In the eighteenth century northern New england was claimed by both the English and the French, and both established forts and settlements in the disputed area. The English in 1724 built Fort Dummer, named for WIlliam Dummer, lieutenant governor and acting governor of Massachusetts. It was near the site of present-day Brattleboro, Vermont, named for William Brattle, who with Dummer had purchased the tract of land on which the fort stood. Brattleboro was the first permanent European settlement in Vermont. A French stronghold at this time was the Abnaki Indian village of Norridgewock on the Kennebec R. in Maine. The leader there was a French Jesuit missionary, Father Sebastien Rasle. Father Rasle escaped a British raid in 1721, leaving behind a dictionary of the Abnaki language he had been preparing. The raiders took it away, and it was not published until 1833. In 1724 the British again raided Norridgewock, captured it, and killed Father Rasle, gun in hand. These and similar events of the period became known as Dummer's or Lovewell's War (1721-1725). The Lovewell in question was John Lovewell, a Massachusetts Indian fighter who was killed in a skirmish with Pigwacket Indians at Fryeburg, Maine, on May 8, 1725.