Some Hannah Duston Descendants Find Pride in Ancestry; Haverhill Remains Undecided on Legacy

David A. Dustin, a ninth generation descendant of Hannah Duston, tells her story during the Friends of the Public Library's annual meeting. (WHAV News photograph.)

Overcome with pride, a descendant of Hannah Duston visiting from Michigan yelled to a stranger walking by, “I’m related to her,” after seeing her statue in GAR Park.

David A. Dustin, who took the man on a tour, related this story at the annual meeting of the Friends of the Haverhill Public Library Tuesday night, adding a genealogist found around 27,000 ninth generation descendants—including those who married into the family—spread across the country. Dustin’s grandchildren belong to the 13th.

During the national reckoning following George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, residents called for the removal of the statue, which was twice splattered with red paint. Erected in 1879, it depicts Duston holding a hatchet and staring slightly down, presumably at the 10 sleeping Native Americans—including six children—she is said to have killed with two other colonists before escaping captivity. According to some accounts, her captors killed her newborn.

The City Council voted in 2021 to remove the hatchet, strike the term “savages” from an inscription and provide land for the Abenaki to create a memorial. At around the same time, then-Mayor James J. Fiorentini established the Native American Commemorative Task Force, which included Massachusetts and New Hampshire officials, educators, historians, Cowasuck band of the Penacook-Abenaki, scholars and descendants of Dustin-Duston family. The Commission was instructed to work out how to honor indigenous people in the city.

Duston was abducted during a 1697 raid on Haverhill, then a farming village. The French and English were at war and Native Americans fought on both sides.

Asked whether he sees himself in his distant progenitor, Dustin said, “I am absolutely not as brave as she was. Being a woman out on the frontier, far from any European settlements, headed for Quebec, I can’t imagine how bold and brave she was to do what she did, witness what she witnessed,” which he said included the “brutal” murders of others abducted with her. Given the circumstances, both Native Americans and colonists “did what they felt they had to do,” he added.

Maureen Ferris, president of the Friends of the Haverhill Public Library. (WHAV News photograph.)

The Duston-Dustin Garrison House, 665 Hilldale Ave. in Haverhill, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is being updated to reflect the era when Hannah Duston lived there, said Maureen Ferris, president of the Friends.

“When you go inside, you realize how plain their life was,” she said. “There was no color, almost no color. It was brown and black and white. And they were deeply religious Puritans so there was nothing fancy. There was church, family and home.”

The landmark holds open houses and tours.

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