Montreal

The city of Montreal began with a land grant in 1640 and was settled two years later as the missionary camp Ville-Marie, on an island first surveyed by Jacques Cartier in 1535. The village’s jESUlT-influenced founders chose the location in part because it offered access to local Indian peoples via the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers, and also seclusion from the main French presence in Quebec.

The missionaries hoped to create a model Catholic community. They wanted to attract potential converts to the fortified village and to keep Native Americans away from the alcohol traders in Quebec, whom the missionaries accused of corrupting and exploiting indigenous peoples. While the city may have been founded to advance religious aims, commerce soon became central to Montreal. The same accessibility that appealed to its founders made the city a critical commercial junction, displacing Quebec’s place in the fur trade.

Further waves of immigration in 1653 and 1659 sustained the settlement. Because of its rapid economic growth and its deliberately altruistic purposes, Montreal developed many public institutions, including a hospital, much sooner than did other French colonial cities. Its complex seigniorial status also afforded it a relatively high degree of autonomy. The former Ville-Marie was soon one of the foremost cities in the French colonies.

Montreal became an obvious objective for France’s enemies during the Seven Years’ War, and, in 1760, British forces captured the city and subsequently the whole of New France. Though political authority changed dramatically, the French-inflected Creole culture endured, and Montreal remained among the most important cities of the region.

Further reading: Louise Dechene, Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992); Andre Lachance, La vie urbaine en Nouvelle-France (Montreal: Boreal Express, 1987).

—Simon Finger

Moraley, William (1699-1762) writer One of the few people of his status to leave a written record of his life, William Moraley wrote The Infortunate, an autobiographical account of indentured servitude in the colonies between 1729 and 1734. The Infortunate illuminates the desperate circumstances that forced some Europeans to sell themselves into servitude for a few years in return for passage to North America as well as the difficulties encountered by servants in achieving success in the New World.

Moraley admits having “neglected to improve” his talents when his father apprenticed him at age 15 as a clerk to an attorney in London. Two years later his father decided against the profession and urged him to learn the “trade of watch-making.” Moraley’s family faced financial ruin when his father lost his investments when the “South Sea Bubble” burst in 1720. When his father died in 1725, Moraley inherited a mere 20 shillings and few prospects.

In 1729 Moraley contracted to indenture himself in “the American Plantations” for five years. After 13 weeks at sea, he landed at Philadelphia. A clockmaker, Isaac Pearson, purchased Moraley’s time. Like many servants, Moraley never achieved economic security after his servitude, but despite his various misfortunes he remained buoyant. An adventurous spirit, Moraley journeyed to contiguous colonies, telling entertaining tales, eluding creditors, and begging for charity.

Moraley’s travels brought him into contact with people who seldom appear in contemporary accounts. He commiserated with white people in circumstances similar to his, sympathized with slaves, and greatly respected Native Americans’ knowledge of their land. Moreover, Moraley candidly described his encounters and liaisons with women, although his behavior toward them in some instances was less than respectable. An economic failure in America, Moraley returned to England in 1734, where he lived until his death in 1762.

Further reading: Susan E. Klepp and Billy G. Smith, eds., The Infortunate: The Voyage and Advenitures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1992).

—Leslie Patrick

Morris, Lewis (1671-1746) government official Lewis Morris was born in New York City to a Welsh merchant and sugar planter from Barbados. His father soon died and his Quaker uncle came to New York to adopt him. In 1691 Morris inherited a large landed estate in New York and New Jersey. He led the opposition to East New Jersey’s proprietary government, and he went to London in 1701 to broker the sale of that government to the Crown. In 1710 Morris shifted his political base to New York, where he became the legislative adjutant to Governor Robert Hunter, who presided over the stabilization of that colony after a generation of political polarization. When Hunter returned to England in 1719, Morris remained the chief adviser to his successor, Governor William Burnet. In the 1730s Morris led his supporters in an unsuccessful effort to regain power by resisting New York’s governor, William Cosby. He went to London to seek Cosby’s recall while his allies in New York used John Peter ZeNcer’s press to subvert Cosby’s regime. In 1738 Morris became the royal governor of New Jersey. He ended a turbulent career battling with the New Jersey assembly, often defending “prerogative” positions explicitly contrary to the ones he had long advocated in New York.

Morris has been viewed as a hypocrite, a “trimmer,” or an ideological chameleon. It may be fairer to say that he was best suited by talent and temperament to serving under strong leaders, mobilizing secure legislative majorities, and executing detailed programmatic instructions. When he had to take personal command or to improvise politically, he often displayed a rash and volatile spirit. Morris was also a self-tutored scholar, author, and ardent Anglophile, who worked as hard to enact the role of the English country gentleman in cultural and social life as he did in politics.

Further reading: Eugene R. Sheridan, Lewis Morris, 1671-1746: A Study in Early American Politics (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1981).

—Wayne Bodle