#hassanamesit

Sarah Phillips her mark

Moving out of the seventeenth-century for a minute to share the signature of Sarah Burnee Phillips, a Nipmuc woman of Hassanamesit, or so-called "Grafton, Massachusetts"

Sarah Burnee Phillips was born in 1744 to Sarah Muckamugg and Fortune Burnee. Her kinship lines connect her to Sarah Robbins, Peter Muckamugg, and Petavit. Several of the men in Sarah’s family, including Fortune Burnee Jr., Joseph Aaron, and Prince Paine, served in the Revolutionary War. Her half-brother, Joseph, returned disabled, no longer able to work the family farm. Prince Paine, Sarah’s first husband, died after returning from the war, in 1777. Before marrying Boston Phillips in 1786, Sarah worked the family homestead herself.

Sarah lived on ancestral land passed down through family matriarchs, even as that land had been constrained by colonial and state systems of allotment, debt, trusteeship, and dispossession. After Boston Phillips died in 1798, Sarah continued to sustain herself and her family at Hassanamesit through farming, animal husbandry and basket making. She died in 1824.

I have been thinking about Sarah while preparing a TEK and archival recovery walk through Hassanamesit Woods. Now a completely wooded landscape, there is sassafras, sarsaparilla, oak, berries, medicines, stone walls, trails. Beneath the native and invasive plants are cellar holes, buried pewter pots, stone tools. There are the invisible allotment lines, absences, stories, and records that vibrate in my mind when I walk this place.

The upcoming walk in these woods cannot only be about “learning plants.” It has to be about relationship, responsibility, surveillance, survival, and the archival traces of Nipmuc people who continued to live, farm, tend, make, remember, and remain there under conditions designed to make that survival nearly impossible.

Sarah and her kin lived at Hassanamesit for hundreds of years. Their homesite has been the subject of a series of intensive archaeological excavations in the 21st century. Because of that work, we can know intimate details about their household — even fragments of plates, spoons, and other belongings from their daily lives. In some ways, I am grateful for what can be recovered. I am also sitting with the harder question of what it means that so much of what can be known about ancestors comes to us through these forms of (settler) entitlement to knowledge, through legal documents like deeds, debt records, trustees’ reports, through excavations, and the documentation of colonial control.

Sarah's mark leaves the trace of a Nipmuc matriarch whose life at Hassanamesit asks us to read land, plants, archives, and memory together, not separately. 

the mark of Admon Lalanc

Nipmuc. At home in Hassananamesit (in and around present day Grafton, Massachusetts).

The mark of Admon Lalanc (also seen as Edmond Lalanc) appears here with other Nipmuc signers on an agreement to the sale of land between Hassanamesit and Magunkaquog. Magunkaquog is the place now occupied by towns lying between parts of Grafton and Natick, including Ashland and Westborough.

the mark of Ammi Printer

Ami Printer (also spelled Ammi), Nipmuc. At home in Hassananamesit (present day Grafton, Massachusetts). Ami was a descendant of the Printer line, a surname given to Wawaus who was re-named James the Printer by colonizers, then James Printer; Wawaus being the first Native printer in Massachusetts. Wawaus’, or James Printer's relatives all later assumed this surname as well. It’s as-yet unclear what the direct family relationship between Ami and Wauwas was.

Ami Printer’s mark appears here, with other Nipmuc signers, on an agreement to the sale of land between Hassanamisco and Magunkaquog. Magunkaquog is the place now occupied by towns lying between Grafton and Natick, including Ashland and Westborough.

Ami’s kin: a partner, Sarah Thomas. A daughter, Hannah Printer.

Document is undated. Seen at the Massachusetts State Archives.

Sarah Burnee. Hir Mark. 

Nipmuc. Her homelands and homeplace at Hassanamesit, in present-day Grafton, Massachusetts. Sarah was daughter of Sarah Muckamaug and Fortune Burnee (Nipmuc and Black, respectively), and granddaughter of Peter Muckamaug.

In this quitclaim document, Sarah’s brother, Joseph Aaron, is deeding to her, for the sum “one hundred and twenty pounds of lawful money,” a portion of land at Hassanamesit. 

The Muckamaug family was subject to much surveillance by the colonial government of Massachusetts, related specifically to Muckamaug land as Hassanamesit. Information, written by Sophia Ramos (Nipmuc) in the catalog record for the collection that this document comes from, states that “Sarah Muckamug[‘s].... union with an enslaved man called Aaron Whipple would create a decades-long investigation into her relationship in order to contest two of her children's - Sarah Burnee, who was born from...Fortune Burnee; and Joseph Aaron, who was the son of Aaron Whipple and born out of wedlock - claims to her inheritance.” We can read “inheritance” here to mean land, desired by the State. 

Signed June 4, 1771.

The Mark of Wutasakompanin.

Nipmuc. Also known as Captain Tom or Tom Wuttasacomponom. A Christian convert at Hassanamesit. Vowed loyalty to settlers during the First Indian War, or King Philip's War, but was still hung by colonizers in 1676 after accusations of being involved in the burnings of Sudbury and Medfield (which Wuttasacomponom denied). 

This document, signed by Wuttasacomponom and others, reports to be submitted on behalf of “peoples of Nipmuck…the inhabitants of Quánutusset, Mônuhčhogok, Chaubunakongkomuk, Asukodnôcog, Kesépusqus, wabuhqushish and the adjacent parts of Nipmuk…” It pledges the submission of  inhabitants of praying towns to the government of Massachusetts. It’s signed in 1668, a little less than a decade before the War would begin. 

Below Wuttasacomponom’s mark is the signature of Job Kattenanit, brother of James Printer, whom we will write about at a later date. 

Wuttasaompnoms kin: a son, Nehemiah Tom.

Peter Ephraim. His Mark. 

Natick Nipmuc. His home at Natick and the place today called “Sherborn, Massachusetts” and at Hassanamesit or so-called Grafton, Massachusetts. A “Christian Indian” and interpreter. Defended Nipmuc rights to land and petitioned against John Wampus’ fraudulent sale(s) of land at Hassanamesit through the 1670s. Died 1685.

This document outlines 2000 acres around the place now called Sherborn, MA, Peter Ephraim’s mark accompanying Waban’s, Piambow’s, John Magus’ and others. 

Piambo. Pyambow. Piamboho. Piambowhow. His Mark.

Nipmuc. His home at Hassanamesit (present day Grafton, MA and surrounding areas) and later at Natick. Interred on Deer Island during  the First Indian War (King Philip's War). Leader in praying town at Natick, with Waban. Translator for John Eliot. 

His mark appearing on deeds relative to land transfers and land disputes against settlers in Nipmuc country.