The Damm Garrison House in Dover, New Hampshire
is located inside this pavilion at the Woodman Institute
 |
| This map is located inside the Damm Garrison at the Woodman Institute in Dover, New Hampshire It explains the events of Cochecho Massacre, and maps out the locations of the garrisons |
The first recorded captives carried to Quebec, Canada to be
sold to settlers and native Indians occurred at the Raid on Dover, also known
as the Cochecho Massacre, in Dover, New Hampshire on 27 June 1689. This makes this raid very interesting to genealogists,
since some of the women and children who were taken north converted to
the Catholic religion. These same English people later married French spouses and left descendants in
Canada. Some of the captives were
redeemed and came home, and some of the redeemed refused to return because they
preferred life in Canada!
At the beginning of King William’s War (1688- 1697) there
were many raids on New England settlements by the French, and the English raided
French villages in Penobscot Bay and Chedabouctou (Guysborough, Nova Scotia). In June 1689 several hundred Abenaki and
Pennacook Indians raided Dover and killed more than 20 and took 29
captives. This was one quarter of the
Dover population. The raid was quite a blow to the English settlements in New Hampshire.
The Dover Raid was revenge on Major Richard Waldron who had tricked and captured many Abenaki and
Wampanoag in 1676 during King Phillip’s War.
These Indians he captured were taken to Boston where some were executed
and some were sold into slavery in the Caribbean. Twelve years later the Abenaki retaliated with the help of the French in Canada.
Waldron's garrison was attacked with a vengeance. The Major was singled out for a particularly horrendous
torture and execution. His nose and ears
were removed and stuffed in his throat.
Each Indian slashed his chest, and he was forced to fall on his own
sword. Waldron had been well known as a
cheat at trade with the Indians and he had been a particularly cruel leader to
the English settlers (especially to Quakers).
You can read more about Waldron at this blog post:
There were five garrison houses in town at Dover, and others
in outlying areas. Five Indian women
came into town and asked to shelter at the garrisons, one at each. In the middle of the night, each woman opened
the gates of the garrison to the attackers. The rest was history…
According to the book New England Captives Carried to Canada,
pages 142 - these are some of the identified captives, all traced to French
records in Quebec:
John Church (sometimes misspelled Chase)
John Evans
Sarah Gerrish, 7 year
old granddaughter of Major Waldron,
Mrs. Elizabeth Hanson, wife of Tobias
----- Heard “a young woman of Cochecho”
Esther Lee, daughter of Richard Waldron, along with her
child
Grizel Otis, wife of Richard, daughter of James Warren
Margaret Otis, rebaptized Christine in Quebec
Rose Otis
John Otis
Stephen (rebaptized Joseph Marie)
Nathaniel (rebaptized Paul), son of Stephen Otis and Mary
Pitman
Joseph Buss
William Buss
Here is a list of some members of my family tree who were victims
of the Cochecho Massacre:
I'm forced to admit that I'm closely related to Major Richard Waldron (1615 – 1689). He was married to my 9th
great aunt, Ann Scammon. I descend from
Ann’s sister, Elizabeth (about 1625 – abut 1680) who married Thomas
Atkins. Major Waldron, as I described above, was
killed, along with most of his family, and his garrison was burned to the
ground, along with his grist mills and trading post.
I'm proud to tell you about Elizabeth Hull Heard (about 1628 – 1706), my 8th
great grandmother. According to stories
in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana and Belknap’s History of New Hampshire
and other books, she was a witness to Waldron’s deceit in 1676, and sheltered a
young native Abenaki boy from death. On the night of the Cochecho Massacre she was hiding
In the woods when an Indian pointed his weapon at her, but suddenly spared her
life and ran away. The Heard garrison
house was one of the few homes that were successfully defended that night by
William Wentworth because Elizabeth's husband had died a few months before the attack. It is suggested that the Indian who spared her life was the
young Abenaki boy in 1675. Elizabeth's children survived, too, including her daughter Mary (1650 - 1706), my 7th great grandmother, and her husband John Ham and children.
[You can see that I am related to both the villain and the
heroine of this massacre]
For more information:
New England Captives Carried to Canada Between 1677 and 1760 During the
French and Indian Wars, by Emma Lewis Coleman, published in 1925, reprinted
by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2012.
From the Dover, New Hampshire Public Library website
An online
article from Portsmouth, New Hampshire historian J. Dennis Robinson
Magnalia Christi Americana, or "The Ecclesiastical History
of New-England, from its First Planting in the year 1620 Unto the Year of Our
Lord, 1698", Cotton Mather, in seven books (reprint), New Haven, CT,1820
The Hull Family in America, Compiled by Col. Weggant, Hull
Family Association
"A Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Richard
Otis" -- 1851 -- by Horatio N. Otis. NEHGR
for July 1848 & April 1850 has the Genealogy of the Otis Family Descending
from John Otis, who immigrated to New England & settled in Hingham, Mass.
about 1635.
Click here for blog post about the DAMM family garrison,
which survived the Cochecho massacre in 1689.
The DAMM garrison was built in 1675, and is the oldest surviving
garrison house still standing in New Hampshire.
UPDATE - 3 June 2015
Roger W. Lawrence has written a new book "English Captives and Prisoners Remaining in New France" (for those with ancestors who were carried to Canada from New England in the colonial period). You can pre-order this book from the American Canadian Genealogical Society at this link www.acgs.org
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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Cochecho Massacre, 27 June 1689, Dover, New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 18, 2015, (http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/05/cochecho-massacre-27-june-1689-dover.html: accessed [access date]).
