USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens > Part 16
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While Pepperell had the matter under consideration, Whitefield, the cele- brated Episcopal and itinerant clergyman, and founder of the Calvinistic Methodists, was on a visit to Maine, and Pepperell became well acquainted with him, and asked Whitefield's advice.
"Your scheme," said the great preacher, "I think not very full of encourage- ment. The eyes of all will be upon you, and should you not meet with success the widows and orphans will utter their complaint and reflection, and if it be otherwise numbers will look upon you with envy and endeavor to eclipse your glory. You ought, therefore, in my judgment, to go with a single eye, and then you will receive strength proportioned to your necessities." White- field furnished the motto for the flag of the expedition, "Nil desperandum Christo."
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New Hampshire furnished 500 men, one-eighth of the whole land force. Among these was the Rev. Mr. Langdon (once the grammar school teacher, and then pastor of the North Church), as chaplain, and Jacob Sheafe, son of Sampson Sheafe, of Great Island, as commissary. There was Nathaniel Meserve as lieutenant-colonel; there was Samuel Hale with the rank of major; there was John Storer, grandfather of George Storer, of this town; there was Rev. Ammi R. Cutter, of the Massachusetts Regiment, whose eldest son was Dr. Ammi R. Cutter, of Portsmouth; there was Rev. Samuel Moodey, of York, son of our Mr. Moodey, remarkable for his eccentricities, and private chaplain to Sir William. The expedition was completely successful, and Pepperell was rewarded with an English knighthood. One by one he was compelled to give up his duties and enterprises, and died at his mansion at Kittery on the 6th of July, 1759.
Champernowne .- There remains for us to notice briefly still another important character, whose life has been so carefully written by C. W. Tuttle, Esq., of Boston, that beyond his thorough researches no one need desire to go. In his sketches of this prominent person, printed in "The Historical and Genealogical Register," may be found authority for most of the following. Among the early settlers of our province more persons perhaps came from Devon and Cornwall than from all other counties in England, and of all the noble families in the west of England, few if any surpass in antiquity and splendor of descent the family of Champernowne, being connected with the Plantagenets, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Capt. Francis Champernowne, one of that family, came to New England in 1636.
In 1636, Sir Ferdinando Gorges granted to Champernowne's father two tracts of land bordering on the eastern shore of the Piscataqua and at the mouth. One embraced what has been for the last hundred years and more known as the Gerrish and the Cutts Islands, and the stream now known as Chauncey's Creek for a long time bore the name of Champernowne. To this grant came Capt. Francis Champernowne in 1636, at the age of twenty-two. About 1640, and at the time of the granting of the glebe land, Champernowne bought 400 acres in Greenland, where he built a house and lived for twenty years. Afterwards he added three hundred acres more, including the farm . of Colonel Pierce, and seems to have lived in a baronial style. At a later date he preferred his residence on Cutts Island, and went there to live. He was a councillor in the government of Gorges, and for a few years, with his asso- ciates, had the sole authority in Maine, and opposed strenuously the usurpa- tion by the Massachusetts Bay. He was councillor to Cranfield, to Dudley, and to Andros. Strange to say, when some examinations were made, a few years since about this almost forgotten character, traditions in Greenland were brought to light of the descent from royalty of one Champernowne who used to live there, and in Kittery of one who was "the son of a nobleman." He was a thorough royalist and churchman, and about ten years before his death married the widow of Robert Cutt, of Kittery. He lived a retired and dig- nified life, was reserved in disposition, and took little interest in matters which tradition says that he forebade any monument to be erected in his that day of prominence on account of his high birth, and altogether respected. He was doubtless one of the most active supporters of Episcopacy, and from
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his residence at Greenland a constant worshiper at the first chapel, and there- after, unless too strict a churchman to take any interest in the services of Puritanism, at the old South for thirty years. He died on Cutts Island in 1687.
Nothing marks Champernowne's Island grave save a heap of stones, which tradition says that he forebade any monument to be erected in his memory. Among the writings of John L. Elwyn we found the following :
"Here rest the bones of Francis Champernowne ; The blazonry of Norman kings he bore; His fathers builded many a tower and town, And after Senlac England's lords. Now o'er His island cairn the lonesome forests frown, And sailless seas beat the untrodden shore."
A Church on the Plains .- Quite a little village had grown up at and about the Plains, of so much importance that in 1725 a meeting-house was built on the rise of ground east of the training-field, and worship regularly maintained for nearly two years, when, in 1727, it was voted "to free and exonerate them from any tax or charge towards the support of the gospel ministry (at the North Church), or any parish at the Bank for the future, provided they have frequent preaching more for accommodation than at the Bank." The meeting-house blew down in 1748.
Absence of the Spirit of Persecution .- It has often been remarked that our early settlers were singularly free from religious bigotry, and in, an epoch fruitful of dogmatism and persecution but few instances of fanatical zeal can be laid at their feet. Themselves strictly of the Church of England, when they could not maintain their own form of worship, the Non-conformist clergyman of the Bay found no hindrance here except when Cranfield instituted proceedings against Moodey for refusing to administer the sacrament accord- ing to the order of the Church of England. There has come down to us an account of but a single instance of the infliction of violence in the province for heterodoxy, and that was under the law of Massachusetts ( for New Hamp- shire as a separate government never authorized such a penalty), when in 1662 Richard Waldron ordered three Quaker women to be led at the cart's tail " through New Hampshire and Massachusetts out of the jurisdiction and whipped in each town; but Walter Barefoote, afterwards a royal governor of New Hampshire, by a pious stratagem, obtained the custody of the women in Salisbury, and saved them from further cruelty by sending them out of the province. The refuge of Quakers and Anabaptists in these days was Rhode Island, a state from the beginning to the present day remarkable for its hospitality towards various opinions, but at that time regarded as the drain or sink of New England for the shelter it gave the heretics, so that it has been said of Rhode Island, "If any man had lost his religion he might find it there among such a general muster of opinionists." We have, in 1656, under rule of the Bay, the several enactments against "a cursed sect of here- ticks lately arisen up in the world which are commonly called Quakers, who took upon them to be immediately sent of God."
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THE WENTWORTH HOTEL, NEW CASTLE, N. H.
THE PEACE CONFERENCE BUILDING, PORTSMOUTH
THE FITZ-JOHN PORTER STATUE, HAVEN PARK, PORTSMOUTH, N. H.
SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT, GOODWIN PARK; PORTSMOUTH, N. II.
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Witchcraft .- There is also but little about the sad delusion of witchcraft, which was then a common belief, and while only a score of miles away men eminent for piety and learning were hurried into all kinds of errors, persecu- tion, and bitterness, only a few instances occur where there were any accusa- tions prosecuted for that offense here, and of these not one reached a tragical conclusion. The only case in our town had a singular and triumphant ending. It occurred in 1656, at Little Harbor, then a part of Portsmouth. The tes- timony was that on Lord's day, 30th of March, at night, as Susannah Trim- mings was going home with Goodwife Barton, she separated from her at the freshet, next her house. On her return, between Goodmen Evens and Robert Davis, she heard a rustling in the woods, which she at first thought was occasioned by swine, and presently after there did appear to her a woman, which she apprehended to be old Goodwife Walford. She asked me where my consort was? I answered, "I had none." She said, "Thy consort is at home by this time. Lend me a pound of cotton." I told her I had but two pounds in the house, and I would not spare any to my mother. She said, "I had better have done it, that my sorrow was great already, and it should be greater, for I was going a great journey but should never come there." She then left me, and I was struck as with a clap of fire on the back, and she vanished towards the waterside in my apprehension in the shape of a cat. She had on her head a white linen hood tied under her chin, and her waist- coat and petticoat were red, with an old green apron, and a black hat upon her head.
Her husband and others testified to strange things which apparently had been brought about by the bewitching of Goody Walford; but Goody Walford, traduced as a witch, boldly brought her defamers into court to answer for the slanderous words, and actually succeeded in recovering damages.
Clerical Anecdotes .- Some of the stories which are told of the contempo- rary ministers, neighbors, and friends of Mr. Shurtleff give us the only glimpses of ministerial life among the scanty records which are preserved to us. There was a clergyman at Newington, Rev. Joseph Adams, who lived. I believe, to a greater age than any minister ever settled in New Hampshire. He is described as a man of fair talents, but of great self-complacency. In praying for a person dangerously sick, who had desired the prayers of the congregation, he prayed very earnestly that the man might be prepared to die, for, added he, "We, O Lord, who are skillful, know there is no possibility of his recovery."
The Rev. John Tucke, settled at the Shoals, was also a contemporary of Mr. Shurtleff. The Shoals was at that time quite flourishing, and Mr. Tucke's salary was one of the highest at that time paid in New England. He was a scholarly and faithful pastor, and, as it reads on his tombstone at Star Island, "a useful physician, both to the bodies and souls of his people." These islands had before and after Mr. Shurtleff two or three quite eminent as well as eccentric men. There was one Rev. Mr. Rooch, whose prayers were so touch- ing and whose life was so pure that it was said of him, "He dwelt as near heaven as any man on earth." His congregation were fishermen, and they usually assembled one day in the month, besides the Sabbaths, for public worship. On one of these days he was requested to postpone the meeting
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to a future time, as it was a fine season for their business, and they must go out with their boats. He endeavored to persuade them, but in vain, and then addressed them: "If you are resolved to neglect your duty to God, and will go away, I say unto you, catch fish if you can; but as for you who will tarry and worship the Lord Jesus Christ, I will pray unto him for you that you may catch fish till you are weary." Thirty went, toiled all day, and caught four fishes ; while the five who attended divine worship, and afterwards went out, caught as many hundred. After that they all regularly attended any meetings the pastor appointed.
After him came the eccentric Moodey, son of the minister of Portsmouth of that name, of whom is told that familiar story, that once addressing the congregation on the occasion of a shipwreck, he inquired, "Supposing, my brethren, any of you should be taken short in the bay in a northeast storm, your hearts trembling with fear, and nothing but death before you, whither would your thoughts turn? What would you do?" He paused, and a sailor, supposing he awaited an answer, and attracted by his description of the storm at sea, replied, "Why, in that case, d'ye see, I should immediately hoist the foresail and scud away for Squam."
Revival under Whitefield .- The most remarkable ecclesiastical event during the ministry of Mr. Shurtleff was the great revival under Whitefield, of which Mr. Shurtleff has left an extended account. It is interesting for the description he gives of the townsmen, as well as of the revival. He says, "You are doubtless in some measure acquainted with the character which the People of this Town have heretofore generally sustained. They have, I think, been remarkt by strangers for their Politeness in Dress and Behaviour ; have been thought to go beyond most others in equal circumstances, if not to excess themselves in their sumptuous and elegant Living, and Things of a like nature; & while they have been justly in Repute for their generous and hospitable Disposition, and for many social habits. Diversions of various kinds have been much in Fashion, & the vices that have been usual in Sea Port and trading Places have been common and prevalent among us. We have, I trust, never been without a number of sincere and serious Christians ; but even these wise virgins have slumbered and slept; and as to the generality of Professors, they have seemed for a great while to content themselves with an empty Form, and there has been but little of the Life & Power of Religion to be seen."
Mr. Whitefield came here and preached in the old South Church on the 25th of February, 1745, and while Mr. Shurtleff seems to have disapproved of a good many excesses of the revival, he testifies that he thought "his travel- ing this way was a favorable Providence, and his preaching was instrumental in making many shake off their heavy slumbers."
As the result of the revival he gives us his opinion that there is not the profane cursing and swearing that was formerly usual; that the Sabbath was more strictly observed; that family worship was set up; that many dishonest dealers had made restitution; that music and dancing were wholly laid aside.
North Meeting-House .- In 1657 there was some objection at the time to building the old South Church beyond the milldam, at the fork of the roads going to New Castle and the cemetery, and the matter was settled only
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by the appointment of a committee by the General Court, which finally located it there. All the time there had been a small party wanting it farther up Pleasant Street. Since the building of that first old South more than fifty years had passed away, and from the building of the first chapel near the Universalist Church nearly seventy-five. The population, which in 1657 was not far from five hundred, had increased to at least twelve hundred in 1693, and yet they were all included in one parish, and their only place of worship was the old South Church beyond the mill bridge. From some old records this number, according to the same calculation, Great Island had about two hundred, when a separate parish was established there in 1693. There must still have been in the old parish, wide as its limits still were, allowing for the same rate of increase, although there is every reason to suppose it was much more rapid, at least twelve hundred inhabitants, whose only home for worship was the old South, and all the time the settlement had been growing away from the church and towards the Bank, as this upper part of the town was generally called. The old church was not only in constant need of repairs, but was entirely too small to accommodate the large and rapidly increasing parish.
The following vote is copied from the records :
"At a generall town meeting held at Portsmouth this 24th day of Septem- ber, 17II, voted, that the new meeting-house be built on the corner of the minister's ffield and that it be the stated meeting-house of ye town. Voters for the meeting-house are sixty-five, against forty-five,-and the selectmen were empowered to raise money by way of a town rate for said house.
"The minority deemed the parade too far north and continued to worship in the old meeting-house; when the house was completed it was voted January 7, 1714, that Nathaniel Rogers, minister of this church, should come to the new meeting-house erected at ye Bank, on ye next Sabbath, seven night, and preach there, and continue preaching there as formerly at ye old Meeting House, and perform all other offices which appertain to his function."
The people at the South End claimed that the vote for locating the house in this place was obtained unfairly; and they were not willing to submit to it. After Mr. Rogers began to preach in the new house, they obtained Rev. John Emerson to preach in the old house. The controversy ran so high, that it was referred to the Legislature; and the following vote was passed by the Council and General Assembly of the Province of New Hampshire, at Ports- mouth, May II, 1714: "Upon the hearing of all parties referring to the meetinghouses of this Town, and having seen the grants, agreements and votes of the said Town of Portsmouth, referring to the settlements of the Rev. Mr. Rogers, the present minister of the said Town or Parish,-voted the said Mr. Rogers be established the minister of the said Town, and be con- firmed in the possession of the Gleeb land or Parsonage Lands according to the agreement with the Town." Provision is also made in the same act for the support, by the town, of the minister at "the other Meeting House at the Mill Damm."-Provincial Papers of N. H., iii-559.
But this did not bring peace; for we find, that, two months later, there are two sets of town-officers in Portsmouth,-one elected by a town-meeting
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at the old meeting-house, the other chosen at the new; and the interposition of the Legislature is again requested, with the following result :
House of Representatives of New Hampshire, July 28, 1714, "Voted a concurrence with the order of the Governor and Council, and considering the Regularity of the Town Meeting at the New Meeting House the seventh of June, confirm the Town clerk and all other officers then chosen, and the votes then passed about the new Meeting House."
The majority retained the minister and removed the church records and the plate, which included the silver flagons presented by Thomas Wibird in 1766 and six cups dated 1705, to the new meeting-house, calling themselves the "North or First Parish."
The result of the whole trouble was that the two parishes were declared to be the two parishes of the town, and went on with a prosperity which has hardly known a pause. For a long time the history of the two parishes was the same, that of the church of Portsmouth, and when it flowered into two channels it was fortunately to witness a prosperity for each of which neither need be jealous. The first difficulty was in regard to the location of the church, the next was doctrinal.
Successive Ministers at the Old South Parish .- John Emerson, the fourth minister of the South Parish, was the third minister of that name settled in New England. The ministry of Mr. Emerson lasted from the 23d of March, 1714-15, to the 21st of February, 1732-33, a pastorate of seventeen years, and, after the settlement of the difficulties with the North Parish, of undis- turbed tranquility and unexampled prosperity.
The ministry of the South Parish has been as follows: Rev. William Shurtleff, installed February 21, 1733, died May 9, 1747; Rev. Job Strong, ordained January 28, 1749, died September 30, 1751 ; Rev. Samuel Haven, D. D., LL. D., ordained May 6, 1752, died March 3, 1806; Rev. Timothy Alden ( college), 1799-1805; Rev. Nathan Parker, D. D., ordained Septem- ber 14, 1808, died November 8, 1833; Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, D. D., ordained 1833, died March 10, 1893: Rev. James DeNormandie, ordained 1883; Rev. Alfred Gooding, ordained 1884, the present minister.
A New Church .- The old South Church was now falling into ruins. It was deemed unfit for worship in 1711, when the whole town had voted to build a new one, but by reason of the separation the diminished numbers at the Mill Dam continued their services there until 1731, when the parish built a new church on a lot of land presented by Capt. John Pickering. This was the South meeting-house, standing on the site of the present South ward room, which was so important a landmark for mariners coming into Piscataqua Harbor. and which, after repairs and remodeling, was finally taken down in 1863. The stone church on State Street was built of Rockport granite in 182 1-26. The Unitarian Chapel on Court Street was erected in 1857 on the site of the old Paxson Walton meeting-house.
CHAPTER XII
PORTSMOUTH-(Continued)
The Four Meeting-Houses-The Glebe Lands-The 1670 Bible-The Brick Church Building, 1854-The Successive Ministry of the North Parish
The Four Meeting-Houses .- The following sketch of the four meeting- houses is condensed from an address delivered by C. A. Hazlett at the semi- centennial of the dedication of the North Church, November 5, 1905 :
The first building was the log chapel on Pleasant Street, near the Uni- versalist Church. The second was the meeting-house at the crotch of the roads near the south mill bridge. The third was the three-decker meeting- house on the parade. The fourth, the present brick church building.
Besides the four houses of worship, there were several separations and divisions from the North Church. In 1706, the Greenland parishioners formed a new parish, dismission being granted on account of the long distance and the danger from the Indians while travelling the five miles to and from the Portsmouth meeting-house. In 1725, a meeting-house was built at the Plains and stood for twenty-three years, when it was blown down and the parish became united again with the North Church.
Then, in 1757, the Independent Congregational Society was formed, and, under the pastorate of Samuel Drown and Joseph Walton, worshipped in their building on the site of the present Unitarian Chapel on Court Street for sixty-five years.
Another separation, or rather colonization, occurred from the then strong Mother Church in 1828, when forty members were granted dismission and formed a new parish, worshipping in their new brick building which they erected at the corner of Pleasant and Livermore streets, until 1836, when they united again with the old church.
The most serious division was the first one in 1711, when there was a separation into two parishes, one continuing to worship in the old meeting- house at the south mill bridge until they built the new meeting-house called the "South Congregational Church," in 1731, placing it on Meeting-house Hill on the site of the present south ward room.
The first house of worship in Portsmouth was erected about 1638. It stood near the Universalist Church, near the site of the Langdon house now occupied by Mrs. Harris, the great-granddaughter of Rev. Samuel Langdon, the fourth pastor of this church.
The Glebe Lands .- On the 25th of May, 1640, twenty of the inhabitants
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"of the lower end of Pascataquack" conveyed by deed to Thomas Walford and Henry Sherburne, "Church-wardens of this Parish," and their successors, the "parsonage house with a chappell thereto united, as alsoe fiftie acres of glebe land." "And forasmuch," the deed continues, "as the said parishioners have founded and built ye said parsonadge house, chaple with the appurti- nances at their owne proper costs and charges, and have made choyse of Mr. Richard Gibson to be ye first parson of ye said parsonadge, soe likewise whensoever the said parsonage happen to be voyd by death of ye incumbent, or his time agreed upon expired, that then the parsonage presently and nomina- tion of ye parson to be vested and remane in ye power and election of ye said parishioners or ye greater part of them forever." The glebe land conveyed by this deed was in two parcels. Thirty-eight acres of it was "thus to be taken, that is to say, ye full tenth part of ye fresh marsh lying at ye head of Strawberry Banke Creeke, and that being meeted and bounded to take the remainder of the thirty-eight acres next adjoyning to ye said marsh." Straw- berry-Bank Creek is still known as "the Creek." The water tower and powder house is in about the center of the upper glebe land.
In 1791 this land was sold by the wardens at public auction to obtain a means for building the parsonage house on Pleasant Street, now owned and occupied by Mr. Fred S. Wendell.
The smaller and more valuable portion of the glebe was twelve acres in what is now the central part of the city. It is thus described in the town records : "The twelve ackers of land belonging unto the meeting house doth take its beginning from the great pine by the sayd house, west and by south towards Goodman Humpkins, his hous which he bought of Roger Knight, full thirty polls : from the end of the sayd thirty polls, up the hill, north and by west, fully fifty-six poll: from the sayd fifty-six polls end diu east forty-six, unto a forked pine marked with three noches : from the said forked pine, south and by east full forty-four polls, unto the before menshoned great pine." As the great pine and the forked pine and Goodman Humpkins's house are no longer available landmarks, the glebe may be described as a square lot of land, of which the boundary ran from the east corner of the North Church, up Congress Street, to a point a little beyond Chestnut Street, so as to include the Kearsarge House; thence southerly, parallel with Chestnut Street, to the South Millpond; thence easterly, passing this side the Universalist Church, to Pleasant Street, and up Pleasant Street to the east corner of the North Church.
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