Research by J. Kelsey Jones in 1998:
Robert Price first appears in Northampton, Massachusetts in a list of soldiers under command of Captain William Turner, 7 April 1676. Hugh Price also appears on the same list and is most likely related to Robert Price.
Robert Price of Northampton appears again on a list of soldiers in the Falls fight under Captain William Turner, 19 May 1676. Robert married 16 February 1677 at Northampton, Sarah Webb, widow of Zachariah Field, and daughter of John Webb and Ann Bassett. She was the mother of three sons by her first marriage, one of whom died young, the other two being raised in the Price household.
Sarah Webb was born c. 1651 and married 17 December 1668, Zachariah Field born c. 1645 son of Zachariah and Mary Field. Zachariah and Sarah Field removed from
Northampton up the river to the Pocumtuck Valley, at what is now Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1672, which had seen the first white inhabitants in 1669. It is believed Zachariah Field may have operated some type of trading post or store, which was then the western frontier. Zachariah died in 1674, believed to have perhaps been killed by Indians. Sarah Field presented an inventory of Zachariah's estate, 29 September 1674. She evidently returned down river to Northampton to family and to seek refuge from the impending Indian hostilities and there married Robert Price. Deerfield was abandoned in 1675 after the battle of Bloody Brook because of Indian hostilities. Two years later, a few settlers returned to Deerfield, but were captured by Indians and taken to Canada. Settlement began again in 1683.
Robert Price was taxed at Northampton from 1677 to 1680. He took the oath of allegiance in the town of Northampton, 8 February 1678. As previously mentioned, settlement at Deerfield began again in 1683 and Robert and Sarah removed about sixteen miles from Northampton to Deerfield. Robert Price was among those who owned land in the Common Field at Deerfield, 5 February 1686/7 (Springfield, Massachusetts Registry of Deeds, Book G p. 130). In 1686, he was residing on lot 17 in Deerfield, which was sold in 1693 to John Baker. This site, today, is occupied by a house built in 1802 and the John Wilson printing shop. On 20 April 1688, Robert Price received a woodlot in Deerfield. The Price family continued to reside in the growing village of Deerfield through the 1690's and into the early years of the 1700's.
In the deep snow of winter, before dawn, on 29 February 1704, a party of some three hundred French and Indians attacked the fortified Deerfield. There were homes inside and outside the fortified town. Of the town's 291 inhabitants, 48 were killed and 112 were taken captive. Seventeen homes were burned in the attack, both inside and outside the fort. Nine houses remained within the fort and several outside the fort. The survivors of Deerfield and the rescue band from towns below Deerfield who saw the sky ablaze from the burning homes found an appalling carnage. The rescue band made a heroic attempt in a nearby meadow to attack the attackers fleeing from Deerfield and were quite successful in inflicting casualties, but the battle turned and they retreated to Deerfield. Of the Price family, Sarah and son, Samuel were captured as was also Robert and Sarah's married daughter, Elizabeth Stevens. Elizabeth had married Andrew Stevens, an Indian, and he was killed in the fighting. Robert and Sarah's other married daughter, Mary Smead, suffocated with her two children and her husband's mother in the cellar of their burning home. Several families had sought refuge and hiding in the cellars of their homes, but these turned into deadly traps when the attackers set the homes ablaze. Robert Price and Samuel Smead survived the attack and may have been among a group of men who tried to affect a defense at the beginning of the attack, which became separated from many of the woman and children, and left their families in jeopardy. Sarah's son, John Field, by her first marriage, and his family were also residing in Deerfield. John's wife, Mary, age 28, and their children, Mary, age 7, and John, age 4, were captured and ten month old Sarah killed. The majority of children who were captured under the age of two were killed in Deerfield, too young to make a forced march to Canada. Furthermore, a child in a mother's arms would impede their flight. Indians were in charge of the Deerfield captives and the French took little part in holding captives.
One Colonel Partridge gathered information a few days after the attack and among his report was a Table of Losses. He gave a list of every household and listed each person as captive, slain, alive, and the amount of the estate lost. In the return list of losses, Robert Price had one child taken captive, one wife slain, left alive himself, and an estate of 40 pounds lost. Of Andrew Stevens household, there was one captive, his wife and one person slain, himself and an estate of 20 pounds lost. Of Samuel Smead's household, four were killed, a wife, two children and his mother, left alive himself, and an estate of 50 pounds lost, including the burning of his home in which his family suffocated in the cellar.
Sarah Price was about 53 years of age when captured. Only a short distance from Deerfield she was killed. What circumstances resulted in her death can only be speculation. It is generally believed from the records that have survived and by the stories of those captives who returned that a woman of her age would serve no useful purpose and perhaps would be unlikely to endure the forced march to Canada of some three hundred miles in winter through an unchartered and uncolonized wilderness. There were two other women over the age of forty five who were captured and they were also killed a short distance from Deerfield. Their bodies were found by the men who went in pursuit of the war party of French and Indians. Others were to be killed along the march, including the wife of Rev. John Williams, who was weakened from recent childbirth. Other captive woman who could not endure the march were slain at intervals along the route. The route was north up the Connecticut River Valley to the White River in Vermont and then the Winooski River to the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. They traveled on the eastern side of Lake Champlain and up the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence River and then to Montreal, arriving on April 25, nearly two months after the fateful morning at Deerfield.
A monument in the old burying ground at Deerfield reads "The Graves of 48 men, women, and children, victims of the French and Indian raid on Deerfield February 29, 1704. Nine of these 48 were men involved in the meadow fight outside of Deerfield when the French and Indians were fleeing Deerfield with their captives and seven of the nine were in the rescue party from towns below Deerfield.
In the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library are plaques on the second floor dedicated to those families who suffered in the Deerfield massacre. Those relating to the Price and Field families are here listed.
Sarah, 50, wife of Robert Price, Samuel, 18, their son, was captured and returned.
Andrew Stevens, an Indian, his wife, 20, daughter of Robert Price, captured. In 1706, she married in Canada, Jean Fourneau.
Sarah Field, 2, Mary, her mother, 28, wife of John, with children, Mary, 6, and John, 3, were captured. Mary adopted by an Indian, was named Walahowey. She married a savage, and became one.
Elizabeth Smead, about 64, "smothered in a cellar," with Mary (Price), 23, Sarah, 4, William, 2, mother, wife and children of Samuel Smead.
Zechariah Field, 1645-1674 a settler at Pocumtuck before Philip's War. His remains lie in an unknown grave in the old burying Ground. Many of his descendants have attained international fame. In his honor this tablet is placed in 1901 by Marshall Field of Chicago.
The majority of the 112 captives were children. Twenty of the 112 died along the march and ten of these were adult woman, some affected by pregnancy or recent births. Those unable to keep up or in weakened conditions were killed. Many of the captives were ransomed after a year and some several years later, returning to New England. Thirty or more captives never returned to New England, but became citizens of New France (Canada) or as young children were raised by Indians and continued the Indian mode of life. Adoption and ransom was faced by most of the Indian captives. The policy of the French government was to keep as many of the captives as possible, to make good Catholics of them, and to wed them either to the church or state. Of those captives who were not ransomed to the French in the beginning, many of them lived at the Indian mission of Kahnawake, near Montreal. The Kahnawake Indians were of mixed tribal background, but of predominantly Mohawk migrants from New York State who had converted to the Catholic faith. The Jesuit priests in Montreal and at Kahnawake endeavored to recruit the captives into the Catholic faith from what they saw as the heretic reformed religion of Protestantism in New England. Many captives were adopted into Indian households, the idea of replacing the dead deeply embedded in Iroquoian tradition.
Elizabeth Price Stevens and little Mary Field were among those who remained in Canada, Elizabeth in a nunnery before her marriage and Mary Field at Kahnawake. Of little Mary Field, it is related every effort was made to secure her release, but her Indian captors would not relinquish her. Of the several captive Deerfield children who arrived at Kahnawake as captives, many would marry and bear children and become fully integrated into Indian culture. Some stayed for varying durations. Mary Field remained at Kahnawake for life as did Mary Carter, age ten when captured; Abigail French, age six; Mary Harris, age nine; Joanna Kellogg, age eleven; Eunice Williams, age seven; and perhaps others. Baptismal and burial files of the Kahnawake mission are missing in the early years, but in later years the lives of some of these children as adults can be found in the records. Most of these woman visited their relatives in Massachusetts and Connecticut, later in life, on several occasions, with their Indian husbands and children. Most were requested and enticed to remain in New England, but always returned to Kahnawake, their adopted home.
Robert Price remained in Deerfield. What news reached him from Canada of his two captive children and other family members we are uninformed. Did he even know if his children were alive? At some point with the various negotiations that transpired, he must have received some word of them. How involved he was in negotiating the release of his two children we do not know. His only known family in Deerfield was one of his two step sons, John Field who he had raised in his household from childhood and his widowed son in law, Samuel Smead. John Field is related to have been active in negotiating the release of his captive wife and children and probably also his half sister Elizabeth and half brother Samuel. Robert Price was among three persons who the town of Deerfield voted to repair his common fence upon the town charge, 25 April 1708. He was thus living at that date, but seemingly in limited circumstances. He had suffered heavy financial and family losses in the attack on Deerfield four years earlier. Robert sold to Henry Dwight of Hatfield, a house lot in Deerfield, containing five acres, at a place called Wappin, 15 February 1715/16. He was of Deerfield at that date, but no further record of him is known. He was deceased before 15 July 1735 when his son, Samuel Price "only son and heir of Robert Price, formerly of Deerfield, deceased, which Robert was one of the soldiers in the Falls fight." The History of Deerfield relates that Robert Price is buried in Old Burying Ground among "at least nine soldiers who followed Turner through the turmoil and din of the battle which cost him (Turner) his life."
Children of Zachariah Field and Sarah Webb:
1. Zachariah Field b. 12 September 1669 d. young.
2. Ebenezer Field b. 31 October 1671 Northampton, Massachusetts.
3. John Field b. 8 December 1673.
Children of Robert Price and Sarah Webb:
4. child stillborn 15 August 1677 Northampton, Massachusetts.
5. Sarah Price b. 12 September 1678 Northampton.
6. Mary Price b. 21 March 1681 Northampton.
7. Elizabeth Price b. 12 August 1683 Northampton.
8. John Price b. 14 May 1689 d. young.
9. Samuel Price b. c. 1692/3 Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Robert Price first appears in Northampton, Massachusetts in a list of soldiers under command of Captain William Turner, 7 April 1676. Hugh Price also appears on the same list and is most likely related to Robert Price.
Robert Price of Northampton appears again on a list of soldiers in the Falls fight under Captain William Turner, 19 May 1676. Robert married 16 February 1677 at Northampton, Sarah Webb, widow of Zachariah Field, and daughter of John Webb and Ann Bassett. She was the mother of three sons by her first marriage, one of whom died young, the other two being raised in the Price household.
Sarah Webb was born c. 1651 and married 17 December 1668, Zachariah Field born c. 1645 son of Zachariah and Mary Field. Zachariah and Sarah Field removed from
Northampton up the river to the Pocumtuck Valley, at what is now Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1672, which had seen the first white inhabitants in 1669. It is believed Zachariah Field may have operated some type of trading post or store, which was then the western frontier. Zachariah died in 1674, believed to have perhaps been killed by Indians. Sarah Field presented an inventory of Zachariah's estate, 29 September 1674. She evidently returned down river to Northampton to family and to seek refuge from the impending Indian hostilities and there married Robert Price. Deerfield was abandoned in 1675 after the battle of Bloody Brook because of Indian hostilities. Two years later, a few settlers returned to Deerfield, but were captured by Indians and taken to Canada. Settlement began again in 1683.
Robert Price was taxed at Northampton from 1677 to 1680. He took the oath of allegiance in the town of Northampton, 8 February 1678. As previously mentioned, settlement at Deerfield began again in 1683 and Robert and Sarah removed about sixteen miles from Northampton to Deerfield. Robert Price was among those who owned land in the Common Field at Deerfield, 5 February 1686/7 (Springfield, Massachusetts Registry of Deeds, Book G p. 130). In 1686, he was residing on lot 17 in Deerfield, which was sold in 1693 to John Baker. This site, today, is occupied by a house built in 1802 and the John Wilson printing shop. On 20 April 1688, Robert Price received a woodlot in Deerfield. The Price family continued to reside in the growing village of Deerfield through the 1690's and into the early years of the 1700's.
In the deep snow of winter, before dawn, on 29 February 1704, a party of some three hundred French and Indians attacked the fortified Deerfield. There were homes inside and outside the fortified town. Of the town's 291 inhabitants, 48 were killed and 112 were taken captive. Seventeen homes were burned in the attack, both inside and outside the fort. Nine houses remained within the fort and several outside the fort. The survivors of Deerfield and the rescue band from towns below Deerfield who saw the sky ablaze from the burning homes found an appalling carnage. The rescue band made a heroic attempt in a nearby meadow to attack the attackers fleeing from Deerfield and were quite successful in inflicting casualties, but the battle turned and they retreated to Deerfield. Of the Price family, Sarah and son, Samuel were captured as was also Robert and Sarah's married daughter, Elizabeth Stevens. Elizabeth had married Andrew Stevens, an Indian, and he was killed in the fighting. Robert and Sarah's other married daughter, Mary Smead, suffocated with her two children and her husband's mother in the cellar of their burning home. Several families had sought refuge and hiding in the cellars of their homes, but these turned into deadly traps when the attackers set the homes ablaze. Robert Price and Samuel Smead survived the attack and may have been among a group of men who tried to affect a defense at the beginning of the attack, which became separated from many of the woman and children, and left their families in jeopardy. Sarah's son, John Field, by her first marriage, and his family were also residing in Deerfield. John's wife, Mary, age 28, and their children, Mary, age 7, and John, age 4, were captured and ten month old Sarah killed. The majority of children who were captured under the age of two were killed in Deerfield, too young to make a forced march to Canada. Furthermore, a child in a mother's arms would impede their flight. Indians were in charge of the Deerfield captives and the French took little part in holding captives.
One Colonel Partridge gathered information a few days after the attack and among his report was a Table of Losses. He gave a list of every household and listed each person as captive, slain, alive, and the amount of the estate lost. In the return list of losses, Robert Price had one child taken captive, one wife slain, left alive himself, and an estate of 40 pounds lost. Of Andrew Stevens household, there was one captive, his wife and one person slain, himself and an estate of 20 pounds lost. Of Samuel Smead's household, four were killed, a wife, two children and his mother, left alive himself, and an estate of 50 pounds lost, including the burning of his home in which his family suffocated in the cellar.
Sarah Price was about 53 years of age when captured. Only a short distance from Deerfield she was killed. What circumstances resulted in her death can only be speculation. It is generally believed from the records that have survived and by the stories of those captives who returned that a woman of her age would serve no useful purpose and perhaps would be unlikely to endure the forced march to Canada of some three hundred miles in winter through an unchartered and uncolonized wilderness. There were two other women over the age of forty five who were captured and they were also killed a short distance from Deerfield. Their bodies were found by the men who went in pursuit of the war party of French and Indians. Others were to be killed along the march, including the wife of Rev. John Williams, who was weakened from recent childbirth. Other captive woman who could not endure the march were slain at intervals along the route. The route was north up the Connecticut River Valley to the White River in Vermont and then the Winooski River to the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. They traveled on the eastern side of Lake Champlain and up the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence River and then to Montreal, arriving on April 25, nearly two months after the fateful morning at Deerfield.
A monument in the old burying ground at Deerfield reads "The Graves of 48 men, women, and children, victims of the French and Indian raid on Deerfield February 29, 1704. Nine of these 48 were men involved in the meadow fight outside of Deerfield when the French and Indians were fleeing Deerfield with their captives and seven of the nine were in the rescue party from towns below Deerfield.
In the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library are plaques on the second floor dedicated to those families who suffered in the Deerfield massacre. Those relating to the Price and Field families are here listed.
Sarah, 50, wife of Robert Price, Samuel, 18, their son, was captured and returned.
Andrew Stevens, an Indian, his wife, 20, daughter of Robert Price, captured. In 1706, she married in Canada, Jean Fourneau.
Sarah Field, 2, Mary, her mother, 28, wife of John, with children, Mary, 6, and John, 3, were captured. Mary adopted by an Indian, was named Walahowey. She married a savage, and became one.
Elizabeth Smead, about 64, "smothered in a cellar," with Mary (Price), 23, Sarah, 4, William, 2, mother, wife and children of Samuel Smead.
Zechariah Field, 1645-1674 a settler at Pocumtuck before Philip's War. His remains lie in an unknown grave in the old burying Ground. Many of his descendants have attained international fame. In his honor this tablet is placed in 1901 by Marshall Field of Chicago.
The majority of the 112 captives were children. Twenty of the 112 died along the march and ten of these were adult woman, some affected by pregnancy or recent births. Those unable to keep up or in weakened conditions were killed. Many of the captives were ransomed after a year and some several years later, returning to New England. Thirty or more captives never returned to New England, but became citizens of New France (Canada) or as young children were raised by Indians and continued the Indian mode of life. Adoption and ransom was faced by most of the Indian captives. The policy of the French government was to keep as many of the captives as possible, to make good Catholics of them, and to wed them either to the church or state. Of those captives who were not ransomed to the French in the beginning, many of them lived at the Indian mission of Kahnawake, near Montreal. The Kahnawake Indians were of mixed tribal background, but of predominantly Mohawk migrants from New York State who had converted to the Catholic faith. The Jesuit priests in Montreal and at Kahnawake endeavored to recruit the captives into the Catholic faith from what they saw as the heretic reformed religion of Protestantism in New England. Many captives were adopted into Indian households, the idea of replacing the dead deeply embedded in Iroquoian tradition.
Elizabeth Price Stevens and little Mary Field were among those who remained in Canada, Elizabeth in a nunnery before her marriage and Mary Field at Kahnawake. Of little Mary Field, it is related every effort was made to secure her release, but her Indian captors would not relinquish her. Of the several captive Deerfield children who arrived at Kahnawake as captives, many would marry and bear children and become fully integrated into Indian culture. Some stayed for varying durations. Mary Field remained at Kahnawake for life as did Mary Carter, age ten when captured; Abigail French, age six; Mary Harris, age nine; Joanna Kellogg, age eleven; Eunice Williams, age seven; and perhaps others. Baptismal and burial files of the Kahnawake mission are missing in the early years, but in later years the lives of some of these children as adults can be found in the records. Most of these woman visited their relatives in Massachusetts and Connecticut, later in life, on several occasions, with their Indian husbands and children. Most were requested and enticed to remain in New England, but always returned to Kahnawake, their adopted home.
Robert Price remained in Deerfield. What news reached him from Canada of his two captive children and other family members we are uninformed. Did he even know if his children were alive? At some point with the various negotiations that transpired, he must have received some word of them. How involved he was in negotiating the release of his two children we do not know. His only known family in Deerfield was one of his two step sons, John Field who he had raised in his household from childhood and his widowed son in law, Samuel Smead. John Field is related to have been active in negotiating the release of his captive wife and children and probably also his half sister Elizabeth and half brother Samuel. Robert Price was among three persons who the town of Deerfield voted to repair his common fence upon the town charge, 25 April 1708. He was thus living at that date, but seemingly in limited circumstances. He had suffered heavy financial and family losses in the attack on Deerfield four years earlier. Robert sold to Henry Dwight of Hatfield, a house lot in Deerfield, containing five acres, at a place called Wappin, 15 February 1715/16. He was of Deerfield at that date, but no further record of him is known. He was deceased before 15 July 1735 when his son, Samuel Price "only son and heir of Robert Price, formerly of Deerfield, deceased, which Robert was one of the soldiers in the Falls fight." The History of Deerfield relates that Robert Price is buried in Old Burying Ground among "at least nine soldiers who followed Turner through the turmoil and din of the battle which cost him (Turner) his life."
Children of Zachariah Field and Sarah Webb:
1. Zachariah Field b. 12 September 1669 d. young.
2. Ebenezer Field b. 31 October 1671 Northampton, Massachusetts.
3. John Field b. 8 December 1673.
Children of Robert Price and Sarah Webb:
4. child stillborn 15 August 1677 Northampton, Massachusetts.
5. Sarah Price b. 12 September 1678 Northampton.
6. Mary Price b. 21 March 1681 Northampton.
7. Elizabeth Price b. 12 August 1683 Northampton.
8. John Price b. 14 May 1689 d. young.
9. Samuel Price b. c. 1692/3 Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Research by J. Kelsey Jones in 1998:
Robert Price first appears in Northampton, Massachusetts in a list of soldiers under command of Captain William Turner, 7 April 1676. Hugh Price also appears on the same list and is most likely related to Robert Price.
Robert Price of Northampton appears again on a list of soldiers in the Falls fight under Captain William Turner, 19 May 1676. Robert married 16 February 1677 at Northampton, Sarah Webb, widow of Zachariah Field, and daughter of John Webb and Ann Bassett. She was the mother of three sons by her first marriage, one of whom died young, the other two being raised in the Price household.
Sarah Webb was born c. 1651 and married 17 December 1668, Zachariah Field born c. 1645 son of Zachariah and Mary Field. Zachariah and Sarah Field removed from
Northampton up the river to the Pocumtuck Valley, at what is now Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1672, which had seen the first white inhabitants in 1669. It is believed Zachariah Field may have operated some type of trading post or store, which was then the western frontier. Zachariah died in 1674, believed to have perhaps been killed by Indians. Sarah Field presented an inventory of Zachariah's estate, 29 September 1674. She evidently returned down river to Northampton to family and to seek refuge from the impending Indian hostilities and there married Robert Price. Deerfield was abandoned in 1675 after the battle of Bloody Brook because of Indian hostilities. Two years later, a few settlers returned to Deerfield, but were captured by Indians and taken to Canada. Settlement began again in 1683.
Robert Price was taxed at Northampton from 1677 to 1680. He took the oath of allegiance in the town of Northampton, 8 February 1678. As previously mentioned, settlement at Deerfield began again in 1683 and Robert and Sarah removed about sixteen miles from Northampton to Deerfield. Robert Price was among those who owned land in the Common Field at Deerfield, 5 February 1686/7 (Springfield, Massachusetts Registry of Deeds, Book G p. 130). In 1686, he was residing on lot 17 in Deerfield, which was sold in 1693 to John Baker. This site, today, is occupied by a house built in 1802 and the John Wilson printing shop. On 20 April 1688, Robert Price received a woodlot in Deerfield. The Price family continued to reside in the growing village of Deerfield through the 1690's and into the early years of the 1700's.
In the deep snow of winter, before dawn, on 29 February 1704, a party of some three hundred French and Indians attacked the fortified Deerfield. There were homes inside and outside the fortified town. Of the town's 291 inhabitants, 48 were killed and 112 were taken captive. Seventeen homes were burned in the attack, both inside and outside the fort. Nine houses remained within the fort and several outside the fort. The survivors of Deerfield and the rescue band from towns below Deerfield who saw the sky ablaze from the burning homes found an appalling carnage. The rescue band made a heroic attempt in a nearby meadow to attack the attackers fleeing from Deerfield and were quite successful in inflicting casualties, but the battle turned and they retreated to Deerfield. Of the Price family, Sarah and son, Samuel were captured as was also Robert and Sarah's married daughter, Elizabeth Stevens. Elizabeth had married Andrew Stevens, an Indian, and he was killed in the fighting. Robert and Sarah's other married daughter, Mary Smead, suffocated with her two children and her husband's mother in the cellar of their burning home. Several families had sought refuge and hiding in the cellars of their homes, but these turned into deadly traps when the attackers set the homes ablaze. Robert Price and Samuel Smead survived the attack and may have been among a group of men who tried to affect a defense at the beginning of the attack, which became separated from many of the woman and children, and left their families in jeopardy. Sarah's son, John Field, by her first marriage, and his family were also residing in Deerfield. John's wife, Mary, age 28, and their children, Mary, age 7, and John, age 4, were captured and ten month old Sarah killed. The majority of children who were captured under the age of two were killed in Deerfield, too young to make a forced march to Canada. Furthermore, a child in a mother's arms would impede their flight. Indians were in charge of the Deerfield captives and the French took little part in holding captives.
One Colonel Partridge gathered information a few days after the attack and among his report was a Table of Losses. He gave a list of every household and listed each person as captive, slain, alive, and the amount of the estate lost. In the return list of losses, Robert Price had one child taken captive, one wife slain, left alive himself, and an estate of 40 pounds lost. Of Andrew Stevens household, there was one captive, his wife and one person slain, himself and an estate of 20 pounds lost. Of Samuel Smead's household, four were killed, a wife, two children and his mother, left alive himself, and an estate of 50 pounds lost, including the burning of his home in which his family suffocated in the cellar.
Sarah Price was about 53 years of age when captured. Only a short distance from Deerfield she was killed. What circumstances resulted in her death can only be speculation. It is generally believed from the records that have survived and by the stories of those captives who returned that a woman of her age would serve no useful purpose and perhaps would be unlikely to endure the forced march to Canada of some three hundred miles in winter through an unchartered and uncolonized wilderness. There were two other women over the age of forty five who were captured and they were also killed a short distance from Deerfield. Their bodies were found by the men who went in pursuit of the war party of French and Indians. Others were to be killed along the march, including the wife of Rev. John Williams, who was weakened from recent childbirth. Other captive woman who could not endure the march were slain at intervals along the route. The route was north up the Connecticut River Valley to the White River in Vermont and then the Winooski River to the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. They traveled on the eastern side of Lake Champlain and up the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence River and then to Montreal, arriving on April 25, nearly two months after the fateful morning at Deerfield.
A monument in the old burying ground at Deerfield reads "The Graves of 48 men, women, and children, victims of the French and Indian raid on Deerfield February 29, 1704. Nine of these 48 were men involved in the meadow fight outside of Deerfield when the French and Indians were fleeing Deerfield with their captives and seven of the nine were in the rescue party from towns below Deerfield.
In the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library are plaques on the second floor dedicated to those families who suffered in the Deerfield massacre. Those relating to the Price and Field families are here listed.
Sarah, 50, wife of Robert Price, Samuel, 18, their son, was captured and returned.
Andrew Stevens, an Indian, his wife, 20, daughter of Robert Price, captured. In 1706, she married in Canada, Jean Fourneau.
Sarah Field, 2, Mary, her mother, 28, wife of John, with children, Mary, 6, and John, 3, were captured. Mary adopted by an Indian, was named Walahowey. She married a savage, and became one.
Elizabeth Smead, about 64, "smothered in a cellar," with Mary (Price), 23, Sarah, 4, William, 2, mother, wife and children of Samuel Smead.
Zechariah Field, 1645-1674 a settler at Pocumtuck before Philip's War. His remains lie in an unknown grave in the old burying Ground. Many of his descendants have attained international fame. In his honor this tablet is placed in 1901 by Marshall Field of Chicago.
The majority of the 112 captives were children. Twenty of the 112 died along the march and ten of these were adult woman, some affected by pregnancy or recent births. Those unable to keep up or in weakened conditions were killed. Many of the captives were ransomed after a year and some several years later, returning to New England. Thirty or more captives never returned to New England, but became citizens of New France (Canada) or as young children were raised by Indians and continued the Indian mode of life. Adoption and ransom was faced by most of the Indian captives. The policy of the French government was to keep as many of the captives as possible, to make good Catholics of them, and to wed them either to the church or state. Of those captives who were not ransomed to the French in the beginning, many of them lived at the Indian mission of Kahnawake, near Montreal. The Kahnawake Indians were of mixed tribal background, but of predominantly Mohawk migrants from New York State who had converted to the Catholic faith. The Jesuit priests in Montreal and at Kahnawake endeavored to recruit the captives into the Catholic faith from what they saw as the heretic reformed religion of Protestantism in New England. Many captives were adopted into Indian households, the idea of replacing the dead deeply embedded in Iroquoian tradition.
Elizabeth Price Stevens and little Mary Field were among those who remained in Canada, Elizabeth in a nunnery before her marriage and Mary Field at Kahnawake. Of little Mary Field, it is related every effort was made to secure her release, but her Indian captors would not relinquish her. Of the several captive Deerfield children who arrived at Kahnawake as captives, many would marry and bear children and become fully integrated into Indian culture. Some stayed for varying durations. Mary Field remained at Kahnawake for life as did Mary Carter, age ten when captured; Abigail French, age six; Mary Harris, age nine; Joanna Kellogg, age eleven; Eunice Williams, age seven; and perhaps others. Baptismal and burial files of the Kahnawake mission are missing in the early years, but in later years the lives of some of these children as adults can be found in the records. Most of these woman visited their relatives in Massachusetts and Connecticut, later in life, on several occasions, with their Indian husbands and children. Most were requested and enticed to remain in New England, but always returned to Kahnawake, their adopted home.
Robert Price remained in Deerfield. What news reached him from Canada of his two captive children and other family members we are uninformed. Did he even know if his children were alive? At some point with the various negotiations that transpired, he must have received some word of them. How involved he was in negotiating the release of his two children we do not know. His only known family in Deerfield was one of his two step sons, John Field who he had raised in his household from childhood and his widowed son in law, Samuel Smead. John Field is related to have been active in negotiating the release of his captive wife and children and probably also his half sister Elizabeth and half brother Samuel. Robert Price was among three persons who the town of Deerfield voted to repair his common fence upon the town charge, 25 April 1708. He was thus living at that date, but seemingly in limited circumstances. He had suffered heavy financial and family losses in the attack on Deerfield four years earlier. Robert sold to Henry Dwight of Hatfield, a house lot in Deerfield, containing five acres, at a place called Wappin, 15 February 1715/16. He was of Deerfield at that date, but no further record of him is known. He was deceased before 15 July 1735 when his son, Samuel Price "only son and heir of Robert Price, formerly of Deerfield, deceased, which Robert was one of the soldiers in the Falls fight." The History of Deerfield relates that Robert Price is buried in Old Burying Ground among "at least nine soldiers who followed Turner through the turmoil and din of the battle which cost him (Turner) his life."
Children of Zachariah Field and Sarah Webb:
1. Zachariah Field b. 12 September 1669 d. young.
2. Ebenezer Field b. 31 October 1671 Northampton, Massachusetts.
3. John Field b. 8 December 1673.
Children of Robert Price and Sarah Webb:
4. child stillborn 15 August 1677 Northampton, Massachusetts.
5. Sarah Price b. 12 September 1678 Northampton.
6. Mary Price b. 21 March 1681 Northampton.
7. Elizabeth Price b. 12 August 1683 Northampton.
8. John Price b. 14 May 1689 d. young.
9. Samuel Price b. c. 1692/3 Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Robert Price first appears in Northampton, Massachusetts in a list of soldiers under command of Captain William Turner, 7 April 1676. Hugh Price also appears on the same list and is most likely related to Robert Price.
Robert Price of Northampton appears again on a list of soldiers in the Falls fight under Captain William Turner, 19 May 1676. Robert married 16 February 1677 at Northampton, Sarah Webb, widow of Zachariah Field, and daughter of John Webb and Ann Bassett. She was the mother of three sons by her first marriage, one of whom died young, the other two being raised in the Price household.
Sarah Webb was born c. 1651 and married 17 December 1668, Zachariah Field born c. 1645 son of Zachariah and Mary Field. Zachariah and Sarah Field removed from
Northampton up the river to the Pocumtuck Valley, at what is now Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1672, which had seen the first white inhabitants in 1669. It is believed Zachariah Field may have operated some type of trading post or store, which was then the western frontier. Zachariah died in 1674, believed to have perhaps been killed by Indians. Sarah Field presented an inventory of Zachariah's estate, 29 September 1674. She evidently returned down river to Northampton to family and to seek refuge from the impending Indian hostilities and there married Robert Price. Deerfield was abandoned in 1675 after the battle of Bloody Brook because of Indian hostilities. Two years later, a few settlers returned to Deerfield, but were captured by Indians and taken to Canada. Settlement began again in 1683.
Robert Price was taxed at Northampton from 1677 to 1680. He took the oath of allegiance in the town of Northampton, 8 February 1678. As previously mentioned, settlement at Deerfield began again in 1683 and Robert and Sarah removed about sixteen miles from Northampton to Deerfield. Robert Price was among those who owned land in the Common Field at Deerfield, 5 February 1686/7 (Springfield, Massachusetts Registry of Deeds, Book G p. 130). In 1686, he was residing on lot 17 in Deerfield, which was sold in 1693 to John Baker. This site, today, is occupied by a house built in 1802 and the John Wilson printing shop. On 20 April 1688, Robert Price received a woodlot in Deerfield. The Price family continued to reside in the growing village of Deerfield through the 1690's and into the early years of the 1700's.
In the deep snow of winter, before dawn, on 29 February 1704, a party of some three hundred French and Indians attacked the fortified Deerfield. There were homes inside and outside the fortified town. Of the town's 291 inhabitants, 48 were killed and 112 were taken captive. Seventeen homes were burned in the attack, both inside and outside the fort. Nine houses remained within the fort and several outside the fort. The survivors of Deerfield and the rescue band from towns below Deerfield who saw the sky ablaze from the burning homes found an appalling carnage. The rescue band made a heroic attempt in a nearby meadow to attack the attackers fleeing from Deerfield and were quite successful in inflicting casualties, but the battle turned and they retreated to Deerfield. Of the Price family, Sarah and son, Samuel were captured as was also Robert and Sarah's married daughter, Elizabeth Stevens. Elizabeth had married Andrew Stevens, an Indian, and he was killed in the fighting. Robert and Sarah's other married daughter, Mary Smead, suffocated with her two children and her husband's mother in the cellar of their burning home. Several families had sought refuge and hiding in the cellars of their homes, but these turned into deadly traps when the attackers set the homes ablaze. Robert Price and Samuel Smead survived the attack and may have been among a group of men who tried to affect a defense at the beginning of the attack, which became separated from many of the woman and children, and left their families in jeopardy. Sarah's son, John Field, by her first marriage, and his family were also residing in Deerfield. John's wife, Mary, age 28, and their children, Mary, age 7, and John, age 4, were captured and ten month old Sarah killed. The majority of children who were captured under the age of two were killed in Deerfield, too young to make a forced march to Canada. Furthermore, a child in a mother's arms would impede their flight. Indians were in charge of the Deerfield captives and the French took little part in holding captives.
One Colonel Partridge gathered information a few days after the attack and among his report was a Table of Losses. He gave a list of every household and listed each person as captive, slain, alive, and the amount of the estate lost. In the return list of losses, Robert Price had one child taken captive, one wife slain, left alive himself, and an estate of 40 pounds lost. Of Andrew Stevens household, there was one captive, his wife and one person slain, himself and an estate of 20 pounds lost. Of Samuel Smead's household, four were killed, a wife, two children and his mother, left alive himself, and an estate of 50 pounds lost, including the burning of his home in which his family suffocated in the cellar.
Sarah Price was about 53 years of age when captured. Only a short distance from Deerfield she was killed. What circumstances resulted in her death can only be speculation. It is generally believed from the records that have survived and by the stories of those captives who returned that a woman of her age would serve no useful purpose and perhaps would be unlikely to endure the forced march to Canada of some three hundred miles in winter through an unchartered and uncolonized wilderness. There were two other women over the age of forty five who were captured and they were also killed a short distance from Deerfield. Their bodies were found by the men who went in pursuit of the war party of French and Indians. Others were to be killed along the march, including the wife of Rev. John Williams, who was weakened from recent childbirth. Other captive woman who could not endure the march were slain at intervals along the route. The route was north up the Connecticut River Valley to the White River in Vermont and then the Winooski River to the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. They traveled on the eastern side of Lake Champlain and up the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence River and then to Montreal, arriving on April 25, nearly two months after the fateful morning at Deerfield.
A monument in the old burying ground at Deerfield reads "The Graves of 48 men, women, and children, victims of the French and Indian raid on Deerfield February 29, 1704. Nine of these 48 were men involved in the meadow fight outside of Deerfield when the French and Indians were fleeing Deerfield with their captives and seven of the nine were in the rescue party from towns below Deerfield.
In the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library are plaques on the second floor dedicated to those families who suffered in the Deerfield massacre. Those relating to the Price and Field families are here listed.
Sarah, 50, wife of Robert Price, Samuel, 18, their son, was captured and returned.
Andrew Stevens, an Indian, his wife, 20, daughter of Robert Price, captured. In 1706, she married in Canada, Jean Fourneau.
Sarah Field, 2, Mary, her mother, 28, wife of John, with children, Mary, 6, and John, 3, were captured. Mary adopted by an Indian, was named Walahowey. She married a savage, and became one.
Elizabeth Smead, about 64, "smothered in a cellar," with Mary (Price), 23, Sarah, 4, William, 2, mother, wife and children of Samuel Smead.
Zechariah Field, 1645-1674 a settler at Pocumtuck before Philip's War. His remains lie in an unknown grave in the old burying Ground. Many of his descendants have attained international fame. In his honor this tablet is placed in 1901 by Marshall Field of Chicago.
The majority of the 112 captives were children. Twenty of the 112 died along the march and ten of these were adult woman, some affected by pregnancy or recent births. Those unable to keep up or in weakened conditions were killed. Many of the captives were ransomed after a year and some several years later, returning to New England. Thirty or more captives never returned to New England, but became citizens of New France (Canada) or as young children were raised by Indians and continued the Indian mode of life. Adoption and ransom was faced by most of the Indian captives. The policy of the French government was to keep as many of the captives as possible, to make good Catholics of them, and to wed them either to the church or state. Of those captives who were not ransomed to the French in the beginning, many of them lived at the Indian mission of Kahnawake, near Montreal. The Kahnawake Indians were of mixed tribal background, but of predominantly Mohawk migrants from New York State who had converted to the Catholic faith. The Jesuit priests in Montreal and at Kahnawake endeavored to recruit the captives into the Catholic faith from what they saw as the heretic reformed religion of Protestantism in New England. Many captives were adopted into Indian households, the idea of replacing the dead deeply embedded in Iroquoian tradition.
Elizabeth Price Stevens and little Mary Field were among those who remained in Canada, Elizabeth in a nunnery before her marriage and Mary Field at Kahnawake. Of little Mary Field, it is related every effort was made to secure her release, but her Indian captors would not relinquish her. Of the several captive Deerfield children who arrived at Kahnawake as captives, many would marry and bear children and become fully integrated into Indian culture. Some stayed for varying durations. Mary Field remained at Kahnawake for life as did Mary Carter, age ten when captured; Abigail French, age six; Mary Harris, age nine; Joanna Kellogg, age eleven; Eunice Williams, age seven; and perhaps others. Baptismal and burial files of the Kahnawake mission are missing in the early years, but in later years the lives of some of these children as adults can be found in the records. Most of these woman visited their relatives in Massachusetts and Connecticut, later in life, on several occasions, with their Indian husbands and children. Most were requested and enticed to remain in New England, but always returned to Kahnawake, their adopted home.
Robert Price remained in Deerfield. What news reached him from Canada of his two captive children and other family members we are uninformed. Did he even know if his children were alive? At some point with the various negotiations that transpired, he must have received some word of them. How involved he was in negotiating the release of his two children we do not know. His only known family in Deerfield was one of his two step sons, John Field who he had raised in his household from childhood and his widowed son in law, Samuel Smead. John Field is related to have been active in negotiating the release of his captive wife and children and probably also his half sister Elizabeth and half brother Samuel. Robert Price was among three persons who the town of Deerfield voted to repair his common fence upon the town charge, 25 April 1708. He was thus living at that date, but seemingly in limited circumstances. He had suffered heavy financial and family losses in the attack on Deerfield four years earlier. Robert sold to Henry Dwight of Hatfield, a house lot in Deerfield, containing five acres, at a place called Wappin, 15 February 1715/16. He was of Deerfield at that date, but no further record of him is known. He was deceased before 15 July 1735 when his son, Samuel Price "only son and heir of Robert Price, formerly of Deerfield, deceased, which Robert was one of the soldiers in the Falls fight." The History of Deerfield relates that Robert Price is buried in Old Burying Ground among "at least nine soldiers who followed Turner through the turmoil and din of the battle which cost him (Turner) his life."
Children of Zachariah Field and Sarah Webb:
1. Zachariah Field b. 12 September 1669 d. young.
2. Ebenezer Field b. 31 October 1671 Northampton, Massachusetts.
3. John Field b. 8 December 1673.
Children of Robert Price and Sarah Webb:
4. child stillborn 15 August 1677 Northampton, Massachusetts.
5. Sarah Price b. 12 September 1678 Northampton.
6. Mary Price b. 21 March 1681 Northampton.
7. Elizabeth Price b. 12 August 1683 Northampton.
8. John Price b. 14 May 1689 d. young.
9. Samuel Price b. c. 1692/3 Deerfield, Massachusetts.
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