John Williams (Reverend)

John Williams (10 December 1664 – 12 June 1729) was a New England Puritan minister who became famous for The Redeemed Captive, his account of his captivity by the Mohawk after the Deerfield Massacre during Queen Anne's War. He was an uncle of the notable pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards.
His first wife Eunice Mather was a niece of Rev Increase Mather and a cousin of Rev. Cotton Mather and was related to Rev. John Cotton.

John Williams was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1664. Son of Samuel Williams (1632–98) and Theoda Park (1637–1718). His grandfather Robert had immigrated there from England about 1638. John had local schooling. Later he attended Harvard College, where he graduated in 1683.

Williams was ordained to the ministry in 1688, and settled as the first pastor in Deerfield. The frontier town in western Massachusetts was vulnerable to the attacks of the Native Americans and their French allies from Canada. The local Pocumtuc resisted the colonists' encroachment on their hunting grounds and agricultural land. In the early 18th century, French and English national competition resulted in frequent raids between New England and Canada, with each colonial power allying with various Native American tribes to enlarge their fighting forces.

In 1702, with the outbreak of Queen Anne's War, New England colonists had taken prisoner a successful French pirate, Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste. To gain his return, the French governor of Canada planned to raid Deerfield, in alliance with the Mohawk of the Iroquois, Abenaki from northeast New England and the Pocumtuc. They intended to capture a prisoner of equal value to exchange. Raiding Deerfield, they captured Williams, prominent in the community, and more than 100 other English settlers.

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