I started out looking at genealogy to try to understand my family. And I have found some answers that helped with my hurt. I didn’t expect to find other family lines that left me hurting.
There was the colonial mother of a one year old who hanged herself. They had no postpartum depression diagnosis then.
Then there was the colonial father in Gloucester who wrote his will hoping that his son would return. His son was presumed lost at sea 9 years before. I tried for a long time to find what happened to him—to give that father some closure—at least in my genealogy. I still have no answer.
And then there was the Davis family in an Indian attack at Oyster Bay, NH in 1694.
…He and his wife and several children were killed in the massacre of 1694, and two daughters were carried as captives to Canada.
It was that “several children” that hurt so much. No one knows their names. I looked at everything online I could find. Bought books on the massacre. My heart continues to ache for those children. I understand that it was catastrophic …
The pre-dawn attack caught the settlers of the plantation unprepared. Just two days earlier, Captain John Woodman had assembled the people of the settlement, notifying them of the Treaty of Pemaquid. As a result, the people had returned to their homes and disbanded the night watch. By the time the attackers withdrew, forty-five people lay dead with another forty-nine taken captive. Half of the dwellings lay in charred ruins. The attackers butchered most of the livestock and burned many crops.
…But, I want so much to give those children names. I finally had to stop looking and leave it in the Lord’s hands. Lord Jesus knows each one of them and each one by name. I have to rest in the fact that they aren’t ultimately unknown or unremembered.