After an existence of one hundred and forty-one years, the old well of Fort Shirley, which was undoubtedly within the block-house and probably in one corner of the enclosure away from the “parade,” is able to tell pretty thoroughly to this day the story of its own construction.  Four forest staddles about six inches in diameter, one for each comer of the well, were set upright on the ground, and then ash planks rived from a log about five feet long were pinned or spiked on the outside of these staddles, beginning at the bottom; and this frame being placed on the ground where the well was to be, the earth was thrown out over the sides, and so the well was gradually sunk to the required depth, the plank-siding being added gradually as the shaft was lowered.  These rived planks and the tops of the four corner-poles, that can now be seen and fingered less than two feet below the surface of the ground, were not very uniform in thickness, and of course have rotted off at the top by time and exposure; but enough of both has been preserved till this time by constant submergence in the water and in the unusually moist soil above it to betray without any serious question the nature of the materials used and the mode of their employment.  One of the corner-posts was a black birch and the bark on it is in a good state of preservation at and below the surface of the water.

The last incident to be mentioned at this time in connection with Fort Shirley relates to the Rev. John Norton, his wife and daughter.  Norton was born in Berlin, Conn., in 1716; was graduated at Yale College in 1737; was ordained in Fall Town, since Bernardston, Mass., in 1741; he was the first minister in that town, “but owing to the unsettled state of the times,” and to the fact that his people lay right in the angle between the military line of the Connecticut and that of the Deerfield, and had consequently as much as they could do, to maintain their families exposed as they were, he labored there about four years, and was appointed chaplain to the line of forts almost as soon as the men were fairly in garrison.  He was in Fort Massachusetts when it was besieged and captured by an army of French and Indians in August, 1746; went captive with the rest of the garrison to Quebec; returned, exchanged, in just a year; and wrote an account of the siege, the journey northwards, the captivity, and the return, a precious little book, which he entitled after a memorable precedent “The Redeemed Captive.”  His narrative begins as follows.—­“Thursday, August 14, 1746, I left Fort Shirley in company with Dr. Williams and about fourteen of the soldiers; we went to Pelham Fort, and from thence to Captain Rice’s, where we lodged that night.  Friday, the 15th, we went from thence to Fort Massachusetts, where I designed to have tarried about a month.  Saturday, 16th, the Doctor with fourteen men, went off for Deerfield, and left in the fort Sergeant John Hawks with twenty soldiers, about half of them sick with bloody flux.”