| Notes |
- Richard Otis was General Dict of Maine & New Hampshire.
He was a blacksmith, adm. inhab. of Boston May 1655, but settled at Dover where he had a grant of land before that year was out. Not in sympathy with the established church and often in court for absence. Administrator of William Lemon 1662 and of James Heard 1677.
He admitted the Masonian claims & agreed to pay ground rent for his lands in 1683.
His first wife was Rose Stoughton, daughter of Anthony, a strong Puritan, who had come to Boston with her kinsman Israel Stoughton.
On the night of 28 Jun 1689 his garrison was attacked by Indians, admitted by treachery, & he was murdered. Some of his family shared his fate, but his wife, daughters and at least 3 grandchildren were taken captive.
Ref: A Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Richard Otis" by Horatio N. Otis, 1851.
The Cochecho Massacre
"In one bloody afternoon, a quarter of the colonists in what is now downtown Dover, NH were gone -- 23 killed, and 29 captured in a revenge attack by native warriors. In one afternoon, 50 years of peaceful co-existence between the Penacook tribe & European colonists ended. The massacre of 1689 entered the history books along with similar accounts throughout the Seacoast. With three-quarters of the native population afflicted by white diseases, dead or driven out of their ancestral homeland, the next half century brought the final gasps of protest against the unending "white tide" of settlers."
Ref: www.seacoastnh.com
- On Thursday, the 27th of June, 1689, the dwelling-house of Richard Otis, was attacked by the Indians, & himself shot as he was rising up in bed,
& his son Stephen & daughter Hannah were killed, the latter, then 2 years old, by dashing her head against the chamber stairs. The wife & infant child &
of 3 months, with others, 29 in all, were carried captive to Canada, & sold to the French.
Ref: A Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Richard Otis", by Horatio N. Otis, 1851.
In this Abenaki Indian massacre in 1689 in Dover, New Hampshire, many of the Otis family were killed. One of his granddaughters, in the 4th generation, Mary Otis, was also taken in that Indian attack and sold to the French. How she returned to marry Ebenezer Varney is still a mystery. The Otis family began to follow the Society of Friends (Quakers) during the 1700's, and their descendants followed them in this faith. - - -
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1615 - 1689 (74 years)