0ctober 1st, 1747, Peter Burvee was taken prisoner near the fort, and went into his second captivity from the same spot, having been one of De Vaudreuil’s prisoners two years before.

August 2nd, 17 48, the fort was commanded by Captain Ephriam Williams, the founder of Williams College, whose grant of two hundred acres of land in East Hoosac has been already mentioned. Four men were fired upon while outside the fort. Captain Williams sallied out with thirty men, and after driving the enemy about a furlong a party of fifty Indians in ambuscade suddenly fired and endeavored to cut off his retreat. By a quick movement he regained the fort, having one man, a Mr. Abbott, killed, and two, Lieutenant Hawley and Ezekiel Wells, wounded. At once a large body of three hundred Indians and thirty French advanced and opened their fire on the fort. After sustaining a sharp fire from the garrison for two hours, the enemy despaired from effecting anything, and drew off with their killed and wounded.

On the cessation of hostilities, in the fall of 1748, the forces on the frontier were reduced, and a small garrison left at Fort Massachusetts.

When the last French and Indian war broke out, in 1754, immediate measures of defense were adopted by the General Court of this state. Fort Massachusetts was strengthened and the garrison increased, making it the foster mother of the infant settlements in the town, now known as North Adams, Adams and Williamstown. The command was continued to Ephraim Williams, with a colonel’s commission in the provincial army of 3000 men, which undertook the expedition to Crown Point.

At Fort Massachusetts he met his old companions in arms, and gave them his last words of council and encouragement. Tradition informs us that at the parting interview some slight expressions fell from his lips of the purpose to leave to them, in the event of his death, more substantial tokens of his regard. This generous purpose was carried out by his bequest of property to open a free school in the west township--now Williamstown; a handfull of good seed which sprung up in the noble harvest of Williams College.

After the lamented death of Colonel Williams, in battle with the French and Indians under Dieskau, near the southern extremity of Lake George, September 8, 1755, the oversight of Fort Massachusetts was committed, it is believed, to Captain Wyman. He is known to have lived in the house within the pickets, and to have occupied the land reserved for the use of the fort.

June 7, 1756 a body of the enemy came again to this fort. Benjamin King and a man named Meacham were killed.

The garrison was probably withdrawn and the fortification began to decay immediately after the conquest of Canada, in 1759. In the time of the revolution it Was a ruin, many of the solid old timbers having been taken to erect less patriotic structures.

Tradition states that three-quarters of an acre of land was inclosed within the stockade, and that there were five or six blockhouses, with families residing, therein.

The site of the fort — as everybody knows — is on a slight rise of land in the beautiful meadow now owned by Mrs. Bradford Harrison. A thrifty elm tree marks the spot. It was planted in the spring of 1858 by Prof. A. L. Perry and some of the students of Williams college.

Captain Clement Harrison, who purchased in 1830 of the, administrators of Isreal Jones, Esq. the farm on which his grandson now resides, discovered in his work of renovating the soil many relics of the fort, and munitions of the old, bloody times of deep significance. Hundreds of bullets, coroded and turned white, Indian arrow-heads curiously carved of flint, a metal tomahawk, the muzzle of a small cannon, several bombshells, pieces of pots and kettles, broken bottles in which the pretended “good liquor” of former days was perhaps contained, a silver spoon with a very large and nearly round bowl, strongly-made but badly rusted jackknives and cartloads of brickbats are among thede curious and suggestive mementoes. Captain Harrison presented many of them to chance visitors, and a considerable variety to the-cabinet at Williams College, where they attract tile reverent gaze of all who have any sentiment of the hero-worship in their nature.

Captain Harrison, from the indications discovered in clearing up that part of his farm where the fort stood, was of the opinion that there were six different houses, or log cabins, within the inclosure, scattered three or four rods apart and that the inclosure may have been double the size mentioned above, or one and a half to two acres. Solid, large beams of pine timber were found in one place, and masses of brick and brickbats where the six chimneys had stood.

Southwest of the fort was the burial ground. Though the graves were long since leveled, in the summer of 1852 a headstone was