Indian Raids of 1692 and 1695

Type	Raid
Date	August 1, 1692 to August 5, 1695

The Indian raids of 1692 and 1695 were the two attacks made on Billerica during King William's War (1688 to 1697), both falling on the scattered farms in the north part of the town, near what is now North Billerica. On August 1, 1692, two mothers and four of their children in the Dutton and Shed households were killed. On August 5, 1695, a larger raid on the families east of the Concord River killed ten people and carried four into captivity from the Rogers, Levistone and Toothaker households. Town historian Henry Hazen called the two attacks Billerica's first and second massacres. The dates are those of the town records, which were kept in the Julian (Old Style) calendar then in use in New England; by the Gregorian calendar they fell on August 11, 1692, and August 15, 1695. Both were Mondays.

Billerica had organized its defense around garrison houses since King Philip's War. In October 1675 the selectmen and the committee of militia assigned each family to a fortified house: John Rogers Sr. and his sons John, Thomas and Nathaniel to the house of the Rev. Samuel Whiting, which was to be the main garrison and "ye last refuge in case of extremity"; Roger Toothaker to Thomas Patten's house; and John Dunkin to the house of Jonathan Danforth. The renewed war, begun with the attack on Dover in 1689, which Hazen thought the French in Canada had instigated, brought raids on Dunstable in September 1691 and on Lancaster two weeks before the first Billerica attack.

The first raid struck two houses at a crossroads by the later Russell place, half a mile south of North Billerica, where an old road ran south toward Fox Hill and the village. On the east side of that road stood the home of Johanna Dutton, a daughter of Henry Jefts and one of the first children born in the town. Her first husband, John Dunkin, had received the land in 1670 in return for the "fat ox" the town presented to its deputy, Humphrey Davy, and had died of smallpox in December 1690; she had since married Benjamin Dutton. Opposite, in the northeast angle of the roads, lived Zechary Shed and his wife Ann. In each house the Indians killed the mother with her eldest and youngest child: Johanna Dutton, aged 36, her daughter Mary Dunkin, 16, and her son Benoni, not yet two; and Ann Shed with her daughters Hannah, 13, and Agnes, about two. The records state only that they were "slaine by ye indians." No captives are recorded, and nothing is known of the circumstances; Hazen noted that none of the histories of the period mentioned the attack. The Rogers, Toothaker and Levistone families living farther north were spared.

Over the next three years the town kept up watches and scouting. On February 27, 1692/3, the militia renewed the watch at Captain Hill's and in the center of town, warned the outskirts to stand on guard, and asked the General Court for relief from the burden of scouting. On August 23, 1693, Major Thomas Hinchman ordered Lieutenant John Lane to impress eight troopers, four of them to scout daily about the town, "especially towards the great swamp." Groton was attacked on July 27, 1694. In the same years the witchcraft prosecutions reached the Toothaker household. A warrant was issued at Salem on May 18, 1692, against "Roger Toothaker of Bilrica," and Roger Toothaker died in the Boston jail, where a coroner's jury found on June 16, 1692, that he had died a natural death. His wife Mary, whose sister Martha Carrier was hanged at Salem on August 19, 1692, was examined on July 30 and confessed that the devil had promised "to keep her from the Indians"; she was indicted in January 1693 as a widow of Billerica but was not executed.

The second raid came about noon on August 5, 1695. Cotton Mather, as quoted by John Farmer, reported that the attackers were on horseback and so were not taken for Indians until they reached the houses. They found John Rogers, about 53 and a widower, asleep at the John Rogers Homestead, north of the present village; an arrow struck him in the neck, and he pulled it out and died with it in his hand. A woman in the chamber escaped by leaping from the window and hiding among the flags, and a young woman was scalped and left for dead but survived. His son Daniel, 12, and daughter Mercy were taken captive. The family of John Levistone suffered most: his wife's mother, Seeth Ross, a widow of four months, was killed with five of the children, Seth, Thomas, Mary, Margaret and Alexander, the youngest about five weeks old, while the eldest daughter Sarah, 11, was carried off; the parents, Margaret and John, and their eldest son John escaped. Thomas Rogers, John's younger brother, and his son Thomas, about ten, were killed, probably away from their house. At the Roger Toothaker House, at the point where the Middlesex Canal later left the Concord River, Mary Toothaker was killed and her youngest daughter Margaret, 12, taken prisoner. The town clerk, Joseph Tompson, entered in the records that the town had "received that awful stroke by the enemy of fivetene persons slain & taken, more sad than that we met withall three years before." Fourteen of the fifteen are named; the other has not been identified.

Men from the center of town pursued at once but found no trace of the raiders, who were said to have tied their dogs' mouths with wampum to keep them from barking. Alarm continued for weeks. On August 23, 1695, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Lynde of Charlestown, commissioned by Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, came to Billerica and found about three hundred armed men from Woburn, Reading, Malden, Medford, Charlestown, Cambridge and Watertown. He posted about forty men at each of the three fords of the Merrimack between Andover and Chelmsford, camped at Prospect Hill, and on August 24 had the great swamp searched in line, finding only a track of perhaps two Indians. He left ten men to guard the chief ford below Hunt's garrison until August 29 and dismissed the rest at the ordinary; his report noted that the bread left with Captain Danforth had not been prudently used. On April 6, 1696, the officers erected new watches, ordered the garrisons repaired with masters and soldiers assigned to each, and divided the town's old powder among them. Samuel Hunt's house near Wamesit, at Hunt's Falls on the Merrimack, was a garrison and, from its exposed position, probably the most important one.

No further attack fell on Billerica before the peace of 1697, and Hazen found no evidence that either raid had been preceded by warnings or accompanied by attacks on other towns. The sites remained part of local memory: in 1883 Hazen wrote that the well of the John Rogers house could still be seen and English bricks dug from its cellar, and that tradition held the Toothaker house to survive as the ell of the brick Rogers house on the canal. The Levistone family remained in the town, and John Levistone's descendants were numerous there. Farmer, writing in 1816, recorded that the shock of the second raid "was long had in painful remembrance."

People

Johanna Jefts Dunkin: Killed August 1, 1692 with two of her children by John Dunkin; born Joanna Jefts, widow of John Dunkin, wife of Benjamin Dutton.
John Dunkin: Her first husband (d. 1690); his land grant of 1670 was the site of the 1692 attack.
Benjamin Dutton: Husband of Johanna Dutton; survived the 1692 raid.
Ann Shed: Wife of Zechary Shed; killed August 1, 1692 with daughters Hannah and Agnes.
Zechary Shed: Husband of Ann Shed; his house opposite the Dunkin place was attacked August 1, 1692.
John Rogers: Killed at his house August 5, 1695; son Daniel and daughter Mercy taken captive.
Thomas Rogers: Younger brother of John Rogers; killed with his son Thomas August 5, 1695.
Seeth Holman Ross: Widow of Thomas Ross and mother of Margaret Levistone; killed August 5, 1695.
John Levistone: Scotchman whose five younger children were killed and daughter Sarah captured August 5, 1695; he escaped.
Margaret Ross Levistone: Wife of John Levistone, born Margaret Ross; escaped the 1695 raid.
John Levistone: Eldest son of John and Margaret Levistone, born 1682; escaped the 1695 raid.
Mary Allen Toothaker: Born Mary Allen; accused of witchcraft 1692; killed August 5, 1695; daughter Margaret taken captive.
Roger Toothaker: Husband of Mary Toothaker; arrested for witchcraft May 1692, died in Boston jail June 1692.
Martha Allen Carrier: Sister of Mary Toothaker, hanged at Salem August 19, 1692.
Jonathan Danforth: Garrison master in 1675; recorded the names of the 1692 victims; Captain Danforth held the bread left by Lynde in 1695.
John Lane: Lieutenant of the Billerica troop ordered in 1693 to impress troopers for scouting.
Joseph Tompson: Town clerk in 1695 who entered the record of the second raid.
Samuel Hunt: Master of Hunt's garrison near Wamesit, the guard post at the Merrimack ford in 1695.

Indian Raids of 1692 and 1695

Indian Raids of 1692 and 1695

People

References