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

Joseph Clesson's father was one of the three Irish bond-servants in Northampton in the second half of the seventeenth century.This places him as an outsider, relative to a general population of descendants of the original Puritans.The book begins with that generation and King Philip's War, followed by the tragic fate of Sarah Smith and Joseph Clesson's alleged youthful involvement in that imbroglio.

In All the Wars covers Clesson and the garrison soldiers during the 1704 Deerfield raid. In 1709 he was captured and with Mehuman Hinsdale sent to France in an apparent prisoner exchange. He remained on duty during the Fourth Indian War of 1722-1726, "Gray Lock's War." During the period of peace there was an Indian conference at Deerfield, the Great Awakening, and marriages of his son and two of his daughters. After King George's War, society continued to advance beyond its Puritan beginnings. There was a crisis in the Clesson household when his 36-year-old daughter, who had never been married, became pregnant. At 75 years of age, Joseph Clesson volunteered as a captain in the last French and Indian War and died in service at Fort William Henry on June 6, 1758. His only son and two sons-in-law were also lost in that war, the last of the wars in North America between England and France.