Humphrey, John

Umphry has been identified as an Eastern Indian, possibly Pennacook or Eastern Abenaki; however, his marriage to Great David's sister might have given him some rights as a Nipmuc or Quaboag.  At a later date, he identified as a Schaghticoke from Albany, but that claim was disputed by a Hatfield Indian.   

 

In 1672, he and Paupachokowin were indicted for the murder of Samuel Paugatowhen in Boston but Umphry was subsequently found not guilty.  In 1675, he was in prison and on the list of seven convicted Indians sold as slaves to Lancelott Talbott and Joseph Smith to be transported out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Not much is known of his years of servitude.  However, some twenty years later Umphry reappeared in New England and placed himself in an account of the 1689 Indian attack at Cochecho (Dover, New Hampshire).  

 

Evan Haefeli, Kevin Sweeney, eds., Captive Histories: English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid (Amherst, 2006), 49-52; Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692, vol. 3 (Boston, 1928), 222-223;  City Document No. 46, Part II, "The Book of Possessions" in City of Boston, Mass., Second Report  of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston (Boston, 1881), 48.