rominent example is that of the Gill
family. In June, 1697, a boy named Samuel Gill, then in his tenth year,
was captured by the Abenakis at Salisbury in Massachusetts, carried to
St. Francis, and converted. Some years later he married a young English
girl, said to have been named James, and to have been captured at
Kennebunk.[75] In 1866 the late Abbe Maurault, missionary at St.
Francis, computed their descendants at nine hundred and fifty-two, in
whose veins French, English, and Abenaki blood were mixed in every
conceivable proportion. He gives the tables of genealogy in full, and
says that two hundred and thirteen of this prolific race still bear the
surname of Gill. "If," concludes the worthy priest, "one should trace
out all the English families brought into Canada by the Abenakis, one
would be astonished at the number of persons who to-day are indebted to
these savages for the blessing of being Catholics and the advantage of
being Canadians,"[76]--an advantage for which French-Canadians are so
ungrateful that they migrate to the United States by myriads.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 14 Novembre, 1703_; _Ibid., 3 Avril, 1704_;
_Vaudreuil et Beauharnois au Ministre 17 Novembre, 1704_. French writers
say that the English surprised and killed some of the Abenakis, who
thereupon asked help from Canada. This perhaps refers to the expeditions
of Colonel March and Captain Tyng, who, after the bloody attacks upon
the settlements of Maine, made reprisal upon Abenaki camps.

[54] English accounts make the whole number 342.

[55] Stephen W. Williams, _Biographical Memoir of Rev. John Williams_.

[56] _Account of ye destruction at Derefd, February 29, 1703/4._

[57] Papers in the Archives of Massachusetts. Among these, a letter of
Rev. John Williams to the governor, 21 October, 1703, states that the
palisade is rotten, and must be rebuilt.

[58] The names of nearly all the inhabitants are preserved, and even the
ages of most of them have been ascertained, through the indefatigable
research of Mr. George Sheldon, of Deerfield, among contemporary
records. The house of Thomas French, the town clerk, was not destroyed,
and his papers were saved.

[59] On the thirty-first of May, 1704, Jonathan Wells and Ebenezer
Wright petitioned the General Court for compensation for the losses of
those who drove the enemy out of Deerfield and chased them into the
meadow. The petition, which was granted, gives an account of