An Old Family Burial Site... By Jonathan Leo Fairbanks
"A Tombstone, surrounded by wild strawberry plants, embedded in the soil of the country town of Lancaster, Massachusetts bears mute testimony of facts. The rough slate is boldly cut with the following inscription:
JONATHAN-FAIR BANKS-AND-HIS DAUGHTER-GRACE FAIRBANKS For two hundred and ninety-nine years this stone has weathered the elements to maintain the memory of a tragic event that cut short the lives of Jonathan and Grace. Two nearby stones, carved by the same hand, record the fateful September of 1697 when twenty-seven towns folk were massacred by Indians. Killed in that raid was the town's minister, the Rev. John Whiting. The Jonathan buried in Lancaster surely was not that earlier Jonathan (deceased 1668) whose Dedham home is preserved by the family Association. No, the identity of Jonathan of Lancaster is documented in the monumental book by Lorenzo Sales Fairbanks, Genealogy pp. 49-50. Lorenzo Sales explains that the Jonathan who met his untimely death in Lancaster was the son of Jonas, the third son of the original Jonathan of Dedham. Jonas had moved to western Massachusetts as one of the original settlers of Lancaster in 1657. He was a founding father of that town. Although a carpenter and a farmer, he had a sense of style and self-worth that exceeded his monetary position in society. Even before moving to the frontier of the seventeenth century he was, in 1652, fined a few shillings for violating the sumptuary laws (passed the year before) by wearing great boots before his estate amounted to more than 200 pounds. Jonas married Lydia Prescott of Watertown who bore him seven children. The fourth was Jonathan (b. 7/8/1666). Within ten years, Jonas was dead - having perished in an Indian attack on Lancaster on Feb. 10, 1676. That raid also took away the life of Jonathan s older brother, Joshua who was, at the time, fifteen years of age. It is not surprising, therefore, that when Jonathan matured he became a soldier, and one of the first to venture on long expeditions into the wilderness. He shared in the ill-fated expedition against Quebec in 1690 with Sir William Phips. On Aug. 24, 1688 he married Mary Hayward of Concord. She gave him three children: Hannah, (d. 1704), Grace (d. 1697), and Mary (d. 1745) Grace was about seven when she perished in the Indian raid of 1697 that killed so many inhabitants of Lancaster, including her father and his younger brother Jonas (b. 1673). Jonathan's wife was carried away with six other Lancastrians as captives, like Mary Rowlandson who had been taken in the l676 raid and wrote a famous account of her captivity and return. All captives from Lancaster but one were redeemed by government intervention and returned to their remaining family members a year later. During the raid of 1697, another brother of Jonathan s, Jabez, saved many Lancastrians in a garrison, or fortified house. He later became a notable soldier commissioned by Governor Dummer, employed as a Captain for long distance travel and scouting throughout the 1720's. "