USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 12
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MARY ROWLANDSON'S NARRATIVE
"In my travels an Indian came to me, and told me, if I were willing, he and his squaw would run away and go home along with me. I told him no, I was not willing to run away, but desired to wait God's time, that I might go home quietly and without fear. Oh, the wonderful power of God that I have seen, and the experience I have had! I have been in he midst of those roaring lions and savage bears, that feared neither God nor man, nor the Devil, by night and day, alone and in company, sleeping all sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me, in word or action.
"So I took my leave of them, and in coming along my heart melted into tears, more than all the while I was with them, and was almost swallowed up in the thoughts that ever I should go home again. About the sun being down, Mr. Hoar and myself and the two Indians came to Lancaster, and a solemn sight it was to me. There had I lived many comfortable years amongst my relations and neighbors, and now not one Christian to be seen, nor one house left standing. We went on to a farmhouse that was yet standing, where we lay all night, and a comfortable lodging we had, though nothing but straw to lie on. The Lord preserved us in safety, and raised us up again in the morning, and carried us along, and before noon, we came to Concord."
Weetamoo had not much longer to live. She returned to her home coun- try, and was betrayed to the English. Her band of twenty-six Indians were killed to a man, but she made her escape by swimming, supported by fragments of wood. Hunger and exposure proved too much for her, however, and the next day her dead body was found lying on the shore at the very spot where she had helped Philip to get away from his English pursuers in the preceding summer. Quennapin died about the same time, shot at Newport for his crimes against the English.
CHAPTER XI. Second Period of Settlement --- The Tragic Romance of the Huguenot Village at Oxford
The second period of the settlement of Worcester County comprises the more than half century which elapsed between the close of King Philip's War and the erection of the territory as a county in 1731. In this time Lancaster, Brookfield, Mendon and Worcester were resettled, and nine other towns were incorporated and established-Oxford in 1693, Leicester in 1713, Sutton and Rutland in 1714, Westboro in 1717, Shrewsbury in 1720, Uxbridge and Lunenburg in 1727, and Southboro in 1728.
Not until after 1726 was the region free from the threat of Indian attack. The settlements were still on the frontier of the Bay Colony. War followed war, as England and France fought over one dispute after another. King William's War endured from 1689 to 1697, Queen Anne's War from 1702 to 1713, and Lovewell's war, of minor importance in a broad sense, but never- theless bringing its tragedy into the Nipmuck Country, from 1722 to 1726.
The French commanders made full use of their Indian allies in harassing the white settlements. Frequent descents were made upon New England and our county towns were often their objectives. Sometimes small war parties of Indians roamed the country, picking off a settler here and there, and occa- sionally taking captives. At other times attacks were made by large forces of French and Indians combined. With the stories of the atrocities of the war with the Nipmucks, Narragansetts and Poconokets still fresh in mind, and with tidings of outrages by Canadian and New York savages, all along the English frontier, it is small wonder that the proprietors of newly organized plantations were slow to encourage settlement. Had there been peace instead of war, all of the original towns and others, as well, would undoubtedly have come into being much earlier.
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The only new settlement of the seventeenth century was that of Oxford. Its establishment and the early years of its original existence constitute one of the tragic romances of American history. Its people were Huguenots, trans- ported from genial, old-settled France and set down in a virgin wilderness and austere climate, with only savages as near neighbors. The Huguenots were not of tough and sturdy peasant stock. They were not of the type of the natural pioneer. Love of adventure was foreign to their minds. They repre- sented the very best of French civilization of their day, in blood and intellect and culture. Their farmers and craftsmen were the best in Europe.
In the period following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, in October, 1685, the persecution of these zealous Calvinists, deprived of their religious liberty, took awful forms of torment and death. Though forbidden to emigrate, half a million of them, the flower of the population of France, escaped the vigilance of the authorities and sought asylum in other countries. Many thousands of them fled to England, and of these many hun- dreds crossed the ocean to America. Their natural choice was the south Atlantic coast, where they found a climate not unlike that of their homeland. Substantial settlement was made in South Carolina, chiefly in Charleston and its neighboring country. But one little band was guided by a fate which proved unkind to the very heart of the Nipmuck Country.
They were few in number, perhaps never more than a hundred souls of all ages. But they faced the situation squarely and bravely, and entered upon the long and toilsome task of creating out of lands mostly forest-covered, a farming village, which, had they been able to carry on, would have become a replica of a countryside of sunny France. They built neat little houses and a chapel. They planted vineyards with vines from home and cottage gardens in which blossomed the French flowers that were dear to them. They opened and cultivated broad fields and had their orchards. They labored hard and intelligently, bringing into use, so far as they could with facilities at hand, the best farming technique the world then knew.
In fact, a chief motive of Charles II and of the English proprietors of these lands in encouraging the settlement by Huguenots, was the belief that the plantations would prove a valuable working example to English settlers of agricultural methods far beyond what they themselves had known in England. The proprietors had also in mind the craftmanship in various trades pos- sessed by these Frenchmen, which apart from any natural sympathy, had made them welcome wherever they had gone seeking new homes. Their skill in these arts might be passed on the English-speaking people, it was argued, and further improve conditions in the Colony. All these hopes might have been realized had not the French and English sovereigns indulged in war, the scenes of which were extended into New England.
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In 1682, the General Court, "having information that some gentlemen in England are desirous to remove themselves into the colony, and (if it may be) settle themselves under Massachusetts," granted to Major Robert Thompson, William Stoughton and Joseph Dudley, a tract of land eight miles square, "in any free place," for a township. Surveys were made, and the territory selected was that about the Praying Town of Manchaug, which had been broken up in the recent war. The plantation was named New Oxford. Plans for settlement proceeded slowly, and probably their fulfillment would have been long deferred, had it not been for the strange repercussion from the unbridled cruelty of King Louis' soldiers three thousand miles away.
Among the French refugees in England was Gabriel Bernon, who, until his self-imposed banishment in 1685, had been a merchant in Bordeaux, and was evidently a person of ample fortune. In 1687 he made the acquaintance of Robert Thompson, who, by-the-bye, chanced at the time to be president of John Eliot's supporting body, the "Society for Promoting and Propagating the Gospel in New England." Incidentally, he made Bernon a member of that body. What was really important, he interested him in the New Oxford plantation. The French merchant considered the enterprise in the light of an opportunity offered his fellow-exiles, and presently we find a share in New Oxford transferred to his ownership. Doubtless he pictured a safe refuge where his friends could establish homes and farms and rear their families in the faith of Calvin, with no fear of the torture chamber and stake.
His next move was to send to Boston one Isaac Bertrand De Tuffeau to serve as his agent in the Bay Colony and to do preliminary work toward founding the settlement. In April of the next year, 1688, he himself set sail for New England with his family and servants and a band of emigre com- patriots, whose passage he paid, and arrived in Boston July 5. By then he held grants for 2,500 acres of the plantation. The same summer thirty Huguenot families were living in New Oxford, and with them was M. Bondet, their minister.
A scattered village took form rapidly. They built houses and a little church, and on the river in the valley a gristmill, sawmill and wash leather mill, driven by waterwheels. Their farms increased in size year by year, and, under their expert tillage, produced prodigally. They pressed familiar wines from their grapes. M. Bernon did not join them, but established himself in Newport and purchased from them large quantities of specially dressed furs, which were sent over the trail to Providence, whence they were shipped by water to their destination. Their patron's business was to supply the hatters and glovers of Boston and Newport with their raw materials. Hat making was a specialty with these French people. They "alone possessed the secret of a liquid composition to prepare rabbit, hare and beaver skins." The dress- ing of chamois skins and the making of gloves were also among the arts in
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which they excelled. At Oxford their "wash-leather mill" was their "chamois- erie." There they dressed the skins not only of rabbit, hare and beaver, but of otter, raccoon, deer and other animals.
The Oxford Huguenots, under the initiation and enterprise of Bernon, also went into the production of naval stores, especially pitch and tar from the forests. Bernon crossed the sea to promote this industry and made sales in England in spite of vigorous opposition. It was even suggested to the Board of Trade that he be appointed Superintendent of Manufacture in America, but the idea was not favorably received, the policy of the govern- ment being to discourage colonial manufactures.
These French people might have been happy, even in this strange, alien country, had it not been for their well-warranted distrust and fear of the Indians. It is quite likely that they experienced petty annoyances from the thievery and begging of their immediate native neighbors, for there was a village not far distant from their homes. They must have heard the true stories of the savage cruelties of the war which had ended only a little more than a decade before.
High on the eminence now known as Fort Hill, which rises steeply from French River, they built a citadel the like of which was not to be found in all New England. It was of solid masonry, and impregnable to any foes who had no artillery. It is easily understood that these people could not associate safety with a fortification made of wood. They were accustomed to castles massively constructed of stone. So they built their fort with walls of stone.
The fort was an enclosure about seventy-five by one hundred and five feet, built of the rough surface stones, without mortar, and having loopholes. Within were the blockhouse, a well and other conveniences for the garrison. In 1884, the Huguenot Memorial Society of Oxford caused the removal of the debris from the ruins, which brought to light the cellar and the chimneys and other details of the structure.
The main building of the blockhouse was eighteen by thirty feet, with a double-walled cellar twelve by twenty-four feet and six feet deep. The inner walls supported the floor beams. The outer wall, three feet from the inner, was made of heavy boulders laid on a foundation three feet deep, and sup- ported the logs forming the walls of the house. The workmen came upon a covered drain seventy feet long, most of it in good condition. The main fire- place, in the middle of the north side of the house, was nearly ten feet wide at the opening. The broad foundation supporting it and the chimney was almost wholly outside of the house, and gave ample room for an oven besides. A smaller fireplace faced it across the room. Attached to the main building was an annex, fourteen by sixteen feet, having no cellar, but at one corner a flight of steps lead down into the main cellar. On its east side was a broad foundation for fireplace and chimney extending five feet out from the wall.
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In the rear of the annex and doubtless opening into it was a separate house twelve feet square, near the center of the fort, used, it would seem, for arms and stores. Beneath it was a circular underground chamber, six feet deep, which is believed to have been the magazine.
The fort proper, of stone, was a solid structure, planned with much mili- tary skill. It was a complete quadrangular citadel with two bastions, with a field of fire flanking every face. The main bastion at the southwest angle was more fully developed than that at the northeast, and thus enfiladed an outer breastwork and ditch which extended westerly from it for nearly one hundred feet. This breastwork was clearly the south line of a stockade which protected the main approach on the west side, and also cattle and chattels too bulky to be brought within the fort. A driveway for carts was made through the west wall, and close to it broad flat stones were laid as a walk for those who went on foot.
The fort stood in the midst of ten acres of cleared land, and this was intensively cultivated, presumably as a convenient source of communal food supply should the inhabitants be compelled to live in garrison. An old manu- script relates that there was a garden hard by the fort on the west in which grew asparagus, grapes, plums and gooseberries, and flowers, too. The site remains untouched, and is permitted to grow over with bushes. About it is the Huguenot field. That is all that remains of the deserted village, excepting the wild grapes, descendants of the vines which were carefully brought over the water and cherished two and a half centuries ago. A monument by the roadside down the hill commemorates the settlement.
Worship-Their form of worship was simple, yet impressive. They were well versed in the scriptures, and excelled in music, having a translation of the Psalms and the hymns of Beza and Marot-called the French Watts- set to the sweet harmonies of Goudamel, an early French composer, and fol- lowed a liturgy modeled by John Calvin, which had been long used in their native land. In their Sabbath worship, first, several chapters of the Bible were read by a lecteur (who was also precentor or chorister ), closing with the ten commandments, then began a service by the pastor, an invocation, and an invitation to prayer and general confession, the congregation the while stand- ing. Next came the singing of a Psalm by the congregation, seated. "This was the people's part-the song in a ritual without other audible responses, and all the Huguenot fervor broke out in those strains that had for genera- tions expressed the faith and religious joy of a persecuted race." After a short extempore prayer came the sermon, and after that general supplications, closing with the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. The benediction fol- lowed, with the word of peace. Their form of church government appears to have been as simple as their worship, for the pastor, with the elders, elected by the membership, controlled all the interests of the body.
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SECOND PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT
King William's War had been raging for some years before the Hugue- nots felt its horrors. In 1694, the children of the Alard family were picking berries in the woods when they were surprised by prowling Indians. The oldest, a daughter, was killed, and the others were made captives. An early writer records that they "were not found for several days," but others have conjectured that they were carried away to Canada. However that may be, the settlers were terrified, and quickly took refuge within the fort, where they lived through the summer. Their home fields were unattended, and the crops were ruined by their own cattle and the wild deer.
The massacre of the Johnson or Jansen family on August 25 of that year was the finishing stroke. The Jansens lived near the present Webster high- way a mile or more south of the town hall. The father had gone to Wood- stock, fifteen miles distant. Evening was approaching when Indians stole up to the house and entered it. The three children were within, and the savages killed them against the stone fireplace. Mrs. Jansen managed to escape their notice, and, with her baby in her arms, started for Woodstock to warn her husband, for he was expected home and would walk into a death trap. For- tune was unkind to the Jansens. There were two trails to Woodstock. The wife took the one, the husband returned by the other. He was met at his door and killed.
When the tragic news reached the fort the settlers were demoralized. They resolved to depart. In the old country they had been compelled to flee from savage enemies. Here in the New World again they must steal away quickly and secretly from foes no more savage than those in France, but more subtle and alert. Old authors paint sad pictures of the departure-the final prayer in the little church, the farewell to their dead in the burying ground, the burial of the Jansens in one grave, while the weeping wife and mother stood by, and the anxious flight through the forest to safety.
A year after the close of the war in 1697, resettlement was attempted by a small band of Huguenots, and eight or ten families were living on the farms. But they lived in constant fear of Indian attack. A letter from the Earl of Bellomont, one of the proprietors, to the Lords of Trade in London, dated July 9, 1700, states that there had been about forty Indian families settled "about the town of Woodstock and New Oxford and that it was obvious that the Jesuits had seduced these forty families," for they had deserted their houses and corn and had gone to live with the Penacock Indians, which was regarded so ominous a sign that "some of the English have forsaken their houses and farms." The reference was not to English residents of Oxford, for their settlement was not made until 1713. The final outcome was that the French refused to risk their lives any longer and in 1704 departed, never to return as a racial group. But continuation of Huguenot names among the
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townspeople of succeeding generations proves that some of the original fami- lies later resumed residence in the town.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing in 1879 to George F. Daniels, author of The Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country of Oxford Prior to 1713, said: "My father visited the site of the little colony in 1819 and 1825. He traced the lines of the fort, and was 'regaled with the perfumes of shrubbery and the grapes hanging in clusters on the vines planted by the Huguenots above a century before.' I visited the place between twenty and thirty years ago, and found many traces of the old settlement. After Plymouth, I do not think there is a locality in New England more interesting.
"This little band of French families, transported from the shore of the Bay of Biscay to the wilds of our New England interior, reminds me of the isolated group of magnolias which we find surrounded by the ordinary forest trees in our Massachusetts town of Manchester. It is a surprise to meet with them, and we wonder how they come there, but they glorify the scenery with their tropical flowers, and sweeten it with their fragrance. Such a pleasing surprise is the effect of coming upon this small and transitory abiding place of the men and women who left their beloved and beautiful land for the sake of their religion."
CHAPTER XII.
Northern Indians Make Repeated Raids on Lancaster
The resettlement of Lancaster was begun in 1678. There was some delay owing to an act of the General Court, which placed deserted villages in the same class with the new plantations, and required preliminary petitioning and the appointment of a paternal committee whose duty is was "to view, and hear, and consider, and order, and enjoin obedience to the form and manner of resettlement." But finally the formalities were complied with, and the village was rebuilt and started to grow. The church which the savages had burned was replaced, and in 1690 John Whiting, Harvard 1685, was ordained as minister. When Indian troubles began again the settlement had fifty fami- lies, probably totaling about two hundred seventy-five people.
The colonists did not forget the lessons of the previous war. Lancaster had eight garrison houses scattered over a wide area, and the families in the vicinity of each found safety while they were within its protecting walls. In view of the attacks which followed it is well to designate these strongholds- Josiah White's, of ten men, upon the east side of the Neck; Philip Goss', nine men, near the North River bridge; Thomas Sawyer's, eleven men, in central South Lancaster ; Nathaniel Wilder's, eight men, at the old trucking house site on George Hill; Ephraim Roper's, seven men, a little to the north of Nathaniel Wilder's; Lieutenant Thomas Wilder's, thirteen men, on the Old Common ; Ensign John Moore's, eight men, at Wataquadock; and Henry Willard's, eight men, at Still River.
When it was learned that war had broken out which would involve the people of the French and English colonies, and that Indians might soon be coming down out of Canada as allies of the French, the general abandonment of the outlying settlements seemed certain. As things turned out in the case of Lancaster, as well as of some other plantations, this would have been the
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wise move. But the General Court quickly passed a special act forbidding removal from these towns, undere severe penalty. The motive, probably, was to maintain the line of frontier posts. The fatal error committed by the authorities lay in not following up the act with sufficient military forces to insure protection for the settlers, not only within their fortified houses, but while they were doing the imperatively necessary work in the fields, and look- ing after their cattle, and laying in their supply of winter firewood. There was ample warning of immediate danger. In April, 1692, hunters reported seeing a body of three hundred Indians in the vicinity of Mt. Wachusett. These could not have been Nipmucks, or others of the southern New England tribes, for these had lost all tribal cohesion. On the face of it, they were war- riors of distant and undoubtedly hostile tribes. Yet the military commanders at Boston made little effort to guard the settlements.
"By day or night mothers grew pale at every half-heard cry of bird or beast," wrote Henry S. Nourse, "imagining it the death-shriek of a dear one, or the dread war-whoop of the savages. The able-bodied men and boys had to delve all day in the planting season or expect to starve the next winter, and their unintermitting toil ill fitted them to watch every second night, as they were obliged to do in garrison. If they remained in their unfortified houses they were exposed to worse than death in case of an attack. But they could hope for little help from the Bay towns."
For years, with only a brief gap between wars, the townspeople lived in a state of continuous "watch and ward," always in fear of a skulking foe. There were frequent alarms, and an occasional attack. The first blow was struck by a prowling band which surprised the home of Peter Joslin on the Neck, while he was absent in the field. They butchered his wife and three young children, and a woman who lived with them, and carried into captivity his sixteen-year- old sister-in-law Elizabeth and his six-year-old son Peter. Tradition has it that Elizabeth was singing at her spinning wheel as the Indians stole up to the house, and her sweet voice so stirred their savage breasts that she was spared the fate of her sister and afterwards was ransomed. But little Peter was murdered on the widnerness trail.
The forenoon of September II, 1697, saw nineteen men, women and chil- dren slaughtered, and eight others led away into captivity, three of them never to return. Many of the men were at work in the fields or at their own homes, away from the garrison houses. The Indians were in force, and divided up in a number of bands, that they might strike at various points at the same time. They had been skulking in the forest awaiting the most favor- able moment. The settlers were wholly unprepared.
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