Prisoner of War

Joseph Bartlett of Newbury 1686-1754

In the fall of 1712, 25-year-old Joseph Bartlett journeyed east through the Massachusetts wilderness to his coastal hometown of Newbury, after more than four years in captivity at the hands of the French and their Indian allies.

Here is what survives of his story.

Queen Anne’s War

For more than a decade, war had once again swept western Europe, this time over the rightful successor to the deceased King Charles II of Spain. Initially a regional conflict, the fight widened the following year when England declared war on France and Spain.

All parties hoped to keep their American colonies neutral, and might have maintained peace in the New World, had tensions between the colonies not already been at a breaking point.

In the south, French outposts in New Orleans threatened the inland trade routes of the English Carolinas.

In the north, New England settlers disputed French claims to lands beyond the Kennebec River in present day Maine. The French and Indians had raided the northern settlements of Massachusetts Colony during King William’s War in the 1690s. Bad blood with the Indians ran even deeper; a permanent distrust had persisted since the massacres of King Philip’s War in the 1670s.

The English colonists knew that, with their home countries at war, it was only a matter of time before the French and their Indian allies once again came south. Local militias rallied. Many settlers slept inside the relative safety of nearby garrison houses.

These measures proved of little value. The French, allied with native Abenaki and Caughnawaga tribes, conducted raids on many New England towns, in many cases for the sole purpose of securing captives for ransom and slave labor.

In 1703, a force of over 500 French and Wabanaki Indians raided settlements from Wells to Falmouth in present day Maine. Over 300 English settlers were killed or captured.

In 1704, a force of 300 French and Indians destroyed Deerfield Massachusetts, taking more than 100 captives overland to a French-governed settlement near Montreal. While a few adult captives were successfully ransomed, most of the children were adopted by Mohawk families and never returned.

Unable to effectively combat these raids, the English colonials mounted offensives against Port Royal, the French capital of Acadia (Nova Scotia). The first attack, an aborted attempt led by Benjamin Church, was followed in the spring of 1707 by a siege led by John March. Unfortunately for the English, a force of 1600 men failed to capture the French city.

The French were bound to retaliate.

Joseph Bartlett

In 1707, five years into the hostilities, 21-year-old Joseph Bartlett arrived from Newbury to serve in the Haverhill militia. Born in the middle of the fifteen children of Richard and Hannah Emery Bartlett, Joseph had likely worked on his father’s farm and gained valuable currier and cordwainer experience in his father’s leather shop.

It was his first and only stint as a soldier. Joseph quartered in the garrison of Captain Samuel Wainright. He can’t have been terribly happy about his assignment: Pressed into military service against his will, away from friends and family, assigned duties that had killed at least one of his predecessors, an unfortunate soul named Jonathan Johnson.

Not that Joseph likely held any pacifist ideas. France had been an enemy since before he could remember. Relations with the Indians had been poor even longer. If he craved action, Haverhill was a good place to be, in those days the front line of the conflict.

Unlike most Massachusetts towns, Haverhill lay on the north shore of the Merrimack River, leaving it particularly vulnerable to surprise raids from their French and Indian neighbors to the north. The town had been regularly attacked for thirty years, but with months and sometimes years passing in between, leaving a sense of hopeful wariness that perhaps all those troubles lay in the past.

Joseph arrived during one such period, and served in Haverhill for nine months without incident…

The Raid on Haverhill

On 29 August 1708, a band of 100 French and 30 Indians attacked. They set fire to several homes including the Wainwright garrison. As many as 40 villagers were killed or captured.

Joseph Bartlett awoke that morning at the Wainwright garrison to find an attack party lying on the ground outside the front door, their guns pointed up at the windows where he stood dressing himself. The enemy fired without hesitation.

The initial volley missed; no one inside was injured. Bartlett and his comrades returned fire. In the subsequent exchange, an enemy round penetrated the front door, killing Captain Wainright where he stood. The soldiers stationed in the inner chambers prepared to defend the house without his leadership.

Surprising everyone, Mrs. Wainwright unbarred the front door and let their attackers enter. She spoke to them kindly, waited upon them with seeming alacrity, and promised to procure for them whatever they desired.

Not knowing what to make of her behavior, the French eventually demanded money.

Instead of fetching it, Mrs. Wainright fled with her children. Realizing they were fooled, the French attacked the barred chambers held by the remaining soldiers. Joseph and the others fired from the windows (In his account, Joseph states he killed some half dozen) before the others convinced him their only option for survival was to cease resistance.

Hiding his rifle in the chimney, Joseph surrendered.

The Journey North

The French took Joseph prisoner along with two others: a soldier named Newmarsh and one of Wainright’s daughters, who had been unable to escape with her mother.

As they were driven north into the woods with other prisoners taken from other homes, a group of Haverhill men mounted a counteroffensive. Several prisoners escaped during the attack on their captors.

Joseph was not so lucky. His captors compelled him to carry a heavy pack with his hands tied behind his back, part of the time led by a cord tied about his neck. A hatchet-wielding Indian with a pistol in his girdle held the other end of the rope. A short leash.

They walked for days. Joseph lived on horse meat and wan porridge. After some hard travel northward the party reached Lake Winnnipiseoge (Winnipesaukee), probably at the tip of what is now Alton Bay. There the French and Indians parted ways.

The prisoners stayed with the Indians. While the French traveled north toward Quebec along the lake’s eastern shore, the Indians moved west through the wilderness where the towns of Gilford and Meredith now lay. Crossing the lake (possibly at present-day Weirs Beach), the Indians killed a bear swimming in the water. They towed it ashore and cooked it, a feast for the famished party.

They then continued their journey, for five days eating little other than pounded corn. The starving Indians scattered; fifteen stayed with Joseph. A day later, the corn ran out.

Arriving at a river, the Indians made canoes and traveled downstream for three days, eating nothing the whole time save for a few sour grapes and thorn plums. When they managed to kill a hawk, the one bird fed fifteen persons. The head fell to Joseph, who later wrote, “this was the largest meal I had these four days.”

They finally met up with another party of Indians and French, who provisioned them with corn and pumpkin. The Indians successfully killed several sturgeons and, feeling stronger and in better spirits, from thence proceeded to the French fort at Chamble, near Montreal. The Indians shaved Joseph’s hair from one side of his head, greased the other, and painted his face.

Captivity

At Montreal, the Governor questioned Joseph about English plans to reinvade Canada. Likely a short interview, given his low status.

The next morning they started for an Indian fort nine miles from the city. When about half way, they came to a fire, surrounded by fifteen men and thirty boys, where they held a consultation about burning Joseph. Before such discussion were concluded, the Indians who owned him marched away with the boys.

While Joseph was spared death by burning, he did not escape abuse and torture. Arriving at the Indian fort, his captors left him with three Indians. One squaw beat him with a pole. Another cut off his little finger.

The Indians danced all night. When Joseph refused to join them, they pulled him into the ring. An Indian then came to him, and, after making a long speech, gave him to an old squaw, who took him to her wigwam.

The squaw whimpered and cried, then washed and clothed Joseph. He later learned he had been given to her in lieu of her son, who had been killed by the English. The squaw treated him well, but Joseph eventually moved to another fort ten miles away. He lived on dog meat and entrails. A French priest forced him to attend Catholic services, though Joseph had no idea what was being said.

From time to time, Joseph encountered other English. In Fort Chamblee, he met a native of Wells named Littlefield. Later he met a captive Englishwoman serving in the Frenchman’s house. Then a boy named John Willet taken by Indians at Quabog. What became of this unfortunates afterwards is unknown.

Joseph’s fortunes improved somewhat the following February (1709), when he went to live with one Captain Delude, a wealthy Frenchman who, suffering from gout, was unable to walk. Joseph stayed there 15 months. He ate well, conversed with Delude’s mistress on matters of religion, and “at leisure” worked at shoe making.

The details of the final two years of Joseph’s captivity are unknown, as are the terms of his release. It’s possible his father, perhaps even the whole town of Newbury, negotiated for his release, though it’s perhaps more likely the French simply let him go, as Britain and France declared an armistice that year.

However it happened, on Oct 5 1712 Joseph started his return trip to Newbury. Traveling south from Fort Chamblee, he arrived in Albany NY on the 20^th. After a week’s rest he made east for Kinderhook, then Westfield, then Springfield. He reached Boston via Quabog and Marlborough on November 4^th, finally arriving in Newbury on November 8, 1712.

In all, he spent four years, two months, and nine days in captivity.

Later Life

Joseph was awarded twenty pounds in compensation for his captivity. He settled on a farm in the fledgling community of Amesbury Newtown and married Elizabeth Tewksbury on December 5 1717. Following Elizabeth’s untimely death, he remarried Sarah Hoyt on April 27 1721.

The Bartlett farm eventually became part of Salisbury, then Amesbury again in 1724, then part of South Hampton NH when the state border was redrawn in 1742. The area finally incorporated as the independent town of Newton NH in 1749.

Joseph became Newton’s first militia captain, and served for many years as a deacon in the local parish. He died February 1 1754, age 68. His wife Sarah lived another 34 years, finally passing away at 90 on May 28 1787. They are both buried in Newton Town Hall Cemetery.

The Bartlett home on Thornell Road, built in 1720, still stands today. The house, which appears meticulously maintained for its age, featured in this 2023 Boston Magazine article.

Descendants

Joseph and Sarah had ten children and many grandchildren. Several descendants became prominent citizens in Newton. Others served in the NH State Legislature.

Perhaps most notably, Joseph and Sarah’s daughter Mary married Josiah Bartlett, a cousin who, while representing New Hampshire in the 1776 Continental Congress, was the second man to sign the Declaration of Independence. Josiah later became New Hampshire’s fourth elected state governor.

We descend from Sarah and Joseph’s son Richard (born 1738) through Herbert Kimball’s paternal grandmother, Eliza Peaslee.

Final Note

Sometime after his return to Newbury, Joseph visited Haverhill, where he found his rifle still hidden where he left it in the Wainwright chimney. The rifle passed down through Bartlett’s descendants for many years.

A grand-nephew, also named Richard, carried the rifle during the Revolution.

Richard removed to Warner following the war, where a group of boys (being boys) overcharged the weapon and blew it to pieces.

The rifle, painstakingly restored in the 1870s, is now on display at the NH Historical Society.