Northampton massacre

In December 1755, settlers of European descent in Northampton County, Pennsylvania endured a wave of violent raids that became known as the Northampton massacre. Fear spread quickly among the local population, and colonists pressed Pennsylvania's colonial government for armed protection in response. On the 10th and 11th of that month, Native American fighters, with reported numbers ranging widely from as few as five to as many as two hundred, descended on the Hoeth family farm. Frederick Hoeth and his wife lost their lives there, while three of their children were seized and carried off. Daniel Brodhead's Plantation was also set ablaze during the assault, and roughly a dozen more farms in the region suffered the same fate. Destruction extended to the Moravian mission at Dansbury, which was leveled as well.

Accounts of the toll vary. One version puts the number of dead at 78, alongside the destruction of about 45 structures, while other sources placed the death count as high as 89. In the wake of this devastation, Pennsylvania's provincial authorities turned to Benjamin Franklin, tasking him with planning a network of stockade forts and blockhouses meant to shield settlements across central and eastern parts of the colony. Once established, this line of fortifications provided settlers with a measure of safety throughout the French and Indian War.

Background

Tensions between colonial settlers and the Lenape people, along with the Minisink, a Lenape phratry, had been souring for years, largely as a result of the 1737 Walking Purchase. Through that arrangement, officials of the Province of Pennsylvania secured a deal granting them lands along the upper Delaware River, territory the Lenape regarded as rightfully their own. Some evidence suggests the Pennsylvania government engineered this outcome through deliberate trickery. As a consequence, the majority of the Lenape found themselves pushed westward into other parts of Pennsylvania.

Matters grew more strained in Northampton County on 24 November 1755, after residents of the adjoining Province of New Jersey seized fifteen Minisink individuals, three men alongside a dozen women and children, and hauled them off to the jail in Easton. Why exactly these people were held remains uncertain, though the townsfolk of Easton feared such an action might trigger retaliation from the Indians. By the following day, authorities had moved the captives to a different jail across the border in New Jersey.

Attacks

Word of the violence reached Timothy Horsfield, a Bethlehem magistrate, through a letter penned by the Moravian bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg on December 11, 1755. Horsfield passed this correspondence along to Governor Robert Hunter Morris. Spangenberg's account told of roughly 200 Native American fighters striking numerous farmsteads, leaving several colonists dead and around a dozen homesteads in ruins. Some residents perished trapped within structures consumed by fire. More than three hundred refugees streamed toward the safety of Bethlehem and Easton.

Two weeks later, on December 25, the Pennsylvania Gazette printed correspondence from the Pennsylvania Commissioners detailing portions of the violence and outlining intentions to construct defensive forts and blockhouses throughout the region. Their letter painted a grim picture: the countryside stretching fifty miles above the town lay largely abandoned and devastated, with only the Dupuy family and four neighboring households refusing to retreat. Most residents had crossed into the Jerseys for safety. Captives were rare, since attackers slaughtered nearly everyone they encountered regardless of age or gender. Commerce had ceased entirely, and the handful of townspeople remaining faced starvation alongside deep despair. Captains Aston and Trump were preparing to march toward Dupuy's that same day to erect two blockhouses guarding the territory between that settlement and Gnadenhütten, construction that displaced families said would prompt their return.

A separate accounting from the Union Iron Works in Jersey, dated December 20, tallied 78 deaths and roughly 45 destroyed structures, though alternate figures place the death toll as high as 89.

Among the hardest hit was the Hoeth farmstead along Pohopoco Creek, known then as Heads or Hoeth's Creek, where only two people lived to tell the tale. Michael Hoeth, sometimes recorded as Michael Hute, provided sworn testimony to Judge William Parsons on December 12. He recounted that the previous Wednesday evening around six o'clock, roughly five Native American attackers descended upon Frederick Hoeth's home, situated some twelve miles east of Gnadenhütten. The family had been eating supper when gunfire tore through the walls, wounding a woman before a subsequent volley killed Frederick Hoeth outright. Additional shots sent everyone capable of fleeing running from the house. Attackers then torched the dwelling, mill, and stables. Hoeth's wife sought refuge in the bakehouse, which was likewise set ablaze; she fled through the flames with severe burns, staggered into nearby water, and died there. Her body was later found with the abdomen cut open and otherwise mistreated. A daughter was killed and scalped, and Hute believed three additional children from the household burned to death. Three of Hoeth's daughters, along with another woman, went missing and were presumed taken captive. During the fighting, one attacker died and another sustained wounds.

The Gazette published on December 18 a separate deposition, this one from George Caspar Heiss, taken before Timothy Horsfield. Heiss, employed as a smith, numbered among the farm's two survivors; his wife died in the assault and his home burned to the ground. He resisted the attackers before ultimately escaping alongside Michael Hoeth.

Mariana, one of Frederick Hoeth's daughters, was seized together with two sisters and transported to Tioga, Pennsylvania. Following her escape in 1760, she recorded her memories of that night. Her family had gathered for their evening meal when nearby gunshots startled them. Her father, puzzled that hostile forces would be so close, went to check the front entrance, only to be shot down instantly by Indians who rushed him. Witnessing his death, the family fled without hesitation through the rear door. Near a small stream close to their home, her mother collapsed dead just before reaching the water, struck by a bullet. Her youngest sister died in the same moment. Mariana and her remaining two sisters were then captured and hauled away by their attackers.

Elsewhere, the Dansbury Moravian Mission owed its existence to land donated by Daniel Brodhead II following his and his wife's conversion to the Moravian church. Missionary James Burnside constructed a modest log cabin there in 1744, naming the site after "Dan" Brodhead. Nine years later

Memorialization

A marker honoring the Dansbury Moravian mission stands in Stroudsburg, placed there in 1947 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The marker's location lies close to the cemetery associated with the mission.

Aftermath

Coming so soon after both the Great Cove and Gnadenhütten massacres, these raids pushed Pennsylvania's provincial government to act, and officials moved to erect a line of forts stretching along the western frontier from the New Jersey line all the way southwest to the Maryland border. December saw the completion of Fort Hamilton in Stroudsburg alongside Fort Depuy near Smithfield Township, while Fort Norris, Fort Allen and Fort Franklin followed in the early months of 1756. Beyond these official structures, settlers themselves put up and staffed a number of smaller defenses, including blockhouses and fortified homes scattered throughout the region.

The following June, warriors returned to Brodhead's plantation and burned it to the ground.

According to what Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger later recounted, they encountered three sisters during their time as captives, women identified as coming "from the Blue Mountains, Mary, Caroline and Catherine Hoeth," and this meeting took place sometime before the pair made their escape on 16 March 1759. Mary, also called Mariana, eventually fled captivity as well, bringing her infant son with her back to Bethlehem. Decades later, on 31 October 1896, her own account of captivity appeared in print in The Monroe Democrat.