but she’s still an infant. Believe me, Laura, this is what your mother wanted.”
How could that be? Over the past few days Mama had told her again and again how proud she was of the way her eldest daughter had taken over the care of the baby when she herself got sick. “A real little mother, that’s what you are, Laura dear.”
Was it only a week ago that Laura had sat beside the big four-poster bed, squeezing cool water from a rag and laying it on her mother’s fevered brow? “There, child,” Elizabeth had said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You’ve done enough.” Gently, she took Laura’s hand away. “You’ve rocked Abigail to sleep. Just leave the cloth in the wash dish; I can reach it. Take the little girls out for some air. Please, dear. Papa’s home now.”
“It’s cold this morning.” Laura’s father spoke from the doorway.
“The girls all have warm scarves and mittens, Thomas.” Elizabeth gave a rasping cough. “Bundle them up, Laura dear, and take them out. For a little bit.”
Mrs. Daniel Nash made her way down the path to the front gate where the horse and cart were waiting. Papa had gone out first to load Abigail’s cradle, and now he stood in the road, talking to Uncle Daniel.
Laura snatched her shawl off the peg. If she hurried she could say one last good-bye to her baby sister, kiss again the rosy lips, and breathe in the baby’s sweet, milky scent.
“Run up and check that we haven’t forgotten anything, Laura.” Papa came striding back, turning her around, steering her inside, and closing the door.
But the corner that had been Abigail’s for six short months in her parents’ upstairs bedroom was bare, and when Laura came back down, the horse and the cart and its three occupants had left.
On February 28, 1775, in Great Barrington, Berkshire County, in the colony of Massachusetts, Thomas Ingersoll had married Elizabeth (Betsy) Dewey, who was just seventeen. Seven months later, on September 13, 1775, Elizabeth gave birth to the couple’s first child, a baby girl they named Laura.
Thomas Ingersoll, the father of the girl who would be Laura Ingersoll Secord, was the fifth generation of his family to live in the colony of Massachusetts. The first Ingersoll to set foot on the shores of North America was Richard, coming from Bedfordshire, England, to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1629.
Thomas was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1749, moving to Great Barrington the year before his marriage to Elizabeth. The town, close to the border of the colony of New York, had been settled in 1724 by one hundred families from Westfield. The family of Laura’s young mother had also come from Westfield, and Elizabeth, born January 28, 1758, was the daughter of Israel Dewey.
In 1775, Thomas Ingersoll bought a small piece of land with a house on it that, according to some sources, had been built by a man named Daniel Rathbun. Other sources state that the property had been left to Thomas by his grandfather, and that the building on the land had once been a family cottage that young Thomas had enjoyed visiting while he still lived in Westfield.
Already a successful merchant, Thomas Ingersoll set up business in Great Barrington as a hatter — making, selling, and repairing hats. In 1782 he would buy another strip of land to increase the size of his property, and he built a larger home to house his growing family. The house sat on the crest of five acres that rolled gently down to the Housatonic River.
The Housatonic, meaning “place or river beyond the mountains,” had been given its name by the Mohicans, a Native American tribe that came over from the Hudson River Valley to use the area as a summer hunting ground. Later, English settlers harnessed the river to power sawmills, gristmills, and to run the furnaces for the working of iron.
The Housatonic River begins its journey of 149 miles in southwestern Massachusetts. As it flows toward Great Barrington it is narrow and swift, dropping several elevations before emerging from the Berkshire Hills.
The Ingersoll home on the main street of the town was a large house, and it was filled with comfortable furnishings befitting a family of privilege. Photographs show the house shaded by mature trees. There is a porch along the right side with a single window above it. A kitchen and servants’ quarters for the elderly couple who had worked for the family for many years were later added to the back of the house, and off to the right sat Thomas’s shop.
In April 1775, a few months before Laura’s birth, the American Revolution had erupted in Massachusetts, with battles in Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill.
At the time, America consisted of thirteen colonies: Massachusetts and Maine being one, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In every colony the conflict divided families, some siding with the “colonial patriots” and others with the British Loyalists. It was impossible to remain neutral.
Thomas Ingersoll had no grudge against his Loyalist neighbours, but because he wanted to protect his property and his business from harsh British laws, he chose to fight on the side of the patriots. Before long his young wife would become used to having him march off to daily arms drills while the drums of war grew louder.
One of Thomas’s relatives, David Ingersoll, a magistrate and lawyer in Great Barrington, remained a Loyalist, and like many who sided with the British he was victimized by unruly mobs of patriots who took the law into their own hands. After being forcibly driven from his home, he was seized and taken to prison in Connecticut. His house was vandalized, attacked by both swords and hatchets, and all his property destroyed. Eventually, David Ingersoll fled to England.
Anyone caught helping a Loyalist to escape was himself fined or imprisoned, and citizens were paid to turn in their neighbours. Some Loyalists suffered the cruel humiliation of tarring and feathering or were forced to ride a rail through town, which meant sitting upright astride a narrow rail that was carried on the shoulders of two men.
The records of Great Barrington for the year 1776 list Thomas Ingersoll as the town constable and tax collector. When Great Barrington’s militia was consolidated into one company in October 1777, Thomas was commissioned second lieutenant under Captain Silas Goodrich. He became captain of the company in October 1781, after marching forty of his men out in response to an alarm raised at Stillwater, New York, the town where part of the Battle of Saratoga had taken place in June of that year.
During Laura’s earliest years, spent amidst the noise and confusion of war, her father was often away from home, and the little girl grew close to her gentle mother. A second child, Elizabeth Franks, was born October 17, 1779, and two years later a third daughter, Mira (also spelled Myra), was born. Daughter number four, Abigail, would arrive on the scene in September 1783.
Britain’s national debt had doubled after its victory over France and Spain in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Now that those two countries no longer posed a threat to the Americans, Britain felt the grateful colonists should help pay more of the cost of colonial government.
The British parliament passed the Revenue Act of 1764 to raise customs revenues, and the same year the Currency Act prohibited the use of colonial paper money. Revenue collectors were appointed to enforce the tax laws, and trade with foreign countries was restricted.
The Stamp Act was passed by British parliament in 1765 to levy internal taxes, and the Quartering Act forced Americans to pay for housing British troops. It went on and on.
The colonies opposed these policies that were set by a government three thousand miles away, and the cry went out: “no taxation without representation.” American merchants joined
