USA > New Hampshire > Strafford County > History of Strafford County, New Hampshire and representative citizens > Part 29
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The Jones garrison, which stood on the upper side of Jones creek, a pleasant location, with the river in full sight. It was built by Stephen Jones, who settled there in 1663, and the farm has been in possession of the Jones family to the present day, 246 years ago. He is called Ensign Jones in 1692, being one of the three officers appointed for the defense of the settlement, the others being Capt. John Woodman and Lieut. James Davis. That was three years after the massacre at Cochecho, so it is more than probable that they supplied their garrison well with ammunition and other means of defense, which inade them thoroughly prepared to fight the Indians when they made the attack two years later. The Jones garrison was beset before daybreak. Ensign Jones hearing his dogs bark, and imagining that wolves might be near, went out to secure some swine, which done, he returned unmolested; but being suspicious that all was not right, he then went up into the flankout and sat on the wall. Discerning the flash of a gun, he dropped backward; soon a ball entered the place where he had withdrawn his legs. Of course there was something doing at once; he aroused his household and
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prepared for defense, which was successfully made, although his fort was beset on all sides.
The Bunker garrison you saw the ruins of. as you came here. It is on the upper side of Bunker's creek. It was built by James Bunker, who was settled at Oyster River as early as 1652; it was built about 1675. It was successfully defended in 1694, and a part of the original estate, including the old garrison, has remained in possession of the Bunker family to the present time, 257 years.
The Smith garrison stood on a hill, near where you saw the Smith bury- ing ground. It was built by Joseph Smith, who on July 31, 1660, had a grant from the town of Dover of that lot of land, which has remained in possession of the Smith family to the present time, 253 years, the present owner being Forest S. Smith, Esq., a prominent merchant in Boston. This Joseph Smith was a son of George Smith, who was one of Capt. Thomas Wiggins' company that settled at Dover Neck in 1633, 281 years ago, and was a prominent citizen of Dover, being town clerk several years; he some- times spelled his name "Smyth." He is named among those who were the first freemen of Dover. Joseph Smith resided on that land until his death; his remains were interred in the burial ground nearly where the garrison stood, and on his gravestone you read this inscription :
"Sacred to the memory of Joseph Smith, who died December 15, 1728, aged eighty-nine years. He was the first European who cultivated the soil in which his remains are deposited." The adjoining tombstone bears this inscription : "Sacred to the memory of Elisabeth Smith, wife of Joseph Smith, who died May 25, 1727." In that burial ground you saw the grave- stones of six generations of the Smith family, who in turn had been owners of that land; it is a condition which probably no burial ground in New Hampshire can duplicate. In the Woodman burial ground, up near the col- lege, there are the graves of Capt. John Woodman and six generations of his descendants, who in turn owned the Woodman garrison and the land around it, but not all of the graves have separate headstones to designate the exact spot where each was buried. The Smith garrison was successfully defended, "being seasonably apprised of the danger," as the report says, other families taking refuge there. The Indians made furious and continued attacks, but the brave men within "held the fort." The Smith family in every genera- tion descended from Joseph has had men distinguished for ability, energy and faithful service in public trusts.
The Davis garrison. the location of which you saw near the mouth of Oyster river, was built by John Davis of Haverhill, Mass., who came here as early as 1653 and settled on that land in 1654; he is the present writer's
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ancestor. He is called Ensign John Davis as early as 1663, and died before 1686. He built the garrison about 1675, and in it resided his son, James, and family at the time of the massacre in 1694. This James was then Lieut. James Davis; later in life, in the next century, he became colonel of his regiment and was one of the great men of his generation, valiant in wars with the French and Indians, wise and energetic in peace; judge, coun- cillor, and incorruptible in all official positions; he accumulated great wealth and left a family of nine children, whose ages, at their death, averaged eighty-seven years each. He died in 1748, aged eighty-eight years. You saw the headstone at his grave, where it has withstood the storms of 160 years. Around it are the unmarked graves of his descendants for several generations.
When the Indians made their attack on the garrison on the morning of July 18th, Lieutenant Davis and his neighbors who had gathered there were ready for them, being forewarned by the guns up the river, and they suc- cessfully repulsed every attack that was made, without the loss of a man. But what a horrible night it was as he looked across the river and saw the burning houses and heard the cries of his neighbors, whom he was unable to assist. It is the tradition of the neighborhood that Col. James Davis, the veteran officer and able magistrate, used on occasion to lay aside his carnal weapons, and convene religious meetings at his capacious garrison, in which he took the lead in prayer and exhortation. (Some time after the affair of 1694, it is the tradition that six or seven persons from Oyster River Point, on their way to the boat from one of these meetings, were waylaid and slain by the Indians on the Meader land just below Davis creek. Their bodies, discovered some days later, were covered with earth where they lay. This place was pointed out to you by Mr. Chesley.)
The Bickford garrison stood at Durham Point, across the river from Colonel Davis' but lower down. It was built by Thomas Bickford, ancestor of the present writer; that point of land has Little Bay on one side and Oyster river on the other. On the occasion of the attack, Captain Bickford being forewarned by the noise and fire up river, sent his family across the bay to Fox Point, and remained to defend his garrison, when the attack should be made, which he knew was sure to come. He did the work in a very ingenious and successful way; it was surrounded by a strong palisade. Despising alike the promises and threats by which the Indians would have persuaded him to surrender, he kept up a constant fire at them, changing his dress as often as he could, showing himself with a different cap, hat or coat, and sometimes without either, and giving orders of command in a loud voice, as if he had a company of soldiers with him, and continually shooting
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at the enemy, he completely deceived them and they finally gave up the attempt to capture the garrison, thinking it was too strongly manned for then1.
The first meeting house at Oyster River was just across the river from the Smith garrison; the Indians did not disturb it, and it is the tradition that while the massacre and burning of houses was going on, a French priest, who accompanied the party, remained in the meeting house, and employed him- self in writing on the pulpit with chalk, and would not permit the house to be damaged. At that time the pastor was Rev. John Buss; he happened to be away from home, but the Indians destroyed his house, nearby the church, with a valuable library, whose books and manuscripts would be of inestima- ble value if our historical society could possess them now. His wife and family escaped to the woods and thus saved their lives.
The Burnham garrison, above the meeting house, also made a successful defense. After the fight on both sides of the river was over, Dr. Belknap says: "Both divisions then inet at the falls, where they had passed the even- ing before, and proceeded together to Captain Woodman's garrison. The ground being uneven, they approached without danger, and from behind a hill kept up a long and severe fire at the hats and caps which the people within held up on sticks above the walls, but did no damage except battering the roof of the house. At length, apprehending it was time for the people in the neighboring settlements to collect in pursuit of them, they finally with- drew, having killed and captivated between ninety and a hundred persons, and burned about twenty houses, of which five were garrisons."
Just a few words about that Woodman garrison, which was standing in a fine state of preservation until it was burned to the ground in November, 1896. You saw what a beautiful location it stood on, the hill at the head of Beard's creek, with brooks and deep ravines on every side of the acclivity, except the west. It has a fine outlook for an approaching enemy, as well as a charming view in every direction, except in the rear, where the rise of land intercepts the prospect. Durham village, which did not exist in 1694, lies at the south in full view; at the east may be traced the windings of Oyster river. At the north, through an opening between the hills, can be seen the spot where stood the Huckin's garrison; and nearer at hand, but separated by a deep ravine, is the field where occurred the massacre of 1689, when the garrison was destroyed and eighteen persons were killed in a field by the Indians. The mound where they were buried can still be pointed out, never having been disturbed by the plow.
The Woodman garrison was built by Capt. John Woodman, a direct ancestor of the present writer ; he was a son of Edward Woodman of New-
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bury, Mass., one of the founders of that town. Captain Woodman came to Oyster River as early as 1657, and in 1659 had a grant of twenty acres of land, the same on which he built the garrison. Captain Woodman was one of the leading men of the town and the province. The garrison and the valuable farm remained in possession of his descendants, in the Woodman name, for more than two hundred years, the last of the name to own it being the distinguished Prof. John S. Woodman of Dartmouth College, who died in the old garrison May 9, 1871, and was buried in the ancient burial ground, which you saw on that beautiful spot on the hill by Beard's creek, where five generations of his ancestors had been laid before him. After his death it was sold by his widow, together with the farm. By carelessness on the part of the owner, it was burned in November, 1896, an event that never ought to have occurred; such carelessness in connection with historic places is inexcusable.
The Woodman burial ground is on a beautiful ridge between Beard's cove and the broad, green field at the south of it. This was an ancient burial ground for the Indians in the ages before the white man came 11p Oyster river. In 1862 Prof. John Smith Woodman of Dartmouth College erected a fine monument in the center of the ground on which are the fol- lowing inscriptions :
"Here lie the remains of the Woodman family, who have occupied these grounds since 1659. Here are the graves of seven generations ; August, 1862. "John Woodman, Esq., came from Newbury, Me .; born 1630, died 1706; his son Jonathan, born 1665, died 1729; his son John born 1701, died 1777; his son Captain Jonathan, born 1743, died 1811 ; his son Nathan born Decem- ber 29. 1780, died March 2, 1869: his son Prof. John Smith, born Sep- tember 6, 1819, died May 9. 1871. Professor Woodman's wife born May I, 1833, died December 15, 1884. Their daughter Fanny born September 5, 1861, died February 26, 1862."
CHAPTER XXX HISTORY OF DURHAM (III) .
DURHAM IN THE REVOLUTION-CAPTURE OF THE POWDER AT FORT WILLIAM AND MARY, DECEMBER, 1774
The third great event in the history of Durham was the Revolutionary war, in which its citizens took an active and important part, beginning with the first overt act of the war, in .December, 1774. The parish was incorpo- rated as a town by the Provincial assembly, May 15, 1732. It received the name of Durham, apparently at the request of the Rev. Hugh Adams, who had been minister of the parish a number of years. In his address to the General Court in 1738, he says this parish "was chartered into the township of Durham" in answer to his petition "for its privileges and said name, as therein pleaded for." For some reason not explained, Mr. Adams had a love for Durham in Old England and wanted it given to this new town in New England, and the Assembly so named it.
The men of the new town took an active part in the French and Indian wars preceding the opening of the Revolutionary struggle. The most con- spicuous man among Durham citizens in the Revolution was John Sullivan, born in the parish of Summersworth, in Dover, February 17, 1740; son of the famous schoolmaster, John Sullivan, and his wife, Margery Brown. He was given a good education by his father, and completed his study of law, with Samuel Livermore of Portsmouth, when he was twenty years old, and was married that same year, commencing housekeeping at Berwick, Me., where his father lived (not South Berwick). Later he settled as a lawyer in Durham, and on December 19, 1764, purchased from the heirs of Dr. Samuel Adams the well known Sullivan house, near the Sullivan monument on "Broth Hill," where the old meeting house stood. That house Parson Hugh Adams, father of Samuel, had purchased of Joseph Burnham, August 7, 1717. It was then a new house, but now (1913) must be near, or quite, two hundred years old. That house was General Sullivan's home until his death, January 23, 1795, and the home of his family for many years after that.
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The young lawyer soon acquired an extensive and lucrative practice of his profession and for ten years was one of the leading lawyers in New Hampshire and in York county, Maine. He was brilliant, energetic and eloquent as an attorney and he carried on considerable mill business, outside of his law practice, so that in ten years he had accumulated quite a handsome fortune, for that period. It would have been nothing unusual for him to oppose war to save his property, but the oppressive measures of the British ministry found him a bold opponent. Perhaps he inherited this feeling of opposition from the way his ancestors had been despoiled of their possessions in Ireland. He was of the O'Sullivans of the southwestern part of that island, near Bantry bay, to whom the name of England was justly a synonym of merciless tyranny and bloody despotism. He could trace his ancestry to holders of castles leveled by the English invader. His grandfather, Major Philip O'Sullivan, had been a soldier in the defense of Limerick, the last place in Ireland to yield to King William III, and on its fall had chosen liberty in exile in France, where he died, rather than to submit to forswear himself at home.
This young lawyer of Durham, at thirty-four years of age, had the spirit and courage of such ancestors, and when the call came for him to show his colors in 1774 he was ready for the fray. In December of that year Paul Revere took his first patriotic horseback ride and came to Portsmouth and informed the leading patriots there that a British warship was coming to that town to take the powder and other war materials from Fort William and Mary, where Fort Constitution now is, and he advised them to get busy and remove the war material before the British sailors could get a chance to do it. It was a very important and timely journey, though not much has been said about it since then.
Well, a party at Portsmouth acted promptly on Paul Revere's advice. On the afternoon of December 14, 1774, they went down river to the fort in Newcastle; surprised everybody in it, and took away ninety-seven barrels of powder and brought it all up river to Portsmouth. Then the question was what to do with it. If they kept it there in Portsmouth the British war- ship could come there and capture it; and the ship did arrive a day or two after the powder and other stuff had been taken safely inland and stored where no British army could find it.
The Portsmouth Sons of Liberty very speedily and wisely sent a message to Major John Sullivan in Durham to come down with a crew of men and help them. They received a prompt and hearty response, and Sullivan and his party arrived early the next day and began to make plans of what to do and how to proceed in doing it, as will be shown a little further along.
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The Pascataqua river empties into Ipswich bay in the space between Fort Constitution and Kittery Point; its mouth is wide and deep. From there it goes almost straight up to Dover Point; at this points it curves to the south and west and extends up about two miles, where it has its head, at Fox Point, around which the tide flows into Little bay, two miles west of which is Great bay, and beyond that Exeter. Oyster river flows into Little bay a short distance south of the head of the Pascataqua river, and it is about three miles from the mouth to the head of tide water at the falls at Durham village, where stood the meeting house under which the powder was first stored, December 17, 1774, as it took two days to cut the ice in Oyster river, from Little bay to the falls, the weather being very cold. The rough sketch enclosed shows the route by which the powder was carried in gondolas and other boats. Why they did this I will explain later.
In 1774 no powder was manufactured in America ; all was brought from England. In the fall of 1774 King George ordered that no more powder should be exported to the American colonies; orders also were given for the British commanders over here to collect and get complete control of all the powder that was over here already; that meant that the colonists, deprived of powder, could not fight the King's armies, if war should come; no powder, no fight. The king would have complete control. Now, then.
News of this order by the King reached Boston early in December. The King had two warships in Boston, which Paul Revere learned were pre- paring to come to Portsmouth and get the powder at Fort William and Mary. now Constitution. December 13, 1774. Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth and informed the patriots there that the British warships were coming to get the powder, and urged them to organize a party and capture and remove it at once from the fort to places where the warships could not reach it. This Paul Revere is the same man who four months later made that historic horseback ride from Charlestown to Lexington and Concord and informed the people that the British soldiers were coming to capture the powder at Concord, which resulted in that "firing of the shot that was heard around the world." His ride to Portsmouth on December 13. 1774, was just as important and beneficial in its results as was his ride to Lexington and Con- cord in the darkness of April 19. 1775. but as no blood was shed at Ports- mouth, and cutting ice is not so poetic as shooting men in battle array, General Sullivan's ice cutting in Oyster river has never been lauded in poetry and song as has been the fighting by the farmers at Concord, and their fight- ing from behind cvery stone wall along the road over which the British sol- diers made their hasty retreat to Boston. The result was the same in both
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instances. The colonists saved their powder at Fort William and Mary and at Concord; the one by cutting ice, the other by shedding blood.
Well, Paul Revere arrived in Portsmouth on the afternoon of December 13th. On the 14th, John Langdon and other patriot leaders organized a party, properly armed, and on the afternoon went to the fort and captured the powder. There were no bridges then; the journey to Great Island had to be made in boats, and in boats it had to be taken away; no easy job on a cold day, but they got out nearly a hundred barrels and brought it up here to Portsmouth. The next day, December 15th, Gen. John Sullivan (he wasn't a general then) and a party came down from Durham, and with Portsmouth men went to the fort at night and took out the rest of the powder, the cannon and the guns, and brought it all up to Portsmouth.
So far. well done; but it never would be safe to leave it there. The frigate Scarborough was on the way from Boston, and could take it just as well at Portsmouth as at the fort, so the work began at once of removing the powder and guns to places where the British soldiers and marines could not get hold of it.
As is well known, it is deep water all the way from Fort Constitution to the head of the Pascataqua river. The frigate Scarborough could easily have gone up there had the powder been left along the way, hence the powder was taken to Durham, the nearest point of safety. So, as fast as possible, with favoring tide, the loaded gondolas were taken up the Pas- cataqua as far as Little Bay, the water being free of ice. At Fox Point they could go no farther, as the Oyster river had frozen over, the ice being a few inches thick. This had to be cut by Sullivan and his men, but in a day or two the powder was all floated up the river and the barrels were rolled ashore and taken up the hill to the old meeting house, which stood where the Sulli- van mounment stands. The cannon and guns were also taken care of ; but the powder was the most precious of all.
After they had the powder safely hidden under the meeting house floor the news came that the frigate Scarborough had arrived at Portsmouth harbor to get the powder. The officers examined the fort and found all the war material was missing. So it appears that Langdon and Sullivan and their compatriots were just in time; a few days' delay would have made it impossible to save the powder from British hands, except by a hard fight with the British frigate, in which it would have been difficult for the patriots to have saved the powder.
The powder did not remain long under the meeting house; for greater security it was carted to the towns around Durham. Maj. John Demerritt, who resided in Madbury, about three miles from the meeting house, had
HIGH SCHOOL, DOVER, N. H.
PUBLIC LIBRARY, DOVER, N. H.
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WENTWORTH HOME FOR THE AGED, DOVER, N. H.
STRAFFORD COUNTY COURT HOUSE, DOVER, N. H.
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his men dig a special cellar under his barn, in which he deposited a number of barrels of the precious explosive. He had a passageway dug from his house cellar to the powder cellar, by which the barrels were rolled in, and in midwinter he rolled out some of them and hauled them to Medford, Mass., with his ox team; some of that powder was used at the battle of Bunker Hill, and more of it in the siege of Boston.
The capture of the powder and arms was the first overt act of the Revolutionary war, ante-dating the encounter at Lexington and Concord by four months.
As regards the way the assaults were made upon the fort, the story given in Brewster's "Rambles about Portsmouth" is not correct, although it is dramatic and interesting. Mr. Brewster says the attack was made by the Portsmouth party on a bright moonlight night (December 14, 1774), about midnight; that Capt. Thomas Pickering was the first man who scaled the western ramparts of the fort and surprised the sentinel and disarmed him, and then some other men arrived and held the sentinel while Capt. Pickering went to the quarters where Captain Cochran, the commandant of the fort, was asleep, and arrested him before he was fairly awake and informed him the fort had been captured and he was a prisoner. "Whereupon Captain Cochran tendered his sword to Captain Pickering, who politely handed it back to him, observing he was a gentleman and should retain his side arms, and turned to leave him. As he turned, Cochran thought he had the gallant Pickering at his advantage and aimed a blow at him with his sword, which Pickering parried with his arm, and then, without deigning to draw his trusty sword, he felled the miscreant to the ground with his clinched hand." Just then others came to Pickering's assistance and Cochran was placed under guard. I need not quote more; the facts of the case are, however, quite different, as I will show.
Paul Revere brought his message on Tuesday, December 13, 1774, from the Committee of Safety in Boston to the committee in Portsmouth, of which Mr. Samuel Cutts was chairman, announcing that troops were to be sent to re-enforce the fort, and bringing information also of the King's order in council prohibiting the exportation of gunpowder and military stores to America; and he urged the committee to at once get the powder and arms at the fort. Mr. Cutts immediately called the committee together and they formulated plans for the capture of the powder upon the following day. Governor Wentworth seems to have had some intimation of what might happen from Paul Revere's visit, for he sent word to Captain Cochran to be upon his guard. In Wentworth's report on the affair, however, he states that "before any suspicion could be had of their (the committee's)
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