Oliver Farwell

     On the 5th Sept. 1724, Lieut. French with ten men under his command, started for the rescue of two of their friends and townsmen, Thomas Blanchard and Nathan Cross, who had been carried off by the Indians the evening previous. Oliver Farwell was one of this company. On arriving at the place where the two men had been laboring, they found evidence that the men had been carried off alive, and concluding the captors and their prisoners could not be far distant, decided on instant pursuit. They therefore bent their way up the Merrimac, till they reached what is now Thorntons Ferry. There they were waylaid, fired upon by the Indians, and all killed except Josiah Farwell, nephew of Oliver, who was vigorously chased by them for some time without either gaining much advantage, till he darted into a thicket, where they lost sight of him, and fearing he might have reloaded, abandoned the pursuit. Thus he alone escaped — to fall by the hand of the same savage enemy the next year. Fox says in Hist. of Dunstable, the captors were a company of French Mohawks, about seventy in number. A company immediately mustered and proceeded to the place to secure the bodies of their friends and townsmen. Eight were found, placed in coffins and buried in one capacious grave in the ancient Cemetery of Old Dunstable, now in the south part of the City of Nashua. Of the slain was Oliver Farwell, and on a small stone about two feet high [J.B. Hill] is the following inscription: Oliver Farwell who died Sept. 5, 1724, in the 33d year of his age.²