Pequot War Topics – Access Genealogy

Ancestors of Alexander Holmes of Kingston, MA

The family of Alexander Holmes of Kingston, MA is one of long and honorable standing in New England, and there the branch is represented by the family of the late Alexander Holmes, who for years was president of the Old Colony and Fall River Railroad. Across the water in old England the Holmes family history reaches back to the year 1066, when one John Holmes, the founder of the Holmes family, is credited with being a volunteer in the army of William, Duke of Normandy.

Ancestors of the Rufus W. Bassett Family of Fall River, Massachusetts

The family bearing this name in Fall River, to which belonged the late Hon. Rufus W. Bassett, long prominent in business and public affairs, for years a member of the board of police and much of the time its chairman, is a branch of the earlier Taunton family, it of the still earlier Rochester branch of the distinguished Bassetts of the Cape Cod towns of the Old Colony.

Ancestors of Charles Jarvis Holmes of Marshfield and Rochester MA

The purpose of this article to treat with one branch only of the Marshfield-Rochester family, the head of which was the late Hon. Charles Jarvis Holmes, lawyer and public servant of distinguished official relation, as was his father before him, Hon. Abraham Holmes, and as was also the former’s son excepting that he was a banker and financier instead of a member of the legal profession, and a man of high standing and long service in his calling at Fall River, where he was succeeded by his only son, Charles L. Holmes, now treasurer of the Fall River Five Cents Savings Bank, an institution his father had served in the same official relation for approximately fifty years, and who is worthily wearing the family name and sustaining its reputation.

The Pequot Indian War

For several years the tribe had been engaged in a desultory war with the Narragansetts, arising from a quarrel, in 1632, respecting the boundary of their respective do mains. Sassacus at once perceived the necessity or policy of healing this breach, and procuring the assistance of his powerful neighbors in the anticipated struggle. He therefore sent ambassadors to Canonicus, charged with proposals of treaty, and of union against the usurping English. A grand council of the Narragansett sachems was called, and the messengers, according to Morton, “used many pernicious arguments to move them thereunto, as that the English were strangers, … Read more

Pequot Tribe

Pequot Indians (contr. of Paquatauog, ‘destroyers.’- Trumbull). An Algonquian tribe of Connecticut. Before their conquest by the English in 1637 they were the most dreaded of the southern New England tribes. They were originally but one people with the Mohegan, and it is possible that the term Pequot was unknown until applied by the eastern coast Indians to this body of Mohegan invaders, who came down from the interior shortly before the arrival of the English. The division into two distinct tribes seems to have been accomplished by the secession of Uncas, who, in consequence of a dispute with Sassacus, … Read more

Pequot War 1634-1638

In 1634 the the Pequot Tribe initiated peace negotiations with the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They wanted the English to re-establish trade and arbitrate a peace settlement with the Narragansetts. The Bay Colony responded with demands for exorbitant tribute (1000 fathoms of wampum) and the surrender of the killers, something the Pequots were not prepared to do. In the same year, John Stone was murdered by the Pequots on the Connecticut River. It may be that he was thought to be a Dutchman, and one of the murderers of Tatobem. Stone was known to the Bay Colony authorities as a privateer … Read more