See directions to the site below.
Bourne’s Garrison was located in South Swansea on Gardiner’s Neck on Old Gardiner’s Neck Road, south of Route 103 and across the Road from the South Cemetery. (Please note that the site is located on private property.) It was a stone warehouse, attacked in June 1675 at the start of King Philip’s War. Major John Brown’s Garrison was also in the area. There may have been up to a dozen more in the area.
Across the street from the South Cemetery, you will see a small sign that says: “Site of Bourne Garrison, King Philip’s War June 1675.” The Bourne Garrison was an 8-sided stone house used for business. After the first battles of the [King Philip’s] war began, local settlers fled to the Bourne house for protection but were later massacred. The killings marked a point of no return for both the English and the Pokanoket Tribe.
From Otis Olney Wright, The History of Swansea, 1667 to 1917:
“A stone house, upon the farm of Gov. Renton, at Matapoiset, occupied by Jared Bourne, was used as a garrison, which the Bridgewater company was ordered to re-enforce. This company reached the garrison Monday night and found there seventy persons, all but sixteen, women and children.”
“This is the family cemetery of the Gardner family and nearly opposite on the other side of the road from the spot on which tradition informs us that the first Gardner settler built his log house, that was succeeded by a stone one.”
“It probably stood eighty, ninety, possibly a hundred years. It must have been a peculiar structure, judging from some of the statements we have heard respecting it. Mr. Leonard G. Sherman, an old resident of the town, son of Sanders Sherman, told me that it had nine outside double doors. I replied that in that case I should not think there would be much of the outside left. He said he did not know anything about that, but it had nine double doors and no mistake, for when he was a boy he worked for Capt. Henry Gardner topping onions. After supper Mrs. Gardner used to tell him stories about old times on the Neck, used to tell him particularly about the old house, that it had nine outside double doors, that it was the custom to draw back logs in with the horse going out the opposite door. Deacon Mason Gardner, who lived in the house in which we are tonight many years, often told of seeing, when a boy, the back logs drawn in by horses and rolled into the fire. This house, which was often called the old stone fort, must have been a study in architecture, and I think if photographs of it were obtainable, every family in this section of the town would desire one.”
The Garrison Marker is located just south of the intersection of Gardners Neck Road and Milne Avenue in Swansea (770 Gardner’s Neck Road). Look for a large white stone next to a small white sign across the Road from the South Gardner Cemetery.
Click on the map below for a Google map of the location.
