Other Events:

• _UID: C73501D21A809C46AD65C5714C0F4970A7E6
• Baptism: 21 Jul 1717, Andover, Essex, MA, USA

Sarah married Temple, Jonathan 8 Aug 1734, Reading, Middlesex, MA, USA. Jonathan was born , Reading, Middlesex, MA, USA. [Group Sheet]

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• _UID: 4EFF95D3791A044C86D3671987E1B642D195
• Settled: 5 Sep 1729, Wilmington, Middlesex, MA, USA
• Member: 1733, Deacon of the first church in Wilmington, Mass.

Notes:

"John Harnden, who had been one of the earliest movers for the setting off of Wilmington from its parent towns, Lynn and Reading, was the oldest son of the settler Richard Harnden and his wife Mary. He was born in Reading in 1668. He was chosen as one of the first deacons of the very first church and also noted as "cash keeper" for the town. One night in 1706 or 1707, while he was away from home, five Indians of a war party that had been attacking Dunstable, came down to his house, made an entrance through the roof and killed Mrs. Harnden and three of the children. The others hid behind a great rock henceforth known as Indian Rock, but were discovered and carried off though they were rescued later by infuriated pursuers. One of the girl's was struck by an arrow and was thought dead and her body was thrown by marauders into a small pond close by, but the water revived her and she was rescued after the savages had gone, and lived to grow to womanhood.

The Indians were prompted to this deed by a desire for revenge for the death of a drunken squaw of their tribe who was run over and killed by a Harnden, near a small pond on the way to Woburn. This pond, now obliterated by a recent relocation of the highway, is a short distance south of the old Isaac Damon place which stands where Eames St. joins Main Street.

The Indians, however, took their revenge on the wrong family, as the one who ran over the squaw lived in the house at the foot of the hill. The house of the massacre stood almost directly back of the Rev. Joshua Buffuns house of later years on High Street and the site today can be plainly distinguished. The well is still there and recently has been piped to supply a house on Woburn Street with water. The pond was hardly more than a mud hole in later years the children of the neighborhood long used to slide on it in winter. It was back of what used to be the John Morris house on High Street."


From an article in the Town Crier Summer of 2006:

THE HARNDEN MASSACRE

by Larz F. Neilson

A large boulder, known as Indian Rock is the only visible remainder of the Harnden Massacre. It is believed that the massacre took place
exactly 300 years ago, on July 6, 1706, although that date is in question.

The massacre took place during Queen Anne's War, one of the French
and Indian Wars. Many towns in New England were raided in that period. The raiders who struck the Harnden family had split from a group which attacked Dunstable.

Richard Harnden, the first white settler in what is now North
Wilmington, built a home, about 1665, on the site of what is now the home of Stuart Neilson, on 67 High Street. The land at the time was a part of Reading.

Seven years after Harnden built his home, the Boston-Andover Road was
laid out. It included the part of High Street that is closest to Woburn Street. Anyone travelling north out of Boston would have to use that road, as the ford at Jenks Bridge was the only point at which it was possible to cross the Ipswich River.

Richard Harnden had lived in the Ipswich area of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, prior to building the home in what is now North Wilmington. He had two sons, Benjamin and John. Benjamin built a house on the site now occupied by the Reading Co-Operative Bank, next to the Whitefield School.

Their oldest son, John, who was a deacon in the Reading (now Wakefield) Church, built his home near the site now occupied by the Woburn Street School.

West Street was the path that John used when he went to the church on
business, and it became known as "The Deacon's Way", as he cut his
way through the swamps, choosing dry ground as much as possible.

John was one of the earliest to advocate starting a new town. He died
in 1727, three years before Wilmington was incorporated.

Benjamin Harnden accidently killed an Indian squaw, about 1704, near
the Wilmington - Woburn town line on Main Street. At the time, the
road went around a small pond, which became known as Squaw Pond.

A band of Indians, seeking Benjamin Harnden, found the wrong house.
Banjamin was probably living at the home of his father at the time. The Indians tore open the roof of the John Harnden house, entered, and killed Mrs. Susannah Harnden and some of the children. Deacon John Harnden was at church at the time of the attack.

The oldest girl, Abagail, took some of the children and hid behind a
rock, which became known as Indian Rock. The Indians discovered them. The smaller children were kidnapped, and Abagail was thrown into a pond, which later became known as Morris Pond. The pond was at what is now the northerly end of Marcia Road.

The children were recovered the next morning by aroused settlers, led
by Benjamin Harnden.

Abagail grew up to marry Jonathan Nourse, whose mother had been put to death as a witch in Salem. After his death, she married Daniel Eames and lived in the red farm house on Woburn Street opposite Wildwood Street. She had a large family, and anyone named Eames in this country has a good chance of being descended from her.

Her son John, a selectman of Wilmington in the 1750's, inherited the "Massacre House" and put in there a family of French neutrals who
were quartered in Massachusetts by the colonial government.

The diary of Rev. Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister of the Old North Church in Boston, contains an interesting story which would affirm the July 6, 1706 date:

25d, 4m Tuesday (June 25, 1706) Having been much solicited, by the
people of Andover, a town almost thirty miles off, to come and preach a Lecture there, I did this day undertake the journey. His calash was
preserved from upsetting when the bad load brought him into danger. On the following day and on the following day he lectured to a great
assembly, and after the lecture he returned the greater part of the way homewards.

There was a singular providence of Heaven over me in my timing of
this journey, he wrote. For immediately upon it, a descent of
Indians from Canada, on this very part of the country, rendered the road so unsafe that I durst be no means have travelled it. Yea, being desirous to do some good on the road in the woods, I called some children to me which I met there and bestowed some instruction with a little book upon them; which I understood afterwards made no little impression on the family, but it proved a family which in a few days the Indians visited and murdered the mother and several of the children in it.

This reference was found in a notebook. Immediately below it was
written: The Harnden Massacre was on May 12, 1707. There was no information given to substantiate that date.

A story entitled Wilmington by Lemuel C.(Cobb) Eames, a descendant of Abagail Harnden Eames, was published in Drake's History of Middlesex County. In it, he wrote:

In the year 1706, five Indians from a party who had attacked
Dunstable ventured down to this town and attacked the family of John Harnden, who occupied a small cottage in the northwesterly part of Reading, now in the limits of Wilmington. The house stood in a pasture some 60 rods south of the road from Samuel Gowings to the centre of Wilmington. (High Street)

Another date given is August 12, 1707, which is the recorded date of
death for Susannah Harnden.

The Harnden family is planning a large reunion in the Wilmington area
in August of 2007.

The reference to Cotton Mather is found in the following source:

Diary of Cotton Mather (First edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, 1911; Reprint, Ungar, 1957). Pages 565 and 566.

Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681-1724.
by Cotton Mather
Language: English Type: Book
Publisher: Boston, The Society, 1911-12.
OCLC: 6359938

A side note from Larz pertaining to diary entry of Mather's:

The Harnden houses in Wilmington were both on the Andover Road, which was laid out in 1672. It is certain that Mather travelled that road, as there was no other road to the north, due to the breadth of the swamps along the Ipswich River. Mather had to have passed the Harnden houses on that journey. And I know of no attack by Indians anywhere along that road in that era.

John married Hutchinson, Sarah 9 Dec 1707, Reading, Middlesex, MA, New England. Sarah was born , Lynnfield, Essex, MA, New England; died 10 Dec 1748. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• _UID: 09925272BBC47042964EB514A8F820B7B439

Notes:

Sarah was the widow of Nathaniel Sherman, when she married John Harnden. So, she was listed as Sarah Sherman when they were married.

Other Events:

• _UID: C61D0FA22EDF5F4EBFC4A41E625652BE5BFE
• Baptism: 1687, Reading, Middlesex, MA, USA

Notes:

This Richard Harnden is often accredited with being the father of the earliest known North American Harnden family lines.

Richard spent most of his life in Reading, Mass. However, for some years after his marriage, he is believed to have been living in Boston. By 1682 he was certainly back in Reading. According to newspaper articles in Wilmington, Massachusetts. He spent some time in Rhode Island giving greater creedance to the fact that Benjamin Hearnden and John Harndel were close relatives to our lines.

At one time Richard Harnden owned land from the Ipswich River at Jenkin's Bridge running north along Lubbers brook and what is now Woburn Street to Nod. (Jenkin's bridge is over the Ipswich River at Laurens Carter crossing - Woburn St. - Wilmington).

Richard took the Freeman's Oath on 18 April 1691.

This is an interesting source. I don't know where it actually belongs or if it even relates to our family. But, there seems to be a close relationship to the name and dates of our Richard.

The following is from The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire:

Capt. Richard(9), Black Point, Scarboro, the Ind. killer, pilot and military leader. Aged 31 in Aug. 1676. Poss. going to Scarb. when his mo. remar, he began in Philip's War the service which contin. until death 6 Oct. 1703, when he and his men from Black Point garri. were cut off by the Ind. Called Corp. in Aug. 1677, Ensign 1680, com. Lieut. by Andros 2 July 1687, signed as Capt. 24 June 1693. App. a fisherman early, he was at a Marblehead stage from Black Point in 1672, and m. a York girl (Ct. 31 Mar. 1674) Elizabeth Stover (Sylvester), of famous ancestry thru her mo. Elizabeth (Norton). All records of him are at Scarb. until 1690, except witn. Mar. 1680-1 at York, where his w. prob. was liv.; she depos. in June 1737, Â84, bet. 40 and 50 yrs. since liv. with her husb. Hunnewell in a stone ho. of Geo. Norton's; depos. again 8 Aug. 1738, Â85, ab. 64 yrs. past liv. in Scarb. He was contin. as Constable at Scarb. 1680; Gr. j. 1683, 1687-8, 1696; Selectm. 1685, 1686, 1688; Comr. Scarb. 1688. Lists 83, 236, 237ab, 238a, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 96. In 1690 at Saco Riv. he was shot thru the thigh. In 1692, late of Winter Harb. or Black Point, he deeded fa.'s est. to br. John, and ack. deed in Salis., his fam. there in 1693. Of York, a good pilot, ready for service, Aug. 1695; there in Mar. 1696-7 he ptn. for relief, wounded several times in arms and incap. of servile labor. Bet. 5 Sept.Â-14 Oct. 1700 he was at Scarb. witn. possession to Mr. Vaughan; app. liv. there 20 Nov. 1702, and drove cattle eastward by Wells on Sunday in Jan. 1702-3. As wid. Elizabeth H., she was pd. in Mar. 1703-4 for a steer, and for disbursem. by her husb. in bldg. the fort; m. 2d Jeremiah Walford, 3d 1733-34 Capt. John Downing(2). Ch: Roger, b. Â1675, bp. at Salis. with two foll. 15 Oct. 1693. John, pd. July 1703 for 1150 lbs. beef furnished at Casco; served under Capt. Harraden in expdn. to Bay of Fundy Apr.Â-Aug. 1704. Elizabeth, m. by 1702 Capt. Benj. Hammond of Rochester, Mass. In 1730-1 she ptn. as Capt. Rich. H.'s dau. 8 ch., incl. Israel and Roger. Patience, m. 29 Sept. 1696 John Hathaway of Dartmouth. 10 ch. incl. Richard and Hunnewell. Their fa. and mo. Walford deeded to two sons-in-law 1 June 1722. See (4), (8).

It should be noted that this excerpt may actually pertain to a member of the Harraden family, but I'm not sure.

Richard married Andrews, Mary 24 Oct 1666, Reading (Lynn), Middlesex, MA. Mary was born 1649; died , Reading (Lynn), Middlesex, MA. [Group Sheet]

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• _UID: 82E4E493B0AC0E43928799AF4C938D21785C
• Baptism: 1677, Reading, Middlesex, MA, USA

Other Events:

• _UID: 75886852C02A124E85E710F3D8C4721D9BA7

Notes:

A Richard Harrington arrived in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1643. He took the Freeman's Oath on 26 May 1647. This Richard was also Baptized in 1626 at St. Botolph's, London, England. Could this be the same man? As he's not connected in any of the well documented Harrington lines.

Richard is mentioned by the Harrington lines but over looked, as the following shows:

The Harrington Family in America Pg. 6

"Mr. Bond mentioned the name of Richard Harrington who lived there as early as 1643, and says that he has failed to discover any record of the marriage of Richard Harrington, or that he left any children him surviving. It may, therefore, be taken as reasonably certain that the Harrington family of America started with Robert Harrington of Watertown as the original ancestor."

The inability to find a marriage record could be explained by the fact that Richard was married in England. And, if he is the father of our lines he certainly didn't use the proper spelling of Harrington. Mr. Bond also wouldn't have found any records of surviving children either as they would have already adopted what has come to be our surname of Harnden.

Information on the names and dates are from the LDS and Chester H. Darr (August 1997)

Richard — Adams, Mary Elizabeth. Mary was born 1607, England. [Group Sheet]

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• _UID: 7DA793CF6AD7AA4BB66A993F425238F6766D