Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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Williams, John 1664-1729

Clergyman; born in Roxbury, Mass., Dec. 10, 1664; educated at Harvard College, and in 1686 settled as the first minister at Deerfield. The village was attacked by French and Indians, March 1, 1704, and among the inhabitants carried into captivity were Mr. Williams and a part of his family. Two of his children and a black servant were murdered at his door. With his wife and five children he began the toilsome journey towards Canada through the deep snow. On the second day his wife, weak from the effects of recent childbirth, fainted with fatigue, when the tomahawk of her captor cleaved her skull, and so he was relieved of the burden. Her husband and children were taken to Canada, and, after a captivity of nearly two years among the Caughnawaga Indians near Montreal, they were ransomed and returned home, excepting a daughter Eunice (q. v.), whom the Indians refused to part with. After the return of Mr. Williams to Deerfield in 1706 he resumed the charge of his congregation. He married a daughter of Captain Allen, of Connecticut, and in 1711 was appointed a commissary under Colonel Stoddard in the expedition against Canada. He died in Deerfield, June 12, 1729.