History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens, Part 53

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

USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens > Part 53

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"John Usher, Lt. Govr.

"William Bedford, Dep'y Sec'y.

"Copy Examined, Theodore Atkinson, Sec'y.

"Province of New Hampshire, March Ist, 1743.

"Entered and Recorded According to the Original, pr. Theodore Atkinson, Sec'y.

"Copy Exam'd.

Pr. George Jaffrey, Clerk."

From the charter. it appears that Kingston is one of the older towns of the state. Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, and Hampton were the only towns incor- porated when Kingston received its charter. It was also one of the large towns, extending from Hampton, which then included Kensington, ten miles west to what is now the eastern boundaries of Chester, Derry, and Hamp- stead. On the north it was bounded by Exeter, which then included Brent- wood and Fremont.

On the south it was bounded by an indefinite line, which became the occasion of much trouble between the inhabitants of Kingston and their southern neighbors. In 1739 East Kingston became a separate parish. and in 1756 Sandown was incorporated. On February 22, 1760, another section of the northwest part of Kingston was cut off and incorporated with the name Hawke (now Danville).

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The southwest part of Kingston lies between Newton on the east, with Danville and Hampton on the west and Plaistow on the south, and is called South Kingston. Though it is not a separated town, its position is such that there is little intercourse between its inhabitants and those of the remain- ing part of the town, which is now in territory one of the smallest in the state.

The whole town contains 12,188 acres, of which 800 are supposed to be covered with water.

Great Pond, with an island of ten or twelve acres, covers 300 acres. It is on the southwest of the village, called "The Plain." Little Pond, cover- ing over fifty acres, lies but a few rods west from the three churches and the town-house. Country Pond, with an island of six or eight acres, lies on the southeast boundary, and is partly in Newton. There are smaller ponds, named Moon Pond, Long Pond, and Barberry Pond.

The highest land in town is on the Great Hill, in the northeast corner of the town, on the line between Exeter and Kingston. Rock Rimmon, in the west of the town, near Danville, is a high ledge of granite, very steep on the south, but falling off gradually on the north.

The first houses in town were built on the plain, and were several of them garrisons. The village where most of the business of the town is done is called Kingston Plains, near the center of the town, on a plain more than a mile long from north to south, and about half a mile wide, with a common in the center half a mile long and twenty rods wide, upon the west side of which are some stately elm-trees. The water from the northeast side of the plain runs into the Exeter River, but from the southwest part it runs into the ponds which are connected with the Powow River, that carries their waters into the Merrimac River.

From Kingston Plains to Exeter is six miles northeast; to Portsmouth, twenty miles; to Haverhill, Mass., twelve miles south; to Concord, thirty- seven northwest.

The Boston and Maine Railroad runs through East Kingston, two and a half miles east from Kingston.

The soil of Kingston is usually a sandy loam, easily cultivated, and pro- ductive if well dressed. There is an abundance of pure water, and the climate is healthy. There have been some cases of remarkable longevity. Samuel Welch, one of the first settlers, had a son Samuel, born September 1, 1710, who married, January 22, 1732, Elenor Clough, and had a son, Reuben, born February 15, 1740. When about forty-five years of age he removed to Pen- broke. He was a quiet, industrious, and temperate man, living the last fifty years of his life on a little farm in an obscure corner of the Town of Bow. Mr. John Farmer visited him in March, 1823, and spoke of him as feeble, but with mental faculties little impaired and quite interesting in con- versation. He died the 5th of April following, aged one hundred and twelve years and seven months. His mother and his sister are said to have lived, each of them, to the age of one hundred years, and his brother lived to near ninety years of age.

Abigail Sanborn, a native of Kingston, died in Canterbury, among the Shakers, aged one hundred and one years; and Mrs. Judith Webster, born in South Hampton, August 29, 1775, was a member of the Kingston Congrega-

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tional Society, and died in East Kingston, March 11, 1876, aged one hundred years and six months.

The ponds in Kingston are well stocked with fish, which afforded much food for the Indians long before the white men visited the country. Many of their implements of stone and some old French coins have been found in the vicinity.

Occupations of the People .- At the settlement of Kingston much of the land was covered with valuable timber. In 1705 the town granted 100 acres of land to the persons who would build a saw-mill upon the Little River, on the condition that they should saw the town's lumber. When the roads were built so that lumber could be hauled to market, it became an important article in the productions of the town. From 1750 to 1775 there were six or seven stores in the town, and a brisk business was done at the "Plains" in the lumber trade. There were large lumber-yards on the common, where great quantities of the article collected from this and other towns were kept . for sale.

At one period in the early history of Kingston a company engaged in the manufacture of iron, using the bog iron ore taken from the bottom of Great Pond, but the quantity of the ore was small, and it was procured with so much difficulty that the business was unprofitable and finally abandoned.

The cultivation of the soil has from the settlement of the town been the main business of the inhabitants. Those who have patiently and intelligently continued this business have not failed to secure,a reasonable reward for their labors and a secure investment for their funds.

Kingston was for many years one of the frontier towns, and for more than fifty years the inhabitants suffered, often severely, from the attacks of the French, and Indians, so that the people were much hindered and dis- couraged in their efforts to clear the land and secure safe homes for them- selves and their families. There were natural meadows, much more numerous and profitable then than now. The Indians used to burn the grass upon these meadows, and thus prevented the bushes from growing upon them as they do now.

The native grasses upon these lowlands were of much value to the new settlers before they had time to fell the large trees, clear the new land, and inclose the fields and pastures for raising the English grasses.

Ecclesiastical History .- As the main object of the proprietors and early settlers in obtaining a charter and organizing a separate town or parish was to aid them in establishing public worship and public schools within a dis- tance convenient to the settlers, the main part of the history of the town for many years which has been preserved for us is the ecclesiastical history of Kingston.

The first settlers of this town were from the families of the Puritans who had settled Ipswich, Newbury, and Salisbury, Mass., and Hampton, N. H. They were ardently attached to the principles of the Puritans, and anxious to train up their children with a correct knowledge of their own doctrines. Some of the proprietors and early settlers were natives of England, who had not been sent out from the prisons and the almshouses of the old country, but men who, at a great sacrifice of property, etc., had left the homes of their fathers and encountered the dangers of a long voyage over the wide ocean for the purpose of finding on this wild, inhospitable shore freedom to worship

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God. Here, exposed to the treachery of the murderous savages, they were in still greater dangers.

If their religion was tinctured with any superstition, it may have been owing somewhat to the circumstances in which they were placed.

The town-meeting in January, 1700, was to consult about the division of their lands, and to establish public worship. They hoped that their treaty with the Indians would be permanent, and in their joy at a release from the burdens and the dangers of the war they were preparing to establish the public worship of God in the place.

The second meeting, in June, 1700, was to discuss "the plan for hiring a minister." They "voted to have a minister, if he can be obtained," and "that his salary shall not exceed £80 a year." They must have roads, and they voted that the road north and south across the plain for nearly a mile be twenty rods wide, and from the plain to the Exeter line eight rods wide. They were not narrow men, as some have supposed.

In 1702, when the lots of land were laid out, No. 14 was assigned for a parsonage lot, and in the year following a grant of 100 acres was made for the first minister who should settle with them. They also chose a site for a meeting-house.

But they were sadly disappointed, for in 1703 the war with the Indians suddenly broke out again, and many of the people left their lands and returned to safer localities in the older settlements. Some of those who remained on their lands were obliged to send back their wives and children to the homes of their friends. These were perilous times, when their cattle were killed, their crops destroyed, their buildings burned, and their lives in constant danger.

Ensign Tristram Sanborn, from Hampton, had commenced clearing a piece of land where some of his descendants still reside on the Exeter road. He had erected a cabin of logs, where he took his food and found shelter till it was safe to bring his family to the place.

One evening, on returning from his work in the Great Meadows, where he had been to cut his grass, he found instead of his food and shelter a heap of ashes. The Indians had been there, and taken what they chose of his property, and burned what they could not carry. He did not, like many others, desert the land which they could not carry off or consume, but built a garrison-house upon it, where his wife and children need not be constantly exposed to death or captivity from any roving Indians who were prowling about intent upon pillage and murder. This building probably afforded a refuge to some of his neighbors in seasons of peculiar danger.

Tradition says that some years afterwards a band of savages, taking advantage of the absence of the men, made a furious attack upon this house. The women defended it till their assailants were repulsed and retreated. The next day a dead Indian was found not far from the garrison.

Aaron Sleeper erected another garrison not far east from Sanborn's, and the town-meeting in 1705 was held in it. One object of this meeting was "to consider some way to secure a minister."

During some years the Indians, supplied with ammunition and incited by the French in Maine and in Canada, kept the people of this whole region 'n a state of continued anxiety and fear. This fear was not groundless, but reasonable.

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Though patrolmen and scouts were employed on a line of frontier for fifty miles at great expense of money and life, it was impossible to prevent small bodies of Indians from passing this line by night or by day. They could conceal themselves by day, and visit the larger villages by night.

The grants of lands to the original settlers of these new towns were attended with certain conditions, so that if a man felt obliged to leave his lot without improvements for a certain period he lost his title to it.

Some of the first settlers of Kingston, who, on account of the danger, had left the place and had forfeited their rights, with others "who wished to settle there in the fall of 1705," sent a petition to the General Court in May, 1705, for leave to return to their lands. This was granted upon the condition that there be not less than thirty families, and that they "build a fort in the centre of the town," and "laye out in the centre of this a forty- acre lot for ye parsonage, and settle an able orthodox minister within three years next coming." The people had already suffered so much that on May 9, 1705, "The Council voted that the town of Kingston be excused from send- ing a representative and paying any part of ye province charge for the present year, provided that they assist the scouts with pilots at their own charge whenever required."

Soon after this the settlers made the attempt to comply with the condi- tions of their settlements. They chose a committee to look for a minister, but it was a difficult business for these thirty or forty families, some of them not permanently settled themselves, to "settle an able orthodox minister." They could not offer a very safe and comfortable home, nor a tempting salary, nor a large and inviting field for usefulness. The people had, many of them, become poor, having suffered so much from the depredations of the Indians. While they were toiling to fell the heavy trees and open fields for cultivation, their families in their humble cabins were exposed to the murderous enemies secretly hovering round, ready to destroy the lives and the property of the poor laborers. Having been heavily taxed in erecting garrison-houses, and in furnishing the means of self-protection, they were unable to promise their preacher more than forty pounds, one-half as much as they had hoped to pay when they commenced their settlement.

In October, 1707, two years later, they succeeded in hiring a Mr. Benjamin Choate, A. M., who was born in Ipswich, Mass., in 1680, and graduated at Harvard College in 1703, who had for a time been a teacher in the garrison at Deerfield, Mass. He was probably licensed, but was never ordained nor united with the church in Kingston, though he remained there more than forty years. He seems to have been a teacher a part of the time while he supplied their pulpit, and afterwards he held different offices in town.

They engaged to pay him fifty pounds a year,-thirty pounds current silver money and twenty pounds in labor and provision pay. They also voted to give him a grant of land, and from time to time we find the record, "that the town give Rev. B. Choate 40 cords of wood this year."

The same year the first meeting-house, with two stories and gallery, was built on the plains, on the southwest part of the common, near the present home of Deacon Clark. Tristram Sanborn, before mentioned, was one of the building committee. "It was paid for by a tax on improved lands, and by a tax on heads." It was standing in 1760, and perhaps later, but was probably never finished, for Mr. Choate preached a part of the time-perhaps

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during the winter-in the garrison-house. It was not used for public worship only about twenty-five years.

Mr. Choate is supposed to have preached about ten years. On April 16, 1716, a committee was chosen to confer with Mr. Choate "upon terms of continuance with us in the work of the ministry." Also a vote was passed to "add fio to the salary, making the whole £60; at the end of two years £5 more, if he continues with us in the work of the ministry." Also a vote that "£40 shall be presented to him when he builds a house in this town." Five voters entered their dissent from this vote. Tradition says the objection to him was that he sometimes used too much strong drink.

The people still continued to suffer from the fearful attacks of the merci- less savages. On the 17th of September, 1707, they killed Henry Elkins. In 1710 they killed Samuel Winslow and Samuel Huntoon. In 1712, Steven Gilman was killed and Ebenezer Stevens wounded. The terrible butchery of so many men, women, and children in 1708 at Haverhill, only twelve miles distant, must have filled with alarm the people of Kingston, who were equally exposed to such murderous attacks. It is not strange that such cruel and bloody acts aroused in the minds of our fathers a lasting hatred of the Catholic missionaries, who, instead of preaching the gospel of peace, incited the Indians to such deeds of blood and murder ; and that as a means of self- protection they followed the example of the French, and bounties were offered for the scalps of these murderers, who lurked about the settlements, waiting their opportunities to kill the innocent and then retreat to their hiding-places. Such a state of things was not very favorable to the success of Mr. Choate's labors in preaching the gospel. It seems the form of public worship was kept up, though it was with danger that the people left their homes on the Sabbath to attend the house of God.

For twenty-five years after the settlement of the town no church was organized, and the citizens in the town-meeting were the only religious society. The town records are the only source of information respecting the progress of religion in the place. It is not known that Mr. Choate kept any records, unless he was town clerk, or that he baptized any. He may, as a civil magis- trate, have married some couples, but I find no records of any such marriages.

When released from service in the pulpit, Mr. Choate did not leave the people in a condition favorable for settling another man. On the 16th of February, 1721, the town gave a call to Mr. William Tompson to become their minister, offering him a salary of eighty pounds a year-forty pounds in money and forty pounds in provision pay-also "a grant of land, provided he be our ordained minister, and continue with us in the work of the ministry ten or fifteen years, except God should take him away by death"; also the use of the parsonage meadow "during his natural life." He accepted the call, and his letter in answer to it is recorded in the town book. But for some reasons, not recorded, he was not ordained, and did not remain long, though he returned and preached occasionally.

The treaty of peace with the Indians in 1713 did not continue long, for the Indians in the east became dissatisfied with the conditions of it, and renewed their attacks upon settlers on the frontiers, while England and France were nominally at peace. In May, 1724, they entered Kingston again and took as prisoners Peter Colcord and Ephraim Severance and two sons of Ebenezer Stevens, whom they carried to Canada. The children were ran-

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somed, and Colcord, a smart, active young man, after about six months escaped and returned to his friends. In September, 1724, while Jabez Colman and his son were gathering cornstalks in a field on the borders of Little Pond, they were attacked and murdered by the Indians.

A mere statement of such facts as these gives us no adequate idea of the solicitude, the sufferings, and the distress with which these early settlers were oppressed. Many of them sacrificed all their pecuniary means, and mortgaged the houses and lands which they had just been preparing for their homes. If they escaped with their lives, they often saved nothing with which to sustain life. Sickness, occasioned by destitution and exposure, took away many who escaped the tomahawks and the bullets of the savages.

On May 17, 1725, the "Selectmen of Kingstown," viz .: Joseph Fifield, Ebenezer Stevens, Tristram Sanborn, Joseph Greele, and Joseph Sleeper, pre- sented the Governor and Council a petition for "Abatement of Province Tax," in which they say, "We request that your honrs would consider our sad surcomstances,-living in a frontier town, -- so small, & exposed to ye Indian enemy, & our rates so heavy that we cannot tell how to pay it. Therefore we humbly pray your honors to consider us, & to medigate sumthing of our Province Rates." "We have Lately lost sundry men of considerable estates,- some by the enemy, & some by sixness. We are so exposed to danger of ye enemy, dayly,-whenever we goe to work, we are as it were upon duty."

Early in the year 1725, Mr. Ward Clark, son of Rev. John Clark, formerly pastor of Exeter, commenced preaching in Kingston, and in April he received a call to settle as minister in the place. He was about twenty-one years of age, and a graduate of Harvard College in 1723.

They voted to pay him a salary of eighty pounds on September 17th. A church was organized of twenty-three members-nine by letter from Hamp- ton, and seven brought letters from Hampton Falls. He was ordained September 29, 1725, his stepfather, Rev. John Odlin, of Exeter, preaching the sermon, which was afterwards printed at Boston. The text was ( I Timothy vi. II and 12) the subject, "Christian Courage Necessary for a Gospel Minister."

Mr. Clark proved to be an able and efficient pastor, and the church increased rapidly under his ministry. His church records are very carefully kept, and will be of much value in preparing a complete history of Kingston. He made a list of the families in the town, eighty-one in all, including the three towns which were afterwards set off from the original town. Fifty surnames are found in the list. The name Sleeper is represented by six heads of families, and Bean, Sanborn, and Webster by four each. One man is described as a Quaker. It would seem that all the others were Congrega- tionalists. There was no other religious society organized for 100 years from the settlement of the town, or in the year 1800, when the Methodists had a society.

From this time the town became more prosperous, and rapidly increased in population. For several years they annually voted twenty pounds addi- tional to their pastor's salary, and made him liberal grants of land.

In 1767, after East Kingston, Sandown, and Hawke had been detached from it and incorporated as separate parishes, Kingston contained 999 inhabitants.

In March, 1732, at the annual meeting they voted to build a new meeting-

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house, and that it "shall be 55 foots Long and forty-five foots wide, and high enough for two ters of Gallery, &c." It stood for 100 years on the west side of the common just north of the road which leads to Rock Rimmon and Danville. Some years later a tower was erected 100 feet high. The first meeting-house remained for more than thirty years, and was in 1764 used for town-meetings.

The Epidemic Which Originated in Kingston .- In the midst of their pros- perity the town was suddenly visited by a terrible disease, called "the throat distemper." It commenced in June, 1735, and in about fourteen months 113 had been taken away by it, ninety-six of whom were under ten years of age. The wife and two children of their pastor, the Rev. Ward Clark, were among the victims of this scourge. His own health failed soon after, and he returned to his native town, Exeter, where after a long sickness he died, May 6, 1737. "A good man, much wanted, and much lamented," as was said of his father, who died at the same place, near the same age, thirty-four.

Of this disease the town record says, "This mortality was by a kanker quinsy, which mostly seized upon young people, and has proved exceeding mortal in several other towns. It is supposed there never was the like before in this country." Professor William Franklin Webster, of this town. when in Germany, found in a "medical work the statement that the first recorded instance of this disease in the whole world was in this town," Kingston, N. H. Of the first forty persons seized with it not one recovered.

It is now supposed that it was a malignant type of diphtheria, which soon visited many other towns in the vicinity, and was fearfully destructive in its ravages.

During the pastorate of Mr. Clark, 471 persons were baptized, and 130 were received into the church. At the funeral of Mr. Clark, in Exeter, 10th of May, 1737, the senior deacon, Moses Elkins, fell and suddenly died.

Mr. Clark in his will gave to "his beloved people at Kingston, for a per- petual parsonage, to be improved for the use of the ministry there, [ his] dwelling-house and home place," upon conditions which were accepted, and for about eighty years his "successors in the ministry" were permitted to occupy the premises, which were afterwards sold, and the funds used some- times to oppose the (truths) doctrines which he preached. The records at his death say "He lived beloved, and died respected by his people."

On the 17th of October, 1737, the church voted unanimously to give Rev. Joseph Seccombe a call, and the town on the week after cast a unanimous vote that he should be their minister. He was installed November 23, 1737, and spent twenty-three years, the remainder of his life, as their pastor.

It is said, "Mr. Seccombe was a good man,-a poor man's son; that he preached to the Indians three years before coming to Kingston." His labors were very successful, and the parish soon grew to such an extent that in February, 1739, the east part of the town had been set off, and a committee appointed to fix the boundaries between the two parishes. On the 6th of March, 1739, the old part of the town voted to remonstrate against this division, but they did not succeed in preventing it. On November 4, 1739, ten members were dismissed from the Kingston Church to unite with a church in East Kingston, which was organized December 19, 1739. In the year following thirty-three others were dismissed to the new church. On September 26, 1740, forty-three persons included in the new parish "requested

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History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and representative citizens, Part 53

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