Martin Severance, Deerfield,MA - A member of Robert Rogers Rangers Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:57:32 EST Subject: Martin Severance, a member of Robert Rogers Rangers Source: History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial. p.21 MARTIN SEVERANCE. I have been asked by the Committee to say something of Martin Severance, the pioneer settler of Pocumtuck Valley. I have only the material for a very brief sketch of his eventful life. He lived at the time when men were doing things, and there was little leisure to talk or write of what they did. Reports were scarce and "interviewing" was unknown, so we know little about the ordinary daily life of Martin Severance and his compeers. We can get only here and there a glimpse of these men whose lives of uninter- mitted toil were passed amid unceasing danger. The courage and fortitude of such men as Martin Severance was all that made the existence of a pioneer settlement possible, and they have due remembrance and honor. The name of Martin Severance appears occasionally on ancient muster rolls and on the crumbling pages of old records, but unless one can read between the lines, the informa- tion they give us is very meagre. We know that he came of good fighting stock. His grandfather was one of those who fought DeRouville's men in Deerfield meadows, February 29th, 1704, and served in Father Rasle's war under Capt. Timothy Childs of Deerfield, Mass., with the rank of Corporal, a title of honor in those days. His father was in the service at the age of seventeen under Capt. Joseph Kellogg and appears to have served through the old French war; he was Clerk of a company in 1746. With such antecedents, Martin Severance, as might be expected, became a typical frontiers- man, a famous scout, rollicking, independent and fearless. Impatient of civilized life, he sometimes outraged its proprieties. He was born at Deerfield, Mass., Sept. 10, 1718. We know nothing of his boyhood and youth, but I find him as a soldier at Fort Dummer in 1738, under Capt. Joseph Kellogg. August 4, 1747, he was with a scouting party of five skilled woodsmen under Lieutenant Matthew Clesson of Deerfield, sent by Governor Shirley to watch the motions of the enemy on Lake Champlain, news having been received that the French were collecting there an army of invasion. Martin is next met with on a roll of seven men - another scouting party - in March, 1756, again under Lieut. Clesson. Clesson was a valued officer on the frontier who, worn out by the hardships of the service, died at Lake George, October 24, 1756. His trusty fellow Martin Severance p.22 ROGERS' RANGERS. is next found at Fort Edward under Capt. John Catlin of Deerfield. In 1758 Martin was serving in the famous company known as "Rogers' Rangers," and was doubtless with Rogers when that redoubtable Captain destroyed the Indian village of Saint Francis, on the St. Lawrence in 1759. Rogers was sent on this dangerous service by General Amherst, who was in command of the northern army. In his commission Amherst charges Rogers to "Remember the barbarities that have been committed by the enemy's scoundrels, on every occasion where they had opportunity of showing their infamous cruelties on the King's subjects, which they have done without mercy." "Take your revenge," he continues, "but do not for- get that though these villains have dastardly and promiscuously murdered women and child- ren of all ages, it is my orders that no women or children be killed or hurt." It is doubtful whether Amherst expected the last clause of his order to be strictly re- spected, since the avowed object of the expedition was to pay off the savages in their own coin. Rogers surprised Saint Francis early in the morning while the inhabitants were in deep sleep, which followed a night of dancing and carousal. In such an assault, it was impossible to distinguish between the warrior and his family, and when it became light enough to see many hundred English scalps hanging on poles as trophies of Indian raids upon New England, the fury of the assailants was roused to such a pitch, that an indi- scriminate slaughter was continued to a shocking extent. The village was burned, and that nest from which the hornets had issued to sting the settlers all along the frontier, from the Penobscot to the Hudson, was utterly destroyed. Martin Severance was trained in Indian warfare by Lieut. Matthew Clesson, whose motto was "Kill them all! "Nits will become Lice," and it can hardly be doubted that he did justice to his training on that expedition. On his mother's side, Martin Severance inherited blood which had suffered terribly at the hands of the enemy. His maternal grandfather, Martin Kellogg, from whom he was named, was captured at the sacking of Deerfield in 1704, with his sons Martin and Joseph Kellog and daughters Joanna and Rebecca. Jonathan, a younger son, was killed. Joanna married an Indian and remained in Canada. Martin Kellog, Joseph Kellogg and Rebecca Kellog, after a half-savage life among the Indians for many years, were brought back to New England. The brothers were thereafter employed by the government as Indian fighters, and all as interpreters at conferences with the Indian tribes. p.23 MARTIN SEVERANCE. Fronteir Scout. The memory of the tragic experiences of these relatives, must have made a deep impression on the mind of Martin Severance, and his hatred of the Indian must have grown with his growth. His association with his uncles, Martin and Joseph, and his aunt, Rebecca, in their wild frontier life, must have given the boy a romantic love of adventure and an impatience of restraint. He must have obtained a knowledge of Indian habits and strat- egy, that was of great use to him when he was called upon to meet the savages, face to face, and match his wily foe with wiles. We may reasonably suppose him to have been a favorite of his uncles, and that he was naturally attracted to their half-civilized, half- savage life and habits, which gave him the best qualifications for a frontier scout. The men of today can have but a faint idea of the duties and operations of the frontier scout, and of his importance to the advanced settlements. The lands occupied by the English were mere dots of clearing in the boundless forests stretching away to the Indian villages of Canada. The forest was not only a perfect shelter for the savage, his kitchen, his dining-room and his bedroom, but also a commissary department abounding with fish, flesh and fowl. Thus supplied by nature, his foster mother, the savage could lurk about the settlements and lie in ambush for days, weeks or months, waiting a chance to surprise a lonely traveler or a belated husbandman, a woman hurrying to minister to a sick neighbor, or a child heedlessly gathering berries or nuts beyond musket range, from the stockade or fort. Crops must be planted and harvested under the guns of an armed guard. Men must carry their arms to meeting on Sunday, and armed sentinels were stationed at the doors or on the roof of the meeting house. The lot of the settler was a life of causeful fear, ever wearing hardships and real danger, with the chances of a horrible death awaiting him at every turn. It may be said that I have pictured all this before on similar occasions - that it is a twice told tale. That is true, and I hope to do it again and again, until the young men and maidens of this bustling generation shall appreciate at its full value, what our forefathers and foremothers endured, that we might occupy the land in peace, and looking back with thoughtful minds and thankful hearts, they may take courage to meet their own trials and disappointments. It was to meet the condition of things which I have described, that a system of scouting was established by the colonial authorities. p.24 MARTIN SEVERANCE. Men were selected to hunt for the lairs of the savages in the outlying woods, or, in the language of that period, "on the back side of the settlements," and to drive them back to Canada. This system was eventually extended, until our scouts reached the "back side" of the settlements of the Indians themselves in Canada. This put them on the watch and defensive, thus securing comparative safety for the colonists. It was on such service as this that Martin Severance distinguished himself, and it is for this that we honor him today. A moment's consideration of the circumstances of the case will show us the extreme hardship and danger of this service. Follow our scout as he plunges into the sombre forest, with his carefully loaded musket in his hand. He has a light "snapsack" containing a few pounds of raw salt pork and a little rye and Indian bread strapped to his back; a powder horn slung over his left shoulder, a well-filled bullet pouch of stout buckskin fastened to his belt on his left side, balanced by a hatchet hung over the right. With moccasined feet he steals noiselessly and slowly among the dark shadows, avoiding every ray of sunlight that might chance to find its way through the gloom. All his senses are on the alert, he strains his ear for the lightest sound, his eye constantly scanning his limited horizon, watching for any unnatural motion in each thicket on the right or left, from any one of which a bullet might be sped at any moment, fired by a savage prone on the earth, his body artfully concealed by a fallen tree or moss covered stone, his war plume not distinguished from the handiwork of nature. In summer's rain and in winter's snow, camping where the night-fall found him - in the breathless heat of midsummer night, tormented by stinging insects - or in the keen blasts of winter, taking such rest as he could in a pit dug in the snow and lined with pine or hemlock boughs. Upon the dawn shaking the hoar frost from his benumbed body, and after a scanty meal of frozen pork and bread, onward again until hundreds of miles of wilderness stretch behind him. Should he be discovered by a savage band, there was nothing between him and death but his own quick wit and his own strong arm. Such was the service of daring and danger, performed by those fearless guardians of the settlers, the frontier scouts, and by none of them, perhaps, was this service more faith- fully and skillfully executed than by Martin Severance. >From what is known of Martin Severance, none need be surprised that he p.25 MARTIN SEVERANCE. found the regulations and conventionalities of civilized life irksome, or that he tacticly refused to be controlled by them. His untamed nature craved a larger liberty. So with Patience Fairfield, his faithful companion for more than sixty years, and the mother of twelve children, among them a Martin and a Patience, he packed his household goods on a horse - so says family tradition - and left old Deerfield, to seek peace and quiet in the woods of "Deerfield North West Pasture." Here he founded a new home and built his log cabin within hearing of the music of the water-fall. The birthplace and parentage of Patience Fairfield have not been discovered. She was probably of the Puritan Fairfields about Boston. In character she must have been near akin to Martin Severance. Baptized Patience in her infancy, the name Perseverance should been added in her maturity, for without patience and perseverence, and indeed without strength, pluck and endurance added, her domestic need could not have been supplied as it was. At one of our meetings it was related by my friend, Harvey Severance - whom we sadly miss here today - that when his grandmother wanted a new dinner pot, she carded and spun her carefully gathered wool, and with the yarn upon her back she walked to Deer- field and bartered it for the iron pot with which she marched triumphantly back to her Sherburne home. That this adventure may not reflect upon the gallantry or conjugal affection of Martin, it is fair to assume that he was absent, hunting Indian scalps to raise money for this outlay (the iron pot), and that his wife intended the transaction as a surprise to him on his return. May not the fine ladies of this generation who think it degrading to carry a bundle on the street, but who disgrace themselves by sending home a pound of tea by an over- worked clerk, learn a lesson from this story of Patience and perSEVERANCE. End. Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth **************Great Deals on Dell 15" Laptops - Starting at $479 (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1220433363x1201394532/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fad.doub leclick.net%2Fclk%3B212935224%3B34245239%3Bb)