Born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on December 23, 1657, Hannah Emerson was married to Thomas Duston (or Dustin or Dustan) in December 1677. During King William╒s War (1689╨1697) the French under Count Frontenac frequently incited Indians to raid English settlements, and on March 15, 1697, a band of Abnakis made such a raid on Haverhill. Twenty-seven women and children were killed in the raid. Hannah Duston, less than a week from childbed, was captured along with her infant daughter and a nurse, Mary Neff; Thomas Duston managed to escape with their seven other children. The baby was killed by an Indian, who bashed its head against a tree, and Hannah and Mary were marched northward by their captors. After a hundred miles they paused at an island (afterward known as Penacook or Dustin Island) in the confluence of the Merrimack and Contoocook rivers above the site of present-day Concord, New Hampshire. Here the two women were held and told that after a short journey to a further village they would be stripped and scourged. On the island they met Samuel Lennardson (or Leonardson), an English boy captured more than a year before. On the night of March 30 Hannah and the boy secured hatchets and attacked their captors; ten were killed, nine by Hannah. The three captives then stole a canoe and escaped, but Hannah turned back and scalped the ten corpses so as to have proof of the exploit. They reached Haverhill safely and on April 21 presented their story to the General Court in Boston, which awarded 25 pounds to Hannah Duston and half that sum to each of her companions. Hannah Duston lived out the rest of her life quietly, moving after the death of her husband in 1732 to Ipswich, Massachusetts, where she died, probably in early 1736.
