Hannah Duston (also spelled Dustin, Dustan, Durstan, Dustun, Dunstun, or Durstun) (born Hannah Emerson, December 23, 1657 – March 6, 1736,H. D. Kilgore, "The Story of Hannah Duston" (June 1940), in Here's Fifty: The First Hundred Years Are the Hardest, Edmund T. Mazur and Garth Clark Dawson. iUniverse, 2008 1737 or 1738) was a colonial Massachusetts Puritan woman who was taken captive by Abenaki people from Quebec during King William's War, with her first newborn daughter, during the 1697 raid on Haverhill, in which 27 colonists, 15 of them children, were killed. In her account given to Cotton Mather, it is stated that the Abenakis killed her newborn baby and several other captives soon after the raid. While detained on an island in the Merrimack River in present-day Boscawen, New Hampshire, she killed and scalped ten of the Abenaki family members holding them hostage, with the assistance of two other captives.
Duston's captivity narrative became famous more than 100 years after she died. During the 19th century, she was referred to as an American folk hero and the "mother of the American tradition of scalp-hunting." Some scholars assert Duston's story became a legend in the 19th century only because her story was used to justify white American violence against Native Americans as innocent, defensive, and virtuous. Duston is believed to be the first American woman honored with a statue.Barbara Cutter, "The Female Indian Killer Memorialized: Hannah Duston and the Nineteenth–Century Feminization of American Violence," Journal of Women's History, vol. 20, no. 2, 2008; pp 10–33
Biography
Early life Hannah Emerson was born December 23, 1657, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, to Michael Emerson and Hannah Webster Emerson; she was the oldest of 15 children. At age 20, she married Thomas Duston Jr., a farmer and brick-maker. The Emerson family would later become the subject of attention when Elizabeth Emerson, Hannah's younger sister, was hanged for infanticide on June 8, 1693. One of Hannah's cousins, Martha Toothaker Emerson, and her father, Roger Toothaker, were accused of practicing witchcraft and tried at the Salem witch trials (1692–93).
Captivity During King William's War, Hannah, her husband Thomas, and their nine children, including a newborn baby, lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts. On March 15, 1697, when she was 40 years old, the town was raided by a group of about 30 Abenaki from Quebec. In the attack, 27 colonists were killed (half of them children), and 13 were taken captive, to be either adopted or held as hostages for the French.John Greenleaf Whittier, Benjamin L Mirick, 1832, The History of Haverhill, Massachusetts, 1807-1892, A. W. Thayer, Haverhill, MA. Collection: UMass Amherst Libraries. Hannah's husband Thomas, who was building a new brick home about half a mile away, fled with eight of their nine children. The Indians captured Hannah and her nurse, Mary Neff (1646–1722, née Corliss), set fire to Hannah's home, and forced the two women to march into the wilderness, Hannah carrying her newborn daughter, Martha. According to the account Hannah gave to Cotton Mather, along the way her captors killed six-day-old Martha by smashing her head against a tree:
"About 19 or 20 Indians now led these away, with about half a score of other English captives, but ere they had gone many steps, they dash'd out the brains of the infant against a tree, and several of the other captives, as they began to tire in the sad journey, were soon sent unto their long home."
Hannah and Mary were assigned to a family group of 12 people (probably Pennacooks) and taken north, "unto a rendezvous...somewhere beyond Penacook, New Hampshire; and they still told these poor women that when they came to this town, they must be stript, and scourg'd, and run the gauntlet through the whole army of Indians." The group included Samuel Lennardson (1683–1718, also spelled Leonardson, Lenorson or Lennarson), a 14-year-old boy captured in Worcester, Massachusetts, in late 1695. Ellery B. Crane, "The Kidnapping of Samuel Leonard," in Proceedings of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, Volume 25, Worcester Historical Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1912; pp. 291-302Emma Lewis Coleman, New England Captives Carried to Canada Between 1677 and 1760 During the French and Indian Wars, Volume 1, 1926. Reprinted by Heritage Books, 2008.
Rebellion and escape The captives were taken north to an islandKnown today as Sugar Ball Island and located at in the Merrimack River at the mouth of the Contoocook River,Jay Atkinson, "Retracing a Mother's Path of Escape Along a Wintry Merrimack," New York Times, Nov. 12, 2015. Archived 3 July 2019. where, during the night of April 29 or 30, while the Indians were sleeping, Hannah led Mary and Samuel in a revolt:
"...furnishing themselves with hatchets for the purpose, they struck home such blows upon the heads of their sleeping oppressors, that ere they could any of them struggle...they fell down dead."
Hannah used a hatchet to kill one of the two grown men (Lennardson killed the second), two adult women, and six children. According to Cotton Mather's account, Hannah and her partners let one of the children sleep, "intending to bring him away with them," but the boy awoke and escaped. One severely wounded Abenaki woman also managed to escape the attack.Leon W. Anderson, "Hannah Duston: Heroine of 1697 Massacre of Indian Captors on River Islet at Boscawen, New Hampshire." Pamphlet prepared for the New Hampshire State Government, 1973. Reprinted 2007. Archived 14 Aug 2018.
The former captives immediately left in a canoe, after scalping the dead as proof of the incident and to collect a bounty. They went downriver, traveling only during the night, and after several days reached Haverhill.
Reward A few days later, Thomas Duston brought Hannah, Samuel and Mary to Boston, along with the scalps, the hatchet and a flintlock musketHannah Duston's Captured Dutch Trade Flintlock Musket Archived 5 July 2020. they had taken from the Indians. Although New Hampshire had become a colony in its own right in 1680, the Merrimack River and its adjacent territories were considered part of Massachusetts; therefore, Hannah and the other former captives applied to the Massachusetts Government for the scalp bounty.
Massachusetts had posted a bounty of 50 pounds per scalp in September 1694, which was reduced to 25 pounds in June 1695, and then entirely repealed in December 1696. Wives had no legal status at that time in colonial New England,Brett Jackson, "Revealing Zion's Daughters: Women in Puritan Jurisprudence," The Gettysburg Historical Journal, 2007:Vol. 6, Article 4 so her husband petitioned the Legislature on behalf of Hannah Duston, requesting that the bounties for the scalps be paid, even though the law providing for them had been repealed:
"The Humble Petition of Thomas Durstan of Haverhill Sheweth That the wife of ye petitioner (with one Mary Neff) hath in her Late captivity among the Barbarous Indians, been disposed & assisted by heaven to do an extraordinary action, in the just slaughter of so many of the Barbarians, as would by the law of the Province which [only] a few months ago, have entitled the actors unto considerable recompense from the Publick. That tho the [want] of that good Law [warrants] no claims to any such consideration from the publick, yet your petitioner humbly [asserts] that the merit of the action still remains the same; & it seems a matter of universal desire thro the whole Province that it should not pass unrecompensed... Your Petitioner, Thomas Durstun" Robert Boodey Caverly, Heroism of Hannah Duston: Together with the Indian Wars of New England, Russell, 1875; pp. 38-39.
On June 16, 1697, the Massachusetts General Court voted to give them a reward for killing their captors; Hannah Duston received 25 pounds, and Neff and Lennardson split another 25 pounds:
"Vote for allowing fifty pounds to Thomas Dustun in behalf of his wife Hannah, and to Mary Neff, and Samuel Leonardson, captives escaped from the Indians, for their service in slaying their captors. Voted, in concurrence with the representatives, that there be allowed and ordered, out of the public treasury, unto Thomas Dunston of Haverhill, on behalf of Hannah his wife, the sum of twenty-five pounds; to Mary Neffe, the sum of twelve pounds ten shillings; and to Samuel Leonardson, the sum of twelve pounds ten shillings...as a reward for their service."The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay: To which are Prefixed the Charters of the Province. Massachusetts Wright & Potter, printers to the state, 1892; pp. 153-54.
Later life Following her return, Hannah gave birth to a second daughter, Lydia, on October 4, 1698.Jay Atkinson, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Her neighbor Hannah Heath Bradley, who had also been abducted in the 1697 raid (and two of her children killed), was held for nearly two years before she was ransomed, returning to Haverhill in 1699.Eleanor Bradley Peters, Bradley of Essex County, early records, from 1643 to 1746: with a few lines to the present day, Heritage Books, 1915. During Queen Anne's War Indians raided Haverhill again in 1704 and 1707. In yet another raid on Haverhill (1708), Algonquin and Abenaki Indians led by the French officer Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville killed sixteen, including the town's minister.
Although she claimed to have been baptized as a child, Hannah rarely attended church and did not take communion until late in life, for reasons that are unclear. In May 1724 she asked to be formally admitted to the Haverhill Center Congregational Church. Her husband had made a similar petition in January of that year.
Following her husband's death (between 1724 and 1732) Hannah Duston is believed to have lived with her son Jonathan on his farm in southwest Haverhill.George Wingate Chase, The History of Haverhill, Massachusetts, from its first settlement, in 1640, to the year 1860, Published by the author, Haverhill, MA; Collection at UMass Amherst Libraries. She probably died between 1736 and 1738, and was most likely buried near Jonathan Duston's home.
Samuel Lennardson moved to Preston, Connecticut, to join his father. He married and had five children and died on May 11, 1718.Taylor, E.W.B. "Hannah Dustin of Haverhill: Her Capture and Famous Exploit Recounted", The Granite Monthly, Vol. XLIII No. 6 (June 1911) p. 177, 182.Rebecca Valentine, Travis Thompson, Beyond the Land of Gold: The Life & Times of Perry A. Burgess, Thompson Media, 2010 Mary Neff died in Haverhill on October 17, 1722.Delores Bird Carpenter, Early Encounters: Native Americans and Europeans in New England, from the Papers of W. Sears Nickerson. MSU Press, 1995. In 1739 Mary Neff's son Joseph was granted two hundred acres of land at Penacook by the General Court of New Hampshire "in consideration of his mother's services in assisting Hannah Duston in killing divers Indians."
Legacy
Written accounts
Contemporary accounts