About: Elizabeth Hanson (captive of Native Americans)

Elizabeth Meader Hanson (September 17, 1684—c.1737) was a colonial Anglo-American woman from Dover, New Hampshire, who survived Native American Abenaki capture and captivity in the year 1725 alongside four of her children. Five months after capture, a French family ransomed Elizabeth and her two children in Canada. Her husband was then able to secure them and find another daughter before having to return home, leaving the eldest daughter, Sarah, behind. Elizabeth's captivity narrative became popular because of its detailed insights into Native American captivity, which was a threat to the people in New England due to the almost constant wars with the Native Americans and French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her religious take on her experiences was heavily emphasized in her