Samuel Vetch was born on December 9, 1668, at Edinburgh, Scotland. The second son of William Veitch (sic) and Marion Fairly, he spent his boyhood uneasily in northern England while his hunted, proscribed father preached for Presbyterianism and conspired against Episcopacy and Toryism on both sides of the border.
Education
In his teens, Vetch received some higher education in the Netherlands.
Career
After the accession of William and Mary, his Whig connection and his own ability gained him a commission in a Scottish regiment. In 1698, as a captain in the forces of William Paterson's "Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, " he went out to Darien (Central America) and was made a member of the colonial council. He came to disapprove of Paterson and his ill-calculated venture, however, and when the colonists fled to New York in 1699, he accompanied them and remained in that province.
His handsome, commanding presence, his wide experience, and his natural gifts soon commended him to the Scots of his own generation and clannish spirit. Robert Livingston of Albany, secretary of Indian affairs, was a son of the Rev. John Livingston who had persuaded William Veitch to abandon the study of medicine for the Presbyterian ministry. Vetch was soon deep in the Albany Indian trade, which by extension included illegal trade overland with the French at Montreal.
About 1702, he moved to Boston, where he engaged in maritime commerce with Acadia and Canada. This commerce was contrary to the British trade laws and was resented by the colonists, especially settlers on the border, who were suffering from French and Indian attacks. In 1701, Vetch's sloop Mary was condemned for illicit trading, but it was subsequently restored to him. In 1705 Gov. Joseph Dudley, whose confidence he had gained, sent him with others to Quebec to negotiate a truce with the Governor of Canada and arrange for an exchange of prisoners, but the terms proposed by the Canadian authorities were not accepted by Massachusetts.
Vetch, however, who claimed that certain concessions had been granted him as a reward for his services, improved the opportunity to trade profitably with the French and Indians of Acadia, to whom he furnished arms and ammunition. Public opinion in Massachusetts became aroused, and in 1706, Vetch with five others was tried by the General Court and fined. The next year, he carried his case to England, where the Privy Council, ruling that the General Court of Massachusetts, being a legislative body, had no power to try cases and impose sentences, ordered a retrial by the Suffolk County Court.
Vetch, safe in England, escaped retrial, and only one of the other defendants was convicted. Meanwhile, Vetch had won favor and made his most distinctive contribution to colonial history by proposing a plan for conquering the French in America which included the Albany scheme of 1690 and New England's designs on Acadia and Newfoundland. His proposals for an attack on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain and a complete investment of Quebec by land and sea were well calculated to succeed. Thereafter Acadia, Newfoundland, and even the Spanish colonies could be attended to.
An acquiescent, optimistic Whig ministry in March 1709, dispatched Vetch to carry out the enterprise, empowering him to enlist colonial assistance from Pennsylvania northward. A fleet, bearing a commander-in-chief, munitions, and five regiments, was to follow in April.
Col. Francis Nicholson accompanied Vetch as a volunteer. Bad weather delayed their arrival at Boston until April 30, but colonial enthusiasm vied with Vetch's impatient energy, and although Quaker Pennsylvania and New Jersey failed him, within two months, he had three well-trained New England regiments and their transports waiting at Boston, while the land expedition commanded by Nicholson was ready with its boats at Wood Creek on Lake Champlain.
Vetch had engineered the best cooperative colonial effort up to that time, only to have it wasted when his expected British auxiliary was diverted to Portugal. Even then the colonial leaders decided to attack Port Royal, in Acadia, but the naval commanders at the northern ports refused to assist and the scheme was dropped. Deeply discouraged, the colonies sent Nicholson, Col. Peter Schuyler, and five Iroquois chiefs to implore Queen Anne for remuneration and for aid the next year.
With British aid arriving late in 1710, the easy conquest of Port Royal and Acadia was effected and Vetch, although Nicholson had commanded, received the promised military governorship. In 1711, at the insistence of Massachusetts, he took part in the expedition against Canada which a Tory ministry entrusted to Rear Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker and General "Jack" Hill. He generously did his best to help by piloting and advice, but Walker's ludicrous fears and ineptitude brought the expedition to disastrous failure at the mouth of the St. Lawrence.
Vetch's subsequent career was unhappy. Completely ignored in England, he spent his own and his friends' resources in maintaining Annapolis for the British Crown. His former protege, Nicholson, who secured the civil governorship of Nova Scotia, harried him unmercifully at Annapolis and Boston and would have utterly ruined him but for the death of Queen Anne and the return of the Whigs to power. Vetch fled to England in 1714, and secured the civil governorship in January 1715, only to lose it in 1717 while still engaged in a vain effort to clear up his affairs. Tempted by several unfulfilled ministerial promises of remunerative employment, he remained in England and died in 1732, a prisoner in king's bench for debt.
Achievements
Connections
On December 20, 1700, Samuel Vetch married Margaret Livingston, the daughter of Robert Livingston.