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Eunice Williams, The Unredeemed Captive

In 1704, Mohawk Indians raided the frontier town of Deerfield, Mass. They captured local pastor John Williams, along with his family. Most of the family (those who didn’t die in the attack or aftermath) would be ransomed – all but a seven-year-old girl the Mohawks refused to free.

A 1913 reenactment of the abduction of Eunice Williams.

Eunice Williams, born Sept. 17, 1696, would spend the rest of her life with the Mohawks. She converted to Catholicism and married a Mohawk Catholic. Her family never gave up trying to bring her home, but when they finally reached her as an adult it was too late. She refused to return, and her Puritan family never got over the loss.

In Deerfield, John Williams was a prominent Puritan minister, married to Eunice Mather, the daughter of Eleazer Mather and first cousin to Cotton Mather.

War on the Frontier

In 1704 Queen Anne’s War raged along the frontier. The French and English fought for control of North America, and the Mohawk and Abenaki people allied with the French against England.

Historian John Demos believes the raid on Deerfield was masterminded by Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor of New France (Canada). He very much wanted the return of the mysterious pirate known as Capt. Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste. Baptiste had wrought havoc with English shipping on the Atlantic Coast on behalf of the French until t British captured him. Vaudreuil wanted the pirate returned, and the best way to do that was to capture an important English prisoner and offer him for exchange.

Vaudreuil quietly approached the Indians with his offer and they accepted, writes Demos in his award-winning book, The Unredeemed Captive.

An illustration of the raid on Deerfield, published around 1900

The Deerfield Raid

On the night of Feb. 28, 1704, a band of Abenaki and Mohawk Indians attacked Deerfield. They killed 39 people, including small children. They plundered possessions, set houses on fire and slaughtered cows, pigs and sheep. The Indians took 112 people captive, including the surviving members of the Williams family: John, Eunice, and five of their children, Samuel, 15, Esther, 13, Stephen, 9, Warham, 5, and Eunice, 7. Then they began the two-month journey through the snowy wilderness into New France.

The children and their father would survive the long winter journey. Their mother would not.

Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil. Was he ultimately responsible for the abduction of Eunice Williams?

By April 1704, the Indians took the Deerfield pastor and three of his children — Esther, Samuel and Warham — to Montreal. All four were turned over to the French authorities. They wouldn’t return home until further negotiations ended. Stephen was still at large in the woods with the Abenaki. He would stay with them for 14 months, until he was ransomed and sent to join his father in captivity in a small village near Montreal.

Eunice Williams

The Indians took Eunice Williams to live with Catholic Mohawks in a small mission fort near Montreal called Kahnawake. John Williams visited his daughter once, and she begged him to take her with him. He told her to pray and to remember her scriptures.

By 1706, five of the Williams family were ransomed and sent home. A Mohawk family that had lost a daughter to smallpox adopted Eunice Williams. The family gave her a new name: A’ongonte, meaning ‘she who has been planted like an ash.’ She was also baptized Catholic and given the name Marguerite.

Her father tried to arrange for her release, but the French intermediaries said the Mohawks “would as soon part with their hearts as the child.” She would later take the adult name of Kanenstenhawi.

Her father would spend the rest of his life trying to free the daughter he always knew as Eunice Williams.

In 1707, John Schuyler, a New York merchant who had many contacts with northern Indians and traders, heard about a sighting of Williams’ daughter. He also heard she didn’t want to return to her family. Schuyler stayed in touch with her Mohawk family in an effort to redeem her.

[optinrev-inline-optin1]In March of 1713 the Williams family learned the melancholy news that Eunice Williams had married an Indian. They were devastated.

Not Even A Look

John Schuyler visited her at Kahnawake. She had forgotten her English, and they needed a translator to communicate. Schuyler pleaded with her to return to her family. She said no, not even for a visit.

Rev. John Williams, father of Eunice Williams

The next year, her father visited her. She did not give him so much as a pleasant look. He would never see her again.

Eunice Williams and her husband, François-Xavier Arosen, had two daughters who grew to adulthood, Catherine and Marie, and a son named John.

Eunice Williams Returns

After John Williams died in 1729, Eunice’s brother Stephen took up the task of bringing her back. He had become a minister in Longmeadow, Mass., and he persuaded her to meet in Albany with him, along with their brother Eleazer and brother-in-law Joseph Meacham. On Aug. 27, 1740, they had a ‘joyful, sorrowful’ meeting, and Stephen persuaded Eunice and her husband to visit them in Longmeadow for four days. They actually stayed a little longer, camping out in the orchard near Stephen’s house.

The next summer Eunice and Aronson brought their children first to Longmeadow to visit Stephen, then to Coventry, Conn., to visit her sister Esther. Finally they went to Mansfield, Conn., where they visited her brother Eleazer.

In 1743, Eunice Williams and her family came to spend the winter with her family in Longmeadow and Deerfield, where her brother Elijah lived. Stephen hoped that this long visit would persuade her to stay, but again she refused.

One Last Visit

She wouldn’t return for another 17 years. In 1761, she brought her husband, a daughter and son-in-law and grandchild to Longmeadow for a brief 10-day visit. Ten years later in 1771, she wrote a letter to Stephen, chastising him for not staying in touch and expressing a desire to see him again. Stephen died in 1782 without ever seeing Eunice again. She died Nov. 26, 1785 at the age of 89.

By the time she died, Eunice Williams had one grandson and 12 great-grandchildren. Two of her great-grandchildren were sent to school in Longmeadow, where they dropped their Indian dress and manners. One of them, Eleazer, would later make the fraudulent claim that he was the lost Dauphin – Louis XVII, the rightful heir to the throne of France.

In 1837, 23 descendants of Eunice Williams arrived in Deerfield, Mass., to visit the graves of their ancestor John Williams and his wife Eunice. They camped near the village and attended Sunday services. They stayed for 10 days, weaving baskets and selling fabrics to the villagers who visited them so often they could barely find time to eat their meals.

Eunice Williams’ descendants behaved “decently and inoffensively,” according to the prefatory remarks of a sermon delivered about their visit. And then they returned to Canada.

With thanks to The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America by John Demos.

This story was updated in 2023. You may also want to read about the Rice boys, also taken captive by Indians, here.

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How the Wampanoag Indians Took Back Gay Head

The Gay Head Wampanoag Indians lived on Martha’s Vineyard for thousands of years, and for the last 400 they never gave up trying to keep their land and remain a sovereign tribe.

Early on they figured out how to best the English colonists at their own legal games. In the end, despite many, many setbacks, they succeeded in taking back their land.

About 3,000 Wampanoag Indians lived on the island they called Noepe when the first permanent English settler arrived in 1641. His name was Thomas Mayhew, and he intended to convert the natives to Christianity. Mayhew led his Congregationalist congregation from Watertown, Mass., to the island. Somehow along the way it became known by the name of a smaller island nearby – Martha’s Vineyard.

Mayhew and his followers set about wresting the land from the Indians. The conversion of the Indians to Christianity would result in a feudal system presided over by Mayhew and his descendants for generations.

The Indians for centuries disputed deeds, took claimants to court and worked the political system. They even staged an occupation protest in the 18^th-century.

A Beautiful and Brilliant Object

The Indians’ home of Aquinnah became known to the English as Gay Head, after the cliffs that rose 100 feet above the ocean. They are made of clay, red, yellow, blue, indigo, black and white. Wrote historian John Warner Barber in 1841, “to those who are on board a vessel sailing near to shore, especially after a rain, and when the sun shines on it, it is a beautiful and brilliant object, hence the name Gay Head.”

It was Mayhew’s son Thomas who first succeeded in converting the Indians. He had been educated to become a missionary, how is not clear. Mayhew Jr. and another missionary, John Eliot, obtained funding for their work from the British Isles through ‘The New England Company for the Propagation of the Gospel,’ which was incorporated in 1649.

Praying Indians

John Eliot praying with the Wampanoag Indians

Mayhew Jr. and Eliot converted the Indians by promising freedom from disease, protection from warfare and eternal salvation. They turned Aquinnah into a praying town, one of 14 Christian Indian communities established by the Puritans in the 17^th century.

To create Christian institutions, Mayhew Jr. opened schools to train teachers and preachers. Benjamin Franklin’s great-grandfather Peter Folger was one of Mayhew’s teachers. They taught Indian children English and indoctrinated them with English beliefs. By co-opting the Indian leaders to support these new churches, schools and courts, they could strictly enforce Christian morality.

Word then spread throughout North America and Europe about the Praying Indians of Martha’s Vineyard who said grace before meals.

Mayhew Jr. didn’t succeed entirely in his mission. The Wampanoag Indians hung on to many of their traditions and beliefs. Later, white evangelists were horrified by the Wampanoag Indians’ democratic and enthusiastic services. They were especially appalled that the women had an equal voice to the men.

Then Thomas Mayhew, Jr., drowned at the age of 35 on a voyage to England in 1657. By many accounts, he sincerely wished to help the Indians. But his father had more interest in establishing – and heading — a feudal colony, using religion as a tool of social control.

“The essence of political rule was religion,” wrote historian Thomas Dresser. Mayhew Sr. became the legislative and spiritual leader of Martha’s Vineyard. He formally accepted the sachems as leaders, but privately, no doubt, believed he ran things.

Lifetime Governor

In 1671, King Charles II appointed Thomas Mayhew, Sr., ‘Lifetime Governor of the Vineyard Indians with authority to buy their property.’ Mayhew and his English settlers went to work manipulating the Indians into selling their land. Generations of Mayhew missionaries would run Indian affairs on Martha’s Vineyard as the English settlements grew. The Province of Massachusetts enforced the Indians’ second-class status by appointing Guardians to run their affairs. The English also supervised their churches.

In 1687, one of the Indians’ Christian leaders sold Gay Head and the Elizabeth Islands to Thomas Donegan, governor of New York. Donegan then leased the land to new English colonists, infuriating the Indians.

Thomas Mayhew Sr.

The English had perhaps taught the Indians too well. The Indians took them to court and challenged the deed. They lost their case, but they persisted. The Wampanoags constantly petitioned the provincial government with complaints about the guardians and claims to their property. Sometimes they won.

Thomas Mayhew, Jr.,’s promise that Christianity would protect the Indians from disease was quickly broken. Smallpox thinned the Wampanoag population and land dealings reduced their territories. By 1747, their numbers fell to 112. Only three native communities remained on Martha’s Vineyard: Aquinnah (or Gay Head), Chilmark and Christiantown.

Stabilization

The fortunes of the Wampanoags improved slightly in the mid-18^th century as their population increased. It rose to 165 in 1765 to 203 in 1786 and 276 in 1790.

They also began to succeed in protecting their land from the predations of the white settlers. Zachariah Howwaswee, a Wampanoag minister, fought tenaciously for 20 years to invalidate a deed for land two Indians sold illegally to the English.

Howwaswee was a community activist and an inspirational leader who understood the English legal system.

In the mid-18^th century, two Wampanoags, Elisha and Israel Amos, were buying up Indian land with money borrowed from the English. They then sold or leased that land to English colonists, which was against existing law and Wampanoag tradition. Zachariah fought them in court for 20 years – and won. Teaching the Indians the ways of the English courts had finally backfired on the colonists. It would happen again.

Zachariah Howwaswee, Jr., picked up where his father left off. In 1775, the English guardians gave a Mayhew descendant, Zachariah Mayhew, several hundred acres of Wampanoag land in payment for his supervision of the Christian churches. Mayhew leased the land to colonists and farmed some of it himself in 1779.

The Indians were furious about the theft. Howwaswee, like his father, did something about it. Howwaswee, Jr., was a minister who preached in the Wampanoag language in the Congregational Church. He came up with a clever, two-part plan to take back the land – and once again, it involved the courts.

Occupying Indian Lands

Howwaswee promised several “busy lawyers” who lived on the island that they could have leasing rights to the land if they helped the Indians fight Zachariah Mayhew in court. And then he began to occupy the land.

The Gay Headers ripped down his mile-long fence. Mayhew rebuilt it. They tore it down again. When Mayhew’s tenant tried to drive his cattle to the grazing lands, the Indians wouldn’t let him. They drove off cows that were already there. Then they built an Indian house on the property and an Indian family moved in. They posted a sign saying no outsider could keep so much as a pig on the land or to have any kind of enclosure on it. They banned Mayhew’s tenants from setting foot in Aquinnah.

Howwaswee also pressured Mayhew to leave through another tactic. He engaged some lawyers, promising them leases if they won back the property.

In 1789 Mayhew abandoned his claim. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Howwaswee’s favor. Mayhew was banned from preaching or even visiting their community.

The story, though, didn’t end happily for the Wampanoags. Howwaswee moved into the house built on the land and appropriated one-third of it for himself. He and another Mayhew, Simon, grabbed most of the grazing rights to the rest. Fifty-two Wampanoags petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for relief, and prevailed. The men were removed from the land.

By the 1800s there were only three native communities, Aquinnah, Christiantown and Chappaquiddick. As the most populous and best organized, the Aquinnah Wampanoags had the best shot at keeping their land and their identity.

Setting a Precedent

The Howwaswees set a precedent that would be followed into the 20^th century. The Wampanoags would use the levers of the established government to win back their lands and their tribal sovereignty. Though their numbers again declined in the 19^th century, they clung to their identity.

Then in 1972, the tribe formed the Wampanoag Tribal Council of Gay Head, Inc. The Indians intended the council to promote self-determination and to ensure preservation and continuation of Wampanoag history and culture. They also intended to achieve federal recognition for the tribe, and to seek the return of tribal lands to the Wampanoag people.

Herring Creek

On April 10, 1987, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head became a federally acknowledged tribe. That year, the federal government settled the Wampanoags’ claims to 485 acres of tribal lands. That included 160 acres of private land and 325 acres of common land, including Gay Head Cliffs, Herring Creek and Lobsterville.

The tribe currently seeks to transform its community center into a casino on its land.

This story was updated in 2022. Image of Herring Creek By William Waterway – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18457262

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The Mysterious Death of Newport Movie Mogul Thomas Ince

The death of Thomas Ince just after his 42nd birthday party was as legendary as some of the movies he produced. As with many Hollywood legends, it didn’t have much truth to it.

Born into a show business family on Nov. 16, 1882 in Newport, R.I., Ince rose from failure as a stage actor to success as the first film tycoon. He pioneered the system of moviemaking still in use today before he left a yacht owned by newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. Thomas Ince died several days later, his body quickly cremated.

Even before the funeral, suspicions mounted about his death. The rumor mill churned out the story that Hearst believed his mistress, Marion Davies, cheated on him with Charlie Chaplin. Davies and Chaplin had joined them on the boat, and rumors surfaced that Hearst actually shot Thomas Ince by accident, intending to shoot Davies, Chaplin or both.

Thiomas Ince in 1918

Thomas Ince

He entered the family business at age six, acting and later singing at funerals and weddings. His father, John “Pop” Ince, started out as a vaudeville comedian but then worked as a theatrical agent. His mother sang comic opera under the stage name Emma Brennan or Emma Jones.

Thomas made his Broadway debut at 15 and then formed an unsuccessful vaudeville company. At 28, he talked his way into a job with a small independent film company in 1910. At the time, Thomas Edison’s Motion Pictures Patents Company tried to crush all independent producers. So he went to Cuba with Mary Pickford and Owen Moore to make movies.

But only in Hollywood could Thomas Ince make the films he yearned to make: westerns and Civil War dramas.

He borrowed a suit from a friend and a large diamond ring from a jeweler and walked into the offices of the New York Motion Picture Company. The firm had opened a studio to make westerns on the West Coast. He got the job.

Thomas Ince, his young wife Nell and a small entourage went to Edendale, Calif., to make films. There he began to revolutionize moviemaking. He inventing the shooting script. He then acquired 460 acres and created the first movie studio, called Inceville. It had sound stages, offices, sets, dressing rooms and a commissary.

Inceville

Ince hired a Wild West show, replete with cowboys, cattle and Indians who set up their teepees on the property. The teepees sat cheek-by-jowl with a fake Swiss landscape, a Japanese village, a Puritan settlement, mansions and cottages. Ince went on to organize production methods, putting the producer in charge of the film instead of the director and cameraman. He also invented the five-reel film when two reels were the standard of the day.

Fires eventually destroyed Inceville, and Thomas Ince created Triangle Studios with Mack Sennett and D.W. Griffith. Three years later he founded the studios in Culver City that would become MGM. On that lot would later be filmed such classics as Gone with the Wind, King Kong, Lassie and Citizen Kane.

Paramount, Then Trouble

Thomas Ince sold out a few years later and formed Paramount Pictures with Adolph Zukor. Then he moved on to form his own studio again. At Thomas H. Ince Studios he made a few memorable films, Anna Christie and Human Wreckage, but he lost power and influence to competing studios.

By 1924, the rumor mill had Thomas Ince edging toward bankruptcy. Supposedly he wanted to make a deal with Hearst to rescue his fortunes.

On November 16 he boarded Hearst’s lavish yacht The Oneida as a guest of honor – it was his 42^nd birthday. Chaplin, Davies and actress Elinor Glynn also boarded the yacht. They celebrated his birthday at dinner, and sometime afterward he suffered acute indigestion. He had drunk champagne and eaten salted almonds, forbidden to him because he suffered from a peptic ulcer.

Though allegations of a cover-up surfaced after his death, the real cover-up had to do with his failing health. Ince worked at a killing pace and his co-workers had seen him double over in pain with indigestion. He also suffered chest pains and, toward the end of his life, insomnia.

Death of Thomas Ince

A physician aboard the yacht, Dr. Goodman, diagnosed Ince as extremely ill. A water taxi took him ashore and a train brought him to Los Angeles. Ince got worse on the train and was taken off it at Del Mar, where he was treated at a hotel. He went home the next day, November 19, and died.

William Randolph Hearst

The death certificate said he died of heart failure. But the front page of the Los Angeles Times ran headlines that said, “Movie Producer Shot on Hearst Yacht.” Those headlines soon disappeared, and the Hearst newspapers reported Ince had taken ill at Hearst’s home, San Simeon. Chaplin’s valet said he saw Ince bleeding from a bullet wound to the forehead.

Charlie Chaplin

Rumors proliferated about what really happened: Hearst caught Chaplin and Davies in a compromising position and shot Ince by accident; Hearst poisoned Ince; an assassin hired by Hearst killed Ince; Hearst stabbed Ince in the heart with a hatpin. Adding to the confusion were the lies and denials told by Hearst’s guests.

Marion Davies

But before his body was cremated, it lay in an open coffin for an hour for viewing. No one saw that bullet hole in his forehead.

The story has lived on, in a mystery written by Hearst’s granddaughter Patty and in a film called Cat’s Meow.

This story was updated in 2022. If you enjoyed reading it, you may also want to read about Varick Frissell and his deadly film here.

Images: Inceville By Ferd J. Zettler – PBA Galleries, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7655554

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New Hampshire Legend: Ocean Born Mary

The New Hampshire legend of Ocean Born Mary has pirates, ghosts, a light green silk wedding dress – and some of it is even true.

Ocean Born Mary

Mary Wilson was born on a voyage from Ulster to Boston on July 28, 1720. Her Scottish parents, Elizabeth and James Wilson, were emigrating to New England to escape the violence in Northern Ireland.

That much is true.

Pirates boarded the ship intending to rob and kill the passengers. But then they heard a baby cry below decks. The captain went down to investigate, and he softened at the sight of the newborn. He said he would spare the passengers if Elizabeth would name the baby Mary after his beloved mother (or his wife). He gave her a bolt of light green silk cloth and asked that Mary wear it at her wedding.

That part might have some truth to it. Pieces of Mary Wilson’s green silk wedding dress are on display in Londonderry, Henniker and Concord. And the Scottish emigrants’ encounter with privateers actually did happen. That’s according to reliable accounts published a few decades after Ocean Born Mary’s death, according to Jeremy Entremont, in his book Ocean Born Mary: The Truth Behind a New Hampshire Legend.

That version has the pirates boarding the emigrants’ ship and taking them aboard their own. The ordeal caused Elizabeth to give premature birth to her daughter, and the pirate captain, a father, took pity on her. He made her comfortable and allowed the captives to return to their ship and proceed on their voyage. And he did give Elizabeth presents, including the bolt of light green silk.

America

Mary’s father then died soon after they arrived in America. Elizabeth soon remarried James Clark, another Scots-Irishman.

Many Scots-Irish were coming to America then with the uneasy blessing of the Massachusetts Puritans. The Puritans viewed them as another persecuted religious minority. And they also thought the newcomers could settle on the frontier as useful buffers against the French and Indians.

The family settled in Londonderry, N.H., then on the western fringes of New England. The settlement celebrated Ocean Born Mary’s birthday every year.

Mary grew up a tall, red-headed, well-loved woman. She married James Wallace wearing the light green silk dress at her wedding. The couple had four surviving sons and one daughter. Three of the sons married three sisters and emerged as local political leaders.

Ocean Born Mary outlived her husband (true) and moved to Henniker, N.H. (true). Here’s where the New Hampshire legend of Ocean Born Mary gets nutty: The pirate captain came to Henniker in search of the grown-up infant Mary and married her (hardly) or made her his housekeeper (not true). He was also said to have been killed by another pirate (definitely not true).

A Nutty Legend

Here’s why the New Hampshire legend of Ocean Mary got nutty. In 1917, Louis ‘Gus’ Roy of Wisconsin bought a house that Ocean Born Mary’s son had owned. He then invented tales of buried gold and a tall, red-haired ghost that was probably Mary. He also gave house tours and rented shovels to tourists to dig for gold in the back yard.

In 1939, children’s book author Lois Lenski published a book of fiction about 10-year-old Ocean Born Mary and her adventures in Portsmouth, N.H. The author had help in her historical research from local historian Dorothy Vaughan, who for many of her 99 years was a reliable source of Portsmouth history.

Ocean Born Mary lies buried in the cemetery behind this building.

When Mary died, she was buried in the cemetery behind the Henniker Town Hall.

There is a house in Londonderry called the old Wilson homestead. Some believe Ocean Born Mary lived there. David Ellis, a volunteer with the Londonderry Historical Society, has researched the town records and learned that a different Wilson family lived there.

Images: Henniker Town Hall By Jokermage at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17982643. This story was updated in 2022.

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