History of the town of Canton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Part 3

Author: Huntoon, Daniel T. V. (Daniel Thomas Vose), b. 1842
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Cambridge, [Mass.] : J. Wilson and Son : University Press
Number of Pages: 728


USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Canton > History of the town of Canton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts > Part 3


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In 1688 Gen. Francis Nicholson, who was subsequently Lieutenant-Governor of New York, under Andros, Governor of Maryland, of Virginia, of Nova Scotia, and of South Carolina, visited " Punckapaug; " and some of the Indians being afraid, he gave them a little powder and ball, - a timely gift, for the year following a draft of ninety Indians was ordered from Ponkapoag, Natick, and other places where the Indians friendly to the English resided, and sent into the army. Rev. George M. Bodge says, "In July, 1689, Capt. Thomas Prentice and Mr. Noah Wiswall were sent to arrange matters with the uneasy Punckapoags." Captain Prentice was so highly respected by the Praying Indians that on the death of Gookin in 1691, they petitioned the court to ap- point him superintendent of their affairs. Not only would it appear that the Indians were uneasy, but the inhabitants of the neighboring town of Milton seem to have been somewhat alarmed; for the same month and year, Thomas Vose writes that -


" Milton is a frontier town, bordering on or near adjacent to a plantation of Indians, who, as he understands, are very speedily to be embodied together and to encamp themselves in or near the precincts of Milton, which will occasion that town for its safety to watch and ward."


Between York Street and Ragged Row (Pleasant Street) there exists a tract of land the greater part of which is cov- ered with a growth of wood. The Turnpike crosses it from north to south; and the region remains almost a wilderness. One can wander for hours over these forsaken acres; cart- roads, bridle-paths, and driftways cross it, furnishing rough, but cool and shady drives or walks. Diverging from these are smaller paths, where one treads on moss of the softest verdure, or sits on banks covered with ferns and flowers; and here in their season are found the rarest wild plants and flowers that grow in our town. Hills and valleys, brooks


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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.


and ponds, break the monotony of the landscape; and at intervals fine views of the surrounding country may be obtained. ·


This whole territory is divided by loose and dilapidated stone walls, which serve to indicate the ancient landmarks. One portion of this land has long been called Mount Hunger Fields. Tradition asserts that in former days one of the early settlers starved to death on the land, hence its name. Some of the giants of the forest still remain. The Old Hornbeam rises, rough and gnarled, above all the trees that surround it; the old deeds make mention of it, and sur- veyors depict it on ancient plans. It has stood for centu- ries, all its companions having been converted to the use of man. Here also stand the Lone Chestnut, the Three Maples, and other landmarks. An ancient roadway known to the Indians as the Quantum Path, which was in use before the Turnpike was built, leaves the latter near the southeasterly border of Reservoir Pond, and crossing these deserted fields, comes out near Belcher's Corner. Diverging from this old highway, one branch leads to Pleasant Street in Canton, skirting the southerly shore of the Reservoir Pond, while another in a more southerly direction comes out on Burr Lane; another road, turning to the east, passes south of Muddy Pond, and running through what are sometimes designated as the Indian farms, passes the Indian burying- ground, coming out on Indian Lane.


Scattered over this territory are many ancient cellar-holes, which testify to the former occupancy of these lands. A portion of this land was purchased from the Indians in 1725; and here were the houses of John and Moses Wentworth, Moses Gill, Edward Pitcher, Elias Monk, and Elhanan Lyon. Here was Pitcher's Pit, where tradition asserts that Edward Pitcher, pursuing a wolf, fell into a hole and found, much to his surprise, that the wolf was already in possession. An- other version of the story is that Pitcher was annoyed by a pilferer of vegetables, and dug a wolf-pit, carefully conceal- ing it from view; the next morning he found one of his neighbors in it, unable to extricate himself, who ever after


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HISTORY OF CANTON.


received the sobriquet of Pitcher's Wolf. Here are Fox and Porcupine hills, Beaver, Spring Meadow, York, Pequit, Shaven, and Ponkshire brooks, York and Muddy ponds. Here was Esty's Neck, Pomeroy's, Robin, and the Cedar swamps.


In 1726 a committee appointed by the General Court reported that it was true "that the Indian proprietors are reduced to but few families, and improve but a small quantity of their land."


The family of Ahauton is mentioned as early as any Indian family. Many of this name embraced Christianity, and sev- eral were educated. Old Ahauton, as he is called by the commissioners who visited his wigwam in 1667, was the son of Jumpum, and before he became a Christian was obliged to pay two beaver-skins to William Blaxton, the first settler of Boston, as a penalty for having set traps in 1635 to catch Blaxton's swine. In 1642 he is mentioned as an Indian guide and interpreter. In 1658, in signing the deed of Nan- tasket, he styles himself as of "Puncapaug." Eliot thus writes of him: -


"Our chief ruler is Ahauton, an old, steadfast friend of the English, and loveth his country. He is more loved than feared ; the reins of his bridle are too long. Wakan is sometimes necessarily called to keep court here, to add life and zeal in the punishment of sinners."


Old Ahauton lived to sign the deed of Boston in 1685. His son William was called to be the teacher at the death of Awinian. Eliot writes of him in 1670 as follows : -


" He is a promising young man of a simple and upright heart, a good judgment. He prayeth and preacheth well ; he is studious and industrious, and well accounted of among the English."


In due time he became one of the councillors of Squa- maug, the Massachusetts sachem. He was a man of great attainments for an Indian. He signed many documents and treaties before 1675, and he wrote a fair hand; the same year William, William, Jr., and Benjamin were paid for military services by the Government. Some years ago an ancient deed was discovered at Dedham, which bore date 1680, and


.


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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.


was a grant of land in the vicinity of Charles River, " from William Ahauton, alias Quaanan, his brotlier Benjamin, and their sisters, Tahkeesuisk and Hanna Ahauton, alias Jamme- wosh, all of ' Punkapogg ' near the Blue Hills." On March 18, 1781, when Charles Chicataubut, son of Charles Josias, sachem of the Massachusetts, desired that William Stoughton and Joseph Dudley might be appointed his guardians, Wil- liam Ahauton acted as interpreter. In 1690 William Ahauton visited Major-General Stoughton to ascertain what was most expedient to be done for the safety of the friendly Indians and the English. Later we find him with the Natick Indians consulting Judge Sewall about the same business. At a meeting held at Pecunit on lecture-day in March, 1704, the Indians consented one and all that William Ahauton should have the improvement of Beaver meadow during his life " for his labors in ye ministery among them." In 1711 he is styled preacher, and stationed at Pecunit. He died July 21, 1717.


The wigwam of Ahauton is said to have stood near the site where Hon. Charles H. French erected his stone house in 1854, a part of the material of which was blasted from an immense rock which stood out from the surrounding field and had been known to the former generation as "Squaw Rock." The tradition is that the squaw of William Ahauton, of Pecunit, after having lived for ten years in great love with her husband, was condemned at a hearing before Justice Daniel Gookin, in October, 1688, for conduct unbecoming a wife and mother. It was decided to spare her life, but that the said Ahauton " shall on the twenty-ninth. instant stand on the gallows, after the lecture in Boston, weth a roape around hir neck one hower, and that the marshall-general shall cause hir to be took down, returned to prison, and committed to the Indian constable, who on a public day, by order of Capt. Gookin, shall severely whip hir, not exceed- ing thirty stripes." The punishment was duly inflicted; and, unable to bear the disgrace attending it, upon her return home she dashed out her brains by jumping head-foremost from this rock.


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HISTORY OF CANTON.


William left sons, William, Thomas, and Amos, the latter of whom succeeded his father as preacher, and lived to be a contemporary of the second minister of Canton, the Rev. Samuel Dunbar.


In 1675 we find that Peter Ahauton and Nathaniel Pa- tunckon were ordered to appear before the magistrate and give their testimony in regard to the murder of one Caleb.


In 1754 the wigwam of one Job stood upon land which he had sold to Stephen David, who informs him in the customary language of the day when addressing an Indian, that "if he dont like its situation, he can move it on the other side of the line on his own land." This family appear to have inter- married with the Pomhams; for in 1767 Pomham, then only seventeen years of age, had a bastard child called Thomas, descended on his mother's side from Thomas Ahauton. One Pitt Pomham appears in Stephen Miller's company in Colonel Bagley's regiment at Fort William Henry in 1756, again in 1760 as a servant to Major John Shepard. In 1812 Presi- dent John Adams, writing to Thomas Jefferson, says, -


" Aaron Pomham, the Priest, and Moses Pomham, the King, of the Punkapaug and Neponset tribes, were frequent visitors at my father's house at least seventy years ago. I have a distinct remembrance of their forms and figures. They were very aged, and the tallest and stoutest Indians I have ever seen. The titles of King and Priest and the names of Moses and Aaron were given them no doubt by our Massachusetts divines and statesmen."


The Momentaugs were among the most ancient of the Indian families. The name of Robert, alias Momentaug, as one of the councillors of the king, Josias Wampatuck, ap- pears on the deed of Quincy, then Braintree, in 1665. In 1683 he is paid for killing a " woulfe " by the town of Dorchester. In 1685 his name appears on the parchment deed given to the town of Boston. In 1712 Nehemiah Momentaug leases to Joseph Tucker for two hundred years six acres of land, where the road now passes into the Revere Copper Com- pany's works from Washington Street. It was then designated as "Nehemiah Momentaug, his Neck;" and probably his wig-


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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.


wam was on this land. Samuel Momentaug was one of the Indians who in 1707 cheerfully yielded his right in the land about the meeting-house in Ponkapoag, that it might be used for a burial-place. John Wentworth affirms that Sarah Mo- mentaug was Samuel's daughter, and calls him " one of the ancient proprietors of Ponkipog Plantation." This Sarah Momentaug, alias Sarah Simons, died at Dedham, Oct. 27, 1747.


The following letter, by Isaac Royall, a well-known citizen in his day, throws light upon her ancestry : -


" I can assure you that she is esteemed to be one of the most certain proprietors of Puncapaug Plantation, she being of the antient family of the Momantaugs, and stands allied by marriage to King Josiah's family, who, in his deed to Dorchester, reserved Puncapaug Plantation for the use of the Indians of which the family of Mo- mantaugs were part."


I find that in 1716 Hannah Momentaug was married to Thomas Blunt, of Milton.


On the 29th of March, 1718, Deacon Joseph Tucker, one of the first settlers of Canton, with his wife, Judith, conveyed to Elijah Danforth and his brother three acres of land known as Thomas Mohen's field. This land is situated opposite the Memorial Hall in Canton, and was leased about 1712 by Mohen to Tucker. The name is spelled sometimes Moohen, and I have seen Moho spelled Mooho. I am in doubt whether the Momentaugs were or were not the ancestors of the Mohos. The name Elizabeth Moohen occurs during the years 1717-19. Joshua Moho married Sarah Momentaug, Feb. 20, 1719. They had a son Samuel, who in 1753 com- plains " that the Indians are greatly neglected, and their lands stripped of timber." Samuel married Dinah, and lived in a house that stood on the westerly side of Indian Lane, on a road which was laid out in 1760, but soon neglected. This house was called old in 1790, and I am told that there are persons living who can remember it. The cellar still can be seen; it is on a hill commanding a view of the surrounding country. The place is sometimes called the Moho lot, and


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HISTORY OF CANTON.


sometimes the Dinah lot. Samuel Moho died May 4, 1762, leaving eleven children, all but one being under age. Dinah joined Mr. Dunbar's church in 1734, and died May 26, 1791, at the age of ninety. In 1761 I find Joshua and Thomas Moho as soldiers stationed at Halifax, in the company of Capt. Lemuel Bent. Alfred Croud tells me that there is a tra- dition among the Indians that Dinah was found dead in the cellar of her house, with her throat cut. She was the mother of nineteen children. One of her daughters, Abigail, lived with John Bancroft, or Bancraft, son of Robert, commonly called " Doctor." Mary married Cæsar Elisha; Martha mar- ried Robert Wood, Jan. 1, 1779. Manta, or Mantha, married, in 1770, Daniel Tom, a Natick Indian; and Dinah married, in 1769, Mingo Robinson. Mollie married into the Williams family. The sons of Dinah appear to have been patriots, and faithfully served their country during the Revolution. Asa, George, and William were in the service. John served six months and twenty-six days, and died far from his home, amid the privations and sufferings of the campaign, Nov. 22, 1777. Jeremiah and George shouldered their queen's-arms and served with Captain Pope in the famous Fourth Massa- chusetts Regiment.


Daniel Moho married Sarah Reed in 1801. George mar- ried Mary Bancroft, Jan. 3, 1774, and died July 30, 1784. It was the custom of Dinah to be drawn every winter on a sled by the young men of the tribe to Dorchester, to visit the graves of her ancestors. My grandfather has seen her on one of these pilgrimages; and Edward Everett, in his ora- tion at Dorchester, in 1855, said that " within his remem- brance one of the tribe used to come down once or twice a year to the seaside, hover a day or two around Squantum, stroll off into the woods, and with plaintive wailings cut away the bushes from an ancient mound, which, as he thought, covered the ashes of his fathers, and then went back, a silent, melancholy man, - the last of a perishing race."


It being then the custom to pay bounties for rattlesnakes, we find that in 1770 Hannah Moho brought two to the select- men. They cut off the rattles, and paid her Is. 4d.


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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.


George Moho lived in a hut about midway between the Turnpike and Indian Lane, northwest of the Henry house, where Daniel Croud lived in 1855. He married Mary Bancroft in June, 1774. She died July 14, 1818; he in 1804. Sept. 29, 1789, Mr. Benjamin Tucker and Mr. David Talbot went to Dinah Moho's in search of a sheep that had been stolen, and were successful in finding one that was dead but warm ; they then went to the wigwam of George, and found nothing. Nevertheless a warrant was issued against Asa and George, and they were accordingly tried at Captain Bent's tavern, known as the Eagle Inn.


George Moho's daughter Margery married, in 1794, Can- ada Reed, of Sandwich; after his death, she married Joel Helden, and lived in a wigwam in the woods west of the York schoolhouse. Upon the death of Holden she married Samuel Freeman, Sept. 2, 1813. The last record I have of George Moho is that he died May 31, 1837.


The nine children of Margery and Samuel Freeman lie side by side in the Indian half-acre near Indian Lane. I have seen persons who have attended funerals there, and am told that the person still lives who dug the graves of some of the Freeman family. Whether this man was descended from Cuff Freeman, who was a negro slave of Capt. Charles Wentworth, and who married Mary Robin about 1752, I am not informed.


An ancient diary records, May 5, 1767, " A negro woman, wife of a white man, buried from Moho's."


Muddy Pond is embraced within the York wilderness, and near its borders many Indians lived and died. One old Indian kept in his wigwam a ready-made coffin, - a precau- tion which was perhaps warranted by some experience he had gained by attending the funerals of his tribe. A sad story is told of the death of Indian George, who, while fishing in this pond, fell from his rudely constructed raft into the water and never was seen again, his straw hat floating on the pond, and his unoccupied raft, alone revealing the manner of his death.


The name of Simon George is frequently seen on early


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HISTORY OF CANTON.


deeds and documents. The first known of him at Ponkapoag was in 1706. He was one of the first to plant an orchard ; and in spite of all the attempts of the white settlers, he was enabled to hold it. The Indians were very fond of cider. Many of them planted orchards soon after their arrival at Ponkapoag, and these were excepted in the leases which the Indians gave to the first settlers. But in 1768 Robert Red- man fenced in his orchard, containing sixteen acres, and threatened the Indians with death if they dared to take an apple from the trees which they themselves had planted, nor would he allow them to gather cranberries for their own sup- port; but the loss of the cider was the hardest to bear. " The apples are now coming on," they say; "and we set great store by our apples, and hope that we shall have some, not only to eat, but to make cyder, - a liquid very peculiar to the aboriginal gust." Another orchard was situated near Muddy Pond. Simon George's orchard was situated at the corner of Ragged Row and Burr Lane; it contained from seven to ten acres. In 1732 the Indian commissioners allowed " him and his squaw the liberty to improve, for their own personal benefit, as much of the land that was that year devoted to John Wentworth and William Sherman as they shall see cause to use." Here he resided; here four of his children - Debo- rah, who married Berry Miller, Oct. 30, 1750; Abigail ; Sam- uel, who married Hannah Momentaug in 1752 ; and Hannah - were born. One of his sons, Mathias, went into the service in 1747, and died soon after. His wife, Abigail, is mentioned in 1765 as old Abigail George ; and on June 5 of the .follow- ing year we find the record of her death.


Simon George departed for the happy hunting-ground in 1739, in full belief that -


" admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog should bear him company."


Simon George gave all rights in his place to Jacob Wilbor, who married, Jan. 9, 1781, Mary Will, by whom he had a son who was buried in the Indian graveyard nearly west of his father's house. After the death of her first husband she


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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.


married Seymour Burr. She lies buried in the Canton Ceme- tery, and the inscription upon her gravestone is as follows :


" In memory of Mrs. Mary, wife of Semore Burr, a Revolutionary pensioner. She died in Canton, November 1, 1852, aged 101 years, last of the native Punkapog Indians.


" Like the leaves in November, so sure to decay, Have the Indian tribes all passed away.


Mary's Christian feature on earth was a true Methodist ; Above, her spirit now rests in sweet heavenly rest."


In regard to her age there has been controversy. The tradition among her neighbors asserts that she was born on the night of the great Lisbon earthquake, which occurred on the 18th of November, 1755. Her husband made oath when he applied for a pension in 1820 that she was then sixty-six years old.


Seymour Burr was born in Africa, and was said to have been the son of a prince. At the age of seven years he was kidnapped and brought to America, and was purchased by Seymour Burr, -a farmer living in Connecticut, a connection of Aaron Burr. Although he was treated kindly by his mas- ter, he bemoaned his condition of servitude, and incited a number of his friends to attempt an escape. Their plan was to steal a boat and put off, in the hopes of reaching the British army, and so gaining their freedom ; but the boat was overtaken by their masters, who were armed, and they quietly surrendered and went home. The astonishment of Seymour was great when, in place of the corporal punishment which he expected, his master reminded him of the kindness with which he always had been treated, and inquired what had in- duced him to leave his old home and go away with foreigners. Burr replied, "I want my liberty." His owner, fearing that he might be more successful in another attempt, or perhaps touched with sympathy by his appeal, made the proposition to him that if Burr would give him his bounty money and enlist in the American army, he should. at the end of the war be a free man. Burr accepted the offer with alacrity, willing to undergo any peril that would bring him his freedom. He


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HISTORY OF CANTON.


accordingly fulfilled his part of the agreement, and served faithfully as a private in Captain Colburn's company, in the regiment commanded by Colonel, afterward Governor, John Brooks. He was present at the siege of Fort Catskill, en- during much misery from hunger and cold, and received his reward of freedom at the close of his term of enlistment. Seymour Burr with the Widow Wilbor settled on the estate of her former husband. On Dec. 24, 1805, he received a deed from the guardians of the Ponkapoag Indians of about six acres of the same land of which Simon George had pre- viously had the improvement, and so became the master of George's wigwam. We have written "master," but it would appear that there were times when the heart even of this brave soldier faltered, and when for the moment he wished himself elsewhere. When his wife threatened and abused him, he would mutter in his broken English, "You Injun ; I nigger. You kill me; I no kill you." He died Feb. 17, 1837,


and is buried in the Canton Cemetery; no stone designates the grave. He left two daughters, but no sons. In 1855 a grandson who took the name of Lemuel Burr was living in Boston. There were, in 1861, seven of the name of Burr liv- ing. Seymour Burr also owned a tract of land through which the Turnpike now passes, which land Samuel Morse purchased of Dr. John Sprague, and which came into Burr's possession by an exchange.


The name of Bancraft, or Bancroft, has usually been consid- ered an Indian name; but Robert, who on his first arrival resided in a hut in the woods near Ponkapoag Pond, was designated as an Englishman. He lived with Elizabeth Pickett, "a real white woman." He was called "Doctor," and died Oct. 26, 1786. After Bancroft's death his widow was married by Parson Smith to one Taylor, a sailor, and she afterward was known in all warrants as Bet Taylor. Con- stable John French so designated her when in 1789 he carried her with her children out of town. She subsequently mar- ried Asa Moho. Asa had a son John who lived with Abigail Moho, whom the wise men of a former generation asserted to be " half Indian and half negro."


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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.


From John and Abigail came Jeremiah. Tradition says that his mother was named Wood, and he is said to have been born in a wigwam which stood near the place where the Providence Railroad passes the ancient homestead of the Taunts. While they lived here, the squaw used to go to Fountain Head and fill her apron with speckled turtles, which on her return she would throw into the hot embers to cook.


The place known as the Bancroft farm, in 1803, was south of York Pond, near Indian Lane. In 1827 Jeremiah had a hut west of the house of William Henry, not far from the Turnpike. He was obliged to remove this when Charles Tucker purchased the land on which it stood. Two years later he purchased three quarters of an acre of land bounded east and south on Indian Lane. The cellar-hole can still be seen at a bend in the road a few rods beyond the last house'on Indian Lane as one goes toward York. I have pleasant recollections of a visit to this house some twenty years ago, and of listening to the ancient legends and folk-lore from the lips of one of the tribe.


The following account of the adventures of Jerry Bancroft was related by Jerry himself, about 1828, in the hearing of Mr. Nathaniel Vose.


He said that at a certain period of his life he was im- pressed on board a Spanish man-of-war, and served long enough to acquire the speech of its crew. When the ship touched at a port on the western coast of South America, he was carried ashore and sold as a slave. He was soon placed upon a plantation in a gang under an overseer. One warm day the overseer lay down in the shade to enjoy a siesta. Jerry, who was at work in the garden with a spade, waited for his opportunity, and then, as he expressed it, " patted him with the spade." Jerry then made his escape and started across the continent; he was well treated by the natives, and reached the Atlantic seaboard in safety, and got passage home. Jerry Bancroft was buried Sept. 29, 1840.




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