📜 Framingham News – March 6, 1738 (Reported April 29, 1738)
🕯️ As told in The Daily Gazetteer, London
A most astonishing thunderstorm struck the town of Framingham earlier this March—startling residents by its force and fury, especially so early in the season.
⚡️Lightning struck near the home of Mr. Uriah Drury, blasting through the ground with such violence that:
- It tore through the earth, passing underground in a truly “wonderful” and mysterious course,
- It split an apple tree into quarters,
- It shattered a step stone at the front of the Drury house.
🚨Two of Mr. Drury’s children were struck down. It was feared they had died on the spot—but by what the paper called the mercy of God, there was hope for recovery.
🕊️ The storm’s true toll remains uncertain, but one likely victim was Samuel Drury, born December 1736, who died as an infant in 1737. His death, combined with the timing and Gazetteer account, suggests he may have been one of the children hit by the lightning.
🪦 The Drurys: A Founding Framingham Family
The Drurys were no ordinary household. Uriah Drury (1707–1754) and Martha Eames had at least 11 children in Framingham, many of whom died young—likely including several not long after this storm.
Uriah was the son of Capt. Thomas Drury, a founding figure of Framingham, its first town clerk, militia captain, and representative to the Great and General Court. The family descended from early Massachusetts leaders like Edmund Rice and the Eames and Moore families.
Of their children:
- Rachel Drury married into the Jennings family and stayed local,
- Lydia Drury married John Adams and raised 13 children in New Salem,
- Captain Thomas Drury, their son, fought in the Revolutionary War and carried the family name into the new republic.
From storm-struck fields to the halls of government and battlefields of independence, the Drurys helped build Framingham—and America.
