The Barnard Raid of 1780
Mistaken Identity on the Frontier?
Old forts have always intrigued me, the more obscure the better. On Route 12 in the northwestern portion of Barnard, Vermont, there’s a Fort Defiance Hill that has long begged me for further investigation.
A short distance further south on Route 12 is an historical marker reading in part “Near this spot stood Fort Defiance built after the Barnard Indian raid of August 9, 1780 when Prince Haskell, Timothy Newton, and Thomas Martin Wright all of Barnard and David Stone of Bethel were carried captive to Canada.”
On reading the marker I became more curious about the raid than Fort Defiance itself. In 1780 Barnard was a small frontier settlement of some 300 people. The Revolutionary War was still being fought, but the closest it came to Barnard was the Battle of Hubbardton on 7 July 1777, some 27 miles to the west. The Battle of Bennington took place on 16 August 1777, some 58 miles to the south. With the American victory at Saratoga in the fall of that year the conflict had shifted to the south and there was nothing in Barnard worth raiding.
The most comprehensive account of the Barnard Raid and the subsequent construction of Fort Defiance was written in 1912 by Reverend William Monroe Newton, a descendant of one of the captives. Newton tells us that the raiders were a party of approximately 21 “Indians” from the village of St. Francis, Quebec, some 75 miles northeast of Montreal.1 St. Francis, also known as Odanak, had long been a Canadian haven for the Abenaki and other native peoples displaced by the conflicts of the previous century. Twenty-one years earlier, in October of 1759, Major Robert Rogers and 140 Rangers had marched north from Crown Point to attack the village, burning it to the ground and slaughtering many of its inhabitants.
Why would 21 men venture 200 miles to capture three farmers? The Barnard Raid appears to have been a response to an incident that took place four years earlier when Benjamin Whitcomb and two companions left Fort Ticonderoga on a scouting mission to Montreal. Whitcomb, originally from Lancaster, Massachusetts, had served as a ranger and a scout during the French & Indian War and was well qualified for the mission. While reconnoitering a road near Trois-Rivières he encountered a party of British officers including Brigadier General Patrick Gordon, whom he shot from his hidden vantage point. Gordon died of his wounds several days later, the identity of his assassin revealed by one of Whitcomb’s captured companions. Whitcomb managed to elude his pursuers and make the 180-mile trek back to Ticonderoga, where he was welcomed as a hero. The British, incensed by what they considered a violation of the rules of war, offered a 50-guinea reward for the capture of “the infamous skulker” Whitcomb, dead or alive. Benjamin Whitcomb was promoted to Major and given two companies of Rangers. From 1777 to 1781 he and his command were stationed at Fort Ranger in Rutland.
In 1775, shortly before Benjamin Whitcomb’s scouting mission, another Whitcomb, Asa Whitcomb of Hardwick, Massachusetts, and his brother Lot had settled in Barnard. There is no evidence to indicate that the two men were related, although Reverend William Newton suggests that there was a physical similarity. On 30 April 1777, Timothy Newton, also of Hardwick, purchased 200 acres of land on Locust Creek from Lot Whitcomb, built a log cabin, and by 1780 had brought his wife Abigail “Nabby” Earl north from Hardwick to their new home. Timothy’s younger sister Elizabeth had married Thomas Martin Wright, again of Hardwick, in 1776 and they settled on 100 acres immediately south of Timothy and Nabby. South of the Wrights was Amos Bicknell, and below Bicknell was Prince Haskell. The remoteness of the location is difficult to imagine today. The closest existing fortification was at Royalton, some five miles to the northeast. Another settler, 44-year-old David Stone, had built a cabin near the spot where Locust Creek enters the White River in Bethel, some five miles to their north. The nearest neighbor, aside from Stone, was Timothy’s brother John Newton, some four miles to the southeast. This was the frontier, with little to the northwest but wilderness between Mount Hunger and Montreal.
The raiders probably journeyed down the St. Lawrence River and connecting streams to Lake Champlain, down the lake to the Winooski River, down that river as far as possible, and then overland to one of the branches of the White River. On reaching the point at which Locust Creek enters the White River in Bethel, they encountered Stone, one of the few settlers in the area, and took him prisoner. Continuing south on Locust Creek they came upon Timothy Newton’s log cabin. Reverend William Newton describes the encounter as follows:
The old chief came into the clearing alone after reconnoitering the place and approaching Timothy quietly made it known to him that he was to “go to Canada”. This was not to Timothy’s taste, he preferred to have the Indian stay in Vermont with him, but when he saw the “army” of the old man coming out of the woods he changed his mind and thought that Canada would be a good place to spend the fall.2
Taking what they could of the Newton’s possessions, the raiders then proceeded to the Wright cabin, where they did much the same thing. The Wright’s neighbor, Amos Bicknell, could see the proceedings and hid his family before running to spread the alarm. Finally, the raiders captured Prince Haskell before making their way back along Locust Creek to the White River and ultimately the village of St. Francis.
On reaching St. Francis, Prince Haskell was turned over to the British and imprisoned for a year in Montreal before being exchanged. Newton, Wright, and Stone were forced to run a gauntlet of angry villagers who pummeled them with sticks but they appear to have been otherwise unharmed. In November the three men escaped and made their way on foot back to the settlements at Bethel and Barnard.
Given the minimal military value of three civilian captives, the purpose of the raid was almost certainly to capture Benjamin Whitcomb, whom the raiders assumed to be associated with Asa and Lot Whitcomb, and claim the 50-guinea reward. The “old chief” is not identified in contemporary accounts, however, a plausible case can be made that he was Joseph Louis Gill (1719-1798). Gill, the famed “White Chief of the Abenakis”, was the son of a white captive. Raised in St. Francis as an Abenaki, Gill’s wife and a child had been killed in Rogers Rangers’ attack of 1759. He would have been 61 years old in 1780 and is known to have pursued and captured Benjamin Whitcomb in May of 1781, only to have Whitcomb escape. Ironically, Gill had been commissioned a Major in the Continental Army as of 1 May 1779 with the endorsement of George Washington.
Fort Defiance was a stockade hastily constructed around Amos Bicknell’s cabin five days after the raid. It was reportedly occupied by the local militia until 15 November 1780 and for the night of 10 August 1781 by a militia company responding to an alarm in Peacham, Vermont. The following sketch is taken from Thomas Williams Bicknell’s History and Genealogy of the Bicknell Family:3
On 21 September 1780, a second raid is said to have taken place at Bethel. Several accounts state that David Stone was captured on this raid rather than the Barnard Raid, but I suspect the Newton account, taken from the memory of family members who knew the participants, is correct. In making their way up Locust Creek the raiders would necessarily have passed Stone’s cabin, raising the question of why he would have been spared, only to be taken a month later. Did the Bethel Raid actually happen? Cox’s Illustrated Historical Souvenir of Bethel, Vermont mentions only the attacks on Barnard and Royalton4. Newton’s History of Barnard, Vermont states:
Barnard and its immediate vicinity was visited three times by Indians during the late summer and fall of 1780. The first visit was at Barnard on August 9, 1780. The second visit was at Bethel on September 21 of that year of which all we know with authority is what Jonathan Carpenter, then stationed at Fort Defiance in Barnard, writes as follow: “two men were taken from their work at Bethel by ye enemy…Our fort being finished nothing remarkable.” Who these two men were is not definitely known. It is thought that one of the number was Silas Cleveland, who was only a temporary resident in Bethel. Some purporting to be writing of these times have said that the other man was David Stone. But this is incorrect. Stone had been captured on August 9 and was already in Canada, having been taken at the time of the Barnard Raid.5
On 16 October 1780, the settlement at Royalton was attacked. While ostensibly similar to the raid on Barnard, the Royalton Raid was carried out by a significantly larger force of some 300 Kahnawake Mohawks and possibly St. Francis Abenakis under the leadership of a British Lieutenant, Richard Houghton, then the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs at Kahnawake (on the south side of the St. Lawrence River, across from Montreal). The intended target is said to have been Newbury, Vermont, however, that settlement was thought to be too heavily defended, thus Royalton was selected. The Royalton Raid was a far more serious encounter in which four people were killed, 26 taken to Canada as captives, and the settlement burned to the ground. The captives were reportedly sold in Montreal for $8.00 a head. In 1818 a survivor and former captive by the name of Zadock Steele published The Indian Captive; or a Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings of Zadock Steele Related by Himself to which is Prefixed an Account of the Burning of Royalton.6
By the standards of the time the Barnard Raid was a remarkably civilized affair in which no shots appear to have been fired and no casualties sustained. Timothy Newton returned to Barnard, where he and Abigail raised eight children. He died in 1834 and is buried with his wife in Methodist Cemetery. The Newton cabin on Locust Creek was replaced by a brick home built by his son Earl Newton (1787-1865) which stands today at 9671 Route 12. Thomas Martin Wright died in 1839 and is buried in Barnard’s Center Yard Cemetery. Prince Haskell died in Huron County, Ohio in 1841. The “Infamous Skulker” Benjamin Whitcomb was never apprehended and died at his home in Lisbon, New Hampshire in 1828.
William Monroe Newton, Richard Newton of Sudbury Massachusetts 1638- also an Account of the Indian Raid in Barnard Vermont August 9, 1780 (Woonsocket, RI: Privately printed by the author, 1912).
Newton, Richard Newton of Sudbury, Massachusetts 1638 - also an Account of the Indian Raid in Barnard Vermont August 9, 1780, 35.
Thomas Williams Bicknell, History and Genealogy of the Bicknell Family and Some Collateral Lines of Normandy, Great Britain and America (Providence, RI: Thomas William Bicknell, Editor and Publisher, 1913) 46.
Fred G. Cox The Illustrated Historical Souvenir of Bethel, Vermont (Bethel, Vermont, 1895) 17.
William Monroe Newton History of Barnard, Vermont with Family Genealogies 1761-1927 In Two Volumes (Burlington, Vermont: Vermont Historical Society, 1928) 50.
Zadock Steele, The Indian Captive; or a Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings of Zadock Steele Related by Himself to which is Prefixed an Account of the Burning of Royalton (Montpelier, Vermont: E. P. Walton Printers, 1818).
Another good one, Elisha! I didn’t read it until now having been distracted by the trip to Dover. The Canadian St. Francis village has come up in Vanceboro Maine history as well.
Wow! How incredibly obscure and absolutely fascinating! Nicely done. Again!