The Rev. John Williams, Captive of the Indians from 1703-1706

John Williams was a Puritan minister in Deerfield, Massachusetts, at a time of intense hostility between English settlers and the local Indian tribes. Throughout the 1690s the young clergyman was continually called upon to encourage and comfort his parishioners as members of the community were killed or captured by Indians. On February 29, 1703, Williams himself became a victim when a French and Indian raiding party sacked Deerfield. Two of his children were murdered outside his house, but he, his wife and their five other children were kidnapped and marched - with over a hundred captured prisoners - to Montreal. His wife, as well as many others who were too weak or infirm for the arduous journey, was killed along the way. He spent two and a half years as a captive in Quebec. Williams wrote his autobiographical account of the ordeal in 176, the year he was released, and it remained for many years one of the most populart among numerous Indian captivity accounts. After his description of the march to Montreal, Williams' narative focuses on the coercive attempts of the French to proselytize the English prisoners into the Roman Catholic faith. To make this early New England classic available to readers, Heritage Books, Inc. has taken a 1908 reprit of the 1795 sixth edition of The Redeemed Captive, which contains a sermon preached by Williams at Boston only two weeks after his return. Several appendices are also included, containing such information as, the names of all the Deerfield captives and brif chronologies of Deerfield before and after the devastating raid. A new everyname index has been added. Greatly enhancing this offer of the Williams' book is its combination with the related 1905 work by George Sheldon, Heredity and Early Environment of John Williams, "The Redeemed Captive." This valuable record provides biographical details of John Williams' youth, education and early adulthood as well as background information into the Puritan faith that was so much a part of Williams' and his neighbors' lives. An everyname index is included.