March of 1676 would be the bloodiest month for the English cause in the entire King Philip’s War so far with attacks taking place pretty much all across the theater of war. After a desperate February, Canonchet‘s Narragansetts had escaped from a massive English force commanded by some of the best men available. With the attacks on Lancaster and Medfield, the United Colonies of Southern New England were reeling. March would make February look like peacetime. Click here to listen as Historian Stan Svec of Fishing Historic Places narrates this 17-minute YouTube video posted on March 19, 2026.

Svec (above) reports that as the snows began to give way to a reluctant New England Spring, Native warbands representing the Confederated Tribes fell on more than a dozen settlements and probably hundreds of isolated garrisons and farms. Mary Rollinson was led from her home in Lancaster to the west and north by her captors who finally came to the Mill River in what is now Orange, Massachusetts.

In the middle of March 1676, Muttawmp and war bands of probably around 400 Native people were ascending just on the other side of what today is a Fairfield by Marriott Hotel (above, center).  Major Savage proceeded to Hadley, and Major Robert Treat of Connecticut proceeded to a stockade in Northampton with 200 men.

While the people in Northampton celebrated, they didn’t celebrate for long because news of disasters began to filter in relatively quickly. Groton had been attacked and completely destroyed just the day before. It had been formerly evacuated after its trained bands had been lured into a brilliant ambush. Warwick would go into flames and be evacuated just a couple days after Northampton’s successful defense. That Sunday, all over southern New England, congregations would come together with their ministers offering prayers of salvation and asking God for forgiveness, praying that He would lift the scourge of Philip from their communities.