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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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SIR EDMUND ANDROS
HISTORY c
OF
NEW HAMPSHIRE
BY
EVERETT S. STACKPOLE
Author of "Old Kittery and Her Families," "History of Durham, N. H.," etc.
VOLUME I
THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEW YORK
=
1481616 Preface
N the preparation of this history every possible effort has been made to gather information from original sources. While former histories of New Hampshire have been utilized, their statements and views have been subjected to criticism and further research. Much that is new in the early history of New Hampshire has been gleaned from manuscripts recently copied in London under the direction of the New Hampshire Historical Society. That Society has given valuable aid in research work through its secretary, Mr. Otis G. Hammond, and his assistants, Miss Edith S. Freeman and Miss Ruth Brown. Footnotes reveal the authorities for the most important statements. All the published Province and State Papers, all the County and Town Histories have been consulted. It has been necessary to leave out much and to write in a condensed style. Multum in parvo has been the rule adopted. An effort has been made to avoid dryness and make the work readable, though what is dry to one reader may be of great interest to another. The aim has been to state the truth with charity and to put blame upon conduct only when a moral lesson demands it.
The advisory board of editors, consisting of General Frank S. Streeter of Concord, William F. Whitcher of Woodsville, Judge Edgar Aldrich of Littleton, ex-Senator William E. Chan- dler of Concord, Charles A. Hazlett of Portsmouth, John Scales of Dover, and Rev. Burton W. Lockhart of Manchester, have given valuable advice and suggestions. Some have read the proof sheets carefully, made some corrections, added lines of information and led to modification of statements. Thanks are due to them for the interest shown and the help afforded. Yet it is not to be concluded that they are in any degree responsible for any statements of facts and opinions found in this history. They have advised and suggested, and the author has decided. He expects to shoulder all criticisms either from the historical or literary standpoint.
By advice of the above mentioned board the political his- tory ends about the year 1884, a century after the adoption of
J.O. #6550
12-58-2
the Constitution of the State. The results of very recent events can not now be estimated. The motives and merits of the principal actors are subject of debate. Time must elapse before the outcome can be measured. Some things now thought to be of little importance may loom up largely in the future. Some other things which now trouble many souls may appear as trifles after another generation has past. The interpretation of history is subsequent history to a very large extent. Therefore the his- tory proper ends with the fourth volume, and the author and the advisory board are not at all responsible for anything found in the fifth volume. That is a supplement, biographical rather than historical, although every biography necessarily includes historical elements. Indeed it is the acts of leading men that form the principal part of history, and the most interesting part. There must be an incarnation of truth and righteousness in the lives of men before their power is much felt. Every noble and useful life is a help and inspiration to somebody. In the fifth, or supplementary, volume an honest effort is made to portray the lives of New Hampshire men of the last generation, who have really taken parts worth mentioning in the recent history of the State. Thus will be preserved the original material from which some future historian will certainly draw.
To determine what biographical sketches should form a part of the fifth volume is a delicate task, for which the pub- lishers alone are responsible. Like a photographer they pose the subject in the best light and attitude possible. Nobody is pleased with his own picture unless it looks full as well as he himself does at his best, and love for the departed idealizes their remembered lives.
The author assumes responsibility for all in the first four volumes except the chapters on "An Almost Successful Seces- sion" and on "Franklin Pierce-President," written by Mr. William F. Whitcher, one of the advisory board, who has de- voted special study to these themes. These chapters speak well for themselves.
Although the history proper terminates thirty years ago, statistical information is brought down to date, as well as late events in the revision of the State Constitution, growth of schools and colleges, development of State Institutions, rise and extension of manufactures and means of transportation. These
items of information will be found in their appropriate places.
It has been the desire and effort of the author to make this history illustrative of truth, righteousness, patriotism and human brotherhood. The history of New Hampshire is a record of the lives of many noble and efficient men. Every native of the Granite State should be proud of the deeds they wrought and the character they exhibited.
EVERETT S. STACKPOLE.
Concord, N. H., September 23, 1916.
The Society would express its obligations to Mr. Charles A. Hazlett, of Portsmouth, N. H., for use of various plates and photographs.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I. The Beginning
3
II. The Four Towns
29
III. New Hampshire Absorbed by Massachusetts
53
IV. First Conflict with the Indians
89
V. New Hampshire a Royal Province
103
VI. Governor Cranfield's Administration
125
VII. The Ungoverned Govern Themselves
157
VIII. King William's War
171
IX. Five Troublous and Troubled Governors
193
X. Queen Anne's War
219
XI. Administration of Governor Shute and His Lieutenants, Vaughan and Wentworth 233
XII. The Fourth Indian War
251
XIII. Administrations of Governors Burnet and Belcher 265
XIV. Controversy about Boundary Lines
283
XV. The Masonian Proprietors 303
XVI. Administration of Governor Benning Wentworth 317
XVII. Towns Granted by the Masonian Proprietors
349
XVIII. Towns Granted by Governor Benning Wentworth
365
Appendix A-The Great House
373
Appendix B-An Old Deed
379
Index of Subjects and Places
385
Index of Nanies
398
Chapter I THE BEGINNING
Chapter I THE BEGINNING.
The Value of History-First Things-Early Fishermen-Martin Pring- Champlain-Capt. John Smith-Grant to John Mason-David Thomson, First Settler-Mason's Hall-Edward and William Hilton-Division of Land of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Capt. John Mason-Laconia- Settlements at Newichawannock and Strawberry Bank-Ambrose Gibbons-Sketches of the First Settlers-Dissolution of the Council of New England-Is Mason's Royal Charter Authentic ?- Death and Character of Mason.
B Y learning and wisely interpreting the events of the past, we seek to better understand the present and forecast the future. History is the handmaid of prophecy. The roots of the present reach down and back to the beginning of things. We would like to start with creation, as the Hebrew historian did, and trace the annals down through the ages, hoping thus to learn the chain of causes. Events, like moving pictures, pass before an ever changing company of on-lookers, and interest in the present obscures memory of the past. Few have time and in- clination to roll the film back and review slowly and thought- fully the historic play as one connected and inseparable whole. Indeed this is impossible; we can only approximate such an endeavor. We dig and search for old records as for hid treasure, and when a few have been discovered it is the patient life-work of the historian to put them together, like pieces of a dissected map, in proper logical order.
First things fascinate us. Who discovered New Hamp- shire? Who first landed on her shores? When came they and for what purpose? Where were the first settlements made? What were the first forms of government? Such questions con- front conflicting claims and evidences. Answers should be given impartially and without prejudice.
There can be no doubt that fishermen came often to the mouth of the Pascataqua many years, perhaps centuries, before any settlement was made on the coast of New England. Watts Fort, a little island in the Pascataqua, off Leighton's Point, in
3
4
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Eliot, Maine, now covered with water at high tide, once had thereon an orchard and a habitation. Nobody surely knows the origin of the name, found in earliest deeds. Perhaps it was once the rendezvous of fishermen, while Franks Fort, just below it, may have been headquarters for an opposing band, the Franks, from Brittany. The Rev. William Hubbard of Ipswich, who wrote a history of New England before the year 1682, says that the Pascataqua was "a river of noat" and that it had been "fre- quented ever since the country was first planted, by such as came this way for trafficke with the inhabitants, natives and others, that have seated themselves in plantations about the uppermost branches thereof." It was probably a well known river long before there were any plantations on its banks. Fisher- men were on the coast of Newfoundland at a very early date, and some adventurous spirits must have sailed along the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. Finding abundance of cod and mackerel about the Isles of Shoals and the waters of the Pas- cataqua and its tributaries swarming with salmon and sturgeon, they came again and brought others, returning to Europe to find a market.
The first discoverer of this region, of whom there is any historical record, was Capt. Martin Pring, sent by some mer- chants of Bristol, England, in the year 1603. His small ship of thirty tons was named the Speedwell. The crew consisted of thirty men and boys. Edmund Jones was his mate and Robert Salterne was chief agent. A bark, called the Discoverer, ac- companied them, with William Brown as master and a crew of thirteen men and a boy. Samuel Kirkland was the mate of this little vessel of twenty-six tons. They sailed by leave of Sir Walter Raleigh, for the further discovery of North Virginia, as the New England of today was then called. April tenth they set sail from Milford Haven. "In June they fall in with the main coast and a multitude of islands in 43 deg. and 30 min. north, land upon them, coast along the shore near unto Cape Cod bay, sail around the cape, anchor on the south side in 41 deg. and 25 min., where they land in another bay and excellent harbor, make a barricado and stay seven weeks." Pring says that he rowed up an inlet ten or twelve miles. This was prob- ably the Pascataqua, and he may have reached Newichawan-
-
JOHN SMITH
5
A HISTORY
nock, Cochecho, Shankhassick, or Squamscot, the names Indians then gave to South Berwick, Dover, Oyster River and Exeter River.
Martin Pring is called "a man very sufficient for his place." He was born probably in 1580, in the parish of Awliscombe, near Honiton, Devon. After his voyage to these shores he en- tered the service of the East India Company. He commanded an English squadron in 1617 and died in 1626. A monument to his memory is in St. Stephens church, Bristol, with the in- scription, "To the Pious Memorie of Martin Pringe, merchant, sometime General to the East Indies and one of ye Fraternity of the Trinity House," etc.1
Samuel de Champlain's account of his voyage along the coast of Maine declares that he saw three or four rather prom- inent islands, isles asses haute, and on the west Ipswich bay. These must have been the Isles of Shoals.2
In 1614 Capt. John Smith sailed along the coast of Maine and New Hampshire and in his report made mention of Smith's Isles, which did not retain his name but were known as early as 1630 and probably before Smith visited them as the Isles of Shoals, where fishermen set up their flakes. Smith speaks also of the river Pascataque,-notice the French way of spelling it,-as "a safe harbor with a rocky shore." On his return to England he published a description of the country seen, with a map of the seacoast, which he presented to Prince Charles, who gave the country the name New England. Smith is best known as a prisoner among the Indians of Virginia, whom Poca- hontas rescued from the tomahawk.
Doubtless many others, fishermen, traders and adventurers, carried back to England reports concerning this country and its wealth of fish and forest. The greatest hope of the first ex- plorers was to find mines of gold and silver, such as had lured the Spanish to Peru and Mexico. Merchants of London and of Bristol were eager for gain. They formed companies and sent out settlers just as men are now doing with reference to Alaska. It is the prospect of gain that beckons colonists to distant lands.
1 Prence's Annals of New England, p. 103; Purchas His Pilgrim, Vol. IV .; Mag. of Am. Hist., VIII, 840-44.
2 Jenness' The Isle of Shoals, p. 18.
6
NEW HAMPSHIRE
November 3, 1620, King James I granted to forty noblemen, knights and gentlemen, styled "the Councill established at Ply- mouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, order- ing and governing of New England in America," a charter em- bracing the territory between forty and forty-eight degrees of north latitude, stretching through the continent from sea to sea. The breadth of this was from near the mouth of St. Lawrence river to the vicinity of Philadelphia. This Council of Plymouth was formed by the petition of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, "captain of our fort and island of Plymouth," and certain other adven- turers.
On the ninth day of March, 1621/2, the above named cor- poration, called in the grant "the President & Counsell of New England," granted to "John Mason, Gent, and inhabitant of the citty of London," a great headland or cape lying in the northernmost parts of the Massachusetts country, "knowne by the Names of Cape Frabizzand or Cape Anne," lying between the Naumkeag and the Merrimack rivers and stretching west- ward to the farthest head of said rivers, together with the great Isle or Island, henceforth to be called Isle Mason, lying Neare or before the Bay harbor or ye river of Aggawam." This stretch of land "the said John Mason with the consent of the President and Councill intendeth to name Mariana." The Council author- ized Ambrose Gibbons or other officer to be their true and law- ful attorney, to deliver possession and seizin to John Mason.3
It is claimed that Ambrose Gibbons made a small settle- ment at Cape Anne in 1622 or 1623, and that in 1630 he was ousted by the Massachusetts Bay Company, whose grant covered the same territory. This claim was made in 1679, when the title of Robert Mason to New Hampshire was fully set forth by his agent.4 The fact that Gibbons is mentioned in the charter of 1622 as the person to whom possession was to be delivered and the fact also that he reappears in 1630 at Newichawannock (South Berwick, Me.) as agent of Capt. John Mason seem to favor this claim.
On the tenth day of August, 1622, the President and Coun- cil of New England granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Capt.
3 N. H. State Papers, Vol. 29, pp. 19-23.
4 N. H. State Papers, Vol. XVII, p. 534.
7
A HISTORY
John Mason of London a territory to be known as the Province of Maine, lying between the Merrimack and the Sagadahock (Kennebec) rivers and "to the furthest heads of said Rivers & soe upwards into the land westward untill threescore miles be finished from ye first entrance of the aforesaid rivers & half way over, that is to say to the midst of the said two rivers," and all the islands to within five leagues distance from the coast. Little was then known of the direction of these rivers, and they were supposed to be somewhat parallel and both flowing west to east. Capt. Robert Gorges was authorized to deliver posses- sion and seizin.5
Thus far we have been dealing with discoveries and char- ters; we now come to actual settlements. An indenture has been found, dated December 14, 1622, between David Thomson of Plymouth, England, who had been employed by the Council of New England as messenger or agent, and three merchants, Abraham Colmer, Nicholas Sherwill and Leonard Pomery. The indenture recounts that the Council of New England had granted, October 16, 1622, six thousand acres of land and one island in and upon the coast of New England to the aforesaid David Thomson. Nothing is said in the indenture about the location of this grant, as to just where in New England it might be found. If Thomson had previously visited New England and selected his land, then this grant was in direct conflict with the grant made to Gorges and Mason only two months before. It is more likely that Thomson was allowed to choose his six thousand acres and his island anywhere within the territory controlled by the Council, so as not to interfere with the rights of other grantees, and when he found out that there was a prior claim to the land whereon he actually settled at Pascataqua, he abandoned his plantation there begun. Indeed the indenture reads that Thomson and those sent with him, as soon as they were landed in New England, should "find oute some fitt place or places there, for the choice of the said sixe thousand acres of land." He did not select it all in one place, as we shall see. It was agreed that the three aforementioned merchants should send over four men with the said David Thomson in the good ship
5 N. H. State Papers, Vol. XXIX, pp. 23-28.
8
NEW HAMPSHIRE
called the Jonathan 'of Plymouth and also three men more in the ship called the Providence of Plymouth, together with vict- uals and provisions for three months, all to be sent this present year, making with Thomson eight men. The Public Record Office in London contains the following, in a catalogue of Patents granted for plantations in New England, "1622, a Patent to David Thompson, M. Jobe, M. Sherwood of Plymouth, for a pt of Piscattowa River in New England." This imperfect memorandum was made about the time of the Restoration of King Charles II, or about forty years after the grant, with change of names and insertion of the place selected after the grant was made. The record shows that Thompson's Point, in the Pascataqua, was known in London at an early date.
Governor Winslow, in 1624, calls David Thomson a Scotch- man, and Hubbard, the historian, makes the same statement, probably quoting from the earlier authority. The marriage, however, of David Thomson, apothecary, to Amias Cole, was recorded in Plymouth, England, July 13, 1613. She was daugh- ter of William Cole, shipwright and mariner, who, April 8, 1615, leased unto said Thomson for six years a part of his house recently built, "neare the old conduit," in Plymouth. Mention is made of her "children" in 1625, and the business transactions of her son, John Thomson, make it probable that he was born soon after the marriage of his parents and so was not the first white child born in New Hampshire, as some have assumed and asserted.6
David Thomson came over in the spring of 1623 and built a house at Little Harbor. The foundation stones of his chimney may be seen at Odiorne's Point. The whole region about the mouth of the river was then called Pascataquack, Pascataqua, or Pascataway. Here Thomson was visited in November, 1623, by Capt. Christopher Levett, who calls the place Pannaway. He staid a month with Thomson and here met Gov. Robert Gorges. Phineas Pratt also visited Thomson in 1623 at Pas- cataway.
Gov. Edward Winslow's book, Good News of New Eng- land, published in 1624, says that in 1623 "Capt. Standish being formerly employed by the governor to buy provisions for the
" Aspinwall's Notarial Records, passim.
9
A HISTORY
refurnishing of the colony returned with the same, accompanied with Mr. David Thomson, a Scotchman, who also that spring began a plantation twenty-five leagues northwest from us, near Smith's Isles, at a place called Pascataquack, where he liketh well." This fixes definitely the date of the first settlement in New Hampshire.
Thomas Morton's book, The New English Canaan, written in 1635 and published at Amsterdam in 1637, after ten years of experience in New England, names David Thomson, a Scot- tish gentleman, among the scholars and travelers of good judg- ment who conjectured the natives of New England to have been descended "from the scattered Trojans, after such time as Brutus departed from Latium."7 Geraldus Cambrensis argues a similar origin for the Welsh people. Such opinions may be classified with that which traces the English people back to the ten lost tribes of Israel.
As for Mason's Hall, said to have been built by Thomson, it existed only in the fancy of careless historians. Thomson had no reason to build or name such a stone house. He probably built a house of pine logs, with chimney of stone set in clay, at its north end. He probably also built a house at Thomson's Point, on the west side of the Newichawannock, the Indian name of the river that empties into the Pascataqua at Hilton's Point. The house was a short distance below the mouth of the Cochecho river, at a place recently called Gage's Point. Thomson's Point House is in the Dover tax list of 1648, and this was the well chosen place for fish-weirs. In the vicinity some graves have been found. Possibly Edward Hilton was one of the seven men who came over with Thomson and built this house for Thomson and here set up his weirs.
About 1626 Thomson left his possessions at the mouth of the Pascataqua and went to an island in Boston Harbor, ever since called Thomson's Island. It is a reasonable conjecture, that having chosen his six thousand acres at what was afterward called Dover Neck he disposed of the same to Edward Hilton, who subsequently obtained a grant for this tract and more land on the south side of the river, thus to insure and enlarge his possessions. Thomson died soon after his removal, for his wife
7 Morton's The New Conaan, published by the Prince Society, pp. 128-9.
IO
NEW HAMPSHIRE
is called widow in 1628. Her second husband was Samuel Maverick, a very early settler at Noddle's Island, now East Boston, whence he was constrained to depart by the oppositions of the Puritans. We shall meet with him again. It has been asserted that John Thomson, son of David, settled in Mendon, Massachusetts, but the evidence is not conclusive.8
The settlements made by David Thomson at Odiorne's Point, in what is now the town of Rye, and at Thomson's Point in Dover were temporary and abandoned after a few years, somewhat after the manner of the Popham settlement near the mouth of the Kennebec in 1607. We come now to the first permanent settlement in New Hampshire, made in 1623 by Ed- ward Hilton at the end of Dover Neck, called ever since Hilton's Point.
The historian Hubbard says that with Thomson came in 1623 Edward Hilton and William Hilton. This has been dis- puted, but the evidence seems now to leave no room for doubt. William Hilton's son, William, in a petition to the Massachu- setts General Court, before 1660, says that his "father, William Hilton, came over into New England about the yeare Anno Dom : 1621 and your petitioner came about one yeare & an halfe after ,and in a little time following settled ourselves upon the River of Pischataq with Mr. Edw. Hilton, who were the first English planters there."9
Edward and William Hilton had been fishmongers in Lon- don, where the former appears as a member of the fishmonger's guild in 1621. In 1628, according to Gov. Bradford, he con- tributed one pound toward the expenses of the arrest and trans- portation of Thomas Morton of Merry Mount. William Hilton came to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the ship Fortune, Novem- ber II, 1621, and his wife and two children came in the ship Anne, arriving in July or August, 1623. They had allotments of land, four acres, in Plymouth, in 1623. This William Hilton planted corn in that part of Kittery which is now Eliot, just across the river from Hilton's Point, in 1634.10 Later he lived
8 See Shurtleff's Hist. of Boston for particulars about Thomson vs. Dorchester as Claimants for Thomson's Island.
9 N. E. Historic Geneological Register, Vol. XXXVI, p. 41.
10 Stackpole's Old Kittery and Her Families. p. 111.
II
A HISTORY
at Kittery Point and at York, Maine. Evidently Edward Hilton came before his brother William to Hilton's Point, and probably with Thomson in the spring of 1623. Another person who came with Hilton was Thomas Roberts, as tradition says, some of whose descendants are now living on Dover Neck. The spot where Thomas Roberts first lived is pointed out to those inter- ested in first things, while Hilton's house stood very near the site of the hotel at Hilton's Point. The location bears testi- mony to their good judgment and appreciation of the beautiful in natural scenery. They probably had charge of Thomson's fish-weir at Thomson's Point, perhaps two miles further up the river Newichawannock, or Fore River, as it came to be called by the early settlers, and doubtless they had independent fishing in the racing tides that flow between Hilton's Point and the opposite point in what is now Newington, which early acquired the name of Bloody Point. When Thomson left, Hilton remained and by occupation and improvement acquired possession of the six thousand acres that had been granted to the former. Hilton's right to this and adjacent lands was recognized by the President and Council of New England, March 12, 1629, when they granted to Edward Hilton, "for and in consideration that he and his associates hath already at his and their owne proper costs and charges transported sundry servants to plant in New England aforesaid, at a place there called by the natives Wecana- cohunt, otherwise Hilton's Point, lying some two leagues from the mouth of the river Pascataquack in New England afore- said, where they have already Built some houses and planted Corne, And for that he doth further intend by God's divine as- sistance to transport thither more people and cattle,"-granted to him "all that part of the River Pascataquack called or known by the name of Wecanacohunt or Hilton's Point with the south side of the said river up to the fall of the river and three miles into the Maine land by all the breadth aioresaid." This is known as the Squamscot Patent, so called from the Indian name of Exeter river. It included portions of the present towns of Newington, Greenland, Stratham and Exeter up to the first fall in Exeter river. It seems strange that this patent should be given by the same company of men that a few years before had granted to Capt. John Mason a territory that included the same
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