Design New England - September/October 2011

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especially given the fate of one Robert Beers, an Irish brick-maker who, a few years earlier, had refused to take refuge in his town’s fort in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, during an Indian attack. He remained in his nearby home, convinced that nothing bad could befall him if he read his Bible. A bullet came through the window, and he died with the Good Book in his hands.

Rehoboth’s fort was a garrison house, also known as a blockhouse, solidly built of squared logs with an overhanging second story. Defenders could fire their muskets through loopholes, narrow slits in the overhang. However, as Tom Desjardin, historian for Maine’s Bureau of Parks and Land, points out, “If you’re fighting from the blockhouse, things have gone really, really bad.” Much better to keep the invaders farther at bay, which is why he says colonists usually built a perimeter of earthworks, and even moats, around their blockhouses. The Pine Tree