Susannah Willard Johnson
[4] Her father, who was killed in 1756 by Indians while repairing a fence,[5] was a descendant of Major Simon Willard, an early settler who had negotiated and purchased Concord, Massachusetts, from the local Native Americans.
Susannah had twelve siblings in all: Aaron; John; Miriam; Moses, Jr.; James Nutting; Jemima; Mary; Elizabeth; Abigail; and Huldah Willard.
After her release from captivity, Susannah Johnson lived in Lancaster, Massachusetts, until October 1759, moving to Charlestown later that month and settling on her late husband's estate.
A year later surfacing rumors of war panicked the colonists, but the townsfolk were put at ease following the return of Captain James Johnson from a trading trip on August 24, 1754.
Feeling relieved and cheerful that they would have time to relocate to Northfield, New Hampshire, before then, the family invited their neighbors to dinner and held a party late into the night of August 29.
During the early hours of August 30, while the Johnsons were sound asleep, an armed Abenaki party raided the enclosed stockade of Fort No.
The following day, as the party was marching through the wilderness of what is now northeast Reading, Vermont,[12] she gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Elizabeth Captive Johnson.
Johnson was given a pair of moccasins and allowed to ride a stolen horse belonging to Captain Phineas Stevens, a noted colonist who had served as commander of the Fort's militia until 1750.
The horse, named Scoggin and captured the night before, was killed and eaten during the journey after the party had run out of food; the Indians made a soup from the bone marrow while the captives were allowed to eat the flesh.
After arriving at St. Francis on September 19, with a full three weeks of journey behind them, the captives, whose faces had been decorated in vermilion paint, were forced to run the gantlet past a parade of Abenaki warriors armed with tomahawks, war clubs, and knives.
Upon his return to Quebec City in late July 1755, he and his wife, along with daughters Polly and Elizabeth, were detained and held in a jail, where "conditions were too shocking for description.
(While Susannah, Miriam, Polly, and Elizabeth were all sent to England, James was not granted permission to leave and continued to fulfill his remaining prison sentence.)
However, as James Johnson's legal troubles for violating his parole were still unresolved—complicated due to his rank of captain in the British militia—he soon traveled back to New York to "adjust his Canada accounts,"[18] and, while there, was "persuaded by Gov.
Peter Labaree made an escape from the French in the early spring of 1757, traveling several hundred miles from Montreal to Albany, New York, by foot, before finally arriving at his home in Charlestown in the winter.
During his journey, Labaree traveled only at night in order to avoid detection and capture by the Natives, at one point apparently traversing a swamp over a period of three days.
Using her surviving letters, notes and diary, as well the memories of her family and fellow captives Labarree and Farnsworth,[n 3] she dictated her account to Charlestown lawyer John Curtis Chamberlain, who ghostwrote[21][22][n 4] the first edition (with the possible collaboration of Joseph Dennie and Royall Tyler).
She had finished a new chapter for her narrative as late as September 1810, and was "very anxious"[24] to have the "considerably enlarged" third edition published before her death; her efforts, however, proved unfruitful.
The narrative has also been translated into French and published in Quebec under the title Récit d'une captive en Nouvelle-France, 1754–1760 (Sillery: Septentrion, 2003, trans.
