807, Daniel worked on the Saskatchewan River at New Fort, South Branch House, and Cumberland House. On October 10, 1805, he was introduced to the young woman who would become his wife. At the tender age of 14, Lisette was, according to Daniel's journal, "a fair Partner of a mild disposition and even-tempered." Nothing is known of her origin or that of her tribe, and she was long thought to be a Snake Indian from the Kootenays. "Snare" has long been considered a misspelling in Harmon's original journal; recent scholars have speculated that the "Snare" people do exist, and are now the Secwepemec band of the North Thompson River, BC, but in 1997, Secwepemec band leaders were unable to confirm this.

In 1807 and 1808, Daniel and Lisette worked in the Nipigon District, from Fort William to Sturgeon Lake and Dunvegan forts. Their first son George was born at Sturgeon Lake on December 4, 1807; his parents would enjoy him for a mere four years. The family was posted to the Athabasca District in 1808, traveling from Dunvegan to Stuarts Lake until 1810. Twin sons were born prematurely on February 15, 1810; they lived only a few days, dying on February 22 and 24. Two more infants died during this period, unmentioned in the journal; we know of their existence only because records show Lisette as having borne a total of fourteen children.

1810: Rocky Mountain District

A great remove to New Caledonia in 1810 took the Harmons into the Rocky Mountain region for a decade. Three sojourns at Stuarts Lake led to Daniel's posting as factor at a new fort at Fraser's Lake, British Columbia, just across the continental divide. Fraser Lake fort was founded by Daniel's fellow Bennington native Simon Fraser , the North West Company adventurer famed for his discovery and descent of the Fraser River to Vancouver.

One of Fraser's companions, J.N. Quesnel (founder of Quesnel, BC), offered to take young George Harmon back to his Vermont relatives to attend school. This was the custom of the country during the fur trade era; the daughters were reared as natives with their mothers, while the sons were sent to white schools and families to be groomed for futures in the fur trade.
"No consideration could induce me to send him down, especially while he is so young, excepting the thought that he will soon be under the fostering care of my kind relations, who will be able to educate him much better than it would be possible for me to do in this savage country. As I do that which I apprehend will be or the benefit of my little son, so I earnestly pray that God will generously protect him in his absence from me."

Four-year-old George bid farewell to his parents on April 22, 1811 and embarked on his cross-continental canoe trip. It would take four more years for the letter to reach Daniel that informed him that while George had made the epic journey safely, the eldest Harmon son had died of scarlet fever in Vergennes, Vermont, on March 18, 1813.

Three days after George's departure, Mary Patience (known as Polly) Harmon was born on April 25, 1811. Polly would become very important to her father, who taught her to read in English (though "with their mother I more regularly employ the French"), and was the only one of the Harmon children old enough to remember their years in the Indian Country after their return to Vermont.

Sarah (Sally) was born at Fraser Lake on February 10, 1817, the last of the Harmon children (save John) to be born in the Northwest.

Daniel's Decision

Friday, August 4, 1815 is a turning point in Daniel Harmon's journal. Devastated by news of his son George's death, Daniel turned inward in a profound spiritual crisis that would change his life and lead him to end his North West Company career. For the next three years, Daniel struggled with intense grief for the loss not only of his son, but his father and several of his brothers back in Vermont. And his grief was not his alone, for he had had to break the news to Lisette.

"Her distress at receiving this intelligence was greater, if possible, than my own. I endeavoured, by some introductory remarks on the uncertainty of earthly things, to prepare her mind for the disclosure which I was about to make. Her fears were alarmed by these remarks, and she probably discovered in my countenance something to confirm them. When I informed her that our beloved son was dead, she looked at me with a wild stare of agony and immediately threw herself on the bed, where she continued in a state of delirium during the succeeding night."

This period was also a turning point in the Company's fortunes. Beaver exports had been declining steadily: trapped out, said some, and starved, said others. The War of 1812 had left the Americans a major force in the fur trade, leading the Hudson Bay Company to take over the North West Company in a bid to keep Canadian trade routes out of American hands. Next, the Red River Affair discredited both the Company and its leader Simon Fraser when Scottish settlers attacked and burned the trading post for its close relations with natives and MŽtis. Trade was giving way to settlement, white women were pushing westward, and formal church marriages were displacing the more casual liaisons "in the custom of the country." It was the end of an era. Heartsick and homesick, Daniel's thoughts turned to home.

Daniel Williams Harmon 1778-1843

Daniel Williams Harmon was born in Bennington, Vermont (then part of New York) on February 19, 1778. The fourth son of a tavernkeeper who had fought on the American side in the Battle of Bennington, Daniel joined the North West Company in the spring of 1800 at the tender age of 22.

Daniel Williams Harmon was a moral man whose passions were conversation, religion, and family. He was intense but not an intellectual, intelligent but not educated. Though one of his brothers went to Dartmouth, Daniel was cut from rougher cloth. The Reverend Daniel Haskell, editor of Daniel's journal, bemoans the fur trader's lack of a classical education as it shows through in his rough writing style. Nicknamed "the priest" by his Canadian companions, Daniel was passionately spiritual, intensely reserved, and extremely hard on himself. Each birthday in his journal finds him condemning his life of "folly and sin," though apart from one or two occasions where he admits to being "three sheets to the wind," it is hard to find evidence of his transgressions. He was serious, earnest and responsible, and inclined to be dry, especially without the society he craved. This was the society of close friends and their books, and his journal constantly laments the lack of good conversation especially about religion. He missed his family intensely, and yearned for their letters; we can only regret that none of his survived.

After a nineteen-year career as a clerk and company factor in the Canadian northwest, Daniel retired from the NWC in 1819 and returned to his native Vermont. The event that has perhaps most distinguished this otherwise typical fur trader's career was his decision to bring with him his mixed-blood wife and children.

With his brothers Argalus and Calvin, Daniel founded the town of Harmonville, later Coventry, Vermont, in 1824, where he kept a trading post and sawmill on the Black River. The family returned to Montreal in the spring of 1843, where Daniel died weeks after the move in March, aged 65. No formal record of his death is known, though he is presumed buried in Montreal. The Harmon family monument in Mount Royal Cemetery is near the grave of his contemporary, the famous Canadian cartographer David Thompson.