Lesson 7 - Readings for the Nims Family

Ebenezer Nims

from New England Captives Carried to Canada, Emma L. Coleman, 1925, pg. 103

Ebenezer, b. [born] 1687, was taken to Lorette. There, too, was Sarah Hoyt. As the story goes they were trying to force Sarah to marry a Frenchman when she, to free herself, offered publicly to marry any one of her fellow-captives. Ebenezer was her knight. Let us hope they were already lovers!

In 1714, when all prisoners were to be returned and Parson [minister] Williams, with Colonel Stoddard, was in Quebec, both priests and Indians made the departure of these two captives very difficult...Ebenezer feared to let the Indians know how eager they were to go home. Finally the governor demanded that they be brought to Quebec without priest or Indian, and since, as they represented, the woman was unable to walk she should come on horseback or in a cart.

...finally Ebenezer, Sarah and their child were safely on board. She, having walked, and being 'as well as generally women are.'

The next day 'a great number of Indians'with the squaw who had adopted Ebenezer hurried to Quebec and demanded their return. Two of them were taken to the ship where Ebenezer assured them of his determination to go home. Then they demanded that the child be left behind, which, naturally, was refused."

From The History of Deerfield, Vol. I, George Sheldon, 1895, pg. 388

"The only known Deerfield captives brought home in Dudley’s vessel [ship] were Ebenezer Nims and his wife Sarah (Hoyt). They brought away, after fierce opposition by the Indians of Lorette where they lived, their only child, a boy of eighteen months, named for his father. The babe had been baptized by a priest, but in 1737 he was baptized anew by the then minister of Deerfield, Jonathan Ashley..."

From The History of Deerfield, Vol. I, George Sheldon, 1895, pgs. 354 & 355

"Ebenezer Nims, seventeen when captured. He was adopted by a squaw, and lived at Lorette; perhaps taken to fill the place of a son killed in the expedition. He came home with Stoddard and Williams in 1714, bringing his wife and son Ebenezer."

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