01/02/07

Contents

ORIGINS OF OUR ANCESTOR (S)

History of the Name Long/Lang - Origins – The Early Years: Before 1775 – Oral history: Mgr. Ernest Lang – Was Philip Long really born in 1757? –– Philip Long was a Protestant – Philip Long was born in Scotland – Did Philip Long emigrate to the American Colonies in the New England area, and did he live in Philadelphia? – Was Philip really 18 years old when he committed his act of bravery? Philip Long more likely born in 1742 – On-Going Research
History of the Surname Long/Lang

1000 - 1200

The origin of the Long surname is clouded in some mystery. There appears to be at least two competing theories for the origins of the names. The first is that it is variation on a Norman-French place name such as “de Longues” or “de Longa”. The other theory is that it is based on physical or other characteristics similar to surnames like Short, Wise, and Strong. There are also Longs in Scotland who became Langs, Laings, and the Longmans, Langmans. Also there are links to Longman, and Longfellow in England.

Here are some excerpts from a document entitled “The Ancient History of the Distinguished Surname – LONG”. “…. Shows the first record of the name Long was found in Wiltshire (England) where they were seated from early times and their first records appeared on the early census rolls taken by the early Kings of Britain to determine the rate of taxation of their subjects.” “The family name Long is believed to be descended originally from the Norman race. They were commonly believed to be of French origin but were, more accurately, of Viking origin.” “The surname Long emerged as a notable English family name in the county of Wiltshire where they were recorded as a family of great antiquity seated with manor and estates in that shire. They were descended from a Norman noble of Preux in Normandy. This distinguished name settled in Wiltshire ….” “by the 13th century they had branched to Symington, Rowde Ashton, and Whaddon, and Beckington in Somerset, Monkton Farley and Bainton in Wiltshire, Preshaw in Oxford, and in the county of Norfolk.”

1200 - 1600

The name Long appears in a number of official records in England.. Here are some examples: Henry l Longe, co. Bucks, 1273. A., John le Longe, co. Hunts, ibid., Walter le Longe, co. Salop, ibid., Johanna Long, 1399: P. T. Yorks, p.130., 1536-37: Thomas Botton and Mary Long: marriage License (London), I.9.

One branch of the Long family eminated from the Prieux of France, in 1400.

Another source indicates that the Longs were at the defense of Londonderry (1688-1689), England.

Coat of Arms

Figure 1 - Long Coats of Arms

The oldest grant of a Coat of Arms is for John Long, who died A.D. 1597. The Long Coat of Arms is described as follows:

Arms: Sa. Within two flaunches and semee of cross-crosslets or, a lion rampant argent.
Creat: A lion’s head argent, erased or, holding in the mouth a dexter hand erased gu.
Motto: Pieux quoique Preux. (Pious though valiant)

Origins

The Early Years: Before 1775

This part of Philip Long’s life remains pretty much a mystery. Only oral history and conjectures are available at this time to satisfy our curiosity to know something more of our ancestor(s) and our common roots. We are indebted to Mgr Ernest Lang for his description of oral history on the origins of Philip Long. Time will tell when definitive conclusions and evidence can be discovered on our ancestry. It is clear as we write this passage that our family and thousands of hours dedicated by researchers have not been able to improve on the record left behind by Mgr. Lang. A very wise man once said that we should thread carefully when evaluating oral history – as in the fog of time, there may elements of truths shrouded in mist and myths but bits of truth may be somewhere buried in the narratives that have transcended the generations.

Our journey must begin with an analysis and assessment of the current record – both oral and documentary. As difficult as it may be to be objective, this can be our only motivation as we search for valid directions to uncover our common ancestors history and roots. Where we are speculating rather than analyzing, we will declare it openly.

Oral History – Mgr. Ernest Lang

Based on the work of Mgr. Ernest Lang (1899-1989), related in his book, Mon ancêtre Philip Long, our collective oral family history can be summarized in the following key points:

1. He was likely of Scottish ancestry.
2. He was a Presbyterian Protestant;
3. He emigrated to the American Colonies in the New England area;
4. He lived (or even could have been born) in Philadelphia;
5. He committed his act of heroism in the American Revolution when he was 18 years old;
6. His act of heroism was committed, based on the best deduction in 1775;
7. He is most likely to have been born in 1757.

In a very real sense, this is the best information we have to date on the origins of our common ancestor! We have presented it in the order above, not because it is necessarily chronological but because some of the information above is in fact a deduction by our family rather than any inference from primary or secondary sources of information. Other significant sources of information can be obtained in Donald Long’s impressive Origins document on Philip Long. We will leverage some of that work in our assessment of oral history informationWe will provide additional information as described by Donald Long in his impressive study on the origins of Philip later in this chapter.

Given that this is the best we have, we believe it is important to assess this information in the context of the writings of Mgr. Lang, tease out as much as we can from the documentary record that is available to identify any corroborations or inconsistencies with oral history, and as far as we can, identify and postulate on what, if any, evidence exists to corroborate or invalidate any of the existing total record at this time. Assessing oral history is a difficult pastime not the faint of heart. First, the body of oral history has accumulated over many years and it is always difficult to determine fact from fiction. Second, much of our collective oral history was past down to us all by a pioneer of our family, Mgr. Ernest Lang, and any attempt to assess the “facts’ might necessarily involve putting in question some of the “evidence” put forward by Mgr. Lang. With much newly discovered information, it is easier to make these historical assessments and we will do in a generous spirit and with a view to come closer to the truth – an ephemereal effort at best even with significant primary sources available to us.

We remain mindful of a warning issued by Gilles Long whereby we need to walk carefully around oral history – foggy or mythical as it may appear to be sometimes, it no less may contain key elements of truth that we cannot eliminate simply by wishing it. Beowulf may be based on an English mythology but it is no less representative of one version of England’s history that may be solidaly based on some key truths about its origins. I would apply the same standard for Rabelais’ own writings.

Investigating the truth does require some skepticism in order to test hypotheses and then develop, based on every shred of fact or belief or conjecture, the most likely scenarios around an ancestors life shrouded in mystery. Only with solid hyptheses can researchers hope to find additional factual information about our ancestor’s origins.

1. Philip Long was of Scottish Ancestry and Origins

Mgr. Lang’s text makes reference to the fact that Philip was believed to be of Scottish ancestry, but not necessarily born in Scotland. This is our view constitutes the most reiterated and therefore believed part of our collective oral history. The two pieces of information are linked but do not necessarily lead to one and the same conclusion that he was Scottish and born in Scotland. Being Scottish would have meant that he would have had parents (or at least a father) who was Scottish but Philip could have been among the hundreds of thousands that were actually born in other soils (e.g. England, Ireland or even the American Colonies for example) and ultimately emigrated to the American Colonies.

Donald Long did an exhaustive review of the available information on the ethnic origins of the Scotch-Irish and we refer the reader to his Origins document to obtain detailed information on the composition of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish in Europe and America at the time of the eighteeth century, including a very impressive and detailed assessment of currently reviewable databases for births, baptisms, death and passenger lists to find the elusive Philip Long. We find it fascinating that our family would so strongly believe that we have Scottish ancestry when from the second generation on, the primary language of the vast majority of Long descendants was French. Of course, there are some physical evidence to highlight Scottish-ness (if such a thing is possible), including some red hair or skin pigmentation. Unfortunately, it is this author’s belief that these traits are not shared across the multiple generations and in fact can really be found in descendants of Joseph Long’s descendants most probably because he did marry a Scottish woman, Annie Douglass. Unfortunately without a vast research project, this is really in the realm of the unprovable but I challenge the readers to identify those traits in any of the other branches of the descendants of Romain, from his first born Paul and his first born, also Paul – a vast branch with very large roots in Clair – to see if alleged Scottish traits are really visible in any of the other branches of the family.

Unfortunately, there is no direct and primary evidence to support the oral history of our supposed origins of Philip as a Scotch. However, in our view, there are some solid challenges that can be raised against Philip having Scottish origins. This does not mean that it is not true that Philip was Scottish. It simply means that a counter case can be built and that perhaps an alternative scenario around his origins may actually be stronger. Some of these issues and questions were raised in Donald’s Origins and in a multitude of correspondence between a number of researchers over the years. Here are some of the arguments:

• Long is not a common Scottish name – in fact, one could consider the name an exception among all of the Scottish generations – based on current research and information shared in Origins, the Long family in Scotland would have been a truly remarkable and unique family; in fact, the Scotch are associated from time immemorial with clans and there is no history in our family, or any tie that exists between Long’s in Scotland, with any particular clan. Donald, after the most exhaustive search ever undertaken, found evidence of very few instances of Long’s in the databases in Scotland.
• Philip Long married Marie-Julie at an Anglican Church in Quebec City. This does not invalidate the Scottish origins oral history since any protestant man marrying a catholic woman would have had to either convert to Catholiscism or have the ceremony performed in a Church acceptable to the Catholic Church. In the 1790’s, only the Anglican church had that arrangement with the Catholic church, mostly because of the closeness and uninterrupted apostolic succession shared between the two churches.
• John Mann, who related his encounter with Philip Long in his Travels in North America, did not in fact raise the fact that Philip was Scottish. Being Scottish himself, we could have expected that Mann would have identified himself to Philip further due to their common ancestry, and might have referred to this fact alone. Instead, he suggested that Philip’s command of the English language was quite good, describing it as “with propriety”, an unlikely epithet for Scotchman in the 18th century in the middle of nowhere. He also referred to him as an American Loyalist but that does not help us in this case. We ask you to consider the following: is it more likely that Philip was Scottish with a command of the spoken English language described in such a way by Mann, or that Philip had command of this language in the way described by mann because he did not in fact have the heavy accent of native Scotchman (even to this day)? To be fair, the other alternative is that Philip may not have been born in Scotland and as every second generation immigrant will know the heavy cultural accents are diminished with each succeeding generations, particularly in the great melting pot that the American colonies actually represented even in the 18th Century!
• Based on our own knowledge and understanding of our ancestor’s education levels, or use of phrases etc …, it is not possible for us to establish either way whether Philip was Scottish or not;
• Philip associated with numerous British and Scottish men during his life – unfortunately, there is no evidence that he associated more prominently with any particular group.
• Long’s in England are are very large group and we can also find them in Ireland in significant numbers. How did we end up being so unique as to be Scottish when it would have been so easy to be of English or Irish origins?

The connection to Scotland seems to have been a pretty constant one in our oral history. However, based on the research by Donald, my own and others, the frequency and appearance of the name of Long in Scotland is very, very low. The occurrence of the name Long is very high in England, particularly in the Wiltshire County, North of London, and in the Cornwall area. In fact, Donald identified a very good candidate for our ancestor. Born in 1742, this Philip Long was born in Lansallos, Cornwall, England. His parents were John and Elizabeth Long – a nice tie in to the fact that Philip was once confused with John Lang during Mgr. Octave Plessis’s visit to the Eastern dioceses. But of course, there is absolutely no connection between Philip Long and any John Long except for that obvious mistake by the Secretary – and what a costly one it has turned out to be given the amount of research wasted in that direction!

In Margaret Stuart’s excellent book, Scottish Family History: A Guide to Works of Reference on the History and Genealogy of Scottish Families, we were unable to identify a single instance of a Long family in Scotland. However, George F. Black, PhD., in The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origins, Meaning and History, does have an entry for our family name:

LONG. A surname descriptive of the stature of the roginal bearer. Johannes Longus who witnessed a grant to the Hospital of Soltre, c. 1180-1214 (Soltre, p. 5) is doubtless the Johannes Longus who witnessed the grant of Gillemoristun by Richard de Morevil, a. 1189 (REG., p. 39), and c. 1180 a charter by Euerard de Pencathlan to Kelso (Kelso, 370). William Longus held land near Lynthonrothrik (?c. 1200) (RHM., I, 3), Adam Long appears in Dumfriesshire, c. 1259 (Bain, I, 2176; APS., I, p. 88), Gregory le Long was a burgess of Dundee in 1268 (Balmerinoch, p. 25), and c. 1350 William Long witnessed confirmation of Snawdoun to Dryburgh (Dryburgh, 232).

In Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames with Special American Instances, by Charles Wareing Bardsley, M.A., we find the following entry:

Long. - Nickname "the Long", from the stature of the orignal bearer; cf. Longfellow and Longman; cf. also Short, &c.

Henry le Longe, co. Bucks, 1273. A.
John le Longe, co. Hunts, ibid.
Walter le Longe, co. Salop., ibid.
Johanna Long, 1379: P.T. Yorks., p. 130
1536-7. Thomas Bolton and Mary Long: Marriage Lic. (London), i. 9.
London, 75; New York, 124.

As well, we have from the Rev. Henry Barber, M.D., F.S.A., British Family Names, Their Origin and Meaning with Lists of Scandinavian, Frisian, Anglo-Saxon and Norman Names :

Long. N.-Fr. (Normand French). De Longa, De Longues; p.n. Also Prot. ref., Longon 1621, in Rot. Hund.

Finally, from A Dictionary of Scottish Emrigrants to the U.S.A., compiled and Edited by Donald Whyte, F.S.A. Scot., L.H.G., we have the following entry:

Long, Henry. From Galloway, Wigtonshire. To New York on Gale, ex Stranraer, 16 May, 1774. Labourer. (T. 47/12).

These are some examples of Long’s found in Scotland, and although relatively rare, and other examples in Brittain as well.

We invite the reader to review Donald’s analysis of the Scotch-Irish immigration during the period of interest. It is an exhaustive approach to the subject and quite informative. Unfortunately, we are still following trails of ghosts in the mists of time to identify the possible origins of our ancestor.

We must agree with Donald Long’s in-depth assessment which did not conclude that Philip’s Scottish origins could be established with any certainty.

2. Philip Long was a Presbyterian Protestant

There is no doubt that Philip Long was a Protestant. It seems to us the single incontrovertible fact known today about Philipthat forms part of our family oral history. Whether he was Scottish or of other British ancestry, the fact that he was married in an Anglican Church, when he married a Roman Catholic, pretty much guarantees that he was Protestant. However, what denomination among the Protestants Philip belonged to is much more controversial. Gilles Long identified in his book Depuis Québec Jusqu’à Clair, a number of times where Philip’s wedding to Marie-Julie was described as “legitimate” indicating that this marriage had been regularized somehow by the Church. There is no evidence throughout his life that Philip converted to Catholicism. Again, we have not found any evidence in all the records that Philip was anything but a Protestant.

It is unknown whether there were particular arrangements between the different Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church to allow mixed marriages as the one that took place at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Quebec City between Philip and Marie-Julie. We do know that Catholics and Anglicans have had a particularly closer relationship than other denominations since the Anglican Church has continued with the same tradition of Apostolic Succession as the Church of Rome. Further research will have to be undertaken to understand if many such mixed marriages were taking place at the Cathedral in that period, whether there were special arrangements that had been made for such marriages, or whether these marriages were restricted to Anglicans and Catholics as opposed to all Protestants and Catholic. You may be wondering why this is an important question? In fact, if Philip was an Anglican, and not any other Protestant, including Lutheran, it is very hard to imagine that he would have been anything but English. The Church of England was to Englishmen what the Presbyterian Church would have been to Scotchman’s – THEIR Church and very little mingling would have been happening at this time.

Hence, Mgr. Lang’s information is really based on a belief, as stated in his book, that Philip was most likely a Prebyterian Protestant given his origins as a Scotchman. Since we know from his writings that, and here we need to quote verbatim from page 14, that “based on the most plausible information, he was born in Scotland, of Protestant parents, around the year 1757”. [free translation and italics not in the original]. Of course, on page 18, we learn that for some, Philip was born in Scotland, whereas for others, he had actually been born in Philadelphia! In the same paragraph, we hear why Mgr. Lang, and for all intents and pruposes, everyone who had had an interest in this matter, believed Philip to be a Presbyterian Protestant: “We know, with certainty, that he was Protestant, probably Prebyterian, as were just about every other Scotchman of his time”. Mgr. Lang, like many of us, wanted dearly to complete the narrative for our ancestor’s life but deducting that he was Presbyterian on the basis of a another presumption does not make it true.

Finally, we have to be content with the only known fact about Philip in this case – he was a Protestant and could have been either a Presbyterian or an Anglican. We encourage the reader to reach their own conclusions after reading this passage as well as the relevant sections in Donald Long’s Origins or Gilles Long’s passages on Philip Long.

3. Philip Long Emigrated With His Parents to the American Colonies in the New England Area

Donald Long’s Origins studied this question in a very complete fashion and we wish to refer the reader to his efforts as a starting point. My own efforts over the years to identify possible sources to find evidence of Philip’s transatlantic voyage have been unfruitful. In this case, it is difficult to challenge or offer alternatives to oral history since there is no way to disprove or prove this information at this time.

As for alternatives, there is only one piece of information that we can use to determine whether this information is legitimate or could be justified. This information, which will be described in great detail later in this book, is the fact that our ancestor enlisted with the either the West Florida Royal Foresters in 1780-1781 or the Kings American Regiment in the Summer-Fall period of 1782. How did an emigrant from Europe, arriving sometime between his birth and his enlistement as early as 1780, come to either be at Pensacola, in British West Florida or Savannah, Georgia? This is why the search continues relentlessly into our past so that we can find connections between these various pieces of unconnected data.

There are likely only a few ports where Philip would have arrived either with his parents or alone: Falmouth and Boston (Massachussetts), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Baltimore (Maryland) or New York. Researchers have investigated many passenger lists over the years, and here is the one that Ghislain Long had developed of possible candidates for either Philip or his siblings.

[Insert table from Ghislain and Strassberger – augment with Donald info etc …]

A large number of sources of information have been consulted over the years to research the Long name in Pennsylvania. We refer the reader to Appendix 15.

Pennsylvania is by far the best option for researchers to uncover our ancestor. Even though there is a great deal of uncertainty on the validity of the oral history available to us, it is still the best material uncovered to date and so should be kept as a key areas of research. Unfortunately, not even dates in oral history can help us out in this search as we will discover in the next section.

It is not possible at this time to eliminate some of these candidates unless and until we develop a strong view of the likely birthyear for Philip Long. That will be the purpose of one of the key sections to follow.

4. Philip Long was born or lived in Philadelphia?

As the reader must now understand fully, the challenges of oral history is that it sometimes is so imprecise! Mgr. Lang gives us both possibilities, and basically leaves either as equally possible. I know that my brother Ghislain, for an extended period in his research, came to believe that Philip had actually been born in Philadelphia. Or course, without any evidence, Ghislain then moved to follow different trails including that Philip was actually born in New York, Virginia, North Carolina and finally Georgia! A phantom would not have more lives than our ancestor.

Philadelphia has always enjoyed a great deal of sympathy from the family as a likely birthplace for Philip. There is no mention of Philadelphia in any of the correspondence to the National Archives between 1930-1975 so it is hard to inpoint when it became a favourite in the family to explain or document Philip’s origins. We know, and Donald Long has again provided ample research for this, that the Long Family is very numerous in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Long or Lang’s in Pennsylvania are of German or Palatinate ancestry – neither of which have ever been used to described our ancestor. Of oucrse, once doubt is cast on our ancestor’s Scottish ancestry, German can certainly be used as a possibility! From Donald and many other sources, we know that the Scotch-Irish were present in great numbers as well in Pennsylvania and that is highly conforting since it gives us a basic framework to work from.

To pinpoint Philip’s birth or having lived in Philadelphia is actually a major improvement on what we know at this point. Philadelphia was a major urban centre in Colonial America but it is at least geographically focused, a much narrower search is possible compared to Pennsylvania as a whole. No serious research has been attempted to eliminate Philadelphia as a legitimate target for Philip’s birthplace. Again, when we narrow our focus in terms of dates, it will be possible to narrow the scope of this research further.

5. Philip Long committed his Act of bravery when he was 18 years old.

Based on Mgr. Lang’s writings in his Mon Ancêtre Philip Long, and we wish to quote in toto some key sections to be careful and clear, our oral history and information about Philip Long’s origins can be summarized as follows:

“Pour situer aussi exactement que possible, dans son temps, l’homme remarquable que fut Philip Long, il importe de dire tout de suite que d’après les renseignements les plus plausibles, il serait né en Écosse, de parents protestants, vers l’année 1757. Dans son jeune âge il aurait émigré dans les États de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, demeurant à Philadelphie.

Selon la tradition orale, seule source de renseignements à ce sujet, Philip avait dix-huit ans lorsqu’il a accompli un acte de bravoure sensationnel, un act d’héroïsme.

Or dans une de ses letters, don’t nous parlerons plus tard, il fait nettement allusion à cet acte de bravoure qu’il avait accompli en l’année 1775.”

This section of Mgr. Lang’s book shows us, as we have painfully shown in the previous sectons, that oral history can offer more challenges than solutions when investigating the origins of ancestors:

(1) The mixing of possible facts (e.g. Scottish ancestry) with legends (e.g. Prebyterian Protestant rather than Protestant) generates more uncertainty on the credibility of the narrative than if we knew almost nothing! ;
(2) As a youngster, he would have emigrated to the American Colonies, in the New England area, and lived in Philadelphia. Youngster was never defined in Mgr. Lang’s book, and my own recollections fo conversations with Rosario or Ghislain Long never narrowed down the idea of youngster to any particular age; therefore, Philip could have been any age under 18 and still be considered a youngster;
(3) That the act of bravery and heroism was done when Philip was 18 years old;
(4) The year of his birth – 1757 – is clearly a deduction and not actually a separate fact within the framework of oral history; it is calculated by subtracting Philip’s age at the time of the beginning of the Revolution, 1775;
(5) 1775 was clearly misunderstood. Mgr. Lang is correct in identifying this date as having been mentioned by Philip Long in one of his letters, in fact, his letter to Governor Drummond in 1816. However, the text of this letter is clear – Philip mentions it as the date from which his trials and tribulations as a Loyalist began but he does not make any specific reference to his act of heroism. This act could therefore have been committed during 1775 or sometime after that date, perhaps when he actually enlisted (e.g. 1780-1781). There is no way of knowing but we cannot with certainty accept 1775 as the year he committed his act of bravery.

There is no known evidence to contradict Mgr. Lang's writings based on oral history on the fact that Philip committed his act of bravery when he was 18 years old. The difficulties emerge when we try to reconcile other parts of oral history with documentary records and evidence to establish the credibility of this particular aspect of oral history vis-à-vis Philip’s life.

Mgr. Lang indicates that it was transmitted down from generation to generation. His text is without equivocation. Mgr. Lang tries to use one piece of documentary evidence to support this piece of oral history. In a letter to Governor Drummond, Philip Long can be quoted as follows:

In this letter, Philip expresses deep emotions about his predicament and that of his family under very trying times. The key passage for our purposes at this point in the narrative is where he mentions that “many Respectable people know how much I have Done and Suffered Since the year 1775 for my King and Country ….”. This is the only place in any existing and known documents that Philip mentions a date as significant as 1775. Mgr. Lang interpreted this date to mean that Philip had entered the War at that very moment, and that given that the accepted oral history was that Philip was 18 when he committed his act of bravery, it was therefore very logical to deduce that he was therefore likely born in the year 1757. This entire deduction is at the root of the belief, as expressed by Mgr. Lang, whereby Philip would have been born in that year and in no other.

Without further evidence, it is not possible to dismiss this element of oral history. However, we believe that it is highly suspect and lacks credibility, particularly when we know that it is quite possible that many generations of Long’s came to beliee that it had been done when he was 18 since he would have had to be young to physically do the exploit as told us by Mgr. Lang, and that it fit a pre-conceived notion about the natural cycles of the lives of soldiers or young men during those days. You were born, worked the farm early or entered into a trade at very young ages, and when there was a war, you would enlist as early as 17 officially, but sometimes even sooner. It would not have been conceivable for members of the Long family to believe that Philip might actually have been 33 instead when he committed this act of bravery (if indeed it was committed in 1775) based on his death certificate and other documentary evidence to be uncovered later in this book, or as old as 39 if it was committed in the same year as the earliest known date of his enlistment in a Provincial Military Regiment!
What can we make of oral history’s point that he was 18 years old when he committed the act of bravery. Its possible and unless we obtain new information, we will have to live with the fact. The problem is that it is going to be next to impossible to reconcile this fact with documentary evidence that links 18 years of age with his birth year. Mgr. Lang deduced that by the most reasonable calculations, if Philip was 18 when he committed his act of bravery, and that he committed this act in 1775 (of which there is no evidence, not even oral history except a likely misinterpretation of Philip’s own letter of 1816), Philip must therefore have been born in 1757! Voilà – a circuitous series of facts and suppositions to establish a whole new fact about our ancestor’s life! Of course, we all commit this act in the process of building hypotheses but the stature of Mgr. Lang and the fact that his book is the only existing account of Philip’s life (except the website of course and Gilles’ book) means that it has actually moved from supposition and deduction to full fledged accepted fact. We do not believe this birthdate and we trust the reader will agree with our interpretation once we have reviewed two fundamental pieces of known information about Philip’s life in the next two sections.

These two documents are extremely compelling. These documents are (1) the Census of 1831 done in Clair and, (2) the death certificate. Both of these documents support a much earlier date of birth compared to 1757, the accepted date deduced by Mgr. Lang in his book. With the date of birth reinterpreted, the year of his act of bravery must be reevaluated and reassessed!

6. Philip Long was born in 1757
The reader will now know that this writer has serious reservations about the year 1757 as a possible birth year. However, we were not able to eliminate oral history’s compelling fact that Philip was 18 when he committed his act of bravery. Therefore, we will attempt to assess the credibility of this assertion by putting forward documentary evidence that, we believe, shows very strong evidence that Philip was in fact born around the year 1742.

1831 Census of Clair

The first piece of evidence that casts serious doubts on the birth year of 1757 is found in
the 1831 Census in what would become Clair [la petite Décharge]. In it, we observe that Romain Long, Philip’s son then living in Clair, is the head of the household. In his household, the census taker notes that there is an elderly man [certainly Philip] of between the ages of 80-90 living in Romain Long's household. Even without the absolute certainty of actual names in the census, is it VERY likely that Philip is that elderly man given that his age accords perfectly with his death certificate in the following year!?

In our opinion, this information alone would be sufficient to cast serious doubts on the veracity of Philip’s birth in the year 1752. There is yet more information to support this belief.

Death Certificate

Normally, a death certificate would represent incontrovertible evidence of age and no one would dispute its accuracy. However, Mgr. Lang had good reasons to believe that the death certificate had recorded an inaccurate date.

First, the age reported in the death certificate would mean that Philip would have been born in 1742, not 1757 as he believed or at least had been forced to deduce, which would have meant that Philip would have been at least 33 years old when the Revolution began in 1775.

Second, he married Marie-Julie Couillard Després in 1792 which would mean that he would have been 50 years old at his wedding (while Marie-Julie was only 16). Certainly in the years when Mgr. Lang was researching and writing his book, this would have been seen as quite extraordinary, particularly given the fact that Michel Long, his last born, would have required Philip to be over 78 at his last son’s birth in 1820. Even today, that would be exceptional … but not impossible. Pierre Trudeau, by becoming the father of a daughter in his seventies certainly proved that this possible!

The final reason for Mgr. Lang believing that the death certificate was inaccurate is the fact that there is an actual mistake in Marie-Julie’s recorded death certificate whereby she is registered as having died, in 1847, at the age of 92 whereby we know that her birth certificate is registered in the year 1776 – incontrovertible proof that she was in fact 81 when she died, not 92 as claimed in the Ste-Luce records. If one mistake, why not two?

To deny 1742 as the birth year of our ancestor would require that we accept that the death certificate in 1832 and the census of 1831 are both wrong. This is simply very unlikely.

Other challenging information supporting 1742 rather than 1757 as a birth year

Deane and Kavanagh did their survey when Philip Long resided in Clair in 1831. He would have been one year away from his death, and their survey captures the following information: "escaped to the British with an American Mail". However, there is no possible date that can be inferred by this information except that Philip did commit his act during the Revolution. It may seem strange to state this obvious conclusion except that if Philip was truly 18 when he committed his act of bravery, then his birth in 1742 would have meant that we would have committed his act not during the American Revolution but rather at the end of the Seven Years War in 1760! In our view, this itself is enough to cast serious doubts on the fact of Philip having been 18 when he committed his act of bravery.

Another piece of evidence casts some doubts on the year of 1757. It is found in another letter written by George Heriot, Deputy Minister for the Post Office, to Lieutenant Colonel Addison, Military Secretary, dated 31 July, 1816 at Quebec City, where he describes Philip Long as “an old servant of the public”. If Philip had been born in 1757, he would have been 59 when this letter was written. It is possible that “old” could have been used in his context at this time but we believe it is less likely than if Philip was actually 74 – his age if he had been born in 1742. In 1815, C. Foster, Military Secretary wrote to M. Robinson, Commissary General, in a favourable response on behalf of Sir Gordon Drummond about Philip Long’s request of two days earlier. In this note, Foster refers to Philip as “and old soldier and settler”. Why is old always being used in his context? Why was it so noticeable in his context? How could it have been such a distinctive feature so that two extremely important figures of the Military Command would make references to ti in two separate letters?

In another book by John Mann, Travels in North America, published in 1111, and recounting the authors travels between 1816 and 1823, we learn that “The landlord was an American, and could speak English with propriety. The landlady was a French woman from Lower Canada, and consequently all the family spoke the French language. After having some conversation with the old gentleman I retired to bed.” Again, Philip would have been 59 rather than 74 if we accept oral history – isn’t it more likely that 74 would have made John Mann call him old rather than 59?

Philip Long – A Reinterpretation of His Origins, Birth and Act of Bravery

In the preceding paragraphs, we have shared the documentary evidence to support our belief that Philip was born in 1742. We understand how difficult it may seem to look at Philip’s life with Marie Julie in this new light but the death certificate (combined with the Census information) in our opinion is very strong evidence that trumps oral history, particularly given the approach used by our family to deduce his birth year from a single date in a letter combined with the belief that he was 18 when he committed his act of bravery.

However, the year of 1742 is not without challenges. Accepting this year means that we have to reinterpret oral information with respect to Philip in a host of areas, including his age when he committed his act of bravery. We do not find this hard logically given that there is no proof either way but oral history is not easily dismissed. Given that we have no documentary evidence to disprove the death certificate, we must conclude that the date is more likely correct and accept the birth year of 1742. If Philip Long was born in 1742, here is how his key life events appear:

• Philip was born in 1742, either in the American Colonies or in Europe from parents of Scottish ancestry; or perhaps of British or Irsish-Scottish ancestry.
• He would have moved to Philadelphia with his parents sometime between 1742 and 1775; he would have lived there for an ideterminate period of time;
• He would have been 18 at the end of the Seven Years War – one year after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham when New France definitively passed into the hands of the British;
• He would have been 33 when the American Revolution began in 1775; if he committed his act of bravery in this year, his age was obviously not 18 as held by oral history; we can be quite certain that his loyalty to the Crown was expressed early in the conflict, perhaps as early as 1775;
• He would have been 39 when he enlisted either in the West Florida Royal Foresters or the Kings American Regiment in 1781;
• He would have married Marie Julie at the age of 50 in 1792;
• He would have moved to the head of Lake Temiscouata at the age of 75;
• His last son Michel would have been born when Philip was 78 in 1820;
• He would have moved to Clair at the age of 88;
• He would have died at the age of 90 in 1832.

Within the framework of oral history, we must conclude that it is not possible to support the assertion that Philip was 18 when he committed his act of bravery. At the earliest, he would have been 33 in 1775, and if we postulate that he could not have committed his act of bravery prior to his enlistment in the armed conflict in 1781 – based on what we do know of his military record at this point – he could also have been at least 39 by 1781.

Is it more likely that both the Census and the death records are equally wrong with very consistent dates, or that the age at which Philip committed his act of bravery is not the result of an accurate passing down, from generation to generation, of a factual date but rather the likely and reasonable conjecture through the years that 18 was a likely good date for a young man to have committed such an act of daring and superlative heroism? The writer must declare his bias toward the latter supposition and conclusion. If Philip was indeed born in 1742, then the earliest he could have committed an act that could reasonably be described as told to Dean and Kavannagh as "escaped to the British with an American Mail" would be in 1775, or later around 1781 when we know that Philip was officially engaged in the conflict as a member of cavalry units. That would mean that in fact Philip would have been at least 33 or perhaps older at 39.

There is further evidence to support this conclusion, in our opinion, in the actual texts from Deane and Kavannagh . Mgr. Lang may have had access to the original English text from the Maine Archives from the survey which reads exactly as follows:

"Next - North bank is claimed by Philip Long, who is reported to have escaped to the British with an American mail during the Revolution and has since and until a few years ago been employed carrying the English mail from Fredericton to Quebec. He began on the lot in 1828 and now residse there.
Next - North bank is claimed by Marmosie Long, who began in 1828.
Next - North bank is claimed by George Long, who began in 1828. The last are the sons of Philip and reside on the land."

In this report, his age is not reported but he is listed as having recently moved to this location in 1828.

The use of the words "escaped to the British" are truly remarkable in their meaning. The following scenario is constructed from an initial premise suggested by Donald Long in 2005 in a series of emails. For the readers’ benefit, we reproduce the meaning of the word "escaped" taken from dictionary.com:

1. to slip or get away, as from confinement or restraint; gain or regain liberty: to escape from jail.
2. to slip away from pursuit or peril; avoid capture, punishment, or any threatened evil.
3. to issue from a confining enclosure, as a fluid.
4. to slip away; fade: The words escaped from memory.
5. Botany. (of an originally cultivated plant) to grow wild.
6. (of a rocket, molecule, etc.) to achieve escape velocity.
–verb (used with object) 7. to slip away from or elude (pursuers, captors, etc.): He escaped the police.
8. to succeed in avoiding (any threatened or possible danger or evil): She escaped capture.
9. to elude (one's memory, notice, search, etc.).
10. to fail to be noticed or recollected by (a person): Her reply escapes me.
11. (of a sound or utterance) to slip from or be expressed by (a person, one's lips, etc.) inadvertently.
–noun 12. an act or instance of escaping.
13. the fact of having escaped.
14. a means of escaping: We used the tunnel as an escape.
15. avoidance of reality: She reads mystery stories as an escape.
16. leakage, as of water or gas, from a pipe or storage container.
17. Botany. a plant that originated in cultivated stock and is now growing wild.
18. Physics, Rocketry. the act of achieving escape velocity.
19. Computers. a key (frequently labeled ESC) found on microcomputer keyboards and used for any of various functions, as to interrupt a command or move from one part of a program to another.
–adjective 20. for or providing an escape: an escape route.

We are putting emphasis on the word "escaped" because we believe it is important.

In Mgr. Lang's telling of the act of bravery, Philip Long was described as having volunteered to be a sentinel or scout, and to have been sent by the British in one of the most watched sectors in order to find precious intelligence for his side. It was on that mission that he, by accident, encountered a group of enemy emissaries accompanied by some Indians, who were carrying a bag of mail that contained secret military orders sent to enemy (Patriot) units. Under the very eyes of the soldiers, Philip stole the bag of mail and ran for his life in the woods. He was pursued ferociously, splitting into two groups to try and capture our ancestor. He ran for three days and nights, without food, and finally brought the bag of mail to his military commanders who extracted a significant advantage from the stolen documents. [free translation from Mgr. Lang’s original.]

Mgr. Lang indicates that this story was told under different forms in the family, from generation to generation, and that he often heard this story from his own father. This story is obviously captivating and it is hard not to feel pride and admiration for a man who would be able to accomplish such an act. Of course, it is possible that Philip himself may not have passed this story to his own children but that between his death in 1832 and the research of Prudent Mercure in the 1880’s and the writing/publishing of Abbé Thomas Albert’s monumental Histoire du Madawaska, published originally in 1920, some family members may have become knowledgeable of the famous act of bravery as told by Deane and Kavanagh indepently of family oral history! It is at least a plausible conjecture.

Irrespective of our own beliefs, there is a huge caveat in this story from our point of view - it is difficult to believe that such a feat would have been accomplished in this particular way by a man of perhaps 33 or 39 years of age. That the mail was stolen is probably clear. What is less clear are the circumstances of this theft. Based on the text from Deane and Kavannagh, the word “escaped”, as the numerous definitions demonstrate, is more likely to be understood as "having escaped with" rather than "escaped from". The two have very different meanings since the first implies that Philip was on one side then went to the other side with the bag of mail rather than escaping from the American with their mail after having stolen it. The French equivalent of escaped, from its Latin root similar to "échapper", is not "livrer" as in Thomas Albert's translation of the Deane and Kavanagh text. Why change the sense of escaped to deliver in the translation? Who should we believe, the original words used by Dean et al. or the translation in Albert's Histoire du Madawaska?

In conclusion, it seems the preponderance of evidence points to the fact that 1757 was not the birth year of our ancestor Philip Long, and that a significant reinterpretation of Philip’s life is in order – let alone a re-evaluation of oral history.

On-Going Research

In 1790, according to Donald Long, there were a total of 464 Longs enumerated in the US Census. It is therefore unlikely that the number of Long's before 1775 was anywhere greater than a few hundred. That is a good thing from a research perspective since it narrows the various directions that a researcher might consider taking. At this point, we have no further information on Philip’s life between his birth in 1742 and his act of bravery (if it took place in 1775) or his enlistment in the military in 1781. We wish we had better and more useful information to relate to the reader at this point but unfortunately that information has yet to be uncovered.

Here are possible avenues of research open to those who have an interest in uncovering the origins of our common ancestor:

(1) research in European databases and church records for a possible birth of a Philip in or around 1742; Donald Long has already found an excellent candidate in Lansallos, Cronwall, England who was born on …. From parents named John and Elizabeth.
(2) Research in passenger lists for those who emigrated to the American Collonies, in particular those who arrived in Philadelphia althought the possibility that Philip and his parents actually arrived at other locations cannot be ruled out based on the shown inaccuracy of oral historical information;
(3) Birth or baptism records of Philip Long or his parents’s death certificates starting in Pennsylvania;
(4) Any type of record of a Philip Long that may have been employed as a courier prior to the conflict – being a courier seems to have been a constant in Philip’s life, as wellas farming, so why not follow that trail of research?
(5) Finally, a story of an act of bravery being accomplished by a Loyalist in service of his King resembling that of Philip’s for a Regular or Provincial Regiment during the conflict.

Please visit the Genweb website for more current and up-to-date information on research in Philip’s life and origins.