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Hannah Hendee

Wisdom picks her battles in matters of principle and fights them fiercely. May I illustrate?

October 16, 1780: A band of 300 Indians under the command of a British captain named Horton moved down the White River near South Royalton, Vermont; capturing, killing, and terrorizing the local inhabitants. The Hendee family was warned of the oncoming mobbers. The father set out to warn others of the danger while Mrs. Hendee took Michael, her seven year old son, and a younger daughter and fled into the woods.

As they ran, they came headlong into a band of the mobbers. An Indian stepped from behind a tree, grabbed her son and wrestled him away. She demanded to know what they were going to do with him.

One of them who spoke English replied, “Make a soldier of him.”

They dragged the sobbing boy away. Mrs. Hendee made her way toward the road carrying her tiny daughter who was screaming in panicked terror.

As she traveled down the road, surely as heartsick and grief-stricken as any mother could be, she was suddenly filled with a surge of steeled resolve and a fierce determination. They could not, they would not keep her little boy!

She went back and faced Captain Horton. Oblivious to the looming danger, she demanded of him her little boy. Horton responded that he could not control the Indians, and it was not his concern what they did anyway.

Angry and indignant, Hannah Hendee said, “You are their commander, and they must and will obey you. The curse will fall upon you for whatever crime they commit, and all the innocent blood they shall shed will be found in your skirts when the secrets of men’s hearts shall be made known, and it will cry for vengeance upon your head!”

Her son was brought in. Hannah grabbed his hand and refused to let go. One of the men standing nearby grabbed her son and jerked him away from her, threatening her with a cutlass. Defiantly, she faced him and grabbed the boy again, telling them that she would follow them every step of the way to Canada if she had to. She would never give up; they would not have her son.

How does the story end? Now – later that day, the British soldiers and the Indians set out on their march with their captives. Hannah Hendee left that camp and crossed the river for home. But when she did, it was with her daughter and Michael, her son, and eight other little boys she had rescued from a sure and certain death.

Has this kind of will to fight died in America today? No, I think not. 

Is there a need to be roused to fight today? There is! 

For what should we be roused to fight? Please hear my answer: Our God, our religion, our freedom, our peace, our wives, our children, and our families. 

Lord help us that we may be roused to fight!

Sources:

Adapted from Evelyn Wood Lovejoy, History of Royalton, Vermont (Burlington, Vermont, Free Press Printing Company, 1911) cited in The Spirit of America, Bookcraft Inc. Salt Lake City, Utah, 1998, pp. 43-46.

https://www.hhhistory.com/2024/05/heroines-of-frontier-part-2-women-who.html