Say Their Names

• Jacques Mius (c1688 in Nova Scotia – November 2, 1726 in Boston)
• Philippe Mius (the third) (c1703 in Nova Scotia – November 2, 1726 in Boston)
• Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr. (c1684 in Nova Scotia – November 2, 1726 in Boston)
• Jean-Baptiste Guidry Jr. (1712 in Nova Scotia – November 2, 1726 in Boston)
• John Missel (unknown birth – November 2, 1726 in Boston)

Merligueche

The devastating events that snuffed out the lives of these four men and one boy began on July 28, 1723, here, in Merligueche Harbor, now Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, where Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr. and Philippe Mius (the second) (c1660-after August 25, 1726) lived and were raising their families. Philippe had a trading post nearby.

Both Philippe and Jean-Baptiste were French Acadians. Philippe Mius married two Mi’kmaq women and had lived among the Native people for decades. Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr. married Madeleine (Madelaine) Mius around 1720, the half-Mi’kmaq daughter of Philippe Mius and his second wife, Marie. They too lived in the Mi’kmaq village at Merligueche.

Jacques Mius and Philippe Mius (the third), sons of Philippe Mius (the second), were half Mi’kmaq, and were called “Indians” by the English, while Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr. and his half-Mi’kmaq son by the same name were both referred to as “French.”

John Missel was an Indian man, according to the English records. His name is probably substantially misspelled, given that both Mius and Guidry are, and Jacques Mius is called James in the English records.

July 28, 1723

In 1723, New England was engaged in Dummer’s War with the Wabanaki Confederacy, which included the Mi’kmaq, particularly those living in New England as opposed to Nova Scotia. The Massachusetts government, along with the fishermen, were afraid of losing access to their lucrative Nova Scotia fishing waters, so naval galley ships were sent to patrol the Nova Scotia coastal waters.

On July 28, 1723, English Commander Joseph Marjory was patrolling the Nova Scotia coastline when he captured a group of seven people, according to the ship’s log, after anchoring in Merligueche Harbor. This family band, far removed from New England, had not been involved in warfare.

Commander Marjory labeled the three adult men and four children broadly as “Indians,” conveniently ignoring their European or mixed-European heritage. The children were aged 16, 10-12, and two younger children around 7 or 8. Yes, children were taken as hostages for leverage.

Among those kidnapped were François Mius, about 23, the son of Philippe Mius, the second, and Paul Guidry, about 22, the son of two French parents, Claude Guidry and Marguerite Petitpas. Paul Guidry was the brother of Jean-Baptiste Guidry who was married to Madeleine Mius, the daughter of Philippe Mius. The others were probably family members as well, but historical records have not confirmed their names.

François Mius, born about 1700, was one-half Mi’kmaq, and Paul Guidry, born about 1701, was entirely French, although he was born at Merligueche, as confirmed by his Catholic baptism record. He grew up among the Native people and the Mius family.

On October 3, 1723, the Boston News-Letter reported that a provincial sloop had sailed into Boston Harbor carrying “seven of the Cape Sable Indians on board, who were all sent to prison.”

But 1723 wasn’t the first time that both the Guidry and Mius family members had been kidnapped.

Dummer’s War Was Declared

There was another group of Guidry brothers, reportedly Augustin, Paul, Claude and Philippe, and their families who were kidnapped in 1722, shortly after Dummer’s War was declared on July 25th.

Paul Guidry and his wife Anne Marie Mius had their daughter Judith while being held in confinement in Boston, and Augustin Guidry and Jeanne Hebert had twins Hélène and Marie-Josèphe Guidry while confined in Boston in January of 1723.

The Guidry patriarch, Claude, then 75 years old, was also captured and performed an emergency or conditional baptism, called an ondoiement, done when no priest was available. His wife, Margaret Petitpas, about 62, and also French, probably delivered her granddaughters. At least some of these family members were returned to Nova Scotia, one way or another, in 1723, sometime before September 26^th when the twins’ baptisms were recorded in the Grand Pre parish records.

If you’re heaving a collective sigh of relief – don’t.

Not everyone was released, and by the time that this powder keg exploded in August of 1726, the families had waited for more than three years.

The Interminable Wait

For three agonizing years, 1,124 days, their families sought their freedom, expecting them to be released anytime, like the Guidry family had been in 1723 after being held for a year. That’s what “normally” happened, but not this time.

Finally, on December 15, 1725, a peace treaty was signed in Maine, and hostilities related to the Dummer War ceased, but that treaty did not include all parties.

When word of the treaty arrived in Merligueche, they were hopeful. Surely their family members would be arriving home soon since hostages were no longer “needed.”

Yet no ship arrived on the horizon.

No hostages appeared.

The days dragged on.

An additional treaty was signed in Nova Scotia in June of 1726, but word spread slowly, and full peace was not reached until the summer of 1727.

The Acadians and Mi’kmaq had lost faith in the promises of the English – their long-time, sometimes clandestine, trading partners.

Still, no one returned, and no word came either.

Day by day, every single day, they waited and prayed to the Catholic God, and the Great Spirit.

Were the hostages even still alive?

Sane?

What had happened?

Were they ever coming home?

Letter to Philippe

My dearest ancestor, Philippe,

I did not understand why you sent the winds to summon me to Merligueche two summers ago.

I learned, as we sailed along the coastline, that this is where your village stood more than 300 summers before. Where you lived, and loved, and grieved endlessly.

Where I walked the very land you refused to leave during the hunting moons because the English ships might return your family – and you wanted to be there, waiting, to greet them and rejoice.

Where you called me to wait for their spirits with you.

Nothing was more important.

I did not know, when I laid my hand, wearing the ring that belonged to your granddaughter, my mother, on Paul’s stone in the cemetery, with 1754 neatly carved beneath the cross, who he was – and what he had endured and survived.

I did not know that Paul Guidry married your daughter Anne Marie Mius.

Paul was known as LaVerdure, which the English heard as “Labrador,” so later in his life they called him “Old Labrador,” before he was buried here on the sacred land at Merligueche.

I did not understand the aching in your soul, the desperation for François. How could you have known that he would one day become a Chief, a leader of his people, and that during his time in Boston he was iron being forged into steel by the fire? All you knew was that he was your son, being held hostage, in the worst of conditions, in a faraway world that he didn’t know and could not escape from.

Now I know why you called me.

I answered then.

I’ve answered now.

Life has come full circle.

Your blood is in my veins.

Two years later, your invisible hand pushed me across the waters to Boston.

To do what you could not.

Kidnappings and Hostages

In August 1726, Captain Joseph Decoy from Cape Breton had been trading in Boston when his son was taken and detained for some reason. Distraught, Capt. Decoy stopped at Merligueche, probably at the trading post. He told the people there what had happened and that he thought the only thing that would secure the release of his son was seizing a Boston vessel and trading it in exchange for his son’s freedom.

That’s the way life worked in the French and English colonies, both of which had been established on Indian lands.

Apparently, the people living in the village at Merligueche, after 1,124 days of fruitless waiting for their relatives to be released, were at their wits’ end too, and Capt. Decoy either planted or perhaps watered a seed.

On August 25, 1726, the English fishing vessel, Tryal, captained by Samuel Daly (recorded as Doty in the trial record), sailed into the harbor at Merligueche, where he invited several villagers, including the Mius and Guidry men, aboard to drink.

Philippe Mius (the elder) did not drink, nor did he stay on board after greeting Daly with a friendly handshake, unlike the others, who remained to imbibe with the crew. Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr.’s mother also begged the Merligueche men not to stay on board and share the English sailors’ rum, but her warning, too, went unheeded.

One thing led to another, as described in my article, Philippe Mius (c1660 – after August 1726), Disaster, Piracy and the Dead Man’s Jig, and under the influence, it seemed like a good idea to do exactly what Capt. Decoy had suggested.

Who can blame them after more than three years of fruitless waiting for François Mius, Paul Guidry, and perhaps others to be released? By this time, any hope garnered by the 1725 peace treaty in Maine had quickly faded. Days turned into months, and months had dragged into years.

However, things didn’t go exactly as the Merligueche men had anticipated in their alcohol-fueled bravery. The English crew regained control of the ship before even leaving the harbor, tied Jacques Mius, Philippe Mius (the third), Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr., Jean-Baptiste Guidry Jr., and John Missel below deck in ropes, and headed straight for Boston with their drunken trophy “pirates” that were, in fact, political prisoners. This type of back-and-forth capture, trade, and release of prisoners had been going on for decades. Except that, unlike others, François Mius and Paul Guidry had been held and languishing as prisoners at Castle William for an exceptionally long time and not released.

The English were not playing by the unspoken rules.

In addition to the men being transported to Boston, three other “Indian” men jumped overboard when the English regained control of their fishing sloop. Being about four miles from shore, they may have drowned, although one report states that they survived. Unable to escape, the wife of one of those men described as a “squaw” and two “papooses” remained on board and were taken to Boston with the male captives. If she ever saw her husband again, I’m guessing she had a few choice words.

We don’t know the identities of the woman and children, or what happened to them after the trial a few weeks later.

Philippe was now left staring at the endless horizon, which, in addition to having already swallowed François, Paul, and five others three years earlier, had now consumed two more sons, his son-in-law, grandson, another man, woman, and two additional children.

His heart must have sunk in his chest, heavy with grief and foreboding.

Family Members

Various Mius and Guidry family members were taken hostage in multiple kidnappings. I can’t help but hear the phrase, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”

Keeping track of the players is confusing, so I’ve assembled a color-coded chart.

The children of Philippe Mius and his Mi’kmaq wife, Marie, who were known to be kidnapping victims in these episodes or were married to hostages, are shown at left.

Claude Guidry and Marguerite Petitpas’s children are shown in a column at right. Both couples had children who were not known to have been involved in the hostage episodes, and those children are not shown.

Two Mius daughters married two Guidry sons. Madelaine (Madeleine) Mius married Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr. dit Gravois and Anne Marie Mius married Paul Guidry.

The peach background color identifies known captives of the first kidnapping in 1722, where several Guidry family members and their families were taken. At least some were released in 1723, but perhaps not all.

The blue background color indicates known captives taken in July of 1723 who were still being held in 1726. There were more people kidnapped who were assuredly family members, but we don’t know their identities, nor do we know when François and Paul were eventually released. The records are silent until at least 1730 for Paul, and longer for François.

Paul Guidry was either kidnapped twice or never returned from the 1722 kidnapping. We know he was still held in the fall of 1726.

The names in bold red were captured in August of 1726 in Merligueche and hanged in Boston that November.

Boston

Prisoners who had allegedly committed crimes were held in jail while awaiting trial, but hostages, like the men taken in 1722 and 1723, were shipped to fortified Castle William on an island in Boston Harbor, where escape was not only improbable, but nearly impossible. That said, records from 1724 contain details about an incident in which a group of “Indian Hostages” successfully staged an escape from Castle William. Given the currents in the bay, I wonder if they survived, especially considering the physical conditions of the men held there and the island’s isolated location in the harbor. Could any of these brave escapees have been our Merligueche men?

François Mius, Paul Guidry and the other captives were held under deplorable conditions. Paul may have remained from the 1722 captures or could have been recaptured just a month or so after his 1723 return. In other words, by 1726, he had been confined there either three or four years.

Castle William was a stone military fortress, and the hostages were valuable pawns, diplomatic chess pieces, not men awaiting trial. There was no intention of releasing them, and only enough care was taken of them to keep them alive. Dead hostages aren’t useful.

Budgets reflected their fare of bread, salted meat and peas, along with colonial clothing such that they would not freeze to death.

They were fed, but experienced total isolation from everyone and everything they knew.

For three long years, and maybe more.

How did they not go mad?

In 1723, the men on board Marjory’s warship would have watched as they sailed directly into the harbor, dropping anchor at Castle William where their family members had been held after the 1722 kidnappings. Some may still have been languishing there.

Knowing what to expect, fear must have gripped the captives’ throats with its icy hands, but at least they had each other.

They, or their family members, had been here before and had tales to tell.

Their climb up this incline from the sea, with muskets or knives at their backs, was probably the last time they were outside these walls for more than three years – although we don’t know how much more than three years. For all we know, it could have been many more years of unjustified captivity.

Paul Guidry, if he had not been released earlier in 1723, would have been both thrilled and horrified to see his family members being ushered through those doors at knife- or bayonet-point, their hands bound.

How many of the people who entered this door walked out again? How many were carried in a wooden box or whose remains were simply tossed into the sea?

What horrors did they endure?

What about the women and children who were held here?

I shudder to think.

It’s worth mentioning that our last record of patriarch Claude Guidry is the twins’ official baptism entry in Grand-Pré that September where the parish record notes that he had given them ondoyée baptisms after their births here in January 1723.

Hostages were typically not held in dungeons at Castle William unless they were deemed uncooperative or unruly, but they were closely guarded within the barracks and parade grounds.

They probably looked up into the salt air, when they could, and wished themselves to be a seagull, lifting over the tops of the walls and following the waters of the Atlantic back to Merligueche.

Merligueche must have seemed like another time and place. Long ago. A land of their dreams.

Both François and Paul were in their early 20s, and while their more than three years spent here were undeserved and certainly unpleasant, to say the least, they were both honing survival skills that would serve them well for the rest of their lives – not the least of which was learning English.

François and Paul ultimately survived, but we have only silence about the rest.

How ironic that the flight path for planes arriving at Boston Logan Airport tracks right over the castle, named Fort Independence today. Escape – so close and so far into the future.

Is the reason we never learned the identity of the rest of the hostages because they died here?

I scattered flower petals that I had brought with me on the water, with a white feather that was gifted from above, for the souls who suffered and died at Castle William, perhaps attempting to escape – and for the soul of Philippe, the tortured father, who was suffering on the shores of Merligueche.

Boston

During the first week of September 1726, following the episode in Merligueche that resulted in the eight Acadian and Mi’kmaq captives, the ship Tryal sailed straight into Boston Harbor from the Atlantic, directly past Castle William.

The captives on board the Tryal would have watched as they passed Castle William, if they were allowed above deck. They would have known that their family members that they had been trying to free were suffering there.

Those men, beloved family members, whom they risked their lives to save, were within mere feet, yet they could not see them. In fact, they would never see them again.

The ship passed both Governors Island and Bird Island on their right, both within sight of Castle William and part of Boston’s Logan Airport today.

These two historical 1700s maps of Boston and the harbor are overlaid on a current map showing greyed-out ghostly images of future development, including the airport beneath most of Bird Island. Boston was significantly smaller then. Much of Boston and all of East Boston adjacent to the airport is built on fill.

Bird Island had mostly washed away before the airport development began in the 1930s and 1940s and had evolved into Bird Island Flats. The northwesternmost tip is marked today by an orange buoy in the harbor. The pointed Skyline Memorial is visible behind the buoy, at far left, with the airport runway and shipping terminals behind the tree and to the right.

These are the remnants, beneath the fill, of Bird Island.

Of course, the Boston skyline as seen from Bird Island today looks nothing like it did in 1726, but Long Wharf remains across the harbor, nearly indistinguishable in the picture, just slightly to the left of the buoy.

The purpose of Skyline Monument is to orient visitors to what they are seeing across the water.

The ship Tryal with our unwilling passengers anchored along Long Wharf, which is found in the monument section below the white flowers on the railing at right if you zoom in.

The water near the Boston shoreline was too shallow for ocean-going vessels. It was mostly mud flats at low tide, hence the need for Long Wharf to be so, well, long, extending some 2,000 feet into the water, reaching well beyond the low tide mark.

Boston was the center of commerce in colonial New England. Merchants and traders maintained their businesses along the wharf, which transitioned directly into King Street, leading to the Old State House, and past that, the jail, then spelled gaol.

Most of the time, the ship’s captain would go directly to the customs house, unless he was smuggling, of course – but not on that day.

Nope, that day, Captain Daly had something much more valuable than fish to declare. He had pirates, five of them, plus an accidental “squaw” and two “papooses,” but they could be useful barter too.

Indeed, it was his lucky day. He was probably so excited that he “accidentally” forgot to declare his cargo!

The hostages would have been bound with ropes and marched through the street, like trophies, shepherded by proud-as-punch Capt. Daly, straight up King Street to either the State House or the gaol, as shown on this 1722 map.

Minus today’s modern innovations, the harbor as seen from the end of Long Wharf looks much the same. The tall building directly across the harbor to the left of center is the Hyatt, which stands on what was once Bird Island, beside the Skyline Memorial.

A walk down Long Wharf is a stroll through time, past the old Chart House, now a historic restaurant.

Jacques and Philippe Mius, both Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr. and Jr., father and son, John Missel, and an unnamed Native woman with her two children walked this exact same path.

They were probably justifiably terrified.

Perhaps at night, past the bustling waterfront taverns, in a darkened street, enveloped by fear.

The children cried. The men wanted to.

Perhaps the State House in 1726 held a lantern in the cupola.

Just beyond the State House lay their final destination for the next few weeks anyway: the jail, drawn on the map as the prison.

Where were the woman and her two children taken? Did anyone have mercy, or were they “just Indians,” dispensable and disposable?

Did Jacques and Philippe Mius, Jean-Baptiste Sr. and Jr., and John Missel know that they were going to be tried as pirates? I’d wager that they did, and everyone knew what happened to pirates. Maybe they thought their trial would be different, because they weren’t actually pirates.

The Boston jail was a horrific place, described as a forbidding, dark stone building with “outer walls three feet thick, unglazed windows barred with iron, the cells partitioned off with planks, and the cell doors covered in heavy iron spikes. The passageways like the dark valley of the shadow of death.”

And that was not written by a prisoner. Imagine the experience of someone confined there and what they would have to say.

Daniel Fowle, a Boston printer, in his Total Eclipse of Liberty, said of the gaol, “If there is any such thing as a hell upon earth, I think this place is the nearest resemblance of any I can conceive of.”

I’m sure that Jacques, Philippe, both Jean-Baptistes, and John can attest to Hell on Earth. That, combined with the overwhelming dread of what they had to realize was coming.

The word of either a Frenchman or an Indian would never be believed against the triumphant deliverance of “pirates” to Boston by an English captain for a showy trial.

Today, Queen Street is Court Street, and the entire area from the street to the rear of the present-day 26 Court Street is occupied by the Old City Hall Annex, at far right. You can see the Old State House just a block away, now dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers, where the Mius, Guidry and Missel men would be taken to be tried.

I use the word “tried” very loosely, because wouldn’t you know it, their case would be heard by William Dummer himself, of Dummer’s War, in the Vice Admiralty Court, which was structured in a way that essentially presumed one’s guilt unless you could prove yourself innocent. Oh, and by the way, jury trials were prohibited.

This is not going to go well.

I realize this is “only a sunbeam,” but I like to think that maybe their spirits were not snuffed out and that they remained to protect others from injustice.

The Eclipse

It was around noon on September 14^th, 1726, and people were partaking of their midday dinner when the sun began to grow dim, casting an unnatural gray pallor over the Boston streets. Today, we know it was an eclipse, and nothing to be afraid of, but they didn’t know that then.

People looked up, reacting in fear as the sun was still present in the sky, yet was being swallowed by an evil darkness. The five men in the jail cells would probably not have been able to see the sky, but they would have heard their frightened jailors.

An ominous omen.

However, François Mius and Paul Guidry at Castle William would have seen the eclipse and probably understood its meaning all too well. To them, it foretold death.

In Puritan New England, an eclipse was widely interpreted as a direct warning from God. It was, indeed, just that, an omen that they were about to bloodstain their own hands.

The “Trial”

Witnesses, meaning the crew, were publicly called by the cryer to testify about “acts of Piracy, Felony and Robbery committed on board the Sloop Tryal, by John Baptist Jedre, alias Laverdure, John Baptist Junior, James Mews, Philip Mews and John Missel.”

Not only that, but to further inflame the situation, and justify the results, the devil was brought into the mix.

For that the said John Baptist Jedre, alias Laverdure, and John Baptist Junior, Not having the Fear of GOD before their Eyes, but being Instigated by the Devil, on the Twenty Fifth Day of August last, about the Hour of Two in the Afternoon of the said Day, together with James Mews, Philip Mews, John Missel, Indians, and others, in or near Mallegash Harbour…

Puritans viewed New England as holy ground carved out for them to build a godly society. Crimes like piracy, murder, and witchcraft were viewed as literal covenants with the Devil that polluted the community.

The men assuredly knew the charges were woven around details that may or may not have been entirely accurate. And introducing “the Devil” just inflamed everything.

“I move for dismissal, Your Honor, on grounds of prejudice. The “Devil” has poisoned this trial,” but there was no one to say that, and the Puritans certainly wouldn’t have believed it anyway. Not to mention that no one cared about a fair trial. This took place just over 30 years after the last of the Boston and Salem witch trials.

On the morning of October 4^th, the two Guidry men, father and son by the same name, heard the key turn in the lock of their spike-studded jail cell door. They were probably chained as they were marched to the Old State House.

They may not have seen each other in the month since they had been placed in the prison’s dungeon.

The light would have blinded them as they emerged from the darkness.

The Old State House was badly damaged by fire in 1747, with only the brick exterior remaining, so we don’t know exactly what it looked like in 1726, although this 1791 sketch is probably close.

It was here that their fate would be sealed by men speaking a language they did not understand.

Records tell us that they would have been marched inside the building, and up the stairs. They were tried on the second floor where they would have heard the muffled voices of traders and merchants conducting business beneath them, on the building’s ground floor.

Dummer would have been seated at the head of the table, along with the rest of the wealthy merchants and politicians hearing their case.

Did the accused men even get a seat at the table?

Were they banished to the side of the room, looking out the window at the freedom they would never know?

Perhaps staring at the church across the street, wishing it were Catholic, and that they could seek shelter and solace there. Did they pray as they heard the voices that would condemn them drone on in the background in a foreign tongue they did not understand?

Indeed, many people entering the State House, where lives were changed in an instant, needed to pray, either entering or exiting, or perhaps both. Of course, Catholics would not have been welcome in the Puritan church.

Perhaps God, by whatever name, heard them anyway.

The old brick church, long gone, stood diagonally across from the Old State House, where the tall building with the arched windows stands today.

The lintel above the door indicates that this was the site of the first meeting house in Boston, where its replacement, a brick church built in 1712, stood in 1726.

During the trial, we learn that Jean-Baptiste Guidry Jr. was only 13, turning 14 that fall, and that the Guidrys did not understand English and requested a French interpreter. A local Huguenot was summoned.

The court decided that since young Jean-Baptiste was not a “madman,” he was old enough to be responsible for his actions.

The sentence, a foregone conclusion, was then pronounced:

You…are to go from hence to the place from whence you came, and thence to the place of Execution, there to be hanged up by the Neck until you are Dead, and the Lord have Mercy upon your Soul.

After Sentence was given against the Prisoners, the Marshal of the Admiralty was Ordered to remand and keep them in safe Custody within His Majesty’s Goal in Boston.

As the father and son left the State House with the guards, life outside continued as it had that morning. Horses and carts and people making their way along the streets, attending to their business.

Everyday, mundane life.

But they probably sounded different, because the father and son knew they would not hear those sounds for long. They would never hear the precious voices of their family, or the sounds of their beloved woods, again, either.

Someone assuredly informed Jacques and Philippe Mius, and John Missel back in the jail what had happened at court. The guards may have taken glee in the men’s misery.

The next morning at 10 o’clock, their cell doors clanged open, and it was their turn to walk the long block to stand before the tribunal.

The charges were read, in English, of course:

For that the said Philip Mews, James Mews, and John Missel, not having the Fear of GOD before their Eyes, but being Instigated by the Devil, on the Twenty Fifth Day of August, last, about the Hour of Two in the Afternoon of the said Day, together with John Baptist Jedre, alias Laverdure, John Baptist Junior, and others, in or near Malegash Harbour…

Ironically, the Mius men had an Indian interpreter, not a French one. Their court-provided advocate asked for time to prepare a proper defense, and he was so generously given until 3 that afternoon.

By the end of the same day, two hours later, they too had been found guilty, with absolutely no regard for the fact that at least eight of their family members had been held for a year in 1722-1723, and seven more had been kidnapped in 1723, of which at least two were still being held at Castle William.

If the two Jean-Baptiste Guidrys, Philippe and Jacques Mius, and John Missel were supposed to abide by the December 1725 treaty, which is what qualified their behavior as “piracy,” then why weren’t the Bostonians?

Why hadn’t François Mius and Paul Guidry been released from Castle William and returned to Nova Scotia?

Why wasn’t any of that considered?

Apparently, the “rules” applied only to one side, and not the other.

Why were the accusers allowed to testify, but the accused men’s explanations were discounted and dismissed, along with the circumstances surrounding the hostages?

Was justice ever the goal? Or was this always meant to be an elaborate vengeful performative political spectacle dressed up as justice?

The identical verdict awaited Jacques and Philippe Mius, and John Missel, word for exact word.

This begs the question of how much François Mius and Paul Guidry, confined helplessly at Castle William, knew about what was going on. Humans love to gossip, so I find it difficult to believe they were unaware.

François and Paul were probably equally thrilled that their families hadn’t forgotten them, or given up on obtaining their freedom, and at the same time utterly horrified. Devastated that they had essentially sacrificed their lives for nothing.

This dreadful soap opera wasn’t over yet.

In the words of Marcus Rediker, Boston and other cities “staged spectacular executions” of pirates. Five pirates, all to be hanged on the same day, would be a sight to behold. Top-flight entertainment for everyone to look forward to. A public holiday.

Sickening.

Utterly sickening.

Between the Gavel and the Gallows

The walk from the Old State House back to the prison seemed like it was into another dimension for the four men and one boy whose lives would be ended. Not justice, but injustice, revenge, had been meted out that day. They were dead men walking.

The clock was ticking, day by day, hour by hour, until their lives would be snuffed out.

They probably didn’t know which day they would die. Would it be sooner, or later? Who would decide?

Gallows had to be constructed for five executions. We don’t know whether one executioner’s platform or five separate ones were built while Boston Town watched in anticipation of the blood-sport being prepared for their mass consumption.

Just three months earlier, William Fly only had to wait eight days after his verdict before he drew his final breath.

There were no such things as appeals. Often the length of time between the sentence being passed and execution carried out was dependent on how successfully the Puritan ministers were in their spiritual counseling delivered inside the jail cells of the condemned. But these people weren’t Puritans. They were Native Americans and Catholics. The Catholics had spent the past century trying to convert the Native people. We know the Guidrys were Catholic, but the mixed family members may have practiced some combination of Catholicism and Native American traditions.

Were they afforded any religious comfort, such as Last Rites, or were they treated as less than human?

Was the promise of the Puritan version of life after death powerful enough for them to recant their beliefs?

Ironically, Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who is entombed in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground near the Old North Church, within sight of where they were hanged, was fascinated by pirates and visited them often in the gaol, attempting to extract confessions and convert them. He ultimately published several treatises about piracy and conversion, so it’s unclear how much of his zeal was concern for their souls, fodder for his pulpit and books, or fascination with the spectacle of hanging itself.

Then on the morning of November 2nd, 28 long days later, the cell doors creaked open for the final time.

Did they know in advance that this would be the day?

Their appointed date with the Grim Reaper had arrived.

Were the men hopeful of a final miracle, or were they resigned to their fate?

The Execution

I’ve learned a lot more than I ever wanted to know about executions since writing Philippe Mius’s original article, and I’ve since traced their footsteps on that fateful, final day.

Because Philippe Mius (the third), Jacques Mius, Jean-Baptiste Guidry Jr. and Sr., and John Missel were convicted of piracy in the Vice Admiralty Court, tradition required that they be hanged over the water. The Diary of Jeremiah Bumstead tells us that executions occurred on the mudflats near the Charlestown Ferry between the high and low tide marks.

Execution day was a much-anticipated social event – for the attendees – not for those unfortunate men at the center of this carnival-like spectacle.

Nearby towns were emptied of residents as they flocked to Boston. Businesses closed, except for taverns, of course, and vendors sold food, drinks, and printed copies of execution ballads to the gathered crowds.

Preachers often appeared, using the convicted as examples to convert the flocks.

Everyone lusted for morbid last dying speeches, waiting breathlessly to see what would happen.

Would the men break?

What would they say?

Peasants and laborers watched from the crowded shore or the mudflats, but the wealthy secured prime seating or even watched from their boats in the river for a premium view.

Enslaved people and indentured servants were encouraged, permitted, or perhaps forced to attend in order to internalize the lesson of complete, unquestioning obedience.

Based on historical records of Boston’s pirate executions and admiralty customs, we can glean what their last day would have been like.

On the morning of their executions, the men would have been taken from the Boston gaol and placed into open wooden carts, sometimes alongside their own coffins, then paraded through the packed streets, lined with jeering residents and visitors.

The town drum corps marched ahead of them, beating a slow, ominous rhythm to alert the neighborhoods that the condemned men were approaching so the residents could hurry to watch.

The procession started at the gaol and moved slowly past the Old State House so the authorities could watch, then threaded through the North End’s narrow streets that were most heavily populated.

The condemned men were paraded around the city so everyone could take their turn seeing the spectacle. Hostility and violence were actively encouraged by the Puritan authorities, who wanted the public to vocalize their hatred for “sin” and rebellion – qualities it was believed that these four men (and one boy) represented in the flesh.

What a macabre parade.

People crowded the doorsteps, leaned out of second-story windows, and packed the cobblestones. They aggressively shouted insults, cursed the men, and openly spat on them as the carts rolled slowly past, bumping along the cobblestones, giving everyone ample opportunity to desecrate their bodies.

The lower-class spectators typically pelted the prisoners in the carts with mud, rotting produce, dead animals, and stones scraped from the street’s gutters. The “guards” did nothing to stop this, as it was viewed as part of the public penance.

I shudder to think of the example this set for children. Whatever happened to messages that would be preached from the pulpits on Sunday, like “love thy neighbor,” and being kind?

The merchants viewed pirates as an economic threat, but these men weren’t pirates in the traditional sense. Their “crime” was about something different altogether, and the fact that François Mius and Paul Guidry were still sitting at Castle William was evidence that the English had committed the exact same crime – and that crime was still in progress. Yet, there was no justice, and no accountability for them. Someone needed to hold a mirror!

The regular townspeople saw the prisoners as lawless, bloodthirsty outlaws who had broken both the laws of the King and the laws of God. The crowd felt a righteous, religious duty to mock them and break their spirits before they reached the gallows. Cruelty seemed to be the point, the purpose, and the name of the game.

The men were probably actually relieved to be finished with that unholy gauntlet by reaching the mudflats where their execution would soon occur. And poor Jean-Baptiste Jr. That poor child.

One of the reasons that hangings occurred in the intertidal zone, between high and low tide, was that in Boston, the high tide mark was where the streets and buildings began, but where the mouth of the Charles River entered the harbor was shallow. The low tide mark extended some 1,650 feet offshore in places, nearly one-third of a mile, providing a great deal of real estate for people to gather to witness the gruesome spectacle, along with the day’s entertainment.

The shoreline has changed substantially, but the historical map overlaid on the shadowed contemporary map beneath shows the 1700s shoreline, with the buildings in red, and the subsequent development on filled land on the current map.

The procession would have passed by various cemeteries, then called burying grounds. The prisoners knew they would not be buried there.

Pirates were not wanted in Puritan cemeteries, and neither were French Catholic or Native American men. Nor were they welcome in the Old North Church, either.

As the spectacle passed by the tombstones of Copp’s Hill, descending the steep hillside as they neared the water, the men could see the harbor, river, and the mudflats where their fate awaited.

Their heartbeats must have quickened.

As they approached the streets that ran along the waterfront, they would have been able to see the gallows scaffold, towering above the water, in the distance.

Everyone could find their way to Charlestown Ferry, where the mud flats extended nearly halfway across the river to a narrow channel.

Today, part of the area shown as water along the shoreline on the early map has been filled and is part of Langone and Puopolo Parks, located directly across Commercial Street from the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground lower terraces. The elevation and historic shoreline don’t much matter, though, because the gallows would have been constructed well offshore so that everyone had a good view of the barbaric spectacle that they had come to enjoy.

Oh, the incredible irony of the marker that greets visitors to Langone Park, today.

Thousands of spectators lined the North End docks, and the river was choked with boats, all gathered to watch the horrible gallows performance.

Around noon, typically between 11 AM and 1 PM, the show got underway, with the ministers acting as showmen.

The convicted men, with only minutes left to live, were either forced up on a ladder or sometimes stood in the back of the cart.

With four men and one boy to be hanged at the same time, I’d bet that they were all five forced to climb onto the scaffold or scaffolds and up ladders so that the crowd could see better.

The executioner would place the nooses around their necks.

Then, everyone was “treated to” an execution sermon. Yes indeed, what could possibly have been lovelier or more inspiring? I wonder what God thought.

Next, they were forced to listen to fiery sermons by high-profile rival Puritan ministers like Cotton Mather and Benjamin Colman, often lasting well over an hour, frightening and capturing the imaginations of the attendees.

They exhorted the voyeurs by using the condemned men as “living examples” of what happens if one strays from God’s law.

Finally, the ministers pressured the desperate men standing with nooses around their necks, willing to do almost anything to delay the inevitable, to recant and repent, reading a script pre-written by the minister. This coerced final act of admitting their sins would supposedly “save their souls.”

Of course, the condemned men could have been incredibly brave, stood their ground and refused to participate in the charade, as actual legendary career pirate William Fly, who raided shipping fleets, had done just a few weeks earlier. Fly shocked the crowd with his belligerence, disdain, and refusal to comply – rather spoiling their day.

Fly’s body would still have been “hanging in chains” in a gruesome gibbet cage on Nixes Mate, an island in Boston Harbor, as a warning to others when our men were hanged.

We’ll never know what Jacques Mius, Philippe Mius, John Missel, Jean-Baptiste Guidry Sr., and his 13-year-old son, Jean-Baptiste Guidry Jr., did, or didn’t do – but I’d hazard a guess. At least, I hope they refused. They literally had nothing to lose at that point, except their very last shred of dignity.

I can’t help but wonder if François Mius and Paul Guidry were transported from Castle William to witness this horrific spectacle, perhaps being provided with up-front, close seats as a form of torture for them and the convicted men as well. One last well-planned indignity.

The hanged men’s final minutes of life, sometimes stretching into hours before death overtook them, were scenes of pure torture.

Years later, hangings occurred using the “long drop” method where the floor of the scaffold was dropped from beneath the feet of the condemned, and their necks snapped, providing a blessedly quick death.

Not so in 1726. Death came slowly.

Either the cart was pulled from beneath each man, or the ladder was removed, or the men were “turned off” of it, leaving them swinging by their necks. The weight of their own bodies caused the noose to tighten, depriving them of oxygen.

Death by slow strangulation was neither swift nor kind, but that was anticipated by the voyeurs as part of the spectacle. The men died slowly, struggling for air, while horrible involuntary utterances and agonizing moans escaped their bodies as the transfixed crowd watched in this torture theater.

Sometimes their faces were covered, and sometimes not.

In the Footsteps of the Executed

In August of 2026, 300 years later, I found those mudflats and walked in their footprints.

After passing that horribly ironic marker reading, “By their deeds, measure yours,” I stepped onto the boardwalk of Langone Park.

The bustling city around me faded into oblivion. I could feel the cold iron of the chains, the motion of the carts lurching through the streets, what they endured as their bodies were bruised and abused, and the fibers of the nooses on their skin. The absolute terror of the thirteen-year-old child who died here, the horror of relatives held on an island, so close, but so far away, and the crushing grief of a father hundreds of miles removed.

My body was in the present, but my heart was with them, almost exactly three centuries earlier.

The pain was overwhelming, but I knew I couldn’t look away. I had to stay. I had to finish what was started.

That is why I had been called here.

Summoned.

I walked to the water.

Looking to the left, the beautiful bridge crossing the Charles River to Charlestown belies what happened here.

The bridge and water were lovely in late August 2026, but not when they breathed their last here, on November 2, 1726.

Looking directly across the water, I could see both the Bunker Hill Monument and the USS Constitution, a tall ship similar to what our family members might have seen as they were carted onto the mud flats that fateful day.

Looking to the right was the vast shallow plain of mudflats that stretched out to the heavily trafficked shipping lanes, the gallows scene completely inescapable to any ships passing by.

My eyes were drawn to the shallow water, below.

I knew that it was here.

Here that they had hanged from their necks until they died, choking, deprived of air.

Swinging helplessly.

Deprived of life as thousands reveled in their misery.

These ancient timbers bearing witness.

And these.

I looked up and saw the flats, heard the roaring crowds, cheering for their murders – as they gasped, groaned and perhaps begged for mercy that would never come.

Especially the father for his son.

I found the old seawall, marking the high tide and bearing the footprints of time.

When their last breaths had forever escaped their earthly bodies, the rest of Boston went off to celebrate.

Practices of English admiralty law required the men be left to hang for a full day, as a spectacle, until three high tides had fully washed over them, submerging or battering the swinging corpses.

This ritual symbolized the Crown’s authority over the prisoners, allowing the sea to claim them three different times – because once just wasn’t enough.

The gallows did not just claim their breath; their customs demanded one final, grotesque act in this morbid theater.

The third tide would have receded around noon the following day, exposing their waterlogged bodies. The colonial marshals either rowed out to the scaffolds, or took the carts and cut the men down, hauling their soggy bodies into the bottom of boats.

Denied burial in a burial ground, Philippe, Jacques, Jean-Baptiste, Jean-Baptiste, and John were instead rowed across the harbor to Bird Island. They were buried like so much waste, anonymously, in the wet, marshy soil where no one could honor them, but where their family members, François and Paul, still held at Castle William, could suffer the agony of watching them be buried – fully comprehending the horror they were witnessing.

Not only had they failed to save them, but by trying, they sacrificed their own lives.

Back in Nova Scotia, Philippe awaited the official word, but he probably already knew.

Philippe was never heard from again.

Bird Island

I am here to stand witness and tell you that neither the state, the gallows, nor the mud won.

The pain of standing on this ground was excruciating and tore at the very fabric of my soul. But I did not come to relitigate their staged kangaroo trial that could not be won, grant them quarter for their heinous deeds, or give them yet another win.

I came to answer three centuries’ worth of silence.

Against all odds, I found Castle William, the gaol, the path they traveled, the execution site, and finally, the remains of Bird Island.

I walked there, along the Harborwalk.

I brought flowers to free their souls. The Universe added a feather. I heard the message loud and clear. So did they.

I came for Philippe, to deliver what he had been denied. As a father, father-in-law, and grandfather, he had been robbed of the right to tend his family in death, to observe the sacred rituals of walking on into the next realm, and to lay them to rest in this one.

I walked to the very end of what had once been Bird Island, before the sea whittled it down to Bird Island Flats. The Skyline Monument stands here today.

One bouquet for the graves of Philippe, Jacques, Jean-Baptiste Sr. and Jr., and John, with the buoy marking the end of Bird Island Flats in the water, at right.

One bouquet for François Mius, Paul Guidry, and unnamed others who were held hostage at Castle William, and those who died there.

A third bouquet over the mud and flats. To release their souls.

Philippe, my ancestor, I stand here for you.

We have done a holy thing.

Resurrecting their memories from the mud.

Beyond all doubt, I know the Universe heard.

And answered.

With unbounded beauty.

You were denied the mercy of their funerals and the sacred rituals of burial. You could not touch your boys, your daughter’s husband, or your grandson. You could not comfort them, stroke their faces, and wash away the cruelty they had endured.

You were left alone on the shores of faraway Nova Scotia to mourn an empty horizon for all the rest of your days.

In your stead, I did what you could not.

I brought the ritual to them and returned them to the sacred water that spirited them away.

The judges are all forgotten now, themselves turned to dust, having already answered to God.

The scaffolds, too, are gone, but the water remembers. It’s alive. That which can divide us also unites us.

Together, we brought them out of the shadows and lifted them up to the Creator.

We set them free.

We have spoken their names and honored them.

You are all free now.

Your work is done.

Your time here is finished.

Your tasks complete.

Soar with the Eagles

And touch the face of God.

The gallows did not win.