In All the Wars: A Militia Soldier in Colonial Massachusetts: His Life and Times 1683-1758

From the age of 14 until he died at 75, Joseph Clesson was in all the wars of his time. Sentinel, Sergeant, Lieutenant and Captain, he rose through the ranks until 1758 when he died in service at Fort William Henry. This generously illustrated book follows his life and times through each of the colonial wars and the years between them.

Clesson appears as a leitmotif as we follow the protracted struggle of the French colonies against western Massachusetts. The sixty years of conflict with the French and their Indian allies was bloody and merciless. This book gives a fresh and personal understanding of those remote times, so little known by the general reader but so fundamental to American history.