42 THE INDIANS AND THE MILK PAILS 



Temperance Union, lives at Stroudwater, and 

 Elizabeth Hawkins Patrick was the great-grand- 

 mother of Mr. Stevens, who could tell you many 

 stories of the days when his grandmother, Mar- 

 garet Patrick, was a little girl. 



When the Patrick family came to Stroud- 

 water they built a little house about an eighth 

 of a mile away from the garrison. All the early 

 settlers in New England were obliged to build 

 garrisons, or strong log houses with tiny win- 

 dows houses in which they could hide away 

 from the attacks of unfriendly Indians, and in 

 which they could protect the Avomcn and chil- 

 dren. A signal gun was their only telephone 

 or telegraph, and if any one had reason to 

 think the Indians were coming he would fire a 

 gun from his doorway. Someone, often a 

 woman, in the nearest house, would at once go 

 to her door and send forth a volley to tell her 

 nearest neighbors that there was trouble, and 

 thus word would be shot along by the gun-tele- 

 graph through the lonely settlement, and the 

 scattered families would quickly gather in the 

 garrison. 



This was more than a hundred and sixty 

 years ago, and most of the country around 



