KING GEORGE'S WAR--SIEGE OF LOUISBURG--ITS CAPTURE--PROPOSED CAPTURE OF CANADA--NOVA SCOTIA AND CAPE BRETON IN DANGER--FRENCH FLEET ARRIVES OFF LOUISBURG--COLONEL ATKINSON AND THE NEW HAMPSHIRE REGIMENT MARCH TO WINNIPESAUKEE--INDIAN ATTACKS RENEWED--ATTACK AT HOPKINTON--ATTACK AT RUMFORD, NOW CONCORD--CAPTURE OF MRS. MCCOY--INDIAN CHRISTO--PEACE DECLARED

In 1744 about thirty years after the Peace of Utrecht, war was openly declared between France and England, known as King George's War on account of George II being King of England, and as a result the people in New England became involved on account of the French and Indians. It had now become a matter of fact that an Indian War was a necessary attendant of war with France.

New Hampshire had been a distinct royal province for the last three years, and as such, must rely upon her own resources for the part she took in the conflict. At the close of the last war England ceded to France Cape Breton Island, north west of Nova Scotia, a cold barren island, separated from Nova Scotia by a narrow channel. The English owned Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

On the southeast side of the island was an excellent harbor with deep water six miles in length. Here the French had spent five million dollars and twenty-five years of incessant toil building and fortifying the city of Louisburg, and so impregnable did they deem it that it was named "The Dunkirk of America."

In the fall of 1744, a plan was started for the capture of Louisburg by Major William Vaughan of Portsmouth. He communicated his plan to Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, who became deeply interested in the matter, and during the winter plans were matured, and in March, 1745, the expedition set sail. New Hampshire furnished a regiment of five hundred men commanded by Col. Samuel Moore and in the regimental rolls we find the name of Robert Kennedy and Robert Cunningham who afterwards were associated with Goffstown.

The troops, both land and naval, performed the most signal services. They were engaged for fourteen nights in dragging cannons over a deep morass between the landing place and camp. They also built a battery on Lighthouse Cliff that commanded the important Island battery of the enemy.¹

The city was besieged until the 15th day of June when terms of capitulation were agreed upon and it surrendered. Her walls were defended by one hundred and eighty-three pieces of ordnance and sixteen hundred men, yet she surrendered to an army composed of farmers, fishermen and mechanics, who upon entering the city were astonished at the surrender.² After the conquest of Louisburg the reduction of Canada occupied the attention of Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, who consulted with Governor Wentworth and Mr. Atkinson, who approved his plan. Upon divulging the scheme to the British minister he viewed it favorably and the British Secretary of State sent letters to all the governors of the colonies as far south as Virginia to organize their spare men for action. It was proposed the New England troops should meet a British fleet and army at Louisburg, and proceed by way of the river St. Lawrence to Quebec. The New York troops to rendezvous at Albany, and proceed by way of Crown Point to Montreal.

New Hampshire raised a thousand men and equipped two ships of war, and Colonel Atkinson was appointed commander. The New Hampshire troops were ordered to march to Albany, but on account of smallpox prevailing there, the order was changed to Saratoga.

It soon became evident that Nova Scotia and Cape Breton were in great danger of being captured by the French, and the New England troops were ordered to that region. But before this could be carried into effect, a large fleet from France appeared off the coast of Nova Scotia, which caused great consternation among the New England people, apprehensive that the war might be brought to their own shores. They at once turned all their attention to means of self-defense and fortification. Piscataqua and Little Harbor were fortified with twenty-five heavy guns. The French fleet at Nova Scotia were daily expecting the arrival of an English fleet. For some reason the officers of the French fleet were divided in council and there was no concentrated action. Pestilence and disease had sadly weakened their crews, eleven hundred men being buried at Halifax, and hundreds more at sea.

On account of the great loss of men and crippled by storms the commander and second officer became so dejected that they committed suicide, after which, overtaken by a violent storm, a part of their vessels were wrecked and the rest returned to France. The English fleet and army through the long summer was terribly remiss in action, and seven times sailed from the British port and as many times returned. Only two English regiments were dispatched to Louisburg. Following this, bodies of troops were sent from Massachusetts and Rhode Island and two armed vessels from New Hampshire with two hundred men to Annapolis. Reverses, misfortunes and disappointments attended the season and caused serious ill consequences.

After the alarm caused by the French fleet and the abandonment of the expedition for the reduction of Canada, Colonel Atkinson marched with his regiment to Lake Winnipesaukee where he spent the winter in listless inactivity, the men engaged in hunting, fishing, etc., and late in the following summer returned to New Hampshire.³ The French and Indians, exasperated by the fall of Louisburg, made continuous attacks upon the frontier settlements in New Hampshire.

The Indians were continually prowling through the Piscataqua, Merrimack and Connecticut valleys, the garrisons were all guarded by public expense throughout the province. They were so bold and frequent in their attacks that in the spring of 1746 the government was obliged to send extra men to guard the garrisons while the people did their planting.

"All the horrors and atrocities of former Indian Wars were renewed. There was no safety for private houses; every occupied house must be turned into a garrison. No field labor could be performed with safety. Harvests were destroyed, houses burned, cattle killed, and men, women and children inhumanly massacred or dragged into slavery. No man walked abroad unarmed. It was unsafe to step out of the stockade to milk a cow or feed an animal. The lurking foe seemed omnipresent. They were scattered in small parties along the whole frontier. When people wanted bread, they were obliged to visit the mllls with an armed guard for Indians often lay in ambush about the turns. The upper towns on the Connecticut and Merrimack were all visited. Some of them were decimated, others lost only one or two inhabitants."⁴

The Indians carried on their work of death and destruction around us but the inhabitants of Goffstown were molested very little. Garrison houses were established at Dunstable, now Nashua, Milford, Bedford, Pembroke, Concord, Boscawen and Canterbury.

The garrisons at Milford, Bedford and Starks fort, in what is now Manchester, were under command of Capt. John Goffe, and in the roll of his company we find the name Of Caleb Emery who resided in the valley of the Harry Brook in Goffstown; also John Pollard and undoubtedly there were others.

On the 27th of April, 1747, the Indians entered a garrison house at Hopkinton which had been left insecure when one of the party early arising had gone out to hunt. They found the people asleep, took and carried away the entire household, consisting of Samuel Burbank, his sons Caleb and Jonathan, David Woodwell and his children Benjamin, Thomas and Mary. At Boscawen, Thomas Cook and a negro were killed and Elisha Jones taken prisoner and died in Canada.

One of the most wicked atrocities ever perpetrated in this section occurred in Concord, August 11, 1746. Captain Ladd with his company from Exeter came to Concord for protection of its citizens. Concord and Exeter soldiers numbered about seventy; they worshipped on Sunday with arms by their side, which facts disheartened the Indians as they lay in a swamp near the meeting-house waiting to attack.

On Monday, Lieutenant Bradley and seven men went out on the Hopkinton Road intending to go to Eastman's fort; they had proceeded about a mile and a half from the meeting-house in Penacook, when they were fired upon by the Indians lying in ambush, and five of the party, Lieut. Jonathan Bradley, Samuel Bradley, John Lufkin, John Bean and Obadiah Peters were killed and hewn to pieces.⁵ Alexander Roberts and William Stickney were captured, and Daniel Gilman made his escape and alarmed the town. Stickney and Roberts managed to escape after years of captivity. Stickney was drowned before he reached home, and Roberts returned to Rumford. A fitting monument to their memory was erected on the spot where they fell about half way between the city and St. Paul's school, by Richard Bradley, grandson of Samuel Bradley.

On the 21st day of August, 1747, Mrs. McCoy of Epsom was taken captive and carried to Canada where she was sold as a servant to a French family, and at the close of the war she returned home.⁶ This was the last attack made in this section during the war, and one of the party had previously been considered a friendly Indian.

On the easterly side of the Merrimack River, a short distance below Amoskeag Falls where a small brook empties into the Merrimack, lived an Indian named Christo or Christi; he remained in this neighborhood after nearly all of the tribes or remnants of tribes had gone; here he had his wigwam, lived by fishing and hunting, and was upon friendly terms with the whites. He was suspected of treachery and of being in the fight at Pequawket where Captain Lovewell was killed. But be that as it may, a company from Dunstable came up to pay him their compliments in the same manner their friends were treated in Lovewell's fight. They did not find Christo, but they destroyed his wigwam. Christo had been employed as a scout by the government and received compensation for his services. In 1745 Capt. Jeremiah Clough of Canterbury was paid 9�, 17s for keeping Christo by order of the captain general.⁷

About this time for some reason which at this late day cannot be explained Christo left Amoskeag and went to St. Francis and joined himself with the St. Francis tribe of Indians, from whence he returned in company with two other Indians, Sabatis and Plausawa, and burned McCoy's buildings in Epsom and took her into captivity. McCoy had previously lived at Londonderry and was accustomed to visit the Falls quite frequently, and he and Christo were known to each other. He probably died at St. Francis as about ten years after he was seen there and recognized by Moses Jackman, a captive taken in Canterbury.

Near the close of 1748 a treaty of peace was concluded between England and France at Aix-la-Chappelle. England yielded Cape Breton to the French, the conquest of which so distinguished the colonial army, and received in return the city of Madras in Hindoostan which the French had taken from the English.

If the capture of Louisburg was an interposition of divine providence as it was then viewed, it is difficult to realize how it could be so easily yielded to the French. The treaty declared that "all things should be restored on the footing they were before the war." Nothing was gained, and all the old questions in dispute were again revived in the French and Indian War which soon followed.⁸

¹Adjutant General's Report, Vo1. II, p.62. Return
²Sanborn's History of New Hampshire, p. 122. Return
³Sanborn's History of New Hampshire, p.124. Return
⁴Sanborn's History of New Hampshire p.125. Return
⁵Potter's History of Manchester, p. 225; Stackpole, Vol. I, p.343. Return
⁶Potter's History of Manchester, p.231. Return
⁷S. P., Vol. v, p. 389. Return
⁸Sanborn's History of New Hampshire, p.127.