Frontier and Faith
After 1655 the margins grew teeth. English towns pushed inland toward groves already cleared by Pennacook hands; French farms clung to riverbanks while Iroquois warriors watched from every cedar swamp. Faith meant different things on each shore — Puritan meetinghouses where Eliot's Praying Indians wore English coats, and stone chapels where Jesuits exorcised devils from teenage girls. Both branches were about to learn that frontier peace is always borrowed time.
1656–1658 kept the registers busy on both sides of the ocean. Edward Peter Hurst died in Boston; his daughter Margaret had married Edward Preston at New Haven in 1651. William Towne sold Salem land and bought Topsfield meadow. Robert Smith, tailor of Rowley, married Mary French. Eleven-year-old William Taylor came alone on the Speedwell toward country that would become Marlborough. In Canada, Robert Drouin's prosperity showed in dowries — from nothing in 1656 to milk cows, clothing, and livres cash within eight years. Marie Anne Le Laboureur arrived from Bayeux as a fille à marier and married carpenter Jean Normand in Charlesbourg's star-shaped Jesuit layout. Ignace Gagne was born at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré; Étienne Dumay Jr. at Sillery; Marie Bonneau followed her husband Pierre from France with seven-year-old Joseph. Louis XIV, recalling Governor Lauzon, authorized the "36-mois" indenture — three years' labor, no citizenship, no fur trade, hope of land at the end. Canada held fewer than three thousand souls against an empire of beaver and fear.
Deacon Ralph Mousall of Charlestown left £20 in his will to ward Ruth Wood — who would marry Phineas Upham at Malden on 14 February 1658. Nathaniel Gary wed Anne Mattle Douglas at Roxbury; would marry Tryall Shepard three years later. John Johnson and Deborah Ward married at Sudbury; Bethiah Ward born to Deacon William Ward and Elizabeth Storey — fifteen children between them. Solomon Johnson received 130 acres in Sudbury's two-mile strip. Between 1651 and 1658, John Eliot and Daniel Gookin organized seven Praying Indian villages — over fourteen such towns eventually, forty-five to sixty Native inhabitants each, Bibles in Algonquin, English houses, Puritan meetinghouses. Chief Tahattawan's Nashoba grant of 1651 would one day become Littleton. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658; son Richard lasted months before exile. The Act of Uniformity marked every non-Anglican a nonconformist. David and John Stirling, Scottish prisoners indentured in New England, sailed home when the Protectorate cracked.
French Canada in those same years filled with arrivals and plague. On 8 March 1658, Étienne de Lessard donated land for a chapel at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré — rheumatic builder Louis Guimont cured laying three foundation stones, miracles multiplying. Michel Messier married fille à marier Anne Lemoine at Ville-Marie and bought Île de Montréal acreage. Léonard Pilote sailed from La Rochelle on Le Taureau, leaving pregnant Denise Gauthier behind; by October he was procurator for merchant Michel Desorcy, emissary of the king. Toussaint Giroux finished servitude under Giffard, built a heated room with cellar and attic at Beauport, took up eel fishing beside Michel Baugis. In 1659, Bishop François de Laval arrived with Paul de Rainville's family and eighty-four Normandy fishermen. Jeanne Mance recruited Olivier Charbonneau's laboring family — the Saint-André lost its rudder, returned, sailed again, and the Black Plague killed ten at sea; the infection spread through Québec until Charbonneau fled to Boucherville with Pierre Dagenets, wheat farming and a water mill at Pointe-aux-Trembles. Paul Vachon became notary at Beauport and first notary of Île d'Orléans. Jean Pichet contracted at Château-Richer. Pierre Maheu contracted to marry twelve-year-old Jeanne Drouin before notary Paul Vachon. Léonard Pilote wrote Denise: "It is here you must come. I have obtained a beautiful grant right next door to Québec."
30 January 1660: Charles II climbed to a throne his father had lost on a scaffold. The Restoration bargain gave him army and purge; Parliament held him to the Petition of Right — no forced loans, no martial law without consent. Charles II and his ministers pulled colonies under crown control and passed Navigation Acts forcing Atlantic trade onto English hulls, turning colonial merchants into smugglers overnight. In Massachusetts, the General Court named Marlborough and ordered every claimant to pay public charges by November or forfeit interest — Edmund Rice, William Ward, Solomon Johnson, John Howe among the signers. William Ward moved nine miles west from Sudbury, became Marlborough's first deacon, received fifty acres. Roger Preston kept a Salem inn for strangers and strong liquor. William Sterling married Elizabeth Sawtelle at Haverhill — ship carpenter, miller, future selectman. Francis Gould and Rose Whitehall left Braintree for Chelmsford's western edge in late 1659. William Douglas bought at New London and moved from Boston with Ann Mattle and their children. In Canada, Jean Carrier arrived from Saintes to work for the Hospitallers; Nicolas Bélanger married Marie de Rainville at Beauport; Iroquois raiders took girls from Ville-Marie — Marie Madeleine Bourgery, Jeanne Baillargeon — and slaughtered militia who ventured beyond the walls.
1661 was a year of terror on the St. Lawrence. and educated Tryall Shepard bought land from Lt. Joseph Wheeler north of Concord's garrison, built on Quagany Hill. Joseph-François Hertel, stepson of Lt. Quentin Moral, was captured by four Iroquois, tortured, adopted, smuggled letters to Father Simon Le Moyne, escaped — future "Hero of Canada." Louis Gagne died with seven Frenchmen on the Mohawk River near future Auriesville. Michel Messier was reported burned by Onondagas; he would surface again. Iroquois massacred nearly a hundred French and Huron on Île d'Orléans; Sainte-Famille parish rose from the blood. Governor Davaugour sent Pierre Boucher to France; Louis XIV chose the Carignan-Salières Regiment — hand-picked soldiers fresh from fighting Turks — rather than abandon the colony. Raymond Pagé moved his carpenter's family to Beaupré waterfront; Jacques Lareau sharecropped north of the Saint-Charles as carpenter and wood-turner. Michele Picard born at Ville-Marie to Jacques-Hugues Picard and widow Anne Antoinette de Liercourt. Charles Garnier sailed from Caen. Marie-Marthe Moral born at Trois-Rivières where Quentin Moral would argue 29 cases in a court that tried 907 disputes for 700 settlers — two-thirds debt, inheritance the rest.