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"What befell Stephen Williams in his captivity"

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Stephen Williams, the son of the Reverend John Williams<!--ObjectID=538-->, was nine years old when a French and Native American raiding party captured him, his family and over 100 other residents of Deerfield, Massachusetts. Stephen survived a grueling march north. Initially treated much as any other Abenaki boy, Stephen spent the winter in an Abenaki village in present-day Vermont before his Indian master decided to send him to one of his kinsman, a Pennacook known to the English as Sagamore George. Stephen spent fourteen months among the Abenaki before the Governor of New France in present-day Canada ransomed and returned the boy to his father. Stephen wrote this account shortly after he returned to New England. He attended Harvard College, entered the ministry and led the church at Longmeadow, Massachusetts, for many years. Stephen Williams died in 1782.

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