USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Canton > History of the town of Canton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts > Part 4
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One of this family, bearing the name of its ancestor, George, fell in love with Abigail Capen, whose father, Chris- topher, had purchased land on Indian Lane. His house
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HISTORY OF CANTON.
stood on the northerly side of Indian Lane, between the houses marked A. Tilden and D. Croud on the map of Canton published in 1855; his old well can be seen from the road. He forbade his daughter to have anything to say to Bancroft, and locked her up in her room; she made her escape in the night, joined her lover, and they were mar- ried on the 28th of December, 1779. From her are descended persons of ability in Essex County. Sivery Bancroft's wig- wam was on the northerly side of the road that leads from Indian Lane to York Pond before reaching the brook, almost directly west of the southerly end of the pond. The Widow Elizabeth was living in 1861. She was probably born in the last century .. Jeremiah and Thomas are still living; with both I have had the pleasure of talking over the old traditions.
In 1768 Aaron Wentworth writes the following letter to the selectmen of the town: -
" These are to inform you that I took into my house, Berry, a negro man, - came last from Milton in November, 1767; how long he will tarry I don't know."
He came to Ponkapoag as other slaves came, to marry an Indian wife, for then his children would be free, as the law in those days was that the children of Indian women were free-born. This man was mentioned in 1750 as a slave be- longing to Samuel Miller, Esq., of Milton; he took his mas- ter's surname, and subsequently, as a free negro, appears to have married Deborah George in 1750. We hear that his wife Hannah, an Indian woman, was buried by the rector of the English church, July 24, 1769; and September 24 of the same year he appeared at the church, and after the evening service was married by the ritual of the Church of England to Sarah Will. In the list of the names of heads of families belonging to the Church of England in Canton in 1767, appears that of Berry Miller. Sarah Berry in 1780 made her mark in receipt for money expended in the support of ""y" Wid. Adlington." She died on the 24th of November, 1781, at Smithfield, R. I., aged sixty-seven years,
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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.
was brought to her old home for burial, and lies in the Indian graveyard near Indian Lane. The house occupied by Berry Miller stood between York Pond and the easterly and southerly lines of the Ponkapoag Plantation; the cellar still can be identified. This house was built by Wills subse -- quent to his residence in the " tree cellar " house. After his death Berry Miller took the property with the live-stock. He married the widow of Isaac Williams, who also at one time lived in this house.
The first colored man in Canton, named Isaac Williams, ap- pears in 1719. His father was imported from Africa, though he was born in Roxbury, and was a slave of Dr. Williams, whose surname he adopted. When on Nov. 8, 1775, Isaac Williams married Elizabeth Wills, he hailed from Dedham. She had lived in the family of Dr. Holden of Dorchester, and is spoken of as a woman of "pure, unmixed Ponkapoag blood." David Talbot employed Isaac Williams to assist him on his farm in 1789; and he was, upon his marriage, admitted as a member of the tribe by its guardian. He is said to have received a pension for his services in the Revolutionary War. If this is so, the events of a certain day in December, 1776, when he was arrested as a deserter and sent to jail by the Committee of Correspondence, must have been forgotten or atoned for. He lies buried in the Stoughton graveyard, where a stone marks his last resting-place. His widow lived to be over one hundred years old, bedridden and blind. She died Feb. 3, 1848.
It would appear that the Indians had some interest in cer- tain lots of land, - possibly of occupancy or of cutting wood. As early as 1789 a certain piece of woodland containing eighteen acres was sold for the benefit of the Indians to Jabin Fisher, and was then known as the Williams lot, designated as in Mount Hunger. It is bounded on the north by Muddy Pond and on the east by land of Seymour Burr. This land has been owned successively by the Withington and Lewis families ; and about twenty years ago it passed into the pos- session of Horace Guild. There is a cellar-hole on this lot, by which runs an ancient driftway, or bridle-path.
3
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HISTORY OF CANTON.
Isaac Williams purchased the land on which he built his house in 1803; the cellar-hole of this house, in which he died, is still to be seen on the York Pond road about an eighth of a mile south of York Pond. In 1813 he added thirty-nine acres adjoining the original purchase.
Amasa Williams was styled during the early part of this century an Indian mulatto of the Ponkapoag tribe. He was the son of Isaac, and followed the sea. On one of his voy- ages he made a miniature man-of-war, rigged and mounted her, took her to York Pond, loaded all her guns, arranged his slow-match so that they would all go off at once, and touched a match to her; the annihilation of the craft was complete. He died Feb. 13, 1827. He is buried in the old graveyard at Stoughton, and is said to have been a mem- ber of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Masons. In 1861 Isaac Williams, then over sixty years of age, was living. His wife died April 18, 1849.
William Croud married Sarah, daughter of Nuff Wills, Aug. 15, 1783. He remained in Canton until 1784, when he removed to Smithfield, R. I., and in 1819 was living at Wood- stock. He left a son, William, Jr., baptized in 1783, who figured with no credit to himself in this vicinity until 1812. Another son, Daniel, was born about 1792, and was well known as an exemplary unassuming Christian man, who built honest walls. He was married at the house of Seymour Burr, by the Rev. Benjamin Huntoon, Sept. 2, 1824, to Betsey Digans; after her death he married Lydia Harrison, a white woman of Natick. His children and grandchildren are still living on Indian Lane, and are owners by purchase of the very land which was given to their ancestors by Eliot's labor.
Daniel W. Croud, a member of the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry during the war, died in Canton, Dec. 19, 1883, aged fifty-eight years. There were sixteen of the name recorded as living in 1861.
One of the daughters of Dinah Moho, named Mary, mar- ried Cæsar Elisha, May 17, 1769. He was a former negro slave of Capt. Charles Wentworth. They had a daughter, Louisa,
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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.
who married, in 1795, Uriah Low, and, Aug. 18, 1797, Peter Robertson. His son Lewis married, in 1792, Rachel Corden, or Cordner; the ancient record says, "both of the Moho tribe."
The house of Lewis Elisha stood on what is now the south- eastern border of York Pond. As the road approaches the pond, it is bounded on the easterly side by a wall, which was once the boundary of the Williams farm, now owned by Hiram Johnson. On the westerly side of the road- way, at about eighty feet from the pond, stands a large smooth, upright stone with an apple-tree directly in the rear of it, and a maple-tree a little to the southwest; this stone is the back of the hearth or fireplace of the Lewis Elisha house. Oct. 10, 1804, there was a terrific storm; the wind howled, and even York Pond showed white caps. Polly Davenport Mois was then living in this house. As the storm increased, Polly, alone in the old shanty, grew more and more frightened, and finally, mustering all the courage she had, left the hut and started up the pathway toward Berry Miller's, then living in the Williams' house. She had barely strength to reach the door, and as soon as she had succeeded in opening it, fell headlong into the room; there the neighbors found her the next morning, cold and dead. Her body was tenderly cared for and carried to her friends in Dorchester, where it was buried. Her daughters - Persis, Mary, and Betsey - were removed by Joel Holden to Dor- chester in October of the following year. Lewis Elisha was known afterward in Andover, where he had a large family, and figured conspicuously in a law-suit, Andover vs. Canton, in 1814. He married, in 1803, Hannah Richardson, the daughter of a mulatto father and a white mother, and died in Milton in 1817. James Elisha, aged sixty-one years, was living in 1860; and the names of William, Harriet, James F., and Maria ap- pear at the same time.
On the northeast corner of Indian Lane and the road which leads to York Pond stands the house in which, in- 1855, ac- cording to the map of that date, was living Simon Willard Wilde. There is a small knoll in the rear of this house
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HISTORY OF CANTON.
which has always borne the name of Mingo's Hill. The man for whom this hill was named lived near the spot on land adjoining that of Bancroft and Williams, bounded west by Indian Lane and south by the York Pond road; his name was Mingo Robinson. I find among the Narragansett soldiers the name of William Mingo, June 24, 1676; whether his de- scendants added the surname of Robinson to designate them- selves is an open question. It was the good fortune of Mingo to possess in 1769 one of those royal jewels which had descended on one side at least from the ancient sachems of Massachusetts. He married one of Dinah Moho's daugh- ters, named in honor of her illustrious mother, Dinah.
The family of Hunter is very ancient. On Sept. 21, 1675, Thomas Hunter and Benjamin Ahauton were among the Pon- kapoag Indians who marched with Captain Prentice against the hostile Indians. In October of the same year John Hunter, with others, had permission given him by the General Court "to passe and repasse between Puncapaug and the place as- signed to them near Joseph Belchar's for the conveyance of their goods." In 1717 George Hunter signed deeds of im- portance, and went to Milton on a cold October day to marry Betty Nateant.
Old Sarah Hunter had a house built for her in 1767, but she did not enjoy it long. Soon after, she was taken sick, and Lydia Waterman was sent for, - one skilled in all the ancient arts of healing and the use of herbs; Lydia nursed Sarah till the 11th of May, 1768, when she died. Parson Dunbar rode over to the funeral on horseback, said just what he thought about her, and was presented with a pair of gloves for his pains. A granddaughter of hers, named Bette Hunter, is mentioned as dying Aug. 12, 1766.
Elisha Mannumian, or Menumion, was one of the Ponka- poag Indians who leased land to the English squatters in 1706. He was the son of William, who in his palmy days was the owner of a tract of land in the Nipmuck country, which extended two miles each way. It adjoined land pur- chased by Mr. William Stoughton, probably in what is now the town of Charlton. In 1682 William was described
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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.
as " falling into a languishing state of body." He ran into debt, and drank up all his property, and was obliged to sell his land. Probably Harriet, whose name appears in 1717, was his daughter.
There are many of the Ponkapoag Indians whose names only appear once or twice on any record, - Bette Solomon, 1754; Mary Peters, 1735; Hester Cole, 1717; and Phineas and Patience Cole in 1747. The first minister of Canton had an Indian servant. She died July 1, 1718. Her name was Hannah Spywood. Pomponechum has been preserved in the name of a swamp. We also know that "Wachennakin lived at Peckunitt," and two more men with unpronounceable names - Monnoccumut and Manantaligin - encumbered some portion of this desolate space. From 1667 to 1735 we meet with the name of Hezekiah Squaumaug, and in 1717 of Rebecca, lineal descendants of the great Chicataubut, who was sachem when the Pilgrims landed.
The family of Quok was also an ancient family. John is seen in 1717; Timothy was in the expedition to Carthagena in 1740; Zachariah died in 1741; and James was living in 1753. Quok Mattrick, a soldier of the Revolution, who mar- ried Chloe Howard in 1788, may have been named from this family. Hon. James M. Robbins, of Milton, informs me that when a boy he was very much frightened at the cry, "The Quoks are coming." Sucamugg is another name which ap- pears in 1719. Mary died in 1738; Sue in 1754. Experience lost a daughter in 1759; and as late as Feb. 20, 1771, Mary married Thomas Mitchell, Jr. He died Dec. 4, 1810, aged ninety-two years.
Robert Burrill came from Braintree and took up his resi- dence with Thomas Penniman in 1764. His wife's name was Mary; and at that time he had two children, -one named for his wife, and the other named for him. David is seen in 1765. There were half a dozen of this name living on In- dian Lane in 1860, and the name of David was perpetuated. I remember seeing a row of Burrills in the York School when visiting it in 1866.
Moses Marendash was published to marry Lydia Jones on
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HISTORY OF CANTON.
May 31, 1733; but on the 2d of June she changed her mind, and sent her uncle Jonathan to have the notice taken down. This was done, but she was still unsatisfied; and on July 6, 1734, the notice was posted a second time.
Jonathan Capen was appointed to take the place of Joseph Billings as guardian of the Ponkapoag Indians, June 17, 1767. The following notice shortly afterward appeared in the Bos- ton papers : -
STOUGHTON, July 30, 1797.
The subscriber having been appointed by the Great and General Court in their last session Guardian of the Punkapang Indians, notice is hereby given to all persons not to trust or give credit to any of the said Indians, as no debts of their contracting will be paid without the consent of the said Guardian.
JONATHAN CAPEN.
Nuff Wills, a negro, was a tenant of Capen's, and is said, after Capen built a new house, to have lived in his old one. He moved to Williams' old place nearly north of his former residence. His daughter Hannah seems to have been called after the Christian name of her father; she is reported to have married or lived with a Bancroft. Elizabeth married Isaac Williams; and Mary, Wilbor and then Burr.
Sarah, the widow of Nuff Wills, married Berry Miller, and her daughter Sarah married William Croud. Jacob is seen in 1788.
The number of the Ponkapoag Indians in the towns of Canton and Stoughton, as taken by Nathaniel Fisher and Samuel Talbot, who were appointed to procure the informa- tion in 1784, was of males, twenty-one; of females, thirty-one. There were two males and two females in the families of Robert Bancroft, Jr., and George Moho respectively. Asa Moho appears to have lived alone. William Croud's family contained two males and one female, and Sarah Berry's, one male and two females. Isaac Williams and Jacob Wilbor are classed with blacks; and two are mentioned as " at Tucker's."
The Ponkapoag Indians had made complaint to the Gen- eral Court as early as 1668 that other Indians, who were unfriendly to their tribe, had visited them as soon as the
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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.
snow was off, and had done them much mischief. It was for this reason, and also as a protection to the English living to the north of them, that they built a good and "deffenci- ble " fort, which should protect them from these predatory excursions. This fort was nearly completed in 1675; and the Major of Suffolk was ordered to appoint out of the towns of Dorchester, Milton, and Braintree sixteen or twenty soldiers, who should reside at "Punckepauge," and in conjunction with the Indians, should go on scouting parties through the woods, and give warning of the approach of the enemy or any strange Indians. In August, 1675, Corporal Swift was doing garrison duty at this fort with a number of soldiers.1 The exact' site of this fort is unknown; tradition says that a stockade, or garrison-house, stood on the land owned by Mr. Samuel Bright. This was not a garrison-house, for such houses were surrounded with walls of stone. It may have stood on Powder House Hill, on the Taunton Old Way.
On a record of the Indian inhabitants belonging or con- nected with the Ponkapoag tribe in 1861 appears the name of Rebecca Davis, aged seventy-one. "Her mother [says an old letter which I have copied] was a Moho; her father un- known." Her first husband was Abel Lewis, a mulatto, who was a wandering musician, descended from quite a prominent family, - the Bensons of the Natick tribe. Her second hus- band's name was Black; he had unfortunately sworn "to love, honor, and obey" another woman before he married Rebecca; but as she lived to a good old age, we surmise that she did not wear away from regret at his departure. Aunt Becky was in the habit of visiting Canton in her last years. She used to come out from Boston just before Thanksgiving ; and her old friends furnished her with pork, eggs, turkeys, and other comforts. She gained some money by the sale of a salve, which she prepared from herbs according to the prescription of some ancient medicine-man.
It is impossible to fix exactly the site of the Indian places of worship. Gookin says that when he describes Natick, the first Praying Town, he describes all the Praying Towns.
1 See Appendix IV.
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HISTORY OF CANTON.
Now, Ponkapoag was the second Praying Town, and of course had a meeting-house. I judge the first one to have been situated where the little graveyard is, - between Ponkapoag Village of to-day and Aunt Katy's Brook. In 1707 the Indians relinquished their right in about three acres of land for a burying-place and a cemetery. Now, there was no person buried in the Canton Cemetery until 1716; and persons were interred in the Proprietors' Lot at Ponkapoag ten if not sixteen years earlier. There is no record of the building of any meeting-house before 1707; and then the inhabitants were ordered " to remove the meeting-house or build a new one." The new one was built at Canton Corner. Perhaps the English settlers bought it; it is more probable that they got it as they did their land.
In 1741 the Indians presented a petition to the General Court in which they said that they were in a sad condition; that the infirmities of age were creeping upon them, and they could do little or nothing toward obtaining a livelihood. They prayed that some of their interest-money might be expended for clothes, and that £100 might be devoted to the building of a meeting-house to be placed at some convenient point on the Indian land. In order to strengthen their appeal, they attached to the petition the names of Amos Ahauton, the preacher, and also that of Simon George. Amos told the guar- dian, Mr. Quincy, that he never saw the petition and never signed it, and that Simon George was dead. In spite of this, it would appear that the house was built for Amos, the preacher, and Martha, his wife, and of such proportions that it would accommodate all the Indians as well as his own family. But in a short time their promise to meet together on the Lord's Day and hold religious worship was broken; laziness and rum made sad havoc among them. They prob- ably all got drunk; and they alleged that Amos, instructing them to do as he said, not as he did, had given himself up to excessive drinking, and that they did not want to hear him any more as a preacher. Certain it is that in the winter of 1743 he was in reduced circumstances, and had one, and only one son, who was dying of consumption; and he asked leave
1
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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.
"to sell two and a half acres of land for his comfortable support in his old age." In consideration of these misfor- tunes the General Court gave him assistance.
The Indians were assured that if they would attend Mr. Dunbar's meeting, seats would be provided for them. They made the reply that they did not understand Mr. Dunbar; that they knew of but one Indian who ever attended Mr. Dunbar's church, and he was dead.
There is a tradition that there was a meeting-house on Burr Lane. I know of no reason to believe it.
The Rev. Charles Chauncy, D. D., as early as 1762, in writ- ing of the labors of Eliot and others to plant churches among the Indians, thus traces their gradual diminution : -
"Some of these churches are running to this day with English or Indian pastors at their head, though they are, it must be confessed and lamented, in a declining state. The Indians within this and the neighboring provinces have strangely diminished ; a few only are left. . . . Within my remembrance the Indians at Punkapog, an ancient settlement within fifteen miles of Boston, were considerably numerous, but there are few now remaining. I can assign no other cause for this strange fact than the necessity these Indians were under, by being surrounded by English towns, to change their simple, plain way of living for ours."
There was a meeting-house on Indian Lane. The exact site of this house has fortunately been preserved. Samuel Capen, of Stoughton, an indefatigable antiquary, has shown its site to me, and told me that his grandfather James remem- bered the meeting-house, and that John Eliot preached in it.
Directly south of the house of Daniel Croud, on the map of 1855, there are two walls running west from Indian Lane parallel to each other, forming a country lane, a short dis- tance down which another wall meets the north wall at a right angle; and west of this wall stood the meeting-house. It is not wonderful that the scholarly productions of Mr. Dunbar, who could quote Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, were not understood by these people. It is related that Deacon Jonathan Capen once went to hear an Indian preacher in this meeting-house,
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HISTORY OF CANTON.
and was astonished when the text was announced as, " Tell no more lies than needs must." They knew what that meant, and it conformed to their idea of Christianity.
The places of Indian sepulchre in Canton known to me are five. One was on the extreme northern boundary of the Ponkapoag Plantation, near the pond, on the ancient Redman farm, now owned by Henry L. Pierce. It is near a field that I visited some years ago, to see, before the land was broken up, hills that had remained since the Indians reaped their corn there. Excavation at the site of the burying-place re- vealed nothing, although the workmen in several instances dug seven feet into the soil.
On Chapman Street is a piece of land called the "Stone lot," from its having been owned in early days by Daniel Stone. Mr. Asa Shepard tells me that he has seen rough unlettered head and foot stones on that land.
Directly east of the Sherman schoolhouse on Ragged Row, there is an Indian burying-ground. It is easily reached from Burr Lane, and is not far from Simon George's orchard. Here are buried Simon George and his squaw. Here also was deposited in a grave dug by Abijah Upham in October, 1788, all that was mortal of Jacob Wilbor. Some of his children were also buried here.
In that part of the town known as Mount Hunger Fields,- is an ancient Indian burying-ground. Some years ago I vis- ited it, and the excavations made resulted as at Ponkapoag in finding nothing. This is near the spot where in my boy- hood were charcoal-pits. The land was owned twenty years ago by the heirs of Laban Lewis.
The most modern Indian burial-place is not far from In- dian Lane. I find the first record of it in 1760, and have conversed with persons who have attended the burial of Indians in this graveyard within fifty years. Its location is easily ascertainable. A driftway, or bridle-path, leads from Indian Lane to within a few rods of it. It is hard to distin- guish the mounds, and some believe that the ground has been ploughed; but the stones picked up in the neighboring fields and placed at the head and foot of the graves show that
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THE PONKAPOAG PLANTATION.
no plough has ever disturbed this quiet place, and that some attempt has been made at regularity of interments. When the guardians, in 1790, gave a deed of the sixteen acres ad- joining, they declared that this half-acre was reserved as a burial-place for the tribe, and also that the tribe should have the liberty to pass and repass by the leading way then com- monly used. William Henry, the purchaser, was allowed to use it for pasturage, or plant it with corn, but it was distinctly stipulated that this sacred place should not be ploughed or tilled. A thick growth of wood now covers the land, which half a century ago was an open field. Be- sides Indians of pure blood, several mestees and at least one white person are buried here, - the white person being Hulda Green, who died at the house of Mr. Croud.
There is a rock on the Bailey farm at Packeen, which has a cleft in it, and is believed to be a place where the Indians used to grind their corn. It is admirably adapted for such a purpose. In this part of the town there is a large rock known as Fairbanks's rock; it rises abruptly in the midst of wood and underbrush, and on the westerly side is an open- ing where six or eight men could easily find refuge. Here one Fairbanks secreted himself in order to avoid the officers of the law. It would appear that an Indian in passing saw Fairbanks, and greeted him with offensive words and ges- tures, whereupon Fairbanks, on the impulse of the moment, fired a charge of buckshot at the Indian, from the effects of which he died. The name of Fairbanks's meadow in the immediate vicinity appears in 1717; and it has continued to bear this name to the present time. There is a barn standing on the Endicott homestead, composed of the timbers of an earlier building, against which an Indian is said to have dashed out the brains of a little child. An Indian is reported as having shot a white man as he was about to enter the house of Moses Gill, one of the first settlers of Canton.
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