USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 30
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a natural stronghold for the Indians on account of the high, pre- cipitous hills, from the tops of which they obtained an extensive view of the English settlements. These same hills, Toby and Sugar Loaf, also served as look-out places, in time of trouble with other tribes. Deerfield was burnt and the people killed by Indians at different times, for so long a period as ninety years.
The population increased rather fast during the first four or five years, and when the first Indian attack was made, five years after the settlement, there was a well built village. King Philip's War began in 1675, and in September of that year an attack was made
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and one of the settlers was killed, and a little later, another at- tack was made upon the people as they were on their way to meeting, but nobody was killed. The settlers of all that portion of the valley were alarmed by these and other attacks by the Indians at other settlements and, as there were 3,000 bushels of grain stored in Deerfield, they decided to remove it to a place of greater safety. This duty was assigned to Captain Lathrop and about eighty of his men, who were stationed at Hadley.
Captain Lathrop and his men, with a great number of carts
LIBERTY POLE PLANTED HERE BY THE PATRIOTS JULY 29.1774
SITE OF PATRIOTS' LIBERTY POLE.
drawn by oxen, passed over the fifteen miles between Hadley and Deerfield in safety, and loaded the grain upon the carts. They started on their return to Hadley, on September 18, 1675. The first three miles of the return was over level ground that was heavily wooded. At the southern end of Sugar Loaf Mountain the road passed through a swamp, which was covered by a dense thicket, and across Bloody Brook-now Muddy Brook. Although the march had been through conditions most favorable to an
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ambush by Indians, Captain Lathrop did not take the precaution of sending out scouts to give warning of an ambush, or the presence of Indians. As a matter of fact, 700 Indians had secreted themselves in the thicket at the place where the swamp road crossed Bloody Brook.
The Indians permitted the soldiers to cross the brook, and when they halted, to allow the teams to catch up with them, the Indians made their attack. They first fired a volley upon the soldiers causing the greatest consternation and confusion. Before the soldiers had time to recover in the slightest degree from their dismay, the Indians rushed in for a hand-to-hand fight. The large number of the Indians made it possible for them to attack the bewildered soldiers from all sides, at once. The soldiers, adopting Indian · tactics, took to the trees and rocks and shot carefully and only when a human target was in sight. Captain Lathrop and his men fought desperately, but the greater number of the enemy made the result a certainty from the first. Captain Lathrop was killed early in the fight and when it was over, seventy-three of his soldiers had been killed, and about sixteen of the men with the teams. Of the whole number under Captain Lathrop but seven or eight escaped, to give an account of the disaster.
Captain Mosely and his company, who were stationed at Deer- field, hearing the firing, hastened to the scene of the fight only to find the Indians slaughtering the wounded and stripping the dead of their scalps and clothing. Mosely and his men made a des- perate attack upon the greatly superior number of the enemy and for several hours held them off, and finally made it so hot for them that they were forced to hide in the swamp and woods. It happened that Major Treat, of Connecticut, was on a scout along the river with one hundred men consisting of English, and Mohegan and Pequot Indians. As soon as he heard the noise of the battle he hastened with his men and arrived in time to take part in the final utter defeat of the Indians, who scattered in all directions. Incredible as it may seem, when the great number of the Indians is considered, Captain Mosely lost but two men and only seven or eight were wounded, while between ninety-five and one hundred Indians were killed. In the report of the fight Lieutenant Savage and Lieutenant Pickering were especially men- tioned for their coolness and bravery.
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Toward night, Major Treat and Captain Mosely returned with their men to Deerfield and camped for the night. The next morn- ing they returned to the scene of the fight to bury the dead. Later in the day after the fight, the Indians returned to Deerfield 'and attempted to intimidate the soldiers by whoops and the dis- play of the bloody scalps and clothing of the men they had killed. At this time there were but twenty-seven men in the fortified house, but the officer in command made signals to make it appear that a large force was but a short distance outside of the village,
CAPTAIN JOHN SHELDON'S HOUSE.
One of the chief points of attack by the French and Indians on the morning of February 29, 1704.
and in addition, he and his men shot so straight and so rapidly that the Indians believed a much stronger force was within the fort than was really the case, so they withdrew without attacking.
Not long after this the soldiers and the settlers left Deerfield for Hadley, whereupon the Indians returned to Deerfield and destroyed the settlement.
In 1677, the General Court ordered the return of the garrison and of the settlers, that the village might be rebuilt. They obeyed
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the order, but several of the settlers being killed by Indians the place was again abandoned and the little work of rebuilding they had been able to do was undone by the Indians. In the spring of 1682, the settlers again returned to Deerfield and rebuilt the village, and for ten or eleven years they were left in comparative peace and quiet.
In 1693, the second period of Indian attacks began and con- tinued till 1704. They culminated in the expedition sent out by Governor Vaudrieul, of Canada, under the command of Major de Rouville, who had 200 Frenchmen and 142 Indians. It is rather odd that the conditions were so nearly exactly the same as were those when the French and Indians attacked and destroyed Schenectady, New York, fourteen years earlier, in 1690. At this time, the attack was made in the midst of winter with several feet of snow on the ground and the cold most intense ; conditions which caused the garrison at Schenectady to become careless in its watchfulness, because it was believed that it would be impos- sible for an attack to be made from Canada at that time of the year, with the snow so deep and the cold so intense. Another point of similarity between this attack upon Schenectady and that upon Deerfield in 1704, was the statement made by the French commander in both instances, that had the garrison been reason- ably prepared, and had it made even a weak defence, the French would have been obliged to surrender, for they were nearly perished from cold and hunger. As a full account of the destruc- tion of Schenectady was sent to the Governors of Connecticut and Massachusetts -- as well as to those of New Jersey and Pennsylvania - it is strange that Deerfield should have allowed itself to be caught in a similar trap by the French. The attack upon Schenectady took place in the night of February 8 and 9, 1690; that upon Deerfield, in the early morning of February 29, 1704.
When de Rouville and his army arrived at Deerfield they found the garrison asleep, with no guard or sentinels on duty. The ground was covered with snow to a depth of four feet or more, and the snow was covered with a crust strong enough to bear the weight of the attacking army. The snow being so deep, they were able to easily climb the palisades. When they had distributed themselves all over the village the attack was made upon the
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sleeping soldiers and inhabitants. The chief difference between this affair and the one at Schenectady was, that once they were awake the inhabitants of Deerfield fought for their lives and their homes desperately, while in Schenectady, the only inhabitant who made a desperate and successful defence of his home, was that fine specimen of a Dutchman, the hero of " 1690", Adam Vroo- man, who made it so hot for the French that they granted him an unconditional surrender.
The part of the village where the attack was made in 1704,
CAPTAIN JOHN SHELDON'S HOUSE, DEERFIELD.
contained within the palisades about twenty acres. Some of the houses within the palisades were built in the form of blockhouses with the spaces between the timbers filled with brick to make them bullet proof, and with loop holes in the sides and through the floor of the overhanging second story. In addition there were " mounds ", which were built of massive hewn timbers, from the tops of which a watch could be kept - but on this sad occasion was not kept - and from which a strong defence could be made.
When the door of the house of the Rev. John Williams was
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forced he fired at the first Indian with his pistol, but the flint did not spark and he was immediately overpowered and kept standing in the intense cold, in no other covering than his night shirt. Two of his children and a female slave were killed, but Mrs. Williams and the five other children were permitted to dress. At Captain John Sheldon's house they met with a stubborn re- sistance. The enemy was unable to force the door, so a hole was cut in it with a tomahawk through which Mrs. Sheldon was killed as she was getting out of her bed. The Captain's son and his
BLOODY BROOK, SOUTH DEERFIELD.
wife hoped to escape by jumping from a window, but young Mrs. Sheldon sprained her ankle so badly that she could not walk. Woman-like, she persuaded her husband not to remain for them both to be captured. He finally consented to leave her and fled through the woods to Hatfield. Young Mrs. Sheldon was taken to Canada, whence she returned to her husband after thirty months of captivity.
Captain Sheldon's house was used by the French as a place of confinement for their prisoners, so it was not set on fire till they were about to leave. It was saved from being burnt by the set-
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tlers who had escaped and returned as soon as the French with- drew. One of the settlers who was confined in the Sheldon house was a man named Bridgeman. He managed to reach the attic without being seen, where he hid himself under a quantity of bark, but he was found by the Indians. Bridgeman made another attempt by following the Indians to the cellar and secret- ing himself behind the cellar door, but as the last of them was passing up the stairs he followed, as he feared they would kill him should he be found in the second attempt to escape them. Just as the French were leaving the place a young Indian ap- proached Bridgeman and deliberately cut off one of his fingers. But this did not end his adventures. Loitering in the rear when the march began, he watched for an opportunity and made a dash for the town, but he was shot and seriously wounded as he was at the top of the hill near the fort. This fort, by the way, was a smaller one about sixty rods to the south of the larger one, where the attack took place. It probably escaped capture as the enemy had enough to do with the main portion of the village, and by the time they had subdued the larger fort, day was dawning and they feared to stop longer on account of possible reinforcements.
Soon after the French and Indians had left the desolate settle- ment, all of the settlers who had escaped and a few who had arrived from Hadley and other places, followed the retreating French and made a vigorous attack upon them, about a mile out of the village. So desperate was their attack that the French commander, fearing they would be hampered by the prisoners, sent an Indian to tell the guard to kill them all. The Indian was shot before he reached the guard and the odds being too great the attacking settlers withdrew, and the necessity for killing the prisoners no longer existed.
The night after the march toward Canada began, the French and their captives camped on the bluff where the village of Green- field was later built. Sometime in the night one of the captives, named Alexander, escaped. In the morning the French com- mander instructed the Rev. Mr. Williams to tell the prisoners, that if any more escaped all of the others would be burnt to death. On the second day of the march Mrs. Williams, the wife of the minister, who had but a few weeks previously given birth to a child, became exhausted. In her weakened condition the Indians
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regarded her as too much of a nuisance so she was murdered. The Rev. Mr. Williams and four of his children were eventually ransomed, but his daughter, Eunice, who was ten years old at the time of the capture, remained in Canada. She married an Indian and, what was much worse in the estimation of her friends, became a Roman Catholic. Although she visited her relatives in New England on several occasions, they were never able to induce her to remain, or to give up Romanism. One of her grandsons was educated at Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and be- came a missionary to the Oneida Indians.
KING PHILIP'S SEAT, SOUTH DEERFIELD.
On February 29, 1704, Deerfield contained 280 inhabitants, including women and children, while the French had 342 fight- ing men. The odds were irresistible and the fight was soon over, but at one of the fortified houses the few defenders held the enemy off for several hours till it was finally set on fire. Of the 280 inhabitants, 112 were captured and 47 were killed. Nine- teen of the captured were murdered on the march to Canada and two, David Hoyt and Jacob Hix, died of starvation. Of the 91 survivors of that terrible journey to Canada through the snow and
DEERFIELD. 379
cold, 62 were ransomed after two years and a half of captivity and 29 never returned.
There is a tradition that one of the causes of the attack upon Deerfield, with its murders and. torture, was due to Roman Catholic superstitution. The priest of the St. Regis Indians had induced them to provide sufficient furs for the purchase of a small bell for the mission, in which the French taught them the gentle art of saving their souls, by murdering and torturing their fellow Christians of a different creed. The ship in which this bell was being brought to Canada was captured by a British cruiser and, with its freight, was sold in Salem, Massachusetts, to provide the prize-money for the captors. The bell was bought at auction and eventually reached Deerfield, where it was hung in the tower of the little Church. That a Holy Catholic bell should call those heretics to their mock worship of the Creator was more than that gentle Father of St. Regis could bear, so he persuaded the St. Regis Indians to offer their services in an expedition against the heretic settlement that they might thus recover the bell. The good Father recovered his bell and incidentally, no doubt, his children of the forest saved themselves many of the pains of Purgatory by dashing out the brains of heretic infants and by the murder of Mrs. Williams, the wife of the prime heretic. The only part of this that is not tradition is, that the bell was captured, that it was sold and hung in the Deerfield Church ; that the French and their good friends and fellow Romanists, the Indians, burnt Deerfield and murdered its inhabitants ; that they rescued the bell from the heretics and took it with them on the march as far as Lake Champlain, where it was hidden and removed to St. Regis in the following spring.
Besides the two great tragedies of Deerfield, when the village was destroyed by fire and many of the inhabitants killed or taken as captives to Canada by the Indians, the people were harassed by Indians for about ninety years, as has before been said. While the actual number killed in the many attacks by small parties of Indians, and the number of buildings burnt, were not large in any individual instance, the total was considerable and the terror in- spired was great and constant. The following is a fair sample of the kind of warfare that was kept up by the Indians during those trying ninety years.
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In the last week of August, 1746, Samuel Allen and his daughter; two brothers named Amsdell, a soldier named Gillet, from Connecticut, and Eleazur Hawkes, Jr., were making hay in a field on Mr. Allen's farm, when a band of about forty Indians attacked them and killed the five men and frightfully crushed the skull of Miss Allen, who was tomahawked on both sides of her head. The inhabitants of the village, hearing the shooting hastened to the lot and drove off the Indians, one of whom was killed and one seriously wounded. Miss Allen was still alive
STEBBINS HOUSE, DEERFIELD.
and was carried to the village. Although so frightfully injured she lived, but was always an invalid and was much disfigured. A curious effect of her injuries was, that after recovering, the odor of liquor always caused her to faint. Miss Allen was living as late as 1804. The body of the Indian who had been killed was thrown into a pond in the hope that the settlers would not find it. They did, however, and removed its scalp. Lieutenant Mehuman Hinsdell, who was the first white child born in Deer- field, in 1673, had an exciting and varied experience as an Indian fighter, and was twice captured by them. He escaped, or was ransomed, and finally died in his home, in May, 1736.
GREENFIELD.
N OTWITHSTANDING that the New England settlers prided themselves upon their devotion to the stern un- beautiful realities of life and religion; that they tried to eliminate from their lives an appreciation of all that was beautiful, in nature and art, as an evidence of their faithfulness to the Church they had crossed three thousand miles of ocean to build up and maintain ; the fact still remains, that the inherent love for, and deep appreciation of, the beautiful dominated the hearts and minds of the men who chose the site of Greenfield for their future homes. It is difficult to imagine a site more charming for a settlement than the bluff upon which Greenfield is situated, above Green River, that winds through the meadows to empty into the Deerfield and so with the Connecticut. Pro- tected from the east winds by a high range of cliffs, and on the north and west by hills that nearly reach the altitude of moun- tains, and to the south the beginning of the meadows, the situa- tion is nearly ideal. Men who were capable of choosing such a lovely spot for their homes proved, by so doing, that they were utterly incapable of crushing out the inherent love of Jehovah's exquisite handiwork.
That their shell of reserve had cracked and was torn away is shown by the words of the men who went out to select a place for settlement, to those who had remained at home. "Providence led us to that place. It is indeed far away from our plantations, and the Canaanites and Amalekites dwell in that valley, and if they have any attachment to any spot on earth, it must delight them to live there."
For people who worshipped God by fearing Him, this burst of admiration for the natural beauties of Greenfield and the valley to the south means more than all the prose and verse that has been written about it since that day, when the God-fearing Con- gregationalists forgot themselves and became God-loving human beings, and champions of the beautiful in Nature.
Greenfield was originally part of the Town of Deerfield, which is the oldest settlement in Franklin County. The General Court
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of Massachusetts granted to a company of men in Dedham a tract of 8,000 acres at Pocomtuck, and a later grant included the territory within the bounds of the present Town of Greenfield.
Nathaniel Brooks was probably the first settler of Greenfield, in 1686, when he was granted twenty acres on the Green River, which the Indians called, Picomegan, meaning the boring river. Later in that year, grants were made to John and Edward Allyn and Joseph and Robert Goddard, on condition that they should live on the land for three years after their coming of age; that they pay taxes and their proportion of the price paid in the pur- chase of the land from the Indians. These were the conditions of all the grants. In the following year, 1687, grants of twenty acres each were made to Jeremiah Hall, Ebenezer Wells, Samuel Smead, Phillip Mattoon, Nathaniel Cooke, both of the Allyns and both of the Goddards.
About this time the lots on the street were owned according to their numbers as follows: Beginning at the west end, on the south side of the street, Ebenezer Wells, I; David Hoyt, 2; William Brooks, 3 and 4; Edward Allyn, 5. On the north side, from the west end were; Samuel Smead, I; the Mill lot, 2; Joshua Goddard, 3; Robert Goddard, 4; John Severance, 5; Jeremiah Hall, 6; John Allyn, 7. There can be nothing that more strongly emphazises the almost entire lack of money, in the form of coin or bills, than the record in 1695, that the Deerfield Town rate was made payable in pork and corn, good and mer- chantable.
Attention was paid to the education of the children at an earlier date than in some other river towns. There was no compulsory education in those days by Legislative enactment, but a Town law was passed that was about the same in effect. It was, that the fathers of children between the ages of six and ten were com- pelled to pay toward their "schooling " whether they attended school or not; under six and over ten years of age, they only paid for actual attendance. Another interesting fact shown by this Town law was, that the elders believed that the youngsters had accumulated a sufficient education for all practical purposes by the time they were ten years old. This early age was no doubt fixed upon through necessity. The community was small and the work of clearing the land and cultivating crops, and of spinning and weaving was so great, that every available pair of hands
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was an absolute necessity. At the age of ten the boys could re- lieve their older brothers and their fathers of the " chores " about the barn and the house, and the girls were even more helpful in the housework and the work having to do with the spinning and weaving.
In this same year, 1698, the greater value of oxen over horses . for farm work, was shown by the taxable rate fixed upon stock that was in every way perfect. An ox was valued for taxing pur- poses at £6, a horse at f3, and a cow at f2, and inferior specimens of each variety were rated lower but in accordance with this ratio. For nearly two hundred years after that date, oxen were more highly prized for farm work and logging than horses, in New England, especially in the hill-towns. There are still portions of New England in which the slow, sure-footed oxen are more valued for heavy work than horses. For taxing purposes swine -not being fattened - were rated at ten shillings and less, ac- cording to age and quality, and sheep at five shillings and less.
In 1699, grants were made of thirty acres to Samuel Root, Joseph Petty, Martin Kellogg, John Severance, Zeb Williams, and Michael Mitchell, on the Green River, and Mitchell was also granted four acres for a homelot, the homelot being in the village.
The destruction of birds was not considered an offence in those days. There is little doubt, had anyone suggested that the time would come when men would be fined and imprisoned for killing birds, that his neighbors would have considered him as being a little queer. There was a Town law requiring every householder to kill twelve blackbirds in the summer of 1699, and for each bird less than that number, not killed, a fine was imposed. For each bird killed in excess of twelve, there was a small bounty paid by the Town. The bounty paid for dead crows was four pence. There are parts of New England in 1905, where a fine of five dollars is imposed for killing crows. Another odd law, because it had to do with the height of the animals about which the law was made was, that swine fourteen inches high, found on the commons, should be liable to be impounded and their owners fined six pence per head, and that the owners should also pay a certain quantity of grain toward the support of the school- master for that year.
In the winter of 1738-'39, the people of Green River petitioned the Town of Deerfield for permission to be set off as a separate
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parish, but the petition was refused. A petition was again pre- sented in 1743, and this time the desired permission was granted, but for some reason not stated in the records, the Green River people did nothing about it till 1753, when the Town of Greenfield became incorporated. At a Town meeting held on July 3, 1753, the following men were elected to office.
Moderator, Benjamin Hastings ; town clerk, Benjamin Hastings ; selectmen and assessors, Ebenezer Smead, Samuel Hinsdell, and Daniel Nash; treasurer, Eben Arms; constable, Benjamin Hastings; tithingmen, Nathaniel Brooks and Shubael Atherton; fence-viewers, James Corse, Jonah Smead, and Ebenezer Wells ; surveyors-of-highways, Amos Allen and Ebenezer Wells; deer- reeve, Aaron Denio; hog-reeves, James Corse and Amos Allen; sealer-of-weights-and-measures ; Joshua Wells ; sealer-of-leather, Benjamin Hastings ; field-drivers, Thomas Nims and Gad Corse ; committee on preaching, Daniel Graves, Daniel Nash, and Aaron Denio. These were the first officers of Greenfield.
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