[462] Life and character of Col. Ephraim Williams, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., viii. 47.
[463] The fort will be seen to consist of a house (A in ground plan, 40 × 24), nine-feet walls of four-inch white ash plank, surmounted by a gambrel roof, the pitches of which are seen (E, F) in the profile, while the limits of the house are marked (X X) in the prospect. Sills (H) on the ground gave support to pillars (I, K, in ground plan, A, C, in profile), which held a platform (B in profile) which was reached by doors (K in profile), and protected towards the enemy by a bulwark of plank pierced with loop-holes, as the doors and window-shields of the house were. One corner of this surrounding breastwork had a tower for lookout, as seen in the prospect. At one end a wall (E, F, G, in ground plan) with a bastion (D) enclosed a yard (L in ground plan, G in profile), which was planked over. In this was a well (C in ground plan) and a storehouse (B, size 35 × 10, in ground plan), with a roof inclining inward (H, in profile).
[464] Hall’s Eastern Vermont, i. 67. The papers of Col. Williams are preserved in two volumes in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Soc., having come into their possession in 1837. (Proceedings, ii. 95, 121.) The papers are few before 1744, and the first volume comes down to 1757, and concerns the warfare with the French and Indians in the western part of the province. The second volume ends in the main with 1774, though there are a few later papers, and continues the subject of the first, as well as grouping the papers relating to Williams College and Williams’ correspondence with Gov. Hutchinson. It was this same Col. Israel Williams who took offence in 1762 that his son’s name was put too low in the social scale, as marked on the class-lists of Harvard, and tried to induce the governor to charter a new college in Hampshire County. (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xx. 46.)
The MS. index to the Mass. Archives will reveal much in those papers illustrative of this treacherous warfare, and the Report of the Commissioners on the Records, etc. (1885), shows (p. 24) that there is a considerable mass of uncalendared papers of the same character. Various letters from Gov. Shirley and others addressed to Col. John Stoddard during 1745-47, respecting service on the western frontiers of Massachusetts, are preserved in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. These, as well as the Israel Williams papers, the Col. William Williams’ papers (in the Pittsfield Athenæum), and much else, will be availed of thoroughly by Prof. A. L. Perry in the History of Williamstown, which he has in progress. A coöperative Memorial History of Berkshire County, edited by the historian of Pittsfield, is also announced, but a History of Berkshire County, issued under the auspices of the Berkshire Historical Society, seems likely to anticipate it.
[465] There is an account of Mason’s expedition from New London to Woodstock in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., ix. 473.
[466] [This is described in Vol. IV. p. 364, with authorities, to which add Pearson’s Schenectady Patent, 1883, p. 244; Mag. of Amer. Hist., July, 1883; Palfrey’s New England, iv. 45; Mass. Archives, xxxvi. 111.—Ed.]
[467] See Vol. IV. pp. 353, 361, 364. Cf. Connecticut Col. Records, iv. 38; and the present volume, ante, p. 90.
[468] During the Dutch occupation of New York there were only two Catholics in New Amsterdam, and according to Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, they had no complaint to make that they suffered on account of their faith. Father Le Moyne, another missionary, was allowed to come to New Netherland a few years later, and administer the rites of the church to the few Romanists then in the province, and in 1686 Governor Dongan, himself of the Church of Rome, reports that there were still only “a few” of his co-religionists in the government.
[469] Vetoed by the king in 1697.
[470] Leamer and Spicer.