Historical Fiction about an Apothecary Living through the French and Indian War

My name is Charles B. Jones. I’m an apothecary, a medical professional, who formulates and dispenses medications to physicians, surgeons, and patients. Numerous times before | have helped people recover from various illnesses like measles, smallpox, malaria, and influenza. | met my wife, Lydia Jones when giving her medicine for the measles. Lydia and | got along well, she was very charming. We planned a time to meet once again, it was set for the Kings arm Tavern, a local restaurant. A year later we got married and had a child that we named Anna Jones.

We live in a 3 room, wood abode in Williamsburg, Virginia. | wouldn’t say that we live a prosperous life, gold is not abroad the walls and every appliance. But our life is decent considering that we had food on the table almost every day, and a roof to stay under. But little did | know that something would change my life, and history forever.

For a few years now, both we (the British) and the French have been desiring the Ohio River Valley, which had many natural resources.

One of the benefits is that it has a considerable amount of fish in it. Not only that but it has lumber around it for days. The only issue is that the French had already been trading fur with the Native Americans there. There is a key problem with all of this, no one, and | mean NO ONE, wanted to share. Especially the French,
who built a string of forts there.

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| remember the day that | had heard we were going to follow the trend too and started to build a fort of our own. In my mind, I had thought that was quite a silly idea, and almost certainly | knew it was going to fail. Nonetheless, | had no say in what the soldiers would do. A few weeks later | had found out
that the French took over our fort before it was finished, they named it Fort Duquesne. This meant the start of major trouble.

It was now the spring of 1754, While | was at the market purchasing potatoes, bread, and cheese for my family, | heard a fleet of footsteps. | knew what it was right away, a militia. | looked down the smooth dirt road and saw the group. One of them had seen many civilians, me being one of them, looking confused and responded, “Do not worry, we are going to fort Duquesne to take revenge, sweet, sweet, revenge.” | was compliant to the words of that man knowing that there was no point in me responding anyway. It was quite pathetic really, they looked aimless and out of place. They did jog in a way that made them look childish. | knew we would be embarrassed when they inevitably lost the fight. But no one could stop them, the governor of Virginia had already made the choice to send them.

Later that month, they had returned, and a meeting was held in the town center. Of course, with my liking to stay up on current events, | had attended the meeting. Up on the podium, a man started to speak, “We failed to get revenge on the French, our power had not been enough,” he said solemnly. “That is quite surprising,” | mumbled in a sarcastic tone. The French had the help of the Native Americans, which was a big advantage for them. By now you should
realize that we like following trends, we attempted to make a treaty with the Iroquois Confederacy. Even though they declined the offer, they agreed to be neutral during the fighting. Soon, all were involved in the French and Indian war.

We had almost no chance against the French, they were very formidable. But then, in 1757, William Pitt became the leader of the British government. When I heard he was now one of our leaders I was glad, he seemed very perspicacious, unlike our other leaders who were not as much. | knew this because of course | attended all
the speeches he made. He was a fantastic military planner. On September 16th, 1759 while | was walking to a makeshift hospital for the soldiers to dispense medicine, | saw a large wood sign in front of the town market. The sign looked almost new, in big black letters it said, “THE CAPTURE OF QUEBEC-THE CAPITAL OF NEW
FRANCE IS FINAL,” this was a major victory for us. The following year we took Montreal. Each time we had taken over somewhere, a large wooden sign with large black letters was set outside of the market.

Things were looking up for us. Now as | said before, | dispense medicine in this war. You would think that I’m thanked for this right? Wrong. The soldiers couldn’t care less about the work | cree put in for them. Most of them don’t speak more than a few words to me, saying what medicine they needed. Once | was done with them they left without a word. They were allowed to do that, | had been ordered to not be disrespectful. To show you what | mean, here’s one of my experiences. A soldier stomped into my shop, he said in a stern voice, “Give me the pain medication plebeian scum,” I quickly got it, knowing that if | disobeyed they would hang me at a town meeting. The war continued in Europe until it finally ended with the treaty of Paris in 1763. It was a hard-fought 8 years, and I and many
other citizens were glad it was over. Especially because it was nice to have no more soldiers treat me disrespectfully.

Britain now controlled the Ohio River Valley. | loved this new change, the price of fish had gone down because of the abundant amount of it. Not only that but | was able to afford a new house for my family because the price of lumber had also gone down, Another great thing that happened from this is that all of us, the colonists, had been proud we won, giving us a new sense of hope to ‘feed’ off of, Well as you might have expected, all luck comes with trouble.
The Indians were not pleased with our ways of life and how we treated them. They killed many of us, the town | lived in had luckily not been attacked, but neighboring towns had been greatly affected. We named this attack, Pontiac’s war.

We were foolish to think that the king would not disappoint us once again, he did not care about our say in what he did in the slightest. He did, however, care about the ideas of rich, white, men who owned property, and let me tell you, there were not many of those, making it where only a small population got to choose rules. Then, out of nowhere, Something surprising happened. King George Ill ruled that we could not settle west of the Appalachian
mountains. Our fights with the Natives calmed. It also stopped us from leaving our colonies on the coast. Britain sent 10,000 troops to us to enforce this rule. We were very alarmed. This new rule (called the Proclamation) limited our freedom of movement. This became the start of me, and much more colonists, greatly distrusting the British government.