Misc. Notes
According to Shattuck’s
Memorials36, “Isaac [Lakin] was one of the six companions of John Chamberlain, from Groton, in the Pigwacket Fight, and was wounded on that occasion.” A footnote follows on the ancestry of Isaac Lakin; see also the corrections to that footnote on Shattuck’s p. 387. The battle at Pigwacket, commonly called “Lovewell’s Fight” after Capt. John Lovewell of Dunstable who commanded the company of 46 colonists, took place on 8 May 1725 on the shores of what is now Lovewell’s Pond in Fryeburg, Maine. Lovewell’s company went to suppress the Indians in the region and hoped to collect bounties on Indian scalps, but instead was ambushed and Lovewell himself and eight of his soldiers were killed. Lovewell’s Fight was famous throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and much was written about it. Green’s
Indian Wars5 gives a comprehensive history of the Fight; Longfellow and others commemorated the Fight in verse (see
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/1094/lovewell.htm).
Green’s
Indian Wars77 also recounts the following story about Isaac Lakin, as told by a Mr. Charles Woolley: “Lakin lived in a log-house near the Nashua River, in the north part of the town. The house had no glass windows, but had shutters instead, and a door that swung on wooden hinges. One day an Indian was seen lurking about the house, and hiding behind the stumps, apparently bent on mischief. Lakin seized his gun, and, standing at a crack in the shutters, told his wife to swing the door so that it would creak on its hinges. Hearing the noise, and seeing the door open, the Indian sprang from behind a stump, and started for the house, when Lakin fired and shot him dead. Seeing no signs of other Indians, after dark he dug a hole and buried him.”
There is confusion in Shattuck’s Memorials about this family (see his footnote and corrections at end of book). More details to be entered.