John Demos' book The Unredeemed Prisoner examines the story of the "Reverend Mr." John Williams, minister of the church of Deerfield (a town of about 300 inhabitants in the Massachusetts Bay Colony), and his family. The reverend and his wife had many connections with important people of the time. His father was a shoemaker, a farmer, and a "ruling elder" in the Roxbury church. The Rev. John Eliot, minister of the Roxbury church, created many of the "prayer towns" where converted Native Americans prayed and was New England's "apostle to the Indians." Reverend Williams' wife, originally named Eunice Mather, was the daughter of Reverend Eleazer Mather, minister of the Northampton Church in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Rise and Cotton Mather, two of Boston's most famous ministers, were his uncle and first cousin, respectively. Eunice Mather's grandfather, the Reverend John Warham, was one of the founders of Connecticut (p. 8-9). The many connections of the Reverend John Williams and his wife allowed him to become the leader of Deerfield and one of the most important symbols of Puritanism in the city. At the beginning of John Demos' book, a group of Native Americans attacked the English town of Deerfield, kidnapped some of its inhabitants, and took them to Canada. Thirteen days after the attack, on October 21, 1703, the Reverend John Williams, the town leader, wrote to Joseph Dudley, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to obtain tax relief, funding to rebuild the fort, and an exchange of prisoners to free the captured. residents and soldiers to protect the city. Governor Dudley agreed to comply with the reverend's requests and stationed 16 soldiers at the city fort (p. 11-13). In response to English counterattacks against the French colonies,......middle of paper......cession led to many wars, such as the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1702 to 1714. The incursion of Deerfield depicted in Demos' The Unredeemed Captive was one of many clashes that occurred in the Americas that were part of the war. Works Cited Verner W. Crane, “A Lost Utopia of the First American Frontier,” The Sewanee Review 27, no. 1 (January 1919): 48-61J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (Chatto & Windus, 1904) Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974) James Watson Gerard, The Peace of Utrecht: A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713-14 and the Principal Events of the War of the Spanish Succession (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1885) Demo by John Putnam , The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story of Early America (New York: Vintage Books, 1995)