USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
62
CHAPTER VII
Frontier War with the Indians
W HEN in 1643 the Massachusetts General Court created the four counties with their good old English names-Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Middlesex-Essex was bounded on the north by the Merrimack River, from which it extended down the Atlantic coast to Lynn and Saugus and then followed an irregu- lar line to the north and west until it again reached the Merri- mack at a point a little upstream from the present city of Law- rence. To the original eight townships mentioned in an earlier chapter were later added Salisbury, Haverhill, Merrimac, Ames- bury, and Methuen, all of which had once been part of Norfolk County, north of the river. The confused and confusing matter of boundaries need not concern us further except to point out that the line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire was not definitely fixed until 1741. Today Essex County, covering about five hundred square miles, contains thirty-four separate townships and several urban centers, the chief being, in order of population, Lynn, Lawrence, and Haverhill. The county has been described by one of its not too modest partisans as "the most historical county in America," and it has sound claims to that distinction.
The town of Andover, as finally established, was delimited by the Merrimack on the north, Bradford and Boxford on the northeast, Middleton on the southeast, Reading and Wilming- ton on the south, and Tewksbury on the southwest. Its shape on the map is best described as "irregular." The curious will be glad to learn that it lies in 42 degrees, 40 minutes, north lati- tude-about on a line with Vladivostok, Milwaukee, Genoa, and
63
ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
Istanbul-and in longitude 5 degrees, 54 minutes, east of Wash- ington. Its total area in the seventeenth century was about thirty- eight thousand acres.
Nowadays the distance of less than twenty-five miles from the Boston State House to the common at North Andover or the Memorial Tower of Phillips Academy, through Somerville, Stoneham, and Reading, can be covered in an uneventful forty minutes by automobile. In the seventeenth century, however, this was a long, wearisome trip, to be undertaken only under the pressure of duty or necessity. The roads at best were rough, in some places mere wood-paths; places of refreshment were few; and wild animals were likely to appear at any point. In 1648, the General Court recorded "that there is a dangerous passage, for want of a bridge over Ipswich River, about 4 miles from Red- dinge, especially in winter, & at the springe, when the waters are high, where some travellers have been in great danger of drown- ing, it being the common road to Andover and Haverhill, & the neerest way from the bay, by many miles, to the eastward." The construction of a bridge at the place where Route 28 now crosses the stream made the journey safer. But even with that precau- tion Andover was still regarded by Bostonians as a wilderness village!
When the first Pequot War broke out in 1637, Essex County had not been formed and the district around Lake Cochicha- wicke had not been settled. In that year John Mason and John Underhill, with a force of fewer than eighty soldiers, assaulted an entrenched fort near the present Stonington, Connecticut, defended by more than five hundred desperate Indians, of whom all but a very few were shot or burned alive by the flaming wig- wams. The victims included women and children as well as the male warriors. This wholesale massacre had its peaceful after- math of nearly forty years, during which the aborigines, al- though often restless, did not dare to rebel. In 1637 they had only recently become accustomed to firearms. Furthermore, the English settlements were still concentrated along the coast, pro-
64
FRONTIER WAR WITH THE INDIANS
tecting one another. When the next racial conflict broke out, the situation had altered. The braves now had the white man's weapons and knew how to use them. Scattered and vulnerable villages, like Andover and Haverhill, existed in the interior. A new generation of Indians had grown to manhood with only dim memories of the horrors of the Pequot War and with an attitude towards the colonists which was far from submissive.
The settlers at Cochichawicke had no desire to engage in a war with their Indian neighbors. The red men were all around, fishing the streams and hunting in the forests, and coming occa- sionally to the stores for barter. They seemed harmless enough as they strolled about; yet it is clear from the Records that the white families rarely felt secure. In 1643, for example, the Gen- eral Court ordered that the military officers in every town should specify what arms should be brought to the meeting house on the Lord's Day and should see to it that guns and ammunition at farms and in remote places were safely hidden "that an enemy may not possess himself of them." The colonists had plenty to contend with-cold, sickness, famine, exhaustion, and depres- sion of spirits. It was a life which overwhelmed and destroyed the weak and tested the vitality of the strong. Under such condi- tions a stable peace with the natives was much to be desired.
For almost forty years, then, the relations between the settlers and the Indians, although sometimes strained, were generally amicable. In some respects, such as food and creature comforts, the natives were better off than they ever had been; and a few of the less ferocious were actually persuaded by John Eliot to ac- cept Christianity and form their own groups of "praying In- dians." When the friendly Massasoit died about 1661, he was succeeded as Chief Sachem of the Wampanoags by his elder son, Wamsutta, called by the whites "Alexander," who soon died, and then by the latter's brother, Metacom, better known as "Philip." The rights and wrongs of the disputes between the two races have been told and retold by historians. One of the undisputed facts is that the resulting conflict was inevitable.
65
ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
Philip, although hardly a romantic figure, seems to have been largely responsible for the organization of a widespread con- spiracy, and was dignified with the title of "King." The early events took place at some distance from Andover. When Sausa- mon, an Indian well disposed towards the colonists, warned Governor Winslow that Philip was making hostile plans, he was murdered by his tribesmen; and the Pilgrims, in retaliation, seized three natives, found them guilty, and put them to death. The next incident occurred in June, 1675, when raiding Indians attacked and burned settlements at Swansea and Dartmouth, south of Boston. King Philip's War was on!
On September 1, simultaneous attacks were made on the somewhat remote hamlets of Hadley and Deerfield. Next, on September 11, followed the frightful affair at Bloody Brook, when more than sixty picked soldiers, described as "the very flower of the County of Essex," under the command of Captain Thomas Lathrop, were ambushed and massacred. Although this company was presumably recruited in Essex County, I cannot find that any Andoverian was a member.
When, in 1675, a levy was made on the various Massachusetts townships to meet the expense of "the present warr against the Indians," Boston, the largest, was assessed 300 pounds in cur- rency or in goods. The relative importance of Andover may be judged by its assessment of 20 pounds, as compared with 100 pounds for Salem, 70 for Ipswich, 60 for Newbury, 34 for Lynn, 12 for Topsfield, and 8 for Exeter!
Andover was then, as it is today, the most westerly of the Es- sex County townships. Although the broad Merrimack was its northern boundary, that was no protection, for both Indians and whites used it for transportation. Further to the north, ex- cept for a few small settlements like Exeter, all was wilderness. Lieutenant Osgood, when he applied in 1675 for military as- sistance, was not stretching the truth when he called Andover an "outside town"; and Major Dennison, of Ipswich, wrote to the Council of "our posts at Topsfield & Andover being affright-
66
FRONTIER WAR WITH THE INDIANS
ed with the sight, as they say, of Indians. .. . It is hardly imagina- ble the panick fears that is upon our upland plantations & scat- tered places .... The almighty and Merciful God pity and help us." On May 3, 1676, Andover was formally named by the Gen- eral Court as a frontier community, along with "Meadfield," Sudbury, Concord, Chelmsford, Haverhill, and Exeter.
As the news of these fearful disasters in the west spread from hamlet to hamlet, the eastern colonists became more and more alarmed. October 7, 1675, was proclaimed a solemn day of fast- ing and prayer. Meanwhile the colonial commissioners had learned that the Narragansetts, under their chief, Canonchet, had decided that the moment was favorable for joining Philip and were making warlike preparations. Prompt retaliatory meas- ures could not be avoided. Each township in Massachusetts Bay had its own militia company which drilled regularly on its train- ing field, and there was one complete regiment for each county. For the emergency, however, the commissioners did not rely up- on these units but made a general levy, setting Andover's quota as twelve men. These "draftees," all of whom had received some earlier training in the militia, were the following:
Joseph Abbot Ebenezer Barker John Ballard James Frie John Faulkner
John Lovejoy
John Marston
John Parker
Samuel Philpes
John Preston
Nathan Stevens
Edward Whittington
These were very respectable names in the Andover communi- ty. Nathan Stevens, the first white child born in Andover, was
67
ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
in 1675 thirty-three years old. Eight of the dozen were from fami- lies of the original proprietors. Marston, Philpes, Preston, and Whittington were later comers. It is impossible to ascertain how many came from the south end of the town, but we do know that Joseph Abbot, only twenty-three, was the third son of George Abbot, a pioneer in that area.
Lieutenant John Osgood, commander of the Andover militia, arranged to have these recruits fitted out with arms, ammuni- tion, and clothing. He reported frankly, "Edward Whittington wants a better musquete, which we know not well how to supply, except we take from another man, which in these times seems harde." On December 10, the twelve Andover representatives joined a force of more than a thousand men under the command of Governor Josiah Winslow, of Plymouth, mustered on "Ded- ham Plain." They and their comrades were assured by governor's proclamation that if they "played the man, took the fort, and drove the enemy out of the Narragansett country," they should have a gratuity of land, besides their routine pay.
There can be no doubt that they "played the man." Assigned to complete the company headed by Captain Gardiner, they marched through winter snow and cold to the swamp fortress of the Narragansetts and there, on December 19, after reckless hand-to-hand fighting, slew at least a thousand of the foe and burned four hundred wigwams. Andoverians today, traveling by train from Boston to New York, can see on the right-hand side a little south of West Kingston, the very spot where this sanguinary action took place. The colonial casualties were small. In the attack Ebenezer Barker was wounded, but not seriously. It was also reported that another Andover man, Robert Mackey, in Major Appleton's company, was slain, but Miss Bailey could find no such name in the official Records.
These Andover soldiers had a share in what was unquestion- ably the turning point in the racial struggle for the domination of the eastern seaboard. After the virtual extermination of the
68
FRONTIER WAR WITH THE INDIANS
powerful Narragansetts, victory for the colonists, though de- layed, was never again in question.
The ungrateful and dilatory colony took a long time to redeem its pledge to the veterans. Not until more than half a century had gone by did the General Court take action, and then only under pressure from some of the survivors and their families. Five Andover participants in the fight, including Ebenezer Bark- er, who had been wounded, were alive fifty-three years after- wards and received grants of land in a section later incorporated as Amherst, New Hampshire. Thus, at long last, Massachusetts paid its debt to its protectors.
Even after the decisive annihilation of the Narragansetts, both King Philip and Canonchet were still alive, with their under- standable desire for revenge. As winter turned to spring in 1676, Andover, like other frontier villages, took some essential pre- cautions. The General Court directed the construction of garri- son houses, each enclosing an area of several square rods, with sentry boxes for keeping watch and the customary overhanging second story. It was reported in March, 1676, that Andover had twelve such substantial garrison houses in which the inhabitants could take shelter, all of them strategically located and well sup- plied with firearms and ammunition. One of them, placed on the lot belonging to the Abbot homestead on what is now Central Street, was conveniently situated for the protection of residents in the south end of the township.
At the same time the town fathers wisely started the practice of sending out armed guards with parties of workmen in the fields. Andover citizens seem to have been, with some justifica- tion, "on edge"; and when two Indians appeared on a scouting expedition, an appeal was sent to Ipswich, and Major Daniel Dennison, who had married Anne Bradstreet's sister, Patience Dudley, hurried to the scene with fifty soldiers. Meanwhile the invaders had departed, and Dennison had nothing to do, al- though he reported later that, if he had been so instructed, he
69
ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
could have brought away with him some of Governor Brad- street's household goods, which had not been removed from the town.
Some confusion exists as to what actually happened at An- dover in the spring of 1676, but Lieutenant Osgood, who should have known, said in a letter of April 10 to the "Honoured Coun- cill," "the enemy has twice assaulted us." Hubbard, the minister of Ipswich, who in 1677 wrote The Present State of New England, also mentions two attacks. According to Hubbard, a few convert- ed Indians at Wamesit, an Indian village at the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers, "suddenly turned our ene- mies after winter was over," and, irritated because some of the settlers had shot at them, appeared at Andover, fired Mr. Faulk- ner's house, wounded one Roger Marks, and killed his horse. Further details are missing, but all the Faulkners at that time lived in the north end.
A far more serious attack came on April 8 on residents of the south end. A party of savages, crossing the Shawsheen River near where the South Church now stands, surprised some of the villagers working in the fields around the garrison house occu- pied by George Abbot. Abbot and his wife, the former Hannah Chandler, had in their home at the time eleven of their thirteen children. Two of these could not reach shelter-Joseph, aged twenty-four, who had been in the Narragansett fight of the pre- ceding December, and Timothy, only thirteen. There is reason to believe that the Indians were seeking revenge on Joseph, who, although he struggled with his captors, was overwhelmed by numbers and slain within sight of his home. Timothy was car- ried off as a captive.
On this dramatic incident the Reverend Increase Mather, in his A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians (1676), made the following almost contemporaneous comment:
In the beginning of April they did some mischief at Chelmsford and Andover, where a small party of them put the town into a great
70
FRONTIER WAR WITH THE INDIANS
fright, caused the people to fly into garrison houses, killed one man and burnt one house, and to show what barbarous creatures they are, they exercised cruelty towards dumb creatures. They took a cow, knocked off one of her horns, cut out her tongue, and so left the poor creature in great misery. They put an horse, ox, and cow into a hovel and then set it on fire only to show how they are delighted in exercising cruelty.
Timothy Abbot, the youth who was carried off, was brought back to his family in the following August, almost starved, by a poor squaw who had been kind to him when he was in captivity. According to tradition, when Timothy had grown up, married Hannah Graves, and raised a family, he never allowed his three children to complain that they were hungry, declaring that not one of them could really know the meaning of that word. He died on September 9, 1730, at the age of sixty-seven. Until the late nineteenth century his descendants were still living on a farm in the South Parish.
Following this second outrage, Lieutenant Osgood, still in charge of the town's defenses, wrote to the General Court ap- pealing for aid. A modernized version of his quaint spelling and punctuation will make his statement more easily understood:
The militia of our town do must humbly request your Honours to consider our condition. The enemy has twice assaulted us; the last was Saturday last, who slew a lusty young man and took his brother a youth and carried him away. We have had some forces to help us but the enemy cannot be found when we go after them; and we find that we are not able to go to work about improving our lands but are liable to be cut off. .. . We fear greatly that we shall not be able to live in the town to improve our lands to raise a subsistence with- out some force be kept above us upon the river of Merrimack and to the Concord River .... Now we are so distressed to think that our men are liable to be shot whenever we stir from our houses and our children taken by the cruel enemy. It do so distress us that we know not what to do. If some defense be not made by the forces above us we must remove off if we can tell where, before we have lost all lives
71
ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
and cattle and horses by the enemy; we are completely able to fend ourselves in our garrison if we have warning to rest in, but otherwise out of our house we are in continual danger.
Obviously this pathetic appeal was based on genuine appre- hension, but in fact the critical period was almost over. Within a few days the refugee chieftain, Canonchet, was captured and handed over to the friendly Mohicans, who promptly toma- hawked him. After the desperate "King" Philip was shot on Au- gust 12, in a swamp near the present Bristol, Rhode Island, he was beheaded, drawn, and quartered as a traitor, and his head was for some years exhibited on a pole on the village green in Plymouth. Andover suffered no further depredations during that year, and on October 1 the General Court ordered "that Andiver [sic] be allowed and abated out of their last tenn rates the sums of fower pounds ten shillings towards their losses."
After the death of their tribal leaders, the baffled hostile In- dians broke up into small roving bands which emerged briefly from cover and then retreated expeditiously into the wilderness, like flames leaping out from an always smoldering fire. These forays were more annoying than dangerous, but they kept the colonists constantly on the watch. On June 1, 1677, the ever- active Dudley Bradstreet was appointed captain for "the foot company at Andover" and insisted on keeping small detach- ments of armed men on guard whenever any farmers were work- ing in the fields. Later in that month several of the Andover militia were drafted for a punitive expedition under the com- mand of Captain Benjamin Swett to the Kennebec River. Un- fortunately the colonials were ambushed at Scarborough, south of Portland; and in the ensuing battle Captain Swett was killed and also four residents of Andover-John Parker, John Phelps, James Parker, and Daniel Blanchard, a servant of Christopher Osgood. Of these men, only Phelps and Blanchard were identi- fied with the south end of the town.
During the next decade, the Andover townspeople, although
72
FRONTIER WAR WITH THE INDIANS
unmolested by the red men, never felt quite safe. Captain Brad- street and Lieutenant Osgood were alert officers who took vig- orous measures for the protection of the settlement. Bitter expe- rience had taught everybody the need of being prepared, and the militia drilled regularly on the training fields. Although the In- dians had been taught a salutary lesson and were avowedly eager for a permanent peace, what resulted was little better than an armed truce. The colonists seem always to have been suspicious of their copper-colored neighbors.
The respite ended in 1688 with the outbreak of what Ameri- can historians have called King William's War, in which large numbers of Indians lined upon the French side against the Eng- lish. Once again Andoverians had to accustom themselves to plowing and planting under the shelter of the garrison guns, never quite sure when or how an attack would be made. The so- called "Wilson manuscript" published in the Peters genealogy tells with stark conciseness how two brothers, John Peters, aged twenty-nine, and Andrew, twenty-four, met their doom on Au- gust 14, 1689:
A couple of Indians had been looking around the settlements and had taken one prisoner and were cautiously retiring when they saw two young men, John and Andrew Peters, approaching. They had been at work in the fields and were returning to the garrison. The Indians immediately hid behind a log fence and told their captive, John Singletarry, if he stirred or made any noise they would instant- ly kill him. They suffered the brothers to pass and then they both fired. One of the young men fell dead from his horse and the other was mortally wounded, the ball passing through his body and through the neck of his horse. The wounded animal dashed off at full speed, carrying the unfortunate rider to a considerable distance from the spot where his brother fell.
An incident like this, happening with the unexpectedness and swiftness of a bolt of lightning, must have caused quivering ex- citement in the community. But all that is left is this vivid bit
73
ANDOVER: SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND
of gossipy recollection. What became of the captive, John Single- tarry, is not recorded, nor are we told whether any reprisals were undertaken. Somewhere within the township the unfortunate Peters brothers must lie buried, but where not even time will ever reveal.
From month to month other depredations occurred, such as . the burning of barns and outbuildings. In 1690, Thomas Chandler, a south ender, son of the local blacksmith and a man of influence, was commissioned as a captain of militia and ap- pointed to command a company of forty troopers and thirty foot soldiers, whose responsibility it was to defend the frontier vil- lages, including Andover. It was ordered that, during the emer- gency, these troops should keep moving along the borders of these communities and that the settlements should send out "one or two of the inhabitants who are acquainted with the woods for daily scouting." These precautions seem to have pre- vented the Indians from making any major assault.
Nevertheless tragic incidents still occurred. The next An- dover victim was my own direct ancestor, William Peters, young- er brother of the two Peters boys who had been killed in 1689. In 1694, when he was twenty-two years old, he married Margaret Russ, by whom he had one child, John, born in Andover on Oc- tober 1, 1695. The house in which he lived was described as be- ing located about half a mile from the garrison on the Billerica Road, in an open plain, not far from the present Ballardvale. On August 1, 1696, while he was working at the garrison belong- ing to Samuel Blanchard, on the old Haverhill Road, Peters went a little distance from the fort with "old John Hoyt," of Amesbury, to fetch his horse. When he did not return promptly, a search was undertaken, and both men were found killed and scalped under very distressing circumstances. It was reported at the time that they were not shot, but "knocked in the head." There is no more calamitous story in all the colonial annals than the deaths of the three Peters brothers.
Although the signing of the Peace of Ryswick in 1696 should
74
FRONTIER WAR WITH THE INDIANS
have halted hostilities in America, the savages paid little atten- tion to treaties regarding which they had not been consulted. Their next appearance at Andover was in connection with what might be called "The Strange Case of Pascoe Chubb." This man, with a name which Dickens would have been delighted to im- mortalize, made his entrance on the colonial scene in unobtru- sive fashion but ended as the central figure in a grim and sinister episode. Thomas Chubb arrived from England in 1633, bound to Samuel Maverick for his passage money. We have the record of the marriage, May 29, 1689, of Pascoe Chubb, son of Thomas and Avis Chubb, to Hannah Faulkner, daughter of Edmond Faulkner, one of the original proprietors of Andover. When and how "Pasco Chub"-the spellings are variable-first came to Andover is unknown; but he was listed in a "Rate made for the minister in the year 1692 for the North End of the towne of An- dover." The Chubb family had evidently come up in the world!
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.