17. Hannah Duston was memorialized by the State of New Hampshire in 1874
As noted, the site of the actual escape executed by Hannah took place on an island (or perhaps on shore nearby) in the Merrimack River in what is today New Hampshire. In 1874 a stonecutter in Lowell, Massachusetts was commissioned by the legislature of New Hampshire to create a statue of Hannah Duston. The stonecutter, William Andrews, had no idea what Hannah looked like, nor a physical description to guide him as he crafted what is purportedly her image out of marble. Undaunted, he created a marble icon of Hannah, which was erected on Boscawen Island, which sits where the Merrimack and Contoocook Rivers join, forever designating it as the site where Hannah’s heroism was demonstrated.
The island is today the Hannah Duston Memorial State Historic Site, and usurps to New Hampshire a colonial heroine who rightfully belongs to Massachusetts, according to some. The statue was the first to be erected by New Hampshire using public funds, rather than money raised privately, and is said by some to be the first ever erected to honor a woman in the United States. Andrews paid service to the Hannah Duston legend by depicting her in marble bearing the scalps of the Indians which she had heroically slain. Her other hand holds the axe with which she dispatched the savages, rather than the knife with which she would have taken the scalps. The entire monument, statue and pedestal, stands over thirty feet in height.