A report sent to Increase Mather in August 1683 describes stones, earth and household objects apparently moving around Nicholas Desborough’s home and fields at Hartford, Connecticut. It also records a dispute over a deceased child’s clothes and an eventual arbitration. The correspondence is unusually useful for following how a colonial haunting account reached print, but it does not establish what caused the reported movements or the separate barn fire.
The surviving source chain
The fullest contemporary account reviewed here is John Russell’s letter from Hadley to Increase Mather, dated 2 August 1683. Russell says that he had delayed answering because he wanted better information from Hartford. He then identifies Captain John Allyn, Desborough’s near neighbour and an arbitrator in the underlying dispute, as the source of the account he was forwarding.
Russell was therefore transmitting a named neighbour’s report rather than claiming to have watched the events himself. Allyn’s proximity and involvement help explain his access to the household story, but the letter does not provide a separate signed statement from every person said to have witnessed an incident. Its evidential value lies partly in making this chain of transmission visible.
Mather subsequently included an abbreviated version in his 1684 collection, usually known as Remarkable Providences. George Lincoln Burr reprinted the passage in 1914 and explicitly linked it to Russell’s letter. These are connected versions of a narrative, not three independent investigations confirming the same physical events.
The surname varies between Desborough, Disborow and related spellings. The accounts concern the same Hartford household. Those variations should not be used to create different cases or to merge the episode with other colonial stone-throwing narratives merely because Mather printed them nearby.
The family dispute before the disturbances
According to Russell’s account, Desborough’s wife had a daughter who married John Andross. After that daughter’s death, Andross sent their young daughter to live with Desborough and her grandmother. The child remained there for several years before drowning in a nearby pond, aged approximately seven or eight.
Andross had also sent the child her late mother’s clothes in a chest. After the drowning, he demanded their return. Desborough argued that keeping the child for three or four years gave him a claim to retain the clothes. The letter describes discussion from about June until late August or early September, when Desborough declared that he would keep them unless they were taken from him.
The child’s death and the property disagreement are reported circumstances, not evidence that the family caused a death or brought supernatural punishment upon itself. Russell’s closing religious speculation does not amount to an investigation of the drowning. No finding of foul play appears in the material reviewed for this case.
Within two or three days of Desborough’s declared decision, the account says, small stones and dirt began to strike or fall around him and his wife’s son. The narrative places the beginning after the dispute, but temporal sequence alone does not establish that the disagreement caused either the disturbances or their eventual end.
Stones in the house and fields
The reported objects included stones, pieces of brick, dirt and corncobs. They were said to arrive during both day and night, in the house and out in the fields. Russell’s source described open places where a considerable distance could be seen around the observers, without a visible person throwing the material.
Inside, objects reportedly came through the chimney, door or window, sometimes falling upon hats and clothing. Most were said to land near Desborough and his wife’s son. The account also mentions others being present, but does not supply their individual descriptions or demonstrate continuous observation of every possible source of the objects.
An early suspicion focused on a worker employed elsewhere in Hartford. The account says that enquiries established that he was far away on the relevant day. This detail records a rejected ordinary suspicion. It does not support renewing the accusation or treating the failure of that first suspicion as proof that no human explanation was possible.
The letter describes little serious injury. A blow to Desborough’s arm reportedly caused some pain, and a stone striking his leg drew a small amount of blood visible through his stocking. Such reports should not be inflated into a succession of independently documented severe assaults. There is no accompanying medical record in this correspondence.
The clay episode and the barn fire
One incident involved a piece of clay said to have come down the chimney and landed on a table. The household threw it onto the hearth, where it remained for some time. During supper, they said that it lifted and fell back onto the table. Desborough, his wife and her son were identified as asserting this episode.
When they picked it up, it was hot. Russell’s account explicitly explains the heat by its time on the hearth. The claimed anomaly is its reported movement back to the table, not a demonstration that it acquired heat without an ordinary source. Keeping those two elements separate avoids making the story more mysterious than its own narrator did.
The disturbances reportedly continued until November, when Desborough’s barn burned, causing substantial loss. The letter states that the origin of the fire was unknown. It then describes a pause in the falling objects from Tuesday until Thursday, followed by renewed activity. Neither the unknown fire origin nor the brief pause establishes that one hidden agent caused both kinds of event.
Arbitration and the reported ending
In December, the clothes dispute was referred to Major Talcott and Captain Allyn. After hearing it, they determined that the clothes should be returned to Andross. Desborough complied. The following day, two or three small stones or pieces of dirt reportedly fell onto his hat, after which no further comparable trouble was reported.
This is more specific than an immediate, experimentally verified cessation at the moment the chest changed hands. The arbitration resolved a property dispute; it did not establish a physical explanation for the earlier events. The ending may have mattered greatly to those interpreting the episode, but the letter supplies no controlled comparison that proves why it ended.
The incident year itself is less explicit than the report date. Russell gives a sequence running from summer through November and December before his August 1683 letter, without naming the year of those months. Mather uses relative dating. The article therefore records the securely dated correspondence and leaves the incident-year filter unassigned rather than substituting 1683, the reporting year, for an exact event year.
Mather’s version and the assessment
Mather’s abbreviated account adds or emphasises some details differently. It says disturbances did not occur when the wife was alone and mentions one stone weighing four pounds. Russell’s letter instead refers to some stones and brick fragments of about a pound. These differences make it inappropriate to present every detail across the versions as if it came from one uniform eyewitness record.
Mather understood the episode in a religious framework of providence and demonic agency. Russell’s own letter combines confidence in his source with an admission that the cause of the motions was not known. These are historical interpretations of the reports, not demonstrations that a spirit moved the objects or that the household was exposed as fraudulent.
The outcome is insufficient evidence. The correspondence supports the existence and transmission of a detailed seventeenth-century disturbance story, including an actual reported dispute and arbitration. It does not provide the independent observation, physical documentation or demonstrated cause needed to settle the moving-object and fire claims.
Location, illustration and sources
The map uses a rounded Hartford town reference, identifying the locality named in Russell’s letter without locating a former private house, pond or barn. The image is a faithful page of Mather’s narrative in Burr’s expired-copyright edition. It documents the text’s historical publication, not the claimed movements themselves.
The main source is Russell’s letter, Mather Papers, pp. 86–88, published in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s 1868 collection. It was compared with Mather’s passage and Burr’s source note, pp. 33–34. Coordinates use the 2025 Census Gazetteer. Sources and image rights checked 13 November 2026.