as 1694.

He was Town Clerk for several years.

With the

first fear of an Indian war, on May 6, 1673, it was ordered that, "James Parker of Groaten, having had the care of the military company there for several yeares is appointed and ordered to be their leiftennant, and Wm. Larkin to be ensigne to the said Company there." Sixteen years after, when the conflict entitled "King William's war," was impending, it was still the veteran James Parker who was called to lead the soldiers of the town, being appointed Captain in 1689. Judge Joel Parker was one of his descendants, and the Lawrence family which has filled so large a space in the commercial, manufacturing and philanthropic life of Massachusetts is descended on one side from the Parkers-whether of the Capt. James branch, the genealogy of the family has not been sufficiently put in order to permit a definite statement.

I reserve the most picturesque figure for the last : Ephraim Curtis, scout and interpreter. One wonders that so little has been made of this person; for you have to come down to the days of Robert Rogers, and Israel Putnam, and John Stark, before you find an individual who stands out so clearly on the background of our frontier history. He was the son of Henry Curtis, one of the first settlers of Sudbury, born in 1642, and so only 33 years old at Brookfield. He was evidently a man of courage and iron firmness both in peace and war. No chapter in Lincoln's History of Worcester is more entertaining than the first, in which he gives an account of the contest between the Committee of Settlements and one Ephraim Curtis, a young man from Sudbury. This young man had bought a grant of Ensign Thomas Noyes of 250 acres, and had located it just where the Committee wanted to lay out town lots, especially one for the minister, one for the meeting-house, and one for a mill. This was in 1669. A petition to the Great and General Court signed by four men of name and substance did not terrify the "young man." Four years after he

had added to the difficulty by taking possession of his ground and building thereon a house, becoming, as I judge, the first settler of Worcester. Things began to look serious, whereupon another petition, signed not only by the aforesaid four men of name and substance, but by twentynine persons proposing to settle, was sent to the General Court. They stated that they had made all proper offers to the young man, which he had declined. They intimate that if they cannot get the coveted two hundred and fifty acres they shall have to give up the plantation. The affair was finally compromised by giving Curtis fifty acres in the village, on which a descendant still lives, and two hundred and fifty acres outside the village. When we consider that Daniel Henchman, Daniel Gookin, Richard Beers and Thomas Prentice constituted that Committee, men of experience, men of high position and influence in the colony, we can understand of what metal the young man from Sudbury was made. In this frontier life Curtis had somehow become a sagacious scout, and had learned to speak with fluency the Indian tongue. These qualities, together with his known firmness and courage, made him the very man to send on the mission to the Nipmucks. In his narration of that expedition his coolness and undaunted bravery are hardly more evident than his power to picture vividly the exact condition of affairs. In the siege which followed, it was necessary that some one should carry to Marlborough news of the peril of the beleaguered garrison. Twice Curtis failed. But the third time he succeeded, creeping on his hands and knees through the enemies' lines. Thrice afterwards he appears on the Massachusetts Records;-once as a witness against an Indian chief; once as clothed with power to raise a company, "to march under his comands into the wood, and endeavor to" surprise, kill or destroy any of the Indians our enemies ;-finally, liberty was given Ephraim Curtis "with such other Englishmen as he shall procure, provided they be not less than thirty men well

armed," "to gather and improve for their own use all the Indian Corn of the Indian plantations belonging to our enemies the Indians that are fled." With these records my knowledge of this heroic character ends. Whether he went back to his trade as a carpenter, or peaceably tilled his acres, or remained to the end a daring scout and Indian fighter I know not. It may be assumed perhaps, that in 1718 he was dead, as his farm was then improved by his son. George William Curtis, the silver-tongued orator, traces back his origin to this stalwart Puritan; and I think it may be admitted, that, in addition to persuasive speech, of which his ancestor does not seem to have been destitute, he inherits the capacity to have views of his own and to stand by them. With these personal sketches ends my account of the affair at Brookfield and of its actors. I do not propose to follow farther the desperate conflict. The war pursued its devious, cruel course till it closed, so far as our State was concerned, with the death, twelve months later, of Philip, who like a wounded wild beast sought his own lair to die. And when it closed, the Wampanoags, who had welcomed the Pilgrim and given him food and kindness, as a tribe had ceased to exist. It was the first and the last independent Indian war on Massachusetts soil. All later wars may properly be termed French and Indian Wars. And the savage allies of the most Christian monarchs, the Kings of France, came largely from outside the Bay State.

WHEELER'S DEFEAT, 1675: WHERE?

BY LUCIUS R. PAGE.

VERY soon after his crushing defeat by the Indians, August 2, 1675, Captain Thomas Wheeler wrote a "Narrative of the Lord's Providences in various dispensations towards Captain Hutchinson of Boston and myself, and those that went with us into the Nipmuck Country, and also to Quabaug, alias Brookfield," etc. This Narrative, having become scarce, was republished in 1827, in the New Hampshire Historical Collections, ii. 5-23. It has recently been again published in the History of North Brookfield, pp. 80-89. From this "Narrative" I quote a passage relative to the place where he was defeated :

"The said Captain Hutchinson and myself, with about twenty men or more, marched from Cambridge to Sudbury, July 28, 1675; and from thence into the Nipmuck Country; and finding that the Indians had deserted their towns, and we having gone until we came within two miles of New Norwitch on July 31, (only we saw two Indians having an horse with them, whom we would have spoke with, but they fled from us and left their horse which we took,) we then thought it not expedient to march any further that way, but set our march for Brookfield, whither we came on the Lord's day about noon. From thence the same day (being August 1,) we understanding that the Indians. were about ten miles north west from us, we sent out four men to acquaint the Indians that we were not come to harm them, but our business was only to deliver a message from our Honoured Governour and Council to them, and to receive their answer, we desiring to come to a Treaty of Peace with them, (though they had for several days fled from us,) they having before professed friendship and promised fidelity to the English. When the messengers 1 One of these men was Ephraim Curtis.

1

came to them they made an alarm and gathered together about an hundred and fifty fighting men, as near as they could judge. The young men amongst them were stout in their speeches and surly in their carriage. But at length some of the chief Sachems promised to meet us on the next morning about 8 of the clock upon a plain within three miles of Brookfield, with which answer the messengers returned to us. Whereupon, though their speeches and carriage did much discourage divers of our company, yet we conceived that we had a clear call to go to meet them at the place whither they had promised to come. Accordingly we with our men accompanied with three of the principal inhabitants of that town marched to the place appointed; but the treacherous heathen, intending mischief, (if they could have opportunity,) came not to the said place, and so failed our hopes of speaking with them there. Whereupon the said Captain Hutchinson and myself, with the rest of our company, considered what was best to be done, whether we should go any further towards them or return, divers of us apprehending much danger in case we did proceed, because the Indians kept not promise there with us. But the three men who belonged to Brookfield were so strongly persuaded of their freedom from any ill intentions towards us, (as upon other bounds [grounds?] so especially because the greatest part of those Indians belonged to David, one of their chief Sachems, who was taken to be a great friend to the English,) that the said Captain Hutchinson who was principally intrusted with the matter of Treaty with them was thereby encouraged to proceed and march forward towards a swamp where the Indians then were. When we came near the said swamp, the way was so very bad that we could march only in a single file, there being a very rocky hill on the right hand, and a thick swamp on the left. In which there were many of those cruel blood-thirsty heathen who there waylaid us, waiting an opportunity to cut us off; there being also much brush on the side of the said hill, where they lay in ambush to surprise us. When we had marched there about sixty or seventy rods, the said perfidious Indians sent out their shot upon us as a shower of hail, they being (as was supposed) about two hundred