20. Hannah’s legend is a New England and Internet business
In Haverhill, there exists a house known as the Dustin Garrison House, built around 1700, near the site where Hannah was captured in 1697. Some claim that the house was under construction by her husband at the time of the attack on his farm. However, the property records of the town offer no evidence that the house was ever occupied by the Dustons, of whatever spelling. Nonetheless, it uses its name and the notoriety attached as part of its allure to tourists and other visitors. The site of the Hannah Dustin statue in New Hampshire has little to justify its claim as the site of the massacre, but just as little to oppose it, and thus its claim is accepted. Hannah and her legend are a modern business as much as they are a historical legacy.
There is no doubt that Hannah lived in Haverhill, was taken captive, and returned from captivity bearing the scalps of the Indians she and her party had slain. By her own account as recorded by Sewall the Indians killed were not those who had originally seized her; were killed with their own weapons as they slept (with Hannah and her fellow captives unrestrained); and were mostly women and children. Subsequent use of her story by those inclined to reshape it for their own purposes made Hannah’s tale one of the best-known of colonial America’s captivity narratives. But as is all too often the case, the true story of Hannah Duston, however, one spells her last name, is somewhat different from what is widely believed, though no less interesting for that.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives”. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola. 1998
“Cotton Mather and the Emerson Family”. Dustin Griffin, Massachusetts Historical Review. 2014
“Diary of Samuel Sewall”. Samuel Sewall, edited by M. Halsey Thomas. 1973
“A Week on the Concord and Merrimack”. Henry David Thoreau. 1849