USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > New Castle > Bi-centennial souvenir, 1693-1893 : New Castle, New Hampshire > Part 2
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Pastors of this Church. "The memory of the just is blessed."
The absence of three other names-Moody, Wood- bridge, and Jourdon-all preceding Rev. John Emer- son in 1703, can be accounted for from the fact that when the tablet was erected in 1852, the early records had not been recovered. Of this list all were gradu- ates of Harvard College except Rev. Oliver Noble, who graduated from Yale. One other name belongs on this tablet: that of Rev. Lucius Alden, who pre- sided over this church from 1846 to 1872. He exerted an influence on our generation that will cause his name to be long remembered. He was a direct descendant of John Alden, but never had the luck to be asked by any Priscilla to speak for himself.
Mr. Alden was a graduate of Brown University.
THE "WENTWORTH.'
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The New Castle of to-day presents a strange contrast to that of a generation ago. No industry is now carried on here. Our citizens, for the most part em- ployed at the Navy Yard and in Portsmouth, enjoy a suburban residence in this quiet, historic town, very likely to the envy of our city neighbors, who some years ago discovered the natural attractions here pre- sented. New Castle shares, with fifty other places, the distinction of being "the prettiest spot on the coast."
The decline of the fishing industry has left us an inheritance of picturesque bits of scenery that attract artists of reputation to our shores. One sum- mer school of art is now in session, and sketch clubs frequently visit us for a day. The sight of artists flitting about in gay colored costumes, carrying their " traps," or stationed before some newly discovered subject or " scheme of color," is as pleasing to us as to them the finished sketch. The exchange is fair. We enjoy their presence, are reluctant to their de- parture, and welcome their return.
As a summer resort, New Castle has become known chiefly through the now famous Wentworth House, situated one mile from the village, by the "outalong" road, on the high bluff by the shores of Little Harbor. Under the able management of Mr. William K. Hill, its appointments within and without have been made perfect, and its large patronage, that of the class appreciating metropolitan comfort and luxury at the seashore. A veranda fifteen feet broad extends around the house, from which there is an unobstructed horizon view of over twenty miles. And such a variety of scenery ! The immediate surroundings of beautiful
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lawns, terraces, and groves; the lagoon and island- dotted Pool, but lead the eye in silent enjoyment to Pawtuckaway and Saddleback mountains, and the Blue Hills of Strafford looking upon us from afar. On clear days, even Mt. Washington may be seen from the towers, ninety miles away to the north. Nearer, but in the same direction, are Kittery Foreside, the Navy Yard, and Mt. Agamenticus, the throne of the great sagamore, Passaconaway. On the northeast you look down on the mouth of the "gay Piscataqua," our compact village on the south bank, flanked by Fort . Constitution and the old Walbach Martello tower. On the other side of the river are Kittery Point, the home of Sir William Pepperell, Gerrish Island (con- taining the cairn of the royal Champernowne ), and the long broken coast of Maine. East is the Atlantic ocean and Isles of Shoals six miles distant. Looking southeast you see Ipswich bay, enclosed by the long, slender arm of Cape Ann. In the bend of Ipswich bay are the Rye and Hampton beaches, six and ten miles away. Coming nearer, are Odiorne's Point, the site of Mason Hall,-the first building erected in New Hampshire-and Frost's Point. In front of the hotel and between these two points, is Little Harbor, on whose bank, at its confluence with Sagamore creek, is situated the famous water-side residence of Gov. Benning Wentworth, celebrated in song and story.
New Castle points with pride to the record of its Life- saving Station, manned almost wholly by her citizens. · The station, situated on Jerry's Point, was built by the government in 1887, at a cost of $5,000, and equipped at an equal expense. It was manned in February,
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1888, with seven men under Capt. Silas H. Harding, still in charge, and during its five years of service has won the honorable position "No. 1 Station" on the government books at Washington, both in point of successful assistance and in the discipline of the crew. In Captain Harding the government has found the right man for the right place. His whole time and
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LIFE-SAVING STATION.
thought are devoted to the improvement and per- fection of the service. Every man of the crew is a typical sailor ; he is agile, courageous, and courteous, with a strong love for humanity in his big heart.
The life-boat has been manned and assistance ren- dered forty-four times ; and sixteen persons have been taken from wrecks. In several instances, vessels sail- ing under the British flag have been assisted.
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For heroism in saving the crew of a vessel wrecked in the November gale of 1888, each member of the station crew was awarded, by special act of congress, a gold medal valued at $125. A continuous watch is maintained from September 1 to April 1, and at night, the coast from the station to Fort Point is patrolled by the life-savers. The crew of 1892-'93 consisted of Capt. Silas H. Harding, Wm. L. Flynn, T. H. Barber, Isaac Gillis, E. S. Hall, Ernest Robinson, Esrom Corkum, Chas. Prohaska.
ADDRESS OF WELCOME.
BY MR. FRED BELL, CHAIRMAN OF BOARD OF SELECTMEN.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : The anticipated pleasure of this occasion (to me at least) has been impaired by the thought that I must perform the initiatory act of this, the two hundredth anniversary of our incorporation as a town under a royal charter granted to the men and inhabitants of this place by king and queen, William and Mary of old England in 1693.
And we meet here to-day to commemorate that important event : and, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, as chairman of the selectmen, and in the name of the residents of this town, I thank you for your presence here to-day on this occasion, and bid you one and all a hearty welcome; and with a few changes in the phraseology of Samuel Woodworth's " Old Oaken Bucket," may we all say
" How dear to this heart are the scenes of our childhood, When the bright light of day presents them to view : The ocean, the ledges, the deep tangled wildwood, And every loved spot that our infancy knew."
Again bidding you welcome, I will now introduce the chairman of the executive committee, Mr. John Albee.
ADDRESS BY MR. JOHN ALBEE,
CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
Our celebration to-day is happily coincident with the Columbian year, and our little local history extends over rather more than half the Columbian period. To-day a procession of two hundred and fifty years moves past us, to be remem- bered, to be saluted and honored. Generation after generation has come and gone; this day they assemble, reunited and complete. Not a single one of the sons and daughters of New Castle is absent. They pass by pale and speechless, but all are remembered, and I seem to see them return our salute with a smile of recognition and gratitude.
Their annals are brief but in no way obscure. They lived plainly ; they wrote clearly and concisely their own story, and acted with integrity and intelligence in their public and private stations. All that to day we behold living and flour- ishing is, in nameless ways, derived from them. Thens, too, are the mins we find everywhere on this Island ; and could we call up from the deep the unum. bered vessels in which they sailed over all seas, the picture of their activities would be complete.
Hail, ancient town ! Island home of so many brave, unpolished, stalwart mariners, fishermen, and soldiers !
Here was gathered together the first community in New Hampshire that could be called, with any historical propriety, a community; that organized it- self on the basis of law and religion, and furnished itself with the outward sym- bols of the provincial civilization-a small fort, or Castle, as they loved to call it-a church, within the Castle enclosure, a watch-tower, prison and stocks, sev- eral inns, and one after another all the equipments of village order which we inherit, and to which we have not added a single one. Indeed we have lost some and only changed the operation of others. Can you believe that by the mere act of incorporation, in 1693, this town sprang, full-fledged, into being ? Not at all. It had been settled more than fifty years, and was, in fact, a place of more importance before incorporation than it has been at any similar period since ; so that, although we celebrate to-day a bi-centennial, we distinguish rather a formal than an actual event.
The reason why this place became the first community of any importance in New Hampshire, is not far to seek. It was due to its environment. Its popula tion was necessarily concentrated within very narrow boundaries .- boundaries which the eye here meets in every direction, the bays, the river and ocean, until the Island is reduced to less than one square mile ; and mainly over a few acres of this, along the margin of the river, the town arose. Its business was on the water, not agricultural. For this it required little room ashore ; room it found
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in abundance when its citizens lifted the anchor, spread the sail, and ploughed a furrow whose crop was codfish, rum, and molasses. Our ancestors set their houses near together ; consequently they sooner needed regulations for the pro- tection of their separate interests than rural and sparse communities. More- over, this concentration of houses and population, although requiring more minute police regulations-and in these the Castilians were excessively punctil- ious-led naturally to a closer and more definite community of interests in affairs of greater importance than the garden wall and the height of the chim- ney.
Here first in the history of New Hampshire, in consequence of close neigh- borhood, came into being and exercise that terror and safeguard of our later civilization, public opinion. Public opinion was the whole of the law and nearly of the gospel on Great Island at a very early date. Its quaint, first, and very significant name was the " Town's Mind." At a very early date we had a public opinion on the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay; on witchcraft, on royal gover- nors, on taxes, and the Mason claims ; and within our rocky shores, on the actions of every man and woman ; on pigs, salt fish, and staves, and on all the details of daily life. Many of these found a formal, and often pragmatic expres- sion in our ancient documents.
But I must not trespass on the time and topics of the orator of this occasion. Because New Castle is a small island, called in early times Great Island, m comparison to its twenty companions near by, because of the concentration of its inhabitants and their long seclusion, its whole history is unique, picturesque, and romantic beyond that of any New England town known to me. If any one accuses the local historian of using too much color on his palette, let him study our annals and himself become identified with the town for a number of years, and he will become aware how really faint and imperfect is the picture.
Local history is the only important history. In it we come nearer to human life, to man, than in that of empires. Study and interest in it is the source of most civie virtues. It is most fitting, therefore, that we should celebrate its anniversaries, not only for our own enlightenment and inspiration, but in grateful remembrance of our forefathers. If I may be allowed to moralize, I should say that local interest, the love of our own town, and the people among whom God has appointed us to dwell, is, after the great commandment, the beginning of wisdom.
The tides come in, and return again whence they came. As they come in, they fill every nook and cranny in rock and sand. No spot is forgotten, no shore unrefreshed. I suppose no drop of water complains that it must fill some empty shell, or visit some obscure shore and float the boat of an humble fisherman. It knows that it will soon return and become a portion of the infinite sea, an equal sharer in all its grandeur and power. So it is with man. Without his will he is borne on the tides of life to some destined or wholly accidental shore, where without glory or reward he must fill well the place and the duty he finds awaiting him, comforted and sustained by the thought that the same tide which bore hin hither will soon restore him to the great central sea of being, where, it is said, if he has been faithful over a few things he will become lord over many.
RESIDENCE OF EDMUND C. STEDMAN.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
BY FRANK WARREN HACKETT.
We are met together amid surroundings of no common or ordinary kind. One has only to look about him to see that here is a region where Nature in bestowing her wondrous gift of beauty has held not back her hand. Below us a noble river pours its tide into the Atlantic. Yonder are the Isles of Shoals, while here and there against the sky is to be discerned the white sail of some passing vessel. Do we turn inland, the eye rests upon a varied expanse of water, land, and distant hill,-a picture such as artists love to paint. Close at hand is a snug, little village, smiling with every sign of thrift and comfort. Well may we exclaim, " Lo, a goodly land, that is fair to look upon."
We are at this moment occupying a spot fertile in historic incident. We stand upon soil early dedicated to the art of war. For more than two cen- turies and a half (save during certain seasons of neglect), cannon planted here have guarded the harbor entrance of the Pascataqna ; or, as the Indian, with an ear for the rich music of the word, pronounced it,-the Pas-ca-tah- qua. To-day these walls of massive granite, but half completed, and these huge, unplaced blocks tell of an ambitious project to sweep beyond the lines of an old fortification, and build a new one of grand proportions. It was the fierce struggle of inventive skill and genius, as applied to the problem of guns afloat and guns on shore, that arrested the enterprise, and of a sudden con- verted a scene of busy engineering into the stillness of death and decay. But these ruins, we may believe, are for a time only. They presage the rising of a stronghold that shall protect and endure, even as the citadel of our liberties whose name it shall bear, the Constitution.
We are here to greet with festivity and gladness the recurrence of this day. Two hundred long and eventful years of the chartered life of the town of New Castle have run their course. In 1693, William and Mary, of their especial grace, granted to their beloved subjects, men and inhabitants of Great Island, including Little Harbor and what is now Rye (then Sandy Beach), to be a town corporate by the name of New Castle. The royal char ter passed the seal of the Province on the 30th day of May of that year. The town was to pay an annual quit-rent of one peppercorn, on the five and twen. tieth day of October, forever. On the 4th of August, 1693, the Council of
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the Province granted leave for an election; but the first town meeting was not held till the 20th of December, following.
As a happy medium between these respective dates, this seventeenth day of August has been set apart to commemorate our anniversary.
We possess records of the town, at periods somewhat defective, that come down to the present hour. The two earliest books once after some myste- rious fashion wandered off across the ocean (how many years ago no one seems able to tell), but, like the prodigal, they repented and came home again, to get a warm welcome in 1873. Every son and daughter of New Castle can look through these pages with a feeling that goes some ways be yond complacency, and borders very closely upon pride. If there be little here recorded that has much affected the great world outside, there is on the other hand nothing to be ashamed of. No! If a hardy, resolute, and ener- getic people, such as have held this island from the first, may not in the course of two hundred years have accomplished something that deserves to be remembered, something for the cause of human progress, something to make the world better for their having lived in it, where else are we to look for annals worthy of preservation ?
While New Castle as a town has attained the respectable age of two hun- dred years, the first settlement here lays claim to a date, sixty or possibly even seventy years earlier. In the spring of 1623, a staunch little ship, the Joud- than, of Plymouth, England, cast anchor off yonder point, then called by the Indians " Pannaway," now known as Odiorne's Point, in the town of Rye. She brought from Plymouth Mr. David Thomson, with twelve or fifteen men, to begin a plantation. They built a strong and large house of stone, enclosed it with palisades, and mounted guns within, as a protection against the Indians. Under an agreement with Plymouth merchants, they had come to engage in the fisheries, to traffic in furs, and to build up a colony. Thomson's wife canie over with him, or followed in a later vessel. It was the first settlement of what is now the state of New Hampshire. A granite shaft ought to mark the spot. It would stand on ancient territory of the town of New Castle.
There has recently been brought to light a manuscript description of New England, written about 1660 by Samuel Maverick, who settled in 1624, at Winnisimmet, now Chelsea. Maverick was a friend of Thomson's, and the two must have interchanged visits. About 1626, Thomson moved to Boston Bay, where he soon after died. The widow afterwards was married to Maverick. From this source we learn that Thomson, " haveing granted by l'atent all the Island bordering on this land to the Midle of the River, he tooke possession of an Island comonly called the great Island." So we know that this terri- tory where we now are came into the possession of Englishmen in 1623. Whether any house was built here for permanent occupation at so early a date, is a matter of conjecture ; but that Great Island was then in some way occupied, we can feel assured.
Thomson was doubtless acting in the interest of Gorges and Mason. The plantation, we may believe, was continued after its founder had left it. In 1630, and during the two or three following years, the Little Harbor settle- ment was increased by the coming of stewards and servants, to the number
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of fifty men or more, with their families, sent out by Captain John Mason. Some of them went up the river, where they built the Great House at the Banke,-that is, at Portsmouth, near what is now Court and Water streets. Others went further up to Newichawanneck-now South Berwick. To the site where we are assembled Captain Walter Neal, who was a soldier, and the leader of the band of newcomers, brought camon, some of which were of brass. Here he planted them, and here he built a strong and substantial work, to command the river. To this they gave the name of Fort Point.
For a period of nearly half a century Great Island maintained the lead,
RESIDENCE OF MRS. ELBRIDGE GERRY.
both in numbers and activity, of the settlements upon this river ; and it long remained the place of chiefest importance. Nor is this to be wondered at. Not that the soil was superior-rather the contrary; but here fishing could with most convenience be carried on. Here, too, was security against sudden incursion from hostile savages. Then, again, it is to be remembered that most of the adventurers were west of England men. They came from Cornwall, and from Devon. They loved the sea ; they loved to be near it. Strong affection for the familiar scenes of the home they had left may have exercised a controlling influence in the choice they were now to make. The settler may well have preferred to cast in his lot at a place where daily he
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could look out over the ocean, ready to catch the first glimpse of a sail that should bring tidings from " merrie England."
To this subtle attraction of the element so potent to shape the life of him that once yields to it, your own poet-historian, Mr. Albee, alludes, with a deli- cacy of touch that is the pervading charm of his valuable little book. " Fond local attachment," he truly says, " belongs to dwellers by the sea. Nor can they be happy away from their boundless horizon." 1
Travel at that primitive day was accomplished almost exclusively by water. The river was a highway. A ferry was early established to the main land, but scarcely any one here went on horseback. So late as 168o, in a tax-list of fifty-seven estates, one finds only three horses owned upon Great Island. One was the property of George Walton, Senior ; the other two belonged to Der- mont Usher.
The first grant of land upon Great Island, so far as we now know, bears the date of October, 1637.2 Vines, Jocelyn, and Warnerton, as agents of Gorges and Mason, lease, at an annual rent of two shillings, a neck of land lying upon the north-west side of the island, of about one hundred acres, commonly called Muskito Hall,3 to Francis Mathews, and his heirs, for the term of one thousand years. If Mr. Mathews had cherished the purpose of conferring upon his descendants the privilege of living upon an estate thus agreeably described with the opportunity for active enjoyment that its name implies, all at the rate of two shillings a year,-he was doomed to a speedy disappointment, for the land soon passed into other hands.
One wishes that we might be furnished with some particulars in regard to these first settlers of New Castle. You would like, I dare say, to ascertain in just what part of the town this or that remote ancestor of yours had his home lot. What were the incidents that befell him in the round of his simple yet stirring life ?
The records to which we would naturally resort for light upon this interesting period, have been destroyed. You will be surprised, when I tell you that they perished, not from fire, or by accident, but at the hands of the selectmen of the town.
One winter's night, five men met at a tavern (or ordinary, as it was then called) kept by George Walton, who had come here, a fisherman, from New- foundland. The party had with them a volume containing the accumulated records of perhaps seventeen or eighteen years of the infancy of the settle-
1 New Castle, Historic and Picturesque, by Johu Albee (Boston, 1884), page 4.
2 The salt-marsh around the head of Sagamore Creek early invited occupation. Mr. Francis Williams, chosen governor under a combination for local self-government, which had been entered into about 1633 by Great Island, Little Harbor, and Strawberry Bankc, lived on the "Salt Creek." So at least I infer from the record of a deed made by him in 1645. For faithful services as a factor of Mason, a large grant upon Sanders Point had been made to Ambrose Gibbens in 1632. We may safely set down Sanders Point as the earliest English name that has been preserved in this region. It applies to the neck of land upon which the bridge from the Wentworth touches, at its finther end.
3 Later called Wotton's Neck. I find it desenbed as Maskino Hall, in court records, as late as 1829. To-day the name is applied lo a narrow stretch of water in that vicinity.
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ment. Slowly they turned over leaf after leaf of this book, and marked here and there an entry that they thought worth preserving. The rest they crossed out. They voted (for they were the selectmien) to begin a new book of records, into which the town clerk should copy such entries as they had approved. The old book thus dishonored they threw aside. This transaction took place on the night of the 13th January, 1652.
What became of that old town-book, no one knows. It is enough to say that our earliest records at Portsmouth start in 1652,-the result of that night's work at Walton's inn. The entries copied from the old first book are few and meagre.1
Time does not admit of my entering upon an explanation of this strange act. It was no secret conclave of conspirators. The leading men of the town in an official capacity were carrying into execution a carefully concerted plan. Suffice it here to say that the procedure was in strict conformity with the methods by which Massachusetts Bay had seized upon this region, and with a rigid hand maintained her jurisdiction. The story of usurpation is all the more difficult to unravel, for the very reason that the Bay authorities did not scruple to make use of the records for their own purposes, nor hesitate to. malign those who stood in their path. Until recently New Hampshire history has been written from the standpoint of the Puritan. Perhaps nothing more readily reminds us what that standpoint was. than certain familiar resolutions, with which you are very familiar :
Resolved, That the saints shall inherit the earth.
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