WILLIAM LONGLEY |
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Near Groton, Massachusetts on the old Pepperell Road, now named Longley Road,
is a large boulder with these words etched into it. The countryside is
beautiful and presents a peaceful scene where so long ago the Abnaki Indians
lurked in the early morning shadows awaiting the time when they would
destroy the lives of the Longleys and others living nearby. Here life
ended for William Longley, who for twenty years has served his town in
the same capacity as had his father before him.
The death blows dealt to William and his family on that fateful morning of
July 27, 1694 were cruel and barbarious, and severed eight strands of the
"Ancestral Tapestry". Their bodies were gently laid to rest by
their townsmen in a single grave a few rods northwest of their house,
which was built of hewn logs and was still standing more than a century
later. A small apple tree and a stone lying even with the ground marked
the grave for many years, but these have long since disappeared.
Although Lydia Longley is not in my direct ancestry,
her life story is interesting and I feel it should be included in this text.
English Captives in Canada: "Lydia
Madeline Longley, dau. of William of Groton near Boston, and Deliverance
(Crispe), born 12 April 1674 in Groton; taken in July 1694 by the Abenaquis;
bapt. 24 April 1696 in Montreal; resides at the Congregation of Notre
Dame". Translation from: Dictionnarie Genealogique des Families
Canadiennes depusis la fondation de la Colnis jusq's nos jours. par l'
Abbe. C. Tanguay, A. D. S., Quebec, Canada, MDCCCLXCXI, p. 623.
Lydia Longley was two years old when the first of many Indian raids threatened
the small settlement of Groton, Massachusetts. Her father and mother,
William and Lydia Longley, hastily packed their belongings and fled with
their two children either to Lynn or to Charlestown, where William's
sister, Mary Lemon, offered shelter to other members of the family.
The family returned to Groton several years later and
life in the re-built settlement progressed normally for a number of years
despite occasional threats from the Indians. Some years later Lydia's
mother died and her father re-married. Her step-mother was the widow,
Deliverance Crispe.
William Longley was elected to the office of Town Clerk
and was serving in that position when rumors of new Indian threats spread throughout
the counryside. The danger in the frontier settlement was great, but this time the
Longleys could not flee. The General Court had set down a decision that
all persons who wanted to leave their homes could not do so without a
special license. These were costly and Longley did not purchase one.
Without the license they would lose their rights to their land if they left.
When William Longley entered the record of the town
meeting in the record book on July 19, 1694, he had no way of knowing that, two
days earlier, a large body of Indians from Maine had attacked the village of Oyster River
(now Durham), New Hampshire, about seventy-five miles east of Groton.
They had burned 60 homes, killed 104 persons and carried away 24 captives.
A group of fifty or sixty Norridgewock warriors, under the leadership of
the sagamore Toxus, decided to move west in search of another place to
continue their carnage.
"On the 27th of July, 1694, about the break of day,
Groton felt some surprising blows from Indian hatchets. They began their
attacks at the house of one Lieut. Lakin, in the out skirts of the town,
but met with repulse, and lost one of their crew. Nevertheless in other parts
of that plantation, where the good people had become so tired as to lay
down their military watch, there were more than twenty persons killed, and
more than a dozen carried away." History of Groton, p. 93,
record written by Cotton Mather.
On that fateful morning Toxus and his warriors turned
the Longley cattle loose and then hid in ambush. William Longley looked
out and noticed that his cattle were not in the barnyard where they should
have been awaiting the morning milking. He called to his family to come and
help him drive the cattle, who were wrecking havoc to his shoulder-high
corn, back into the barnyard.
Suddenly the savages issued a series of bloodcurdling shrieks
and began firing at the helpless family. William, Deliverance, and five of the
eight children were killed in the bloody massacre that followed. The three
remaining children, Lydia, John and Betty, were seized and hurried away through the
woods toward the river. Little Betty died before the raiders, hurrying down the
Nashua river past Dunstable, reached Penacook. John and Lydia were separated
after leaving Lake Champlain, he being taken to the Abnaki village of St.
Francis, and she to Villa Marie (Montreal), where she was offered for ransom
to the French.
Lydia's ransom was paid by Jacques LeBer, a distinguished,
wealthy resident of Montreal, in whose household she was gently cared for
and treated with kindness and consideration. For two years she lived and
moved in a world so foreign to any she had ever known, and then, by her
own decision, reversed her principles, and united with the Catholic Church.
On April 24, shortly after her twenty-second birthday, she was baptized into
that faith and given the name of Lydia Madeleine.
The following is from the translation of the copy of the
record from the Congregation of Notre Dame:
"On Tuesday, April 24, 1696, the ceremony of baptism
was performed on an English girl, named Lydia Longley, who was born Apr. 14,
1674, at Groton, a few miles from Boston in New England. She was the daughter
of William Longley and Deliverance Crispe, both protesants. She was
captured in the month of July, 1680 (1694)* by the Abenaqui Indians, and
lived for the past month in the house of M. Jacques LeBer, merchant; the
godmother was Madame Marie Madeleine Dupont, wife of Monsieur de Maricour,
Ecyer, Capitaine d'une compagnie de la Marine. She named this English girl
Lydia Madeleine. The said ceremony was performed in the chapel of the said
Congregation and that by special permission of Messire Francois dolie
Grand Vicaire de Monseingneurs l'Illustrissione et Reverendissime, Bishop
of Quebec, for certain reasons."
Signed: Lydia Madeleine Longley...M Md. Dupont...LeBer...M. Caille faisant
les fonctions curiales.
*The date of capture in this record is written out in
full, and the omission of one word would cause a mistake; i.e., " mil
six cent quatre-vinget," omitting quatroze.
Within the year Lydia was admitted to the Congregation
as a novice and on Sept. 19, 1699 took her final vows, and as Soeur Madeleine de
la Congregation de Notre Dame, became the first girl of United States birth
to become a Roman Catholic nun. In 1722, she was living on the Isle of Orleans, near
Quebec, in the convent of the Holy family, of which it was supposed she
was the Mother Superior.
On July 21, 1758, almost sixty-four years after her
capture, Lydia Longley de Ste. Madeleine, Englishwoman of the Congregation
of Notre Dame, died in her eighty-fifth year, and was buried in the Chapel
of the Infant Jesus in the parish church in Montreal. Monique Lanthier, Montreal historian, states: The first church was demiloshed in 1830. The bodies were then buried under the new church and remained there until 1855 when they were moved to the new cemetery on Mount Royal, Notre-dame-des-Neiges-Cemetery. This is the largest cemetery in North America. There are ca. 1,000,000 buried there. (Ref: Personal email from Monique Lanthier, September, 2000.)
Strangely enough Lydia Longley's death coincided with
the end of the Indian raids upon any settlement in New England. The rivers
and their tributaries ceased to be feathered arrows, pointing at the hearts
of the English people, pouring out poison and death, and instead became highways
to a new world.
doth rest between Heaven and myself."
Rev. John Longley
William Longley
William Longley
John Longley William Longley
William Longley
Ezekiel Longley
Joseph Longley Warren Longley
Jay Longley
Carl Longley
Epilogue
William Longley (3), son of William (2) and Joanna (Goffe) Longley, was born ca. 1640 at Lynn, Massachusetts; died July 27, 1694, Groton, Mass.; married May 15, 1672, Groton, (1) Lydia; married (2) Deliverance Crispe, widow of Benjamin. She died July 27, 1694.
6. Betty, born, Groton, Mass.; died 1694, enroute to Canada.