The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[377] meeting-house, the walls of which were afterwards found written over with chalk. At sunrise, Major Turner, with a portion of his soldiers, entered the village; and the enemy made a rapid retreat, carrying with them seventeen prisoners. They were pursued and overtaken just as they were entering the woods; and a severe skirmish took place, in which the rescue of some of the prisoners was effected. Thirty of the enemy were left dead on the field, including the infamous Hertel de Rouville. On the part of the villagers, Captains Ayer and Wainwright and Lieutenant Johnson, with thirteen others, were killed. The intense heat of the weather made it necessary to bury the dead on the same day. They were laid side by side in a long trench in the burial-ground. The body of the venerated and lamented minister, with those of his wife and child, sleep in another part of the burial-ground, where may still be seen a rude monument with its almost illegible inscription:—

‘Clauditur hoc turnulo corpus Reverendi pii doctique viri D. Benjamin Rolfe, ecclesioe Christi quoe est in Haverhill pastoris fidelissimi; qui domi suoe ab hostibus barbare trucidatus. A laboribus suis requievit mane diei sacroe quietis, Aug. XXIX, anno Dom. Mdccviii. $Atatis suoe XLVI.’

Of the prisoners taken, some escaped during the skirmish, and two or three were sent back by the French officers, with a message to the English soldiers, that, if they pursued the party on their retreat to Canada, the other prisoners should be put to death. One of them, a soldier stationed in