Person:Matthew Coe (3)

Coe, Matthew: Unknown; 1639; Piscataqua, Gloucester, Falmouth [NHPP 1:113; GDMNH 153; J. Gardner Bartlett, Robert Coe, Puritan, His Ancestors and Descendants, 1340-1910, with Notices of Other Coe Families (Boston 1911) 531-32]

2 MATTHEW, at Portsmouth in 1640. See Cole (21). Rem. to Gloucester. With other Gloucester men, as Phineas Rider, Jo: Jackson, Jo: Briers, Elias Parkman, Geo: Ingersoll, Thos: Skillins, Jo: Kettell, Thos: Wakely, Anthony Day, Jo: He m. Elizabeth Wakely (Thos.) K. on his farm in Indian attack of 9 Sep. 1675 Wakely and Giles Barge, migrated to Falm. and Scarb. ab. 1658, Coe buying land on the Presumpscot in 1661.

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there came, in 1661, Matthew Coe, who married a daughter, fisherman of Gloucester, who married Elizabeth 15 June 1647, of Thomas Wakely (entry in MA vital records document from ancestry on-line January 2016)...Matthew Coe died before the war, leaving several children, John (1), his eldest son; Isaac; Martha, married a Farnum of Boston; Elizabeth; married to a Tucker of Roxbury; who were both widows in 1731; and another daughter who married to Joseph Ingersoll, one of our early settlers. Page 195 Thomas Wakely's death The English having exposed themselves to censure by this imprudent attack without a sufficient justification, removed at once all restraint from the Indians. They had seen the blood of their companions causelessly spilt, and they now sought opportunities of revenge. These were not wanting along an extensive and entirely unprotected frontier. In every plantation the houses were scattered over a large territory, and the only defensive preparations were an occasional private garrison, which, in cases of sudden emergency, afforded the neighboring in habitants a temporary refuge. The able-bodied men in each town formed a train-band; but they lived so widely apart, and there were so many points to guard, that they could offer but little protection against the desultory and rapid attacks of their subtle enemy. The first visitation of their vengeance was upon the family of Thomas Wakely of Falmouth, about a week after the affray before mentioned. This unsuspecting family was composed of Thomas Wakely and his wife, his eldest son, John, his wife, who was far advanced in pregnancy, and their four children. They killed the old man and his wife, his son John and wife, with three children, in a cruel manner, and carried one daughter Elizabeth, about eleven years old, into captivity . Next day Lt. George Ingersoll, who had perceived the smoke repaired to the place with a file of soldiers to learn the cause. He found the body of John's wife and the three children with their brains beaten out lying under some planks, and the half consumed bodies of the old man and his wife near the smouldering ruins of the house. Why this family was selected for a sacrifice we have no means of determining; the Indians committed no further violence, but immediately withdrew to a distant place. The daughter Elizabeth was some months after carried by Squando, the Saco Sachem, to Major Waldron at Dover, where she subsequently married Richard Scamman, a Quaker. The Wakelys came from Cape Ann, and had originally settled in 1661, at Back Cove, on the west side of Fall Brook, where a son-in-law, Matthew Coe, died. The eldest son, John, had removed to the east side of Presumpscot river several years before the melancholy event which terminated his life; his farm was about three-quarters of a mile below the falls, and between the farms of Humphrey Durham and Jenkin Williams; his house fronted the river "and stood within about a gun shot of said Durham's house". His father and mother from their advanced age had probably taken up their residence with their eldest son, or had gone there at this time in consequence of the general alarm. He is spoken of by Mather as a worthy old man, "who came into New England for the sake of the gospel," and had long repented moving into this part of the country so far out of the way of it. The inhabitants in the immediate vicinity had probably drawn off at this time to a more secure place, as it appears that Ingersoll who lived at Capisic was the first to visit the scene, drawn out of the way of it.