John Lovewell was born on October 14, 1691 in that part of Dunstable, Massachusetts, now lying within Nashua, New Hampshire, United States. He was the son of Anna (Hassell) and John Lovewell, who served under Captain Benjamin Church in the "Great Swamp Fight" of 1675.
Career
Lovewell became the owner of a two-hundred-acre farm at Dunstable in 1724. When the town was attacked, his brother-in-law, Josiah Farwell, was one of the few who escaped out of the pursuing company, which was ambushed by the Indians. Soon afterward, Lovewell and others petitioned the Massachusetts government for a commission "to range the woods in order to kill and destroy their enemy Indians". The General Court granted two and a half shillings a day with a bounty for every male Indian scalp. After managing, with a force of thirty recruits, to kill one Indian and capture a boy on December 10, 1724, he was able to raise a company of eighty-seven men for a second expedition. Taking a course along the Merrimac, past Lake Winnepesaukee and nearly to the White Mountains, they found a warm trail and, on February 20, 1725, surprised and killed ten sleeping Indians. On March 10 the company marched in triumph through the streets of Boston.
He raised a third expedition with some difficulty because of the planting season and, advancing with forty-six men into the stronghold of the Pequawkets, on the site of Fryeburg, Maine, he showed himself more daring than prudent. At Lake Ossipee he built a small fort and garrisoned it. With his force reduced to thirty-four, on May 8, he crossed the Saco just above where it enters what is now called Lovewell's Pond. Decoyed by an Indian, the company was ambushed by a band of Pequawkets, and, in the first fire of the enemy, he and several others were killed. The remainder of the force fought stubbornly throughout the day. At evening the Indians withdrew leaving the fallen bodies untouched.
Lovewell and his company were the subjects of balladry even before the full truth of the fight was known. The earliest version of the song was advertised under the title "The Voluntier's March" in the New England Courant for May 31, 1725, and, though no known copy has been preserved, is probably the same ballad as "Lovewell's Fight, " which appeared in the February 1824 issue of Collections, Historical and Miscellaneous, edited by John Farmer and J. B. Moore, and followed closely the account of the battle in Franklin's paper of May 24, 1725. The second known version, also called "Lovewell's Fight, " was printed by Farmer and Moore in their issue for March 1824 and has usually been attributed to Thomas Cogswell Upham, who was at that time a minister at Rochester, New Hampshire.
Achievements
Connections
John Lovewell was married to Hannah. They had two children.