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The boy captives
An incident of the Indian war of 1695.
The township of
Haverhill, even as late as the close of the seventeenth century, was a frontier settlement, occupying an advanced position in the great wilderness, which, unbroken by the clearing of a white man, extended from the
Merrimac River to the
French villages on the
St. Francois.
A tract of twelve miles on the river and three or four northwardly was occupied by scattered settlers, while in the centre of the town a compact village had grown up. In the immediate vicinity there were but few
Indians, and these generally peaceful and inoffensive.
On the breaking out of the
Narragansett war, the inhabitants had erected fortifications and taken other measures for defence; but, with the possible exception of one man who was found slain in the woods in 1676, none of the inhabitants were molested; and it was not until about the year 1689 that the safety of the settlement was seriously threatened.
Three persons were killed in that year.
In 1690 six garrisons were established in different parts of the town, with a small company of soldiers attached to each.
Two of these houses are still standing.
They were built of brick, two stories high, with a single outside door, so small and narrow that but one person
