lake now called Lovewell's Pond, named for John Lovewell
of Dunstable, a Massachusetts town on the New Hampshire line. Lovewell's
father, a person of consideration in the village, where he owned a
"garrison house," had served in Philip's War, and taken part in the
famous Narragansett Swamp Fight. The younger Lovewell, now about
thirty-three years of age, lived with his wife, Hannah, and two or three
children on a farm of two hundred acres. The inventory of his effects,
made after his death, includes five or six cattle, one mare, two steel
traps with chains, a gun, two or three books, a feather-bed, and
"under-bed," or mattress, along with sundry tools, pots, barrels,
chests, tubs, and the like,--the equipment, in short, of a decent
frontier yeoman of the time.[273] But being, like the tough veteran, his
father, of a bold and adventurous disposition, he seems to have been
less given to farming than to hunting and bush-fighting.

Dunstable was attacked by Indians in the autumn of 1724, and two men
were carried off. Ten others went in pursuit, but fell into an ambush,
and nearly all were killed, Josiah Farwell, Lovewell's brother-in-law,
being, by some accounts, the only one who escaped.[274] Soon after this,
a petition, styled a "Humble Memorial," was laid before the House of
Representatives at Boston. It declares that in order "to kill and
destroy their enemy Indians," the petitioners and forty or fifty others
are ready to spend one whole year in hunting them, "provided they can
meet with Encouragement suitable." The petition is signed by John
Lovewell, Josiah Farwell, and Jonathan Robbins, all of Dunstable,
Lovewell's name being well written, and the others after a cramped and
unaccustomed fashion. The representatives accepted the proposal and
voted to give each adventurer two shillings and sixpence a day,--then
equal in Massachusetts currency to about one English shilling,--out of
which he was to maintain himself. The men were, in addition, promised
large rewards for the scalps of male Indians old enough to fight.

A company of thirty was soon raised. Lovewell was chosen captain,
Farwell, lieutenant, and Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end
of November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in January, bringing one
prisoner and one scalp. Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out
again, this time with eighty-seven men, gathered from the villages of
Dunstable, Groton, Lancaster, Haverhill, and Billerica. They