Person Page - 226

       Thomas/2 Hapgood was born 1 Feb 1669 at Sudbury, MA.¹ "Impressed and sent to fight at Piscataqua under Captain Converse, 1690. Shot through one of his hands; the bullet breaking and shattering the other arm, so that he was crippled for life."² He married, by 1694, Judith/3 Barker of Concord, daughter of John/2 Barker and Judith/2 Simonds.³ 12 Nov 1703, Thomas Hapgood petitioned the General Court for an allowance, "he having in 1690, been detached into the service against the Indian enemy," and "engaged in the bloody fight near Oyster River, N.H., wherein Captain Noah Wiswell and divers others were slain and wounded…."⁴ An agent for Edmund Rice in the Indian lands, Thomas lived at Marlborough, MA, where his wife died 15 Aug 1759.⁵ There he died 4 Oct 1764, leaving, according to Savage, 92 grandchildren, 208 great-grandchildren, and 4 great-great-grandchildren.⁶
     Thomas and Judith are buried in Spring Hill Cemetery.⁷

       Shadrach/1 Hapgood was born in England circa 1642.^2,3 During his life, his name was rendered in many forms: as Sidrach, Sydrach and Shadrach, as Hopgood, Habgood and Hapgood. Orthography notwithstanding, he is remembered as the sole progenitor of this surname in America.
     According to Savage, "the first Peter Haynes" sent a son Thomas to England about 1654 to bring Shadrach Hapgood to New England.⁴ The boy of 14 embarked at Gravesend, 30 May 1656, bound for New England on the Speedwell, Robert Locke, master, and arrived at Boston on the 27th of June.^3,5 We may guess that he went to live with Peter Haynes at Sudbury, a frontier village which was just the second inland settlement in Massachusetts. The will of Peter Haynes, drawn Sep 1657, calls Shadrach a kinsman.⁶ There he married, at 22 years of age, 21 Oct 1664, Elizabeth/2 Treadway, daughter of Nathaniel/1 Treadway and Sufferana/2 How, of Watertown, with whom he had 5 children over the next 10 years.⁷
     Shadrach Hapgood acquired land at the new plantation of Pompasitticutt sometime after 11 May 1670. Concord historian Lemuel Shattuck relates the story:
     "Lieutenant Joseph Wheeler, by trading with the Nashoba Indians, became their creditor, and petitioned the General Court in 1662, for a grant of 200 acres at the southerly part of their plantation as payment for his debt; but it was refused. In 1669, he, with several inhabitants of Concord, petitioned for a tract of land at Pompasitticutt; and the Court appointed him, with John Haynes of Sudbury..., etc ... a committee to view it and report at their next session. This report was made May 11, 1670..." The committee found that the Indians at Nashoba had superior meadowland "and they do make but little or no use of it."
     10 men, including Joseph & Thomas Wheeler, Stephen Hall, William Buttrick, and Sydrach Hapgood, subsequently petitioned for and were granted ownership of the land, provided they settle it with not less than 10 families within three years, "and that a pious, an able, and orthodox minister be maintained there." 12 "foundation lots," or "rights," each comprising 50 acres of upland and 15 of meadow, were granted, to John and Samuel Buttrick, Thomas Gates, Richard Whitney (both Sr. and Jr.), Moses Whitney, Boaz Brown (Sr. and Jr.), Henry Rand, Samuel Hall, James Wheeler, and the aforementioned Hall and Hapgood. The grant was subsequently incorporated 16 May 1683 as Stow.⁸
     As the month of July, 1675 came to a close, New England faced a crisis. The colony's indigenous population, as dependent as the English on agriculture for subsistence, was increasingly pressured by English expansion and encroachment. The English knew that an uprising under the leadership of Metacom ("King Philip"), a Wampanoag sachem, was imminent. Small-scale raids had become more frequent, and deaths were mounting. The authorities responded to the threat with economic, military and diplomatic initiatives. They called out the "training bands," or militia, began to inventory and stockpile food and supplies, and sent out armed scouting parties, both to ascertain the movements and sentiments of various tribes, among these the Nipmucks, and to negotiate or perhaps intimidate the tribes into neutrality or support for the English.
     On the 30th, Philip and his followers slipped out of their stronghold at Mt. Hope, in present-day Rhode Island, under the noses of the colonial troops assigned to watch them, and headed northwesterly toward central Massachusetts. Yet the first major blow against the English would come thee days later in the west—not from the Wampanoags, but from the Nipmucks. Shadrach's descendant Warren Hapgood, writing in 1898, relates:
     The Nipmuck Indians, whose original country embraced the upper basins of the Concord, Charles, and Blackstone rivers, and extended west to the Connecticut, had engaged secretly with King Philip to make war upon the English, but the war having been brought on before they were fully prepared to take part, they dissembled, and assured the settlers of their friendship. Still they were suspected by the government. Captains Hutchinson and Wheeler were therefore ordered, with twenty mounted men, and three Indian interpreters, to proceed into their country to treat with them, to insure their loyalty. In this company was Shadrach Hapgood.
     They proceeded to Brookfield. Here the Indians, being made acquainted with the object of their visit, engaged to meet them, August 2, 1675, at a certain spot at Quaboag, about three miles from the village and garrison of Brookfield. They proceeded to the place, but finding no Indians, and imagining they had mistaken the locality, directed their course to Wikabaug Pond, in single file, between a swamp on the left and an abrupt high hill on the right. The place is supposed to be on the south side of the railroad, between the depot in Brookfield and West Brookfield. Here they fell into an ambush, and were suddenly surrounded with 200 or 300 warriors, who killed eight of their number and mortally wounded three others. Among the murdered was Shadrach Habgood.
     The surviving troopers made a fighting retreat to Brookfield, where they and the town's 80 residents barricaded themselves inside the garrison, while the Nipmucks fired the town and laid siege. The besieged colonists were saved by scout Ephraim Curtis, who slipped out under cover of darkness and ran all the way to Marlborough for help. By the fall Brookfield lay abandoned.^9,10,3,11
     Mrs. Habgood, with her five children, was probably at Sudbury, to receive the sorrowful tidings. But their griefs and losses were not yet ended. She was appointed to administer on her husband's estate, which, with his right and interest in the "New Plantation at Pomsetticutt," now Stow, was appraised by Peter Noyes and Edmund Goodenow, September 2, 1675, at £145-2s.- October 5 (8), 1675 she presented a new inventory of the estate, valued at £106-11s., praying for an abatement of the difference, in consequence of the burning of a house by the enemy. This, no doubt, refers to a house which her husband had built upon his lot at Pomposetticut, for Sudbury was not burnt until April 6, 1676, although his descendant, who occupies the spot, has no tradition of the event.
     About the close of her administratorship, probably in 1677, the record says: "There are five children left of Sydrack," (or Shadrach) and Elizabeth Treadway (or Tredaway) Habgood.¹¹
     "Capt. Thomas Wheeler's Narrative of an Expedition with Capt. Edward Hutchinson into the Nipmuck Country, and to Quabaog, now Brookfield, Mass., first published 1675," can be found in New Hampshire Historical Society Collections, 2:5-23.¹²