Apr 14, 2015 - Sale 2380

Sale 2380 - Lot 106

Price Realized: $ 3,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(COLONIAL WARS--QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.) Peirce, Daniel. Ominous reports of Indian activity in advance of the Northeast Coast Campaign. Autograph Letter Signed to "Your Excellency," presumably Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley. One page, 12 1/4 x 8 inches; minor wear, docketed on verso with later historical note on Peirce; partial embossed ex-libris stamp of J. Wingate Thornton. Newbury, MA, 13 August 1703
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The Northeast Coast Campaign brought Queen Anne's War to New England. About 500 Indians of the Wabanaki Confederacy and a small group of French raided a series of English settlements along what is now the Maine coast, starting on 10 August 1703. This letter is dated just three days into the campaign. Colonel Daniel Peirce or Pierce (1638-1704) of Newbury in northeastern Massachusetts, veteran of a 1695 Indian raid, reported on a series of ominous signs reported by residents of the neighboring towns. A farmer in Massachusetts town of Haverhill reported seeing a strange dog which did not respond to English commands but seemed to understand Algonquian quite well. Other villagers saw three Indians in the woods who ran off, and the dogs of the town were observed to be howling all night: "when formerly observed have been a littel before the town had been attacked by the enimi." Provenance: Libbie's John Wingate Thornton sale, 16 October 1878, lot 1335 (see also below and lot 160).