Person:Hannah Emerson (2)

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Hannah Duston (Dustin, Dustan, and Durstan) (born Hannah Emerson, December 23, 1657 – c. 1736) was a 40-year-old colonial Massachusetts Puritan mother of eight during King William's War who was taken captive with her newborn daughter during the Raid on Haverhill (1697). On March 15, 1697, Hannah witnessed the brutal killing of her baby and several of her neighbors. Later in her captivity, while detained on an island in the Merrimack River in present-day Boscawen, New Hampshire, she acquired the assistance of two other English captives and scalped ten of the Indian family members they resided with.

Duston's captivity narrative became famous more than a hundred years after she died. Duston is the first woman honored in the United States with a statue. During the nineteenth century, she was referred to as "a folk hero" and the "mother of the American tradition of scalp hunting". At the same time, scholars assert Duston's story only became legend in the nineteenth century because America used her story to define its violence against native Americans as innocent, defensive and virtuous.^[1]

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

During King William's War, Hannah, her husband Thomas Duston, and their nine children were residents of Haverhill, Massachusetts in March 1697 when the town was attacked by a group of Abenaki American Indians from Quebec. (In this attack, 27 colonists were killed and 13 were taken captive to be either adopted or held as hostages for the French.) When their farm was attacked, Thomas fled with eight children, but Hannah, her newborn daughter Martha, and her nurse Mary Neff were captured and forced to march into the wilderness. Along the way, the Indians killed the six-day-old Martha by smashing her against a tree.

Hannah and Mary were assigned to an Indian family group of 13 persons and taken north. The group included Samuel Lennardson, a 14-year-old captured in Worcester the year before.

Six weeks later, at an island in the Merrimack River at the mouth of the Contoocook River near what is now Penacook, New Hampshire, Hannah led Mary and Samuel in a revolt. She used a tomahawk to attack the sleeping Indians, killing one of the two grown men (Lennardson killed the second), two adult women, and six children. One severely wounded Indian woman and a young boy managed to escape the attack.

The former captives immediately left in a canoe, but not before taking scalps from the dead as proof of the incident and to collect a bounty. They traveled down the river only during the night and after several days reached Haverhill. The Massachusetts General Court later gave them a reward for killing Indians; Hannah Duston received 25 pounds, and Neff and Lennardson split another 25 pounds (various accounts say 50 or 25 pounds, and some accounts mention only Duston's receiving an award).

Hannah lived for nearly 40 more years.

1.   Hannah Duston, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. (Online: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.).
2. ↑ Haverhill, Essex, Massachusetts, United States. Vital Records of Haverhill, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849. (Topsfield, Mass.: Topsfield Historical Society, 1910), 1:122.

   Emmerson, Hannah, d. Michael and Hannah (Webster), [born] Dec. 23, 1657.

3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2} Hoyt, David W. "The Duston Family of Haverhill", in Essex Institute Historical Collections. (Salem, Massachusetts: Essex Institute Press), 46:350.

   Thomas Duston, m. 3 Dec 1677 Hannah Emerson. Will of wid. Hannah dated 19 Sep 1733, proved 6 Mar 1737-38.

4. ↑ ^4.0 4.1 Pope, Charles Henry. The Haverhill Emersons. (Boston, Mass.  Cambridge, Mass.: Murray and Emery, 1913-1916), 1:19-20.

   Hannah² (Emerson), one of the most famous women of early New England, was b. at Haverhill Dec. 23, 1657; m. Dec 3, 1677, Thomas Duston. She was captured by the Indians in one of their attacks on the settlement, March 15, 1697, taken from her bed with her infant of 6 days, and compelled to march with her captors. Seeing her child dashed to death against a tree; worn, with long marching and cruelties, after going with the Indians for two weeks she and Mrs. Neff and a boy, Samuel Lennerson, rose in the night, killed and scalped ten Indians and made their way home through intolerable hardships. She carried the scalps to Boston and was paid the regular bounty. Her deed was one of the chief means of checking the cruelties of the Indians, showing them that "weak women" would meet their atrocities in kind. She was at no other time in her life found lacking in the gentleness and peaceful character of woman; this deed was the product of maddening experience. Mr. Duston, who first tried unsuccessfully to induce Hannah to let him carry her to a place of safety when he saw the savages approaching, bent his energies to the saving of their nine children; and by keeping them running and firing back at the pursuing Indians, managed to get them all to a place of safety.

5.   Hannah Emerson Duston, in Find A Grave.

   She may well have been buried in Pentucket Cemetery, but there is no record and no surviving headstone. She may as easily have been buried in a family plot on the farm of one of her sons or sons-in-law.--jaques1724 (a descendant). 22:19, 4 December 2012 (EST).