Families like mine with roots in Puritan America invariably had ancestors in direct conflict with the native peoples they supplanted. I have not featured the Abbott branch of the tree in my posts on family history as prominently as those in my mother's line, given the rich trove of primary source material to draw from in the maternal archive. Still, my Abbott kin were original settlers in Andover, Massachusetts where my parents now make their home - returning our particular branch of the Abbott tree to its origins after a 200 year absence - and my ancestors were deeply embroiled in the signature events in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Our association with the 1692 "Witch Hysteria" deserves its own post, so you shall have to wait to learn about my collateral ancestor Benjamin Abbot, an Andover witch accuser who helped send his neighbor Martha Carrier to the gallows, and others in our line who were on the receiving end of such accusations and one (Rebbecca Nurse) who was condemned as a witch and hanged. My interest here is in an earlier slaughter of innocents in which my family also played a shameful part, though sadly just one of many atrocities large and small perpetrated on both sides during King Philip's War.
In 1675, a regional conflict erupted between an alliance of New England tribes under Wampanoag sachem Metacomet (known to the colonists as King Philip) and the Plimoth, Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut colonies. Rhode Island, which neither sought nor declared war with Philip, suffered greatly during the conflict, for the Narragansett of Rhode Island offered sanctuary to Wampanoag women and children which the English viewed as a violation of their neutrality. In December 1675, a 1,000 man colonial force, along with 150 Mohegan scouts, marched against the fortified Narragansett settlement deep in in a ceder swamp in present day South Kingston, Rhode Island. Among the soldiers who participated in what became known as The Great Swamp Fight were twelve men from Andover in Captain Gardiner's company, including my 8th great uncle Joseph Abbot(t).
Historian Jill Lepore describes the English attack and its aftermath:
"...a coalition of English soldiers from each of the United Colonies, aided by an Indian guide, entered the Great Swamp...where they found a palisaded fort sheltering hundreds of wigwams and, by some estimates, as many as three or four thousand Narragansetts. Most were women and children hidden in the swamp for protection during the war, along with storehouses of winter supplies. English soldiers first set fire to the wigwams and then waited as the Narragansetts began fleeing over the palisade and through its doors and windows. Then the soldiers ' ran on the very musles of thyr guns, up to the Indeans port holes: & fyred in at them, & leped over thyr brest workes, & run into theyr forte, & beat them out: & slew many of them.' The fury of the English was so great that, rather than preserve the wigwams for their own shelter, or to save the food, they burned everything and were forced to march back out of the swamp all through the night and the next several days, in driving snow, during which many English soldiers froze to death." (Lepore; The Name of War 1998: 88).
Captain Gardiner was killed in the first charge of the gate, and one report lists Joseph Abbot(t) of Andover as wounded. Two hundred of the attackers were killed or wounded, but over 1,000 Narragansett perished, most of whom were noncombatants, and the destruction of 500 wigwams and corn supplies condemned many more to starvation in the winter wilderness. The surviving Narragansett joined the war against the English.
Such slaughter was unprecedented in this war, and it made a deep impression on the English soldiers who participated. The carnage seems to have affected Joseph Abbot(t) and the other Andover men, for during the long journey home they committed an atrocity of their own.
Where the Concord River meets the Merrimack in present day Lowell, Massachusetts, there was a village of Christianized Indians called Wamesit. During the war most of the inhabitants of these "praying towns" were interred under appalling conditions on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The Wamesits took a different path, nailing the following message to a tree that November before abandoning their town and going "towards the French" in Canada:
"As for the Island, we say there is no safety for us, because many English be not good, and may be they come to us and kill us...we are not sorry for what we leave but we are sorry for the English have driven us from our praying to god and from our teacher." (Lepore 1998: 138)
The long trek north in winter would have been impossible for the old, blind and infirm of the tribe, so these were left behind at Wamesit. And here the returning Andover soldiers found them.
Joseph Abbot(t) and his comrades may have been drunk on cider, or just inflamed by what they had seen and done in the Great Swamp Fight, but when they reached Wamesit they entered the village and burned it to the ground. The Andover men later claimed they did not know the old people were there, but those who had stayed in the village perished in the flames.
It is unclear whether any Wamesits were among the Indians who subsequently attacked Andover two months later on April 18th, 1676. Philip's Nipmuc allies had burned neighboring Chelmsford to the ground several days before, making Andover now the frontier of English settlement in the Merrimack Valley. The Abbot(t) family established a blockhouse for the security of themselves and their neighbors, to which most of the family fled when the Indians approached. Joseph Abbot(t) and his 13 year old brother Timothy, however, had been cutting elder bushes in a swampy field by the Shawsheen River and did not hear the alarm. When the Indians burst from the trees, the Abbot brothers discovered that young Timothy had mistakenly brought a horn not filled with gunpowder but with sand for whetting scythes. Joseph defended his brother with his clubbed musket, killing one of his attackers at least before he was pulled down and slain.
Timothy Abbot(t) was taken as captive to Canada but was returned gaunt and famished that August by an Indian woman, who according to Andover legend had formerly been known to his mother and treated kindly by her. A less romanticized explanation may be that at the close of hostilities, those Algonquin peoples who survived in the Massachusetts Bay and Plimoth Colonies, regardless of what part they might have played during the war, were required to produce either English captives or two heads of other warriors as security for their parole.
It was a brutal time, and many New Englanders interpreted the calamities they faced as evidence that "God had withdrawn his favor, making apparent both his terrible anger at their backsliding and their terrible vulnerability without his protection (Elinor Abbot; Our Company Increases Apace: 2007:130)." A third of the English settlements in Massachusetts were destroyed during King Philip's War and over 600 colonists lost their lives. The Algonquin of southern New England fared far worse, and only 400 Wampanoag survived the war, mostly on Cape Cod and the offshore Islands where these bands had managed to remain neutral.
Joseph Abbot(t) was by contemporary accounts an admirable young man, just 24 years old and involved in a war of survival that threatened the very foundations of his world. He participated in a savage campaign of extermination in the Great Swamp Fight in which his side suffered 20% casualties and his company (the Sixth Massachusetts) lost its Captain, 1st Lieutenant and 5 others killed and 10 wounded. He had done and seen too much to remain unchanged by the experience, and so he committed an atrocity at Wamesit in which the only Indians killed were Christian, non-combatant, old and sick. From this great distance one can see how it happened. There were decent young men like him at My Lai, too.
.
Very interesting post. I grew up in Shawsheen village in Andover, but have lived in southern RI for many years now. After recently reading Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower" I have become more interested in the history of early settlers and local native peoples. The Great Swamp Fight is something I had heard about for many years, but never took the time to explore. Imagine my surprise to stumble across your post that links events and people of my old and new homes. It is truly amazing to think that people actually walked those distances in the dead of winter, and sobering to think that they sometimes did so to commit acts of almost unimaginable cruelty.
Posted by: David Kane | November 18, 2009 at 05:26 PM
Hello, Frank. I don't have any close Abbott kin west of New York State, and our branch of this large and extended family of New England origins has stayed relatively close to its roots. I do have a gr-gr-great uncle buried at the Veteran's Home up by Glacier National Park but he's the only one who drifted west that I know of and had no descendants. Most Abbott's in America with puritan roots stem from two unrelated George Abbot(t)s who settled in Andover, MA in the 1640s. Best wishes and good luck in your research. Tim
Posted by: Tim Abbott | June 23, 2008 at 03:20 PM
I am curious, tim if you are/know of/are related to / heard of/ a Tim Abott from Mt. Home ID, that played college basketball in Alaska? My 11th/12th great grandfather John Baker fought in the Great Swamp Fight, and I ran across your name.
Frank Mielke
Posted by: Frank Mielke | June 23, 2008 at 03:14 PM
Tim, thank you very much!
Posted by: Charles Abbott | February 25, 2007 at 05:30 PM
Charles, there is a bit more biographical information about your Benjamin Abbott (1750-1816) and his in-laws at Rootsweb http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:2408176&id=I1015 Nothing on his parentage, nor military servcie, though he was in the Revolutionary Generation. If I find more I'll forwadr it along.
Posted by: GreenmanTim | February 25, 2007 at 04:22 PM
I just noticed that I misspelled the maiden name of Benjamin's wife. It should be Hudgens. It seems that they were married March 16,1781 In Rowan County NC. It seems that Benjamin was born in 1750 and Mary Hudgens was born in 1760 and her father was William Hudgens. By the way, thanks for responding to my querry.
Posted by: Charles Abbott | February 25, 2007 at 07:58 AM
Do you have birth or death dates for your Benjamin Abbott? I'm guessing he was alive in the latter part of the 18th century. The Andover Abbotts were in their 4th and 5th generations in this country by then, and there are two, initially unrelated Abbot(t) families that settled there in the 1640s. Abiel Abbot's Genealogical Register of the Abbot Family (1847) does not list any Hudgings in its index of surnames not Abbot, but that does not mean your Benjamin is not to be found within. Lay out what vital stats you have for this couple and I'll see what I can turn up.
Posted by: GreenmanTim | February 25, 2007 at 02:48 AM
I am new to the Abbott Family research and am trying to connect the dots. I have gotten back to great, great, great, great grandfather, Benjamin Abbott who was father of my great (times 3) grandfather Sterling Abbott. My research leads me to believe this Benjamin Abbott was married to Mary Hudging in Rowan County N.C. However, that is where my research becomes sketchy. Can anyone direct me to a more complete source?
Posted by: Charles Abbott | February 24, 2007 at 06:00 PM
Tim, you might also want to check into Francis Ellingwood Abbot about whom I'd blogged
briefly the night I found your site mentioned at Boston 1775. Brian Sullivan of Harvard
University edited a book of Abbot's diary and love letters to his wife Katharine Loring
called "If Ever Two Were One: A Diary of Love Eternal" and it seemed an appropriate
entry for Valentine's Day. He'sa distant cousin of mine through both the Abbot and
Ellingwood lines.
And hello there, Cousin VA!
Posted by: Bill West | February 17, 2007 at 01:44 AM
VA - There were a lot of Abbot(t) progeny, so I guess we should not be surprised to find ourselves distant cousins through the blogosphere! You may have encountered Bailey's Historical Sketches of Andover, one of the big 19th century town histories, in which she reports: "Timothy Abbot, when master of a family, never allowed a child to say he was hungry, saying they did not know the meaning of the word hunger." Sort of akin to saying; "Eat your baked beans! There are Wamesit kids starving in the wilderness who would give anything for Boston Baked Beans!" Many thanks for visiting. You and Mr. West inspire me to focus my attention on blogging the Andover roots of the family. In addition to the witch hysteria, one could imagine posts about The Lexington Alarm, for which the Andover Minutemen got a very late start, and the redoubt on Breeds Hill in which my ancestor Nathaniel Abbot(t) and Frye's Andover Company of Minutemen were right in the thick of things...
Posted by: GreenmanTim | February 16, 2007 at 09:11 AM