John Kettell (c.1639-c.1676 or 1685 or c.1690) (also known as John Kettle) was an early settler, cooper, and explorer in what is Maynard, Massachusetts and Stow, Massachusetts. Kettell's family was taken captive by Native Americans in King Philips War in 1676.
John Kettell was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts to Richard Kettle, a cooper, and Esther (Ward) and was baptized there in December 1639. Kettell had several siblings including Nathaniel, Joseph, Jonathan, Samuel, and Hannah. Kettell was likely a cooper. [1] Kettell first married Sarah Goodnow, the daughter of Edmund Goodnow of Sudbury, Massachusetts, and they had three children, John, Sarah, and Joseph. [2] After Sarah's death, John married Elizabeth Ward of Ipswich and had more children, including Jonathan, possibly James, and another daughter. [3]
Around 1660 Kettell and Matthew Boon settled in what later became Stow and Maynard as the first settlers in that area. Kettle likely lived "in the vicinity of Pompassiticutt Hill, on land now included in Maynard" [4] while others have controversially claimed that he lived closer to where his monument is located today. By 1663 Kettell was spending significant time in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. According to some disputed accounts, during King Philip's War in 1676 the Kettles fled to Rowlandson's garrison where John Kettle and his sons John and Joseph were killed in the Lancaster raid, and John's wife Elizabeth, and children, Sarah, Jonathan, and another daughter were taken captive and later redeemed with Mary Rowlandson [5] and two other daughters escaped to Marlborough after almost starving. [6]
In 1883 John Robbins of Stow conveyed to the town "land by an old cellar on Kettell Plain, which tradition informs us was the place where Kettell lived, and is about a quarter of a mile from the Bolton line." [7] Today in Stow off the easterly side Maple Road on Stiles Farm Road, "there is...a large granite marker (1883) for John Kettell and family on Maple Street (near the Hudson/Bolton line), a[n]...early family who 'escaped' to the Lancaster Garrison during the Indians raids." [8] [1] A public right of way reserved by the town exists along Stiles Farm Road to visit the monument. [9] [10]
According to one source Kettell's monument also "inaccurately states that he was killed during the Indian raids. He did not die from this attack." [11] Historian Rev. George F. Clark claimed it is "a doubtful story about Kettle himself having been captured and killed by the [Indians]. He probably died at sea about 1690" after spending much of his life as a cooper in Portsmouth, New Hampshire according to probate and tax records in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. [12] [1] Clark points to primary sources showing that Indian scribe James Printer wrote to Kettell negotiating for the release of Kettell's family, so Kettell was likely alive for some time after the Lancaster raid. [13] Clark also disputes the evidence that John Kettell owned the land in Stow where his monument was erected due to local tradition, but agrees that Kettell (Kittle) does appear to have lived in the general area for a period on one of the farms of mariner Abraham Joslin according to Joslin's will probated in 1671, and the several Joslins were killed and abducted in the Lancaster raid along with the Kettells. [14] According to Clark, "[i]n March 1675–76, just after the Lancaster raid, [Kettell] was a culler [and packer] of fish at Great Island, now New Castle, N.H. and made a deposition in Exeter in 1678 stating he was about 38 years old which lines up with the birth date of John Kettell of Charlestown. [1] [15] In 1720-21 Nathaniel Kettell requested a commission appraise his brother, John's, estate and stated that his brother disappeared at sea about thirty years prior. [1]
There is also a source that mentions a John Kettell of Gloucester who died in Salem, Massachusetts on 12 October 1685 with probate records showing he owned 300 acres of land at Nashaway (likely including the monument site in what is now Stow on what was referred to later as Kettell farm), but this John was about eighteen years older than the John born in Charlestown; it doesn't seem like he would have been the Mr. Kettle living on Joslin's land if he had his own large farm. [16] [17] In the 1890s Rev. George F. Clark and Abraham G.R. Hale engaged in an influential published debate in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register regarding genealogical methodology, specifically using original documents (Clark) versus tradition (Hale), and the subject of their debate was life and death of John Kettell, the cooper from Charlestown, and his family and the inaccurate monument. [18] [19]
Besides the monument, Kettell's name is memorialized in several places, including Kettell Plain Road and the Kettell Farm Conservation Property in Stow.
Stow is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is located 21 miles (34 km) west of Boston, in the MetroWest region of Massachusetts. The population was 7,174 at the 2020 census. Stow was officially incorporated in 1683 with an area of approximately 40 square miles (100 km2).
Lancaster is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in the United States. Incorporated in 1653, Lancaster is the oldest town in Worcester County. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 8,441.
Charlestown is the oldest neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Also called Mishawum by the Massachusett, it is located on a peninsula north of the Charles River, across from downtown Boston, and also adjoins the Mystic River and Boston Harbor waterways. Charlestown was laid out in 1629 by engineer Thomas Graves, one of its earliest settlers, during the reign of Charles I of England. It was originally a separate town and the first capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Maynard is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is located 22 miles west of Boston, in the MetroWest and Greater Boston region of Massachusetts and borders Acton, Concord, Stow and Sudbury. The town's population was 10,746 as of the 2020 United States Census.
King Philip's War was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands and the English New England Colonies and their indigenous allies. The war is named for Metacomet, the Pokanoket chief and sachem of the Wampanoag who adopted the English name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Plymouth Colony. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.
Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott, was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans in 1676 during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her ordeal, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was published. This text is considered a formative American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and in England, leading some to consider it the first American "bestseller".
Monoco was a 17th-century Nashaway sachem (chief), known among the New England Puritans as One-eyed John.
Joseph Lord was a Puritan pastor in colonial America in the late 17th century and early 18th century. He served as a pastor in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and then Dorchester, South Carolina, for two decades before becoming the pastor of the diocese of Chatham, Massachusetts.
Simon Willard (1605–1676) was an early Massachusetts fur trader, colonial militia leader, legislator, and judge.
Nanepashemet was a sachem and bashabe or great leader of the Pawtucket Confederation of Abenaki peoples in present-day New England before the landing of the Pilgrims. He was a leader of Native peoples over a large part of what is now coastal Northeastern Massachusetts.
Deacon John Larkin was an ordained minister of the First Congregational Church in his hometown of Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was also a merchant, in the tea trade, for the East India Company, having in his possession chests of tea that he readily concealed to avoid England's Stamp Tax. John Larkin is most notable for aiding Paul Revere to obtain the horse he used in his "Midnight Ride". The horse, Brown Beauty was owned by John's father, Samuel Larkin. John Larkin's will is among Charlestown Records. He amassed a large fortune before he died in 1807. His estate was probated for $86,381.99.
Rev. Jonathan Leavitt (1731–1802) was an early New England Congregational minister, born in Connecticut, and subsequently the pastor of churches in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, both of which dismissed him from his posts. Several of Rev. Leavitt's descendants became among the most noted abolitionists of their day, even though he himself was dismissed from one pastorate for allegedly abusing his runaway slave, and from another for his Loyalist sentiments.
The Sudbury Fight was a battle of King Philip's War, fought in what is today Sudbury and Wayland, Massachusetts, when approximately five hundred Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Narragansett Native Americans raided the frontier settlement of Sudbury in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Disparate companies of English militiamen from nearby settlements marched to the town's defense, two of which were drawn into Native ambushes and suffered heavy losses. The battle was the last major Native American victory in King Philip's War before their final defeat in southern New England in August 1676.
The Lancaster Raid was the first in a series of five planned raids on English colonial towns during the winter of 1675-1676 as part of King Philip's War. Metacom, known by English colonists as King Philip, was a Wampanoag sachem who led and organized Wampanoag warriors during the war. Teaming up with Nipmuc and Narragansett warriors, the Wampanoag successfully raided the town of Lancaster, securing provisions and prisoners to help them carry on into their winter offensive.
James Printer, also known as Wowaus, (1640–1709) was a Native American from the Nipmuc tribe who studied and worked as a printer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was one of the most famous early Nipmuc writers. Printer was the first Native American printer's devil in America as well as one of John Eliot's most accomplished interpreters who assisted in the creation of the Eliot Indian Bible.
Tantamous was a well-known Native American Nipmuc leader in seventeenth century Massachusetts. Tantamous was a powwow who lived near the Assabet River, later in Nobscot. Tantamous "...may have gotten his English name for his good advice."
Peter Jethro was an early Native American (Nipmuc) scribe, translator, minister, land proprietor, and Praying Indian affiliated for a period with John Eliot in the praying town of Natick, Massachusetts.
James Atherton was an early settler and one of the founders of Lancaster, Massachusetts. He emigrated to the New England Colonies from the parish of Wigan, Lancashire, England, in 1635.
Matthew Boon was the first English settler in what is now Stow, Massachusetts. After his murder in 1676 by Native Americans, he became the namesake of what is now Lake Boon.
Summer Hill is a 351-foot (107 m) hill overlooking the Assabet River in Maynard, Massachusetts "with a gradual slope to the north and west". Today the hill is largely conservation land with 24 acres of public hiking trails, and the summit of hill also contains a radio tower and the town's steel and concrete water tanks. It is the highest point in Maynard.