USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 4
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The tide turned. They hunt Philip now here, now there. Prisoners are brought in to Plymouth.
The last act is played in a black muddy swamp. It is August 12, 1676. English soldiers plunging through the briars and going knee deep in mud, with traitor Indian guides.
At last there he is, the chief of the Wampanoags! A shot rings out! One of his own people fires the gun. Philip falls, his heart pierced, face downward in the mud.
And so the young chief dies, "the most illustrious savage on the North American continent."
They cut off his head and send it to Plymouth! They cut off his hands and send them to Boston! They "hung his quart- ered body in the trees where he fell!"
And there was a Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth and the Rev. Cotton Mather said "God sent 'em in the head of a Levi- athan for a Thanksgiving feast."
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Philip was dead, but out from the great swamp in Sepecan comes the Black Sachem, killing cattle, horses and swine, giving vent to his rage and grief, and the Indian fighter Church march- es again from Plymouth through the Sepecan woods.
Tuspaquin was gone, so Church takes the wife and child- ren, leaving two Indian women to tell the chief that he must come to Plymouth at once and be a fighter for him if he wanted to find them living.
When the chief came home along the Sandwich road he was met by cries of despair and the news of the capture of his family, and back he goes through the Plymouth woods.
He stands before the armed men of Plymouth court who tell him that Captain Church has gone to Boston, but that if he is to be a captain under Church they must see if he is impene- trable by bullets.
Of what use to waste words?
Perhaps he heard ringing in his ears the war cry "Iootash! Iootash! Stand firm! Stand firm!" - He fell at the first shot, dead! "And so received the just reward of his wickedness" the court said.
Annawon, Philip's Captain died with Tuspaquin. Today there is a bit of rising ground surrounded by swamp still called- by the old people of Sepecan, "Towser's Neck," from the Black Sachem Tuspaquin.
Still the curtain is up - There is a great company of the dark skinned men, women and children, in Plymouth, five hun- dred of them, "severall of them have bine actors in the late rising and warr of the Indians against us - the councell adjudged them to be sold, and denoted into servitude, except- ing a few of them are to be otherwise disposed of and the Treasurer is appointed by the Councell to make sale of them in the country's behalf."
And so they went to the West Indies, Spain, Portugal Vir- ginia and Bermuda; some remained in Plymouth. Philip's wife and son had been sent long before. Among others dis- posed of was the chief Keeweenarn. He was given sentence of death which was that his head shall be severed from his body "which was immediately accordingly executed."
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"The severall collonies shall fully posesse and freely dispose to theire owne advantage all such lands as lye within their owne precincts with other proffits as have been brought into them and are now posessed by them."
The curtain rings down over 12 villages and towns utterly destroyed and 40 others burned and ravaged by the horrors of war, and the "lands of his fathers" pass from Philip and his people.
Captain Church called Philip "a doleful beast" as they drew him out of the mud, but General Gookin said he was "a person of good understanding and knowledge of the best things" and he was "known to be humane and to exercise his authority on several occasions to prevent harm being done to English families who had been friendly to him or his father."
And his people, Watachpoo of Sepecan and Sampson and . all the others. No trace. Gone, whether to the Indies or where, nobody knows.
In 1775 there were still a few Indians living on the "lands of Sepecan." A short distance west of the Railroad Station where the old trail ran up to the Center.
An old lady tells of her memories of the last one that re- mained in 1820. She was called "Hosey" and had married an Indian named "Dorrill."
"In 1820 Hosey was living alone in a house with one 16 ft. room in a clearing in the woods. The house had a large stone chimney built on the outside with an oven for cooking. A wooden cross bar in the center of the chimney was hung with heavy iron pot-hooks and trammels for cooking utensils over the fire. The door side of the chimney had a small entry and stair- way. The fireplace inside extended more than half the width of the room. The room had but one window about three fourths of a yard in length and one half yard in width. The window was diamond panes of glass set in lead. A low bedstead stood in one corner. On the straw was laid a bed of chopped woolen rags, called flocks. There were three or four Indian chairs, and a small unpainted pine table; a small cupboard hung over it with her crockery. In one corner of the room was a large chest for clothing, in another a chest for food. She had several
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blocks cut from square timber for seats. The children would huddle in there in the corner and look up the huge fire- place at the stars. Children loved Hosey and parents trusted them to her care.
She was kind but rather grave. I rarely saw her laugh. She used to trudge along to the meeting house covered with her scarlet woolen short cloak (a relic of the Revolution) and a little black jockey on her head.
Sometimes some of her people came from away and we liked to watch them weave baskets, seat chairs and make bush brooms."
The old lady finished her story. "Hosey has been dead many years. She was kindly and tenderly cared for. Many were the tears shed as she was carried to the burial ground of her people to remain until the resurrection morning."
The last Indian is gone and the burial ground of Hosey's people is lost in the forest.
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CHAPTER IV. OYSTERS, KENT AND ROCHESTER-TOWNE-IN- NEW-ENGLAND.
"Come my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O Pioneers!"
WHITMAN.
Those cedar and pine forests in Sepecan! The meadows on the Necks stretching out into the bay!
For sometime from the North, East, South, and West settlers have had their eyes on those delectable uplands, those hunting and fishing grounds.
Their guns are scarcely cooled, and long neglected chores done around their barns and gardens after returning home from chasing the remaining hostile Indians out of the colony, when there were meetings, and communications and inter- views; and on March 10, 1679 with the Lathrops of Barn- stable, and Keneln Winslow of Marshfield and William Clarke of Plymouth as agents, the would be Purchasers of the Sep- ecan Lands met "at Joseph Burg, his house at Sandwich."
It is decided that Mr. Thomas Hinctly, already at home on the Lands, and Mr. William Paybody, Joseph Warrain, Sam- uel White and Joseph Lathrop "shall take a view down of the Lands of Sippican and determine where the house lots shall be layed out and if the Land will beare it to lay out 40 ackers to a house lot and to have for their paines 25 6d a piece in mony." Samuel White was to stay with Paybody in Sepecan and Joseph Doty to go to help him.
And so they go riding over the paths, fording the streams down on the "Neckes" here and there, and decide that they will
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give 20 acres for a house lot and 40 acres of woodland to go with the share.
They lay out 16 lots in Sepecan and 16 in Mattapoisett, and at the next meeting, April 15, they agree that in case those who come to settle don't like their lots assigned they may pick out lots on any "Unlayed out lands from Charles, his meadow and the long swamp to Sippican River."
Of course there must be permission from the Plymouth court before they can go on, and on June 3, 1679 the Court under Gov. Winslow replies-
"In answare onto the proposition of severall that would purchase lands at Sepecan and places adjacent, the court are glad to take notice of what they proposed and offer themselves to oblidge in order of a comfortable settlement of a plantation there; and shall be ready to accomodate them as farr as they can on reasonable and easey tearms, and give them all due incurragement, if they can procure some more substanciall men that are prudent p'sons and of considerable estates that will make a speedy settlement of themselves and families with them; and we desire and expect to heare further from them att the next meeting of the court by adjournment in July next."
Some of the most important men in the Colony already had obtained land from the Indians in Sepecan, and "in July next" the Court is satisfied with "the bargains" evidently, for on July 22 the deed is passed at the home of Joseph Bradford in Plymouth.
Seventy square miles of the lands of Watachpoo and his people, by the scratch of a feather, became the property of the white men.
It is too cold to begin to settle on the new territory in the fall, but by April 1680 they begin to come. Elizabeth Ellis of Sandwich is the only woman to draw a lot in Sepecan.
The other proprietors are Samuel Briggs, James Clarke, William Clarke, Seth Pope, Keneln Winslow, Ralph Powell, Joseph Dunham, Thomas Clarke, Aaron Barlow, Benjamin Bartlett, Benjamin Foster, William Paybody, and Joseph Burge.
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The lands of Sepecan would have been settled long be- fore, but the Indians were many and powerful for years. The "bloodie warr" came to pass, and there are no wigwams now around Minister's Rock. No dark skinned people playing, working, fishing. The wind blows over deserted Indian fields, until that April day when civilization comes riding in, in the shape of English colonists coming up over the Sandwich path.
The excitement of drawing lots! But the first and second, the best two "twentie acker lots on great Necke," and two of the best woodland lots are the "ministry lands."
Not many of the proprietors built. They sent their sons or divided their land and sold to the best advantage. The first little houses were on the clearing about Minister's Rock, the Angier lands, and over on Great Neck but not too far from where the "place of Publicke worship" was to be raised.
There was still a terrible fear and uneasiness about the few remaining Indians, and when Connett, the Indian Chief defied "the title of every one of these men called the purchas- ers of Sipican", and claimed "all the land bordering on the Weweantic and Wookinco Rivers," they not only paid him one pound in silver and gave him a trucking cloth coat, but most astonishing of all made him a proprietor.
With the minstry shares and Connett's there were thirty- three proprietors shares.
Every town was supposed to have a record of deeds and the deeds were recorded in the Proprietor's Book in Plymouth. As for those who had had deeds from the Indians, by 1688 Gov. Andros had stated that the "conveyances of land by the Indians were worth no more than the scratch of a bear's paw."
The old deeds are vague in boundary lines. They read "from a white oake" to "Red Rocke in the river" and "soe untill it comes downwards to the narrow stoney place," and so on. They mean nothing now, and the old boundaries were lost long ago.
There must have been many hostile Indians lurking in the swamps, as the deadly fear of them kept some settlers away for a number of years. They were tempted to come by the offer 'to those that first settell to live on the lands." They
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could make the valuable product tar, "ten Barrells a piece for a yeare," but the Proprietors soon voted "small Barrells"; and also that there should be no "Tymber of any sort shipped away out of the limits of Sippican" and the fine was 20 shill- ings for "every tree or part of tree so used and sent or carried away."
It doesn't take long to build a log house with one dirt floored room; they plant their cornfields and put in rye, flax, pease and beans; then they are at the forest trees, making "Tim- ber Bourds and Clabourde Cooper Stuf" and little boats were putting out from the "generall landing" to take this important product of their labor to other settlements. The Proprietors call a halt. If this timber was "brought to the water side or any landing place where it may be judged that it will be trans- ported out of the Township" it was to be forfeited half to "the Interman and the other halfe to the Townes use."
No timber for "Post Rails or house frames" except for use within the town should be cut on the "undivided lands." The people weren't supposed to cut down trees unless they really needed the timber for their own use.
The log houses became frame dwellings with pine floors, with the white shore sand sprinkled on them, marked in whirls and flower patterns for decoration.
The furniture changed from stumps and blocks of wood for seats, to settees and rude chairs and tables.
Slow heavy years of hard work!
Everybody up at daybreak. The men tramping about in their leather breeches and long leggings, cutting and piling up wood; prying the rocks out of the fields and making the stone walls to keep in the cattle; going out for shell fish; shooting deer and foxes; sitting down to their meals of bean or pea porridge served in wooden or pewter bowls, with bread of rye or Indian corn or the corn and beans, the "succotash" of the Indians or "hasty pudding" and milk. Sometimes beef or fish or venison. The women cooking, mending, knitting, scouring, washing, bearing children and looking after them; and everybody in bed soon after the sun disappeared behind the dense pine forests.
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The days are full of back breaking tasks and it is wet and cold in winter with only the fireplace fire which often went dead before morning; and sometimes very dry in summer making the lines appear in foreheads as shrewd eyes in the tanned weather beaten faces scanned the fields of flax and corn and rye. The lands must yield or there is want in the little houses.
The weather of New England! It has been the subject of speculation and shrewd "guessing" and short crisp conversa- tions for 300 years among old New Englanders. New Eng- land can't forget the weather! In the fall there must be just so much protection for pigs, and cows, and horses, and oxen and hens; hay and grain stowed away for food; trips down to the shore for sea weed to stack up about the house to keep the weather out, and for bedding for the pigs; slow half day journeys down on the necks for salt hay for the cattle. The marshes and meadows on the necks were held in common, and until very recently farmers from the "center" could be seen coming up from Charles Neck with their hay wagons filled full of salt hay, the drivers seated high on top of the rounded load and the patient farm horse steadily plodding along. The old salt meadows on Charles Neck are now almost grown up to forest trees with the deeds still reading from "the meadow fence," now a tumbled down stone wall lost in tangled wood- land, showing how the marshes have changed in three hundred years.
But the plantation of Sepecan!
In two years it had grown to be a real town and helped "lay out a way that will serve the inhabitants best of Middle- berry, Bridgewater, Dartmouth and Sepecan." "Each town to pay their own man" and little Sepecan sending one man to serve on the jury.
Twenty acres of land are laid out on the two sides of the Sippican River for a mill site. This river comes down from the "Black Water" near Middleboro with several little brooks uniting; Muddy brook, Venture's Brook, Dagget's or the Front Brook. It empties into the Bay with the Weweantic River. Joseph Burge built the Sepecan mill; one large enough
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to do for twenty years. Each proprietor paid ten shillings towards the cost and Connett paid in tar, six barrels for himself and his brother. The old mill is gone long ago and the loca- tion is lost. A mill was built later on Leonard's Pond and the mill wheel stopped only a few years ago.
A small settlement under the control of proprietors. Horse back trails between Mattapoisett, Agawam, and Sepecan with the woods full of deer, foxes, wild cats, some wolves and an occasional Indian overseer watching the few "Red Men" left, and seeing to it that no strange Indian lurked in the forest to hunt deer or do mischief in building fires.
In the meantime there is much talk of a name for the town. Sepecan means Indians, and the horrible experience they have just been through!
They are feasting on the oysters that are so luscious and so plentiful in the harbor.
"Don't they make you think of home?"
"It is the truth, they do," and the minds go back to the beautiful country of Kent, and their home town of Rochester in Old England, and so it happens that the thought comes -
"Let us call this our new home, for our old home, Rochester."
In 1686 June 4, the Plymouth Court decided that "Upon the request of the inhabitants of Sippican alias Rochester to become a township, and have the priviledges of a town the court granted their desires in ye respect."
And so another old Colony town is born with all a town's "Priviledges" and it is soon to find out, all a town's duties.
Over in the mother country Charles II was becoming alarmed and irritated at the strange actions of the new bust- ling settlements across the water. The King was to appoint the Governor, make laws and tax rates, and there shall be no more General Courts.
But Charles II died and James II came into power. Trouble! Trouble! "Whether the people or a king shall reign." It doesn't mean much to Rochester-Towne-in-New- England; but it spread across the sea and the horrid face of
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war looked in again and the hand reached out and took one from his little rude home in Sepecan and sent him marching, marching!
And every town on the sea must look out for pirates and privateers and raise and levy such a number of well armed men as they think needful to seize and hold such persons, and if they resist, to kill. But most of the time, the settlers were busy about their crops and own affairs. It is hard to think of trouble across the ocean, or even a few miles away when black birds are eating the crops, and the foxes and wild cats are bothering.
It was not many years before the Proprietor's meetings were held in the town and slowly the meetings "to know the town's mind" grew more important. In 1689 Joseph Burge was sent as representative to the General Court at Plymouth.
Also Plymouth took the valuation of all towns, oxen, cows, horses, lands, meadows, vessels and "trading estates," "faculties and personall abillities." Those who refused "to give in a just account of their ratable estate shall pay trible," one third to informer, one third to colony and one third to town.
In June Rochester was in disgrace - hadn't chosen "raters."
Nobody wanted the office of constable, even if he was "Provided with a Black staff tip't with Brasse as a badge of his office." He had to collect the taxes and was a very unpop- ular man in town. To this day the warrant of the town meet- ings in the County begins "Plymouth 33:
To either of the Constables of the Town" and goes on with "Greeting" and directs the constable to notify and warn the inhabitants to meet at the Town house on a certain day.
In 1690 the selectmen of Rochester were Aaron Barlow, Samuel Hammond and Sam White.
In 1690 they had to think of the troubles of the mother country because two men were impressed from Rochester for the "expedition for Canady, or places adjacent," and the town must provide 3 charges of powder and shot and "put on board
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the vessel provided to carry the souldiers, two pound and a half of powder and 12 pounds of suitable bullits for each man sent out. Alsoe to take care that the powder be sent so as it may not be bruised or otherwise damnified."
The vessel and men were to be ready by June 5 to go to New York. Having had information from the Governor of Massachusetts of their present expedition to "Canady", "The Court have concluded to raise and send forth 200 souldiers if need be of English and Indians to joyne with Massachusetts and other confederate forces for their Majesties service as afores'd." One fourth of these soldiers were to be Indians.
Four times a year the list was made out of all persons required by law to bear arms.
John Hammond was "approved by the Councill to be Lieutenant of the military company of ye town of Rochester, Joseph Doty, ensigne."
Roll call was on muster days, and it was ordered that "Town councils take care for watchings in each towne, and that one third of the souldiers at a time, come armed to meeting every Sabath day untill further order."
In the meantime in comes a notice from Plymouth to find out "Whether it be your minds we should sett still and fall into the hands of those that can catch us with out using means to procure that which may be for our good, - prevent that which may be our inconvenience."
Boston and New York had grown important in the years and were on the point of swallowing up Plymouth, and letters go out to England but in July 1698 the court sets for the last time in Plymouth. Sir William Phipps arrives in Boston and Ply- mouth is united with Massachusetts under the new Province Charter.
In 1691 - A Rochester Indian was sent off with "a well fixt gun, sword, a hatchet, a horn, car-touch-box, suitable am- munition, and a snap-sack" to go with Capt. Church to the coast of Maine.
As the years go by the woods and swamps and streams of all parts of the lands had been explored and house lots laid
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out where the Rhode Island and the Sandwich roads met three miles above the Little Neck settlement.
In 1694 many changes were made in house lots and they tried to establish the center of the town. Isaach Little had a wood lot, No. 17, which was thought to be a good place to "sett a meeting house", "on the West side of Muddy Brook below where the Rhode Island Way goes over." Later Wood Lot No. 30 was chosen.
In 1697 the town exchanged its "Ministry lands by the Sea for the lands nearer the center, the present Rochester vil- lage and Samuel Briggs was allowed to take up the land around the old meeting house on consideration of his allow- ing a cart way through his land to the town's landing. "Whear as Samuel Briggs hath alowed a cart way through his Lands down to the townes gennerall Landing place on the northerly side of the harbor in case s'd briggs Receave damage by any Cart of Person either by breaking or Leaving open s'd briggs his Gattes or Railed he or they shall surly pay the whol dam- age that doth accrew to s'd briggs there by."
The roadway up to the Center was the old Indian trail that wound up through what is now the Radio Station grounds over an old corduroy road called in the Records "the long Bridg" where the new meeting house was "sett" in 1699. It was the traveled road from town to town and the rich important Prince family had built on that road. Samuel Prince was the larg- est land owner in town. He was like an English squire in his attitude and influence in the little town. By 1710 he had erected a large house on his estate and with his many acres of land was living like the county families of England. His wife was the daughter of Governor Hinckley and their in- fluence over the town affairs was very important. Along the "old Bridg" road today may be seen stone walls, crooked apple trees, sunken overgrown remains of gardens with lilacs blooming, reminders of far away days when Prince was living in his big house called "White Hall" in memory of the family home in England. After the family left Rochester, called into greater fields of action and a larger life in the big towns, the house stood deserted and during the Revolution the floors
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were taken up "to procure materials for making salt petre for the army", and then the house was taken down. Prince was sent as representative in 1714 to the General Court of Boston with pay of "four shillings a day for his pains." A son of Samuel Prince, Thomas, owned a part of Charles Neck and built the first house there. Thomas Prince was pastor of the Old South Church, and for 40 years was an authority on New England history. His library was given to the Boston Public Library, and items about books in the Prince collection are quoted in papers of today.
It is probable that the location of this estate caused the center of Rochester-Towne-in-New-England to be changed. Forty years ago there were remnants of fields where a hay crop was gathered. Today, even the road is lost in the wilderness, and it seems almost incredible that there could ever have been a squire's big house and gardens in that tangled wild. Almost every trace has disappeared, and in 1929 a room from the Prince estate, Whitehall, England was offered for sale in the United States by a Chicago merchant. If one were supersti- tious one would think of the old Pond Sachem's will when Gov. Prince was getting his many acres in Sepecan.
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