April 18
Jacob Fulham was killed April 18, 1725, at age 32 in an Indian ambush on Saco Pond in Maine. Solomon Keyes was wounded and escaped from this battle, known as Lovewell's fight.
Lovewell's Fight started as a scalp hunting expedition. In April 1725 the bounty on scalps was one hundred pounds. Lovewell's rangers traveled more than two hundred miles to attack the Pequawkets whose headquarters were on the Saco River in what is now Fryeburg, Maine.
The expedition was a disaster. Of the 33 who started 15 died (Lovewell included) and 9 were wounded.
The Pequawkets discovered packs that the rangers had left at the northeast end of Saco pond. Taking advantage of the opportunity for an ambush, they laid a trap into which the rangers fell.
A contemporary ballad says Sgt. Jacob Fulham died while trying to save another man:
Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four,
And of the rebel Indians, there were about fore score,
And sixteen of our English did safely home return,
The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn.
Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die,
They killed Lt. Robins, and wounded good young Frye,
Who was our English Chaplain; he many Indians slew,
And some of them he scalped when bullets round him flew.
Young Fullam too I'll mention, because he fought so well,
Endeavoring to save a man, a sacrifice he fell; …
Governor Drummer received word of this fight and dispatched Col. Eleazar Tyng and 87 men to advance to Pequawket. "At the battlefield he found and buried the bodies of the twelve men killed there, among whom were Capt. Lovewell, Lieut. Jonathan Robbins, Ensign John Harwood, and Sergeant Jacob Fulham. He also found and identified the body of Chief Paugus, whom the Indians had paused to bury before leaving."
Capt. Solomon Keyes was one of the survivors of Lovewell's Fight at Saco Pond.
Keyes fought in the battle till he received three wounds, and had become so weak by the loss of blood that he could not stand. Keyes crawled up to Ensign Wyman in the heat of the fight, and told him that he, Keyes, was a dead man, but that the Indians should not get his scalp if he could help it.
According to historian Francis Parkman, Keyes escaped by canoe:
Creeping along the sandy edge of the pond,
he chanced to find a stranded canoe,
pushed it afloat,
rolled himself into it,
and drifted away before the wind.
A breeze wafted the canoe across the pond. Keyes succeeded in reaching the stockade where he found several others of the survivors. They set out through the wilderness and arrived at Dunstable six days later.
Capt. Solomon Keyes recovered from his wounds and later moved to Western (now Warren) Massachusetts. He lived in a house "built on an eminence near the Village." He was killed at Lake George September 8, 1755 in the French and Indian war.
A grandson also named Solomon Keyes was born in Arlington, Vermont February 22, 1756. He fought in Revolutionary war. He moved to Reading, Vermont in 1783, built log cabin and cleared a farm on land belonging to his uncle Danforth. In 1785 Danforth Keyes conveyed 125 acres for 33 pounds.
That same year Solomon married Thankful Lincoln. He brought Thankful to Reading in an ox sled, having to stop several days in West Windsor, due to snow drifts. This Solomon Keyes was Reading town clerk (1794-99, 1801-04, 06); town representative (1800); selectman and lister; justice of the peace, and known as "old Esq. Keyes."
After Jacob Fulham's death at Saco Pond in 1725 his then 8-year-old son, Francis, was taken in by his grandfather (also named Francis) with whom he lived until 1740 when he married. As eldest son, Francis inherited all Jacob's property in Weston Massachusetts.
Francis Fulham fought in French and Indian war, with Capt. Sam. Hunt’s expedition to Crown Point in 1755; also in the Revolution, having enlisted 6/1/78 for 1 year. He died just shy of his 90th birthday in 1807.
Francis' son Timothy Fulham was born at Weston Massachusetts. Timothy Fulham was a private in Capt Ebenezar Bridge's Co., Col. John Whitcomb's regiment of minutemen. He marched to Cambridge on the alarm of April 19, 1775. At 35, he fought at battle of Bennington, August 16, 1777. Relics he picked up at battlefield are in Bennington Museum.
Timothy lived in Sterling, then Fitchburg, Massachusetts until 1798 when he moved to Cavendish Vermont. Timothy's granddaughter Lucinda Fulham was born 1797 in Fitchburg. She was great granddaughter of Jacob Fulham who was killed in Lovewell’s fight in Fryeburg Maine.
Lucinda married Marvin Robinson (son of Ebenezer Robinson of Reading, Vermont). Lucinda was mother of Elmer Duane (Robinson) Keyes, born 7/15/ 1838, but she died when he was only 16 months old.
Elmer was raised in the home of his aunt Eliza and her husband Washington Keyes on their farm in South Reading, Vermont. Elmer's adoptive father, Washington Keyes was a farmer, Town representative (1859-60), selectman, lister, overseer of the poor in Reading, Vermont, and great-grandson of the Solomon Keyes who chanced to find a stranded canoe and escaped death at Lovewell’s Fight.
Thus Elmer Duane (Robinson) Keyes was the great-great-grandson of both Solomon Keyes and Jacob Fulham who fought at Saco Pond in 1725.
See May 5, 1859 (“The wilderness, in the eyes of our forefathers, was a vast and howling place or space, where a man might roam naked of house and most other defense, exposed to wild beasts and wilder men. They who went to war with the Indians and French were said to have been "out," and the wounded and missing who at length returned after a fight were said to have "got in," to Berwick or Saco, as the case might be. ”)
- Longfellow's first verses, so far as known, printed in the Portland Gazette, November 17, 1820.
Cold, cold is the north wind and rude is the blast
That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast,
As it moans through the tall waving pines lone and drear,
Sighs a requiem sad o'er the warrior's bier.
The war-whoop is still, and the savage's yell
Has sunk into silence along the wild dell;
The din of the battle, the tumult, is o'er,
And the war-clarion's voice is now heard no more.
The warriors that fought for their country, and bled,
Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed;
No stone tells the place where their ashes repose,
Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes.
They died in their glory, surrounded by fame,
And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim;
They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.
~ a Week: It was from Dunstable, then a frontier town, that the famous Captain Lovewell, with his company, marched in quest of the Indians on the 18th of April, 1725. He was the son of “an ensign in the army of Oliver Cromwell, who came to this country, and settled at Dunstable, where he died at the great age of one hundred and twenty years.” In the words of the old nursery tale, sung about a hundred years ago,—
“He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide,
And hardships they endured to quell the Indian’s pride.”
In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the “rebel Indians,” and prevailed, after a bloody fight, and a remnant returned home to enjoy the fame of their victory. A township called Lovewell’s Town, but now, for some reason, or perhaps without reason, Pembroke, was granted them by the State.
“Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four,
And of the rebel Indians, there were about four-score;
And sixteen of our English did safely home return,
The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn.
“Our worthy Capt. Lovewell among them there did die,
They killed Lieut. Robbins, and wounded good young Frye,
Who was our English Chaplin; he many Indians slew,
And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew.”
Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the Indians, and their degenerate children no longer dwell in garrisoned houses nor hear any war-whoop in their path. It would be well, perchance, if many an “English Chaplin” in these days could exhibit as unquestionable trophies of his valor as did “good young Frye.” We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings to-day?—
“And braving many dangers and hardships in the way,
They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of May.”
But they did not all “safe arrive in Dunstable the thirteenth,” or the fifteenth, or the thirtieth “day of May.” Eleazer Davis and Josiah Jones, both of Concord, for our native town had seven men in this fight, Lieutenant Farwell, of Dunstable, and Jonathan Frye, of Andover, who were all wounded, were left behind, creeping toward the settlements. “After travelling several miles, Frye was left and lost,” though a more recent poet has assigned him company in his last hours.
“A man he was of comely form,
Polished and brave, well learned and kind;
Old Harvard’s learned halls he left
Far in the wilds a grave to find.
“Ah! now his blood-red arm he lifts;
His closing lids he tries to raise;
And speak once more before he dies,
In supplication and in praise.
“He prays kind Heaven to grant success,
Brave Lovewell’s men to guide and bless,
And when they’ve shed their heart-blood true,
To raise them all to happiness.” . . .
“Lieutenant Farwell took his hand,
His arm around his neck he threw,
And said, ‘Brave Chaplain, I could wish
That Heaven had made me die for you.’”
Farwell held out eleven days. “A tradition says,” as we learn from the History of Concord, “that arriving at a pond with Lieut. Farwell, Davis pulled off one of his moccasins, cut it in strings, on which he fastened a hook, caught some fish, fried and ate them. They refreshed him, but were injurious to Farwell, who died soon after.” Davis had a ball lodged in his body, and his right hand shot off; but on the whole, he seems to have been less damaged than his companion. He came into Berwick after being out fourteen days. Jones also had a ball lodged in his body, but he likewise got into Saco after fourteen days, though not in the best condition imaginable. “He had subsisted,” says an old journal, “on the spontaneous vegetables of the forest; and cranberries which he had eaten came out of wounds he had received in his body.” This was also the case with Davis. The last two reached home at length, safe if not sound, and lived many years in a crippled state to enjoy their pension.
But alas! of the crippled Indians, and their adventures in the woods,—
“For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell,
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well,”—
how many balls lodged with them, how fared their cranberries, what Berwick or Saco they got into, and finally what pension or township was granted them, there is no journal to tell.
It is stated in the History of Dunstable, that just before his last march, Lovewell was warned to beware of the ambuscades of the enemy, but “he replied, ‘that he did not care for them,’ and bending down a small elm beside which he was standing into a bow, declared ‘that he would treat the Indians in the same way.’ This elm is still standing [in Nashua], a venerable and magnificent tree.”
