perfectly adaptable to the above described route.CHAPTER XV
TOWNS
GRAFTON.--HASSANAMESIT.--WESTBORO.--JACK STRAW.--WAHGINNACUT.--HOPKINTON
GRAFTON
The Bay Path entered the town of Grafton, by the way of Millbury Street; and continued over Chestnut Hill, probably, and made use of the location of that old road, that entered Westboro near the southwest corner of the town.
This town was called Hassanamisco by the Indians, and went by that name until 1735, when it was incorporated and named Grafton.
It was one of the reservations for the Christianized Indians set off by the provincial government, upon the petition of Rev. John Eliot, in 1654.
In 1674, Rev. John Eliot and Maj. Gookin visited all the Christianized Indians of the Nipmuck country; and of this place; Gookin says: "Hassanamesit signifieth a place of small stones, it lieth about thirty-eight miles from Boston west-southerly, and is about two miles eastward of Nipmuck river (Blackstone) and near unto the old roadway to Connecticut."
Another old record says: "The people were well known to the English so long as Connecticut road lay that way."
No Indian town gave stronger assurance of success than Hassanamesit; at that time it had become the central point of civilization and Christianity to the whole Nipmuck country.
WESTBOROUGH
The location of the Bay Path in Westborough is described by Harriette Merrifield Forbes in "The Hundredth Town," 1889, as follows:
"The part in town which can still be followed begins at the barn belonging to Jacob Mortimer on the edge of Hopkinton. For a quarter of a mile or more it is a good cartpath, easily gone over by wagons. Going the length of Mr. Mortimer's farm, most of the way through a wood-lot, it passes northeast of the Lovell Miller place, crosses the road near J. A. Parker's cider-mill, and is lost near Rev. H. W. Fay's. Judging from its course on the old maps, it went over Mt. Pleasant, and formed one of the two roads entering Hassanamisco a hundred and fifty years ago."
The old road in Grafton, that enters Westborough near the southwest corner of the town, is found to be perfectly adaptable to the above described route.
Jack Straw, so prominently associated with the first introduction to the English people at the Bay, of a knowledge of this long Indian path, had his residence near it in this town.
Judge W. T. Forbes, in his historical sketch of the town, published in J. W. Lewis' County History, says,--
"In 1631 a company of Connecticut Indians traveled from near Hartford to Boston, to secure the aid of the English settlers against their powerful Indian enemies, and secure a colony on their river. An historian says they secured the services of Jack Straw and Sagamore John, as the former Indian spoke English and the latter lived between the Charles and Mystic rivers.
The following is Governor Winthrop's account of their visit:
"April 4, 1631, Wahginnacut, a sagamore upon the river Quonehtacut, which lies west of Naraganset, came to the governor at Boston, with John Sagamore & Jack Straw (an Indian who had lived in England and had served Sir Walter Raleigh, and was now turned Indian again) and divers of their sannops and brought a letter to the governor from Mr. Endicott to this effect:
That the said Wahginnacut was very desirous to have some Englishmen to come plant in his country and offered to find them corn, and give them yearly eighty skins of beaver, and that the country was very fruitful &c and wished that there might be two men sent with him to see the country. The governor entertained them at dinner, but would send none with him. He discovered that the said sagamore is a very treacherous man, and at war with the Pekoath (a far greater sagamore). His country is not about five days' journey from us by land."
They subsequently went to Plymouth, and, according to Gov. Bradford's account, received a more favorable reception there.
In 1728, Jack Straw's Hill and other farms in that vicinity were annexed to Westborough.
Jack Straw's Hill is on the east side of Ruggles' Street, about a quarter of a mile beyond the house of N. M. Knowlton. An old cellar on the summit of the hill, a few rods from the street, indicates the spot where, within the memory of our oldest inhabitants, stood a small deserted house. Through the valley on the east flows Jackstraw Brook.
The history of this spot, and of the famous Indian whose name it bears, indicates the reason why this hill, so inconspicuous among the larger elevations about it, has retained its name for more than two hundred years. Nearly a half century before white people lived there, it named the country around, so that a grant of three hundred acres of land was said to be "in a place called Jack Straw's Hill."
It bears the name of the first Christian Indian in the English Colonies, a man for several years in the service of Sir Walter Raleigh, and baptized by his order one of the two Indians presented by that gallant explorer to the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, together with a large pearl, as illustrations of what the newly-named Virginia could produce.
Made king of a petty domain near Roanoke, N. C., "always faithful" as a scout, interpreter, and guide "as an Englishman," his Indian name, Manteo, is now borne by that county-seat of Dare County, N. C., and is situated on Roanoke Island.
After the abandonment of the Roanoke Colony by the English, he appears to have left his home, and served as interpreter for traders and explorers along the coast as far north as Maine.
The other Indian, Wanchesi, who accompanied him on his voyage to England, returned to Roanoke, and with a year joined a part of hostiles, who killed one of the settlers, named "Master Howe."
The friendly Indians were desirous of gaining English names for themselves and their children, but they did not always understand their significance.
In 1623, "not long after the overthrow of the first plantation in the Bay, Capt. Lovitt came to ye contry." At the time of his being at Pascataway (near Portsmouth, N. H.) he and Mr. Tomson, who were exploring and trading along the coast, engaged two Indians. A spectator, perhaps observing the responsible duties assigned them, said: "How can you trust these Salvages? Call the name of one Watt Tyler and ye other Jack Straw after ye names of the two greatest Rebells that ever were in England."
So Jack Straw received his English name, not realizing, probably, that his namesake was one of the leaders in the socialistic rebellion in the fourteenth century, who head was affixed to a pike in the city of London.
The exact time when he located here is not know. About 1650, the apostle to the Indians, Eliot, had gathered the scattered Indians of this vicinity into the villages of Marlborough, Hopkinton and Grafton.
This hill was not far from the earliest Indian trail which was the only highway from Connecticut to the Massachusetts Bay, and called the "Bay Path."
The old name of Jack Straw is now applied only to the hill, pasture and brook, and is now used as one word, "Jackstraw."
HOPKINTON
It may be noted that in many towns along the way, the first settlers and promoters located their meetinghouse and town center on the Bay Path.
This was clearly so in Grafton, Oxford, Charlton, Sturbridge and Brimfield. 
In the last town named, they at first laid out an eight rod road across the path on Tower Hill for their village site, but subsequently built the meetinghouse a mile and a half southerly on the border of "the plains."
The eastward trend of the path in Westborough leads northerly of Whitehall Pond and reservoir, taking the present road to Hopkinton Centre; thence to Ashland.
The following is a quotation from "The Hundredth Town."
"In 1675 a party of eleven Indians attacked the house of Mr. Thomas Eames, of Framingham, he being absent, killed his wife and some of his children, and caried the rest away. In this company there were three--a father and two sons--being the name of Jackstraw. They lived in Hopkinton. They were probably son and grandsons of the Westborough Jack Straw.
They were tried, convicted, and executed, in spite of the pathetic petition which they addressed to the Court of Assistants, in which they said: 'You were pleased (of your own benignity), not from any desert of ours, to give forth your declaration, dated the 19th of June, wherein you were pleased to promise life and liberty unto such of your enemies as did come in and submit themselves to your mercy, and order, and disposal;' and they further claimed that they took no active part in the massacre."
Sewell, in his Journal, thus makes record of their death: "September 21, 1776, Stephen Goble, of Concord, was executed for the murder of Indians. Three Indians for firing Eames, his house, and murder. The weather was cloudy and rawly cold, though little or no rain. Mr. Mighil prayed; four others sat on the gallows,--two men and two impudent women, one of which, at least, laughed on the gallows, as several testified." (Temple's "History of Framingham," p. 78.)
This seems to have been the last mention of the Jack Straws in this vicinity.
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