Queen Anne's War

Type	War
Date	May 4, 1702 to April 11, 1713

Queen Anne's War, the American part of the War of the Spanish Succession, lasted from 1702 to the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. For Billerica it was a decade of militia duty rather than of attack: unlike the war before it, which had brought the Indian Raids of 1692 and 1695 to the north part of the town, no raid on Billerica itself is recorded. The town's troopers and foot soldiers were kept armed, stood watch at the Merrimack fords, scouted the woods toward Dunstable and Groton, and rode to the relief of Lancaster in 1704 and of Dunstable in 1706, and the pastor's son was carried captive to Canada. The surviving record is mostly the rolls and orders preserved in the papers of Captain, later Colonel, John Lane, the town's leading military officer, which Hazen printed in 1883.

Preparations began before the declaration of war reached New England. On April 22, 1702, Major Jonathan Tyng of Dunstable ordered Captain Lane "forthwith to take effectual care that there be strict execution of the act for regulating of ye Militia" and to see that his men were provided with arms and ammunition. On October 26, 1702, Judge Samuel Sewall, riding with the governor, stopped at Billerica, visited the "languishing" pastor Samuel Whiting, to whom he gave "2 Balls of Chockalett and a pound of Figgs," and "Saw the Company in Arms, led by Capt. Tomson," that is, Joseph Tompson. On November 5 Governor Joseph Dudley sent Lane with two troopers to carry letters to the officers at Marlborough, Lancaster, Groton, Chelmsford and Dunstable, and to assure "Wotamanmon and the Penacooke men" of the governor's friendship while warning them that "the french Indians will be amongst them soon."

Guard duty was constant. On September 3, 1703, Colonel Tyng ordered Lane to warn his soldiers in Chelmsford "to watch, Two in a night and the day following, at the wading place at Wamesit," relieving Captain Bowers's men "as the custom hath been." After the destruction of Deerfield in February 1704 and an attack by several hundred French and Indians on Lancaster on July 31, twelve Billerica men, with four from Chelmsford and three from Groton, were "sent out August ye forth, 1704, with ten days' provisions, and marched to Lancaster to inforce Major Taylor." Lane's list names "Samull Hill, Corporal, John Needham, Clark, Raph Hill, Centinell, John Farmer, Samull Hunt, Andrue Richardson, Thomas Ross, Nathanell Bacon, Samull Hill, Junr., William Grimbs, John Hunt, Steven Richardson." They petitioned afterward that "they never as yet received anything for their provision." In November 1704 Colonel Tyng received twenty-four pounds from the General Court for four blockhouses, one at Dunstable, two at Chelmsford and one at Billerica, probably the blockhouse "nere Andouer line" mentioned in the town records.

The war reached the Whiting family. The pastor's son Samuel Whiting Jr., one of the first settlers of Dunstable, was taken prisoner there with Joseph Hassell and Samuel Butterfield, probably in 1704, when Robert Parris, his wife and daughter were killed. He was carried to Canada but escaped, his Dunstable house was a garrison in 1710, and in 1713 the colony granted him ten pounds "for his wounds and sufferings." His brother, the Rev. John Whiting of Lancaster, had been killed at the end of the previous war. A family tradition handed down through Leander Hosmer, a grandson of the heroine, belongs to this period: Mary Lane, the colonel's daughter, left with one man on guard, grew suspicious of a stump outside the window, took the gun herself when he laughed at her, and fired; "the stump rolled over, a dead Indian."

In July 1706 Indians attacked Dunstable again, surprising a scouting party at Weld's garrison and killing the Blanchard family at their garrison; on July 10 Joseph Kidder and Jeremiah Nelson of Rowley were killed in a fight with the troopers, and John Pickard of Rowley, mortally wounded, died at Billerica on August 5. Lane recorded "the Names of the Troopers which served under my command to the reliefe of Dunstable, July the fourth, seventeen hundred and six, being twenty-nine men, two days, with the sustenance," among them Thomas, Andrew and Jonathan Richardson, John and Oliver Farmer, Thomas Pollard, Samuel, Daniel, Ralph and John Hill, John Stearns, Josiah, Nathaniel and Benjamin Bacon, Henry Jefts, James Dutton, Corporal Samuel Hill, Josiah Fasset and Quartermaster Joseph Foster. A second list names twenty men who marched with him to Groton, Dunstable and Dracut from August 11 to 13, "by Command from his Excelency," finding their own food, with Josiah Bacon as trumpeter; some on it were Chelmsford and Groton men. Two undated rolls of about the same time, one headed "The Names of the men that went the rous with Mager Lane," add Jonathan Bacon, Hugh Ditson, John Kittredge Jr., Kendall Patten, Benjamin and Jacob Walker and others.

Billerica men probably served in the unsuccessful expeditions against Port Royal in 1707, its capture in 1710, and the invasion of Canada by the St. Lawrence in 1711. Hazen found only one more roll, a receipt of September 18, 1708 by James Dutton for eight pounds, three shillings and sixpence "for the solgers that bilary [sent] unto Chelmsford and Groton." The only Billerica death in the war found in the records is that of Isaac Stearns, son of John Stearns, who was "ship-wrecked and lost in expedition to Port Royal, 1711," probably in the wreck of the Canada fleet in the St. Lawrence that August. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713 brought, as Hazen put it, "another ten years' peace," which he called "most welcome to the weary colonists." Of the men on Lane's rolls he wrote that they "are as worthy of honored remembrance from a grateful posterity as those which we carefully record and tenderly cherish, in the later wars of the Revolution and the Rebellion."

People

John Lane: Captain and later colonel of the Billerica troop, who received the militia orders of 1702 and 1703 and led the town's troopers to the relief of Dunstable in 1706; his papers preserve the war rolls.
Joseph Tompson: Captain of the Billerica foot company that Judge Sewall saw under arms on October 26, 1702.
Samuel Whiting: The aged pastor, visited by Sewall in October 1702; his son Samuel was taken captive at Dunstable.
Samuel Whiting: Son of the pastor, settler of Dunstable, taken prisoner by the Indians about 1704 and carried to Canada; escaped and was compensated by the colony in 1713.
Joseph Foster: Quartermaster of Lane's troop on the march to the relief of Dunstable, July 4, 1706.
John Needham: Clerk of the twelve Billerica soldiers sent to Lancaster in August 1704 and of the 'rous' roll.
Jonathan Bacon: On the roll of the men who 'went the rous with Mager Lane' about 1706.
John Stearns: On the roll of troopers sent to the relief of Dunstable in July 1706; his son Isaac was lost in the 1711 expedition.
John Farmer: One of the twelve Billerica soldiers who marched to Lancaster in August 1704.
Andrew Richardson: One of the twelve Billerica soldiers sent to Lancaster in August 1704, and a trooper at Dunstable in 1706.
Thomas Ross: One of the twelve Billerica soldiers sent to Lancaster in August 1704; first on the Dunstable relief roll of 1706.
Nathaniel Bacon: One of the twelve Billerica soldiers sent to Lancaster in August 1704 and a trooper at Dunstable in 1706.
John Hunt: One of the twelve Billerica soldiers sent to Lancaster in August 1704.
Stephen Richardson: One of the twelve Billerica soldiers sent to Lancaster in August 1704.

Queen Anne's War

Queen Anne's War

People

References