Poems of American History - Unknown

Page 106. Of worthy Captain Lovewell. Not much is known of Lovewell. He was a son of Zaccheus Lovewell, an ensign in the army of Oliver Cromwell, who had come to America and settled at Dunstable, where he died at the great age of one hundred and twenty years,—"the oldest white man who ever died in New Hampshire." He left three sons, the youngest of whom was John, the hero of Pigwacket. At the time of the fight, he was about thirty-three years of age, and had a wife and two or three children. After the Indian attack on Dunstable in 1624, he and some others petitioned the House of Representatives at Boston to make some provision for a force to be sent against the savages. The Representatives voted that all such volunteers should be paid two shillings and sixpence a day, and promised large rewards for the scalps of male Indians old enough to fight. A company of thirty was raised, with Lovewell as captain, and captured one prisoner and took one scalp. A second expedition brought back ten scalps and some other booty, and the third expedition culminated in the battle at Pigwacket.

Page 106. 'Twas nigh unto Pigwacket. The old name for Fryeburg. Pigwacket was at the time the principal village of the Ossipe tribe. Also spelled Pequawket.

Page 108. They killed Lieutenant Robbins. Robbins was a native of Chelmsford. He was so badly wounded that he had to be left on the ground. He desired his companions to charge his gun and leave it with him, saying, "As the Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, I will kill one more of them if I can."

Page 108. Good young Frye. Jonathan Frye, the chaplain of the company, was the only son of Captain James Frye, of Andover, and had graduated at Harvard only two years before. It is a curious commentary on the taste of the time that he should be commended for scalping Indians, as well as killing them; the scalping, however, was the result not of ferocity but of the large rewards offered by the Boston legislature for these trophies.

Page 108. Wymans Captain made. Ensign Seth Wymans, or Wyman, belonged in Woburn, and commanded through the day, after the fall of his superiors at the first fire. He so distinguished himself that he was given a captain's commission, and his admiring townsmen presented him with a silver-hilted sword.

Page 108. Anon, there eighty Indians rose. Penhallow says seventy, Hutchinson eighty, Williamson sixty-three, and Belknap forty-one.

Page 111. The British Lyon Roused. From Tilden's | miscellaneous | Poems, | on | Divers Occasions; | Chiefly to Animate & Rouse | the | Soldiers. | Printed 1756. The little volume from which this poem was taken is one of the most interesting published before the Revolution. For a long time nothing whatever was known of the author, not even his first name. But that was subsequently discovered by Mr. J. H. Trumbull, and communicated to the "New York Historical Magazine," iv, 72, by him. This account seems to have been overlooked by all of Tilden's biographers. Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography fails to give his first name, nor does any history or cyclopædia of American literature with which the compiler is familiar.

Page 112. The Song of Braddock's Men. This spirited song has been preserved by Mr. Winthrop Sargent in his excellent monograph upon the Braddock expedition, published by the Pennsylvania Historical Society in 1855. Mr. Sargent states that it was composed in Chester County, Pennsylvania, while the army was on the march in the early autumn of 1755, and that there is no doubt of its authenticity. He does not say where he discovered it.

Page 112. Braddock's Fate. It will be noticed that these verses were composed just six weeks after the battle which they describe, and the author must have sat down to them at once upon hearing the news of the defeat.