USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Rye > History of the town of Rye, New Hampshire, from its discovery and settlement to December 31, 1903 > Part 1
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LANGDON B. PARSONS.
HISTORY
OF THE
TOWN OF RYE
NEW HAMPSHIRE
FROM ITS DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT TO DECEMBER 31, 1903
BY
LANGDON B. PARSONS
-
CONCORD, N. H. RUMFORD PRINTING COMPANY 1905
Illustrations.
Map of Rye and Location of Residents, 1851.
Portrait of Author Frontispiece.
Ocean View, Rye Beach
Page I I
Typical Residence of One Hundred Years Ago at Sandy Beach 23
Rye Center, 1889 .
30
Rye Center, looking Westerly, 1889 34
Rye Center, looking Easterly, 1889 36
Spray Rock, Rye Beach 48
Cunner Rock, Rye Beach
56
Love Lane, Rye
59
Sea Road from Allen's Corner, Rye Beach
62
Fern Avenue, Rye
Residence of Colonel Thomas J. Parsons
67
On the Sagamore Road, Rye
76
Grove Road .
78
Farm Scene, Rye .
On the Rocks near Wallis Sands .
90
Monument at Odiorne's Point, Rye
93
The First Schoolhouse at Rye Center
South Schoolhouse 100
West Schoolhouse
102
Center Schoolhouse
103
East Schoolhouse
104
Colonel Garland's Inn where the Patriots Gathered in 1776 . 110
Atlantic House and Cottages, Rye Beach, J. C. Philbrick,
Proprietor II2
Ocean House, Rye Beach, Job Jenness, Proprietor 114
Farragut House, Rye Beach . 116
Sea View House, Rye Beach 118
Ocean Wave House, Rye North Beach . 120
Residence of Francis E. Drake, Rye Beach 122
65
The Seavey House, about Two Hundred Years Old
69
4111
iv
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Summer Residence of George L. Allen, Rye Beach
124
Summer Residence of Henry Diblee, Rye Beach
128
Bathing at Rye Beach .
140
The First Meeting House
151
Congregational Meeting House, 1888
158
Congregational Meeting House, 1903
162
St Andrews'-by-the-Sea
I68
First Christian Church Built at Rye Center
I71
Christian Church .
175
Cedar Stump and Cable at Jenness Beach
184
Life Saving Station, Wallis Sands
ISS
Central Cemetery
197
Rye Beach, Bathing Pavilion
2II
Residence of Dr. Warren Parsons
215
Abenaqui Golf Club House .
216
Jenness Sawmill
217
Town Hall, Rye .
222
Gosport Church .
242
Rye Center, 1903
281
Washington Avenue, near the Beach
282
Portrait Colonel Thomas J. Parsons
287
Merrill's Map of Rye, 1805 .
293
Portrait Dr. John Wilkes Parsons .
478
Portrait Warren Parsons, M. D.
.
.
431
Preface.
" Years rush by us like the wind ; we see not whence the eddy comes, nor whitherward it is tending, and we seem ourselves to wit- ness their flight without a sense that we are changed ; and yet Time is beguiling man of his strength, as the winds rob the woods of their foliage."
It is more than a quarter of a century since, with the assistance of my father (the late Thomas J. Parsons), I put in some order a genealogical list of the names of the former inhabitants of Rye, which he had gathered at different times in an otherwise busy life. Called upon to write deeds and wills for the people of this and ad- joining towns, he would while at their houses make searching inquiries for biographical facts, genealogical data, anecdotes and incidents. among those who have long been numbered with the great majority. To him this town will always be indebted for the preservation of much useful and valuable information that otherwise would have been lost forever. Eight years ago I made an entirely new genea- logical record and have, as far as possible, brought it down to date.
To one who has never attempted any historical work it may appear to be a very simple matter ; it is merely to record facts as they have occurred, and surely there can be nothing very difficult about that. But the history, even of a small town, will be found a very compli- cated matter by whoever attempts to make a straight record of it. It cannot be written in a straight-ahead style, like a newspaper account of a burglary or railroad accident. Events which in the end prove to be closely related, as to results, occur in widely separated localities at wide intervals of time. Authorities, often obscure and perhaps conflicting, must be consulted, and verified or disproved, if possible. Traditions must be sifted, and judged as to the proba- bility of their being founded on facts ; and what is proved fact must be carefully separated from what is tradition, whatever the latter's probable origin in fact may be.
And neither scrupulous care nor exhaustive research will prevent errors from wedging themselves into the record, as the works of the
vi
PREFACE.
most painstaking and eminent historians show. Even the most im- portant and most relied-on documentary evidence may prove to be unreliable, after being accepted at its face value for years. The famous Wheelwright deed of 17 May, 1629, which has so prominent a place in the early history of New Hampshire ; which was sustained by the courts in 1707 and 1708 ; which was accepted as genuine by William Hubbard, Jeremy Belknap, Nathaniel Adams, Gov. William Plumer (first president of the New Hampshire Historical Society), and other historians; and the validity of which was not seriously questioned previous to 1800, was in 1875, nearly two and one half centuries after it was produced, declared to be a forgery by no less an authority than Rev. Dr. Bouton, state historian of New Hamp- shire.
Hence it would be the height of presumption to assume, or even hope, that this little history of the town of Rye will be found free from errors ; but none such have been carelessly inserted, and if in the work it is only because earnest and extended research has failed to detect them as such. The historical portion has been gathered from the departments at Washington, Provincial and State Papers, church and town records, and private sources. I am under obligations to Thomas M. Jackson of Brooklyn, N. Y., for material furnished ; and to Israel P. Miller of Portsmouth, who has aided materially in the work on the early history of the town. Most of the engravings are from photographs taken by Alba R. H. Foss of this town.
There will be found in this book transcripts of Provincial, State, and Town papers, and other documents bearing on the history of the town ; also, many lists of names and much genealogical matter, all of which, it is not unreasonable to hope, will be of interest not only to residents of Rye but to many persons outside its boundaries. Such as the work is, it is the only history of Rye that has ever been attempted.
December 31, 1903.
THE AUTHOR.
1.
Discovery and Settlement.
Although Rye was not set off from Portsmouth and New Castle as a separate parish or township, by the provincial legislature until 1726, and indeed was not wholly separated from New Castle, politically, until after the Revolutionary war, yet it is proper in writing its history to commence with the earliest history of the state, for the first building erected by white men within the boundaries of what is now the state of New Hampshire was put up, and the first soil of which there is authentic record that it was trodden by white men is now within the boundaries of this town; and it is not certain that one of the earliest exploring vessels, long before any settlement was made on the shores of the Piscataqua, did not anchor for a time in Rye harbor.
A daring " venture " indeed it was, three hundred years ago, when those old maritime explorers set sail from Europe in little ships that could be stowed by the half-dozen in the hold of an ocean liner of the present day, in search of unknown lands in unknown seas. Now, the coasts of all civilized countries are minutely charted, and the coasts of all countries fairly charted from running surveys; the navigator knows just where to look for a rock, an island, or a continent, and science has devised many instruments and appliances for his aid. Then, when the mariner set sail from home he had neither chart of the seas to which he was going, chronometer nor nautical almanac: his aids were the compass, the spyglass, and the sounding lead, and all he could be sure of was that he would meet with many sur- prises, and have to do many things he did not plan to do when starting, before arriving home again. And as the coast ex-
2
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HISTORY OF RYE.
plored was wholly unknown, of course its notable features were unnamed, so the adventurer, in describing his discoveries, had no definite point to start from, and from this cause many places mentioned by the early explorers cannot be positively identi- fied now.
In 1603, several merchants of Bristol, England, formed a company for the exploration of this coast, and fitted out two small vessels, the Speedwell and the Discoverer, placing the expedition under the command of Capt. Martin Pring, then but twenty-three years of age. Pring, personally, commanded the Speedwell, a ship of about fifty tons, having a crew of thirty men and boys ; the Discoverer was a bark of about thirty tons, commanded by William Brown, who had under his command fourteen men and a boy. The expedition sailed from Bristol on the 10th of April, 1603, and arrived home in October fol- lowing. Pring's vessels entered the Piscataqua, and he explored the river for several leagues from its mouth, landing at various points on its shores in search of sassafras, then esteemed a panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. The account of this voyage, printed in Purchas His Pilgrimes, (London, 1625), is the first printed account, so far as is known, of a visit to this river by white men; but there is much reason to believe that it was visited by more than one English fishing vessel at an even earlier date.
In the summer of 1605, the coast of New England was explored by Samuel De Champlain, who sailed from Havre, France, in March of that year. He made the Piscataqua bay, July 15, 1605, discovered the Isles of Shoals, and is said to have landed the next day at a place called the "Cape of the Islands," which probably is the same now known as Odiorne's point in the town of Rye. Thence sailing, on the 17th, he dis covered a " very wide river" to which he gave the name of " Riviére du Gaz," which was probably the Merrimack.
Champlain undoubtedly discovered the Isles of Shoals, but he was not the first white man to discover them, for Martin Pring could not possibly have entered and departed from Pis- cataqua without seeing them, nor could Pring's predecessors, if
3
DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT.
such there were. But it is in the account of Champlain's voyages that they are first mentioned.
Champlain was along this coast again in the fall of 1606, and from statements in the story of his two voyages, written by him- self, at least one earnest and critical student of New England's early history, the late Thaddeus William Harris, former libra- rian of Harvard college, became convinced that on the second voyage his ship, commanded by Capt. Poutrincourt, anchored for a time in Rye harbor. Among the papers of the late Thomas J. Parsons of Rye was found the following letter from Prof. Harris, who had previously written to Mr. Parsons' father, the late Dr. John Wilkes Parsons, a letter that arrived after the doctor's death, and which was answered by his son. The letter to Thomas J. Parsons, which explains itself and gives inter- esting information concerning Champlain's second voyage, of which little if anything has ever been published in this country, is here given in full, and will repay careful reading :
Cambridge, Mass., April 3, 1850.
Dear Sir :- Your favor of the 30th ult. reached me this morning, and 1 am much obliged to you for the interesting information communicated. I ventured to address my letter to your father, because he was of the medical profession, to which also I was bred,-not being aware of his decease, for his name was in the New Hampshire Register of 1849, as a physician and a magistrate,-and I have always found such to be the most intelligent gener- ally, and most ready to communicate information.
Notwithstanding the difference of appearance in the sketch with which you have favored me, I am strongly inclined to the belief that Rye Harbor was Champlain's " Beauport." But as you have been so obliging in your com- munication, I will venture to state the grounds that lead me to this conclu- sion, and to add some items translated from the very interesting narrative of Champlain's voyages in 1605 and 1606, with the Sieurs De Mons and Pou- trincourt, whom he accompanied, and the account of which was written by himself.
In the first voyage along the coast from Port Royal, now Annapolis, Nova Scotia, after having visited Saco and Cape Porpoise, De Mons was pursuing his course southerly along the shore, when "on the 15th of July, 1605, towards sunset, he could find no suitable place in which to anchor for the night, because the coast was flat and sandy. Standing away from the land towards the south, he saw a point on the mainland six leagues distant, south and a quarter southwest. Two leagues to eastward were three or four pretty
4
HISTORY OF RYE.
high islands " ( Isles of Shoals), "and at the west a great inlet," which Champlain on his map called Bay Long, " three or four leagues in extent. At the entrance, there were two large islands north and south of it " (Ger- rish's Island and Great Island), " covered with trees, and another that was low, on which the waves broke, a little farther out to sea, and on which there were no trees " (White Island or the Hog's Back ). " The place being unsuit- able for anchorage, they kept off and on the shore under light sail till towards daybreak when they came to anchor in 16 fathoms water near the before-named cape, which they named the Cape of Islands" (Odiorne's Point?), " and they found the latitude 43 degrees and some minutes north." I judge from the description and from the maps, that Bay Long was Piscat- aqua harbor, into which Champlain has represented a river flowing, which he calls the Charante. On the 16th they went on shore at the Point or Cape, where they saw Indians, and made them some presents of knives and biscuits. Here there were "abundance of vines, the berries of which were not much larger than pease, and nut-trees, with nuts about as big as musket balls. The ground was well cultivated, as at Saco, and other places that they had visited." From this place they sailed along southerly, passing rocks and sandy shores, till they came to several islands covered with trees, and inhab- ited by numerous Indians, and the wind being favorable, they reached Cape Anne, by them named Cape St. Louis, on the 17th of July, having in the voyage from Bay Long passed by a large river called by them Riviére du Gaz, which was barred at the mouth, before reaching the cape. The Du Gaz I take to be the Merrimack, from " the Bar" at its mouth, and the islands which they passed, Plum Island; and the islands in Squam bay.
Having brought De Mons and Champlain thus far, I will take up the next voyage, by Poutrincourt and Champlain, along the same coast, bringing them to Saco on the 21st of September, 1606, where they made some stop. and thence " continued the voyage to the Cape of Islands, where they were overtaken by bad weather and fogs, and were unable to find any good harbor for the night. While they were in this trouble, Champlain recollected that, in the previous voyage, as they were coasting along shore, he had observed a place, which had the appearance of being a good harbor, but which they did not enter, as the wind was favorable for their voyage. Having men- tioned it to Poutrincourt, while they were about sailing by it again, he indicated a certain point of land which he advised Poutrincourt to stand in for, and where they cast anchor near the entrance of the harbor he had noticed." This place they called Beauport, and it is represented on the map as south- erly of the Cape of Islands ; and on the little plan, a copy of which I sent to you, Champlain has represented on the northwest corner a portion of water, which, in the explanation, he says is " the sea or water of a bay as you turn around the Cape of Islands," corresponding I imagine with Little Harbor.
In a rapid voyage of this kind, supplied as they were with only the very imperfect nautical instruments used at that time in coasting voyages, perfect
5
DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT.
accuracy in the maps and plans is not to be expected. Besides, on a coast like this, great changes may be expected to take place in the course of 244 years. Indeed, at Cape Cod, very remarkable changes have occurred, even within the memory of man, at Nauset and Chatham harbors, which now would hardly be recognized by the maps made 100 years ago. Poutrincourt and his companions passed several days at Beauport, which they did not leave till the morning of the 30th of September, to go to Cape St. Louis, or Cape Anne. They stated that the latitude of Beauport was 43 degrees-the Cape of Islands, according to their calculations, being 43 degrees and some minutes. This, again, if the so-named cape was Odiorne's Point, shows that Beauport must have been Rye Harbor. The greatest difficulty that I find is to account for the entire disappearance of the little island and prom- ontory behind which Poutrincourt's small vessel was anchored. The rocky islet in the sea was perhaps the rocks off " Rocky Shore." If we suppose that, at high water, the sea covered most of the ground indicated in your plan as " thatch ground " and " salt marsh," the resemblance will be much increased.
Goss' mill may well occupy the creek or stream running through a meadow represented on Champlain's plan. On the original, there are cabins and cornfields all along to the south of this creek, extending, perhaps, to what you call the high land or Locke's neck. There were likewise other cabins and patches of corn on the other side of the harbor, near " Sandy Beach." . The extremity of the tongue of land on the easterly side of the harbor, Champlain on his map called " Rocky Point," answering to your " Ragged Neck," perhaps : the rest of this tongue, he said, was full of yellow flowers (goldenrod?), nut-trees, and vines. In a little creek near the northern ex- tremity or base of this tongue, the sailors washed their clothes and spread them on the bank to dry and whiten in the sun. While they were thus engaged, Champlain had strolled away from them, and suddenly perceived a large party of Indians, armed with bows and arrows, "coming across the marsh," apparently to cut him off and to surprise his companions. But Poutrincourt and seven or eight men armed with muskets were concealed behind some trees, and, hearing Champlain, came out upon the Indians, who immediately fled in all directions.
Before this event, the Indians had appeared very friendly, having visited the French while they were caulking their boat near the neck, and having exchanged, for such small presents, as they received, the produce of their country. One woman, above 100 years old, came to Poutrincourt and laid at his feet a cake made of maize, and a great quantity of very good, ripe grapes. The French found here besides the corn, which the Indians were then harvesting, great quantities of beans, winter squashes, and pumpkins, and the tuberous sunflower which the Indians cultivated for the roots, " which had the taste of artichokes, and were good to eat." The trees in this place were walnuts, cypress (cedars), sassafras, oaks, ashes, and beeches. There were above 200 savages in the place.
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HISTORY OF RYE.
But my paper will hold out no further. Please excuse the haste in which I have been obliged to write, and believe me to be, very truly your much obliged
Thaddeus William Harris.
This letter contains the first and only suggestion we have ever seen that Champlain on his second voyage to this coast anchored in Rye harbor. That he did so is not inherently improbable, for the exploring " ships" of Champlain's time were much smaller than the American fishing schooners of the present day ; but, whether he did or not, it is accepted by historians that on his first voyage he landed upon what is now called Odiorne's point.
The next foreign visitor to the Piscataqua of whom we have record was the famous Capt. John Smith, who, being at Mon- hegan, Maine (neither island nor state having at that time been named, of course ), in the summer of 1614, with an English fishing expedition of two vessels, took a boat with a crew of eight men and explored the coast from Penobscot bay to Cape Cod. He gave the name Smith's Isles to what are now the Isles of Shoals; entered the Piscataqua, the harbor of which he commended ; and drew the first map made by an English- man, so far as is known, of this coast, which on his return to England he presented to Prince Charles, who gave to the terri- tory the name of New England. On Smith's map what is now the Portsmouth side of the river is named Hull, and the oppo- site side Boston.
In 1620 forty noblemen, knights and gentlemen of England. were constituted a company or corporation by King James, under the title of " The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling and governing of New England, in America." This was the " Plymouth Council," or " Grand Council of Plymouth," to which King James gave a patent or charter to all the territory of the New World between the fortieth and the forty-eighth degrees of north latitude, which patent was the foundation of all the subsequent grants of lands. in New England. These grants-owing partly, perhaps, to im- perfect acquaintance of the grantors with the topography of the sections granted, but still more to forced and dishonest con-
7
DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT.
struction of the terms of some of the grants, placed upon them by the grantees-often conflicted with and overlapped each other. Certain grantees, while earnest to hold all the territory specified in their patent, were eager to appropriate what had been granted to others; and the consequent disputations and difficulties were not settled until long after the War of the Revolution. Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Capt. John Mason were two of the most active and influential members of the Grand Council.
In 1622 the council granted to Mason and Gorges jointly all the territory between the Merrimack and Kennebec rivers, to a distance of sixty miles back from the coast, with all the islands along the coast, this grant being designed to be called the Province of Maine. [Dr. Jeremy Belknap, in his invaluable " History of New Hampshire," says of this grant that it em- braced " all the lands between the rivers Merrimack and Saga- dehock, extending back to the great lakes and river of Canada, and this was called Laconia." In this he followed# Hubbard, who on this point, as on many others, was incorrect. ] And in the fall of the same year the Council granted to David Thom- son a patent for six thousand acres of land in New England, and an island on the coast, both to be selected by him.
In the spring of 1623, the exact date being unknown, the ship Jonathan of Plymouth, of one hundred and fifty tons, arrived at the Piscataqua with the first party of settlers, David Thomson being the leader. Belknap says that Thomson was sent over by the Company of Laconia, of which Mason and Gorges were the principals. In this he follows Hubbard ; as, later, Nathaniel Adams, in his " Annals of Portsmouth " ( Ports- mouth, 1825,) relied almost wholly upon Belknap for the statements made in the earlier chapters of his work. All three of the historians named say that Thomson was sent over by the Laconia Company. But this is incorrect. Hon. Frank Warren Hackett, in his address on "The Early Pascataqua,"
*Rev. Nathaniel Hubbard, who was ordained minister at Ipswich, Mass., in 1658, and died in 1704, left a manuscript history which was published many years later. It touched upon the settlement of New Hampshire to but a limited extent, and contained much that Jater research has shown to be inaccurate, notwithstanding which it is a work of value.
8
HISTORY OF RYE.
delivered at Portsmouth, May 28, 1903, at the exercises in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the name of Portsmouth by the town, makes this error of the early historians very plain by showing that the Laconia Company did not come into existence until 1639, six years after Thomson's settlement at Pannaway.
But though Thomson was not sent over by the Laconia Com- pany, nor by Mason and Gorges, and though his grant of six thousand acres of land apparently conflicts with the terms of the patent previously granted to Mason and Gorges, it is evident that there was no antagonism between them. Thom- son's grant was from the Plymouth Council, of which Mason and Gorges were the dominant spirits; he could not have secured it in face of their opposition. His venture was an independent one, but of very limited extent; in a few years it became merged in the larger one of Mason and Gorges, and there are indications that from the start it had the hearty sup- port of the Council of Plymouth, and was intended to be a part of the later and larger enterprise of Mason and Gorges in the development of the vast territory granted to the latter.
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