Wilmont Kreis

More Andrew questions: Were his ancestors really French Huguenots?

We really don’t know, but a many of these French Protestants fled to England during the wars of religion and many became Puritan and ultimately fled to the colonies. Francis Marion who was the inspiration for the movie, THE PATRIOT, came from such a family. Since Andrew had spent significant portions of his life in all three of the cultures of the time and place: Puritan Protestant, Native American and French-Canadian Catholic, he was the ideal person to explain the differences and similarities to Lizzie. Adding French Huguenot made him even more interesting. Next time I’ll leave Andrew for a while to field other questions. Read More 

More who was Andrew Stevens:
If he was not and Indian, what was he?
One of the more recent and certainly most complete academic histories of the Deerfield Raid is CAPTORS AND CAPTIVES… by Haefeli and Sweeney, 2003. I referred to it frequently in researching Lizzie and Andrew’s stories. They propose Andrew was more likely to be a young Puritan boy named Stevens or Stephens taken from Pemaquid, Maine in one of the era’s numerous Indian raids with his older sister, Katharine. This boy was christened Samuel, but it appears he shows up being baptized near Quebec as André. I chose to keep him ‘Andrew’ throughout to avoid confusion. The age and circumstances of this lad seem to match Andrew very well and help solve the mystery about the Indian identity. Read More 

Questions: Shannon asked, “Was Andrew Stevens really an Indian?”

This has been debated by Deerfield scholars for centuries and my views will take a few posts to explain. Two of the early works on Deerfield: C. Alice Baker, TRUE STORIES OF NEW ENGLAND CAPTIVES CARRIED TO CANADA…, 1897, and George Sheldon, A HISTORY OF DEERFIELD MASSACHUSETTS…, 1896, refer to Andrew Stephens (both spellings, Stevens and Stephens, are found) as “The Indian” but they also state this is probably the only case found in the history of Puritan New England. My old professor once told me, if someone describes something that only happened once, the safe bet is that it did not happen at all.
Since both references were penned almost two centuries after the fact, we are forced to ponder: what was the primary source? An astute reader and Deerfield scholar fortunate enough to live in western Massachusetts, has gone to the archives of Deerfield and found a facsimile of Andrew and Elizabeth’s marriage record: a simple listing of names and dates, but next to Andrew’s name is a barely perceptible mark which when scrutinized seems to say INDIAN. I am attaching it. The mark is circled but doesn't show well here (take my word for it). Anyway, it is written with a different instrument and a different style, indicating it was not written at the time of the original document.
So where does this lead us? Was it written ten minutes later, or two-hundred years later??? More to come as the plot thickens—stay tuned. Read More 

WHO WAS ANDREW STEVENS???
Making her way with the friendship of two local girls and the encouragement of an aging school teacher who has learned how to be a literate woman in this land of repression, Lizzie’s big breakthrough comes when she encounter a strange and exciting man. Two of his many qualities not shared or appreciated by the townspeople. Read More