April 1, 2021
Serendipity is a curious thing.
While setting final plans to visit the Berkshires, I received an email telling me of “talk” on Facebook about one Israel Bissell, an American patriot who, like Paul Revere, was a post rider during the American Revolution, but performed a much more impressive, yet lesser known, ride than Revere’s. On April 19, 1775, Israel was in Watertown, Massachusetts, and was given orders by General Joseph Palmer to deliver the message to the American Colonists that the Revolution had begun in Lexington. Bissell mounted his horse and shouted, “To Arm! To Arm! The War has begun” in every town he passed through from Watertown to Philadelphia on the Old Post Road. He covered 345 miles and made several stops along the way where the general’s message was copied. It took Israel four and a half days to finish his mission. It is believed that no other post rider ever matched his ride in distance or in time.
I knew Israel’s story and had documented him in my own family research, but was unaware of where he was interred. I looked up Hinsdale, Massachusetts, and discovered it was very close to where I would be staying in the Berkshires. Knowing a Robert Hinsdale was one of Medfield’s first thirteen settlers, I wondered if this town might have a connection to Medfield.
Researching the line of Reverend Theodore Hinsdale, founder of Hinsdale, Massachusetts, I found that Medfield’s Robert Hinsdale was his 2nd great grandfather.
Robert Hinsdale was the founder of the Hinsdale family in America and an original settler of Dedham. He became a very prominent man in that community, serving on the first board of selectmen and, with eight other men, establishing the first church of Dedham. With six others he was given, “full power to contrive, execute and perform all the business and affairs of this town,” and in 1645 was selected to be a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, the oldest military group in America. In 1649 he was appointed to be on the committee established to organize a new town, which became Medfield.
He and his wife, Ann Woodward, were Medfield’s eleventh settler family and, sometime before 1652, they built their homestead on North Street. They had eight children: Samuel, Barnabas, Gamaliel, Mary, Experience, John, Ephraim and Elizabeth, all of whom were born in Dedham prior to moving to Medfield.
Samuel married Mehitable Johnson in 1660 and started a family. Two of their children, Mehitable and Mary, were born in Medfield, but around 1666 Samuel’s father decided to remove his family to Hadley, Massachusetts, and most of his children followed except Gamaliel, who was about twenty-four years old at the time. Gamaliel married Rachel Martin in 1672 and they had one child who died early. He had a small house on the south side of Frairy Street close to the railroad tracks. The recording of his death is missing, but there is a record of neighbor Joseph Bullard “tending Gamaliel Hinsdale” in 1689. One would assume this relates to his end of life since there appears to be no further record of him in this town.
In 1673 Robert Hinsdale and five of his sons Samuel, Barnabas, John, Ephraim and Experience were in Deerfield, Massachusetts, then known as Pocumtuck, which was a newly acquired territory of Dedham. In 1775 four of the Hinsdale men, Robert, Samuel, Barnabas and John, were engaged in the battle of Muddy Brook, popularly known as Bloody Brook, probably one of the most recognized battles of the King Philip War.
Under the command of Captain Thomas Lathrop, about 100 colonists were transporting goods from Deerfield to Hadley when they were ambushed by 700 of King Philip’s men. Nearly all of Lathrop’s men were slain, including the four Hinsdale men. The dead were placed in one mass grave in South Deerfield and, in 1838, a 26-foot inscribed tablet was placed just south of the Bloody Brook monument to mark their resting place.
While Robert’s fourth son, Experience, was not at the Battle of Bloody Brook, he did play his part in the King Philip War. Six months later, on May 19, 1676, while serving as a guide for the military, he was killed at the Battle of Turner Falls, which became the turning point of the King Philip War.
Captain William Turner was assigned to attack an Indian village called Peskeompscut, meaning a river divided by a cleft rock, later called Turners Falls after the good Captain. The attack took place at dawn and over 200 Pocumtuc Indians were killed and around 40 of Turner’s men, including Turner himself, perished in their retreat.
Three months later, on August 12, 1676, King Philip was killed by an Indian loyal to the colonist cause. However, this does not end the Medfield Hinsdales’ plight with the Indians, as the unrest between the colonists and Indians continued.
On February 29, 1704, Samuel’s daughter Sarah, her husband Samuel Janes, and three of their children were murdered during the Queen Anne’s War “raid on Deerfield.” This was a French raid, but the forces comprised many Indians including around 300 from the Pocumtuc tribe. They killed 56 villagers, burned a portion of the town and took 109 captives. The French commander in charge was Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville.
Samuel’s son Mahuman, first known white male to be born in Deerfield, was taken captive twice by the Indians. He was captured during the raid on Deerfield in 1704 when his only child was killed and he was taken to Canada. He was returned in August of 1706.
Three years later, on April 11, 1709, he was surprised by Indians while hauling apple trees to Northhampton by oxen, taken captive and once again brought to Canada where he experienced much suffering at the hands of the Native Americans. Eventually, he was sent to France. Nearly three and a half years later, on October 12, 1712, he arrived back in Deerfield.
Samuel ’s grandson, Samuel Hinsdale ends up inheriting his grandfather’s Samuel Rockwood (Mother’s father) estate in Medfield. He became a tanner and had six children, all born in Medfield, two of whom remained here. His daughter Susanna married Nathaniel Smith of Medfield and his son Samuel wed Esther Fisher.
This story began with Israel Bissell, an American patriot during the Revolution, who changed the course of our history, almost exactly a hundred years after the Hinsdales of Medfield played their own roles in forming our country.
It is worthy of note that this little-known western Massachusetts town of Hinsdale, with a population of about 2,000 people, could have such close ties to Medfield. Israel Bissell rests in the Maple Street Cemetery in Hinsdale, Massachusetts.