USA > Connecticut > The Connecticut River and the valley of the Connecticut, three hundred and fifty miles from mountain to sea; historical and descriptive > Part 16
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The site selected for Fort Dummer is in the south- eastern part of Brattleborough, and the locality is still known as Dummer Meadow. It was built under the supervision of Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton, Parson Stoddard's son, the soldier who was in Parson Williams's house at the time of the Sack of Deerfield. Lieutenant Timothy Dwight, also of Northampton, later a judge, the ancestor of President Timothy Dwight of Yale, had immediate charge of the work ; and he was the fort's first commander. It was constructed of hewn yellow pine timber, which then grew in great abundance in the neigh- borhood, laid horizontally nearly in a square. The longest side was presented to the north. Within, built against its walls, were the "province houses," the habitations of the garrison and other inmates. Its equipment comprised four " patereros," light pieces of ordnance mounted on swivels, with small arms for the garrison. It had a
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" great gun," but this was used only for signals to summon aid or to announce good tidings. It was a stout structure, and believed to be proof against ordinary assault. But in October following its completion (1724) it was attacked by a band of seventy Indians and four or five of the garrison were killed or wounded. Subsequently a stockade was built about it composed of square timbers twelve feet long set upright in the ground. The stockade inclosed an acre and a half of ground. This fort, with "No. 4," later erected up the River at Charlestown, New Hampshire side, was the chief northern military outpost till the conquest of Canada.
Father Ralé's War, though mainly a rising of the tribes east of the Merrimack, and in the province of Maine, led by the Jesuit enthusiast and backed by the French Governor de Vaudreuil, broke into the Valley in side assaults by Canadian Indians incited by De Vaudreuil's emissaries. All the towns in the Massachusetts Reach were imperilled, and deadly assaults by small bands from ambuscade upon workers in the fields were frequent. It was the method of this enemy to come stealthily down the River in considerable numbers, and make camps at conven- ient and secluded spots near the towns. Thence spies would be sent out, and upon their reports of unguarded points, small bands would issue forth to take scalps and captives. In one of his reports Colonel Samuel Partridge of Hatfield, then the rugged military commander in the Massachusetts Reach, though bearing a weight of seventy- eight years, wrote, " the enemy can and sometimes do lie in wait two months about a town before they kill or take, as some of them have acknowledged." They were Indians of the St. Francis tribes living at the confluence of the St. Francis and St. Lawrence Rivers, and the Caughnawagas
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established near the northerly end of Lake Champlain. The leader of their most daring expeditions was Gray Lock, so called from the color of his hair, whose name survives in the majestic Graylock mount of the Berkshire Hills, in North Adams. Gray Lock was an old Warranoke chief who, previous to King Philip's War, had lived on the Agawam (Westfield) River. Upon the dispersion of the tribe he had gone to the Mohawk country. He was well known to all the River towns as a wily warrior. Now an old man, he is pictured as noble in aspect like the height that bears his name. At this time his seat was on the shore of Missisquoi Bay, where he had erected a fort and had collected numerous followers. After the war had opened, Governor Dummer and the captains of the Valley had endeavored with gifts to win him and some of the Caughna- waga chiefs to the English side. But they were too late. The French had got their presents in first. Gray Lock him- self managed to dodge the English messengers, always happening to be away from his camp when they called. He took the war-path in the summer of 1723, and he was the terror of the Valley to the end.
To head off Gray Lock's and other expeditions, and to watch and ward the north and western frontiers while the main theatre of hostilities was kept in the eastern country, was the part of the Valley towns in this war. Accordingly the chief operations were those of scouting parties into which many of their lusty young men were pressed. The chronicles of those scouting adventures, in the terse jour- nals of the leaders, furnish fine material for colonial romances. They tell of silent marches through the un- broken wilderness, along treacherous Indian trails ; of win- ter travelling over the ice of the River or along the forest paths on snowshoes, constantly apprehensive of Indian
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ambuscades ; of magnificent endurance, courage, and nerve. While, acquainting themselves with the region, these men marked the way for the plantations that eventually followed.
Much of the scouting was in the woods and over the heights between Northfield and Bellows Falls on both sides of the River; and in this reach the pioneer Upper Valley settlements were afterward attempted. But several parties of rangers penetrated the Valley far above into the rich Coos country. More than one crossed to Lake Champlain, and pushed close to the Canadian borders. The leaders had thus early become familiar with the various northern trails through previous expeditions. Chief among them, by virtue of age and experience, was Captain Benjamin Wright of Northfield. He had done bold work along these trails in Queen Anne's War. The son of one of the settlers from Northampton killed at the destruction of Northfield in Philip's War, he had been a mortal enemy of the savages from that time, when he was a boy of fifteen. He was the first of English scouts to lead a " war- party " up to the Indian rendezvous of Cowass on the Great Ox Bow in Newbury, Vermont. That was in 1708, in the depth of winter, the "war-party" comprising a few Deerfield men and friendly Indians travelling on snow- shoes. It was an expedition to discover the rendezvous and the plans of " hostiles " supposed to be in force there. It failed in the latter respect, for when the place was reached the Indians had flown. The expedition of Caleb Lyman of Northampton, in the summer after the Sack of Deerfield, referred to in a previous chapter, was an attempt to discover the same rendezvous, but Lyman fell short of the goal by about twenty miles. By the summer of 1709 Captain Wright had advanced his scouts to within forty miles of Chambly. In the last summer of Father Rale's
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War he headed a band of volunteers who penetrated the wilderness farther than any previous English force had reached. Captain Thomas Wells of Deerfield was another of the veteran scouts of this war who led bands of savages far up the Valley. In the spring of 1725 he reached the Canadian frontiers with a company hastily recruited from Deerfield, Hatfield, and Northampton. Making note of its richness in passing, he afterward profited as a proprietor in one of the new townships.
But the most effective work, in that it opened the region that first was settled, was accomplished by the scouts sent out from Fort Dummer, who ranged the country systematically between Northfield and the " Great Falls," - the Bellows Falls of to-day. These rangers were mainly directed by Captain Josiah Kellogg, then commander at Northfield. He was a returned Deerfield captive, experi- enced in the ways of the Canadian Indians from having lived their savage life. When captured at the Sack of Deerfield he was a boy of fourteen (native of Hadley), and in the distribution of captives he fell to a Macqua who took him for his own. He lived the free forest life for ten years, acquiring meanwhile, with the skill of the hunter and trapper, a knowledge of French and of the language spoken by the northern tribes and by the Mohawks. Thus after his return to civilization he became of great value to the colonial leaders as an interpreter in their Indian councils. From the time of his return to his death in 1757 he was almost constantly employed in pub- lic service on the frontiers. The journals of his scouting bands sent out in the winter of 1724-25 tell their story with vividness and brevity. Some scaled the mountains - the wild Wantastequat, opposite Brattleborough, and Kilburn Peak by Bellows Falls - and spent long winter
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nights on the summits "to view morning and evening for smoakes " of the enemy. Others scoured the woods on both sides of the River, crossing below the Falls and mak- ing a circuit of the country. Others pushed up West River, then steering northward, struck Saxton's River and fol- lowed that stream to its mouth in the Connecticut.
The scouting was kept up for a while after the close of Father Ralé's War with "Lovewell's Fight " at what is now Fryeburg, Maine, and the death of De Vaudreuil in Canada, which "broke the mainspring" of the Indian campaign. Vigilance in the Valley was still necessary, for Gray Lock continued on the warpath, he having refused to join in the treaty of peace with the Eastern Indians. Sometime in 1726 he was actually on the way with a hos- tile party, which he had collected about Otter Creek, to fall upon the River towns. He expected to catch them unguarded, and was turned aside only by word from his scouts that a fighting force yet remained at Fort Dummer.
Meanwhile, however, movements for new settlements had already begun. Quick upon the ratification of peace petitions for grants of lands above the northern and west- ern frontiers showered upon the General Court at Boston ; and soon the government was moving to establish new townships. First the Court made provision for a " careful view and survey " of lands between Northfield on the Con- necticut and Dunstable (Nashua, New Hampshire), on the Merrimack, ten miles in width, preliminary to marking out townships. A scheme at this time contemplated three lines of townships, "in a straight and direct course," one up the Connecticut, one up the Merrimack, and the third in the Eastern country, or Maine, between the Newicha- wannock (part of the Piscataqua River) at Berwick, and Portland, then Falmouth. The survivors of the Indian wars
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and the families or heirs of those that had fallen were to have first preference in land grants issued. In January 1727-8, the Court authorized an exploration of the region between the northern frontiers and Canada. One party was "to march up the Connecticut River to a branch thereof called Amonusock [the Ammonoosuc] and up the same, and round the White Hills, and down Androscoggin River to Falmouth, observing the distance of rivers, ponds, and hills." Another party was to discover the country between the Connecticut and Lake Champlain. Later, traders explored the "Indian Road," - by way of the Con- necticut, Black River at the present Springfield, Vermont side, Otter Creek, and Lake Champlain, - the route usually taken by the Indians coming down from the north to the Truck House at Fort Dummer. The diary of a journey made in 1730 by one of these traders, -James Cross of Deerfield, - describing the course of this Road and the country about it, was laid before the government. The messages of the Massachusetts governor, now Belcher, repeatedly urged measures to advance the settlement of ungranted lands. At one time he advised the employment of " a good number of hunters " to travel the woods on the frontiers and so gain a knowledge of them that would con- tribute to the future quiet of the country.
But the plan for lines of towns northward moved slowly. The Council non-concurred with the House in some of the details upon its periodical appearances through sev- eral years. In the interim a few grants were issued to individuals, soldiers and others ; and to petitioners for town- ships close to the established frontier towns. Two of these township grants were in the Valley. One was issued in 1732, to Colonel Josiah Willard, afterward commander at Fort Dummer, and sixty associates, for what became
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Winchester, east of Hinsdale, New Hampshire side. The other, given out in 1734, went to the survivors and heirs of the dead of Captain Turner's company in the "Falls Fight " (Turner's Falls) of 1676, for the establishment of " Falls Fight Township," which evolved into Fallstown, and ultimately Bernardston (for Governor Bernard), west of Northfield.
At length, in January, 1735-6, the Court and Council came to an agreement for a line of towns between the Merrimack and the Connecticut and set the machinery in motion to carry out this project. A survey was ordered of the lands between the two rivers from Rumford (now Con- cord, New Hampshire) to the Great Falls (Bellows Falls), twelve miles broad, or north and south ; and provision was made for the distribution of this territory into townships of the then regulation size of six miles square. Also, the lands bordering the Connecticut south of Bellows Falls, on the east side to Colonel Willard's town (the later Winchester), and on the west side to the "Equivalent Lands," were to be resolved into similar townships. The result of these measures was the plotting of twenty-eight townships be- tween the two rivers; and two on the west side of the Connecticut. In November, 1763, at a meeting of peti- tioners for grants, called to assemble in Concord, Massachu- setts, grantees were admitted to four plotted townships on the east side of the Connecticut and two on the west side, designated by numbers, those on the east side being num- bered in sequence going up stream, and those on the west side, going down stream. The next step was taken a month later when a grantee in each group was appointed to call first meetings of the several proprietors for organization. Thomas Wells of Deerfield was named to organize the pro- prietors of Number 4, the uppermost east side township,
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among whom were several other Deerfield men, and their first meetings were held in Hatfield. The others generally met in eastern Massachusetts. Number 1 west side was organized in Taunton.
Thus were started, but not yet settled, the up-river townships that became Chesterfield, Westmoreland, Wal- pole, and Charlestown on the New Hampshire side; and Westminster and Putney on the Vermont side. The terms upon which these and other township grants were made are interesting to recall. Each grantee was required to give bonds in forty pounds as security for the performance of the conditions named. The grantees were to build " a dwelling-house eighteen feet square and seven feet stud at the least on their respective house-lots ; fence in or break up for plowing, or clear, and stock with English grass, five acres of land; and cause their respective lots to be inhabit- ed within three years from the date of their admittance." Also within the same time they were required to " build and finish a convenient meeting-house for the public wor- ship of God, and settle a learned orthodox minister." Each township was divided into sixty-three rights: sixty for the settlers, and the other three, one for the first settled minister, one for the second settled minister, and the third for a school.
Scarcely a foothold had been effected in these new River townships when the climax of the boundary dispute between New Hampshire and Massachusetts was reached by the king's decree which shifted them all outside the jurisdiction of Massachusetts and made necessary readjust- ment of the titles. By this decree, March 5, 1739-40, which established the line as it now runs, Massachusetts lost all of the new townships marked out between the two rivers, and on either side of the Connecticut above North-
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field, together with a large amount of unoccupied land that lay intermixed, and a vast tract on the west side of our River. New Hampshire on the other hand was given a far greater domain than she had ever claimed, her new bounds embracing a territory more than fifty miles in length, and extending due west, above the new north Massachusetts line, to " his majesty's other governments," which was assumed to take in all of the present Vermont, and northward to the province of Quebec. Then the royal province of New Hampshire was reinstated under its own governor, and in July, 1741, Benning Wentworth, son of the previous Lieutenant-Governor Wentworth, and an opulent merchant of Portsmouth, received the king's com- mission as governor-in-chief, empowered to grant town- ships, in the king's name, in the new territory which the province had acquired.
For a few years after the shifting of jurisdiction the proprietors of the new River townships continued under their Massachusetts charters, while little groups of settlers ventured on their lands. In 1740, at about the time of the boundary decision, three families from Lunenburg, north of Lancaster, Massachusetts, toiled up the River with their supplies and began the east-side settlement of Number 4, which became Charlestown. The next year, John Kilburn, originally of Wethersfield, Connecticut, left Northfield with his family, and started the plantation which became Walpole. Not long after, a pioneer was at Number 1, -Chesterfield. He planted, perhaps, near a preserve of five hundred acres granted to Governor Bel- cher in 1732, partly in the limits of this township, and embracing West Mountain, or Wantastequat, and long after known as "The Governor's Farm." In 1741, also, a family or two had moved up from Northfield to Number
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1 on the west side, - Westminster,-where was already one rough log-house set up by pioneers two years earlier. By 1742 a few families from Lancaster and Grafton, in central Massachusetts, had made a clearing on "Great Meadow " in Putney, beside the " Equivalent Lands," and had here built a fort.
Then, in 1744, after eighteen years of comparative security and quiet, the Indians were again on the war-path with the outbreak of the "Old French War," or "Cape Breton War" (1744-1748), and most of these settlements were abandoned, the settlers falling back to the refuge of Fort Dummer and of fortified Northfield. There now re- mained above Fort Dummer on the west side only the small fort on Putney Meadows; and on the east side, Kilburn's slender holding, together with a fortified block-house at Walpole; and the remote settlement of a few families at Number 4 with a fort erected the previous year.
The brunt of the enemy's raids down the Valley in this four-years' war was sustained by Number 4 as the outer- most post ; but, as in the previous war, the older towns of the Massachusetts Reach suffered much from the stealthy foe. As before, many of the heads of families were drawn from their regular occupations for defensive work or for army service, and many of the lusty young men exchanged the prosy toil of the farm and field for hazardous but exhilarating and promisingly profitable adventure, -for large bounties were offered for captives and scalps, - with ranging parties in the Wilderness. The war opened with the Valley gravely exposed, since Massachusetts and New Hampshire were at strife growing out of the boundary matter, and union of action in protecting the River fron- tiers was impossible. New Hampshire, indeed, bluntly
..
----
IZENS OF. D
IN THE CE VEJON HIS
CHARLESTOWN, N.H.
SPRINGFIELD Vi
ING OF TH SOCIETY OF COLONIAL HORS IN THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE TO MARK THE SITE OF THE OLD FORT. BUILT IN 1743.
DEDICATED, AUDUST 30 1906 BEING THE 150- ANNIVERSARY CE THE INDIAN BAID.
Site of the Historic Fort " No. 4," of the French and Indian Wars, Charlestown.
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refused to take over the charge of the forts which had come into her jurisdiction, and would make no move to protect the River settlements above the new boundary line. "The people " here, her Assembly declared, " had no right to the lands which by the dividing line had fallen within New Hampshire." There was no danger, the Assembly concluded, and shrewdly, that the forts would want sup- port, since it was certainly "the interest of Massachusetts, by whom they were erected, to maintain them as a cover to her frontiers."
The Indians who now again took the war-path were fully acquainted with the condition of affairs. They were aware of the state of the forts; knew the lay of the towns with their farms and fields, and the customs of the English. Those who had come down to trade at the Fort Dummer Truck House had been free to hunt and to rove at pleasure. " They lived in all the towns and went in and out of the houses of the settlers, often sleeping at night by the kitchen fire." At the Truck House six Indian commis- sioners from the northern tribes had been maintained by the Massachusetts government for ten years, receiving regular pay and rations. At the first threatening note of war they suddenly left.
Fort Dummer, however, happened to be in good con- dition, and the defences at Northfield were soon strength- ened. In addition to these a cordon of forts was erected from Fort Dummer over the mountains to the New York line. Of this series Fort Shirley in Heath, Fort Pelham in Rowe, and Fort Massachusetts in Adams (then East Hoosick), scant settlements along the north Massachusetts line westward, were built by the province of Massachusetts. Others completing the chain, fortified block-houses, in Vernon (then part of Northfield), Bernardston (Falltown),
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Colerain, and Charlemont, were erected at town or indi- vidual charge. At Greenfield and Deerfield new defences were also set up, or old ones strengthened, when " mounts," towers for watch-boxes, were ordered built on the fortified houses. Fort Dummer and Fort Massachusetts stood out the strongest posts on this part of the frontier ; whereas, between Fort Dummer and Number 4, thirty miles up the River, there remained only the slight structure at Putney. On the east side, at Keene, then Upper Ashuelot, east of Westmoreland, were also some slight defences. Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton was again at the front, charged now with the general superintendence of the defence of these frontiers, with Colonel Israel Williams of Hatfield as second officer. The headquarters of command were at Northampton and Hatfield, and Northfield was the depot of stores and headquarters of service, soldiers rendezvousing here, with scouting and ranging parties. Captain Josiah Willard was in charge of Fort Dummer, and Captain Phinehas Stevens was early at Number 4. Captain Stevens became the "hero of Number 4" in this war. He was a soldier of exceptional skill, fertile in re- sources, and was familiar with the methods of Indian war- fare, for he had been in his youth a captive among the St. Francis tribe, taken with a brother, at Rutland, Massa- chusetts, in Gray Lock's first raid of Father Rale's War.
Number 4 was now a plantation of nine or ten families living in log houses grouped near together for mutual pro- tection. Before the outbreak of the war quite a number of Indians were here in friendly association with the set- tlers. They had taken part in the festivities at the erection of the first saw-mill when all the inhabitants had a dance on the first boards that were sawn at the mill. With the opening of hostilities they disappeared, but were known to
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be lurking in the neighborhood ready to swoop upon the settlement at the first opportunity, or to join attacking forces coming down from the north. The surrounding country was " terribly wild," with no English posts of consequence nearer than Fort Dummer and the settlements on the Merrimack thirty-three miles off as the crow flies. Still during the first year the place escaped molestation, while the handful of townspeople held the fort, and scouting parties from down river occasionally ranged the region about it. The few depredations of that year were com- mitted lower in the Valley, the single tragic one at the Putney fort, when one Englishman was taken captive, and another, coming down the River in a canoe, was slain.
But in the spring of the second year, 1746, when the French planned the destruction of the frontier forts while the English were mainly engrossed in the invasion of Can- ada, Number 4's tribulations began. Late in March Cap- tain Phinehas Stevens, having been employed in other parts, returned with forty-nine men to save the fort from falling into the enemy's hands ; and arrived just in time, for a force of French and Indians under Ensign De Niver- ville was then close upon it. On the 19th of April a few of De Niverville's Indians, watching the settlement from ambush, waylaid three men on their way to the grist-mill with a team of four oxen, burnt the mill, and capturing the men marched them off to Canada. Others of De Niver- ville's red men hovered about the place for some time, mak- ing no open attack, but constantly harassing the settlers and soldiers. One morning in May several women going to milk the cows, under the protection of a guard, were at- tacked by eight of them concealed in a barn, and one of the guard, Seth Putnam, was killed. As the Indians were scalping their victim the guard rallied and routed them.
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