Colonial Deerfield, Massachusetts - 1704 Deerfield Raid

[wnylib]

4. Not sure without checking my sources, but

I think that Thomas Wells was the brother of the village's militia captain, John Wells. Or maybe Thomas was his father. I do remember that Captain John Wells' mother was killed on the march. He did not know that until he accompanied my ancestor, John Sheldon, to Montreal to try to ransom the captives.

Deerfield and other colonial descendants can be found anywhere in the country today, but as they spread out from western Massachusetts several decades after 1704, clusters of them settled in NY and PA. The surname of one of my close friends in high school (in northwestern PA) was Buell. I currently live in a small city in western NY with a few street names that are surnames of Deerfield descendants, and were named for early settlers of the area.