In the Name of Belief

By George M. Watson Jr.

In 1672 Thaddeus and Elisabeth Haskins, a young couple, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts journeyed to Falmouth, Maine, hoping to establish a new life. In three years they became successful farmers producing abundant crops and managing a growing cattle herd until barely escaping with their two children from an Indian attack during King Philip's War. The Haskinses lost everything and limped back to their Cape roots, remaining there until their parents passed. With the proceeds of their families' estates the couple moved to Salem, Massachusetts, purchased and operated an inn, tavern, and several farms. They planned to acquire capital and return to their Falmouth lands. Thaddeus hired Almerk, a talented multibreed Indian, who became his right-hand man and later married his daughter.

At Salem, Elisabeth was accused of witchcraft and died in prison awaiting trial. This enraged Thaddeus and enhanced his already intense loathing of the Puritan hierarchy and their religious beliefs. He passed his views on religion and the clergy to his progeny.

Overtime the family became wealthy and prominent, if not dominant in Falmouth society. They acquired a fishing fleet, merchant vessels and an abundance of farm and forest lands. In short, they became colonial aristocrats. Their descendants participated in wars against the Indians and the French, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and both world wars of the 20th century.

The Haskins family became renowned for charity, assisting new settlers in surviving the extremes of the Maine winters. On many occasions their financial assistance helped Falmouth, later Portland endure hard times. In the 19th century the Haskins became international traders and bankers shifting some of their operations to New York, Canada and London while retaining their Portland mansion and position in the city's society. The family did not acquire all of its wealth legally. Critics considered their cooperation with the British during the Revolutionary War to be treason; and their later liquor smuggling flouted the law even as it added to the family fortune.

The novel follows the Haskins family's adventurous march through three hundred years of war and peace ending with World War II and the final disposition of the Haskinses' Portland homestead and the dispersal of family members throughout the country and abroad. This is an account of a family's survival, and attainment of great wealth and influence, achieved largely through hard work and wise decisions. Throughout their history the Haskins preserved their skepticism of established religion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664153905

George M. Watson Jr.

George M. Watson, Jr. Ph.D. worked as an historian for the Air Force History and Museums program for forty years. There he wrote several books, co-authored many more, and wrote numerous articles. In addition, he served as a branch and division chief. He served two years in the U.S. Army to include a year in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. His book, "Voices from the Rear: Vietnam 1969-1970,"depicts that experience, and another book, "Choices: The Crisis of Conscience of the Vietnam Generation," describes the difficult decisions that confronted both he and his generation. Following his retirement in 2012 he wrote "Remember these Things: Neighborhood Connections," a novel about the civilian lives of three Vietnam veterans.

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Copyright © 2021 by George M. Watson, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/21/2021

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter I:Newcomers and the Aborigines

Chapter II:Coping with Their Own Religious Zealots

Chapter III:Return to Maine

Chapter IV:Exploring Remote Lands in the Province of Maine

Chapter V:Strengthening Falmouth and Enhancing the Fortress and Its Mysteries

Chapter VI:Changing Times

Chapter VII:Revolutionary Fervor

Chapter VIII:Shoring Up and Surviving the War

Chapter IX:Falmouth Following the Revolution

Chapter X:Portland Following the Second

War of Independence

Chapter XI:An Alternative Way of Life

Chapter XII:The French Connection

Chapter XIII:Important Associations

Chapter XIV:The New York Connection

Chapter XV:The Haskinses’ Reaction to the Postwar Decades and the Jacksonian Era, 1828- 1844

Chapter XVI:The Meeting at the Mansion: The Confluence of Many Minds, Views, and Prejudices in 1857

Chapter XVII:The Civil War and the War Against Temperance

Chapter XVIII:Undercutting Temperance, Island Finds, the End of the Civil War and Return to Normalcy

Chapter XIX:The Great Fire and Flames of Romance

Chapter XX:New York Trauma

Chapter XXI:Tragedy on the Penobscot

Chapter XXII:Surviving 1870s and The Panic of 1873

Chapter XXIII:Negotiating the Gilded Age

Chapter XXIV:Adjusting to the New Century

Chapter XXV:The Twenties, the Thirties, and World War II

Epilogue

Main Characters and Important Players

Endnotes

Selected Bibliography

Maine.jpg

Maine

Nova%20Scotia.jpg

Nova Scotia

DEDICATION

Nancy L. Watson, my wife and companion for nearly

fifty years who died on November 11, 2019

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I IMAGINED THIS BOOK prior to my retirement in August 2012. However, I gave priority to several books before getting back to this historical novel. I realized writing about a single family over a period of nearly three hundred years would be a major undertaking.

Several people were definitely key to making this novel a reality. My friend, author, editor, historian and former fellow employee with the Air Force History and Museums Program, Colonel (Dr.) Elliott Converse (US Air Force Retired.) who in the course of many hours dedicated to this manuscript provided major editorial suggestions and asked factual questions all of which made the manuscript tighter and a more readable product. He consistently warned all verbiage slows the narrative and that you must keep the manuscript flowing. I am forever grateful for the hours that he devoted to this work.

Dr. Robert Duffner, historian and former infantry rifle-platoon officer with the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War, and retired Chief of the Air Force Research Laboratory History Office and author of several Air Force scientific histories provided editorial comments that enhanced the flow of the piece.

Dr. Daniel F. Harrington, retired Air Force Historian and author of Berlin of the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, And the Early Cold War put much time and effort into reviewing the manuscript providing superb editorial and copy edits that tightened the manuscript.

John Schiraga, a photographer, restored the clarity of the cover photo.

My neighbor and psychologist, and author Dr. Vincent Greenwood took time from his busy schedule to read the manuscript.

I am again grateful to my former long-time office mate and friend Dr. Richard I. Wolf, former head of the Air Force Historical Studies office in Washington, D.C., for his advice readying the manuscript for print.

I appreciate the interest, advice and encouragement of the above and to any others whom I might have overlooked.

THE COVER PHOTO

T HE PHOTO IS a picture of Portland, Maine that includes the city’s waterfront ca. 1900. The copy of the photo was purchased from the Maine Historical Society in Portland. The Grand Trunk Railroad Grain Elevator and the port facility are visible as is the Customs House—the white building in the foreground. That structure is still standing at the time of this writing.

PREFACE

T HE BIG HOUSE or the so-called Deering Mansion located in the suburb of Oakdale in Portland, Maine, has been cemented in my memory since about the age of three in 1947. I lived at 102 Bedford Street, which was diagonally across from the mansion and directly across from what had been its sheep field and shed when it was a farm. At four years old I almost daily crossed through the mansion’s main driveway on my way to Oakdale kindergarten. I knew at the time that there were families living in the big house whom I assumed were not the owners but were renters, very possibly instructors at Portland Junior College which had purchased much of the land that bordered the mansion between Falmouth and Bedford Streets. There were cars in the half-moon turnaround driveway similar to ours, a 1938 Chrysler and my dad’s 1949 Plymouth. In other words, there were no autos like a Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce that one would expect to be parked in a mansion of that size. Instead, there were Chevys and a Ford Woody station wagon that were not recent models. Remember too, that cars of the late forties and fifties were much more distinguishable than the look-a-like cars of today. Practically every kid in those days could easily identify them and took every chance to do so.

As I grew older I wanted to know more about the original owners and the history of the place. I acquired that information through high school, college, graduate school and a forty-year plus career as a historian.

Some early experiences involving the mansion that I recalled later in life persuaded me to ask more questions. One day on my way to kindergarten I noticed an underground cellar between the mansion and a small yellow barn and the beautiful main barn that the college used for several purposes, including a gym. The cellar’s bulkhead doors were open and a ladder descended to an underground room. As I approached the ladder, and looked down into the room, I saw two men handling what appeared to be electrical wires. As I peered further over the side l I could see bunches of fuses on the room’s far wall, the kind that were screwed into a large fuse box. I was curious was and wanted to see more, but the two men told me to move on and warned me that it was a long fall to the floor below; and that I might get hurt. I followed their advice and walked away. I don’t remember seeing any type of electrical truck with company logo markings parked in the driveway. So, I concluded that the men were probably part of the college’s maintenance staff.

My later musings made me think that the mansion’s tenants required additional electrical power and outlets to accommodate the many twentieth century electrical gadgets and devices such as toasters, can openers, various types of mixers, and vacuum cleaners, as well as washing machines and dryers and radios and later televisions. I also thought that having a separate underground room dedicated to electrical wiring and fuse boxes was a wise safety procedure since the mansion was so old. If there was an electrical fire it might be contained in that underground room. However, I also knew the wires had to enter the house in many places to provide power throughout the large building. In writing this novel the memory of that underground room spurred my imagination for the construction of a large barn built on the main estate during the first decades of the 1700s. That barn spawned many ghostly mysteries and rumors that its secret rooms contained large caches of gold and silver.

One theme I discuss throughout these pages is Thaddeus Haskins’s (the initial main character) strong aversion to religions especially those faiths such as the Puritans that attempted to control their parishioners’ lives outside the place of worship. He loathed such practices and was not afraid to express his views in public, often at personal risk. The founder of the Haskins family in Portland, the novel’s main setting, Thaddeus would pass his views onto his progeny and they to theirs and so on.

Another of the novel’s themes is that because an atrocity or other evil act may be in accordance with local practice and legal at the time doesn’t make it right either then or now. Those who brought about the evils of the Salem Witch Trials were wrong then and would certainly be considered depraved and criminally insane today. Thaddeus believed the perpetrators of those atrocities ought to have been punished then. No religion has the right over the life and death of its adherents. So, the Haskins leadership —Thaddeus and descendants chose not to support or rationalize the wild and insane actions by the Puritans. In the name of their beliefs, the Puritans and their clerical leaders persecuted those who deviated from established norms. They condemned them as witches and executed them. At the same time Thaddeus was not opposed to having the witch baiters punished. Neither was right then nor would be now. And, as I frequently state in these pages, the decision by the founding fathers of the United States of America to separate Church and State has had momentous consequences.

Thaddeus would hate the proclivity of religious leaders to see plagues and untimely deaths as punishments for human misbehavior by an angry God. Blaming the influenza epidemic that followed World War I on God’s displeasure with men for fighting it or the Reverend Gerald Falwell in the 1990s attributing the AIDs epidemic to God’s disgust with homosexuality would be considered by most today as irrational. Are these twentieth- century interpretations of God’s intentions a throwback to the Hell Fire and Damnation sermons and executions of witches by the Puritans? Certainly there are parallels.

In my attempt to follow the Haskins family from the 17th to the 20th century I discuss the evolution of their moral character and juxtapose their beliefs against the historical flow of religions development, to include the ideas and practices held by religious leaders and their followers. I present the ideas of that same clergy and compare those ideas with the vision, thoughts and wisdom of their parishioners. For instance, I mention the new ideas brought by the Great Awakening of the 1740s and the reaction to that movement by the major religious establishments. When that new movement appeared to threaten the loyalty of the parishioners to the religious establishments, attitudes of the clergy towards the Great Awakening changed. Do not tread on my modus operandi or, rather, my means of living or sphere of influence without expecting opposition became the reaction of most of the establishment.

Thaddeus, the patriarch of the Haskins family, would often postulate that, no matter how foolish and unscientific the multitude of ideas created and expounded upon by religious leaders who were often ignorant and uneducated, there also simultaneously existed a multitude of gullible and simple-minded individuals willing to accept those ideas and follow those incompetent leaders.

For the reader’s benefit, I sometimes employ a single spelling of names as well as places. I use the spelling of Rale instead of alternatives spellings for Father Sebastian Rale the hero of the French as well as some Indian tribes. I use the several names in existence at one time of another for a particular place. I identify New France, Canada and Quebec as the same, realizing that New France is ceded to Great Britain after the French and Indian War. Canada is officially called Canada in 1791 and the maritime provinces too are established later. However, I use the Canada at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.

1 use Casco, New Casco, Neck, Falmouth and Portland all names for the latter at various times—to refer to the present-day city of Portland, Maine. Since Portland is a peninsula I describe the people living there interchangeably with the term people on the neck. I use the term Back Bay and Back Cove interchangeably. I often use the term Mainiac (not maniac) to describe a resident of Maine. In most cases I have chosen to write out numbers, such as troops, and ages. I have opted to use numerical dates of battles and events.

Since there are many characters involved in the history of a single family over the course of nearly 300 years, I have provided a list of the important people in the story and information about them in an appendix at the back of the book. However, so that the reader does not have to constantly turn to the appendix I have identified key characters at the end of most chapters.

Of course the history of Portland, Maine is an integral part of my story. I provide details as to how both the city and its population endured devastating Indian attacks, bombing by the British Navy during Wars of Independence, famine, floods, dire economic times, as well as destruction by fire. And yet the town repeatedly recovered from these trials, more than justifying its leaders’ choice of the Phoenix rising from the ashes as the its symbol. It is almost as if this city had its own will to survive and eventually thrive. I was born in Portland and spent my youth and early adult years there. That experience had such great influence on me that I chose to write about it.

CHAPTER I

Newcomers and the Aborigines

P ERHAPS IT WAS the refreshing spring breezes on Cape Cod that spurred young Thaddeus to dream about homesteading in another place. However, that same breeze didn’t encourage his young 17-year-old wife Elisabeth to think about leaving her comfortable home and familiar family surroundings. The year was 1672 and Thaddeus Haskins, who resided in a small fishing village on Cape Cod in Plymouth Colony, was enamored with the possibility of owning his own farm at a place called Casco or Falmouth, about 170 miles north in the Province of Maine. At 23 Thaddeus was knowledgeable about fishing, shipbuilding and farming. His father had journeyed to the new world as one of the first Puritan arrivals some three decades earlier. The elder Haskins had friends who had left the Boston area to establish farms and mills along the Maine province’s many rivers and streams that were abundant with fish and game. The adjacent sea too flourished with a bountiful supply of foods.

Thaddeus had learned his seamanship and boat-building skills from his father and his neighbors. He was a good albeit a new husband, an excellent worker, and generally abided by the rules and the Christian tenets subscribed to and directed by Puritan leaders.

There were many new towns or simple settlements flowing north of Boston in the province of Maine, such as Wells, York, Saco, Black Point, Scarborough, Purpooduck and Falmouth. These towns, which were mostly along the coast, were joined by crude roads and lay separated by a half-day’s ride on a good horse. The King’s highway, initially begun in 1673 to enhance landed travel between New York and Boston, had yet to evolve.

The central court of Massachusetts had declared that every newly incorporated town would provide roads suitable for both horses and people. However, this direction was not closely followed and road conditions remained shoddy. So, the best means of transit between counties of Massachusetts and the remote northeastern settlements was provided by the coastal boats, which definitely represented the quickest connection to and from The City on the Hill— Boston— to these most remote settlements of the province of Maine.

Thaddeus had a distant uncle, Thomas Brackett, who was also a close family friend. Mr. Brackett had established a farm in Maine just west of Casco in an area called Back Cove. It was this uncle who induced Thaddeus and Elisabeth to join his community as they were searching to expand the population of the settlement. Elisabeth was not as enthusiastic as her husband about leaving the comforting environment of her family, friends and church. The hardships suffered by earlier Puritan generations had mostly disappeared with planned and ample vegetable-producing gardens and cattle sufficient to sustain the populace throughout the long and severe winters. To be sure the Indian population had aided the early colonists’ survival. And these good deeds were accomplished by both parties—Indians and English colonists helping each other. Both parties had early in their communications proved that they were capable of getting along.

The next generation of Puritans had produced craftsmen who built adequate small boats, and made furniture, sturdy dwellings and barns for their animals. In addition, ships from England arrived more frequently, bringing newcomers with their various skills to include tanning. The ships returned home with raw products such as furs and lumber. Besides this influx of new crafts, the later colonists also brought their own aptitudes, expertise and old world thinking that mixed with the experiences of the first wave of immigration—the ardent God-fearing Puritans.

Stockades and forts were built that were strong enough to ward off an attack from any intruder be it animal or human. And of course, there was the ever-present breath of the Puritan church that could be both comforting and confining, depending upon the individual witness.

Unlike Thaddeus, Elisabeth was content with the controlling style of the Puritans, their way of life and their dedication to instructions to lead a good Christian life. She was satisfied with her place of birth and the pace of life along with the steadfast Puritan tenets of freedom of Christian worship.

On the other hand, Thaddeus was more prone to seek further freedoms outside the confines of the Puritan ethic. And he didn’t like the Puritans’ penchant for proselytizing their beliefs in the form of a state religion. He was more open to freedom for all religions, which he understood or thought was the foundation of the Puritan instructional beliefs. What was good for the Puritan Thaddeus supposed could also be applied to other religious denominations. Like countless youths of many generations he was compelled to seek adventure. With his family’s survival in the new world assured, he like numerous young bucks sought to distance himself from his roots and attempt to establish himself elsewhere without the controlling leash of Puritan leadership. Perhaps he was seeking a freer existence that answered closer to the tenets of nature, as did the Indians. And again, he was more than likely seeking a different environment where he could expand his fortune by attaining additional lands and livestock.

Thaddeus would argue his case for a change of location with Elisabeth. The Casco town was situated upon a large bay, stored with cattle, sheep, swine, abundance of marsh and arable land, a corn mill or two, with stages for fishermen. And as for the people they feed generally upon as good [supply of] flesh, beef, pork, mutton, fowl, and fish as any in the world beside.¹ Thaddeus held, perhaps from rumor or word of mouth, that the town of Falmouth or Casco had forty dwelling houses, and he argued that it was not just a frontier outpost, it was growing jurisdiction. In other words, he could reassure Elizabeth that they would not be totally void of human contact.

There were meetings by both families as to the wisdom of the couple’s planned move to Falmouth. At a joint family gathering Thaddeus’ father, who had established himself as a busy shipbuilder and sometimes fisherman and adequate farmer, did as many a parent would do: he, argued that he had built the place for his only son to inherit and Thaddeus possessed excellent skills to share the enterprise and perhaps expand it in some capacity for his own later family.

Of course, Elisabeth’s family did not want her to leave. They hoped to enjoy her company and their future grandchildren.

Thaddeus’s father was most skeptical of the Indians farther north, arguing that they are not as pacified or as friendly as the local Wampanoags, many of whom have accepted some of our beliefs and farming methods. The father was leerier of the Abenakis and other northern tribes, whose beliefs had become skewed by French influence. While proselytizing their Catholic faith the French promised the Indians the return of lands taken from them by the English colonists.

Then, too, the increasing influx of Englishmen and their desire for additional lands caused a stir even among the friendly Wampanoags, whose leaders were becoming annoyed by seeing their own people being influenced by English ideas, in farming methods, holding or fencing cattle and the knowledge of innovative and powerful weapons.

It ought to be noted that in fairness to both the colonists and the aborigines that the Puritans had purchased considerable acres from the Indians at agreed-upon sums. Yet to the Indians’ mindset these proceedings did not include enclosing lands for their animals, preventing them from hunting and trapping and crossing the land to reach their traditional fishing areas. It could be argued the Indians’ desire to control hunting was similar to the arguments between farmers and coal mining industrialists over mineral rights centuries later. On the other hand, the Puritans did not want their crops trampled either by their own herds or Indian hunting parties.

Even though the Wampanoag were most friendly to their new neighbors, the increasing numbers of whites was a source of anxiety among factions of Indians. So, there were rumors of discontent even among the settlers’ longest and closest ally.

Young Thaddeus convinced Elisabeth that her duty was to accompany him against the pleadings and arguments of their parents, and the couple set out for Falmouth and the Back Cove. Traveling by horse and primitive wagon and having their meager possessions sent by boat, they completed their journey in about two weeks after stopping at places like Isles of Sholes (later Portsmouth, New Hampshire), Wells and Saco. In actuality these smaller settlements served as a frontier buffer zone for the larger towns of Massachusetts and of course Boston.

Arriving at Falmouth they moved into a simple three-room dwelling with a thatched roof in the midst of their plot of nearly 50 acres of land, marsh and water that was backed by bountiful forests. Their simple home was provided for them by their uncle while the couple had purchased the land from him at a very reasonable sum.

The following two years would see Thaddeus and Elisabeth produce two children while tending a fine vegetable garden and nurturing five head of cattle that freely roamed the marsh. Thaddeus also enhanced his income and food supply by joining with other seamen and using his fisherman’s skills during various seasonal fish runs. They were a happy family, and Thaddeus was already planning to expand his holdings by purchasing additional acreage that he hoped would include a small stream. Then he could dam the stream and produce power to run either a grist mill or a sawmill or both.

The farmers and townsfolk knew they needed each other. This was, after all, the frontier. There were gatherings and communication between the neighboring farmers as well as the townspeople. There existed a comradely sense of urgency to keep the economy flowing. These people were strivers who knew that the winter conditions demanded storage for goods of all types that would have to be raised and preserved following the short growing season. They were also fishermen and lumbermen all just trying to make a living and survive. Fortunately, the adjacent sea did not freeze during the winter which allowed fishing to continue year-round.

In addition, there were trappers who frequently came to sell their furs to various storekeepers, who in turn organized the delivery to England through Boston. And there were friendly Indians who often traversed the land with their stacks of furs, fish and other goods looking to trade with the colonists for knives, guns and gun powder. The Indians were not reluctant to use the colonial tools that improved their methods of hunting and trapping. The Indians were eager to learn from the white man but at the same time had no desire to be dominated by him.

This three-year period of peace and prosperity would abruptly end in 1675, when he first of five Indian wars began. The era of good feeling between the aborigines and the colonists to the north of Boston collapsed for many reasons. As the English moved both westward and to the northeast among the Indians there was less Puritan influence on the colonists and thus much less proselytizing effort on the aborigines. While the English worried that these remote colonists were becoming more like the Indians, the aborigines saw the reverse—they were becoming too much like their European neighbors. In the Indians’ view, not only had the English taken their lands and disrupted traditional systems of trade and agriculture, they also had corrupted the position and status of native rulers, or sachems. The Indians believed the English had also attempted to eliminate or at least denigrate the power of native religious leaders and lessen the importance of other traditional aborigine skills such as their practice of medicine.

Further, as European diseases devastated the native population many Indians opted to convert to Christianity and to live among the English. Indian leaders, to include Philip for whom the first Indian war is named, believed that too many of his people had become Anglicized and Christianized and had even learned to read and write. This trend he believed was wrong for his people. As noted author Jill Lepore states in her most impressive book The Name of War the boundaries between the two peoples had become blurred.²

War was no stranger to these new colonists. In the 1630s English colonists from Connecticut and Massachusetts had fought the Pequot Wars over furring rights and the right to deal with the Dutch or English or both. The Pequot tribe was nearly eliminated and those few remaining melded with other tribes or asked to be traded into slavery with other Indian groups.

When war finally erupted in June 1675 both sides pursued the fight with viciousness, almost without mercy. The Indians,—Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and Nipmucks, as well as Pocomtucks and Abenakis—attacked dozens of English towns, burning as many houses and killing as many inhabitants as they could. And the English, with occasional assistance from Mohegan, Pequot, Mohawk and Christian Indians around Boston, burned wigwams, killed women and children, and sold prisoners into slavery. And both sides practiced torture and mutilation of the dead.³

By the time the head of King Phillip was exhibited in Plymouth in August 1676, thousands of Indians and Englishmen, women, and children were dead. More than half of the new towns in New England had been wiped out. And to be sure the province of Maine had suffered severely.

Falmouth was no stranger to this scene. Nor were Thaddeus Haskins and his family exempt from the realities of these tortuous and terrifying times. The very same Indians that had befriended the local population now turned against them. Supposedly friendly Indians visited the Braddock farm near Thaddeus’s home. Braddock welcomed them but as soon they came inside they absconded with all rifles and imprisoned Braddock and his family, promising instant death if they resisted. Braddock’s brother did resist and was hacked to death. The Braddock clan was moved north toward safer tribes. The ever-present French who sometimes bought prisoners and sent them to Canada to work as servants or for other tasks. According to Braddock’s wife, who related her story of escape, she was able to mend some old canoes to aid the family’s flight back to Falmouth after some months in captivity.

In the meantime, Thaddeus had been working in his fields and had seen smoke in the distance. He immediately sprinted to his home, and gathered up his family, and raced for his small boat in Back Cove. He and Elisabeth and the two children edged out into the waters just ahead of about nine Indians some of whom he knew personally. He suspected they intended to kill him and his family and then plunder and torch his home, which they eventually did.

The natives fired their few guns and many arrows at Thaddeus and his fleeing family. Some of them nicked the boat. Elisabeth took the helm as she sheltered her children at her feet. Thaddeus had two loaded rifles at the ready; he immediately shot and killed two Indians. Seeing them die, one shot through the head, would along with other atrocities later unnerve Elisabeth. Lacking canoes the Indians could not pursue the Haskinses’ small craft, which gradually moved out of range.

Thaddeus planned to leave Back Cove, and head around the peninsula and dock at Falmouth Harbor or the neck. He was hoping that those forty or so houses had had somehow not been attacked and the inhabitants had fortified themselves in a safe haven, perhaps the stockade there that would later be improved and eventually become known as Fort Loyal.

When he determined his pursers could no longer keep up Thaddeus’s adrenaline quieted and he began to comprehend how fortunate their escape had been. He had had a slight lead on the angry natives. He had built his small row boat or shallop so that it could be easily maneuvered by a single person. He then unfurled its small sail, which sped him along. The high tide was just turning so he did not have to wade through low waters and mud flats to board the boat. The current that was in his favor and would take him out of Back Cove towards the deeper waters of Falmouth’s inner harbor more quickly. Thaddeus’s planning had made possible his family’s escape.

As his little boat gained speed. Thaddeus scanned the wooded banks searching for either a barrage of arrows of some semblance of a gathering force of Indian canoes. Then he thought again about what had just happened. He had lost everything his farm, his cattle and his crops. But most importantly, he and his family had saved their lives.

As he sailed on he pondered his situation further. Why now had the Indians attacked? And some of them were the same Indians who had befriended him. He knew that the aborigines and the English were born into divergent cultures and beliefs. He knew too that the Indians had a much-regarded respect for nature. He recognized their penchant to use an area to winter and then go elsewhere for the summer foods like fish and crabs but not return to the exact winter quarters, opting instead to let that land heal for a few seasons. So, as he argued mentally with himself he concluded the Indians were not the scourge of the land as some colonists depicted them. To be sure Indians respected nature and what and how it provided them more than the colonists did. They appreciated their God in nature on the earth, not in the cosmos of the supernatural as the Europeans believed. The Indians had their own rules of belief and for living and their own means of punishment.

Then Thaddeus thought how the English had curbed the native lifestyle and modus operandi. Previously the natives never had to fight for the use of fishing privileges on any stream, river, lake or sea. Sure, there were skirmishes among the tribes who fought, took prisoners, and tortured each other, yet there were no rules forbidding members from all tribes from having same access to the same waters and woods for their livelihoods. Thaddeus could see that the English colonists had truly disrupted the Indians’ communion with nature. Besides the English there was another beast to contend with, especially in the northern settlements, the French and their penchant for proselytizing the Roman Catholic faith. He saw that the divergent faiths of both the English and the French brought a certain order to their societies, yet these beliefs also strengthened the rationale for war between the two countries.

Indeed, besides bringing their civilization and customs to the new world the Europeans also brought along all their animosities toward their European enemies and practically forced the Indians to choose between the European powers, hence further stirring up the complexities of life for them.

Many Indians wanted a return to their former civilization, a goal that had become impossible after more than fifty years of interaction and interference by Europeans, who kept increasing in numbers and interjecting their ways of life.

And as Thaddeus perceived, many families like his wanted to prosper, and, to live good lives in the eyes of their God. Thus, the dilemma for the people from the City on the Hill—had they in the name of God stolen the lands of the natives? And in so doing, had they also crushed the Indian culture while at the same time skirting some basic principles of their own Christian doctrine and beliefs? In the pursuit of their goals, were the English colonists responsible for crushing the very tenets of belief, ways