Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/25

 CAPT. THOMAS BAKER AND MADAME CHRISTINE, HIS WIFE. 17

��CAPT. THOMAS BAKER AND MADAME CHRISTINE, HIS WIFE.*

��BY REV. SILAS KETCHUM, WINDSOR, CONN.

��On the 9th of February, 1704, a sec- ond great calamity and destruction by the Indians fell on Deerfield, Mass., the story of which has become familiar through the narrative of Rev. John Wil- liams, minister of the town, who, with his wife and children, was carried captive to Canada. In this attack thirty-eight perished, and 100 were taken prisonei-s. Of this latter number nineteen were mur- dered and three starved before reaching Canada. Among the survivors was Thomas Baker, afterwards the celebrat- ed Indian fighter.

He was born in Northampton, Mass., May 14th, 1682, a son of Timothy and Sarah (Atherton) Baker. Whether he was residing at Deerfield, or whether he was captured previously, in the raid of the Indians on surrounding towns, does not appear. He was then twenty -two years of age. How long he remained a captive in Canada is unknown, at least to the writer. What were his experiences, or manner of deliverance, how he was treated, or how employed, there is noth- ing to show. Two things, however, it seems safe to predicate of his captivity : That he acquired that knowledge of In- dian modes and methods which contrib- uted to his subsequent successes as an Indian scout, and that he made in Cana- da the acquaintance of a young woman who afterwards became as famous as he, and who, by becoming his wife, doubt- less induced him to forsake his own and become a citizen of her native State.

��* Since writing this article, my atten- tion has been called to certain facts in relation to the subjects of it, communi- cated to the N. E. Hist, and Genealog. Reg., in 1851, by Hon. John Wentworth of Chicago, and afterwards embodied in the Wentworth Genealogy, privately print- ed, in 2 vols., 1S70, and soon to be pub- lished in an enlarged form, in 3 vols., by the same gentleman.

��This lady was Madame Christine Le Beau, a daughter of Richard Otis of Do- ver, carried to Canada when an infant three months old.

A correspondent of Farmer and Moore's Collections, Vol. III., p. 100, says that " about the year 1720, Capt. Thomas Ba- ker of Northampton, in the County of Hampshire, in Massachusetts, set out with a scouting party of thirty-four men, passed up the Connecticut river, and crossed the height of land to Pemige- wasset river. He here discovered a par- ty of Indians, whose sachem was called Walternummus, whom he attacked and destroyed."

That this date should probably be 1712, instead of 1720, is shown by Dr. Bouton in N. H. Provincial Papers, II., 635, where it is found in a transcript from the Legislative Journal of Massachusetts, in May of the former year, that £10 was voted to " Thomas Baker, commander of a company of marching forces in the late expedition against the Enemy at Coos, and from thence to the west branch of the Merrimack river, and so to Dunsta- ble, in behalf of himself and Company for one enemy Indian besides that which they scalped, which seems so very prob- able to be slain." On the 11th of June following, the same assembly voted £20 "additional allowance " for still others of the enemy killed, on their own (i. e. the enemy's) showing. To both Gov. Dudley consented.

It was in this expedition that Capt. Baker came upon and surprised a camp of eight Indians at the confluence of a small stream with thePemigewasset, be- tween Plymouth and Campton, which has since, in remembrance of the exploit, borne the name of Baker's river. Pen- hallow says the number of the enemy was eight, and that all were slain with- out the loss of a man. CCoH. N. H. Hist.

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