Groton Indian raid of 1964 and Lydia longley, The

Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Summer 2002 by Wolkovich-Valkavicius, William L

Doubtless, Mary Rowlandson acquired much of this sense from her clergyman-husband, Joseph. How many lives he must have shaped with the type of sermon he preached in 1678, whose text was appended to the printed version of his wife's recollections. The eighteen-page sermon is replete with Old Testament references, with not a single allusion to the New Testament and its Christ of mercy. The very lengthy title of Rev. Rowlandson's presentation makes his mentality so evident. The title in the attractive frontispiece reads in the original script as follows:

The Possibility of Gods Forsaking a people, That have been visibly near & dear to him TOGETHER, with the Misery of a People thus forsaken, Set forth in a SERMON, preached at Weathersfield, Nov. 21, 1678. Being a Day of FAST and HUMILIATION.

Indeed, James Drake asserts that many colonists viewed the entire King Philip's War as a divine punishment. The Longley household could hardly have been unmindful of this way of viewing God. For Lydia, the 1694 family slaughter, captivity and ransom must have fit into this mold.

Thus, a Puritan maiden, victim of a raid on her household, was soon transformed in captivity into a Roman Catholic and a nun. To her new vowed life she brought the meritorious courage and strength of her Protestant upbringing.27

James D. Drake, King Philip's War: Civil War in New England, 1675-1676 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 14, 30.

2 John Stetson Barry, History of Massachusetts: The Provincial Period (Boston, 1856), 455.

3 Caleb Butler, History of the Town of Groton (Boston, 1848), 242-50.

4 For details about the Longley family, see Robert Dalton Longley, Longley Family: Some Descendants of William Longley (private publication, 1952), 3-5.

5 For a contemporary account of the Groton assault, see William Hubbard, The History of the Indian Wars in New England (1677; Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books facsimile reprint, 1990), 193-201; on the Nipmuck attackers and other New England Indians, see Steven F. Johnson, Ninnuock (The People): The Algonkian People of New England (Marlborough, MA: Bliss Publishing Co. Inc., 1992), 187 and passim.

6 For more observations on the Longley household, see the masterful, painstakingly researched dissertation of William Foster, "The Captors' Narrative: Captive Women and Their Puritan Men on the Early North American Frontier, 1653-1760," (Cornell University, 1999), 72-75.

7 Henry D. Dunnack, Maine Forts (Augusta, Maine: 1924); Francis Parkman, France and England in North America (Library of America reprint, 1983), Vol. II, 172-191, describes the Phips ventures as well as other attacks on Canada.

8 Parkman, ibid., Vol. 11, 402, 269-271; John Gilmary Shea, History of the Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States, 1529-1854 (1854), 129, 142-144; Shea devotes three chapters to the Abenakis, 129-162, but is curiously silent about their 1694 raid on Groton; two-hundred-forty years later, only the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies survived in reservations at Old Town, Eastport, and Princeton. See Maine: A Guide `Down East' -- Federal Writers Project of the WPA for the State of Maine, 1937, 24. For Parkman's view of the Catholic clergy, see Vol. 2, 269-271; for details of their missionary work see Lord, Sexton & Harrington, History of the Archdiocese of Boston (Boston, 1945), Vol. 1, 38-63.