John Lovewell

John Lovewell (October 14, 1691 – May 8, 1725) was a famous Ranger in the 18th century who fought during Dummer's War (also known as Lovewell's War). He lived in present-day Nashua, New Hampshire. He fought in Dummer's War as a militia captain, leading three expeditions against the Abenaki Indians.

Lovewell was commemorated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with his poem, "The Battle of Lovells Pond", and by Nathaniel Hawthorne with his story, "Roger Malvin's Burial".

1st and 2nd expeditions

On September 4, 1724, Mohawks warriors captured two men from Dunstable (Nashua, New Hampshire), Thomas Blanchard and Nathan Cross, and taken as captives to Quebec. In response, a militia from Dunstable pursued the natives up the Merrimack valley. The Mohawks killed the entire militia except for Jonathan Robbins. (112)

As a result, three men from Dunstable, John Lovewell, Josiah Farwell and Jonathan Robbins led sixty two men on an expedition after the Mohawks. (112-113). John Lovewell was commissioned captain, and conducted three expeditions northward in quick succession.(113)

Raid at Lake Winnipesaukee

In the first expedition, Lovewell and his militia company (often called "snowshoe men") of 30 men left Dunstable on their first expedition in December of 1724, trekking to the north of Lake Winnipesaukee into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. On December 19, 40 miles north of Winnipesaukee, the troop came upon a wigwam, where they killed and scalped an Abenaki man and took an Abenaki boy captive in response to the abduction of two men from Dunstable and the ambush and killing of eight others by Abenaki warriors. The company was paid 200 pounds for the scalp (150 pounds plus 50 pounds over and above).

Raid on Wakefield

On January 29, 1725, Lovewell and 87 men made a second expedition to the White Mountains. For more than a month they marched through the winter forest, encountering neither friend nor foe. Some troops were sent back home. The remainder made a wide loop up towards the White Mountains, followed the Bearcamp River into the Ossipee area, then headed back in an easterly direction along the Maine and New Hampshire border.

On February 20 they came across a recently inhabited wigwam and followed tracks for some five miles. On the banks of a pond at the head of the Salmon Falls River in the present town of Wakefield they came upon more wigwams with smoke rising from them. Some time after 2:00 AM Lovewell gave the order to fire. A short time later ten Indians lay dead. The Indians were said to have had numerous extra blankets, snowshoes, moccasins, a few furs and new French muskets which would seem to indicate that they were on their way to attack frontier settlements. Preventing such an attack is probably the true success of this expedition.

Early in March Lovewell's troops arrived in Boston. They paraded their Indian scalps through the streets, Lovewell himself wearing a wig made of Indian scalps. The bounty paid was 1000 pounds (100 per scalp).

3rd Expedition: Lovewell's fight

Main article: Battle at Pequawket (Fryeburg)

The third expedition consisted of only 46 men and left from Dunstable on April 16, 1725. They built a fort at Ossipee and left 10 men, including the doctor and John Goffe, to garrison the fort while the rest left to raid the Abenaki town of Pequawket, now Fryeburg, Maine. On May 9, as the militiamen were being led in prayer by chaplain Jonathan Frye, a lone Abenaki warrior was spotted. Lovewell's men waited until the warrior was close and fired at him but missed. The Abenaki returned fire, killing Lovewell. Ensign Seth Wyman, Lovewell's second in command, killed the warrior with the next shot. Chaplain Frye then scalped the dead Indian. The militia had left their packs a ways back so as to be unencumbered by them in battle. Two returning war parties of Abenaki led by Paugus and Nat found them and waited in ambush for the returning militia. Eight men were killed in the first volley by the Indian warriors. The battle continued for more than 10 hours until Ensign Wyman killed the Indian war chief Paugus. With the death of Paugus the rest of the Indians soon vanished into the forest. Only 20 of the militiamen survived the battle; three died on the retreat home. The Abenaki losses except for Paugus are unknown. The Abenaki deserted the town of Pequawket after the battle and fled to Canada.

Aftermath of the fight

Later that month Colonel Ebeneazer Tyng arrived with a large force of militia to bury the dead and take revenge on the Abenaki who had already fled. Without support from the French the western Abenaki were forced to make peace with Massachusetts and New Hampshire. John Lovewell's widow and children along with the other widows and children of those slain in the battle were given large tracts of land in what is now Pembroke, New Hampshire. Lovewell Mountain in Washington, New Hampshire, which he climbed to do surveillance, is named for him, as is Lovewell Pond in Fryeburg.

External links

• Ballad of Lovewell Fight
• The expeditions of Capt. John Lovewell, and his encounters with the Indians; including a particular account of the Pequauket Battle, with a history of that tribe; and a reprint of Rev. Thomas Symmes's sermon (1909)

References

Endnotes

Commemorations

• The first published poem of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807–1882, was "The Battle of Lovells Pond". The poem, written when Longfellow was 13, and published in the Portland [Maine] Gazette of November 21, 1820, retold the story of John Lovewell's death. [1]

• Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1832 story, "Roger Malvin's Burial", concerns two colonial survivors returning home after what he calls "Lovell's Fight."