John Payzant

John Payzant (17 Oct. 1749 in Jersey – 10 April 1834 in Liverpool, N.S.) was a Foreign Protestant, prominent New Light Congregational minister in Liverpool, Nova Scotia and was taken captive for four years with his siblings and pregnant mother after the Raid on Lunenburg (1756).[1][2] He was born Jean Paysant in St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands to French Huguenots Louis Payzant (1695–1756) and his wife Marie Anne Noget (1711–1796).[3] The family moved to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in 1753.[4] At the May 1756 raid, mercenary natives for the French shot and scalped his father and three others.[5][6] (According to DesBrisay, they were later buried on Heckman's Island, Nova Scotia.)[7] For the first year, he and his siblings were adopted by the Indigenous family while his pregnant mother was taken to Quebec. John learned to speak their native language. He later wrote: “I was [later] a languattor [translator] for the Indians as I had learnt that Language when prisoner among them."[8] After one year of captivity by the natives, he and his siblings were eventually released to re-connect with their mother in Quebec. “When I arrived at Quebec I was sent to the Jesuits to be instructed in the Learning of that Academy and during my stay there I made great proficiency in the Arts that were taught in that School, and as they were fond to proselyte they took the more pains with me."[9] In 1760 they all (including a sister born in Quebec in December 1756) returned to Nova Scotia, settling in Falmouth.[10] He then became a minister in Liverpool, Nova Scotia (1793). He was part of the Great Awakening and was a follower of Henry Alline and married his sister Mary in 1774.[11] They had one daughter and eight sons. Rev. John Payzant died at 84 and is buried in Liverpool's Old Burying Ground.

John Payzant (1749–1834) - taken captive for four years (age 6-10)
Raid on Lunenburg (1756): John and family defending against the attack by Donald A. Mackay


See also

References
  1. Canadian Biography - John Payzant
  2. Mather Byles DesBrisay (1895). History of the county of Lunenburg, pp. 494-501
  3. Brian C. Cuthbertson., ed., The Journal of the Reverend John Payzant (1749-1834) (Hantsport, N.S.: Lancelot Press, 1981), p. 16.
  4. William Cotterell to John Pownall, 30 July 1753. Nova Scotia Archives, RG1, Vol. 38A, p. 87.
  5. D. Christopher Jessen, 11 May 1756. Nova Scotia Archives, MG100, vol. 263, No. 1.
  6. There are competing primary accounts regarding the ethnicity of the fighters. Rev. John Payzant states in his Journal in 1810 that there were: "ten Indian[s] from the River St. John. … They took my Mother and her four Children away with them to the River St. John Where we were all ransomed…" This may be a reference to Maliseet (i.e., St. John River Indians). At the same time, DesBrisay relays another primary account in which another son of the Payzant family identifies one of the fighters as "the old Micmac," p. 496.
  7. DesBrisay, p. 498.
  8. Cuthbertson, p. 17.
  9. Cuthbertson, p. 16.
  10. Linda G. Layton, A Passion for Survival: The True Story of Marie Anne and Louis Payzant in Eighteenth-century Nova Scotia (Halifax, N.S.: Nimbus, 2003), p. 84
  11. Marion M. Payzant, The Payzant and Allied Jess and Juhan Families in North America (Wollaston, Mass., 1970), p. 31.

Further reading
  • The journal of the Reverend John Payzant (1749–1834), ed. B. C. Cuthbertson (Hantsport, N.S., 1981)
  • Nova Scotia Historical Society, #40 (1980): "Rev. John Payzant: Henry Alline's Successor"; by Brian Cuthbertson; Vol #40 (1980); pp. 2

Nova Scotia Historical Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1993: "The Lunenburg Indian Raids of 1756 and 1758: A New Documentary Source," by Linda G. Wood, pp. 93-108.

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