Site of the block house on the North River, Scituate, 1906

A rail fence and a bar-way into a tangle of trees by the river, where Scituate’s block house stood. The plate is printed sideways on the page, as in the book. On 20 May 1676 a war party came into Scituate from the north, burned Cornet Stetson’s mill on the Third Herring Brook, and followed the North River down into the south part of the town; “they attacked the blockhouse located on the bank of the river, but were repulsed,” and went on to the garrison at Charles Stockbridge’s by the mill at Greenbush, “where a large force of the townsmen were assembled, and after a desperate fight, were driven off and no more seen in the town” (Ellis and Morris, pp. 222-223). Lt. Isaac Buck mustered the men of the lower town that day. The Stockbridge garrison was the house John Stockbridge had built by his grist mill, and Scituate’s own captain, Michael Pierce, had been killed with most of his company two months before.