| 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.
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1668 - 1727 (59 years)
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