History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 235

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 235

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At the approach of war an additional garrison was ordered in the house of James Sanders, who lived at or near the foot of "Sanders'" Hill, in the north- easterly part of the town. James is thought to have been a son of John, who came from the parish of Dainton, Wiltshire, England.

Mirick says that early in the spring of 1701, the Indians attacked the garrison house of Jonathan Emerson, at the northwest corner of the present Win- ter and Harrison Streets. He may have antedated the time of the attack ; but indeed, some straggling party may have anticipated the war, and made an as- sault without direction from their French masters. The garrison repulsed the attack without loss, whilst it is said that two Indians were killed, whom the red- men carried away and threw into the "deep hole," near the brick-yards. In the winter of 1704, Febru- ary 8th about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, a party of six Indians surprised the northern garrison at Joseph Bradley's, rushing in at the open gates. Jonathan Johnson, a sentinel, shot and wounded tbe foremost, and Mrs. Bradley, who had a kettle of boil- ing soap on the fire, threw a ladleful of it over the unhappy savage, whom the "subsequent proceedings " interested no more. The savages at once killed John- son, and took prisoners Mrs. Bradley and four others. Three whites escaped unhurt, and the Indians proba- bly fearing to be surprised in their turn, commenced a precipitate retreat. The weather was bitter and the snow deep, whilst the unhappy captives were over- weighted with a heavy burden. Mrs. Bradley lived for many days on bits of skin, bark, ground-nuts, wild onions and lily-roots. In such a miserable plight she gave birth to a child, deep in the forests.

When the child cried the Indians thrust hot embers in its mouth. In mockery of the rite of baptism, they gashed its forehead with their knives; and, dur- ing her temporary absence they piked it upon a pole. At last the party arrived in Canada, where the In- dians sold Mrs. Bradley to a Canadian for eighty livres.

She was treated kindly by the family of which she thus became an inmate, and in March, 1705, her husband went to Canada, and redeemed her. Tra- dition among deseendants relates that he travelled on foot, accompanied only by a dog that drew a little sled, whereon was a bag of snuff, a present from the Governor of Massachusetts (at this time Joseph Dudley) to the Governor of Canada. The reunited couple voyaged from Montreal to Boston, and re- turned to Haverhill in safety.

The old writers said this was Mrs. Bradley's second captivity ; and tradition added that when the Indians rushed into the garrison, one of them cried out,exult- ingly, "Now Hannah, we got you." There was a good deal of confusion about the second captivity, but there seems to have been no doubt that in the summer of 1706, the year after the return of Bradley and his wife, their garrison was again attacked in the night time. It is said they, their children and a hired man, were the only persons within it. But the moon shone brightly and they could see the red men silently and watchfully stealing near. They all armed themselves, and Mrs. Bradley, in her des- peration, declared to her husband, that she had rather be killed than taken prisoner again. The savages, rushing against the door, tried to break it in and partially succeeded, when Mrs. Bradley shot and killed the foremost, who was struggling to crowd him- self in at the opening. Baffled in this first attempt, the Indians, as often occurred when their first leap failed, retreated like the wild beasts of the forest, whose habits in their warfare they often seemed to have copied.

This was not Mrs. Bradley's first captivity, as ap- pears from the State Archives. In 1738, Ilannah Bradley, of Haverhill, petitioned the General Court for a grant of land, in consideration of her former sufferings among the Indians and her "present low circumstances." That body granted her two hun- dred and fifty acres of land which was laid out to her in two lots, May 29, 1738, in Methnen, by Richard Hazen, a noted Haverhill surveyor.

Shortly after, Joseph Neif, a son of Mary, peti- tioned for a similar grant, in recognition of his mother's service in helping Hannah Duston to kill " divers Indians." He says his mother was " kept a prisoner for a considerable time," and " in their re- turn home (they) past thro the utmost hazard of their lives and suffered distressing want being almost starved before they could return to their dwelling." Nell' was granted two hundred acres of land. In aid of his petition, Mrs. Bradley made the following

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deposition which establishes the fact that she had been taken prisoner March 15, 1697, with Mrs. Duston, and traveled with her at least as far as Pennacook :

" The deposition of the Widow Ilannah Bradley, of Haverhill, of full age, who testifieth and saith that about forty years past the said Hannah together with the widow Mary Neff were taken prisoners by the Indians and carried together into captivity and above penny Cook the deponent was, by the Indians, forced to travel further than the rest of the Cap- tives, and the next night but one, there came to us one Squaw, who said that Hannah Duston and the aforesaid Mary Neff assisted in killing the Indians of her Wigwam, except herself and a boy, herself escaping very narrowly, shewing, to myself and others, seven wounds as she said with a llatchet on her head, which wounds were given her when the rest were killed, and further saith not. her

IlANNAN X BRADLEY." mark

August 4, 1704, Joseph Page and Bartholomew Heath were killed at Haverhill by the Indians, and a lad with them had a narrow escape.

The distress occasioned by Indian alarms was such that the town directed the selectmen to petition the assembly for abatement of that year's taxes. The next year a constant watch was kept day and night. In June Governor Dudley directed Colonel Salton- stall to " detach twenty able sokliers of the Newbury militia, and have them rendezvous at Haverhill on July fifth." These orders were given, and July 17th Saltonstall writes Lientenant-Colonel Thomas Noyes, of Newbury, a severe letter, complaining of the phys- ique of the " able soldiers," sent as "a considerable number of them appeared to be but boys or children, and not fit for service, blind, in part, and deaf and cross-handed." August 4th he writes again to Noyes in the same strain.

"Some idea," Chase truly says, "of the dangers and alarms of those years, and the great exertions made for the security of the frontier towns, may be had from the large number of soldiers ferried across the Merrimac at a single place, Griffin's Ferry, oppo- site the present village."

In 1707 Griffin would appear to have ferried over, at different times, two hundred and eighty-four men and nearly as many horses ; in 1708 one hundred and eighty men and thirty-one horses.

June 24, 1707, Joseph and Ebenezer Page, sons of Joseph, were killed in llaverhill. In August anoth- er attack was made, in which Nathan Simonds, of this town, and Jonathan Marsh, of Salem, were wounded.

Early in the spring of 1708 intelligence was sent to Governor Dudley at Boston that a French and In- dian force, consisting of eight hundred men, was about marching for some one of our frontier settle- nients. Upon the receipt of this news, he "ordered guards in the most exposed places of both his prov- inces." Four hundred Massachusetts militia were posted in New Hampshire. A patrol was kept up from King-ton to Dover, and scouts were continu- ally upon the move. To Haverhill were sent about forty men, commanded by three Salem officers-

Major, afterward Colonel, Turner (a principal mer- chant of that place, and for many years a member of the council), Captain Price and Captain Gardner. Soon after their arrival they were posted in the frontier houses and the garrisons. The following is the French account of the Canadian expedition. It is copied from Father Charlevoix's "Ilistory of New France." "This expedition had been decided upon in a great council held at Montreal with the chiefs of all the Christian Indians settled in the colony, and other Abenaquis were to join with a hundred picked Canadians, besides a great number of volun- teers, chiefly officers in our troops, making in all four hundred men. Messieurs de St. Ours des Chaillons and Hertel de Rouville were to command the French, and the Sieur Boucher de la Perriere was to lead the Indians. As it was important to keep the project secret till the moment when the warriors should start and to march rapidly, it was arranged that the two first named commandants should proceed by the St. Francis River with the Algonquins, the Abéna- quis of Bekancourt, and the Hurons of Lorette, and that La Perriere with the Iroquois should go by Lake Champlain : that all should meet at Lake Nikisipigue (Winnipisiogee), where the Indians bordering on Acadia were to be at the appointed time. Various incidents well-nigh defeated the expedition, and de- layed the march of the warriors. At last, on the 26th of July, they started; but Des Chaillons and Rou- ville, on reaching the St. Francis, learned that the Ilurons had turned back, because one of their men had been accidentally killed, apparently while hunt- ing, the rest believing, from this, that the expedition would be disastrous. The Iroquois, whom La Per- riere was conducting by way of Lake Champlain, soon followed this example, under the pretext that some of them were sick, and that the malady might easily spread through the whole force.

" De Vaudreuil (Governor of Canada), to whom the commandants wrote, communicating this desertion and asking his orders, replied that even if the Algon- quins and the Abénaquis of Bekancourt should also abandon them, they should nevertheless keep on and make a dash at some isolated place, rather than return without doing something. Des Chaillons imparted this letter to the Indians, who swore that they would follow wherever he might lead them. They accord- ingly set out to the number of two hundred, and after marching one hundred and fifty leagues by imprac- ticable roads, reached Lake Nikisipigue, but found no Abénaquis there from the Acadian border, those Indians having been obliged to turn their arms elsewhere.

" They then resolved to march against a village ealled Hewreuil (Haverhill), composed of twenty-five or thirty well-built houses, with a fort, in which the Governor resided. This fort had a garrison of thirty soldiers and there were at least ten in each house. These troops had but just arrived in the place, having

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been sent by the Governor of New England, who, on hearing of the march of the French, had sent similar detachments to all the towns of that district.

"Our braves were not dismayed on learning that the enemy were so well prepared to receive them, and no longer trusting to a surprise resolved to make it up in valor. They rested quietly all that night and the next day, one hour after sunrise, drew up in bat- the array. Rouville made a short address to the French to exhort all who had any quarrels with each other to be reconciled sincerely and embrace, as they all did. They then prayed and marched against the fort. Here they met with a vigorous resistance, but at last entered sword in hand and set it on fire. All the houses were also well defended and met the same fate. About a hundred of the English were killed in these attacks; many others, too slow in leaving the fort and houses, were burned in them, and the number of prisoners was large. There was no booty, as no thought was given to it till everything was consumed by the flames. Moreover, the sound of drum and trumpet was heard in all the neighboring villages, and there was not a moment to be lost in securing their retreat.

" It was conducted with great order, no one having more provisions than were needed for the homeward march. This precaution was even more necessary than they imagined. Our men had scarcely gone half a league, when, on entering a wood, they fell into an ambuscade formed by seventy men, who, before un- covering themselves, fired every man his shot. Our braves stood this volley withont flinching, and fortu- nately it did no great damage. Meanwhile all behind was full of horse and foot, in close pursuit, and there was no course but to trample down those who had just fired on them.

"They took this course without hesitation ; each one threw down his stock of provisions and almost all his baggage and without losing time with fire-arms at once rushed to close quarters. The English, taken aback by this sudden attack from men whom they supposed they had thrown into confusion, were routed themselves and could not rally; so that, except ten or twelve who escaped by flight, all were killed or taken.

" Nescambionit (an Indian warrior whom the Eng- lish writers call Assacambuit), who had returned from. France the year before, always fought near the com- mandants, performing wonders with a sabre presented to him by the King. He received a musket-ball in the foot. In the two actions we had eighteen men wounded, three Indians and five Frenchmen killed- among the last, two young officers of great promise, Hertel de Chambly (Rouville's brother) and Ver- cheres. During the last combat, several of the pris- oners taken at the attack on Hewreuil (Haverhill) escaped.

" All the rest praised highly the kind treatment shown them by their captors during the retreat,

which was effected withont accident, after the en- counter just mentioned, and various incidents, related of some of the officers and volunteers, were more honorable to them than the signal proofs they had given of their bravery. I was one of the first to learn them, because I was at Montreal, at the very port, when the party landed there about the middle of September. Great praise was given especially to the Sieur Dupuys, son of the Lieutenant Particulier, of Quebec, who had carried his humanity so far as to carry the daughter of the King's Lieutenant at Hew- renil a good part of the way, the girl being almost unable to walk.

" The inaction of the English youth, much more numerous than the French, surprised men in Canada and one of the prisoners was asked the reason. His answer revealed the true canse of the remissness of the Iroquois led by La Perriere on his last expedition. This man said that it was not the fault of the young men of his nation that they had not raised war-par- ties against the French this year; that more than five hundred of the most alert had asked and obtained leave of the Governor-General of New England, but that as they were on the point of marching, they re- ceived counter-orders in consequence of a letter from the Governor of Albany to his general.

"In this letter, he added, the Governor stated that he had just gained control of the Christian Iroquois, who had assured him that no Indian would ever again take the war path against the English ; that it was thus useless to go to any expense to attack the French, who, reduced to their own forces, were in no position to undertake anything, so that they might rest assured that the English colonies would hence- forth enjoy perfect tranquillity, which was all they desired.

" This same prisoner also said that it was believed at Hewreuil (Haverhill) and all the cantons, that the party that laid waste that village was merely a detachment from a force of sixteen hundred men, of which the main body was not far off; that the same thing was said at Boston and that throughout New England they were constantly under arms, which exhausted the people greatly. It was ascer- tained from another prisoner that the Governor of Albany had recently made considerable presents to the Christian Iroquois."

It would appear that the French Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, whilst sending his detachments of French and Indians against the English settlements in New England, had pursued a conciliatory policy towards l'eter Schuyler, whom Charlevoix ealls the Governor of Albany. le was accordingly much disgusted to find that Schuyler had been intriguing with the Catholic Indians and had warned Governor Dudley of the expedition which resulted in the attack on Haverhill. Charlevoix con- tinues : " On his side, the Governor-General com- plained warmly to the Governor of Albany that

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while he left his district and all New York undis- turbed, out of consideration for the Dutch and for him personally, and this with a view of keeping the Iroquois to a neutrality no less advantageous to the English colonies than to New York, he (Schuyler) not only kept constantly stimulating the cantons to take up arms, but was building a fort in the Mohawk canton, and laboring to debauch from him the Indians domiciliated in the centre of the French colony."

October 8, 1708, about three weeks after the return of the Haverhill expedition to Canada, Schuyler re- plied to Vaudreuil : " As for the belt which I sent with a view to prevent the Indians from taking part in this war, carried on against the government of Bos- ton, I must avow the fact, but I was impelled to it by Christian charity. I could not help believing it my duty to God and my neighbor to prevent, if possible, these barbarous and pagan cruelties, which have been but too often perpetrated on the unhappy people of that province." " Petre Sehuiler," comments Father Charlevoix, " was a very worthy man, and here ex- pressed only his real sentiments ; but he was sufficiently aware of all that had occurred during the last fifty years in that part of America to know that it was the English who drove us to the stern necessity of letting onr Indians act as New England did theirs. He could not be in ignorance of the horrors to which the Iroquois had gone at their instigation during the last war; that even at Boston the French and Aben- aquis held as prisoners were treated with an inhu- manity little inferior to the cruelties of which he complained so bitterly. It was also easy to prove that neither the French nor their Indians had ever resorted to the cruelties he reproached them with, except in retaliation ; and that before determin- ing to resort to this means to stop the barbarities used by the Iroquois to our officers, our missionaries and our settlers, and the ill treatment to which the Bostoners subjected our allies and our own people, the most illustrious in New France had long been allowed to shed unavailing tears."

" It was not only in Canada that the English sought to turn against us the Indians, whose esteem and affection we were always more successful than themselves in securing."

In this manner, the accomplished Jesuit presents the French side of the issne of responsibility for Indian atrocities. And having now read the enemy's account of the descent npon Haverhill, let us turn to that transmitted to us by the English writers and loeal tradition. Discrepancies will of course be ob- served. Charlevoix received his narrative from the returning Frenchmen, who doubtless magnified their own exploits. Besides, the English accounts are con- fused and difficult to reconcile. People who lived in the time of our Civil War, and are familliar with its literature, will not be surprised that we have not a clear narrative of this affair, which happened in the

gray of the morning in an obscure frontier hamlet, one hundred and eighty years ago.

Thus, Charlevoix says the attack was made "one hour after sunrise." The local accounts say that on Sunday morning, August 29, 1708, at break of day, the French and Indiaus passed the frontier garrisons undiscovered and were first seen near the pound by Jolın Keezar, who was returning from Amesbury. John Keezar was a wandering cobbler, the son of John Keezar who was killed in the Indian attack of March 15, 1697. The original pound, as we know, stood near the meeting-house. In 1773 the town voted "to build a stone pound in the corner of the parsonage pasture, near Captain Eames." This pound stood on the west side of Main Street, about midway between White and Fourth. Probably the pound of 1708 may have stood lower down, but near the present line of Main Street. Keezar ran into the village and alarmed the sleeping and unguarded inhabitants by firing his gun near the meeting-house. Another ac- count assigns the honor of discovery to one Hutchins who was out stealing milk. Still another to a young man, who went up on the common to catch his horse, for an early start (on the Sabbath !) for a distant town, but who unluckily went to hide his sweetheart before he told the people. An old tradition says that the assailants came down along the present line of Con- cord Street, east of Round Pond. Upon that route they would have shunned the garrison houses, and would be quite likely.to come within the observa- tion of John Keezar, returning from Amesbury. At any rate, they speedly whirled into the village, utter- ing wild yells, with shrill whistling, and dressed in hideous war-paint. It is well known that the French- men, who so easily assimilated themselves to the Indian habits and thus acquired the extraordinary control over them to which Charlevoix alludes, frequently adopted the Indian war-dress. Nothing conld be conceived more horrible and distracting. No wonder the savages seemed like red demons to our ancestors. The first victim was Mrs. Smith, shot whilst flying from her house to a garrison. The enemy broke up into small parties, to do their bloody work more quickly and effectually. There was no fort and they attacked none.

The first assault was made at the honse of the pastor, Rolfe, which stood at the corner of the present Main and Summer Streets, where the venerable Dr. Moses Nichols lives (1888). The honse was garrisoned by three soldiers, who behaved like poltroons, and who even, it is said, begged their foes for mercy, which they did not deserve and did not get.

Mr. Rolfe, an athletic man, in the prime of life, awakened by the savage yells, jumped out of bed and placed his back against the entrance door, which the enemy were trying to break in. Calling in vain on his guard for help, he was wounded in the elbow by a ball passing through the door. Still he resisted till, finding the door giving way, he fled through the

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house and out at the back-door. The Indians over- took him at the well and gave him swift despatch with their tomahawks. Some roved over the house for plunder and vietims. Mrs. Rolte was killed by a hatchet stroke in the brain, and her youngest child, Mehitabel, an infant, snatched from her protecting arms, was dashed against a stone near the house door.

Hlagar, supposed to have been a negro slave, saved by her courage and dexterity two of the Rolfe children-Mary, agirl of thirteen years, and Elizabeth, who, three days later, attained her ninth year. At the first alarm Hagar took the children into the cellar, covered them with tubs and then hid herself. The enemy rushed to and fro in the cellar and even trod upon the foct of one of the girls who had the resolution not to cry out. They drank from the milk- pans, dashed them upon the cellar floor, and took meat from the barrel behind which Hagar was crouched. In after-years these girls were accounted remarkable women. Mary married Colonel Estes Hatch, of Dorchester. Elizabeth married Rev. Samuel Checkley, of Boston, minister of the New South (Church Green). Her daughter Elizabeth married Sam Adams, the patriot, and John Lothrop Motley, the historian, was one of her descendants. There were two other children-Benjamin and Francis, aged respectively twelve and six at the time of the massacre. December 22, 1735, the House of Repre- sentatives granted to Benjamin Rolfe, for himself and other children, heirs of Benjamin Rolfe, a plot of land in Lunenburgh, not to exceed six hundred acres and not to interfere with any former grant. This, of course, was in consideration of the sufferings and losses of the family in the descent on Haverhill.

Anna Whittaker, a girl of eighteen, probably in attendance as nurse to Mrs. Rolfe, hid herself in an apple chest, under the stairs. She lived to be seventy- four years old, was a famous midwife, was twice married, and at her death had one hundred and twelve descendants. She probably often told the story ot the wonderful escape, and it seems likely that in her old age she dreamed that she had saved Mary and Elizabeth's lives; but the laurels of poor black Hagar were not thus to be stripped from her.

Thomas Hartshorne lived a few rods west of the meeting-house-the new one, on the Common, now City Hall Park. He and two sons were shot just after leaving the house, and a third son was toma- hawked as he came out of the door. Mrs. Hartshorne and the rest of the children, save one, escaped notice by going into the cellar, closing the trap-door over them. The enemy swarmed through the house for plunder, and finding an infant on a bed in the garret, threw it out of the window, on a pile of clapboards. It was picked up unconscious when all was over. When this infant had become a man of lofty stature and great strength, the neighbors used to joke him, saying that the Indians stunted him when they threw him from the garret window.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 235

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1672

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672