French officer Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville killed sixteen, including the town's minister. Although she claimed to have been baptized as a child, Hannah rarely attended church and did not take communion until late in life, for reasons that are unclear. In May 1724 she asked to be formally admitted to the Haverhill Center Congregational Church. Her husband had made a similar petition in January of that year. Following her husband's death (between 1724 and 1732) Hannah Duston is believed to have lived with her son Jonathan on his farm in southwest Haverhill. She probably died between 1736 and 1738, and was most likely buried near Jonathan Duston's home. Samuel Lennardson moved to Preston, Connecticut, to join his father. He married and had five children and died on May 11, 1718. Mary Neff died in Haverhill on October 17, 1722. In 1739 Mary Neff's son Joseph was granted two hundred acres of land at Penacook by the General Court of New Hampshire "in consideration of his mother's services in assisting Hannah Duston in killing divers Indians." Legacy Written accounts Contemporary accounts The event became well known, due in part to Cotton Mather's account in Magnalia Christi Americana: The Ecclesiastical History of New England (1702). Mather interviewed Hannah after her return to Haverhill, and on May 6, 1697, he preached a sermon celebrating her return from captivity, with Hannah herself in the audience. He later published the story three times in five years: in Humiliations follow'd with Deliverances (1697), Decennium Luctuosum (1699), and in Magnalia Christi Americana (1702). Mather titled the story "A Notable Exploit: Dux Faemina Facti," (Latin: "The leader of this deed/exploit was a woman") and compared Hannah Duston's story to the murder of Sisera by Jael in the Old Testament, and to the captivity narratives of Hannah Swarton (captured in 1690) and Mary Rowlandson (captured in 1675). Captivity narratives featuring women were often used as metaphors for the identity struggle evolving in New England at that time, wherein submissive, humble and obedient Puritan women fought to regain their freedom from the oppression of their Native American captors, in the same way that the long-suffering colonists resisted oppressive governance by the British crown. Hannah's story also appears in the diary of Samuel Sewall, who had heard the story directly from her on May 12, 1697, less than two weeks after her escape. Sewall's account adds the detail that the night