It was the home of a family of wealth and social standing, composed of three—husband, wife, and daughter, the latter a child. Gardens belonging to it covered much of the area of that meadow-like district already mentioned. That home was to be the scene of a drama in three acts; the death of a child, the death of a husband, and a struggle of strong, martyrlike womanhood in the toils of temptation, tried to the lowest depth of her being, but coming forth triumphant. In examining the calendar of the Haldimand collection by Mr. Douglas Brymner, Archivest of the Dominion of Canada, we are impressed with the great and varied responsibility, labor, and care, attending the office of commander in chief of the American colonies, especially after Great Britain’s, Canada, Florida, and Louisiana acquisitions. His administration involved not merely general superintendence of the military department, but likewise embraced the minutest details requiring expenditures of public money. We accordingly find General Gage, during Governor Chester’s administration, dictating letters in respect to carpenter’s wages[19] in Pensacola. Again we find him busy over a controversy which had sprung up there in respect to the employment of a Frenchman, Pierre Rochon,[20] to do carpenter’s work, and furnish shingles, to the exclusion of Englishmen. Upon economical grounds his excellency decided in favor of Rochon. Pierre was evidently an active and enterprising man. Before he came to Pensacola to secure for himself all the public carpentering and shingle business there, he had enjoyed the like monopoly at Mobile. Again we find the General engaged with a small matter at Red Cliff.[21] Lieutenant Cambell, of the engineer department, had furnished some carpenters who were employed there with candles and firewood, doubtless because they could not otherwise be procured by the men. That act of kindness brought the benevolent lieutenant the following scorching reproof: “I am sorry to acquaint you that his excellency, General Gage, is greatly displeased at your giving of the carpenters candles and firewood; and he desires to know by what authority you assumed to give those allowances, or by what order they were given? For his excellency declares, that a shilling shall not be paid on that account.” New York, 16 Feb. 1773. S. Sowers, Captain of Engineers. Even the quality of bricks used on the public works at Pensacola was a matter of interest to the commander in chief. In 1771, a brick manufactured by the British, and one by the Spaniards, nearly a century before, as General Haldimand says, were sent to headquarters at New York, for the judgment of his excellency as to their comparative merits.