Hassell Massacre Memorial

A stone with a plaque marks the spot where a settler family was buried after being killed by Natives in the 1600’s.

Only the subject of slavery is more contentious than the treatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, As the Europeans expanded their reach into was was called the New World. Hint, it was a pretty old world for the people who were already here. As the Europeans moved inland they either co-opted or killed the natives who were not complying with the efforts to expand Westward in search of land and the vast amount of resources that covered every inch of the Americas.

Beginning with DeSoto in 1539 and all the way into the early 1900’s there was a long and violent battle for the occupation of what we call the U.S.A. From east to west and from north to south there were attacks and counter attacks that killed scores and scores of men, women and children with each new atrocity.

One of these attacks occurred in 1691 during King William’s War which pitted the French and their Native allies against the English and the colonial settlers in the Northeast. The settler family of Joseph Hassell, his wife Anna Hassell, their son Benjamin and a girl named Mary Marks were killed in their home in what was then known as Dunstable by members of the Abenaki Tribe. Their bodies were buried at the site of the massacre near their home.

In 1916 a plaque noting these murders was placed on the side of what was known as Hassell Bridge. By the 1950’s  a local member of the Historical Society appealed to have a new marker made. In 1960 a new plaque was placed at a ceremony attended by the then Mayor Mario Vagge. What was once the location of one of many war atrocities is now a quiet meadow, near a small brook in a residential neighborhood