February of 1676 was the start of a dark time for the United Colonies as the Narragansetts, bent on vengeance for the attack on their Great Swamp village, added their warriors to the other confederated tribes and, under the leadership of Canonchet, fall on the vulnerable settlements of the frontier. Click here for a 17-minute video of historian Stan Svec’s narrative about the events in that month of King Philip’s War posted on February 19, 2026 by Fishing Historic Places.

(Above) Historian Stan Svec relates that for the next few months, as their women and children made sugar at the winter camps, Native warriors pushed the English to the very edge of ruin in a series of attacks. Lancaster colonists gathered in a garrison house similar to the one above in order to survive an attack by Native forces.

Warriors pushed a cart of burning wood against the garrison house, setting it on fire. Colonists, including Mary Rowlandson and her three children, escaped the fire but were taken captive by Nipmuc Natives for eleven weeks. In 1682 she wrote a best selling narrative of her ordeal that was published in England and New England.

Svec points out the entrance marker to the town of Medfield that was also attacked, as well as the marker for the site of the house of Mary’s husband, Rev. Joseph Rowlandson. She was reunited with her husband and stayed with a friend in Concord for a while until Rowlandson’s sister, son, and daughter were also returned. When they were reunited, the family built a house in Boston, where they lived until 1677.