Recently, while looking through records on Connecticut’s boundary disputes in the 1670s, I found an odd reference to a murder. While the record does not connect the murder to the decades long strife between the two colonies, its placement suggests that Connecticut officials saw a connection. My research has revealed fighting, arrests, brawls, and vandalism all along the border between the colonies in the 1660s and 1670s, so this would fit in. Below find my transcription.
Naraganset: 11 : or 12: day of July : 1670
A sad accident befallen the Towne of Wickford in Coneticut Colynie
and upon that account, Mr Samuell Cedwey Constable of that Towne
called as many of the people together as he could get to behold it
where is to say, a man murthered to say walter house and as we all
heare by 1 Thomas flounders and the maner of the murther was[?]
this, there was a hole strucke in the fore parte of his head and several
other bruses, one upon his left arme, another bruse upon his backe
where wee judge to be the cause of his death being seen and view
=ed by us whose names are under written with the constable by
these witneses stood by and many others, that saw this
sad specttaclcle, but not owne them selves In this
collynie::
John Cole, Robert Greene, Thomas Well, Ambros Leery, John Crabtree, Report of a Murder, 12 July 1670, Colonial Boundaries Series 1, Vol. 1, #71, Connecticut State Archives, Hartford, CT.
