The Deerfield Massacre took place on Feb. 29, 1704, when French and Native American raiders under the command of Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville attacked the English colonial settlement of Deerfield, part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, just before dawn. They burned parts of the town and killed 47 colonists.
— 1900 illustration
Old Maine Street, Deerfield, in about 1910.
“If it is no exaggeration to say that Deerfield {Mass.} is not so much a town as the ghost of a town, its dimness almost transparent, its quiet almost a cessation, it is essential to add that it is probably quite the most beautiful ghost of its kind, and with the deepest poetic and historic significance to be found in America….It is, and will probably always remain, the perfect and beautiful statement of the tragic and creative moment when one civilization is destroyed by another.’’
— From the WPA Guide to Massachusetts (1937)
