Susannah Willard Johnson was captured with her family during an Abenaki raid on Charlestown, New Hampshire, in August 1754, shortly after the outbreak of the French and Indian War. The raid occurred during a period of escalating tensions between European colonial powers and Native American nations in North America, with the Abenaki conducting military operations against English settlements in New England.
Following their capture, Johnson and her family were marched for weeks through the wilderness of New England and Quebec before arriving at the Abenaki village in Saint-François-du-Lac, Quebec. The family was initially held for ransom but was subsequently sold into slavery to the French, experiencing extended captivity and displacement from their home.
After her release in 1758, Johnson returned to Charlestown and eventually recorded a comprehensive account of her experience. Beginning in 1796, she documented her ordeal, which was first composed by John Curtis Chamberlain using Johnson's oral testimony and notes and published in small circulation that year. Subsequent editions were revised and edited by Johnson herself, appearing in 1807 and posthumously in 1814. Her memoir became among the most widely read and studied captivity narratives, despite not being the first work in the genre, and was republished numerous times in the years following its initial publication, contributing significantly to the historical record of colonial warfare and captivity experiences.
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
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