Historic Towns of New England

September 18, 1675, “that most fatal day, the saddest that ever befel New England,” says a contemporary, “Captain Lothrop, with his choice company of young men, the very flower of the county of Essex,” marched boldly down the street, across South Meadows, up Long Hill, into the woods stretching away to Hatfield Meadows. Confident in his strength, scorning the enemy, Captain Lothrop pushed on through the narrow path, with not a flanker or vanguard thrown out. Extending along his left lay a swampy thicket through which crept a nameless brook. Gradually, the swamp narrowed, and turned to the right across the line of march. At this spot the combined force of the enemy lay in ambush, and into this trap marched Lothrop and his men. While the teams were slowly dragging their loads through the mire, it is said the soldiers laid down their guns to pluck and eat the grapes which grew in abundance by the way. Be this true or not, at this spot they were surprised and stunned by the fierce war-whoop, the flash and roar of muskets with their bolts of death. Captain Lothrop and many of his command fell at the first fire. The men of Pocumtuck sank, the “Flower of Essex” wilted before the blast, and —

“Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turn’d the unwilling waters red.”

The sluggish stream was baptized for aye, “Bloody Brook.”

Captain Samuel Moseley, who was searching the woods for Indians, hearing the firing, was soon on the ground. Too late to save, he did his best to avenge; he charged repeatedly, scattering the enemy, who swarmed as often as dispersed. But he defied all their efforts to surround him. His men exhausted with their long efforts, Moseley was about to retire, when just in the nick of time Major Treat appeared, with a force of English and Mohegans. The enemy were driven westward and were pursued until nightfall. The united force then marched to Deerfield, bearing their wounded, and leaving the dead where they fell.

Mather says, “this was a black and fatal day wherein there was eight persons made widows and six and twenty children made orphans, all in one little Plantation.” That plantation was Deerfield, and these were the heavy tidings which the worn-out soldiers carried to the stricken survivors of the hamlet. Of the seventeen fathers and brothers who left them in the morning, not one returned to tell the tale. The next morning, Treat and Moseley marched to Bloody Brook and buried the slain – “64 men in one dreadful grave.” The names of sixty-three are known, and also of seven wounded. John Stebbins, ancestor of the Deerfield tribe of that name, is the only man in Lothrop’s command known to have escaped unhurt.

The reported force of the enemy was a thousand warriors, and their loss ninety-six. This must be taken with a grain of allowance.

Deerfield was now considered untenable, and the poor remnant of her people were scattered in the towns below.

October 5, Springfield was attacked. The Indians laid the same plan as at Deerfield and Northfield. Only notice given by a friendly Indian during the night before saved the town from total destruction. The assailants were Indians who had lived for generations neighbors and friends of the Springfield people. On the 4th they had made earnest protestations of friendship, on the strength of which the garrison had marched to Hadley. This deliberate treachery was probably planned by Philip.

October 19, a large party made an attack on Hatfield, but was repulsed.

As the spring of 1676 advanced, a large body of Indians collected at Peskeompskut for the purpose of catching a year’s stock of shad and salmon. Parties from thence occasionally harassed the settlers below, who knew that when the fishing season was over, the enemy would constantly infest the valley, and watch every chance to kill the unprotected. They therefore determined to take the initiative, and at nightfall of May 18, a party of about a hundred and fifty men under Captain William Turner made a night march, surprised the camp at daylight the next morning and destroyed many of the enemy.

The homeward march was delayed so long that Indians from neighboring camps began to appear. A released captive reported that Philip with a thousand warriors was at hand, and as the enemy swarmed on rear and flank, the retreat became almost a panic. The straggling and the wounded were cut off. Captain Turner was shot while crossing Green River, about a mile from the battle-field, and the party, under Captain Samuel Holyoke, reached Hatfield with the loss of forty-two men.

The warring Indians never recovered from the blow at Peskeompskut. Besides their slain, they lost their year’s stock of fish, and the hundreds of acres of Indian corn they had planted with the assurance of a permanent abode in that region. The broken, disheartened clans drifted aimlessly eastward. They quarrelled among themselves. Philip, with a few followers, skulked back to Pokanoket, where he fell, August 12, 1676. The war ended soon after.

In the spring of 1677, some of the old settlers came back and planted their deserted fields; preparations for building were well advanced by some of the more venturesome, when, September 19, they were surprised by Ashpelon with a party of Indians from Canada, and all were either killed or captured.

In 1679 the General Court passed an act regulating the resettlement of deserted towns, requiring the consent of certain authorities who should prescribe “In what form, way & manner, such townes shall be settled & erected, wherein they are required to haue a principal respect to neerness and conveniency of habitation for securitie against enemyes & more comfort for Xtian comunion & enjoyment of God’s worship & education of children in schools & civility.”

By virtue of this act a committee was appointed under whose direction a resettlement of the town began in the spring of 1682. Induced by grants of land, new settlers appeared, and the plantation progressed rapidly. In 1686, sixty Proprietors are named. This year, young John Williams appears on the scene as candidate for the ministry; and, September 21, he received a “call.” He was married July 20, 1687, to Eunice, daughter of Rev. Eleazer Mather, of Northampton. October 18, 1688, he was ordained, and the First Church was organized.

The second meeting-house was built in 1684, the third in 1695, the fourth, a very elaborate one, in 1729, the fifth, the present brick structure, in 1824, and it is still occupied by the First Church. In all these, save the last, the worshippers were “seated” by authority.

In 1688, on the news of the Revolution in England, the seizure of Andros in Boston and the call for the election of representatives to organize a new government for the Colony, the men of Deerfield acted promptly. Lieutenant Thomas Wells, a commissioned officer under Andros, was selected to represent the town, and the selectmen sent to Boston a certificate to that effect. These men were fully aware that in the case of a failure of the movement, the vindictive Andros would wreak his vengeance upon all concerned. Shrewd men were at the fore, and Randolph himself might search the town records in vain for any trace of these proceedings or other treasonable action.

During King William’s War, the town was harassed by the enemy; drought and insects ruined the crops, and a fatal distemper prevailed. There was question of deserting the place, but bolder counsels controlled. Baron Castine with an army from Canada attempted a surprise of the town, September 15, 1694, but he was discovered just in time to close the gates, and was driven back with small loss to the defenders. Another army organized in Canada for the same purpose turned back on being discovered by scouts. During this trial Deerfield suffered great losses, but pluck carried her through.

Queen Anne’s War broke out in 1702. The population here was about three hundred souls. The fortifications on Meeting-house Hill were strengthened, and the house of the commander, Captain Wells, about forty rods south, was palisaded. In May, 1703, Lord Cornbury, Governor of New York, sent word that he had learned through his spies of an expedition fitting out against Deerfield. Soon after, Major Peter Schuyler sent a similar warning to Rev. John Williams. These warnings were emphasized in July by news that the Eastern Indians had made a simultaneous attack on all the settlements in Maine, only six weeks after signing a treaty of peace with the most solemn declarations of eternal friendship. Twenty soldiers were sent here to reinforce the home guard, and all were on the alert; two men, however, were captured October 8, and were carried to Canada. On the alarm which followed sixteen more men were sent here. October 21, Rev. John Williams writes, on behalf of the town, to Governor Dudley:

“ …We have been driven from our houses & home lots into the fort. (there are but 10 houselots in the fort); some a mile, some two miles, whereby we have suffered much loss. We have in the alarms several times been wholly taken off from any business, the whole town kept in, our children of 12 or 13 years and under we have been afraid to improve in the field for fear of the enemy… We have been crowded togather into houses to the preventing of indoor affairs being carryd on to any advantage, … several say they would freely leave all they have & go away were it not that it would be disobedience to authority & a discouraging their bretheren. The frontier difficulties of a place so remote from others & so exposed as ours, are more than can be known, if not felt…”

Nothing can add to this simple and pathetic statement.

The months dragged slowly on, and no enemy. The deep winter snows seemed a safe barrier against invasion. The people, breathing more freely, gradually resumed their wonted ways; but dark clouds loomed up, all unseen, just beyond the northern horizon. In the early morning of February 29, 1703-4, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, an army of French and Indians under Hertel de Rouville burst upon the sleeping town, and killed or captured nearly all of the garrison and inhabitants within the fort. Through criminal carelessness the snow had been allowed to drift against the palisades, until, being covered with a hard crust, it afforded an easy and noiseless entrance, so that the enemy were dispersed among the houses before they were discovered.

The captives were collected in the house of Ensign John Sheldon, which, being fired by the enemy only on their retreat, was easily saved, and stood until 1848. It was popularly considered the only one not burned, and has gone into history as the “Old Indian House.” Its front door, hacked by the Indians, is now preserved in Memorial Hall. By sunrise the torch and tomahawk had done their work. The blood of forty-nine murdered men, women and children reddened the snow. Twenty-nine men, twenty-four women and fifty-eight children were made captive, and in a few hours the spoil-encumbered enemy were on their three-hundred miles’ march over the desolate snows to Canada. Twenty of the captives were murdered on the route, one of them Eunice Williams, wife of the minister. The spot where she fell is marked by a monument of enduring granite.

The desolated town was at once made a military post, and strongly garrisoned. Of the survivors, the men were impressed into the service, and the non-combatants sent to the towns below. Persistent efforts were made to recover the captives. Ensign Sheldon was sent three times to Canada on this errand. One by one, and against great odds, most of the surviving men and women were recovered; but a large proportion of the children remained in Canada. Many of their descendants have been traced by Miss Baker, author of True Stories of New England Captives, among them some of the most distinguished men and women of Canadian history.

The inhabitants of Deerfield gradually returned to their desolate hearthstones and abandoned fields, and held their own during the war, but not without severe suffering and a considerable loss of life. Peace was established by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

Nine years of quiet followed, in which the town prospered. The Indians mingled freely with the people, bartering the products of their hunting for English goods. A permanent peace was hoped for, but this hope was blasted on the outbreak of the Eastern Indians in 1722. Incited by the Canadians, the northern tribes joined in the war; and Father Rasle’s war brought the usual frontier scenes of fire and carnage; the trading Indians being the most effective leaders or guides for marauding parties. Many Deerfield men were in the service, notably as scouts. Inured to hardship, skilled in woodcraft, they were more than a match for the savage in his own haunts and in his own methods of warfare.

In 1729, before the new meeting-house was finished, the people were called to mourn the death of their loved and revered pastor, Rev. John Williams, so widely known as “The Redeemed Captive.” His successor was Rev. Jonathan Ashley, who was ordained in 1732 and died in 1780.

Rev. Stephen Williams, a son of Rev. John Williams, the first pastor, was born in Deerfield in 1693, taken captive to Canada in 1704, redeemed in 1705, graduated at Harvard in 1713, settled as minister at Longmeadow in 1716, dying there in 1782; he was Chaplain in the Louisburg expedition in 1745, and in the regiment of Col. Ephraim Williams in his fatal campaign in 1755, and again in the Canadian campaign of 1756. His portrait, reproduced on page 428, was painted about 1748; it is now in the Memorial Hall of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, within fourscore rods of the spot where the original was born, and whence he was carried into captivity.

On the closing of Father Rasle’s war the settlement expanded; trade and home manufactures flourished. Deerfield remained no longer the frontier town of the valley, and the brunt of the next border war (of 1743) was felt by the outlying settlements. The one sad blow upon this town fell at a little hamlet called The Bars. August 25, 1746, the families of Samuel Allen and John Amsden, while working in a hay-field on Stebbins Meadow, with a small guard, were surprised by a party of Indians from Canada, and five men were killed, one girl wounded and one boy captured. This followed close on the fall of Fort Massachusetts, and danger of French invasion was felt to be imminent. Active measures were taken for defense; the forts were repaired and the woods filled with scouts.

The closing war with France found Deerfield more strongly bulwarked, and still less exposed to attack. No blood was shed within her narrowed bounds. Her citizens held prominent positions, and did their part in the campaigns which resulted in the conquest of Canada and the consequent immunity from savage depredations. The nest destroyed, the sting of the hornets was no longer felt or feared. The last raid on Massachusetts soil is described in the following mutilated despatch to the military authorities in Deerfield:

    “Colrain, March y

21, 1759.

“Sir: – These are to inform you that yesterday as Jo

McKoon [Kowen] & his wife were coming from Daniel Donitsons & had got so far as where Morrison’s house was burned this day year, they was fired upon by the enemy about sunset. I have been down this morning on the spot and find no Blood Shed, but see where they led off Both the above mentioned; they had their little child with them. I believe they are gone home. I think their number small, for there was about 10 or 12 came [torn off]”

The most important civil events of this period were the divisions of the township. In 1753 the Green River District, which included what is now Greenfield and Gill, was made a distinct municipality. The next year the construction of a bridge over the Pocumtuck River at Cheapside was a prominent issue; the discussion ended in establishing a ferry at the north end of Pine Hill in 1758. That year the people in the vicinity of Sugar Loaf petitioned the General Court – but without success – for liberty to form a ministerial and educational connection with the town of Sunderland, and to be exempted from paying certain town taxes in consequence. In 1767 the inhabitants of Deerfield-Southwest were set off into a town named Conway; and Deerfield-Northwest became the town of Shelburne in 1768. The same year Bloody Brook people caught the division fever, but it did not carry them off.

A permanent peace being settled and an unstable currency fixed on a firm cash basis, business projects multiplied, and Deerfield became the centre of exchange and supply for a large territory. The mechanics, or “tradesmen” as they were called, and their apprentices, rivalled in numbers the agricultural population. Here were found the gunsmith, blacksmith, nailer and silversmith, the maker of snowshoes and moccasins, the tanner, currier, shoemaker and saddler, the pillion, knapsack and wallet-maker, the carpenter and joiner, the clapboard and shingle-maker, the makers of wooden shovels, corn-fans, flax-brakes, hackels, looms and spinning-wheels, cart-ropes and bed-lines, and pewter buttons, the tailor, hatter, furrier, feltmaker, barber and wigmaker, the cartwright, millwright, cabinet-maker, watchmaker, the brickmaker and mason, the miller, the carder, clothier, fuller, spinner, weaver of duck and common fabrics, the potter, the gravestone-cutter, the cooper, the potash-maker, the skilled forger who turned out loom and plow irons, farm and kitchen utensils. There were doctors and lawyers, the judge and the sheriff; storekeepers were many, and tavern-keepers galore. To all these the old account-books in Memorial Hall bear testimony.

Many leading men held commissions from the King in both civil and military service. These were rather a distinctive class, holding their heads quite high, and when the Revolution broke out they were generally loyal to the King, making heavy odds against the Whigs. But new leaders came to the front, who, so far as they had character and force, held their own after the war, and the old Tory leaders were relegated to the rear.

At the opening of the Revolutionary War the parties were nearly equal in numbers; on one yea and nay test vote there was a tie. Excitement ran high. In 1774 the “Sons of Liberty” erected a Liberty Pole, and at the same time a “Tory Pole,” whatever that might be. The mob spirit was rampant. Through it the fires of patriotism found vent; but it was always under the control of the leaders, and its most common office was to “humble the Tories,” and compel them to sign obnoxious declarations of neutrality, or of submission to the will of the Committees of Safety and Correspondence. A Tory of this period wrote: “Oh Tempora, all nature seems to be in confusion; every person in fear of what his Neighbor may do to him. Such times never was seen in New England.”

In October, 1774, a company of minute-men was organized here as part of a regiment under the Provincial Congress. November 14, staff-officers were chosen. David Field, colonel, and David Dickinson, major, were both of Deerfield. December 5, the town raised money to buy ammunition by selling lumber from its woodland. January 5, 1775, an emissary from General Gage was here, advising the Tories to go to Boston. “The standard will be set up in March,” he said, “and those who do not go in and lay down their arms may meet with bad luck.” He was discovered, but had the good luck to escape a mob; another agent who came a few days later was not so fortunate.

But the culmination of all the secret machinations and open preparations was at hand. April 20, at a town-meeting, votes were passed to pay wages to the minute-men for what they had done; “to encourage them in perfecting themselves in the Military Art,” provision was made for “practicing one half-day in each week.”

The voters could hardly have left the meeting-house, when the sound of a galloping horse was heard, and the hoarse call, “To arms! To arms!” broke upon the air. The horse bloody with spurring and the rider covered with dust brought the news of Concord and Lexington. The half-day drills had done their work. Before the clock in the meeting-house steeple struck the midnight hour, fifty minute-men, under Captain Jonas Locke, Lieutenant Thomas Bardwell and Lieutenant Joseph Stebbins, were on the march to Cambridge. This company was soon broken up; Captain Locke entered the Commissary Department, while Lieutenant Stebbins enlisted a new company, with which he assisted General Putnam in constructing the redoubt on Bunker Hill, and in its defense the next day, the ever-glorious 17th of June. One Deerfield man was killed and several were wounded.

Independence Day should be celebrated, in Deerfield, June 26, for on that day in 1776 the town “Voted that this Town will (if y

Honorable Congress shall for y

safety of y

United Colonies declare them Independent of y

Kingdom of Great Britain) Solemnly Engage with their Lives and Fortunes to Support them in y

Measure, and that y

Clerk be directed to make an attested copy of this Vote and forward y

same to Mr. Saxton, Representative for this town, to be laid before the General Court for their Information.”

Here was treason proclaimed and recorded, and every voter was exposed to its penalty. Ten days later the Continental Congress issued the world-stirring Declaration of Independence.