William HAYNES

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      Historical detail in NOTES

Haverhill, inland on the Merrimac River, was still a frontier town, though founded in 1640, and but few towns suffered so severely from the Indians. During King William's war, on the 15th of August 1696, Jonathan Haynes, his three sons (Thomas aged 16, Jonathan 12, Joseph 7) and his daughter Mary (aged 9) were captured by Indians. At Pennacook (Concord, N. H.) the party divided. The father and his eldest son, Thomas, were taken to an Indian village in Maine from which they escaped; but the man's strength failed as they wandered in the forest, and the boy, leaving him, followed the whirring sound of a saw mill which led him to Saco, where he found help for his father.Tradition says that the second Indian group tarried until winter near Pennacook, then, carrying Mary on a hand sled, went to Canada, where they sold her and her young brothers to the French. Mary was redeemed the next winter by the payment of a hundred pounds of tobacco carried North (again, tradition says) on a hand sled. The two boys were identified many years later in Canada. They had grown up as Frenchmen, married into French-Canadian families and forgotten their native language.A year and a half after the first captivity, Indians again appeared in Haverhill (22 Feb 1697/8), killed Jonathan Haynes and a neighbor, Samuel Ladd, and carried off their two sons, Thomas Haynes and Daniel Ladd. Thomas again escaped, as did Daniel Ladd, finally, though at his first attempt he had been recaptured and subjected to torture.