The Jehu Hay journal (212 pages) is a diary kept by a lieutenant of the 60th Regiment (Royal American) while stationed at Detroit from May 1, 1763, to June 6, 1765. In the journal, Hay provided a firsthand account of the Ottawa, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and Huron siege of Detroit, led by Pontiac, between May and October 1763. Hay recorded entries almost daily and described the political and military news coming into Detroit. He discussed the internal operations of Fort Detroit and gave a British perspective on the colonial/Native American relations in the Great Lakes region, along with details on skirmishes and casualties.
The Hay Journal has been published:
Hough, Franklin Benjamin. Diary of the Siege of Detroit in the War With Pontiac. Also a Narrative of the Principal Events of the Siege. Albany: J. Munsell, 1860.
Jehu Hay (1748-1785) was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He entered the British army in 1758, and was promoted to lieutenant in the 60th Regiment (Royal American) in 1762. He arrived at Detroit on August 23rd of that year and witnessed Pontiac's siege on Fort Detroit from May through October 1763. In 1764 he married Marie Julie Reaume, and two years later Sir William Johnson appointed him commissary of Indian affairs at Detroit.
Though his department was dissolved in 1769, the British appointed him Indian agent of Detroit in 1774. In 1776, he was appointed deputy Indian agent and major of the Detroit militia. Hay accompanied Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton's expedition against Vincennes in the fall of 1778. George Rogers Clark's forces reoccupied Fort Vincennes in February 1779, and Hay helped negotiate the British surrender. Hay and the other prisoners were sent to Virginia, and were not freed until October 1780. Once freed, Hay traveled to England in 1781. The British government promoted Hay to lieutenant governor of Detroit in 1782, but illness and political quarrels with Governor Frederick Haldimand prevented Hay from reaching Detroit until June 1784. He died there on August 2, 1785.
