An Indian Attack at Fort No. 4

Stephen Farnsworth was captured by the Indians and French on the 19th of April 1746. Capt. John Spafford the miller and Lieut. Isaac Parker were also taken at the same time. He had been to the sawmill with an ox team for a load of boards. After getting the boards he started back toward home, but he hadn't gotten far when he saw someone coming toward him. The person had an Indian blanket on his head. He thought it was an old Indian hunter named Wil Johnson who was a hanger-on at the settlement. When the person got closer he raised his gun and pointed it, and Stephen knew that this was not a friend, but an enemy.

Stephen knew that it was pointless to try to run, because if he did he would be shot. Instead of running away, he ran directly toward the Indian in a zig zag pattern, probably thinking that if the Indian fired at him, zigzagging would make it less likely that he would be hit. When Stephen got right up close to the Indian, the Indian threw his gun down and tried to capture him and take him prisoner. Stephen was very athletic and bigger than the Indian. He threw the Indian to the ground, and as they wrestled violently on the ground, it occurred to Stephen that he was going to have to kill this Indian.

At that very moment a Frenchman came up behind Stephen and knocked him over the head with the butt of his musket. The Frenchman hit Stephen so hard it knocked him to the ground and stunned him. When he regained his senses he gave himself up to the Frenchman. Afterwards he wished he had surrendered to the Indian because the Frenchman was mean and the Indian seemed much nicer.

There were about forty French and Indian attackers. They didn't shoot their guns so that they wouldn't alarm the fort. They slaughtered the oxen and took what meat they could carry, but made sure they took all the tongues, which were the preferred part of the beef in those days. Then they set the mill on fire and set off with their prisoners. They started at a fairly steady pace, but hadn't gotten more than a mile before they heard the alarm guns at the fort. At the sound of the guns, they started moving much faster and kept up a fast pace for many miles.

After they had traveled about twelve miles, the group built a fire,cooked some of the meat they had taken, and camped for the night. The captors tied the prisoners up and placed each of them between two Indians to make sure they didn't escape. They did this every night until they reached Canada.

While they traveled, the Indians kept eight or ten guards in the back of the pack and the rest of the group traveled in front. Some of the streams they had to cross were difficult to go through because they were deeper and faster than usual because it was springtime. Stephen had a hard time crossing one of these streams but the Indian who had first tried to capture him helped him. The journey through the wilderness was long and hard. During the last part, after they had eaten all the meat they had gotten that first day, they were very hungry. The only food they had was the wild game they could kill in the forest. To cope with their hunger, the Indians had a strap that they buckled really tight around their stomachs, to make them feel less hungry.

Stephen was taken to Montreal and kept in a room about sixteen feet square, in the second story, with fifteen other people. During the winter, four of the prisoners were selected to carry wood up the stairs, which were rickety and seemed like they were about to fall apart. Each prisoner was allowed to carry up one armload of wood apiece, and this armload was to last all day and all night. Stephen was one of the men chosen for the wood detail. If they tried to carry too big of a load of wood, and dropped some, they weren't allowed to pick it back up. When he got home, Stephen would say that the job of doing wood helped him get excersize and make it a little more possible to endure a captivity that lasted seventeen months before he was exchanged.

Stephen Farnsworth returned from his captivity in broken health. He was never really well after that. The last office to which he was elected was in March 1770. He died Sept. 6, 1771 aged 57.

This is a retelling of the story of Stephen Farnsworth's Indian Captivity.  You can find it yourself in "History of Charlestown, NH, the Old Fort No. 4" by Henry Saunderson, written in 1876.  There is an easily accessed copy of it online through the University of New Hampshire at http://archive.org/stream/historyofcharles00saun#page/n9/mode/2up