Those Amazing Bissells of Windsor
Real Stories from the Reverend Increase Mather's
"Remarkable Providences An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences"
John Bissell, Jr. and Thomas Bissell, Great-Uncles mentioned in the first story below, were two of the sons of Captain John Bissell of Windsor, Connecticut (9th Great-grandfather of the Bissell 3G Generation). Nathaniel Bissell, mentioned in the second story below, was their brother and is the Bissell 8th great-grandfather. Capt. Bissell started the ferry operation across the Connecticut River in 1642 and it was taken over by Nathaniel in 1662. According to the website "The Mather Project," Rev. Increase Mather, who wrote these two "remarkable providences" stories about the Bissells, was representative of American Puritanism in 17th-century New England. He was a leader of Boston's ministry in the original North Church (before what we now call "the Old North Church" was built in 1723) and defender of Puritan orthodoxy during its decline. He was President of Harvard University during its most difficult period, championing the study of science. He led a group to England and successfully negotiated a new charter for the Massachusetts colony when the old charter had been revoked. His involvement with the Salem Witch Trials is covered elsewhere on this website (SEE America's First Witch Trials). In 1684, he published the stories below as part of "An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providence," which one writer describes as a lengthy defense of the existence of apparitions, witches, diabolical possessions and "other remarkable judgements upon noted sinners." In it he reasserted puritan views of witchcraft and also asserted his belief that the sins of the population had brought on the Indian wars, the unusual thunderstorms, and other judgements of God upon New England. He warned his readers of the dangers of Satan and urged them to change their sinful ways.
His son Cotton Mather likewise became a leading religious figure in the Colony. Increase Mather's father Richard Mather was the brother of the Bissell 3G Generation's likely 10th Great-grandmother Elizabeth Mather (born 9 Jul 1618), making Increase a First Cousin, 11 times removed, and Cotton Mather a Second Cousin, 10 times removed. Note that there is at least a small question about whether the "Elizabeth" who married 10th Great-grandfather Henry Woodward was Elizabeth Mather, or was some other woman who happened to be named Elizabeth but was not a Mather.
From Rev. Increase Mather's stories: “Remarkable also was the deliverance which John and Thomas Bissell of Windsor, aforesaid, did at another time receive. John Bissell, on a morning, about break of day, taking nails out of a great barrel, wherein was a considerable quantity of gunpowder and bullets, having a candle in his hand, the powder took fire. Thomas Bissell was then putting on his clothes, standing by a window, which, though well fastened, was by the force of the powder carried away at least four rods; the partition wall from another room was broken to pieces; the roof of the house opened and slipped off the plates about five feet down; also the great girth of the house at one end broke out so far, that it drew from the summer to the end most of its tenant.
"The woman of the house being sick, and another woman under it in bed, yet did the divine Providence so order things as that no one received any hurt, excepting John Bissell, who fell through two floors into a cellar, his shoes being taken from his feet, and found at twenty feet distance, his hands and his face being very much scorched, without any other wound in his body."
The Remarkable Providences of Rev. Increase Mather, a book which, from its extreme scarcity, has been almost unknown to our authors hitherto, and has only recently been made available by its re-publication in London, under the editorship of George Offer, Esq. Mather says (p. 24 of the above London edition): "In the next place we shall take notice of some remarkable preservations which sundry in Windsor in New England have experienced; the persons concerned therein being desirous that the Lord's goodness towards them may be ever had in remembrance, wherefore a faithful hand has given me the following account:
"In the next place we shall take notice of some remarkable preservations which sundry in Windsor in New England have experienced; the persons concerned therein being desirous that the Lord's goodness towards them may be ever had in remembrance, wherefore a faithful hand has given me the following account:
“Jan. 13, 1670. — Three women, viz : the wives of Lieut. Filer, and of John Drake, and of Nathaniel Lomas, having crossed Connecticut river upon a necessary and neighborly account, undoubtedly to attend a woman in confinement, and having done the work they went for, were desirous to return to their own families, the river being at that time partly shut up with ice, old and new, and partly open. There being some pains taken afore-hand to cut a way through the ice, the three women above said got into a canoe, with whom also there was Nathaniel Bissell and an Indian. There was likewise another canoe with two men in it that went before them to help them, in case they should meet with any distress, which indeed quickly came upon them, for just as they were getting out of the narrow passage between the ice, being near the middle of the river, a greater part of the upper ice came down upon them, and struck the end of their canoe, and broke it to pieces, so that it quickly sunk under them.
The Indian speedily got upon the ice, but Nathaniel Bissell and the above-said women were left floating in the middle of the river, being cut off from all manner of human help besides what did arise from themselves, and the two men in the little canoe, which was so small that three persons durst seldom, if ever, venture in it. They were, indeed, discerned from one shore, but the dangerous ice would not admit from either shore one to come near them.
All things thus circumstanced, the suddenness of the stroke and distress (which is apt to amaze men, especially when no less than life is concerned), the extreme coldness of the weather, it being a sharp season, that persons out of the water were in danger of freezing, the unaptness of persons to help themselves, being mostly women, one big with child, and near the time of her travail (who also was carried away under the ice), the other as unskilled and inactive to do anything for self-preservation as almost any could be, the waters deep, that there was no hope of footing, no passage to either shore in any eye of reason, neither with their little canoe, by reason of the ice, nor without it, the ice being thin and rotten, and full of holes.
Now that all should be brought off safely without the loss of life, or wrong to health, was counted in the day of it a remarkable Providence. To say how it was done is difficult, yet, something of the manner of the deliverance may be mentioned. The above said Nathaniel Bissell, perceiving their danger, and being active in swimming, endeavored what might be the preservation of himself and some others; he strove to have swum to the upper ice, but the stream being too hard, he was forced downwards to the lower ice, where, by reason of the slipperiness of the ice, and disadvantage of the stream, he found it difficult getting up; at length by the good hand of Providence, being gotten upon the ice, he saw one of the women swimming down under the ice, and perceiving a hole or open place some few rods below, there he watched, and took her up as she swam along. The other two women were in the river till the two men in the little canoe came for their relief.
At length all of them got their heads above the water and had a little time to pause, though a long and difficult, and dangerous way to any shore, but by getting their little canoe upon the ice, and carrying one at a time over hazardous places, they did (though in a long while) get all safe to the shore from whence they came."
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This additional information is from The Supplement to the History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, by Henry R. Stiles, 1863:
"July 20, 1683, a considerable flood unexpectedly arose, which proved detrimental to many in that colony, i.e., Connecticut. But on August 13, a second and more dreadful flood came. The waters were then observed to rise twenty-six feet above their usual boundaries; the grass in the meadow, also the English grain was carried away before it; the Indian corn, by the long continuance of the waters is spoiled, so that the four river towns, viz : Windsor, Hartford, Wethersfield, Middletown are extream sufferers. They write from thence that some who had hundreds of bushels of corn in the morning, at night had not one peck left for their families to live upon."
Albert Fitch Bellows, "Mill Pond at Windsor, Connecticut"