Rebecca Kellogg Ashley, 1695-1757. From Deerfield to Onaquaga

by Barbara L. Covey

Anyone interested in the 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, by the French and Indians will want to add this unique account of the part-Indian children of captives Joanna and Rebecca Kellogg to their library. Rebecca Kellogg and her family lived in a world of many contrasts: New France vs. New England, Iroquois vs. Delaware, Presbyterians vs. Moravians. She was born in New England, grew up and had children in New France (Canada), returned to the English colonies as an adult in 1727 and lived in Massachusetts. Rebecca Kellogg Ashley, identified as the first white woman in Broome County, died in New York and was buried at Windsor (aka Onaquaga), New York. Her simple stone calls her “Wausaunia.” She was interpreter to missionaries in 1748 and 1753. Her five sons were born in Canada to a part-Indian father and four married Delaware Indians; the fifth married a Mohawk Indian. If you can trace your ancestors back to New England, you may find a relative among those killed or captured in the Deerfield 1704 raid. Among myriad Deerfield descendants are people descended from the well respected and highly visible brothers of Joanna and Rebecca (also 1704 captives): Captain Joseph Kellogg (who married Rachel Devotion) and Captain Martin Kellogg (who married Dorothy Chester). The mother of the captives was Sarah Dickinson Kellogg. The Dickinsons, Devotions, Chesters, and Ashleys were connections of the “Connecticut River Lords”-the Williamses, Edwardses and Stoddards. 2008, 5½x8½, paper, index, 178 pp.. ISBN: 0788446770