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Fort Massachusetts Observance Planned on Sunday03:32AM / Tuesday, August 18, 2009
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — It was 263 years ago tomorrow that some 900 French and Indians laid siege to Fort Massachusetts. The colonists lasted but a day before surrendering and being taken hostage to Canada.
The North Adams Historical Society will mark the attack, made during King George's War, on Sunday, Aug. 23, at 2 p.m. at the North Adams Museum of History and Science Building 5A Western Gateway Heritage State Park.
(The event had been planned at the site of the old fort in the Price Chopper parking lot but was changed to the museum because the rainy weather.)
Special readings will be delivered in the replica of the fort's barracks room on the third floor of the museum.
Fort Massachusetts was one of a line of defensive positions built along the frontier as England and France vied for control of the New World. Constructed under the direction of Col. Ephraim Williams Jr., founder of Williams College, it came under siege on Aug. 19, 1746, while its commander was away.
At that time, nine hundred French and Indians of the St. François tribe under the command of General Pierre Rigaud de Vaudreuil besieged frontier outpost in what was then called East Hoosuck. The 45 (half of them militia) colonists surrendered and the fort was burned to the ground. The prisoners were marched off to Canada, including Mary Smead and her infant daughter, Captivity, carried all the way by caring warriors. The attack recalled the more famous Deerfield raid of 42 years before. The survivors, less than half, were ransomed in a prisoner exchange and returned to Boston the following year.
On Sunday, attendees will be able to read excerpts from the diary of eyewitness the Rev. John Norton along with the poem "Captivity" about the Smead baby born during the prisoners' subsequent march to Canada. Models of the log fort, constructed by Peter Vergunst, are also on view.
For those who can't make the anniversary event, a nine-minute audio relating the events of the two-day siege is available at the museum. Norto's complete account also is available in the museum gift shop.
The museum, in Building 5A, is open Thursday through Saturday from 10 to 4 and Sundays from 1 to 4 through October; weekends from November to May or by appointment by calling 413-664-4700. |
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