USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Northfield > Puritan outpost, a history of the town and people of Northfield, Massachusetts > Part 16
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This bloody ground above the town, both sides the river, was
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now being reclaimed by those whose houses there had been destroyed -Benoni Wright, near Stebbins; on the east side, the two Evenses, the two Coopers, Sergeant Taylor and Daniel Shattuck. Farther north Northfield men were justifying their heritage by striking out new towns-at Number I, now to be Westminster, on the west bank, at Rockingham, on the same side of the river, and at Number 2, newly named "Westmoreland" on the east side. The grantees of this re-settled New Hampshire town were from Northfield's old territory, chiefly from Winchester and Hinsdale.
Amputated from Northfield's domain by the surveyor's instru- ments in 1741, the region on both sides of the Connecticut, claimed by New Hampshire, was proposed in a petition in 1753 to Governor Benning Wentworth of that state as a new township and the charter was issued September 3. It was given the name of Hinsdale, a grace- ful variant of that of the valiant holder of the fort in the Merry's meadow section. The charter was amended, the 26th of the same month, to suit the settlers on the west side, giving them a separate town but with the same name. The hallmark of Northfield, the name of Wright, appearing seven times in the list of grantees, was enough to establish the new town's maternity and it was reinforced by ten Fields, six Strattons, four Alexanders, Holtons and Pettys, three each Mat- toons and Doolittles, while the names of Dickinson, Evens, Lyman and Janes confirmed the origin ; out of the ninety-four names there was hardly any other than Andross not strictly of the old stock, and the bearer of this was the physician who had come to take Mr. Doolittle's place.
Four empty, idle forts in a town at peace with the world were needless reminders of troubled days, and, more to the point, good boards and timbers in them were going to waste. Whether forts should be maintained or not was wholly a town concern. Military authority was exercised from Boston only when war was on and from the regimental command only at trainings in peace time. Northfield kept up its militia company and its forts were its own.
"The forts are useless and I move they be removed," was the ex- pression in the 1751 March meetin' of what proved to be a minority opinion. The town had learned the perils of a lack of shelter and defence, argued the more cautious, and there was no certitude of peace so long as France was in Canada. At next year's annual meet-
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ing the motion to destroy the forts had more supporters but not a majority. It was in 1753, just in time, as it proved, to get them out of the way before war again made them needful, that it was "passed in the affirmative." It was then voted that "as we would have no further use for the forts, a committee be chosen to sell and dispose of them."
It was known, in a general way, that the French were building forts in the West and that the settlers who had gone over the Allegheny mountains from Virginia and Pennsylvania were threatened in their possessions along the Ohio river; but this was only assurance that when the contest opened again, if ever it should, it would be on new fields.
Late in August, Seth Field showed his neighbors a piece in the "Boston Gazette" which said that Lord Holdernesse, the King's sec- retary of state, had addressed a note to all the colonial governors urging them to resist French territorial encroachments, even to the use of armed force. The schoolmaster's weekly copy of the "Gazette" was putting the town in new contact with the rest of the world and was passed from hand to hand until it was nearly worn out. A month later it brought the news that the Lords of Trade had sent another letter to the governors directing them to hold a convention to treat with the Iroquois and if not possible to secure their alliance at least to obtain a promise of neutrality. The convention was also to frame "articles of union and confederation" between the provinces "for the mutual defence of His Majesty's subjects and interest in North America."
Perhaps Northfield had been too swift in destroying those forts. If the New York Indians, who had been English allies, had now to be induced to stay neutral it was evident that the French were tampering with them; and when might there not be the closer demonstration that France was playing the Indians against the English settlements in the Connecticut valley? The outcome of the Albany convention of governors was watched with interest. It was not cheering to know that Hendrick, a Mohawk sachem who dominated his tribesmen, had told the governors, "Look at the French : They are men; they are fortify- ing everywhere. But you are like women, bare and open, without fortifications." Not much seemed to come from the convention, be- yond a grand plan of union, drawn up by the man from Pennsyl-
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vania, Benjamin Franklin, but not adopted. Even the Indians had made no promises.
In the valley towns, the opinion was general that there was naught to fear when England and France were still at peace. A declaration of war in Europe had always been the preliminary to trouble here, and the treaty of Aix la Chappelle still stood. News came in early June that on May 28, in a clash between a small force sent out from Virginia to protect her people who had gone over the mountains, the first shot had been fired at the command of a young leader, Major George Washington. In July, it followed that this officer, after a brave effort to defend the place he had fortified and fitly named Fort Misery, had capitulated to the French officer, Coulon de Villiers, who had come out from Fort du Quesne, a strong fortification built where two rivers came together to form the Ohio. It began to look as if there could be war without a declaration.
Possibility of trouble in the Connecticut Valley turned to reality when on the morning of Saturday, August 31, news came that an entire family of Johnsons had been taken captive by Indians the day before at Number 4 (Charlestown). A warrant was posted the next morning and at the town-meeting on Monday it was voted to build four forts and to ask the General Court to help bear the cost. The people in the two Hinsdales, the few families who had but just re- occupied their lands on each side the river, promptly deserted them and came back to the mother town. There they could share the de- fence, in the militia company of Captain Samuel Hunt and Leftenant Seth Field. There was no aid from Boston. The winter passed with twenty men kept in garrison, all of them from the local militia. The spring was awaited with fearsome expectation of fresh invasion from Canada.
Colonel Israel Williams, who was in command of the Northern Hampshire regiment, in which Northfield men were enrolled, had asked Governor Shirley, the previous September, to build a line of forts running to the west from the valley, with none north of North- field. The notion that Number 4 was a strategic point was now dis- carded on the theory that the favorite line of approach from Canada was by way of Otter Creek, flowing into Lake Champlain, and from its head waters along West River coming to the Connecticut just above Fort Dummer. Number 4 was to the north of this trail, useless to
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check an advance and well within the New Hampshire province. New Hampshire stubbornly refused to shelter the settlements in the Con- necticut valley and the insistence of Massachusetts that, at least, Fort Dummer should be maintained met with no response from Governor Wentworth. There was full warrant for Captain Hinsdell to say his neighborhood was the most exposed point in the valley.
The Massachusetts government, resting upon local militia for home defence, held out bounties, such as £50 for male Indian pris- oners delivered to Boston, £25 for females and boys less than twelve years old and £20 for scalps, regardless of age or sex. Enlistments were asked for ranging companies of not less than thirty men and these volunteers would receive £230 for each captive and £200 for each scalp. The compensation for scouting was a gamble on sighting Indians and taking them, alive or dead.
The war resumed a new aspect when, early in 1755, the grand scheme of four expeditions against French strongholds was divulged. Large armies were to move upon Nova Scotia, with design to recap- ture Louisburg; Fort Duquesne, at the head of the Ohio; Crown Point, on Lake Champlain; Niagara. Enlistments were called for and the response in the Hampshire county towns was prompt and enthusiastic. The old dream of the reduction of Crown Point was dreamed anew. Northfield instantly met its full quota for that and the Nova Scotian expeditions. The project for dislodgement of France was vastly popular, nowhere more so than in the towns whose century of struggle for existence had been made costly and bloody by the conflict for supremacy between these two claimant peoples.
From now, to what time could not be said, the valor of young men was to be tested away from their homes, beyond the reaches of scouting parties through the valley's forests, in regions unknown to any of them save as they had been told of the forts built therein, compared with which the blockhouses of the valley were but huts. There would be long marches in great armies and battles in drawn lines under other orders than "every man for himself." Victories would be reckoned in terms of strongholds reduced, instead of scalps taken, and a nation's flag advanced, instead of a hamlet saved from harm. In the end a continent's mastery would be won.
To an extent that the new test would determine, the training they had received in single-handed encounters would prove their fitness for
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ordered service, and the tactics of the forest supplant the massed for- mations of the field. Personal courage might lose its distinction but there would be rousing comradeship in pursuit of a visible fleeing enemy. To what honor in the eyes of the world might not some valorous service bring the actor on this broad scene of action? Share there would be in the making of history the world would read in the place of deeds doubtfully recorded in the annals of an obscure village.
With all the four expeditions in motion during 1755, the patriotic and prayerful people of the New England towns, whose fate was in- volved in the great issue, shared in the dismay over Braddock's defeat within eight miles of Fort Duquesne, in July, by which the French gained complete control of the country beyond the Allegheny moun- tains; in the return of Shirley and Pepperell from the Niagara ven- ture with no more to show than the leaving of a garrison of seven hundred at Oswego as a menace to French operations on the great lakes ; and particularly in the failure of General William Johnson to follow up the advantage he gained by his outright battle with Baron Dieskau, in which the French commander lost his life, by ad- vance upon the campaign's objective, Crown Point. The one solace was the success of Monckton's expedition against Nova Scotia, ending in the packing of seven thousand Acadians aboard transports to be scattered through the colonies.
In the spring of 1756, a full year after trouble had begun, hos- tilities were proclaimed in Europe, France being joined with Russia, Austria and Poland against the aggression of Frederick the Great, with whom King George aligned his forces. England's enmity towards France was deepened by her designs against the British hold on India and on North America. The year was one of humiliation for England on every front. In America, the serious loss was the fall of Fort Ontario, at Oswego, August 14, after a three days' siege, giving France complete command of the West. The English commander, General Loudon, had succeeded only in discrediting himself, while to the French command in America had come the resourceful and energetic Marquis de Montcalm.
In midsummer of 1757, Montcalm turned his attention to the threatened English advance by the way of Lakes George and Cham- plain. At Fort Edward, which had been built by Johnson at one end
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of the portage from the Hudson, and first named Fort Lyman, in honor of a Connecticut Valley general, and at Fort William Henry at the foot of Lake George, the terminus of the road, were stationed, respectively, General Webb, with 3600 men, and Lieutenant Colonel Monro with 2200. Late in July, Montcalm moved from Ticonderoga with three thousand regulars and two thousand Indians, gathered from all over the northern country, placed himself between the two forts, and after three days bombardment of Fort William Henry received its surrender from a brave commander, Monro. The worst of Indian outrages were wreaked by the savages of Montcalm's army upon the defenders of the fort, who were promised "the right of going out of the fort with all the honors of war." Some fifty of them were killed and scalped and four or five hundred kidnapped by the Indians.
The next year, 1758, was half gone before the fall of Louisburg, under attack of General Wolfe and Sir Jeffrey Amherst, gave the first great cause of cheer to New England, with its complete surrender of the region which had been the hotbed of attack upon its coast. In the same month, occurred a costly battle about Ticonderoga, in which the bright chance of victory was lost in the death of Brigadier Lord Howe and the passing of command to the incompetent Abercromby. In August, Lieutenant Colonel Bradstreet, of Abercromby's com- mand, which was lying idle in camp at the head of Lake Champlain, led a brave attack on Oswego, which he brilliantly captured. In November, General Forbes, ably aided by Major George Washing- ton, and having in a leisurely advance tarried long enough to win the alliance of the powerful Indian tribes, took Fort Duquesne.
It remained for 1759 to bring the climax to the American part of the far-flung war between France and England for colonial pos- sessions. Before the advance up Lake Champlain of Lord Amherst, who had become the British commander-in-chief in America, Ticon- deroga was abandoned and blown up, July 21. Sir William Johnson, as the New York commander had come to be entitled, fought and won a battle with a French force in his approach to Niagara, and that fortress surrendered in late July. In September came Wolfe's battle with Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham, above Quebec, and his capture of that stronghold, to be followed after nearly a year by Lord Amherst's investment of Montreal and its surrender. Thus and then,
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the vast domain of New France passed into the control of Great Britain, leaving France only the remote province of Louisiana.
Threefold were the links between the war which determined the mastery of North America and the town of half a thousand people in the valley of the Connecticut, where that river enters the domain of Massachusetts. In the first place, its life had hung for over eighty years on the fate of English supremacy and its peace had been secure only in the intervals between the active conflict of the two nations now at final grips. Next, its manhood was drawn into the forces that fought the battles on the longest disputed ground. Finally, its reduced defensive strength had been under constant strain and its people in unrelieved anxiety throughout this fateful period.
In the first summer of the war, when the young men were march- ing away on the Crown Point expedition, the now united Scagcooks and St. Francis Indians kept New England in distress. Early in June two men were killed and two taken captive at Charlemont, a new town up the Deerfield valley. On the 27th, a force of Indians beset Bridgman's fort, on Northfield's original territory, occupied by three families, How, Grout and Garfield, fired from ambush upon the three men and two How boys returning from the meadows, killed How, took the boys captive, and at dark gave the signal at the door of the fort for admission, were admitted and took the women and children prisoners. Grout succeeded in swimming the Connecticut to safety and Garfield drowned in his effort. At the same time an attack was being made on Keene, and was successfully resisted by Captain Wil- liam Syms, although houses were burned, cattle killed and Benjamin Twichel was captured.
In July, seven men out from Hinsdell's fort to get posts for the picketing, were fired upon and but two escaped. John Alexander was killed and scalped and a garrison soldier's body was found with both breasts cut off and his heart laid open. The big gun at Fort Dummer called thirty men from Northfield, who made a fruitless pursuit of the savages. In August, a heroic defence of his log house in Walpole was made by John Kilburn, his wife, son and daughter, against an attack by a body of Indians, numbering or seeming to number four hundred.
Seth Field, successor to Parson Doolittle, as pleader for the town, was besieging the government for soldiers to protect the harvesters of
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the abundant crops; Captain Hinsdell was turning first to the New Hampshire and then to the Massachusetts' governor for aid to defend "one of the most exposed places in these parts," on the road of the enemy's descent on the English frontiers by the way of Otter Creek and West River; Jonathan Belding and other Northfield signers of a pitiful petition were begging Colonel Israel Williams for soldiers to scout and to guard the settlers in their "husbandry"; and Colonel Williams was justifying his reputation for a temperament by grudg- ingly ordering a few men posted at Northfield, with the gracious addition to the order, "I expect the inhabitants to assist, and that punctually."
Punctually! Good word to test temperaments that might exist in Northfield. Examples in punctuality were not being set by the government nor by its military commanders, in the matter of saving people from destruction. It was only gradually sensed that the policy of leaving them to save themselves was not local nor individual; it was to be traced back to the British generals. They advised the gov- ernment, and the advice was literally followed, that the provincial regiments should furnish full quotas for the expeditions and the guarding of the frontiers be left to the local militia-without expecta- tion of reward. The disheartening and demoralizing policy was favorable to continued Indian marauding, never rising to the dignity of warfare, but testing the courage of the home people as sharply as that of the enlisted men was being tried in the dilatory performances of the commanding general in the Lake George country.
In the summer of '56, when Abercromby was dawdling with his army on its supposed way to take Crown Point, the Indians were paying occasional but bloody visits to the neighborhood-at Win- chester, June 7, when Josiah Foster, his wife and two children were "taken," the house rifled and hogs killed; between Northfield and Hinsdale, August 20, when Zebediah Stebbins and Reuben Wright were fired upon. In April of the next year, Number 4 was assaulted by a large French and Indian force. In March of '58, the house of Captain Fairbanks Moor, a Northfield man transplanted to West River, was attacked, the captain and a son killed and his wife and two soldiers taken captive.
Far apart as were these assaults, in point of time, they were fre- quent enough to keep the towns, shorn of their fighting strength, in
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constant fear. No sooner was a home company formed and drilled than it would be ordered to join the army. Captain John Burk, a spirited leader who had been produced by Fall Town, next westerly neighbor of Northfield, rallied a ranging company of forty-eight, of whom seventeen were from Northfield, in the winter of '57 and led them on scouting excursions which were effective in warding off attacks, only to be ordered by the summer's end to Fort William Henry. Later, he found out what war was when he was captured and stripped during the French attack on Ticonderoga but made his escape and reached Fort Edward. In one of Seth Field's persistent appeals for the towns, drained of their strength and support, he graphi- cally described his own as "poor Northfield, who has been wasting away by the hands of the enemy these ten years past."
Through all its seasons of distress, the fate and fortunes of the armies in the expeditions against the French were being eagerly fol- lowed. Interest centered in the one aimed at Crown Point, for in it were the husbands and sons of Northfield's homes. Oswego's fall startled the watchers in the New England towns but when Fort William Henry surrendered there was not only a share in "the great alarm" but mourning in Northfield's households. The fall of Louis- burg in July of 1759 turned dismay to rejoicing and the victory of Wolfe at Quebec was joyfully hailed as full promise of permanent peace. There remained for deep concern the fate of the expedition from Crown Point under Major Roberts to destroy the Indian nests at Missisquoi Bay, Gray Lock's headquarters in older days, and at St. Francis, the breeding places of slaughter for years upon years. In October, 1759, all the garrisons were dismissed save the small one at Fort Dummer. Montreal fell the next year and domination of North America was no longer in doubt. And now, after two genera- tions had been lived in alternating conflict and apprehension of con- flict, a peace none could question was permanently settled on the valley.
From the expeditions against Louisburg and Crown Point in 1755 to the capitulation of Montreal in 1760, the manhood of the town had been drawn steadily into the channels of war. From its actual population of not far from four hundred, there had been enlisted not fewer than seventy-eight men, aside from those who shared in the home garrison. Many of them had been in successive cam-
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paigns, the older men first called to service and the youth as it came to the least age that could venture forth. There were those who had been born in the early forties and nearly half the list later than 1730. Fathers and sons went out together-not alone Captain Joshua Lyman, who at fifty-five was with Colonel Israel Williams in the campaign of 1759, and his son, Seth, who at twenty had been in Captain Burk's company in Ruggles' regiment in the movement upon Crown Point, stretching from March to December two years before; there were Beldings as old as Captains Samuel at sixty-three and Jonathan at sixty-one and their nephew, Moses, at half their age; Alexanders as mature as John, born in 1709, and as juvenile as Asa, born in 1742 ; Wrights all the way from Captain Benoni, born in 1702, to Abner, 1740.
Enlistment of seventy-eight men from Northfield only partially represents the community's contribution. There should be accredited as well those who went out from the new towns across the New Hampshire border. The state line, arbitrarily drawn, had not severed the social and the family ties-the families of Stebbins, Taylor, Evens and Hunt were essentially of Northfield, even if politically distinct, while the numerous Alexanders of Winchester could not be differen- tiated from those of the mother town. So reckoned, the old families kept up their numerical importance on the rolls of the enlisted men. Eleven bore the name of Wright and there were nine Alexanders, five from the Field family, two or three each from those of Holton, Ly- man, Mattoon, Petty, Smith and Stebbins, making up a majority of the enrollment and establishing the persistence of pioneer names in the affairs and the constituency of the town. Hardly more than that of Andross was unfamiliar-borne by the village doctor who had gone out as a private in Captain Collins' company "in service to the Westward."
CHAPTER XXI PEACE, AND HOME DEVELOPMENT
New Elegancies in Dress and a New Church for Their Display
NORTHFIELD had done its full duty in the war that settled the English in possession of the new country. Every quota had been fully supplied. The home defences had been kept up by home militia- men. Fine examples of personal bravery had been supplied and the seasoned rangers had turned to disciplined soldiers, equal to all the strain of long marches and the regulated movements of massed troops. Now she was to reap her share in a secured peace by turning her energies to the building up of a town free from the perils that had constantly beset her.
Within the town's boundaries were some sixty houses. Chiefly they stood along the main street on the ample lots that had come down from the first settlers or, at latest, had been gained in the first days of the third settlement, now a half-century in the past. Such as had been built years before had taken on the brown that exposure brings to pine and newness was only marked by the yellow of fresher wood. Far up the street Deacon Ebenezer Alexander's large house and that of Nathaniel Dickinson in the centre of the town had ends of brick, and they were not alone in having walls lined with brick, produced from the clay-beds at the extreme south-end of the village. Outside, were scattered homesteads, at the lower "Farms," on the plains be- yond the river, in the hamlets across the New Hampshire line.
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