USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Concord > The history of Concord, Massachusetts > Part 33
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It would be interesting to follow in detail so far as there is data for it, the fate or fortune of each of these detach- ments as they hurried to the scene of action and became a part of it. But as only a portion of them are nearly related
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to the history of Concord we are called upon to confine our narrative chiefly to those.
The detachment sent from Boston was commanded by Capt. Samuel Wadsworth, an experienced officer who had served in the Nipmuck country under Major Savage, going to the relief of beleagured Lancaster, a short time previous. Hastening with all speed up through Sudbury to Marl- boro, where it was reported at his starting that the enemy had concentrated, he arrived about midnight of April 20, and reported to Capt. Brocklebank, who had been left in charge of the garrison house there, all other houses having been burned.
It took but a short time for Wadsworth to learn that after sacking and destroying the town the Indians had gone in the direction of Sudbury. Without stopping for needed rest, having exchanged some of his tired soldiers and younger men for a part of the garrison guard and accompanied by Capt. Samuel Brocklebank who desired to go to Boston to speak to the Council, Wadsworth at once retraced his steps back to Sudbury, where he arrived probably by early after- noon the day following.
Upon his entering the town there appeared about one hundred Indians, which Wadsworth may have supposed was Philip's main force, or at least a detachment from it, and one which he could pursue with safety and easily capture ; but it was a mistake, and the mistake was fatal. The Indians had resorted to their old ruse of using decoys ; and the same tragic experience that befell Capt. Wheeler at Brookfield and Capt. Lathrop at Bloody Brook, and Capt. Beers near Northfield and notably in one of the later wars Gen. Braddock, was in store for Capts. Wadsworth and Brocklebank, old Indian fighters notwithstanding both officers were.
Upon seeing the savages the English pursued, but sud- denly and without warning were surprised by a number esti- mated at from one thousand to fifteen hundred who fired upon them from a place of concealment at or near the foot
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of Green hill about a quarter of a mile from the present South Sudbury village. The trap had been cunningly set and as cunningly sprung. The Indians had allowed the English to pass up through the town during the night, and during their march to and from Marlboro had placed in wait- ing so many of their men as were needed for the ambuscade When Wadsworth returned, as they believed he would upon receiving intelligence of their absence from Marlboro, they were in readiness to meet him with their murderous volleys. After the first firing by the Indians, which was not so deadly as might be supposed from their vantage ground, Wads- worth closed up his little company for a valiant defence, and from that time, which was probably not far from mid after- noon, the fight continued till after nightfall. On the one hand it was a combat for life, on the other for a mastery over the main force of the English which stood between themselves and the spoliation of the town of Sudbury.
No sooner had Wadsworth recovered from the surprise than he attempted to gain the hill top, and so successfully that by night he had reached it, and with a chance that the foe would be held in abeyance till reenforcements reached him.
From tree to tree, from rock to rock, from over fallen logs the fire of Wadsworth's men was doubtless well directed; while the enemy although strong and active were kept well in the distance not daring to fight at close quar- ters.
The indications as set forth in Philip's war are that the savage was too cowardly for open combat. He depended upon surprises and trickery or upon overwhelming numbers. A mistake of the Council and Colonial committees may have been in believing that they could capture the Indians by large expeditions by which they were chased from point to point in a vain attempt to draw them into open battle. The Indian's mode of living and familiarity with the country enabled him to elude all such efforts, and except for the destruction of an Indian fort and village large bodies of
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troops in carefully planned campaigns were a partial failure, and only furnished opportunity for Indian ambushment.
Wadsworth had gained the hilltop and was within night's friendly shelter both of which he had probably longed for, but the wily enemy impatient of the stubborn de- fense and aware that just over the hill to the easterly was the Watertown company endeavoring to break through to his relief and that with the morning other reenforcements would arrive, as a last resort set fire to the forest. The cri- sis had come. The flames fanned by the April breeze set out upon their disastrous errand without mercy. Soon they reached the top of the hill where the brave little company stood fearless to face anything human but powerless to do battle with this new agent. The last moment of their remaining together had arrived. They broke, they ran, down through the brushwood and the thickening smoke and through the gauntlet of savages. The Indian's opportunity had come. Before the conflagration was started they had doubtless so stationed themselves as to form a complete circle around the fire enclosed space; so that when there was a struggle to escape from the flames not an Englishman would have a fair chance of escape. Only too successfully was the programme carried out ; for of the forty or fifty men more or less, who had fought through the long hours of that April afternoon from the foot to the summit of Green hill less than a score escaped and found shelter in the neighboring mill by the brook. All the others had fallen or been taken captive, and when the morning sun arose and the terrible night shadows had lifted, the charred and mangled corpses of that band of brave men lay scattered over that piece of burnt woodland to be gathered in kind embrace by a com- pany of whites and friendly Indians and laid in one large lone grave in the wilderness.
The burial scene as described in Gookin's History of the Praying Indians is as follows :
"Upon the 22nd of April early in the morning over forty Indians having stripped themselves and painted their faces
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like to the enemy, they passed over the bridge to the west side of the river without any Englishmen in the company, to make discovery of the enemy (which was generally con- ceded quarter thereabout), but this did not at all discourage our Christian Indians from marching and discovering, and if they had met with them to beat up their quarters. But God had so ordered that the enemy were all withdrawn and were retreated in the night. Our Indian soldiers having made a thorough discovery and to their great relief (for some of them wept when they saw so many English lie dead on the place among the slain), some they knew, viz, those two worthy and pious Captains, Capt. Brocklebank of Row- ley and Capt. Wadsworth of Milton, who with about thirty two private soldiers were slain the day before. . . . As soon as they had made a full discovery, [they] returned to their Captains and the rest of the English, and gave them an account of their motions. Then it was concluded to march over to the place and bury the dead, and they did so. Shortly after, our Indians marching in two files upon the wings to secure those that went to bury the dead, God so ordered it that they met with no interruption in that work."
A rude stone heap was placed over the grave, it may be for the double purpose of protecting and of marking it. In 1730, President Wadsworth of Harvard College, son of the Captain, caused a slate stone to be erected beside the spot. From this time there was another long season of neglect. The spring time came with its decoration of violets and wood grass, the autumn with its falling leaves, and the winter with its kindly mantling snows, each in its turn tenderly placing its appropriate token upon the lonely grave. At length after the lapse of nearly two centuries the appearance of the place was changed by the establishment of a more imposing memorial.
Having narrated the leading events of the battle of Green hill we are in a position to consider the movements of the men from Concord.
On the night that Capt. Wadsworth left Marlboro and
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while yet on the march back to Sudbury the Indians were busy in preparation for assaulting the garrison houses of the town. These houses contained at that time in all prob- ability all the inhabitants on the west side of the river; the people on the east side, or what is now Wayland hav- ing fled for protection to the fortified meeting house, and fortified parsonage of Rev. Edmund Brown, the former situated at a spot still pointed out in the town's first bury- ing ground, and the latter at the junction of Mill brook and Sudbury river.
The principle garrison attacked was that known as the Walter Haynes house. This house stood upon the west side of the Sudbury river, the same stream which in Con- cord is called the Concord river, near the meadows about midway between the present Sudbury centre and Wayland centre.
The attack upon this house began, according to the "Old Petition" about six o'clock in the morning and was kept up till after mid day, at times the fight occuring in the very door yard. To this garrison house the Concord men directed their course. They probably arrived in the vicin- ity in the early forenoon. The fight at Green hill had not then begun, and part of the Indians had passed over the main causeway and "town bridge," which are a part of the "old road" from Wayland to Sudbury center and were doing mischievous work on the east side. A sufficient force was probably left at the Haynes house to keep up a hard fight with the inmates and to prevent it from being reenforced. As the Concord men drew near the garrison house, they saw a small company of Indians near it, and doubtless suppos- ing that these were all and that they could easily overcome them and gain entrance to the building, they rushed forward forgetful in their impetuosity of the risk of an ambuscade. No sooner were they within the power of the designing sav- ages than the latter arose in great force and placing them- selves between the English and the garrison house fell upon them with great ferocity and so disastrous was the onslaught
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that but one escaped. The "Old Indian Chronicle" says : "They were waylaid and eleven of them cut off." Hub- bard says: "These men at the first hearing of the alarm, who unawares were surprised near a garrison house, in hope of getting some advantage upon a small party of the enemy that presented themselves in a meadow. A great number of the Indians, who laid unseen in the bushes, suddenly arose up and intercepting the passage to the garrison house killed and took them all."
That resistance was made we may infer both from tradi- tion and from a fragment of record relating to the estate of James Hosmer who was among the slain. The former says "There was a bold resistance ;" the latter, which is a Probate matter, speaks of Hosmer as "being slayne in an engagement with the Indians at Sudbury on the 21st of the 2nd month in the year 1676." The names of the fallen that have been preserved are James Hosmer, David Comy, William Hey- wood, Samuel Potter, Joseph Buttrick, John Barnes, Josiah Wheeler and Jacob Farrar. Tradition is for the most part silent as to the circumstances or any incident connected with the start, the march, or the exact details of the disaster.
We may presume that the start was an exciting one. Perhaps the quick ear of James Hosmer was the first to catch the faint sound of distant firing as at nightfall on the day previous he went out to fodder the stock on his father's farm near the Assabet : or it may be that the tidings were brought by a scout from over the Sudbury boundary line, who scouring the forest had seen the impress of many moc- casins, the sure sign of the presence of a war party. Certain it is that there were warnings of an Indian invasion in the neighborhood of Concord, for only a few days before, the people of Sudbury had informed the Council at Boston by a letter of Rev. Edmund Brown their minister that the woods were "pestered with Indians" and that several of the town's citizens had been shot at ; and asking that men who had been impressed to serve abroad might be sent home. It was only the day before the little company from Con-
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cord started that Thomas Plympton was slain at Boone's plain in the town of Stow, as he was trying to aid Mr. Boone and son to reach a place of safety.
Neither is there any tradition as to the direction that these Concord men took. The main road to the Sudbury east precinct is through what is now the town of Lincoln. If the soldiers took this road, it would lead them to cross the river at the "old town bridge" and to approach the gar- rison house from the southerly passing along the causeway from the bridge until they reached the west side of the mead- ows at a point near the beginning of the old Lancaster road opened about 1663. From this point we have only con- jecture to go by in determining the further movements and the exact whereabouts of these men ; but assuming that we are correct in the the supposition that they went on the east side of the river which would take them over the "town bridge" and the causeway, a route which we believe was the only practicable one in time of high water, we think it fairly safe from the known facts and the lay of the land to make the following supposition ; that the majority of the Indians who were assailing the Haynes house on becoming aware of the approach of men to reenforce it concealed themselves in the neighboring shrubbery near the meadow, leaving only a sufficient number in sight to lead the reenforcing party to believe they could easily overcome them or gain entrance to the house in spite of them. The eager English in their usual forgetfulness of Indian trickery and in their impatience to render relief might naturally rush across the arm of meadow which extended from the causeway just mentioned to the upland adjacent to the Haynes house. When fairly upon the arm of meadow which was covered with water at that time doubtless, the concealed Indians had only to rise up and intercept them. By closing in upon their rear all retreat would be cut off, and the main recourse to be had was to fight where they were, as the broad expanse of flooded meadow to the easterly would make escape in that direction quite difficult, while at the west-
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erly end of the arm of meadow as it terminates in the upland all escape could easily be prevented by a small force.
The foregoing theory not only accords with Hubbard's description of the event but it explains why the men fell on the meadow land.
That this conjecture is correct may be indicated by the following facts relating to the locality. From the point where the causeway proper ended near the Lancaster road as before described, there has been a rude path and a strip of low causeway that extended over the arm of the meadow which in front of the Haynes house reached to the upland at the westerly. This path has served the double purpose of hauling hay and of a way to the house ; and it probably extended beyond the house northerly, and was perhaps a part of the way which the town voted should extend the whole length of the river meadow to the town bounds. The strip of causeway over the meadow arm is today known as the Water Row road and in time of high water has frequently been flooded in modern times.
The bodies of five of the slain soldiers remained where they fell till the next morning and then were recovered by a searching party who went for them in boats and brought them over the flood to the town bridge, as stated in the petition of Warren and Pierce who helped bury them. The occasion of delay in securing the bodies was the perilous condition of things on the west side of the river. It pre- sumably was not till early afternoon, or the time that Wads- worth reached Green hill, that the savages withdrew from about the garrison houses to concentrate for an attack upon his command. By way of the old "Lancaster road" which passed very near or directly over a part of the Green hill battle ground, it was only about a mile distant. The sound of firing while the action was going on at Green hill could doubtless have been heard during the hours of the late after- noon and into the night quite distinctly ; so that the inhabi- tants to the eastward had cause for believing that the entire territory of the west precinct was dangerous to venture upon.
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Moreover every soldier was on duty for defense of the gar- risons or was endeavoring to reenforce Wadsworth. On the east side the inhabitants doubtless durst not venture forth on the sad mission of gathering up the slain ; for although they had in the morning driven about two hundred Indians over the town bridge and causeway by a running fight, yet they knew not how soon a defeat of Capt. Wadsworth might come and the disengaged savages flushed with vic- tory rush back with overwhelming numbers to over- come them. Those were hours in which to care for the liv- ing not for the dead. It was a day of distress and calamity ; dark with its disasters, and dreadful in its uncertainties, and it may be a wonder how human hearts could endure the strain.
What became of all the dead we know not : we may con- jecture, however, that after the strife had subsided they were sought after and found; and if so were tenderly borne back to Concord, or carried to the same lone spot upon the river bank and laid beside the bodies of their late comrades.
The exact locality of the spot where these men were buried may be easily conjectured ; as it was high water there would be but one practicable place near the bridge and that would be on the eastern bank of the river just north of the bridge and the road. The place is still a quiet one. No intrusion of farm building or summer cottage has as yet broken the quietude in the immediate vicinity. The place has remained to this day unmarked by any memorial of man's erection but there are land marks which have been there through the centuries. The bridge, which it is said was the first framed one in Middlesex county, has had several successors. The river, although a new channel was long years ago cut by man as a shorter course for its waters, still bends its friendly arm to the banks near which they were laid, as if reluctant to leave it.
As to the story of the sole survivor history and tradi- tion are alike silent. We know not his name nor how he escaped. We may, however suppose that at the first firing the five whose bodies were earliest recovered fell at about
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the same place being perhaps foremost and where the water was shallow. The seven whose bodies were not at first found may have retreated further back where the water was deeper, and scattered about ; while the one who survived may have straggled forward to the upland unobserved by the savages and escaped into the woods or crossed over the flood.
Perhaps in no other instance in King Philip's war did a town suffer the loss of so many men on any one occasion in their endeavor to succor others. There were slain in the town of Sudbury on that fateful day not far from fifty armed Englishmen that there is a record of; and of these about one fourth part were from Concord.
As to the substantial value of the sacrifice of the Con- cord soldiers we may not be able at this distant day to determine. Doubtless anything that drew off the force of savages in their onslaught on the Haynes house was an advantage, as it gave the inmates a respite. It is also pre- sumable that by a detention of a portion of Philip's warriors, he incurred greater loss at the hands of Wadsworth. But whatever the service rendered by the sacrifice it was a most worthy one. The loss was severe in Concord homes and there was mourning in families from which some member, perhaps the head of the household, had gone out never to return. Although no general Indian invasion occurred there during the war yet her loss on that sad spring day was greater than that of some towns that were attacked.
As some of the leading facts and features both of the Wadsworth fight and the burial of the bodies of the slain Concord soldiers are set forth in a petition of Daniel War- ren and Joseph Pierce to the Colonial Court, we quote it, Mass. Arch. vol. 68 p. 224 :
"To Inform the Honoured Counsel of the Service don at Sudbury by severall of the Inhabatance of Watertown as our honoured Captain Mason hath Allready informed a part of thereof in the petion: but we who wear thear can moer largely inform this honoured Councel : that as it is said in the petion that we drove two hundred Indians over
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the River: wee followed the enimie over the river and joyned with som others and went to see if wee could relieve Captain Wadsworth upon the hill and thear we had a fight with the Indians but they beinge soe many of them and we stayed soe long thar we wear allmost incompassed by them which cased us to retreat to Captain Goodanous Garrison ; and their we stayed it being ner night till it was dark and then we went to Mr. Noices Mill to see if we could find any that were escaped to that place all though they wear noe persons dwelling there ; but thear we found : 13 : or : 14 : of Captain Wadsworths men who wear escaped some of them wounded and brought them to Sudbury towne ;
On the next day in the morning soe soon as it was light we went to looke for - Concord men who wear slain in the River middow and thear we went in the colld water up to the knees where we found five and we brought them in Conus to the Bridge fut and buried them thear; and then we joined ourselves to Captain Hunton with as many others as we could procuer and went over the River to look for Captain Wadsworth and Captain Brattlebank and the soldiers that wear slain; and we gathered them up and Buried them ; and then it was agreed that we should goe up to Nobscot to bring the Carts from thence into Sudbury-Towne and soe returned Hom againe; to what is above written we whos nams are subscribed can testifi :
dated the : 6: of march :78; :79:
JOSEP PEIRCE DANIEL WARRIN
There was for several years a controversy relating to the date of Philip's attack upon Sudbury ; some considering it April 18th, others April 21st. The probate record referring to James Hosmer gives it the 2 1st as do some others. The date on the old grave stone gives it April 18 ; this date having been taken it is supposed from Hubbard's history.
The true date, however, was definitely settled by the discovery a few years ago of an old petition which was signed by a large number of the inhabitants of Sudbury
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and presented shortly after the war to the Colonial Court. This document which is among the State Archives Vol. 30 page 205 is interesting and valuable. We quote the fol- lowing passage from it as it sets forth the condition of things in Sudbury when the Concord men went to its res- cue. The date assigned for the fight is ye 21st April 1676. To ye Honble Governou, Dept Govern' Magistrates and Deputies of ye Gen" Court assembled at Boston ye IIth October 1676.
The humble Petition of ye poore distressed Inhabitants of Sudbury Humbly Sheweth. That whereas yo' impover- ished Petition's of Sudbury have received intelligence of a large contribution sent out of Ireland by some pious & well affected p'sons for ye releife of their brethern in New England distressed by ye hostile intrusion of ye Indian Enemy, and that upon this divers distressed townes have presenied a list of theire losses sustained by fireing and plundering of their Estates. Let it not seeme presumption in yo' poore petitioners to present a list of what damages we sustained by ye Enemyes attempts hopeing that o' lott will be to be considered among our brethren of the tribe of Joseph being encouraged by an act of our Honble Gen" Court that those who have sustained considerable damage should make address to this present Session. And is there not a reason for our releife ? Not only by reason of Our great losses but alsoe for Our Service p'formed in repelling ye Enemy ! Let ye Most High have ye high praise due unto him ; but let not ye unworthy Instruments be forgot- ten. Was there with us any towne so beset since ye warre began, with twelve or fourteen hundred fighting men vari- ous Sagamores from all Parts with their men of Armes & they resolved by our ruin to revenge ye releife which Our Sudbury volunteers afforded to distressed Marlborough in slaying many of ye Enemy and repelling ye rest. The strength of our towne upon ye Enemy's Approaching it con- sisted of Eighty fighting men. True many houses were fortified & Garrison'd & tymously after ye Enemy's invasion,
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