Esther Moulton Whittredge

Capt. later Col. Jeremiah Moulton (ca. 1688-1765) is one of our ancestors on the side of our paternal grandmother Esther Moulton (Whittredge) Smith (1886-1970). Jeremiah Moulton was born about 1688 in York, Maine. He died on July 20, 1765 in York.

As noted in separate report, Jeremiah Mouton was involved in successful expeditions against the Indian outpost at Norridgewock, Maine that took place in 1722 and 1724.

Situated between New France and New England, Norridgewock played an important role during the French and Indian Wars. An Abenaki Indian outpost, it was raided several times by the English.

Found deserted in the winter of 1705 because its occupants had been warned of an impending attack, the village was burned by 275 British soldiers under the command of Colonel Winthrop Hilton. He was retaliating for the tribe's participation in a force consisting of 500 Indians and a few French, commanded by Alexandre Leneuf de Beaubassin, that raided Wells, Maine on August 10 and 11, 1703. With the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, however, peace was restored between France and England. Terms of the treaty required that the French yield Acadia to the English. But what exactly was Acadia? The two nations disagreed, and consequently imperial boundaries between Quebec and the Province of Massachusetts Bay[footnoteRef:1] remained unclear and disputed until the Treaty of Paris in 1763. [1: Maine was then part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.]

The French claimed the Kennebec River because it provided a potential route to invade Quebec (as Benedict Arnold would demonstrate in 1775). The English claimed the St. George River because they held deeds, regardless of the fact that the sachems who signed them often believed they were only granting rights to use the land for hunting, fishing, or safe passage. Sachems were not empowered to sell, the French argued, because Abenaki territory belonged to the entire tribe. But since France and England had pledged peace, New France could not take overt action against the settlements (and particularly their alarming blockhouses) in the contested regions. Instead, the French government found it expedient to secretly engage the Indians, guided by their French Jesuit missionaries, to hinder expansion of English sovereignty. Missionaries with dual loyalty to church and king were embedded within Abenaki bands on the Penobscot, St. Croix and Saint John rivers, but Norridgewock Village was considered Quebec's predominant advance guard.

Father Sbastien Rale (also spelled Rasle) had arrived in 1694 at Norridgewock to establish a Jesuit mission. His mission school is believed to be the first school in Maine. He built a chapel of bark in 1698, and despite reservations from medicine men, converted most inhabitants to the Roman Catholic religion. Burned in 1705, the chapel was replaced with a church finished in the autumn of 1720.

Able to speak the Abenaki language fluently, Father Rale immersed himself in Indian affairs. His "astonishing influence over their minds" raised suspicions that he was inciting their hostility toward the Protestant British, whom he considered heretics. In 1713, the Norridgewocks had sought peace with the English at the Treaty of Portsmouth, and accepted the convenience of English trading posts on their land (although they protested the tendency of traders to cheat them). After all, beaver and other skins could be exchanged for cheap goods following a journey of one or two days, when travel to Quebec up the Kennebec, with its rapids and portages, required over 15 days.

But their acceptance of the English faded as Rale instigated the tribe against the encroachment of houses and blockhouses that followed trading posts. He taught the Abenaki that their territory should be held in trust for their children. On July 28, 1721, 250 Abenakis in 90 canoes delivered a letter at Georgetown addressed to Samuel Shute, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, demanding that English settlers quit Abenaki lands. Otherwise, they would be killed and their settlements destroyed. In response, Norridgewock was raided in January of 1722 by 300 English troops under Colonel Thomas Westbrook[footnoteRef:2]. They discovered the village almost deserted, with the gates wide open. The tribe was gone hunting. Troops searched for Rale but found only his papers, including letters from New France Governor-general Vaudreuil promising ammunition for Abenaki incursions against the British. The tribe retaliated for the invasion by attacking settlements below them on the Kennebec, burning Brunswick on June 13, 1722. Some of the raids were accompanied by Rale, who would occasionally allow himself to be seen from houses and blockhouses under siege. On July 25, 1722, Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute declared war on the eastern Indians. [2: Colonel Westbrook is referred to by Captain Jeremiah Moulton in his report of a 1723 scouting expedition against the Indians. See below.]

In Dummer's War (also, Father Rale's War), at about 3:00 pm on August 23, 1724 (N. S.), English troops attacked Norridgewock for the last time. A force of 208 soldiers had left Fort Richmond (now Richmond) and divided, leaving about 80 soldiers including three Mohawks under the command of Captain Jeremiah Moulton. His militia quietly approached the village, which at that time no longer had a stockade. A startled Indian emerging from a cabin gave a war whoop, then darted back inside to get his musket. Screaming women and children ran from houses to swim or ford across the river and up into the woods. In the confusion, about 60 braves fired guns wildly but did little harm. At that point the regiment, ordered to withhold fire until after the enemy's first volley, took aim--with deadly effect. The warriors fired again, then fled across the river, leaving 26 dead and 14 wounded. Bomazeen (or Bomaseen), the sachem who with Sebastien de Villieu led 250 Abenakis to Durham, New Hampshire on July 18, 1694 for the Oyster River Massacre, was shot fording the Kennebec at a place thereafter called Bomazeen Rips. From a cabin, old Chief Mogg shot one of the Mohawks, whose brother then shot him. Meanwhile, from another cabin Father Rale was firing at soldiers. Refusing to surrender, he was shot through the head while reloading his gun.

Scalps of the dead were collected for bounties in Boston. The soldiers plundered 3barrels of gunpowder, together with a few guns, blankets and kettles, before returning to their whaleboats at Taconic Falls. One of the Mohawks, a brave named Christian, slipped back to set the village and church on fire, then rejoined the militia. The 150 survivors of Norridgewock returned the next day to bury the dead. Subsequently, most abandoned the area and, "in deplorable condition," relocated to Saint-Franois and Bcancour in Quebec.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Source: 17 April 2011.]

An account of Captain Jeremiah Moultons 1723 scouting expedition against the Indians was printed in the Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder.[footnoteRef:4] The account is one of a barely literate man who cannot spell. [4: Captain Jeremiah Moultons Scouting Expedition, 1723, Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder, vol. 1 (1884), pp. 204-207. The original is in the Massachusetts Archives.]

York July ye 4th day, 1723

Honbl.

Sr I make bold to prsent your honor with a Coppy of my Jornel of my prseedigns Sence I Came from Corll westbroock: on the 5th of may I Reseved orders from Corll westbroock to march with 25 men through the woods to wells and thair to Scout and Gard the Inhabtance [inhabitants] of Wells Barwick and York may ye 6th we marched from falmouth throw the woods to nouch [Nonesuch] river thair Camped: ye: 7th we marched throw the woods and headed Dunston River and from thence to Saco falls than Camped: on 8th we marched throw the woods and Came to wells one man Sprained his ankle so that we wair obliged to Leave him at wells: on ye 9th we marched in to the woods on the back of Wells: on ye 10th we Scouted on the back of York: on ye 11th we Scouted on the back of barwick the Same day the Endens [Indians] killed two men at barwick and one at wells we mad no discovery of them tell after thay had don their meschef night Com on we obliged to Camp Desining to folow them by thair Trackes tell I came up with them: on ye 12th a vilant Storm of rain and Raised Sum of the fresh Rivers Eigh feet of water in 24 ours and Beat out the Enden tracke So that we could not folow theme on ye: 13th I devided our Scout and Sent teen men to Scout on the back Samon falls at barwick my Self with the Rest of the Scout marched on the back of the Lour End of barwick and the uper End of york and Camped between the Towns: 14th I went with that part of my Scout I had with me to Kittery in order to Gard the Judges of our Supreme Court to York the other part of my Scout kept Scouting on the back of barwick on the 15th we Garded the Judges to york: on ye: 16th we Tock provisions and Recruted our Selves: on ye 17th we Scouted on the back of york: on ye 18th we marched in the woods at night Came in at the Lower part of wells: on ye 19th Sabeth day we Scouted on the back of wells in hopes to find Sum of the Lurkin Enemy Lurking to take people as thay went to meeting but we found none of them all though four of them wair[r] discovered by the Inhabtonc while we wair in the woods on ye 20th we Scouted on the Littel River and mousam River and kenebunk River and Camped at kenebunk falls; on ye 21. we marched down Kenebunk River and from thence to Wells: on ye 22 day we marched from well throw the woods on the back Side of york whilst we wair in the woods we heard a Larom at Cap nadick we a meaditly [immediately] Struck throw the woods to Cap nadick Expecting to have Came upon the Enemy but we mised of our Exsptions for thay tol