USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Portsmouth > Old St. John's at Portsmouth, and her distinguished colonial flock > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 03288 2364
Gc 974.202 P83d Dunn, Robert Hayes, 1896- Old St. John's at Portsmouth
OLD ST. JOHN'S at Portsmouth -and her distinguished Colonial Flock!
ROBERT HAYES DUNN
ACTORUM
AGENDA
TEMORES
SIMUL
AFFECTAMUS
"Were American Newcomen to do naught else, our work is well done if we succeed in sharing with America a strengthened inspiration to continue the struggle towards a nobler Civilization- through wider knowledge and understanding of the hopes, ambitions, and deeds of leaders in the past who have upheld Civilization's material progress. As we look backward, let us look forward."
-CHARLES PENROSE Senior Vice-President for North America The Newcomen Society of England
This statement, crystallizing a broad purpose of the Society, was first read at the Newcomen Meeting at New York World's Fair on August 5, 1939, when American Newcomen were guests of The British Government
"Actorum Memores simul affectamus Agenda"
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
Old ST. JOHN'S at Portsmouth -and her distinguished Colonial Flock
"Of the broad ATLANTIC was Portsmouth's commerce and trade in days when her merchants and sea captains worshipped in OLD ST. JOHN'S: merchant princes of counting-houses; aristocrats of shipyards; admirals of the Navy; proud masters and sailors from aboard merchantmen and Royal mastships and an occasional whaler; as well as the more modest mariner whose offshore fisheries brought food in plenty from the Great Deep! Of such were the colonial congregations of Old St. John's at Portsmouth, in New-Hampshire." -ROBERT H. DUNN
Up this steep lane, through generations, the colonial flock of Old St. John's in Portsmouth made their way each Sunday: sea captains, naval officers, merchants, fishermen, seamen, and village folk.
OLD ST. JOHN'S
at Portsmouth - and her distinguished Colonial Flock!
THE REV. ROBERT HAYES DUNN
MEMBER OF THE NEWCOMEN SOCIETY RECTOR ST. JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH PORTSMOUTH NEW HAMPSHIRE
ACTORUM
AGENDA
TEMORES
SIMUL
AFFECTAMUS
THE NEWCOMEN SOCIETY OF ENGLAND AMERICAN BRANCH NEW YORK
1947
Copyright, 1947 ROBERT H. DUNN
Permission to abstract is granted provided proper credit is allowed
The Newcomen Society, as a body, is not responsible for opinions expressed in the following pages
First Printing: September 1947
This Newcomen Address, based upon contempo- rary colonial records preserved by St. John's Church, was delivered during the "1947 New Hampshire Luncheon," at which Mr. Dunn was guest of honor, held at Hotel Rockingham, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, U.S.A., on September 10, 1947
SET UP, PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AT
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
"It was to No. 32 Vaughan Street in Portsmouth that the great DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852) brought his young bride on May 29, 1808. It was at No. 82 Mar- ket Street that ICHABOD GOODWIN (1794-1882), sea captain, merchant, shipowner, banker, railroad presi- dent, industrialist, and statesman, had his counting room. It was at Portsmouth that THOMAS BAILEY AL- DRICH (1836-1907) was born and of which he wrote, beginning at the age of fifteen with contributions to the venerable 'Portsmouth Journal.' This colonial seaport, with its seven feet of tide, has a fascination of histori- cal setting which makes of it a jewel in the crown of New England's prized colonial towns!"
-ROBERT H. DUNN
[ 5 ]
Biographical Sketch of The Author
Its racing tides a swirling boundary of now blue now green waters between New Hampshire and Maine, the PISCATAQUA RIVER provoked many an Indian legend, was avenue of navigation from and to the Old World for the colonists, and made possible seaport trade and commerce which brought canvas-borne wealth to the superb old New England town of PORTSMOUTH. At Portsmouth, known as "Strawberry Banke" until 1653, the townspeople were celebrated for their industry, their diligence, and for rare beauty of their shaded lanes, fine houses, and well-kept gardens. Set down in natural surroundings made glorious by their rapid-flowing Pis- cataqua, it could scarcely be otherwise than that Portsmouth's in- habitants should take pride in their seacoast community. And they did. Old ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, rebuilt in 1807 and poised upon the hill looking down on Langdon's Island where John Paul Jones' sloop-of-war "Ranger" was built in 1777 in 114 days, has meant much in the lives of Portsmouth's people during three centuries. St. John's congregations were indeed a distinguished colonial flock! THE REV. ROBERT HAYES DUNN, Rector of Old St. John's, Portsmouth, has in him that grace and scholarship which befit him to tell the colorful, dramatic, historic story of those old colonial parishioners: Governors, patricians, men of the sea, and New Hampshire merchants and traders. The history of these men is the history of much of Northern New England-their influ- ence was far-reaching. Graduate of Princeton University, in the Class of 1919, student of history, an eminent scholar in the pulpit, and a leader in civic affairs, Mr. Dunn is a Vice-Chairman of the New Hampshire Committee, in The Newcomen Society of England.
+
-
My fellow members of Newcomen:
M ANY OF THE EARLY COLONISTS in this historic Piscataqua region were God-fearing folk. In their struggles against the formidable forces of Nature, their conquest of surf and wind, their journeyings through storm and fog, their stout de- fense against the savagery of Indian raids, they came to depend forthright upon the guidance of Almighty God. Even their quar- rels over the nature of religion and the form of its institution among them-quarrels that reflected the bitter animosity aroused by historic events in the home land-indicated a primary interest in that sustaining Providence which had guided and supported them in the wilderness. Not a few were church people to whom it was natural and normal that a church establishment of one sort or another should be promoted. Some were the founders of Old St. John's in Portsmouth, a venerable Parish that has had an hon- orable part in the long life of this seaport community.
It is the story then of this Historic Church and of its Colonial
[ 7 ]
Flock that it is my purpose, Mr. Chairman, to share with you here in Portsmouth today.
In the Spring of the Year of our Lord, 1623, Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason, together with a group of Eng- lish merchants, formed what was called "the company of Laconia." The ostensible purpose of these gentlemen was to establish a col- ony in New England. Various explorers, such as Martin Pring and Captain John Smith, had earlier visited the region which was to be settled. In 1603, Pring had ventured up the Piscataqua River in two small barks, had landed upon its wooded banks, and-of all things-had searched for sassafras trees. (These were supposed to yield therapeutic properties considered of some importance by the medical men of the time.) And the doughty Captain John Smith, in 1614, ranged up and down the coast from Monhegan Island to Cape Cod. It was he who discovered, off the mouth of the Piscataqua, the Isles of Shoals, naming them "Smith's Isles" and drawing a creditable map of the territory that he had visited.
The Laconia company, mindful of reports that had come back to them from these and other sources, determined to send a group of adventurers to the new world. They found a Scotsman, David Thomson, willing to head a small band of perhaps ten men for this venture. These set sail in 1623, arriving at the mouth of the Piscataqua sometime in the late Winter or early Spring of that year. Thomson and his men selected Odiorne's Point (adjoining what is now known as Little Harbor) as a "fitt place to build their houses for habitacons." Here they erected some sort of dwelling place, arranged both for living and defense purposes, which one observer described as a "strange and large house in a large, high palizardo with mounted guns, and a terror to the Indians." Vari- ous devices for salting and drying fish also were erected and Thom- son named his settlement "Pannaway."
The venture of these hardy folk did not at first prosper greatly, so that seven years later, in 1630, only three or four houses had
[ 8 ]
been constructed. Unfortunately, we know too little about the character of these men or the reasons that prompted them to leave England and to endure the hardships of a hazardous undertak- ing. Some have guessed that Thomson and his group were pure adventurers in the mercantile sense, and that, unlike those who had established themselves at Plymouth three years earlier for the sake of enjoying their own concepts of civil and religious liberties, they were seeking gain of one sort or another. But while we may suppose that the Pannaway settlers and those who came on in the next few decades were not possessed of particularly pious motives, yet it certainly is remarkable that as the settlement grew, slowly a desire for some sort of religious establishment grew also. There even is a strange hint in the Register of the Privy Council of the date of June 27, 1638, that one "John Mitchell, a Minister" had a claim on Sir Ferdinando Gorges for remuneration on account of certain services in Laconia, as it is called. This would seem to show there was a clergyman of some sort connected with the earli- est settlement. However that may be, we do know that Captain John Mason was an ardent and zealous Churchman. In his will we find he had authorized his brother-in-law, Sir John Wollaston, afterwards Lord Mayor of London, and his wife, Anne Mason, with all speed after his decease, at the charge of his estate to "settle and convey one thousand acres forever, for and towards the main- tenance of an honest, godly and religious preacher of God's word in some church or chapel or other public place that shall be ap- pointed for divine worship and service within the said county of New-Hampshire." And when Mason's biographer (Tuttle) re- ported his death, he delared: "The death of so energetic a church- man and royalist was regarded as a divine favor by the Puritans of the Massachusetts-Bay." (In the pages of history, joy over celebration of first-class funerals often has been unconfined!)
Whatever Mason's motives were in his attempts at coloniza- tion, it is certain he assumed that the services of the Church of England would be begun and continued in all those ventures with which he had to do. In 1629, one of his agents "brought over one hundred head of Danish oxen, and among other articles
[ 9 ]
imported was a set of church furniture." An early inventory of goods at Dover listed a psalter, a communion cup and cover of silver, and a communion tablecloth. In this inventory we find also two "service books" next to "one old fishing line" and "72 foote of wampampeag." In another list of 1633, tucked away among "7 hens, 2 cocks and chickings, 24 swine great and small," there is an item of "I psalter." The inventory of 1635 includes a Great Bible, several service books, and articles for the celebration of the Holy Communion. While there is no distinct mention in all these old records of public religious services, yet it is reasonable to sup- pose they were at least occasionally held.
By 1638, interest in the establishment of a parish after the English fashion had risen to such a point that a small chapel and a parsonage were built upon the site of the Langdon-Picker- ing House which now is the parsonage of the South Church in Portsmouth. This chapel-whose name is not now known-was the first parish of the Church of England established in New Hampshire, and indeed it antedated King's Chapel in Boston by about thirty years and the famed Trinity Church in New York by fifty-five years. The Rev. William Hubbard, writing in 1680, says, "In 1640, May 25, it is recorded how the inhabitants of Strawberry Bank (since called Portsmouth) having of their free and voluntary minds, and good will, given and granted several sums of money for the building and founding of a parsonage house with a chapple thereunto united, did grant fifty acres of land to be annexed thereunto as a Glebe land belonging to the said parsonage, and all was put into the hands of two men; viz. Thomas Walford and Henry Sherburne, church wardens."
We have no detailed account of buildings thus erected. They probably were constructed of logs and seem to have been in ex- istence at least by 1640, and perhaps as early as 1638. The settlement at and around Strawberry Bank had grown slowly, and there seemed to be enough people at that time to require the services of a clergyman. Probably there was little thought of securing any other kind of parson save an Anglican, since the
I IO I
Laconia Company back home would have been interested in promoting the Church of England. At any rate, the first and only settled minister of this small "chappele" was the Rev. Richard Gibson, a graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1636. Gibson had come to these shores to minister to a fishing plantation in Maine on land belonging to Robert Trelawny, one of the larg- est land-owners in Colonial New England. An agent of Tre- lawny's wrote to him on July 10, 1639, that Gibson was going to "Piscattaway to be their mynister, & they give him £60 per yeare, & bild him a house, & Cleare him some ground, & prepare yt for him against he Com." Mr. Gibson was thought to be "a very fair Condition man, & one that doth keep himselfe in very good order, & Instructs our people well, yf please God to give us the grace to follow his Instruction."
Unfortunately, we have but a meagre record of Gibson's short stay at Strawberry Bank. He was not permitted to exercise his ministry here beyond 1641. In that year the colonists, who were still but a handful of settlers, agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts-Bay Colony, in return for which they were promised a measure of oversight and protection against Indian marauders. The authorities in Boston had got wind of the reverend gentleman from Maine so soon as he had appeared in the Piscat- aqua area. Governor Winthrop, for instance, naturally was an- noyed at Gibson because he was "wholly addicted to the hierarchy and discipline of England and exercised his ministerial function according to the ritual." Those were days of violent antipathies in religious matters, when bitterness caused by a long struggle be- tween Puritans and Anglicans was still of recent memory. Further- more, Gibson may have antagonized the Massachusetts govern- ment because he ministered to an apparently considerable flock of fisher folk out on the Isles of Shoals, off the rocky shores of Maine and New Hampshire; and it was these very fishermen who re- sisted the jurisdiction of the Puritan colony. Gibson therefore was summarily haled to Boston, and was accused of "scandalyzing the government there and denying their title." The charge made against him in the General Court was that he had married and baptized persons on Hog Island-now Appledore-in the Isles of
[ II ]
Shoals, and that since Massachusetts claimed jurisdiction over the Isles, he had shown an arrogant disrespect towards the Massachu- setts colony. Gibson apparently knew on which side the bread was buttered. There was nothing to do but submit; and he was dis- charged "in consideration of his being a stranger and intending to leave the country." Strawberry Bank knew him no more.
No one, of course, was appointed to take Gibson's place, and the initial interest of the Piscataqua settlement in the Church of England was effectually exterminated. The chapel, parsonage, and glebe lands remained unused for a time, but eventually were as- signed to various Puritan missionaries, until finally they passed into the possession of the Reverend Joshua Moody, the first regu- larly settled Puritan minister. Organized Anglican worship did not appear until ninety years later!
There were, to be sure, sporadic attempts in the Seventeenth Century to revive the Church of England. In 1679, New Hamp- shire became a separate province with a government of its own. By terms of the charter, freedom of worship was allowed to all Protes- tants, and it was stipulated that "those of the Church of England were to be particularly encouraged." But nothing came of this because of the generally disturbed condition of life in the little province and by the fact that the Puritans had by this time become fairly well established. Then in 1682, Edward Cranfield became Lieutenant-Governor of the Province. Cranfield favored the Eng- lish Church and shortly after his installation wrote back to England that "the attempting to settle the way of the Church of England, I perceive, will be very grievous to the people." "Grievous" was indeed the word for it. Although Cranfield tried to get the Rever- end Joshua Moody to perform the Lord's Supper in accordance with the rites of the English Church, he could do nothing except throw Moody into a Newcastle "gaol" where for a time he lan- guished unrepentant and resentful. Cranfield's term expired in 1685.
Other attempts were made during this period to strengthen the Anglican cause, but it was not until 1732 that the Church of Eng- land was once more established in Portsmouth.
I 12
In the meantime, the colony had grown steadily into a fairly prosperous community, and people of wealth and social pretension were to be found in Portsmouth in that second quarter of the Eighteenth Century. The town was well on the way to becoming a social capital of the province. The old Strawberry Bank days, when settlers around the River lived together in a primitive society without frills or the ordinary accompaniments of a long established community, were gone forever. Gradually the initiative and the foresight of certain of the inhabitants had set them apart in a pro- vincial aristocracy, and, as trading increased, many of the old fam- ily fortunes were founded. Some of the accoutrements of an urbane life were in evidence, and certain of the citizenry lived in what we are pleased to call "style." They rode about in carriages, hired grooms for their horses, collected silver, acquired fine clothing, constructed spacious mansions, and eased themselves into lucrative positions within the provincial government. They were gay and picturesque and alert and, by and large, a sound group of citizens. And they made Portsmouth a very different place from the scat- tered pioneer settlement of the century before. Trade with the West Indies was responsible for much of this, and that had come about largely because the natural situation of Portsmouth, at the mouth of a broad and noble river giving easy access to the Sea, had encouraged prosperity. A few of the newer groups of settlers here were members of the Church of England, and the Lieutenant- Governor of New Hampshire, David Dunbar, interested himself in the formation of a parish and the erection of a church. Assistance also was given by Captain John Thomlinson, a London merchant known in Portsmouth as New Hampshire's Agent to the Crown, who secured some financial aid in England. The Queen Consort to George II was found favorably disposed to the venture, and be- cause of her interest and gifts the new church was appropriately called "Queen's Chapel"-a name retained until 1791, when the change was made to "St. John's Church."
On the 26th of December, 1734, the parish informed the Bishop of London, who had jurisdiction over such affairs of the colonies as related to the Church of England, that a church had been built in Portsmouth, that services had been held in it by the Reverend
[ 13 ]
Arthur Browne of Providence Plantations, that there had been no friction between themselves and the dissenters, and that they were desirous to secure the Reverend Mr. Browne as their regular min- ister.
The same day a letter was sent to the Society for the Propaga- tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, informing that missionary or- ganization that their church was not as yet finished but that it was fit for services. The writers pleaded for aid, since, as they said, Portsmouth was the only center of trade or commerce in the col- ony where strangers were to be found, and many of these were dis- posed favorably to the Church. They wanted Mr. Browne very much, and if he be sent, they thought he could minister likewise to some thirty families across the Piscataqua River, in Kittery.
Lieutenant-Governor Dunbar added a note of approval to these pleas, and informed the Bishop of London that there was much need for this new church venture in Portsmouth. Last summer, he said, a congregation across the river had delivered themselves and their meeting-house to the care of the Reverend Matthias Plant, an S. P. G. missionary at Newbury in Massachusetts. The Rever- end Mr. Browne had made several visits and was "followed many miles wherever he preaches." But since he lived at Providence, a distance of a hundred and twenty miles, he could not render fre- quent services.
On Ascension Day, 1735, and on the following Sunday, the Reverend Timothy Cutter of Christ Church, Boston, preached at Portsmouth before a "considerable congregation"-whatever that may mean. The Lieutenant-Governor was present; and he and twenty others received the Holy Communion. It was reported to the S. P. G. that "there is a great Prospect of a numerous Congre- gation there."
A few weeks later, on the 5th of July, 1735, a committee of the newly formed parish wrote Captain Thomlinson that they ap- preciated his efforts in helping to secure Mr. Browne as their minister. Since about 1 50 families stood ready to enter the Church,
[ 14 ]
the field of Portsmouth seemed more ready for tillage than that of Providence. Hence the committee hoped The King would ap- point Mr. Browne as his chaplain in their government. Mr. Browne himself was favorably disposed to the move. Circumstances at Providence made it difficult for his small flock to contribute to his support and he believed the people of Portsmouth and "Kettery" (as he spelled it) were anxious to have him settle amongst them. The Society considered all these requests and gave Mr. Browne permission to change his residence. Accordingly, Mr. Browne dis- posed of his parsonage and glebe lands at Providence and moved to Portsmouth. Rhode Island appears to have bowed before New Hampshire.
The Church to which this young parson-he was 37 years old- came was destined to play an important part in the development of Portsmouth during the late colonial period. The building itself was erected in 1734 on land given by a Mr. Hope of London. It stood on Church Hill, the present site of St. John's Church. It was a wooden frame structure, rather unpretentious in appearance, and fitted on the west end with an open belfry. Mr. George Thomlin- son, the London agent for the colony, had interested himself (as we have seen) in securing funds to complete the edifice, and may have influenced Queen Caroline for the young parish. At any rate, The Queen was one of the early donors, and sent over to the Chapel two large flagons, a chalice and paten and christening bowl, all of silver, and two mahogany chairs intended apparently for the Governor's pew. (Incidentally, one of these chairs was destroyed in the later fire of 1806, and a replica was made. The surviving chair is fondly hoped to be the one occupied by President George Washington when he worshipped in Queen's Chapel on All Saints Day in 1789.)
Arthur Browne began his ministry here with considerable hope. The interdiction of the Church of England some ninety years before had run its course, and there now was a sizeable group of families who professed adherence to Anglican faith and practice. Portsmouth, as we have noted, was fast developing an
[ 15 ]
aristocracy of its own, and several of the leading families who had accumulated wealth by exporting lumber to the West Indies and bringing back the ever-precious cargoes of rum on the return trips, were to be found at Queen's Chapel on Sunday morning. As the town grew and prospered despite all the vicissitudes of trade, Church Hill was a colorful spectacle at the weekly serv- ices. There were liveried footmen attending the gentlemen in their embroidered waistcoats and tricorn hats and the ladies in their brocaded dresses and imported mantles. Membership in the Church became an accepted guarantee of admission into a select circle, and the Governor favored those who worshipped there and belonged to the charmed flock of the Reverend Arthur Browne.
From 1736 until his death in 1773, Arthur Browne ministered faithfully to his people; solemnizing their marriages, christen- ing their children, proclaiming the faith in the lusty hour-long fashion of the day, and officiating at their burials. Then the churchyard came into its own.
One of the most interesting marriage ceremonies at which Mr. Browne was the officiant has been immortalized by Longfellow in one of his "Tales of a Wayside Inn." In 1760, Governor Ben- ning Wentworth invited a group of his friends to his mansion at Little Harbor where
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.