Military Service

Philips Callbeck, father of the Tryon settler Philips Morris Callbeck, was the Attorney General and Administrator of Saint John’s Island in 1775. Philips and the colony’s surveyor, Thomas Wright, were taken hostage in the fall of 1775 by two American privateer vessels and removed to American headquarters at Cambridge near Boston. An apologetic General George Washington released the men and permit- ted them to return home. As a result of this incident, the Island Attorney General requested of Britain that she provide a defense for her colony.

Philips offered, as part of this request, to raise a company of one hundred Island men to supplement the assistance from the homeland and His Majesty’s Independent Company of Saint john Volunteers was created. An Act passedjuly 30, 1780, required every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty be mustered and subjected to military service.1 Obviously, military service was not a priority for Island settlers because although there were approximately 1000 eligible men on the Island in 1780, the number of volunteers in the militia never surpassed 47.

However, some of the settlers along the Tryon River had been soldiers in the British Army, having served in the American Revolution as well as the battles against the French at Louisburg and Quebec. Balthazar Mautarde of Tryon was one of the men to join the Company of Saint John Volunteers as a private, to draw provisions and to carry out duties assigned to him. When Balthazar received word that the final muster of the company was set for June 12, 1784, he and others immediately set out by boat to Charlottetown to get their discharge. The Volunteers were entitled to a 100 acre grant of land with their discharge. The boat carrying the Tryon men was swamped not far from the shore and they were all drowned. Regrettably, Balthazar’s widow and family did not receive the land promised to Balthazar?

The decade following 1783 brought governmental changes in the Island colony. Governor Patterson was replaced by Edward Farming, and Captain Philips Callbeck died in 1790. Captain Callbeck’s Militia, which had been a force on paper only, was reorganized in 1794 into two companies; although, by now, the Island was believed to be safe from attack. The Militia Act was amended in 1833, and the Militia was formed into battalions, regiments, and companies. Clerks were ap- pointed for each company, and once each year a list of all persons eligible to be enrolled in the Militia was distributed with a time and place for mustering. An Act entitled “An Act to provide for the organization of a volunteer force for the defense of the Island” was passed in 1862 to create the first truly volunteer Militias

Tension rose during the 1885 Louis Riel rebellion. In preparation for the possibility of the uprising spreading to the east, two companies of artillery were mobilized on Prince Edward Island; however, the