The last incident to be mentioned at this time in connection with Fort Shirley relates to the Rev. John Norton, his wife and daughter. Norton was born in Berlin, Conn., in 1716; was graduated at Yale College in 1737; was ordained in Fall Town, since Bernardston, Mass., in 1741; he was the first minister in that town, "but owing to the unsettled state of the times," and to the fact that his people lay right in the angle between the military line of the Connecticut and that of the Deerfield, and had consequently as much as they could do, to maintain their families exposed as they were, he labored there about four years, and was appointed chaplain to the line of forts almost as soon as the men were fairly in garrison. He was in Fort Massachusetts when it was besieged and captured by an army of French and Indians in August, 1746; went captive with the rest of the garrison to Quebec; returned, exchanged, in just a year; and wrote an account of the siege, the journey northwards, the captivity, and the return, a precious little book, which he entitled after a memorable precedent "The Redeemed Captive." His narrative begins as follows.--"Thursday, August 14, 1746, I left Fort Shirley in company with Dr. Williams and about fourteen of the soldiers; we went to Pelham Fort, and from thence to Captain Rice's, where we lodged that night. Friday, the 15th, we went from thence to Fort Massachusetts, where I designed to have tarried about a month. Saturday, 16th, the Doctor with fourteen men, went off for Deerfield, and left in the fort Sergeant John Hawks with twenty soldiers, about half of them sick with bloody flux."
We can not now follow the good chaplain in his deeply interesting narrative. He makes no mention in it of his family, but it is certain from other data that he left Mrs. Norton and his young children in garrison at Fort Shirley, and that just about the time of his return from captivity to Boston, which was August 16, 1747, his little girl, Anna, died at the fort and was buried in the field a little to the west of it. Probably some soldier in the fort chiselled upon the rude stone the inscription as follows:
Hear lys ye body of An'na D: of ye Rev: Mr. John Norton. She died Aug; ye ---- aged ---- 1747.