1. William Dummer is remembered for his role in leading the colony during Dummer's War, which was fought between the British New England Colonies and a loose coalition of Indian tribes in modern-day New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
William Dummer was born into a wealthy Massachusetts merchant family, traveling to England as a young man to participate in the business.
William Dummer served during the turbulent tenure of Governor Samuel Shute, in which Shute quarreled with the assembly over many matters.
William Dummer negotiated a treaty with the Abenaki people which formed the basis for a succession of later treaties.
William Dummer then retired, dividing time between his farm in Byfield and his home in Boston.
William Dummer was born in Boston, the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Jeremiah Dummer, the first American born silversmith, and Anna Dummer.
William Dummer's grandfather was Richard Dummer, an early Massachusetts settler and one of the colony's wealthiest men, and he was related to the magistrate Samuel Sewall.
William Dummer was the oldest of nine children, only four of whom survived to adulthood.
In 1702 William Dummer was elected to the membership of Boston's Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.
William Dummer went to England, most likely in the early 1700s, where he joined his extended family's merchant business.
William Dummer divided his time between the Newbury property and the family home in Boston.
William Dummer authorized construction of a fort north of Northfield, on land he had acquired a few years before in Connecticut's auction of the so-called "Equivalent Lands" Massachusetts gave to Connecticut as compensation for border issues.
When Grey Lock's raids continued unabated in 1724, William Dummer renewed his appeals to Connecticut Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, noting that Connecticut was equally vulnerable to raiding should the Massachusetts towns in the Connecticut River be abandoned.
William Dummer continued to argue this issue with the assembly, but eventually relented, replacing Walton with Thomas Westbrook.
William Dummer adopted an aggressive stance after the raid, accusing the French of instigating the war and demanding their neutrality.
William Dummer refused in principle to halt settlement activities in contested territories, but allowed the Penobscots to retain a Roman Catholic priest.
William Dummer pressured Wenemouet to bring Grey Lock and other Abenaki leaders to the peace table.
The treaty that William Dummer negotiated became a staple of diplomacy between Massachusetts and the eastern tribes despite the discrepancies between written and oral versions.
William Dummer sought to be generally conciliatory in his dealings with the provincial legislature, tolerating, for example, the selection of Elisha Cooke as speaker of the assembly.
William Dummer finessed the assembly's attempts to interfere with management of the militia by organizing expeditions when the body was not in session, earning the enmity of opponents when it did meet.
The assembly proposed to circumvent the need for an exception by allocating the issue for the repair of fortifications, something for which William Dummer had requested funding.
Since the proposed currency issuance greatly exceeded the amount needed for repairs, William Dummer vetoed the request and dissolved the assembly.
William Dummer is reported to have served on the provincial council, but there are no further public records of note, and he left no letters or other papers.