A "What If" Paddle

This past Tuesday I got out on the Concord River for a "what if" paddle.  By that I mean trying to imagine what if an elaborate plan proposed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony on March 23, 1676 at the height of King Philip's War had been enacted.  I recently came across mention of the plan in the book Groton During the Indian Wars by Samuel Abbott Green, M.D. (1883).  It was something I'd never heard of before and returned to the book for more details. The plan was developed by "several considerable persons" (though unnamed) during a most dark and desperate time when many of the Colony's outlying towns were being raided by Native Americans.  The Colony was at wit's end as to how or if they could protect the many outlying towns.  The plan detailed creating a defensive line utilizing the Charles, Concord, and Merrimack rivers as a water barrier composing the majority of the line.  What complicated matters was how to connect over land from a point on the Charles River in Watertown to a point on the Concord River at Billerica.  The proposal called for a 12-mile long, 8-foot high stockade fence or stonewall "extending from Charles River, where it is navigable, unto Concord River not far from George Farley's house, (living in Billerica)".  The stockade would incorporate several unnamed ponds to help reduce the length.  Those ponds may have been Fresh Pond, Spy Pond, Mystic Lakes, Horn Pond, and Nutting Pond.  The stockade would end in Billerica where it would give way to the Concord River. Oddly, George Farley's house is the only location specifically mentioned by name in the plan leading me to wonder if he may have been one of the plan's proponents.  "This line (stockade) in connection with the Concord and the Merrimack Rivers, it was thought would form a barrier against the savages and protect all the towns lying within the district.  This complicated system of defence was favored by the Council...."  They listed 20 towns within the district: Salem, Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Ipswich, Newbury, Rowley, Lynn, Andover, Topsfield, Reading, Woburn, Malden, Billerica, Gloucester, Beverly, Wenham, Manchester, Bradford, and Medford.

I've used this map, found on Stanford University Library's (Barry Lawrence Ruderman Collection) website, to show the proposed line of defense which included the 12-mile stockade....

The route looks similar to the northern portion of today's Route 495 connecting with Route 3 at Chelmsford.

This is the same map showing the extent of the Bay Colony including many outlying towns...

Another map of the New England Colonies 1677 showing the locations of the Native American Praying Towns as well as many of the outlying towns...

Note that most of the Praying Villages, with the possible exception of Wamesit, would have been outside the defensive line.

So I started my paddling trip from outside of the Colony's defensive line in the wilds of present-day Bedford and headed downriver towards Billerica.  Made my first stop a half mile downriver at Two Brothers Rocks...

...where the kiosk explains how Englishmen, Gov. Winthrop and Deputy Gov. Dudley came to claim much of the land on the east side of the Concord River. George Farley would later build his homestead in the southwestern portion of the Dudley Farm Tract in the early 1650s.

From Two Brothers Rocks I continued downriver passing Jug Island...

...and the very busy Route 3 bridge...

...until reaching a point near the bridge abutments for the old Middlesex Turnpike...

Landing here on the east side of the river I left my boat and hiked a quarter-mile or so up a wooded slope alongside an old stone wall...

...to the address where George Farley's garrison house once stood, and where near it the 12-mile long stockade would have reached its terminus at the Concord River.  It would have been a key point in the line of defense. According to Wikipedia remnants of the structure were still standing as recently as the year 2000 when they were disassembled and 10 years later reassembled in New Hampshire.  An image of how the house looked in 1676 can be seen on the Wikipedia page for the Abraham Jaquith House (Farley's son-in-law).  On this day I found the location to be a barren lot behind this sign announcing the upcoming development to be built on the site...

While I could find no historical marker related to the Farley Garrison House there was a marker for the Middlesex Turnpike which reached roughly the same spot in the early 1800's...

...in fact the route of the proposed 12-mile stockade may have crisscrossed both the turnpike and the Middlesex Canal in places.

Also at this location was this marker noting the Billerica Minutemen having passed the spot in 1775...

So, if the stockade had been built and if I were standing here in 1676 I would have found myself looking up at the structure and wondering which side of it I'd rather be on.  My guess is I would have preferred the side where clerics wouldn't be telling me what I could and couldn't do or say.

Made interesting food for thought on the trip back upriver (outside the proposed defensive line)...

The Massachusetts Bay Colony ultimately appointed a committee made up of Hugh Mason, John Danforth, and Richard Lowden to examine the issue and they found the plan not to be advisable for the following reasons: too costly to build and maintain; would take too long to build; would require many laborers at a time when farms needed tending; and finally they concluded the enemy could easily breach the stockade, ford the rivers, or simply cross the waterway in rafts.  Their opinion prevailed and the defensive line wasn't built.  Following the attack at Sudbury, a month later, the Native American forces suffered a series of setbacks culminating with the death of Metacom (aka King Philip).   Thus the threat of attack on the outlying towns, while still present, never rose to the point where such a drastic solution was considered.  Here several other "what ifs" come into play:

 

What if Canonchet hadn't been captured and killed in April by the Mohegans and Niantics?

What if, a month later, the Native American sentries at Peskeompskut had detected Captain Turner's force before Turner and his men could destroy the village and people at the falls now named for Capt. Turner?  

Had those two "what ifs" gone the other way the defensive line plan might have been reconsidered.

 

Trash from Tuesday...

Trash collected from the Assabet River in Acton...

...while Mrs. Trashpaddler and I participated in OARS 3 Rivers Annual River Cleanup.   It included 17 plastic 2-liter bottles of Schweppes ginger-ale. Brand loyalty on display?!   Also 58 miniature (nip) bottles.   

    

Rivers Continually Replenished

 

Kicked off the last full week of summer paddling alongside Ozzy and his Wenonah canoe on the Assabet River in Stow, MA. This is the same canoe he recently paddled  from Maynard, MA to Newburyport, MA via the Assabet, Concord, and Merrimack rivers.  Of his many portages Ozzy recalls the one around the lower Concord River in Lowell as being the toughest.  This past Sunday morning we launched at Magazu's Landing in Stow and paddled up to Gleasondale and back while scouting for some tires in the river.  At one location, where a canoe is usually locked to a tree, the canoe was nowhere to be seen while a cut padlock laid at the base of the tree.  Hoping it was a case of the owner having lost his key rather than a boat theft. 

On Tuesday after yet another rain event I got out on the section of the Assabet River from West Concord up to Damondale Mill...

The USGS gauge in Maynard was at 3.3 feet.

Followed Nashoba Brook up to one of the two outlets from Warners Pond...

...where the combined flow from Nashoba and Fort Pond brooks was quite healthy.

On Friday morning I paddled the stretch of the Nashua River between Route 111/119 and the dam at East Pepperell, MA.   I launched from the Petapawag Boat launch in Groton, MA...

...which was flooded because of Monday's record-setting amounts of rain especially in Leominster, MA about 30 miles upriver.  The flash flooding in Leominster was catastrophic and resulted from their receiving as much as 11 inches of rain over a relatively short period of time.  

After launching I headed just a bit upriver of Petapawag where a strong current was passing under the Route 111/119 bridge.  The bridge looks to be undergoing some maintenance work with a barge positioned beneath it...

...perhaps the work is on hold until water levels and current subside.

 

A smaller bridge over a slough on the same roadway a little to the west had no head room at all...

The many sloughs of the river in this area were accessible.  This home had water up to its foundation...

Clouds at the outer edge of Hurricane Lee and a freshening breeze were indicative of the storm approaching New England from the south...

Fortunately, Hurricane Lee would pass far enough out to sea and spare vulnerable inland areas from additional rainfall which they don't need. 

Reached my downriver turnaround point, the dam at the East Pepperell, MA,  originally known as Babbitasset Falls...

The USGS East Pepperell gauge was at 6.27 feet. The Nashua River had crested here a day earlier at 7.54 feet. On Wednesday, the afternoon before it crested, I visited the dam by car when the level was at 7.2 feet and the display of water falling over the dam was impressive...

The water level being higher than the bridge's road surface seemed much more evident...

The head pressure within the penstock must have been equally impressive...

...and I imagine some good amount of electricity was being generated.  Up until several years ago the penstock here was made of wood and had a good number of leaks squirting out in all directions.  Yesterday it was tight as a drum.

I think it's safe to say that this summer will go down as one where our rivers never got seriously thirsty.

Trash from Sunday morning included only 6 miniature bottles aka "nips"...

Trash from Wednesday had 5 miniatures "nips"...

Trash from Friday included 110 miniature "nips"...

Encountered a few fallen trees over the course of the week including this one across the path to the boat launch in West Concord...

One other thing I came across last week was this old map of Lancaster, MA which included the Nashua River and its two branches.  According to the map, at an earlier time, today's North Branch was the North River; the South Branch was the Nashaway; and the combined main stem presently known as Nashua River was called the Penecook River...

The map was included in The Early Records of Lancaster, Massachusetts 1643 - 1725 prepared by Henry S. Nourse. It was drawn by Harold Parker.  Though I've seen the name "Penecook" mentioned in text before, as an alternative name for the Nashua, I believe this was the first time I saw it actually printed on a map.

 

Long Gone Garrisons and Bridges

 

My paddling week began on a peaceful Labor Day morning when I joined with canoeists Bob, Erik, Bill, Conrad, and Ellen for a paddle down the Charles River from Old Bridge St. in Medfield, MA to Farm Road at the Sherborn/Dover line.

Map of our route...

Along the way we saw some early fall foliage...

...and paddled a brief side trip up Bogastow Brook to South End Pond...

...where during the height of the King Philip War settlers took refuge in a stone garrison house during a February 1676 Indian attack on Medfield.  According to Ron McAdow's book, The Charles River: Exploring Nature and History On Foot and by Canoe, "...half of Medfield's one hundred homes and two mills were destroyed.  Seventeen settlers were killed as well".  "To discourage pursuit, the Indians fired the bridges (across the Charles).  On the ruins at Death's Bridge (a mile or so downriver from Bogastow Brook) they left this notice:

"Know by this paper that the Indians thou has provoked to wrath and anger will war these twenty-one years, if you will. There are many Indians yett.  We come three hundred at this time.  You must consider that the Indians loose nothing but their lives.  You must loose you fair houses and cattle."  

The notice is believed to have been written by an Indian known as James the Printer and I think it fair to say must have spooked the settlers.

Thus settlers garrison houses providing refuge for settlers during the 1676 conflict became the theme for my paddling week.  

One thing the attacks shared in common was that they all emanated from a Native American stronghold at Mt. Wachusett in Princeton, MA where, according to Leo Bonfanti in volume 4 of his series Biographies and Legends of the New England Indians, the Narragansett leader, Canonchet, "was the military genius who was responsible for the reign of terror in the late winter and early spring of 1676 that almost succeeded in destroying the English  army".  It should be noted that the Narragansetts had only recently entered the conflict. This followed an attack on their winter village in December by the United Colonies in which many of their women and children were killed.  It's known as the The Great Swamp Fight/Massacre.  The successful raids against the settlers designed by Canonchet might have provided him with some sense of revenge for the attack/massacre perpetrated by the United Colonies against his people at Great Swamp.

On Wednesday I launched across the street from the Rowlandson Garrison House site in Lancaster, MA located 11 miles to the east of Wachusett where perhaps as many as 42 settlers taking refuge within were either killed or captured...

A historical marker tells the tale...

After launching into the North Branch of the Nashua River I paddled the short distance down to the confluence of the north and south branches...

...where a sign on the bridge marks the significance of the location...

Unfortunately, the sign isn't visible from the river.  The Nashua was surprisingly low, only 6 inches deep in places, showing how quickly it gives up its water after four or five dry days.  About 1.5 miles upriver on the north branch I found the river blocked bank to bank by a fallen tree.

Yesterday, I wrapped up my week with a paddle on the Sudbury River from River Road in Wayland, MA...

Unlike the Nashua the Sudbury holds it water well and there was still plenty of it.

On my way to the boat launch I had stopped to visit the Haynes Garrison site on Water Row located 25 miles to the southeast of Wachusett...

The view out to the river from the foundation of the long-gone garrison house...

About a mile to the south of the Haynes Garrison another group of settlers were hunkered down in the Goodenow Garrison House...

Hopefully the Goodenow marker will receive some TLC as did the Haynes marker below...

The no-longer-in use Town Bridge in Wayland where in 1676 an earlier bridge spanned the river...

...at the east end of the bridge is a burial marker for 8 men from Concord who responded to the alarm that morning and attempted to aid the folks in the Haynes Garrison...

A closer look...

They never got there.

These three Indian raids occurred in a span of three months in 1676 starting with the Lancaster raid on February 10 followed by the Medfield raid on February 21 and culminating with the Sudbury raid on April 21.  Additionally there was a raid at Groton on March 13 where, according to Samuel A. Green M.D. in his book Groton During the Indian Wars 1883 (transcribed by Janice Farnsworth),  a Native American Nipmuck leader, One-eyed John (aka Monaco) called out to the captain of the Groton garrison that he had a force of 480 men with whom he planned to burn Chelmsford, Concord, Watertown, Cambridge, Charlestown, Roxbury, Boston in that order.  Green writes, "So great was the terror inspired throughout the Bay towns by the quick, succeeding Indian raids of this period that it was seriously proposed to abandon and fence out Lancaster, Groton, and the other outlying towns by a stockade eight feet high and twelve miles in length, from Watertown to Wamesit (near Lowell) [Massachusetts Archives, LXVIII 174.]   Fortunately, for the settlers, Canonchet was killed in April leaving me to wonder "what if he had lived and continued the execution of his strategy?"  Perhaps those outlying towns would have been abandoned and the 12-mile stockade fence erected.

Instead the Indians won the battle at Sudbury but failed to accomplish their goal of driving the settlers to east of the river.  Not too long after, the Native Americans disbanded, and left Wachusett.  Philip himself returned to Rhode Island and was killed in August.  Oddly, Mary Rowlandson's captivity spans this same stretch of time.  She was captured on February 10, 1676 and released on May2, 1676.  She heard of these events from her unique perspective within the Native American community. 

Trash from the Nashua's North Branch included 80 miniature alcohol bottles (aka "nips") and 3 cool dudes...

Trash from the Sudbury...