USA > Maine > Pioneers on Maine rivers, with lists to 1651 > Part 8
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Humphrey, a nephew of William Spencer, succeeded to his estate and, in 1707, became defendant in a leading case of co- lonial jurisprudence, entitled Allen versus Spencer. The action was brought by assignees of the heirs of Captain Mason to re- cover possession of the original homestead of Thomas Spencer, situated on the southerly side of the Great Works River, and con- tiguous tracts granted to him during his lifetime by the Town of Kittery. It was admitted at the trial of the issue that the prem- ises had been in the uninterrupted occupation of the Spencers
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for more than sixty years. Since the defendant denied and the plaintiff was unable to prove any right by former leasehold, the case was dismissed, but the decision has since been recognized as the American precedent for the doctrine of ownership by ad- verse possession.
Spencer was one of the first permanent settlers in the Town of South Berwick, and it has been claimed by some that the house built by Chadbourne, in which he spent the greater period of his New England existence, is to-day the most ancient building in the state.
But this contention is unfounded. Catherine Hammond, who was born in Eliot and attended church services at Old Fields, passed the home of Thomas Spencer frequently in her youth, and she testified, in 1704, that this structure had once been located near that in which his grandson Humphrey Spencer was then living.t
More than one hundred years after the Chadbourne house was built, the tract upon which it had stood was described in a Spencer conveyance as the "Old House Field." To-day the parish cemetery at Old Fields encloses a part of the ten acres that were assigned to Chadbourne by Jocelyn, as agent for Mason, trans- ferred to Patience Spencer and sold by a lineal descendant of hers to members of the First Congregational Society of the South Parish of Berwick. The nucleus of the present cemetery was originally the private burial lot of Thomas Spencer and his family.
The only other residents at Old Fields, who were rated as the heads of families in a court record of 1640, were Humphrey Chadbourne, Basil Parker, Peter Weare and John White.
The house built by James Wall had been erected on the next ten-acre lot between the Parish Cemetery and the mill at Great Works. When this dwelling became vacant, about 1638, by the removal of Wall to New Hampshire, it was sold by John Wil- cocks as agent for Francis Norton, of Charlestown, to Thomas Brooks, otherwise known as Basil Parker, and Peter Weare, an Indian trader. Norton, in turn, was the accredited representative of Captain Mason's widow, and Wilcocks married the niece of the former, subsequently, in England.
+ 2 Me. Hist. Col .. 8-184.
* York Deeds, 19-280.
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"Parker's Field" was the easterly boundary of the Spencer homestead and it was adjacent to "White's Marsh" on the south. These are among the oldest local names on the western side of the state.
A part of Parker's land was described later as the "Vine- yard," and marked the attempt of Gibbons to produce grapes in commercial quantities, on the banks of the Great Works River, before Mason had obtained title to this land by division with the Laconia Company.
Basil Parker was, at the time of his death in 1651, registrar of deeds for the whole district of Maine. After the decease of his associate, Weare removed to York and their property at Old Fields was absorbed by Richard Leader who had acquired the mill privilege at Great Works from the Town of Kittery. The claim of Mason's heirs to the Wall tenement was compromised afterwards by the Hutchinsons, as assignees of Leader.§
After the decease of Captain Mason in 1635 Henry Jocelyn continued to reside in Newichawannock House. During the sum- mer of the following year Thomas Purchase, of Pejepscot, with some of his employes, visited this post in a long boat which he sold to John Treworthy. Purchase subsequently alleged that this bargain was effected at Newichawannock in a house which was then occupied by tenants or employes of the widow of Captain Mason.
When Jocelyn withdrew to Black Point two years later and associated with Thomas Cammock in that settlement, some of the other employes continued to occupy Newichawannock House. In fact, no other course appears to have been open for them in a country where the titles were constantly in controversy. They were accused afterwards of dissipating what property then remained from the estates of Mason and the Laconia proprietors. Apparently, John Wilcocks, from whom the pond in South Ber- wick derived its name, and Thomas Canney, of Rollinsford, were two of these.
May 10, 1643, when but nineteen years of age, Humphrey, son of William Chadbourne, bought his first tract of land of Sagamore Rowles. That he was a minor was attested by Savage who alluded to him as "young Humphrey Chadbourne" and re- ported that he had died before arriving at middle age.
§ York Deeds, 1-30.
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The deed was witnessed by Thomas Spencer, in whose house- hold the grantee appeared to have been living, and its descrip- tion embraced "Half a Mile of Ground which lieth betwixt the Little River & the Great River to begin at the Norther Side of ye old Ground." The reference to the "old ground" alluded to the land which Rowles had previously sold to Jocelyn, in 1634. That tract had extended above the Great Works River and included the northerly slope of the basin, where Gibbons had formerly under- taken to cultivate a vineyard. The name "Vineyard Pasture" was a term used many years later in Chadbourne conveyances .*
The house built by Humphrey Chadbourne, who had learned his trade as a carpenter from his father, was located at the con- fluence of the rivers, according to an ancient map of the district. Here he operated a sawmill in company with Thomas Spencer.
Passage across the river to Old Fields at this point was made in canoes or over a footbridge fashioned from a single log. The only cart bridge across this river was located at Great Works soon after the settlement of Old Fields. There was no bridge near Chadbourne's house as late as the second Indian massacre in 1690, because the English then escaped to the lower planta- tions over a log crossing. The Salmon Falls River was fordable at the head of Little John's Falls in front of Newichawannock House.
Chadbourne's wife was Lucy, a sister of John Treworthy, who was sent to Pascataqua in 1636, when but nineteen years old, as supercargo in his grandfather's vessel. She was born in 1632, according to her deposition, taken in 1704 and used in the case of Allen versus Spencer; she was then seventy-two years of age. She testified that she came to New England in 1646. This ancient document was abstracted from the files at Alfred, Maine, or from Suffolk files in Boston, where an appeal was taken. Only a copy of the first line was preserved by Seth Chadbourne who has long been dead. Another deposition gave the same year of birth .;
Humphrey Chadbourne and Lucy Treworthy were both young when their marriage was solemnized, and he died in 1666, leav- ing a large family of children, all of whom were minors. The widow later married Thomas Wills, and after his decease Elias Stileman. The Chadbourne homestead remained in possession of
* York Deeds. 1-6.
* 2 Me. Hist. Col., 8-184.
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the lineal descendants of Humphrey for more than two hundred years, and part of it is occupied to-day by Berwick Academy.}
17 64 The Town of Sommer sworth in the Province of New Hampshire
Salmon fall River below Salmon Falls commonly called Quamp hegon River
Hewich wanich Jack
Jotand
mill pond and mill Privilège iq acnes
4514
wobadmentor shippar som 4814
Mr Jhoo" Lords Land
m . Wm Hights Land
S/C
Great Works River.
to great works
Averla of or hundred Rods
0 0 20 3040 00 60 70 80 90 100
Indians afsabum badook "English great work,
The Falls called by the
CHADBOURNE ESTATE, 1764
į York Prob. Rec., 11-177.
high way leading
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PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
Newichawannock House was destroyed by fire. About 1645, according to the recollection of Francis Small, the "house & buildings were burned to the ground, but by what means" he did not know.
In 1654, the line of jurisdiction between Berwick and Dover, as also between Maine and New Hampshire, was established at the middle of the channel of Newichawannock River, and the abandoned site of Newichawannock House was officially deter- mined to be a part of the latter municipality.
Two years later, when one hundred and twenty acres of land opposite the mouth of the Great Works River were allotted by the Town of Dover to Thomas Canney, the tract was described as bounded in part by the original lot seized by the Laconia Com- pany in 1631.
According to an ancient survey of Canney's land, made in 1656, it lay between Saint Alban's Cove and Quampheagan Falls and was bounded "on the soeth est partly by Newichnecke River & partly ba sartayn parcell of land that was sometime possessed by Capt Massons agent and on the north Est by a highway that goeth from the Southest End of the sayd lott up into the woods to the N. W. end & on the N. W. by Thomas Hanson his land & on S. W. partly by the common & partly by James Grants land."§
The contiguous tract of James Grant, consisting of twenty acres, particularly defined in a town allotment in 1658, was sold by the grantee to David Hamilton. In his description of these premises Grant, who had previously removed to York, averred that the property was situated "at Nechewanick in Dover."
The upper line of the Canney lot is still defined by the orig- inal highway near the river.
The third lot above Canney's, in the same tier, was assigned to John Dame, of Dover, the same year. Henry Clay Dame, a lineal descendant of the pioneer, who died in Rollinsford in 1906, claimed throughout his lifetime that family tradition fixed the location of the first English habitation upon the Garvin farm opposite the mouth of the Great Works River.
The land "sometime possessed by Capt Massons agent" was the ancient field of the Laconia Company, which had been occu- pied subsequently by Henry Jocelyn as Mason's agent. Appar- ently Canney, who had also been one of Mason's employes at
§ Dover Records, 1-81.
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PISCATAQUA RIVER
Newichawannock House, or the municipal officers of Dover at his suggestion, recognized his employer's presumed title to the appurtenant tract.
Hannah, a daughter of Thomas Canney, married Henry Hobbs, of Dover, and her father's lot, granted only five years before, was assigned to her husband as an endowment July 12, 1661.
Hobbs had no compunction against trespassing upon the early holdings of the Laconia Company or of Mason's heirs in the tract lying between his land and the river and, because it was adapted to his own uses, claimed it. Hence, it was never granted to any- one by the Town of Dover. In 1687, Samuel Sewall, circuit judge of Massachusetts, alluded to the cove in the lower extremity of that little point, which he then visited, as "Hobs his Hole, Quam- phegen." The water there is still forty feet deep at high tide.
Hobbs' Hole had furnished a fair haven for the seagoing ves- sels of the Laconia Company and Mason and later was utilized as a favorable place to build and launch small sloops. It faced di- rectly down river.
As late as 1691, when Henry Child, David Hamilton and five others were reported to have been slain by Indians in Newicha- wannock, that district was still understood to comprise both banks of Salmon Falls River; the former decedent lived on Child's Hill at the upper edge of South Berwick village and the latter was a neighbor of Henry Hobbs in Rollinsford.
In 1707, assignees of Mason's New Hampshire rights under- took to eject the successors of Richard Waldron and other resi- dents from lands occupied by them in Dover. The decisions of the inferior court had been adverse to the defendants and their reasons for appeal recited the transient character of occupation by Mason's agents before his death in 1635, and the fact that only one garrison was ever built by the London proprietor or his predecessors.
Proof that the post at Newichawannock in Dover was the only one ever established by Mason or his associates in New Eng- land may be adduced from the testimony of William Seavey taken about thirty years before the Waldron suit was finally decided. In his deposition, recorded in perpetuam memoriam, Seavey stated that "neither Capt Neale nor Capt Mason nor any by from or under ym did ever set up or exercise any Govermt in this Countrey more than over the family that Capt Neale brought
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PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
with him. Nor ever built any house or settled any family here except a trading house at Niwichewanacke to trade with the Indians."*
In the language of the appeal it was alleged that "whatever possession or Improvements the said Mason's Agents or succes- sors might have or had in these parts of New England, it really was noe other than the settlement of a Factory and Trade with the Natives; And principally, for a Discovery of a place they called Laconia; and that alsoe in company with several other Merchant Adventurers in England, who for the support and se- curity of their factors and Servants, and Especially from the Sal- vages, did Erect a Garrison or Fort as they call it, but never Amounted to a possession in Law, soe as any ways to make or confirme a Title to the Land of this Province."+
The language used by Waldron contains a tacit admission that he knew that the fort styled Newichawannock House had been occupied by the tenants of the patentees and that it had been located in Newichawannock at Dover.
May 9, 1709, a highway was laid out, partly along an ancient cart path made by early settlers from Saint Alban's Cove to Quampheagan Falls. This road followed the old way "on the north side of Thomas Cannies lott to the old wadeing place op- posite to Chadbourn's mill" until it came "to the mouth of Little John's Creek on the south side of James Stackpole's house."
In 1715, when Captain Ichabod Plaisted made his will, he had negotiated with Samuel, a grandson of Thomas Canney and nephew of Henry Hobbs, for the purchase of the tract formerly occupied by Gibbons for the use of the Laconia Company. April 22, 1722, after Plaisted's decease, Canney confirmed the sale of his interest in the tract to a son of Captain Plaisted, of the same name, describing the premises as three acres situated at a place in Dover called Hobbs' Hole, bounded southerly and easterly by Newichawannock River; westerly by the lot of Henry Hobbs, deceased ; and northerly by property belonging to the grantee.
In this connection it is interesting to note that the settlement at Hilton's Point in Dover was situated between two establish- ments of the Laconia Company : one undertaken at Little Harbor by David Thompson and his Plymouth associates in 1623 and the
* N. H. State Papers. 17-522.
¡ N. H. State Papers, 2-525.
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other at Newichawannock by Ambrose Gibbons, of Plymouth, in 1631.
PIONEERS
BROOKS, THOMAS, alias Basil Parker, agent for Shrewsbury merchants at Dover, 1633; Great Works, 1640; registrar of deeds, York County, 1645; died 1651, without issue in this country.
CHADBOURNE, HUMPHREY, planter, arrived at Berwick with his father, 1634; died 1666; widow Lucy (Treworthy) married Thomas Wells and Elias Stileman; children Alice (Donnell, Moulton), Catherine (Weigh- mouth), Elizabeth (Alcock), Humphrey, born 1656; James, Lucy (Lewis), and William.
CHADBOURNE, WILLIAM, carpenter, arrived at Berwick in the "Pide Cow," July 8, 1634; gave his house at South Berwick to his daughter Patience, wife of Thomas Spencer, and removed to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 1642; sons Humphrey and William.
CHADBOURNE, WILLIAM, baptized at Winchcombe, 1610; carpenter, arrived at Berwick with his father, 1634; Boston, 1644; Berwick, 1652; wife Mary; daughter Mary (Foss) at Dover, 1666.
GODDARD, JOHN, carpenter, arrived at Berwick from London July 8, 1634, in the "Pide Cow"; Newmarket, 1638; died November 12, 1666; widow Welthen married John Symonds; children Benjamin, Dorcas (Bennick), Elizabeth (Gilman), John and Mary (Thomas).
NASON, RICHARD, planter at Dover, 1645; South Berwick, 1649; wife Sarah, daughter of John Baker; second wife Abigail, widow of.Nicholas Follett; died 1696; children Baker, Benjamin, John, Jonathan, Joseph, Richard and Sarah (Child, Hoyt).
PARKER, BASIL, alias Thomas Brooks.
SPENCER, THOMAS, born 1596; came to Pascataqua with Mason's em- ployes, 1630; returned to England in 1633 and came back in the "Pide Cow," July 8, 1634; died December 15, 1681; widow Patience. Chad- bourne; children William, Margaret (Goodwin), Susanna (Gattinsby, Joy), Mary (Etherington), Elizabeth (Chick, Turbett), Humphrey, born 1647, and Moses.
WALL, JAMES, carpenter, arrived at Berwick July 8, 1634, in the "Pide Cow" from England; Exeter, 1639; Dover, 1642; died at Hampton Octo- ber 3, 1659; second wife Mary was widow of Edward Tuck; children Elizabeth, Hannah, Mary and Sarah.
WEARE, PETER, born 1618; Indian trader at Dover, 1638; Berwick, 1640; York, 1642; registrar for York County; killed by Indians January 25, 1691-2; widow Mary, daughter of John Gouch; children Elias, Joseph and Peter.
WILCOCKS, JOHN, agent of Francis Norton of Charlestown, who was attorney for Ann, widow of Captain John Mason at Berwick and Ports- mouth, 1638-1640; subsequently married Norton's niece in England.
ELIOT.
This locality offered many natural advantages to the prospec- tive settler. It was adapted to cultivation, as well as for fishing and commerce with the Indians.
Near the shore in Pascataqua River there is a small island which, according to an ancient deed, once contained an acre and
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was known as Watts' Fort. An early map depicted that and Frank's Fort as two small points situated on the Eliot shore about one mile apart.
In 1627, John Watts was sent to Cape Ann as a factor for the Dorchester Merchants. The company was engaged in fishing and trading with the Indians in that vicinity. Watts landed at Cape Ann but Pascataqua was near and must have lured him with prospects of superior trading possibilities. His occupation was merely seasonable, but he appears to have built a fortified trading post upon the little island at Eliot to develop his industry. Only the local name now suggests any historical significance for the islet, once a promontory but now almost annihilated by river tides.
Three years after the departure of Watts for England, the Indians, James and John Sagamore, of Ipswich, complained to Winthrop of the unfair dealings of the Dorchester factor, who was still in England. The tradition was preserved that the native chief- tains followed the English trader to his lair, presented an address to King Charles and recovered full reparation for furs which had been taken from them by force or deceit near Agawam.}
With the possible exception of the trading post at Watts' Fort, probably the first English habitation in Eliot was a building erected at Frank's Fort in the summer of 1631, to provide protec- tion as well as shelter for French employes of the Laconia Com- pany. These men arrived at Pascataqua in June of that year, prepared to begin the salt industry. Francis Williams, from whom the fort took its name, was overseer in charge of the ex- perimental work undertaken by the company at that time.§
The entire project was a failure and the French mechanics did not remain long in the country. The only names mentioned were those of Charles, Labrisse and Petfree who, undoubtedly, were possessed of more than ordinary scientific knowledge, since Petfree was afterwards captain of a French man-of-war in the West Indies .*
Another early settler on the eastern bank of Pascataqua River was William Hilton who appeared there after 1631, when Dover patent had been sold to Bristol merchants by his brother Edward. During the year following that sale he owned a house and planted
# Mass. Hist. Proc., 43-493 ; Winthrop. 1-49.
§ Winthrop. 1-56.
N. H. State Papers, 1-72 ; Winthrop, 1-226.
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corn in Eliot. In August, 1632, he delivered to George Ludlow a stock of merchandise, left with him by John Hocking, the Indian trader who then represented the Bristol Merchants, but was killed two years later at Kennebec in the service of the Shrews- bury Merchants. The indications are that Ludlow, who obtained the goods at Eliot, was one of Hocking's associates at Dover. i
Soon after, as the result of a controversy over Bloody Point, which Neal claimed to have been included in the grant issued to Laconia Company November 3, 1631, Hilton was ousted from Eliot by agents of that company. The vacant premises were con- veyed by Neal, as agent of the proprietors, to Thomas Cammock June 2, 1633, and transferred by the grantee to John Treworthy for the account of his grandfather Alexander Shapleigh, then in England, January 20, 1636-7. After eviction Hilton withdrew to Exeter, but Wood's map of Southern New England, based upon information secured in 1633, assigned the entire Pascataqua shore to him.
The lot south of Cammock's was given to Thomas Wanner- ton, by Neal July 9, 1633, at the request of Laconia Company. At that time Wannerton was living in the house at Little Harbor, whither he may have removed from his own house at Strawberry Bank and where, at the departure of Neal about a week later, he assumed full control. With the exceptions of "18 swords and 4 swoards at Mr. Warnerton's house" at Portsmouth, all property belonging to the company had been stored in their Newichawan- nock and Pascataqua buildings, where inventories had been com- pleted July 2, 1633. Sanders' Point had just been conferred upon Ambrose Gibbons by Neal, but the owner remained in charge at Newichawannock until the next summer and permitted John Pickering, who was remodeling the house for him, to occupy the premises during the interim.}
October 9, 1632, Nicholas Frost had been banished from Massachusetts with orders not to return or a severe penalty would be exacted. With such an alternative he went back to England in some fishing vessel from Pascataqua or the Isles of Shoals.
In June, 1634, he returned to New England with his family, sailing from Plymouth in the Wulfrana, which with a few pas-
¡ York Deeds, 1-60.
¿ N. H. State Papers, 1-80.
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sengers may have come on a fishing voyage to the Isles of Shoals. Upon arrival at Pascataqua his family was entertained by Wan- nerton at Little Harbor for several months and April 17, 1635, during the period of sojourn, one of his daughters was born there.
He and his host either had been, or became, congenial friends. It it possible that they may have been associated in England. Philip Swadden, who was then living in Kittery at the mouth of Pascataqua River, testified that about 1635 Wannerton had given Frost some land in Eliot to induce him "to come to bee his Neighbor." Frost was living upon part of this land, which formed a nucleus for his homestead, in 1637, and his child Cather- ine was born there on Christmas Day of that year. This daughter subsequently married Joseph, son of William Hammond, of Cape Porpoise, resided in Eliot and deposed there when she was sixty- eight years of age.§
Wannerton sold his Laconia grant to Alexander Shapleigh March 1, 1637-8, without reservations. It was then bounded on the south by the tract given to Henry Jocelyn by Laconia Com- pany in 1633 and sold by him to Hansard Knowles, pastor at Dover, five years later, when Jocelyn removed to Black Point where, like Cammock, he had had an earlier concession from the Council of Plymouth .*
The families known to have been resident in Eliot in 1638 were those of Abraham Conley, Nicholas Frost, John Newgrove, Edward Small, James Treworthy and John White. Agamenticus was more populous and had built a meeting-house in 1636. After it was completed William Thompson conducted services there, but in 1639, after a period of probation, he was ordained at Braintree. Then, or later, there was no mention of land occupied by him at Gorgeana, but his pastorate was described in one rec- ord as established at "Agamenticus or Pascataqua." Hence, it may be assumed that his domicile had been at Thompson's Point in the latter settlement during 1638, or prior, and that his entire circuit included communicants living in lower Berwick, upper Eliot and coastal York.
There are several distinct allusions to Eliot territory which prove that it was the original Kittery.
§ York Deeds. 3-13; 2 Me. Hist. Col .. 8-184.
* Appendix E.
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107
The Cammock tract had been occupied soon after its pur- chase by James, father of John Treworthy, and John White, an employe, and that locality, which lay opposite Dover Point, de- rived the name of "Kittery" from members of the Shapleigh family who had emigrated thither from Kittery Point in Devon- shire. The name first appears in a deed of land at Eliot, dated January 1, 1638-9.
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