Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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Des Barres, Joseph Frederick Wallet, 1722-1824

Military officer; born in England, of French ancestry, in 1722; educated for the army at the Royal Military College at Woolwich, and, as lieutenant, came to America in 1756, and raising 300 recruits in Pennsylvania and Maryland, formed them into a corps of field-artillery. He distinguished himself as an engineer in the siege of Louisburg (q. v.)and was aide-de-camp to Wolfe when he fell at Quebec, that general dying in Des Barres's arms. He was active in the retaking of Newfoundland in 1762, and for ten years afterwards he was employed in a coast survey of Nova Scotia. He prepared charts of the North American coasts in 1775 for Earl Howe, and in 1777 he published The Atlantic Neptune, in two large folios. He was made governor of Cape Breton, with the military command of Prince Edward's Island, in 1784, and in 1804, being then about eighty-two years of age, he was made lieutenant-governor of Prince Edward's Island. He died in Halifax, N. S., Oct. 24, 1824.