The Screaming Bridge of Greenfield
By Jeff Belanger | Photos by Frank Grace
Published in Northampton Living | October 2025
Though this picturesque bridge is formally known as the Eunice Williams Covered Bridge, locals will know what you mean if you refer to it by its more ominous moniker: The Screaming Bridge of Greenfield.
Named after the victim of a brutal slaying, this bridge’s roots run back to when Greenfield was still a British colony, fighting for survival against the French in an environment where Native Americans were at war for their homeland.
In February 1704, the Massachusetts town of Deerfield was on alert for an attack. They’d built a stockade fence near the town center with hired soldiers keeping watch. The town minister, Reverend John Williams, kept a vigil in church. He ordered a day of fasting and prayer because he’d had a horrible vision of his town being destroyed. The Reverend was more in tune with prophecy than anyone realized at the time.
On February 29, in the cold, pre-dawn hours of the day when everything is dark and still, 300 warriors from the French Army, along with their Mohawk and Abenaki allies, snuck into Deerfield as the townsfolk slept. Their destination was the home of Rev. Williams. They knew that if he fell, so too would the town.
“The enemy came in like a flood upon us,” Rev. Williams wrote. “They came to my house … and by their violent endeavors to break open doors and windows, with axes and hatchets, awaked me out of sleep.”
In the attack, the intruders killed Rev. Williams’s six-week-old daughter, Jerusha, and their six-year-old son, John.
The French burned and plundered the town. By morning, 112 Deerfield residents were taken captive and informed they would spend the next few months marching 300 miles north to New France where their fate would be decided.
Rev. Williams and his wife, Eunice, along with their five surviving children, ages four to fourteen, were among the captives. It was March 1 when they reached Greenfield.
Eunice Williams had given birth six weeks earlier, and her two youngest children had just been murdered. She was in no shape to make the arduous journey. When the prisoners reached the banks of the Green River, Eunice collapsed from exhaustion. Her captors wasted no time in dealing with a straggler. One soldier approached, raised his tomahawk in the air, Eunice cried out in horror – and was silenced forever.
Eunice Williams was cut down just a few feet from her surviving children in an event that still haunts the grounds and bridge that bears her name. They say on cold, dark nights, you can still hear her scream.
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