History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens, Part 11

Author: Hazlett, Charles A
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond-Arnold
Number of Pages: 1390

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to the former petition. And whereas the name of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidently soe called, by reason of a banke where straberries was found in this place, now we humbly desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most suitable for this place, it being the river's mouth, and good as any in this land, and your petit'rs shall humbly pray.

"BRIAN PENDLETON RENALD FERNALD

RICHARD CUTT AND

SAMUEL HAINES,

JOHN SHEREBOURN

In behalf of the rest."

On this petition it was first proposed to postpone "because of Mr. Mason's claim on the land," afterwards granted 28 May, 1653, allowed to be called Portsmouth, "and the line of this township of Portsmouth to reach from the sea by Hampton lyne to Wynnacot river, leaving the propriet'rs to their just right."

The people living here had, about ten years before, put themselves under the control of the Massachusetts authorities. Those authorities, however, did not create or incorporate our town. They had no power to do that. The town had existed previously, with all the rights and privileges that grew out of the association into a community, under a "Combination" some time prior to 1640. The authorities of the Bay simply recognized that the free and independent people here wanted to have the limits of their township definitely marked out. Besides, they wanted a name that would take rank with some of the great names of English towns. Straw Berry Banke was pleasing, but Portsmouth was a little grander; and, as they argued in their petition, more suitable since it was a safe port at the river's mouth.

But the other and our real birthday is identical with the date of the first settlement of New Hampshire. As yet nobody can point to precisely what day of what month this honor belongs. All that we know is that the fateful event fell upon a day in the early spring. Let us hope that it was a bright, clear, sunshiny morning, with the spring birds singing-when, in 1623, an active energetic man, with his young wife and a handful of followers and servants, landed upon what is now Odiorne's Point, for many years a part of Portsmouth, but now in the town of Rye.

That day's doings was a plain, business-like procedure, though of great moment from the standpoint of local history.

I have said that we do not know the precise date of Thompson's landing. Ninety years ago, when the spring of 1823 was coming on, our fathers cast about to determine what date should be assigned for a grand celebration. They fixed upon the twenty-eighth of May as being that which in their judgment approached nearest to the anniversary of the actual time. But it having been found for some reason inconvenient to adopt the twenty-eighth, they finally settled upon Wednesday, a week earlier, as the day for their exercises.

The twenty-first of May, 1823, was a red-letter day in the history of Portsmouth. The town was crowded with visitors.

The Gilman Blues led off as escort. Then came in full force the school children, bringing their masters along for company. The Mechanic Associa- tion and the Free Masons were also in line. Then followed the orator of the

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day, accompanied by the poet, and sundry distinguished personages. There were the clergy, the judges and other civil officers, while the army and navy were represented from the fort and navy yard. The procession passed through some of the principal streets to the North Meeting House, where a brilliant throng of ladies were filling the spacious galleries.

Nathaniel Appleton Haven, then in the prime of early manhood, delivered the oration. One or two original odes, set to music, were finely rendered by the Portsmouth Handel Society.

If the literary feast were ample, so was the dinner, which came off at Jefferson Hall, at half-past 2 in the afternoon. More than two hundred gentlemen partook of the fare, which, the record tells us, consisted "chiefly of fish of all known names and cooked in all possible variety." Among the guests of distinction one finds the names of Jeremiah Mason, Daniel Webster, Joseph Story, George Ticknor, and John G. Palfrey. In response to a toast Webster spoke of his love for his native state, and of his happy associations of nine years with his former home in Portsmouth.

The festivities of the day were concluded by a brilliant ball in the evening, in the hall of the Franklin House. Nearly four hundred were present. The sides of the ballroom were covered with pictures of prominent persons who had flourished at Portsmouth before the Revolution-the Wentworths, Jaffreys, Waldrons, Wibirds, Pepperrells, Moffatts, Sherburnes, Sparhawks and many another.

Altogether, it was a great day. Out of these memorable exercises sprang into life the New Hampshire Historical Society, which with rare felicity dates its organization in Portsmouth from May 21, 1823.

Every fact, no matter how trivial, which throws light upon the venture begun on these shores, in 1623, is of value in the eyes of all who take an interest in the early annals of Portsmouth. The sum of our information, however, we are obliged to confess, is as yet small and insignificant. The figure of the leader of the enterprise is but dimly outlined, though during the last fifty years the veil has once or twice been lifted for a moment by the discovery of a document or of a record entry thus affording a glimpse that was denied to our fathers.

At the initiative stage of our local history nobody appears to have thought it worth his while to write down an account of what was going on around him in the hope that some day it might prove of interest to a descendant. Here and there a stray paper has been preserved, a business letter, a bill of goods or a memorandum of work done. A few depositions are still on file in the court records used as they were in some suits brought many years after the events which they mention had occurred. But such a document is not explicitly to be relied upon. An old man who is telling what he thinks that he recalls as happening half a century earlier, may be pardoned for an occa- sional want of precision.

To Dr. Jeremy Belknap, the historian of New Hampshire, a schoolmaster at Portsmouth and minister at Dover from 1767 to 1786, we owe a debt of gratitude for the pains with which he hunted up and saved every scrap of ancient document that he could lay hands upon. He began none too soon. Nathaniel Adams, the author of the "Annals of Portsmouth," relied almost

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wholly upon Belknap in collecting the events of the opening pages of his admirable volume.

Portsmouth must ever hold Adams in grateful remembrance. For many years he was clerk of the court, and in that capacity became familiar with old records, a familiarity that suggested no doubt his taking the wise step to prepare and publish the Annals in 1825, a brief history of the town arranged under the heading of the respective years.

A like sentiment of obligation has been richly earned by the late Charles W. Brewster, the author of two volumes of "Rambles About Portsmouth,". first published in 1859. The dullest reader may not fail to note how large is the proportion of interesting material that would have been lost forever had it not been for the foresight of this lover of his native town.

A word of appreciative mention is likewise due to the "Portsmouth Guide Book," by Miss Sarah H. Foster. The pages of this little book, unpretentious but really valuable, breathe an air of refinement as not the least of its literary charms.

The Rev. Charles Burroughs and the Rev. Andrew P. Peabody have each left behind them contributions to the history of Portsmouth that I need not say are of enduring worth.

A third historian who dealt with this early period of New England, although touching to a slight extent only upon New Hampshire, was William Hubbard, the minister of Ipswich, ordained there in 1658. When he died, in 1704, he left a MS. history which was published in 1815. Doctor Belknap placed a greater degree of confidence in Hubbard's narrative than local historians of the present day are willing to accord. Hubbard, of course, labored under many and great disadvantages. Documents discovered since show that not a few of his statements are incorrect. Still, his pages are profitable when read in the light of our later knowledge.

On the 22d of April, 1635, Mason obtained for himself, after discourage- ments and failures on the part of the previous company, a grant of the lands "between Naumkeag and Piscataqua," which, "with the consent of the Council, shall henceforth be called New Hampshire." It seems that after this grant Mason had great hopes and plans; he calls his whole grant on the Piscataqua "my country of New Hampshire, or Mannor of Mason Hall;" he doubtless had large expectations of some manor hall, with its surrounding estates, and of an inflowing fortune, but death put an end to all his dreams, leaving to another generation only an inheritance of lawsuits, which, amidst the perplexing grants to successive companies and individuals, given with little geographical knowledge, disturbed, convulsed, and embittered the settlement for many years. It was this high hope and this grand residence in the future which formed the only reality of a Mason's or manor hall at Little Harbor. There never was any such building. The settlers who came over in the Warwick doubtless occupied the houses at Little Harbor which were built by Thompson.

It may be well to advise one not familiar with the facts that much that hitherto has been published of the settlement here, and of the character of the early planters, should be taken with a grain of allowance. Until recent times the early history of New England has been written almost exclusively by

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men who, though no doubt meaning to be fair-minded, were either Puritan themselves, or strongly imbued with the Puritan prejudice.

No one knew more accurately or minutely the facts of our early history than the late John Elwyn. The following extract, though caustic, is true enough ; and I quote it to emphasize the need of the caution just mentioned. "The stream of the early history of New England," says Mr. Elwyn, in his remarkable sketch entitled "Some Account of John Langdon," "has been so corrupted by the subsequently predominant Puritan faction, who troubled . themselves about nothing that did not go to their own glory, in their phrase, the glory of God, that one half the world think this coast was unvisited until about the time it was honored by their presence. In all likelihood the English came to the Pascataway for fifty years before. Cornish fishermen did not print their voyages then more than Yankee fishermen do now." (XX N. H. State Papers, 850. )

CHAPTER VIII PORTSMOUTH-(Continued)

The Church of England-Early Rectors and Governors-Settled Conclu- sions-Death of Mason-Abandonment of the Settlement by his Widow- Under the Jurisdiction of Massachusetts-Claim of the Mason Heirs- The First Church-Richard Gibson-Pulpit Supplies-The Cutt Brothers -A New Meeting House-Pews and Seating-Early Laws and Rulers.

The Church of England .- It has been charged against the early settlers here that they were fishermen, or that they came merely for business purposes. Many of them doubtless found the fisheries the most profitable enterprise, and Smith sets forth the importance of that occupation and says, "Honorable and worthy countrymen let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will afford as good gold as the mines of Potassie or of Guiana, with less hazard and charge, and more centainty and facility." They were fisher- men, but there were some very humble fishermen on the shore of the sea of Galilee who have played quite an important and respectable part in the history of the world, and it is true that the reason for the settlement was chiefly commercial; the colony, as most of the colonies is North America, except Plymouth, were sent over by merchants or came themselves to trade, and many of the troubles, the misfortunes, and want of prosperity in this settle- ment was owing to the fact that the proprietors had so little personal super- vision over the settlers. They did not come to establish religious liberty for themselves, nor did they make a constant talk about their piety, but there is every reason to suppose that their general character was as good as that of their neighbors in the Bay Colony. They were, however, supporters of the Church of England, and therefore bitterly denounced by the Massachusetts Colony. In spite of the assertions which have been handed down generation after generation and repeated without examination and without reflection, that this was merely a business settlement, a worldly and ungodly colony, while the saints were all at "the Bay," it is easy to show that the purpose of the founders was to make this a branch of the Established Church of England, and that this runs through all the charters. In the one to Gorges, in 1639, we find granted to him "full power, license, and authority to build and erect or cause to be built and erected soe many churches and chappelles there on to the said Sir Ferdinando Gorges, his heirs and assigns shall seeme meete and convenient, and to dedicate and consecrate the same according to all the ecclesiastical laws of this our realme of England," defining furthermore all

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his rights and privileges to be the same that the bishop of Durham had in the kingdom of England. In the earliest efforts made by the city of Bristol, the first inducement held out is "to plant the Christian religion," and that "the one of traffic, be it never so profitable, ought not to be preferred before the planting of Christian faith." One of the first expeditions under Gosnold which reached our coast carried with it a chaplain. Royal orders and instruc- tions were issued requiring religious worship to be conducted as in the Church of England. Gorges' son Robert, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1624 to take superintendence of the churches to the great dismay of the settlers there, brought with him a clergyman of the English Church. One of the Puritan writers, referring to a settlement on the coast of Maine, rejoices "that one Episcopal colony is terminated, and its anticipated influence to advance the interests of the national church on our soil is hastily prevented;" and speaking of the settlement at Exeter, "thus the Granite State commenced its existence under the auspices of energetic and honorable proprietors, who proposed to give it the durable impression of Episcopacy as the efficient handmaid of royalty." In another place, referring to the efforts of Gorges at colonization, we find "his great preferences to have it done by sons of Episcopacy rather than by those withdrawn from its protection and rewards."

Gorges himself, in defending his company against various charges before the House of Commons, says, "I have spent £20,000 of my estate and thirty years, the whole flower of my life, in new discoveries and settlements upon a remote continent, in the enlargement of my country's commerce and domin- ions, and in carrying civilization and Christianity into regions of savages." 1 All these are testimonies that the aim of the proprietors and settlers was quite as truly religious as usually characterizes such enterprises. But their religious views were Episcopalian, and just at this period bitter strife reigned between Puritans and Episcopalians, and the strife in the old country was transferred to these shores. All the proprietors interested in the settlement were of the Established Church, and it was only natural that all the settlers who came out under them should be zealous in that faith. Gorges and Mason, Godfrie and Neal, Gibbons and Chadbourne and Williams, and all the names which appear on the colonial records were doubtless of this faith, and the colonies at the Piscataqua and the Bay were carried on with the same spirit that two rival and highly-excited parishes would be at the present time, only intensified by the more bitter theological hatred of that day. The leader of the Massa- chusetts colony even rejoiced at the death of Mason, as a proof of the Almighty's retribution upon the Episcopal settlement at the Piscataqua and his favor towards them. Governor Winthrop writes, "The last winter Capt. Mason died. He was the chief mover in all attempts against us, and was to have sent the General Governor, and for this end was providing ships; but the Lord in mercy taking him away, all the business fell on sleep." Among the earliest inventories of the colony's goods we find mention of service books,

1 In Mason's will we find instructions to convey one thousand acres of his estate here for and towards the maintenance of an honest, godly, and religious preacher of God's word, in some church or chapel or other public place appointed for divine worship and service within the County of New Hampshire, and also provisions for and towards the maintenance of a free grammar school for the education of youth.

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of a flagon, and of cloths for the communion-table, which show that pro- visions for worship were not neglected, and of what form the worship was.

Early Factors, or Governors. Anecdote of Mather .- After the departure of Thomson, and until the arrival of those sent out by the Laconia Company in 1630, our information about this settlement is slight and indefinite. Then came Neal as governor, after his departure Godfrie, with Warnerton at Strawberry Bank, then Williams as governor in 1634. The colony began to extend over Great Island and along the bank of the river. A rude fort was built on the northeast point of Great Island, "about a bow-shot from the water-side to a high rock, the site of the present Fort Constitution." Under Williams, who is spoken of as a gentleman, a discreet, sensible man, accom- plished in his manners and acceptable to the people, the first attempt at any combination for order and defense was made. It is related that Neal went on a journey of discovery to the White Mountains and the lakes, and gives a somewhat glowing account of them: "The summit was far above the clouds, and from hence they beheld a vapor like a vast pillar, drawn up by the sun- beams out of a great lake into the air, where it was formed into a cloud," but their hopes of mines and precious stones were dimmed. At another time Neal forbade a man who was about to begin a settlement at a point a short distance up the river. The dispute which arose was about to be settled by the sword, when a wiser thought suggested to each it would be braver not to fight, and so the place, known to the present generation as Nancy Drew's, was called Bloody Point, not on account of what actually happened, but what might have occurred in the event of a duel. Just before Neal left some trouble arose between him and the governor of the Massachusetts Colony. It was charged against Neal that he did not call to see the governor in Boston on his way to England, but Neal urged that he had not been well entertained the first time that he was there; that letters he had written had been opened in the Bay, and except he were invited he would not call. Win- throp says the letters were opened "because they were directed to one who was our prisoner, and had declared himself an ill willer to our government." But political honor was rather low at that day, and if, even at a later period. England's prime minister confessed that he had no scruple in opening the letters of a political rival, the conduct of Massachusetts' governor can be excused. Yet the incident shows that no papal inquisition ever exceeded the scrutiny of all persons or documents which came into the neighborhood of the Puritans. Warnerton seems to have been a wild and dissolute character. Winthrop says he lived very wickedly and kept the Piscataqua men under awe of him, while Warnerton, trying to collect a debt from one of the Bay Colony, called him rogue and knave, but added they were all so at the Bay, and he hoped to see all their throats cut. Whether he ever did anything worse than opening letters does not appear, but the incident reveals the general feeling that the two settlements cherished towards each other. All the early Puritan representation of this colony were in the same strain, and in return the bitterness of the eastern settlement against the Massachusetts was quite as great.

A Piscataqua man being in England in 1632 said of the Massachusetts planters, "They would be a peculiar people to God, but all goe to the Devil;

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they are a people not worthy to live on God's earth; fellows that keep hoggs all the week preach there on the Sabbath; they count all men out of their church as in a state of damnation."

John Josselyn, of Black Point, writes of the founders of Boston: "The chief objects of discipline, religion and morality, they want. Some are of a Linsie-woolsie disposition, of several professions in religion, all, like the AEthiopeans, white in the teeth only; full of ludification and injurious dealing and cruelty, the extremist of all vices. Great Syndics or censors, or con- trollers of other men's manners, and savagely factious among themselves."

Settled Conclusions .- It seems that at this day it will never be possible to establish to the satisfaction of the careful historian several dates, and to explain several events in the early settlement of the Piscataqua, on account of the confusion arising from the first patents, which seriously complicated the different ownerships, from the absence of sufficient trustworthy evidence, and from statements of the first writers, made without investigation, and repeated until they have been believed to have the authority of truth; but enough appears determined from the recovery of the indenture of David Thomson and careful research into the conflicting patents to regard it hence- forth as settled that the credit of founding the Piscataqua colony belongs entirely to Thomson, and that he had nothing to do with the Laconia Com- pany ; that this colony was permanent, and that the one at Dover was several years later ; that after the settlement by Thomson passed into the hands of the Laconia Company, the efforts and interests of Mason really begin; that the references to "Mason Hall," or "Mason's Manor Hall," which in so many records give such a pretentious sound to this settlement, do not apply to any building at Little Harbor, and if to any to a house called the "Great House," built by Chadbourne in 1631 at Strawberry Bank, but belong rather to the ambitious claims of his descendants at a much later date, and that the ani- mosities and invectives which disfigure all early intercourse between the Massachusetts and the Piscataqua may be traced first to religious differences, and next to the overlapping and conflicting demands of successive grants given to different companies or individuals without any accurate knowledge of the boundaries of this new realm.

Death of Mason .- Mason, however, evidently preserved his faith in the ultimate profits from all investments at this place, and on the 22d of April, 1635, obtained a grant by the Plymouth Council of a very large tract which covered both his former charters and was to extend sixty miles from the "first entrance of Pascataway Harbor," to take in "the South halfe of the Isle of Shoulds," all which was to be called by the name of New Hampshire, together with ten thousand acres on "the South East of the River of Sagade- hock." to which was to be given the name of Masonia. In the midst of all the expectations from the settlement of such vast possessions Mason died, as we have seen, in the latter part of this same year, leaving for his heir an infant grandson.

Abandonment of the Settlement by His Widow .- For a time Mason's widow attempted to carry out her husband's plan in regard to the colony, and evidently with as great a faith in its ultimate success. One Francis Norton was sent out in 1638 to look after her interests, but she soon wearied of the

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large and constant expenditures and the deferred income; the settlers so far away, and soon conscious that the authority and oversight of the former pro- prietor were gone, began to take advantage of their situation to look out chiefly for their own interests, to divide the property among themselves for their wages, and Mrs. Mason, if she did not abandon her legal right, evidently in despair gave up all hope of carrying on the plantation, and ceased to pro- vide for its needs.

Under the Jurisdiction of the Massachusetts .- The only government which appears in this colony from its settlement until the year 1640 was that of the stewards, or as they received sometimes the more dignified title of governor ; such were Neale, Jocelyn, and Norton. There was no idea for a long time of any self-governing state, or any rule apart from that of the home sovereignty ; they went on as loyalists and members of the Established Church, with perhaps as much quiet and order as other settlements, but as their numbers increased, and the resolution to make a permanent colony became more fixed, efforts appear towards the establishment of a more formal and authoritative government. In this year a combination was entered into with Francis Williams, governor, and Ambrose Gibbons and Thomas War- nerton, assistants. But for some time previous to this the way had been preparing for the Piscataqua to come under the jurisdiction of the Massa- chusetts. The latter colony soon found that the charter of Massachusetts Bay was not as extensive as they had supposed, and had hardly become estab- lished before they began to reach out towards and covet the lands covered by the patent to Mason; the doubtful expressions in which these grants were conveyed made it easier to force an interpretation in agreement with their desires, and the more flourishing and powerful condition of the Massachusetts would have accomplished the purpose even earlier were it not for the different political and religious sentiments which prevailed at the Piscataqua. For several years, amidst all kinds of plottings and quarrelings, ambitious schemes and desire for greater protection, efforts at union were made and repelled, until it was finally accomplished in 1641, and the Piscataqua passed under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts. Hugh Peters, an agent of the latter, after spending some time here, in the spring of that year reported to Governor Winthrop that the Piscataqua people were "ripe for our government; they grone for government and Gospel all over that side of the country. Alas! poore bleeding soules." From 1641 for a period of almost forty years, or until the commission of Cutt, the first Provincial President of New Hamp- shire, under whom the new government began on the 21st of January, 1679 or 1680, the sway of the Massachusetts over their settlement was complete. But it was not harmonious. It was entered into out of the most selfish con- siderations on each side, and preserved amidst constant contentions, opposi- tions, and open revolts. In 1651 the residents at Strawberry Bank openly rebelled and attempted to escape from this jurisdiction, and again in 1664. There was a constant detestation of the union, which for prudential reasons they felt it necessary to abide by, and all the time they saw the influence of a party whose faith they bitterly opposed gaining ground among them. Their indignation appears in their petitions to their sovereign. In July, 1665, we find one headed by the distinguished Champernowne, and signed

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History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens, Part 11

Author: Hazlett, Charles A Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago : Richmond-Arnold Number of Pages: 1390

Author: Hazlett, Charles A
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond-Arnold
Number of Pages: 1390