An Unhealthy Obsession

Sarah Whipple was fifteen years old when a man named John Hobbs developed an unhealthy obsession with her. Sarah was my 8th great grandaunt, the daughter of my 9th great-grandparents, John & Sarah (Kent) Whipple. Her mother died when she was an infant and her father remarried, Elizabeth Woodman. When this happened, she was living in Newbury with her uncle, Richard Kent and it was Richard who filed the complaint against John Hobbs of Newbury in the Ipswich courts. I believe this is the John Hobbs who was born in 1652 to Thomas & Martha Hobbs. That would make him twenty years old and five-six years older than Sarah. 

Initially, Hobbs was found guilty and sentenced, but he appealed and was released on bond. He failed to appear at his next court appearance on September 24, 1672. He continued to "abuse her by many scandalous defamations and threatened to have the blood of any person that shall come to her under any pretense of love." Her father, John Whipple, then urged the court to bring Hobbs to answer for his behavior.

Sarah's testimony in the matter says that Hobbs had stated to her uncle that he would not allow any man to court her or it "would be the death of him" that tried. Rebecca Long backed up Sarah's testimony. (Rebecca is my 9th great-grandmother.) Beriah Browne testified that Hobbs told him that "he would be the death of any man who sought Sary Whipple in marriage and God's blud I think you are the man." Henry Akers testified that Hobbs also threatened Richard Doell and Beriah Browne because he suspected they were interested in Sarah.

Six months after failing to show up for his appeal, the Court record of March 25, 1673, reads "John Hobbs, for profane swearing the threatening to kill, for railing and shamefully abusing Sarah Whipple, and for not prosecuting his appeal at the last Ipswich court, was bound to good behavior, especially to Richard Kent and Sarah Whipple, and not to come into her company."

John Hobbs does not appear in the court record on this matter again. Sarah Whipple married Henry Short, Jr. on March 30, 1674.  There is no record of what reaction John Hobbs had to this event. What is known is that John Hobbs was one of the men killed during the Bloody Brook massacre on September 18, 1675.

Monument to those killed at Bloody Brook

John & Sarah (Kent) Whipple
Matthew Whipple - brother of Sarah
Dorothy (Whipple) Perkins
Ann (Perkins) Packard
Cynthia (Packard) Dunham
James Dunham, Jr.
Florilla (Dunham) Ellingwood
Nina (Ellingwood) Gibbs
Annie (Gibbs) Cotton
Fern Lyndell Cotton - my grandmother

Left for Dead at Bloody Brook

"Bloody Brook Monument. South Deerfield, MA" by Tom Walsh - Own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons 

On September 17, 1675, a band of Indians attacked a train of wagons traveling from Deerfield to Hadley and loaded up with the wheat and corn harvest. This attack was part of King Philip's War. The colonists were led by Capt. Thomas Lothrop. When the news reached Deerfield, Capt. Mosely rushed to the scene with reinforcements and they engaged the Indians for about five hours with little progress. Only the arrival of Major Treat from Connecticut with his force of 100 men and 50 Mohicans turned the tide. 

From The History of Deerfield, George Sheldon, 1895:

"The soldiers crossed the brook and halted, while the teams should slowly drag their heavy loads through the mire; 'many of them,' says Mather, 'having been so foolish and secure as to put their arms in the cart and step aside to gather grapes, which proved dear and deadly grapes to them' ... 'This was a black and fatal day, wherein there was eight persons made widows, and six and twenty children made orphans, all in one little Plantation.'  Of the seventeen men of Pocumtuck who went out in the morning as teamsters, not one returned to tell the tale." 

The battle actually resulted in the deaths of between sixty and seventy men. Many were buried in a mass grave and a memorial marker was erected in Deerfield. The stream which was previously unnamed became known as Bloody Brook. 

Only a handful of men survived the attack at Bloody Brook. One of the survivors was Robert Dutch, son of Osmond Dutch and my 9X great-granduncle. 

Robert Dutch - only surviving child of Osmond Dutch's first marriage 

"As Mosely came upon the Indians in the Morning, he found them stripping the Slain, amongst whom was one Robert Dutch of Ipswich having been sorely wounded by a bullet that rased to his Skull and then mauled by the Indian Hatchets, was left for dead by the Salvages, and stript by them of all but his skin..."

In 1838, after confirming the location of the remains, a flagstone with Lothrop's name was put in place to mark the mass grave and a monument was erected nearby. Killed in the battle was my 8X great-granduncle, Joseph Balch. 

Osmond Dutch - father of Robert                         Osmond Dutch - father of Robert

Esther Dutch - half sister of Robert                     Grace Dutch - half sister of Robert
Robert Elwell                                                            Samuel Hodgkins
John Elwell                                                               Jonathan Hodgkins
Rhoda Elwell                                                             Rachel Hodgkins
Thomas Edgecomb                                                  Elizabeth Moody
Mary Edgecomb                                                       William Ackley
Benjamin Perley Philbrick                                     Sarah Ackley
Lizzie Philbrick                                                         Mary Jane Abbott
Ray Everett Cotton                                                  Fannie May Capen
Fern Lyndell Cotton - my grandmother              Thomas Richard Carter - my grandfather

John Balch
Benjamin Balch - father of Joseph Balch
Mary (Balch) Stone - sister of Joseph Balch
Ruth (Stone) Morgan
Luke Morgan
Samuel Morgan
Martha (Morgan) Yates
Moses Yates
Gilbert W. Yates
Estes G. Yates
Linona Alice Yates - my grandmother