James Converse

Great-grandfather of Col. Israel Converse: Indian fighter, Speaker of the Massachusetts House, and the defender of Storer’s garrison at Wells. The son of Lt. James Converse of Woburn, he married Hannah Carter in 1668/9; their children, born at Woburn, were James (1670), John (1673), Elizabeth (1675), Robert (1677), Hannah (1680), two Josiahs (1683 and 1684), Patience (1686) and Ebenezer (1688) (source; source). He was a freeman in 1671, selectman of Woburn in most years from 1680, town clerk, and its representative in the General Court in 1679 and most years after; he was Speaker of the House in 1699 and 1702-1704 (source). As town clerk in 1688 he copied the town’s crumbling register of births, marriages and deaths into a book of his own, which the town bought from him in 1705 “for twelve shillings” and used as its register until 1768: the Woburn records cited on these pages are his copy (source).

Wells, June 1692. In King William’s War he commanded on the Maine frontier: in 1690 a captain of one of the provincial companies, in 1691 at the defence of Wells, and in 1692 at Wells again, against a far larger force of French and Indians (source). Cotton Mather told the story in 1699: “But now, Reader, the Longest Day [of] the Year is to come on, and if I mistake not, the Bravest Act in the War, fell out upon it … Captain Converse was lodged in Storer’s Garrison at Wells, with but Fifteen men.” The besiegers numbered “about Five Hundred Men, or Fierce Things in the Shape of Men, all to Encounter Fifteen Men in one little Garrison, and about Fifteen more Men … in a Couple of open Sloops.” In the night, asked who commanded them, “the Indians Replied, You ly, you have none but Converse, and we will have him too before Morning!” When one of his soldiers spoke of surrender, “the captain Vehemently protested, That he would lay the man Dead, who should so much as mutter that base word any more!” Offered terms under a flag of truce, “the Captain sent ’em word, That he wanted for nothing, but for men to come, and Fight him,” and to the taunt that he should fight “in the open Field, like a Man,” he answered: “what a Fool are you? do you think, Thirty men a Match for Five Hundred? … Come with your Thirty men upon the Plain, and I’le meet you with my Thirty, as soon as you will.” The attackers drew off (source, pp. 232-238). The modern editor of Mather’s narrative identifies the captain as “James Converse of Woburn” (p. 227).

In 1693 he led the provincial forces in Maine again, and at the outbreak of Queen Anne’s War in 1702 “the governor made him commander of all Massachusetts provincial forces in the field.” Savage: “was disting. as capt. and major in the Ind. war, d. 8 July 1706, aged 61” (source).

Research: research/hatten/Browne_Chapin_Cumins.md.