NOTE. 



My attention has been kindly called, by the Rev. J. A. Vinton, — 

 who has prepared the foregoing Index, — to sundry statements in note 

 323 (p. 163), concerning the Gyleses, father and son, which he conceives 

 to be inaccurate. Those statements were made upon the testimony of 

 Sewall, who expressly refers, in regard to some of them, to an incom- 

 plete MSS. narrative of the Rev. Mr. Vinton, of the date of 1853, and 

 who was therefore supposed to have, in this case, special authority. 

 In order to place the reader in possession of all the facts, however, 

 I gladly append here the following, prepared by Mr. Vinton, — con- 

 taining facts subsequently brought to light, — which note, if it had not 

 been too late, would have been substituted for the note referred to. 



H. M. D. 



John Gyles (p. 163 ante), born in what is now the town of Topsham, Me., about 

 the year 1678, was son of Thomas Gyles (who, after a residence of some years on 

 Merrymeeting Bay, where the Androscoggin joins the Kennebec, went to England 

 to attend to some family matters, then returned to New England, and purchased 

 a large farm at Pemaquid, where he was Chief-Justice, under the ducal govern- 

 ment, of the County of Cornwall, and was killed by the Indians, Aug. 2, 16S9) ; 

 was carried off by the Indians, after his father's death, to their savage haunts on 

 the upper waters of the river St. John, in the present province of New Brunswick. 

 After severe suflerings among them during six years, he was purchased by a French 

 gentleman residing on that river, who treated him kindly, and who, three years 

 afterward, permitted him to return to his friends at Boston. He served the Gov- 

 ernment of Massachusetts thirty-eight years, with some interruptions, as inter- 

 preter in their transactions with the Indians, and as commander of several mili- 

 tary posts on the frontiers; was a man of great courage, and of stern, unbending 

 integrity; retired from the military service in 1737, and took up his residence in 

 Roxbury, near Boston, where he died in 1755, aged 77. In 1736, he printed a 

 narrative of his adventures, which is still extant. [Vinton's Giles Memorial, 

 pp. 103-111, 122-129.] 



203 



