USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume I > Part 13
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On February 22, 1698 (O. S.), another raiding party descended upon Haverhill, when they killed Jonathan Haynes, because "he so old he no go with us," and Samuel Ladd, who had a stern face, because "he so sour." This hostile band was returning from Andover, where they inflicted the most considerable attack ever made on that town. Led by the fierce and implacable foe of the whites, Assacumbuit, they descended upon the house of Captain Bradstreet, killed a guest and relative of the family, and after carrying off some of the household, released them unharmed. It was in this foray that Captain Pascoe Chubb, of Andover, and his wife were murdered, an accomplishment which gave the Indians the greatest joy. Two years before Captain Chubb had been in command of Fort Pemaquid. He had called a conference of Penobscot Indians in regard to the exchange of pris- oners, and had so arranged it that during the meeting they should be plied with liquor until drunk. When his guests were helpless, Chubb ordered the soldiers to fall upon them, and several, including two chiefs, were slain. In retaliation a force of French and Indians besieged the fort and threatened Chubb with death by torture, at which the captain, forgetting his honor as commander, gave up the fort and stipulated only for his personal safety. For this cowardly act he was cashiered and confined in the Boston jail, whence, by the influence of friends, he was later released and allowed to live in seclu- sion in Andover. There has been some doubt as whether the Indians
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came to Andover in search of Chubb, but all the facts indicate that their visit was a deliberate act of revenge.17
The outbreak of Queen Anne's War on May 4, 1702, brought the inevitable accompaniment of savage raids on Essex County's exposed frontier. In the spring of 1701, either just before or after the declaration of war, the Indians attacked the garrison house of Jonathan Emerson, at Haverhill, but were repulsed with the loss of two of their number. On February 8, 1704, six Indians surprised the northern garrison at Joseph Bradley's, and by their attack disclosed another of the indomitable heroines of Essex County. Mrs. Bradley had, in fact, been captured with Hannah Duston, had traveled with her at least as far as Pennacook, and had seen the squaw with seven hatchet wounds on her head just as she had escaped from Hannah's assault.
On this occasion, as the savages rushed in through the open gate, Jonathan Johnson, a sentinel, shot and wounded the foremost, while Mrs. Bradley, who had a kettle of boiling soap on the fire, threw a ladleful of it over the wounded assailant, thus putting him completely out of action. Johnson was at once killed and Mrs. Bradley taken prisoner the second time along with four others. She began her northward march in the bitter cold and through the deep snow. For many days she lived on bits of skin, bark, ground-nuts, wild onions, and lily roots. In her misery, deep in the forests, she gave birth to a child, only to see the savages thrust hot embers into its mouth when it cried, gash its forehead with knives in mockery of the rite of bap- tism, and finally impale it. At last she arrived in Canada, where the Indians sold her to a Canadian for eighty livres. She was treated kindly by the family she thus joined, and in March, 1705, her hus- band came to Canada and redeemed her. The reunited couple returned to Haverhill in safety, only to be attacked once more in the summer of 1706. As they watched the stealthy approach of the red men in the bright moonlight, Mrs. Bradley declared in desperation that she would rather be killed than taken prisoner again. As the assailants rushed the door and partially broke it down, it was Mrs. Bradley who shot and killed the foremost, who was trying to crowd through the opening, and thus frightened away the others.
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17. Bailey, p. 181.
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On August 4, 1704, Joseph Page and Bartholomew Heath were killed at Haverhill by Indians. On June 24, 1707, Joseph and Ebene- zer, sons of the above Joseph Page, were slain, and in August of the same year Nathan Simonds and Jonathan Marsh, a visitor from Salem, met the same fate. "Some idea," as Chase says, "of the dan- gers and alarms of those years, and of the great exertions made for the security of the frontier towns, may be had from the large number of soldiers ferried across the Merrimac at a single place, Griffin's Ferry, opposite the present village." In 1707 Griffin ferried over, at different times, two hundred and eighty-four men and nearly as many horses, and in 1708 one hundred and eighty men and thirty-one horses.
But Haverhill's greatest trial was still to come. Early in the spring of 1708 Governor Dudley, at Boston, received word that a French and Indian force of eight hundred men was marching for our frontier settlements. At once he posted four hundred Massachusetts militia in New Hampshire and sent forty men commanded by three Salem officers, Major Turner, Captain Price, and Captain Gardner, to Haverhill. The expedition reported to him had been decided upon at a great council held in Montreal. It was to consist of Abnakis, Algonkins, Hurons, and Iroquois, together with numerous French volunteers, in all about four hundred men, who were to meet at Lake Winnipesaukee. Among them was Assacumbuit, who had returned from France the year before. Several tribes at the last minute found excuses for not coming to the appointed place, and so with a force of two hundred or less under his command, Des Chaillons, the French commander, decided to make Haverhill his objective. Accord- ing to the account given in Father Charlevoix's "History of New France," the early stages of the conflict were as follows :
"Our braves were not dismayed on learning that the enemy were so well prepared to receive them, and no longer trusting to a surprise resolved to make it up in valor. . . Rouville made a short address to the French to exhort all who had any quarrels with each other to be reconciled sincerely and embrace, as they all did. They then prayed and marched against the fort. Here they met with a vigorous resistance, but at last entered sword in hand and set it on fire. All the houses were also well defended and met the same fate. About a hundred of the English were killed in these attacks; many
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others too slow in leaving the fort and houses, were burned in them, and the number of prisoners was large. There was no booty, as no thought was given to it till everything was consumed by the flames. Moreover, the sound of drum and trumpet was heard in all the neighboring villages, and there was not a moment to be lost in securing their retreat."
But let us look at the attack through the eyes of victims. Having passed the frontier garrisons undiscovered, the war party was first seen by John Keezar, son of the John Keezar who was killed in 1697. Other traditions give credit for first seeing the Indians to other indi- viduals, but Keezar was returning from Amesbury and would have been in a position to see the hostiles' approach. Rushing into the village he alarmed the sleeping inhabitants by firing his gun near the meetinghouse, while close behind him poured the crowd of yelling, whistling, hideously painted French and Indians. The enemy quickly broke up into small parties to do their work more quickly and effectively.
The first victim was Mrs. Smith, shot whilst flying from her house to the garrison. Mr. Rolfe was pursued through his house and tomahawked beside his well, while his three cowardly soldier guards begged for mercy. Mrs. Rolfe was killed by a hatchet stroke, and her infant daughter's brains were dashed out on the doorstep. Hagar, supposed to have been a negro slave, saved herself and Mary and Elizabeth Rolfe by hiding them under tubs in the cellar, and Anna Whittaker escaped by retreating to an apple chest under the stairs.
Thomas Hartshorne and two sons were shot just after leaving the house, a third son was tomahawked, and the baby was thrown out of the upstairs window. The raiders shot Lieutenant John Johnson and his wife as they stood at their doorway, and pursued Ruth John- son through the house to the garden, where they killed her, though she had a year old baby at her breast. Captain Simon Wainwright was shot at the first assault. Mrs. Swan, when her husband coun- seled surrender, ran her spit, three feet long, through the body of the first Indian attempting to force his way into the house. As the savages were attempting to set fire to the new meetinghouse, a fortu- nate diversion occurred. Mr. Davis, a bold and quick-witted man, going behind Mr. Rolfe's barn, which was near the house, struck it
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violently with a great club, and with outcries and words of command shouted, "Come on! Come on! We will have them." This so alarmed the savages, who had no doubt been told that their work must be quickly done on account of the soldiers in the garrison houses nearby, that they fled, and about this time Major Turner actually arrived with his company of soldiers.
Now the tide of battle began to turn. The townsmen were becom- ing organized, and Joseph Bradley, with a small party, secured the medicine box and packs of the enemy, thus causing the raiders great distress from lack of food on their homeward journey. Captain Samuel Ayer, with about twenty men, attacked the hostiles and forced them to give battle just as they were entering the woods on their retreat, and being reinforced by his son, who brought forty or fifty more men, engaged in a smart fight lasting about an hour, in which he retook some of the prisoners and killed nine of the invaders.
Mirick claims that the French, who were in a very critical condi- tion so far from their base, and who were fortunate not to be cut off entirely, left thirty of their number dead. Probably sixteen per- sons belonging to Haverhill were slain and about the same number carried off as prisoners. Many of the soldiers from Salem fell in the attack.
With this repulse of the enemy Essex County's Indian troubles began to subside. Gradually the frontier was extended and new towns built, which shielded Haverhill, as that settlement had long sheltered the interior of the county. There was an alarm at Haverhill, though no attack followed, on September 25, 1708. In 1711 the parsonage was fortified, the garrisons were kept in readiness, and a company of soldiers was organized and armed, who were equipped with snow- shoes. Snowshoes were also supplied the North Militia Regiment of Essex, fifty-six of whose men came from Haverhill. Until 1724 the enemy seemed to be omnipresent, small parties being scattered all over the country, plundering, murdering, and spreading terror in every direction. But Haverhill was not again seriously troubled.18
Although our attention has naturally been focused on the frontier settlement of Haverhill, other Essex County towns, all of which did their share in furnishing officers and men for the conflict, must not be forgotten.
18. For the account of Haverhill's Indian troubles we are much indebted to the Hon. John B. D. Cogswell's account in Hurd's "History of Essex County."
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There was one more encounter in these hostilities which must be related because of the melancholy and romantic fate of young Jona- than Frye, from Andover. A party of forty English led by John Lovewell, of Dunstable, a trained Indian fighter as hardy, wary, and cunning as the savages themselves, was ambushed by twice as many Indians at Pequauket, now Fryeburg, Maine, in May, 1725. The fight lasted all day, when the savages withdrew. Seventeen of the English made their way back through the woods to the fort at Ossipee Lake, twelve died in the woods, and their bodies were afterwards found and buried where they lay; three were "lost by the way and never found."
Jonathan Frye, a youth of twenty years, was the chaplain of this unfortunate little band, and showed himself as ready to fight as to pray. The English were at prayers when they first discovered the approach of the enemy. But, says an old record, "Mr. Frye and another scalped the first Indian who was slain." The story of the fight, written by the Reverend Thomas Symmes, of Bradford, from the testimony of an eye witness, is worth repeating :
"About the middle of the Afternoon, the Ingenious Mr. Jonathan Frie, only son of Capt. James Frie of Andover, a Young Gentleman of a Liberal Education, and who was chap- lain to the company and was greatly beloved by them for his excellent Performances and good Behavior and who fought with Undaunted Courage till that time of Day was mortally wounded. But when he could fight no longer, he prayed audi- bly severall times for the Preservation and Success of the Residue of the Company."
As the English retreated from the fight, some crawled off into the thick wood and died there, while a few who could walk started toward the camp. Among the latter was Chaplain Frye. When, after a few miles of painful effort, he saw he could go no further, he begged his friends, Eleazar Davis, of Concord, and Lieutenant Far- well, of Dunstable, to save themselves and leave him to his fate, "not to hinder themselves any longer for his sake; for that he found him- self Dying." Then he lay down, "telling them he should never rise more." He gave a message to be delivered to his father, that he "expected in a few hours to be in eternity and that he was not afraid
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to die." "Whereupon," says the record, "they left him; and this Hopeful Gentleman Mr. Frie who had the Journal of the March in his pocket has not been heard of since."
It is said by Samuel L. Knapp, Preceptor of Franklin Academy, Andover, in 1805, that Frye enlisted because his parents disapproved of his love for Miss Susannah Rogers. Although only fourteen, Susannah wrote a poetic lament for her lover, which is worthy of quotation, in part, if not for the excellence of its childish verse, at least for its expression of the poor girl's grief.
"Wounded and bleeding he was left
And of all sustenance bereft Within the hunting desert great None to lament his dismal fate A sad reward, you'll say, for those For whom he did his life expose He marched out with courage bold And fought the Indians uncontrolled
And many of the rebels slew. At last, a fatal bullet came And wounded this young man of fame
And pierced him through and made him fall But he upon the Lord did call He prayed aloud; the standers-by Heard him for grace and mercy cry
The Lord did hear and raised him so That he enabled was to go.
For many days he homeward went
Till he for food was almost spent
Then to the standers-by declared
Death did not find him unprepared.
And there they left him in the wood
Some scores of miles from any food Wandered and famished all alone None to relieve or hear his moan
And there without all doubt did die
A ballad, written in 1725, called the "Most-beloved song in all New England," contains this stanza alluding to Mr. Frye :
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"Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die They killed Lieutenant Robbins and wounded good young Frye Who was our English chaplain he many indians slew
And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew."
This incident of the abandoning of a dying comrade in the wilder- ness forms the groundwork of Hawthorne's tale of "Roger Malvin's Burial." The author stated that he based it upon an incident in Love- well's Fight, and the only case of a comrade's being deliberately left is that of the young chaplain from Andover. Therefore, it is almost a certainty that with name and age changed, Jonathan Frye is Roger Malvin, and Eleazar Davis, who survived to reach home, is Reuben Bourne.19
This chapter cannot pretend to be a complete account of the rela- tions, unfortunately for the most part hostile, between the Indians and the settlers in Essex County. Mention might be made of the cap- tivity of Isaac Foster, of Andover, who was taken by a band of Ottawas while scouting near Lake George in 1756, and who, after traveling as far as Detroit with his Indian master, finally returned home after an absence of three years and two months. And the exploit in 1759 of Lieutenant Jacob Farrington, also of Andover, should be related because, while it received the highest praise of his contemporaries, to us it seems cruel and bloodthirsty. Caleb Stark, in his "Reminiscences of the French War," describes it:
"The night before the surprise of St. Francis the Indians were engaged in a wedding frolick. Lieutenant Jacob Far- rington of Andover, Mass., and Benjamin Bradley of Con- cord, N. H., two of the stoutest men of their time, headed one of Rogers' parties. They came to the door of the house where the wedding had taken place and rushed against it so violently that the hinges gave way and Bradley fell headlong among the Indians who were asleep upon the floor. They were all slain before they could make any resistance."
Enough has been told to show the basis of the inevitable conflict between the white and red races, how the Pequot War and King Philip's War touched the lives of our citizens, though they were
19. For the account of Chaplain Frye acknowledgment is made to Bailey's "Historical Sketches of Andover," pp. 186-93.
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waged at a distance, and how these disturbances were followed by continual raids from the north which fell with dire effect upon our frontier towns. Today the red man no longer exists within the borders of our country; a whole race which with different treatment might have made a distinct contribution to American life has been wiped out. Dr. Moorehead recalls a conversation a long time ago with Dr. Charles Eastman, himself of Sioux blood, and a graduate of Dartmouth College. If the writer remembers correctly, Eastman took the position that the Colonists might have avoided most of the wars, or, at least, those of far-reaching extent, such as occurred in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine. During the discussion it was suggested that the Colonists could have assigned certain river valleys as Indian territory, retaining the rest of the country. There is merit in this suggestion, for if one reads the old records carefully, one is impressed with the continual complaints of Indians concerning white appropriation of practically all the coastline and rivers, regard- less of deeds or agreements. Since the white population was not extensive until about 1720, the settlers could have assigned the Indians the entire Penobscot Valley, the Upper Merrimac, and the Housa- tonic, keeping for themselves control of all lands from the Connecticut to the lower Penobscot.
As time passed, and Indian population declined, they might have extended their jurisdiction over more territory.
We do not lack, here in New England, monuments to those who achieved prominence through wars against the red man. But we have very few memorials to the men and women, who, it may be truthfully said, were fighting not for conquest but to maintain their very existence. The writer, when visiting the Thames Valley above New London, viewed with mingled feelings a statue of Uncas. He was not a pleasant person. He was guilty of murder and became a traitor to his own people. Dartmouth College has honored Samson Occum. Miss Sears has placed by her museum a splendid figure in bronze of "Pumugangwet-he who shoots at the stars." This Indian is designed by Philip S. Sears, the sculptor. Cyrus Dallin, Esq., the famous sculptor of Indian subjects, has made a statue to Massasoit at Plymouth and erected another memorial, entitled "The Hunter," at Arlington. These few monuments complete the list.
Nearly two hundred and fifty years have passed since we broke the spirit of Metacom's people, and inherited their possessions. The
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bitterness of those long yesterdays is forgotten, and we owe some- thing to that great leader who fought a good fight and from whom we took all he had. Slight recompense though it might be, a fitting memorial in bronze should be erected to him. Had he been white, we would have eulogized him long ago. His was a "lost cause." Yet he gave his life for it. No man is able to do more.
BIBLIOGRAPHY-For the books referred to in this chapter and suggested to those readers who are interested in the subject, see the end of Chapter II.
Natural History
CHAPTER V
Natural History
By Ernest S. Dodge, Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
No mortal knows or will ever find out what were the earliest animals and plants of Essex County. There are within its limits a half dozen patches of rock, older apparently than Paleozoic, which are clearly volcanic in origin, or else are equally clearly deposits of land wash on sea floors. So there was land and sea in what is now Essex County, about as early as earth and water are proved by recog- nizable signs anywhere in the world. For the New World is, as a matter of fact, on the whole the older one.
Presumably, sea weeds not unlike those of today grew on these old sea floors, animals long extinct and quite unlike those of the present time swam in the waters over them, and other animals and plants inhabited the land around, about as living things seem to have done ever since the first beginnings of the record.
But the oldest fossils actually found within the county are in two small patches of greenish-gray slate and white limestone at Nahant. Here, in 1851, Louis Agassiz discovered animal remains, by which Foerste, in 1889, proved those rocks to be Lower Cambrian, at the very bottom of the Paleozoic, and thus gave a fixed point from which to establish the age of others nearby. From Nahant and the same formation outside the county some forty species are known. All are invertebrates; and those from Nahant, a dozen species in all, are mostly the snail-like, straight-shelled, sea butterflies, which in ancient days were a much more conspicuous element in the local fauna than they are now.
In 1915, at Glen Mills in Rowley, on the Newburyport Turnpike, fossil brachiopods probably of early Devonian age were discovered
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THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
in the rocks of the Newbury volcanic complex. This established the age of those rocks, which had been supposed to be Carboniferous, as somewhat earlier.
Other fossils have been reported from other portions of the county; but nothing is certainly identified in any other of the hard rocks. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of geologic time up to the Ice Age, there are manifest signs of sea and land, inhabited presum- ably by something. Rocks of the same age as most of those of Essex County contain the coal of Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, and nearer by, the coal of Rhode Island and the graphite of southern Massachu- setts. Less than a hundred miles west, in the Connecticut Valley, is the most remarkable assemblage of dinosaur tracks anywhere in the world. Doubtless, Essex County has had much the same abundant and strange life as other districts nearby where the remains have sur- vived. But all southeastern New England, except the Connecticut Valley, is an ancient mountain district now worn down to its roots, and as is well nigh universal in such a district, fossils are rare, and Essex County has even fewer than its small share. But the Essex County rocks cover most of geologic time, and any creature that has ever inhabited northeastern North America may also have lived there.
For the next actual fossils, one must skip from some of the earlier pages of the great stone book to almost the end of its last chapter, which deal with the Ice Age, when man had already arrived in Europe. Here, again, the county fares badly. Other parts of North America have remains of elephants and llamas and sabre-tooth cats. Mastodon skeletons have been dug out of the glacial drift as nearby and all around as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Nova Scotia. But Essex County gets, mostly from near the old Pavilion Hotel in Gloucester, only a half dozen bivalve molluscs, virtually all belonging to surviving genera, one a horse mussel, and one hardly to be distinguished from the common soft-shell clam. Man does not appear in New England until history has begun.
In colonial days the entire district was like many parts that still survive. The marshes and the dunes, with their smaller animals and their vegetation, remain much as they were. The herbs that served the colonies for dyes and medicines are with us still. But the may- flower, once abundant, has been rooted out like a noxious weed. It still lingers, but those who know where are not telling. The laurel,
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NATURAL HISTORY
that once covered hillsides, has gone for Christmas greens, much of it stolen for sale. Here and there, however, especially near water, patches still remain.
The woods were much as they are still, except that there were more of them; and though the largest trees were no larger than now, the proportion of large trees was much greater. They were mostly the familiar hard-woods, with some hemlock and white pine.
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