History of Dunstable, Massachusetts, USA

including the Massachusetts towns of Dunstable, Pepperell, Townsend and Tyngsborough, the New Hampshire towns of Hudson, Nashua and Hollis, and parts of other towns as well.

SOURCE: History of the Old Township of Dunstable: Including Nashua, Nashville, Hollis, Hudson, Litchfield, and Merrimac, N. H.; Dunstable and Tyngsborough, Mass., by Charles J. Fox, Nashua: Charles T. Gill, Publisher, 1846.
(pp. 62-63)

". . . In the summer of 1691 the war was renewed and the Indian ravages recommenced. Small scouting parties attacked many of the neighboring settlements. . . On the evening of Sept. 2, 1691, they suddenly appeared in this town, and attacked the house of Joseph HASSELL, senior. Hassell, his wife Anna HASSELL, their son Benjamin HASSELL, and Mary MARKS, daughter of Patrick MARKS, were slain. There is a tradition that Mary MARKS was killed between the Hollis road and the canal about a quarter of a mile above the Nashua Corporation.
They were all buried upon the little knoll where Hassell's house stood, and a rough stone without inscription points out the spot.* A second stone stood there until within a few years, having been preserved for so long a...

Dunstable, Massachusetts
Middlesex county. Nashua river waters the N.W. part of the town, and passes into Nashua, N.H. The surface of the town is level;—some part of it is good land, but generally it is light and sandy. It has no manufactures, and only 315 sheep. Population, 1837, 570. Incorporated 1683. Dunstable lies 27 miles N.W. from Boston, 18 N. by W. from Concord, and 6 S. from Nashua.

Dunstable, though now a small town, once comprehended Pepperell, Tyngsborough, and much land that is now in New Hampshire.

This town was the home of Captain Lovewell, the celebrated leader in that bloody fight with the Indians on the borders of what is called Lovell's Pond, in Fryeburgh, Maine. Both leaders and nearly all their followers were slain, but the whites were victorious.

Distance from Concord, 18 miles; from Boston, 37.

This town was incorporated in 1663. This is a small township; the land is rather level, and. the soil is light and sandy. Nashua river forms the western border of the town, and then passes into New Hampshire. There are three churches, 1 Congregational, 1 Baptist, and 1 Universalist. Population, 570. Distance, 18 miles from Concord, 6 south of Nashua village, and 37 from Boston.

Capt. John Lovell, (or Lovewell, as his name was formerly written,) the hero of Pigwacket, and six of his men, were from this town. He had distinguished himself in several bloody fights with the Indians, and taken several scalps, for which he received a bounty of 100 pounds each, from the treasury of the colony. In Feb. 1724, he and his followers surprised and killed a party of ten Indians, as they were sitting around a fire, and received 1,000 pounds for their scalps at Boston! In April, 1725, Capt. Lovell and Lieut. Joseph Farwell, Lieut. Jonathan Robbins, Ensign John Harwood, Sergeant Noah Johnson. Robert ...

Dunstable, a post-township of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, 30 miles N. W. from Boston, on the W. side of Merrimack river. Population, 590.