Peace Comes to the Connecticut River Valley

In October of 1748, a treaty was signed between the English and the French. Hostilities at the Fort at No. 4 continued through early June, though. Obadiah Sartwell was killed while he was ploughing his fields, and Phineas Stephens was captured. After that summer, peace again descended on the Connecticut River Valley. In 1751, the settlers voted to look for a blacksmith to settle in town, and also voted to hire a minister. The most exciting development occurred on July 2, 1753, when Governor Benning Wentworth granted No. 4 a charter. No 4 was renamed Charlestown, after Admiral Sir Charles Knowles, the Governor of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. At the time Charlestown was chartered, Stephen and Eunice Farnsworth had three children in addition to Oliver, all girls: Sarah, Submit, and Eunice.

The new village of Charlestown enjoyed a year's peace. In May of 1754, the French and Indian War began. At the beginning of the war, there were 30 houses and 180 people in Charlestown. Almost immediately, the Indian recommenced their attacks.

August, 1754, the Johnson family was captured and taken to Canada. Suzannah and James Johnson and their son, aged 6, and daughters aged 2 and four, were separated and sent to various places. Suzannah was pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl on the trail from Charlestown to Canada. The baby girl lived. When the family was finally reunited, many years later, Suzannah wrote a book about her experiences, from Charlestown. You can read it online here. http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Johnson%2C%20Mrs.%20(Susannah%20Willard)%2C%201730-1810

During the summer of 1755 , no residents were killed or captured, but rampaging Indians on their way to other places slaughtered Charlestown cows from out of the fields, for food. In June of 1756 Indians set a fence on fire and when Lieutenant Moses Willard went to put the fire out, he was killed. His wife Susannah was the sister of Eunice and Hannah Farnsworth (David Farnsworth's wife) and he was the stepbrother of the Farnsworth brothers. In the spring of 1757, the town was again attacked and five men were captured and brought to Canada. One of them was David Farnsworth.

David escaped from his captors after several months, and made his way back to Charlestown. After his return, he apparently decided he had had enough, and moved his family to Hollis, New Hampshire, and then to Eaton, Lower Canada.

After the attack of 1757, the King's Government approved a garrison of soldiers to be posted at the fort at Charlestown. They were a little slow in getting there, but by 1758, there were 100 troops stationed at the fort. This was a change in policy toward Charlestown, because in the past, the inhabitants of No. 4 had to beg New Hampshire and Massachusetts to send help. Even though technically the settlement was in New Hampshire, it was always Massachusetts that sent help, albeit grudgingly, and it was always provincials and not truly professional soldiers. Now they were receiving help from the crown itself, in the form of military professionals. The 100 troops were in Charlestown about a year, when they were ordered to a bigger and more important post in 1759.

In 1759, the plan was for English troops, under General Jeffrey Amherst, to attack the French at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point. To that end, the troops stationed at the fort at Charlestown were sent to Albany to join General Amherst in preparation for those attacks. General Amherst applied to

the Government of Massachusetts to send some provincials to Charlestown to replace the troops that were leaving. Massachusetts sent an equal number of replacement troops from Hampshire County, under Captain Elijah Smith.

The attacks on Fort Ti and Crown Point were successful, and the English took over the forts on the border of what would be upper New York State and Vermont. Crown Point had been under French control for thirty years, and many of the Indian attacks on English settlements in the Connecticut River Valley had been launched from there. With Crown Point and Ticonderoga controlled by the English, there was only one more trouble spot – the Village of St Francis.

The village of St Francis was attacked by Roger's Rangers, led by Robert Rogers. Roger's Rangers were a colonial militia that operated around Lake George and Lake Champlain. They often operated in the winter, traveling by snowshoes and attacking French and Indian winter encampments. After the victories at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, Roger's Rangers were sent on a mission to attack St Francis in Quebec. These were very tough men who had been through many battles in difficult conditions in the north country. They weren't about to be lenient on the village that had been the source of so much suffering to their countrymen. And they weren't. On October 3, 1759, Roger's Rangers attacked and destroyed the village of St Francis, killing women and children in the process.

The true story of the Raid on St Francis will probably never be known. Rogers said he killed 200 Indians and took 20 captive. The French said that he only killed 30 Indians and lost 40 men himself. There are those who say that the Raid on St Francis was too brutal and that there were mostly women, children, and old people in St Francis at the the time of the raid. There are others who say that the brutality was justified, that St Francis was the departure point for many of the Indian attacks against the English settlers along the Connecticut River. Whatever the truth was, there were no more attacks against Charlestown after the raid on St Francis. For the Connecticut River Valley, the war against the Indians ended on that day. By the time lasting peace came to Charlestown, Eunice and Stephen Farnsworth had seven children. They had added a brother, Jonathan, and two sisters, Mary and Azubah, to their growing brood, which now consisted of two boys and five girls. In addition, Relief was born in 1762 and Stephen was born in 1764. Stephen Farnsworth, the father, died in 1771 at age 57. At the time of Stephen's death, Oliver was 29 and his youngest brother, named after his father, Stephen, was 7. Eunice was 49.

After the Raid on St Francis, there was no further need for a fort at Charlestown. The town was growing, and after the French and Indian War was over, new English settlements were founded all along the Connecticut River. By 1760, the fort had fallen into disrepair. There is no record of when the last vestiges of it were removed. The original fort stood where the center of Charlestown is now, but Fort Number 4 has been rebuilt as a living museum closer to the Connecticut River. I appreciate all the hard work the people at Fort Number 4 do to keep the early history of the Upper Valley alive for us all to enjoy and learn about. Not only do they work hard to run the fort so that people can go there and see it and learn about the first white settlement of the Upper Valley, they also work hard to raise the money they need to keep the Fort open and in repair. Thank You, everyone at the Fort at Number Four!