Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry features photos and history of the Ponkapoags, a tribe descended from the Neponset band of the Massachusett people. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

Today I focus on the Ponkapoags, a tribe descended from the Neponset band of the Massachusett people. This historic group gave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts its name, derived from a local word meaning “freshwater spring.”

Recently I came across a photo entitled “Mrs. Mary Chappelle, one of the survivors of the Ponkapoags/Punkapog band of ‘Praying Indians’ of the Massachusett Tribe,” published in a 1925 edition of “Indian Notes and Monographs,” a series compiled by the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian and the Heye Foundation.

In 1972 there is a mention of a Mary in a Patriot Ledger article entitled “‘Ghost’ Hunters Flock to Milton: Sightseers ‘Break Spell,’ Scare off Milton Ghosts,” by Richard Kent. The haunting theme is a reference to unmarked Indian graves.

Mrs. Mary Crowd did not marry a Chappelle, but her daughter Mary did. Note: surname also spelled Croud.

Here is a photo of the Mary Crowd house at 970 Canton Avenue, Milton, Massachusetts.

The 1910 census lists both Mary Crowd (mother) age 79 and Mary Chappelle (daughter) age 47 living at this address, along with Parker C. Crowd, age 19.

Below is a death record for Mrs. Mary Crowd, born Mary Emmeline Crowd to Daniel Crowd and Betsey Crowd. She was the second wife of George J. Crowd, son of Samuel Crowd and Eleanor (Jackson) Crowd. Mary died on 25 May 1916.

George and Mary Crowd had a daughter, Mary Crowd, born in 1862, who married on 11 November 1896 George Chappelle, son of William Chappelle and Jane (Champion) Chappelle.

Below is a photograph of Mary (Crowd) Chappelle taken in 1896 outside the Canton Avenue Milton home by photographer Margaret Sutermeister.

Mary (Crowd) Chappelle died in 1933 and is buried with her parents in Canton Corner Cemetery in Canton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. Below is a photo of a gravestone listing the Crowd family.

According to sources, one of the last full-blooded Ponkapoags was a Milton man named Daniel Crowd who married Miss Betsey Digans of Woodstock, Connecticut, on 6 August 1824. Daniel was the father of Mary Emmiline Crowd mentioned above. Other children for Daniel and Betsey are listed in the following record link from Canton Vital Records.

I found a document from Daniel Crowd’s probate record on FamilySearch. He died on 22 May 1866, in Canton.

Daniel had remarried, after his wife Betsey died, to Lydia. There is a Lydia Garrish (maiden name) and Daniel Crowd listed as parents on the death certificate for son Alfred Crowd, who died 1 March 1919 in Canton.

Here is another article by Richard Kent published in the Patriot Ledger entitled, “Blue Hills Ecology Old as Indians,” that mentions Mrs. Mary Crowd and her home on Canton Avenue. Kent provides some history of her ancestors’ tribal origins.

According to Kent, in 1972 a proposal was in the works to set up a training center on the top of Chickatawbut Hill in the Quincy portion of the Blue Hills Reservation. Part of this plan was to tear down the Great Blue Hill Observation Tower, known locally as Eliot Tower, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Kent provides a history of the early years of this reservation where Mary Crowd was born. He notes the early Merrymount colony of Thomas Morton in Quincy. Morton came to New England about 1622.

Kent asserts that even before white settlement the Indians had reached the point of becoming a vanishing human race. That point is up for debate, and he may be considering the first generation of Indians who became the “Praying Indians.”

The last chief of the Neponset Indians was Chickatawbut, who died of smallpox in 1633. There is another tower in his name built on that hill.

In 1636 Chickatawbut’s brother Kitchamakin, a sachem of the tribe, sold 40 acres of land along the Neponset River to Richard Callicott (also spelled Collicot), a 17th-century English fur trader and colonial leader in Massachusetts.

Kitchamakin was one of the first leaders of the praying Indian town of Natick. He is the possible namesake of Jamaica Plain.

Kent notes that through the intervention and efforts of the “Apostle,” Rev. John Eliot (1609-1690), a missionary to the Indians and Roxbury Latin School founder, a new town was established with a 6,000-acre Ponkapoag Reservation.

Eliot published the “Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God,” or the “Eliot Indian Bible” (1663), the first Bible printed in British North America.

There are many records for this family line that are now digitized.

One record I found from the Monson School files reveal Mrs. Mary Crowd took in two of the Pocknett children as boarders from the Mashpee Reservation. More on that coming soon.

Here is another photo of Mary (Crowd) Chapelle published in the 1925 edition of “Indian Notes and Monographs,” a series compiled by the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian and the Heye Foundation.

Stay tuned for more…

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Note on the header image: close-up of Mary (Crowd) Chappelle. Credit: Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. (AI enhanced)