The Reverend John Fessenden (1804-1881), pastor of the Deerfield, Massachusetts church, delivered this sermon in 1835 before, among others, a party of St. Francis Abenakis. The Native people who “attended divine service on Sunday in a divine and orderly manner” claimed to be descendants of Eunice Williams and were on a visit to the graves of her mother and father, the Reverend and Mrs. Williams. Eunice had been captured and taken to Canada during a 1704 raid on Deerfield by French soldiers and their Indigenous allies. She married an Indigenous man and raised a family in Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada, and never returned to live in Deerfield. The thesis of the sermon – that all people are of one blood descended from Adam and Eve – underscored the connection between the Williamses of Deerfield and their “cousins” in Canada, the descendants of Eunice and her husband, Arosen.
Fessenden, Reverend John. Sermon preached to 1st Congregational Society in Deerfield, Mass. and in the Hearing of Several Indians of Both Sexes Supposed. Phelps and Ingersoll [editors], August 27, 1837. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l98-027/. Accessed on October 16, 2024.
Please note: Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.