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The Story of Deerfield 1630-1930
Gc 974.402 D37f 1796331
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M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01145 5299
Photo by Frances and Mary Allen
DEERFIELD
THE STORY OF DEERFIELD
By MARY WILLIAMS FULLER
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BRATTLEBORO: THE VERMONT PRINTING COMPANY 1930
Copyright, 1930 Mary Williams Fuller
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1796331
THE STORY OF DEERFIELD
1630-1930
T HREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, the waters gathering at the foot of the Green Mountains in southern Ver- mont had merged themselves into a turbulent, rushing river which came hurrying through the deep gorges and wild ravines of the west- ern hills to spread themselves leisurely out in brown ripples and placid still places along the meadows of the wide and lovely valley we know as Deerfield. The Indians called the river and the stately hill that stands solemn guard to the east, Pocumtuck, the name of their tribe.
This was to them a favorite spot. How long they had dwelt here, there is no telling. Wherever the land rises above high-water- mark of the ever recurring spring floods of the river, traces of their habitation can be
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found. Arrowheads, stone implements, and bits of pottery are even to this day turned up by the plow or discovered by the process of digging. Graves of many an Indian warrior have been unearthed with accompanying stone weapons or other symbolic emblems.
Tradition tells us that at the time of the coming of the white man to the shores of Massachusetts the Indians were dwelling here in well-established security. The Pocumtucks seem to have been a powerful tribe not lack- ing in dignity and pride. They were an agri- cultural people. Corn grew in the fertile meadows; game abounded on the wooded hillsides; salmon and shad as well as smaller fish swam in the streams. The Indians used the poorer sorts of fish to fertilize their corn; and so abundant was it that in 1638 John Pynchon, who had helped to settle Springfield in 1635, made his way up the Connecticut River to Pocumtuck to purchase corn to save the settlements farther down the river from starvation. Loaded in canoes, it was easily
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floated down the river. For many years, friendly relations existed between the Indians of this region and the early settlers of Wethersfield, Windsor, Springfield, Hadley and Hatfield.
The Pocumtucks were at times at war with other tribes, but they seem to have maintained their supremacy till about 1660. Tales of a thousand warriors gathering here have come down to us. Perhaps they assembled here because of the wide area that could be watched over and guarded from the lofty summit of Pocumtuck Mountain, or from the abrupt and steep heights of Wequamps (Sugar Loaf).
Soon after 1660, a fierce war broke out be- tween the Pocumtucks and the Mohawks from the Hudson River valley in which the Mohawks proved victorious. The Pocumtucks were almost exterminated, and this, perhaps, accounts for the ease with which men sent here from Dedham in 1665 were able to pur- chase 8000 acres of land with which Dedham
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was to reimburse her people whose land there had been taken for John Eliot's missionary Indians. Quaint deeds of this transaction are to be seen in our Memorial Hall signed by the mark "X" after their strange names; some of them being the names of squaws, showing that they held land and could deed it away.
By 1669 Samuel Hinsdale, a son of one of the Dedham owners, had come here to settle, and his son Mehuman, born in 1673, was the first white child born here. About twenty fami- lies came here to settle between 1671 and 1673. The village street was planned; house lots apportioned; boundaries established, some of which exist to this day. The site for a church was chosen, and a minister bespoken although not settled at this time. Until 1675 peace prevailed. No fear of disturbance or danger perturbed these busy people as they cultivated the fields and built their houses. The Indians went and came unmolested and unmolesting.
Meanwhile, in the eastern part of Massa-
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chusetts a different state of things began. Discontent, probably not without cause, grew among the Indians of that region and spread its contagion rapidly and with ever increasing ferocity. A general uprising, known as King Philip's War, broke out in the spring of 1675. Death and destruction fell upon all outlying towns. Soldiers were hurried to their help; stockades were built, and close guard main- tained.
Brookfield was burned August 2. Soldiers were attacked at the foot of Wequamps on August 24, this being the first fight with the Indians in the Connecticut valley. Deerfield was assailed September 1. No lives were lost, but a few buildings outside the stockade were burned. September 2, Northfield was set upon and several people were killed. Two days later, a troop of soldiers sent to their re- lief was ambushed near the town and largely destroyed. Northfield had then to be aban- doned.
On Sunday, September 12, while the
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settlers were collected in the palisades or fort for worship, Deerfield was again attacked. Horses and cattle were driven off or killed; grain and other spoils carried off. Consterna- tion prevailed. Troops were hurried to the Connecticut valley from the more thickly populated eastern part of the state. On Sep- tember 17, a troop of soldiers under Cap- tain Lothrop of Beverly, called "The Flower of Essex County," was sent to Deerfield for corn and wheat for some of the over-crowded garrisons in the towns below.
The next morning, a lovely, warm Septem- ber morning, a long train of heavily loaded carts driven by seventeen men of Deerfield, escorted by Lothrop and his soldiers, set forth from the southern gate of the fort fearless of the frightful danger of these infuriated sav- ages. Five miles south of here at the crossing of a small brook, they were set upon suddenly by six or seven hundred Indians. Only two or three of all that company escaped unhurt. Lothrop and his men were slain. The brook
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has ever since been called Bloody Brook. Near it is the grave of sixty-four New Eng- land men.
Deerfield could no longer be maintained. Its people werespeedily escorted to safety ; and once more the Indians occupied their old haunts.
Innumerable attacks occurred all up and down the valley. Springfield, Hatfield, Had- ley, Northampton, and Longmeadow all suf- fered. The Indians gathered in large num- bers and grew careless and contemptuous of the English. At length, it was decided that some strong measure of retaliation must be taken. It was resolved to send a large body of men to surprise the Indians in their camp at Peskeompskut, the great falls of the Con- necticut north of Pocumtuck.
On May 19, 1676, about one hundred and forty men led by Captain William Turner marched by night from Hadley through the long aisles of wooded roadway over swamps and across rivers twenty miles and more to their destination at the falls. The sleeping
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enemy was surprised. A fierce fight followed. Many Indians were killed; many wigwams destroyed, squaws and children slain; but also many of the English perished including the brave leader. Peskeompskut was henceforth to be known as Turner's Falls.
But little was gained. France and England became more deeply involved in war. Gradu- ally, the French in Canada acquired the al- legiance of many Indian tribes again instigat- ing them to onslaughts upon the outlying settlements of the English.
For fifty years, off and on, this sort of in- duced hostility prevailed from Maine to Vir- ginia; and this, added to wars between the various tribes which now sought help from the French and again from the English, made frontier life most hazardous.
Seldom did our English forefathers avail themselves of the savages as allies; but now and then a tribe adhered in its allegiance to the English, and from them scouts were ob- tained.
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Photo by Frances and Mary Allen
OLD HOUSES, DEERFIELD STREET
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After the disasters of 1675, no immediate attempt was made to resettle Deerfield; but in 1677 three or four venturesome men, believ- ing the Indians to be gone, and relying too much on the effect of King Philip's death (his influence seems always to have been over- rated), came back to Deerfield and once more started to build. On September 19, before their houses were habitable or their families here, they were attacked, captured and carried to Canada with a number of men and women and children from Hatfield; the first of the many captives to follow that long, hard trail.
Undeterred by all this suffering and loss, a large number of families, some of them those who had been forced to leave after the Bloody Brook disaster, came back in 1682; built more substantial houses and established a village here, following the original plan of "an artiste employed to lay out the street" by the Dedham owners.
They chose the mile-long plateau that rises from the meadows at the south by a steep
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bank, and ends similarly at the north, securing the dwellings from the spring floods of the capricious Deerfield river. A site for a church and the principal houses was selected on a still higher piece of ground in the center. A stockade was built surrounding this part of the village, and soldiers were quartered here. Great caution was necessary. Raids were not infrequent. Men carried their guns everywhere; even in church they were not left behind. Men were attacked in the fields or mending fences or going to the mill two miles away.
It is scarcely possible for us to conceive of the courage and indomitable pertinacity of these isolated people, cut off absolutely from all help, save as some intrepid horseman, if fortunate enough to escape, bore the news of alarm through many miles of forest and bog. For nearly a quarter of a century after this last and permanent settlement, the Deerfield people lived in perpetual dread of the savages that might be lurking in any wooded space or watching the village from the hill above.
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To add to their discomfort, in the autumn of 1691, a party of fifty warriors and about a hundred squaws and children came to camp on the hillside of the town above a little settlement called Wapping to use the right which had been reserved to them in their deeds of land to hunt and fish. These In- dians, purporting to be friendly, had to be re- ceived as such; although grave doubts as to their conduct, in case hostile Indians arrived, disturbed the settlers. Guards and scouts were reinforced; palisades were strengthened. An anxious winter ensued, and great were the rejoicings when, in May, they finally departed. Many alarms and rumors of intended in- vasions reached the town, and it was a relief when the rivers were no longer smooth path- ways of ice. Each year some tragedy occurred. In 1693, a whole family was slain in a house outside the stockade. In September, 1694, French and Indians, lurking in the alders just north of the palisades, made a sudden attack in midday. A speedy alarm and determined
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resistance saved the town. Almost by a miracle, the schoolmistress, Dame Hannah Beaman, fleeing with her flock of school- children from her house outside the stockade, reached its shelter unhurt from the shower of arrows sped to intercept them.
The peace that followed the Treaty of Rys- wick in 1697 had scarcely begun to be felt before that brief respite was over. For a short time, attention could be given to the building of roads and fences, a meeting-house, and a dwelling for their young minister John Williams and his wife Esther Mather. Town meetings were established; money voted for a school; and smaller settlements begun north and south of the village. A sense of security prevailed.
In May, 1702, Queen Anne declared war with France. A little over a month later, it was voted in Deerfield "that ye town Fort shall forthwith be righted up." So soon did the effects of renewed war become apparent. Settlers who had begun to build outside of
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the palisades came crowding in, or in some cases built new ones around their houses. Soldiers were once more quartered here.
Deerfield was now the frontier town to the north. Much concern was felt for her safety throughout the state. Constant guard was maintained. A sentry paced the street at night.
On the night of February 29, 1704, this sentry, grown confident by several weeks of continued safety, being weary toward morn- ing, and, it is said, soothed by hearing a woman crooning to her sick child, slept at his post in the snowy street. A glistening crust covered the earth; and over it, now with a rush, now pausing to listen, and again rush- ing forward, thus to simulate gusts of wind should there be waking ears to hear, came a horde of two hundred and fifty Indians and Frenchmen led by Hertel De Rouville.
Over the palisades they poured, their hor- rible war-whoops waking the sleeping village. Men sprang for their guns, but too late! They
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were overpowered; some killed at once, some bound and carried to the meeting-house where, in the chilly dawn of the grey morn- ing, a sad company of over a hundred men, women and children were soon collected. Houses were pillaged and burned; helpless women and little children brutally killed be- fore the eyes of their nearest and dearest. Hurriedly De Rouville herded the captives from the fort, rushing them across the frozen river to the north.
Hardly had they left the village, before a band of forty valiant men, who had ridden at breakneck speed from Hatfield on seeing the red glare of the burning town reflected on the clouds twelve miles away, followed in furious pursuit. Many Indians were killed, but the pursuers could not contend against the deep snow. The sun had risen, the crust melted; and it was hopeless floundering for the English. The provident French had brought a large supply of snowshoes for their captives! (The next year, five hundred pairs
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of snowshoes were ordered by the General Court for frontier use. )
This was certainly a successful venture for the French. Forty nine people were killed, one hundred and eleven taken captive; and very few houses were left standing within the central palisade. One of these houses stood until 1848, and was called "The Old Indian House." Its door is preserved in Memorial Hall. Through the hole hacked in it by tomahawks, a bullet was fired that killed the wife of John Sheldon, the owner of the house.
So many tales of heroism and self-sacrifice among those who went as captives on that fearful winter journey to Canada-three hun- dred miles through the pathless forests and on the ice of frozen rivers-have come down to us, that we count it a proud distinction to be descended from those people.
Those of the captives too weak to keep up on the march were ruthlessly killed; and fear of a similar fate increased the survivors' suf-
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ferings from cold, wet, and scarcity of food. In a few cases the Indian captors were kind; some of them improvised sleds for the chil- dren and drew them, and shared their scanty food with them. And the Canadian families among whom the captives were placed were good to them. Great efforts were made by the zealous Jesuit priests to convert these un- happy Puritan prisoners to Catholicism; allur- ing promises were held out to them. In some cases they were successful, and we find high officials of the Roman Catholic Church among the descendants of those who remained in Canada.
John Williams, the minister, and five of his children were captured; the two youngest were slain at his door, and his wife killed on the first day's march. All were separated in Canada and remained there two years. The Indian who took Eunice, the eight-year-old daughter, refused to give her up when the others were ransomed in 1706. No amount of money or persuasion prevailed. Eunice be-
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came an Indian and was married into the tribe at the age of seventeen. Twice, in after years, she came to Deerfield to see her family; but could never be induced to remain. Her home was in St. Francis; her tribe the Abenaki.
In 1837 Eunice's granddaughter and the son and grandsons of the latter came down the Connecticut seeking the place of Eunice's birth. They camped on the hill above the village and sought those of the name of Wil- liams, and were much interested in a little "white papoose" of that name, who, thirty years later, was to be maimed for life by In- dians on the far western plains.
To carry the story of Eunice still further. In 1921, a Deerfield girl descended from these captives met in Dublin, N. H., a girl of In- dian blood; and they presently discovered that they were both descendants of Robert Wil- liams of England who was Eunice's great- grandfather. The Indian girl, Elizabeth Sa- doques, told of the long-cherished legend of the English ancestress, and of the visit of
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the tribe to Deerfield in 1837. The name Eunice is still handed down in their tribe. At the request of our historical society, Elizabeth Sadoques wrote a most picturesque and charming paper on her Indian ancestors and their ways.
There are many other fascinating accounts of the courage of these pioneers. The won- derful story of the bravery of Ensign John Sheldon is scarcely equalled by any tale of heroism. His losses on that awful night of 1704 were enough to crush an ordinary spirit. His wife and youngest child had been killed. Three of his children and his daughter-in-law, Hannah Chapin of Springfield, had been car- ried off as captives. Bereft of all his family he rested not until, in the December follow- ing, he was on his way to Boston accompanied by young John Wells whose mother also had been captured. The object of the journey was to get from Governor Dudley "license to travel thither" (to Canada). Captain John Livingstone of Albany was prevailed upon
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OLD MEETING HOUSE, ABOUT 1680 INDIAN HOUSE IN BACKGROUND
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to accompany them and to show them the route by Lakes George and Champlain, down the Sorel River to the St. Lawrence, to Quebec.
Miss C. Alice Baker in her truly great work, "True Stories of New England Captives," tells of this journey in so remarkable a para- graph that it must be quoted here.
"We need not go back to King Arthur for exploits of chivalry; our colonial history is full of them. This man, long past the daring impulses of youth,-this youth, whose life was all before him-show me two braver knights-errant setting out with loftier purpose, on a more perilous pilgrimage."
"Three hundred miles of painful and unac- customed tramping on snowshoes in mid- winter, over mountain and morass, through tangled thickets and 'snow-clogged forest,' where with fell purpose the cruel savage lurked; with gun in hand and pack on back, now wading knee deep over some rapid stream, now in the teeth of the fierce north wind, toiling over the slippery surface of the
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frozen lake, now shuffling tediously along in the sodden ice of some half-thawed river, dig- ging away the drifts at night for his camp; wet, lame, half-famished, and chilled to the bone, hardly daring to build a fire,-a bit of dried meat from his pack for supper, spruce boughs for his bed, crouching there wrapped in his blanket, his head muffled in the hood of his capote, eye and ear alert, his mittened hand grasping the hilt of his knife at his belt; up at daybreak and on again, through storm and sleet, pelted by pitiless rains, or blinded by whirling snow,-what iron will and nerves of steel, sound mind in sound body, to dare and do what this man did!"
Arriving at Quebec, they were courteously received by Governor de Vaudreuil and al- lowed to see John Williams, their beloved pastor. From him they learned that the mother of Wells had died on the journey, but that Sheldon's children were living. At length in March, a letter from one of the Deerfield cap- tives gave them more definite news :- "I pray
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give my kind loue to Landlord Shelden, and tel him that i am sorry for all his los. I doe in these few lins showe youe that god has shon yo grat kindness and marcy. In carrying youre Daighter Hanna, and Mary in Pertickeler, through so grat a iorney, far beiend my expec- tation, noing How Lame they war; the Rest of your children are with the Indians, Re- memberrance liues near cabect, Hannah also Liues with the frenc, Jn in the same house i doe."
Not until May did Ensign John Sheldon complete negotiations for the ransom of his heroic daughter-in-law, Hannah Sheldon, his daughter, Mary Sheldon, Esther Williams, and two other captives. All had suffered and shown the exemplary fortitude which had cre- ated the colonies. But the admirable courage of Hannah Sheldon should not be forgotten. She, a bride of a few weeks, and her young husband had, during the attack, jumped from the second story east window of their house (since called the Old Indian House). In fall-
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ing, her ankle was sprained, and she knew that escape was hopeless. Nevertheless, she urged her husband to hasten to give the alarm to the settlements below while helping to bind up his bare feet in strips of blanket.
Twice afterward did John Sheldon go to Canada to arrange for the redemption of cap- tives.
Stephen Williams, son of the Rev. John, wrote a most interesting account of his boy- hood experience on the fearful winter's journey of 1704, and of his life with the In- dians. Rev. John Williams published a little book, "The Redeemed Captive," soon after his return from Canada in the Autumn of 1706. This gives a full and graphic account of all that he saw and suffered. With rare fortitude and devotion, he returned to his desolated home and people in Deerfield hav- ing refused offers of greater ease and security. In 1707, the people of Deerfield built for him the noble house which is still standing. There he lived until his death in 1729.
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Of all the captives, Mehuman Hinsdale must not be forgotten. He, the first white child born in Deerfield, had a remarkable life. His father was killed in the Bloody Brook Fight; he and his wife were captured in 1704; their baby was slain; and they were carried to Canada where they remained as captives for two years. Ransomed in the Autumn of 1706, they returned to Boston on the French vessel "La Marie." During this voyage, another son was born, Ebenezer, who graduated twenty years later from Harvard College. Some years after, Ebenezer Hinsdale, while stationed as Chaplain at Fort Dummer, bought up grad- ually much land on the further side of the Connecticut and founded the town of Hins- dale, New Hampshire. Mehuman was again captured in 1709 while bringing a load of fruit trees from Northampton to Deerfield. Again he was carried to Canada, made to run the gauntlet, thrown into prison in Quebec, and kept there many months because he would not reveal the plans of the English.
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After many ups and downs of hope and de- spair, he was sent to France, made his way to London; and finally reached home after an absence of three and a half years.
Endless romance can be discovered in the records of those days of danger and heroism. Miss C. Alice Baker, after much close scrutiny of the church records in Canada, was able to piece together many bits of the lives of these captives. It is amazing to see how many were carried into captivity from all over New Eng- land. Captives were preferred to scalps when- ever it was possible to secure them.
Trouble with the French and Indians con- tinued until the year 1713 when the Treaty of Utrecht between France and England was signed. Soon after that, these same Indians began to flock in to sell furs and to buy coveted articles from the settlers. Difficult it must have been to tolerate these savages whose cruelty had broken up so many families and destroyed so many homes.
Four young men who had made a valiant
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escape from Canada and reached Deerfield after terrible sufferings and incredible escapes became ardent scouts a little later when the war known as Father Rasle's War broke out along the northern boundaries. These bound- aries, unfortunately, had not been definitely determined by the Treaty. Ninety-two men formed a company to protect Deerfield and Northfield. Conferences were held at Al- bany, and messengers on horseback went rapidly back and forth to Boston. Much agita- tion prevailed and a few fatal events occurred. Father Rasle was killed in 1724, but Indian incursions did not subside at once. A block house, called Fort Dummer, was established a little above Northfield on the Connecticut River. All through these years great efforts were made to keep in touch with other towns in defence of the border. The constant need of scouting and of keeping watch by day and by night became very taxing. Pathetic me- morials from men of sixty and seventy asking to be absolved from further duty show this
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