France and England in North America, Part VII, Vol 1: A Half-Century of ConflictParkman, Francis
History
France and England in North America, Part VII, Vol 1: A Half-Century of Conflict
Parkman, Francis
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
The exchanged prisoners had been captured at various times and places.
Those from Deerfield amounted in all to about sixty, or a little more
than half the whole number carried off. Most of the others were dead or
converted. Some married Canadians, and others their fellow-captives. The
history of some of them can be traced with certainty. Thus, Thomas
French, blacksmith and town clerk of Deerfield, and deacon of the
church, was captured, with his wife and six children. His wife and
infant child were killed on the way to Canada. He and his two eldest
children were exchanged and brought home. His daughter Freedom was
converted, baptized under the name of Marie Francoise, and married to
Jean Daulnay, a Canadian. His daughter Martha was baptized as
Marguerite, and married to Jacques Roy, on whose death she married Jean
Louis Menard, by whom she became ancestress of Joseph Plessis, eleventh
bishop of Quebec. Elizabeth Corse, eight years old when captured, was
baptized under her own name, and married to Jean Dumontel. Abigail
Stebbins, baptized as Marguerite, lived many years at Boucherville, wife
of Jacques de Noyon, a sergeant in the colony troops. The widow, Sarah
Hurst, whose youngest child, Benjamin, had been murdered on the
Deerfield meadows, was baptized as Marie Jeanne.[72] Joanna Kellogg,
eleven years old when taken, married a Caughnawaga chief, and became, at
all points, an Indian squaw.
She was not alone in this strange transformation. Eunice Williams, the
namesake of her slaughtered mother, remained in the wigwams of the
Caughnawagas, forgot, as we have seen, her English and her catechism,
was baptized, and in due time married to an Indian of the tribe, who
thenceforward called himself Williams. Thus her hybrid children bore her
family name. Her father, who returned to his parish at Deerfield, and
her brother Stephen, who became a minister like his parent, never ceased
to pray for her return to her country and her faith. Many years after,
in 1740, she came with her husband to visit her relatives in Deerfield,
dressed as a squaw and wrapped in an Indian blanket. Nothing would
induce her to stay, though she was persuaded on one occasion to put on a
civilized dress and go to church; after which she impatiently discarded
her gown and resumed her blanket. As she was kindly treated by her
relatives, and as no attempt was made to detain her against her will,
she came again in the next year, bringing two of her half-breed
children, and twice afterwards repeated the visit. She and her husband
were offered a tract of land if they would settle in New England; but
she positively refused, saying that it would endanger her soul. She
lived to a great age, a squaw to the last.[73]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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