USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Exeter > History of the town of Exeter, New Hampshire > Part 41
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The second son, Nicholas, you all know. He entered the Revolutionary army early in the war, and had a full share of its sufferings and its glory to the close. In 1786 he was appointed a member of the old Congress ; and, excepting a short period when he was a senator in the State Legislature, and presided over that
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body, he was a member of the House of Representatives and of the Senate of the United States until his death in 1814. He was also a member of the convention which formed the Constitution of the United States. His integrity and patriotism in all these highly honorable and responsible offices was never questioned for a moment.
But I must not suffer myself to be diverted from the ancestor, by the eminent characters and services of the great-great-grandsons of one branch of his numerous descendants. If that ancestor, one hundred and fifty years ago, could have been indulged with prophetic vision of the future, and could have beheld the various branches of his descendants, filling the highest offices in public life in his beloved and free country. it would surely have yielded him a pleasure than which there is none greater ; it would have cheered his old age to the very verge of a most active, long and useful life.
The records of our town show the first John, during the latter half of our connection with Massachusetts, as the first among our able and respectable men. Accordingly, when disconnected, in the latter end of the reign of Charles II., and New Hampshire became a separate province under the immediate government of the Crown, John Gilman was selected to fill the office of councillor. The chief executive and legislative power was vested in that body. He had the honor to be suspended from that body by Governor Cranfield. The measure was honorable to Mr. Gilman, and excited no surprise in the public mind, or his own. When the courts and juries were packed. why should the Council, the supreme judiciary, escape ? IIe died in 1708.
From his son descended the late Brigadier Gilman, whom some of you must well remember. In his day he was among the first men of our country ; successively representative, speaker, at the head of the militia, and a member of the Supreme Executive Council, appointed by the Crown.
It would take too much of our precious time to enumerate all the names of this respectable family who have been able and useful ministers of the gospel, members of the Council, and judges in our highest courts of law, all of whom derived their descent from this single stem, and connected in various ways with the first families of the country. I will only add, that the Gilmans at all times, under the provincial, colonial and State governments, have been unwavering in their patriotism and love of country.
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The Folsoms, a distinguished family, came early to us ; prob- ably they were settled awhile at Ilingham, where they acted a distinguished part in a memorable dispute in that place. They have filled no small space in our annals. The late General Folsom was a most zealous patriot of the Revolution, and a member of the old Congress. In the French war of 1755, he distinguished himself as an officer under General Johnson, at the capture of the Baron Dieskan, near Lake George.
But one of the most celebrated names in our annals is that of IIILTON. Edward Hilton is justly called the father of New Hamp- shire. He came from London, and settled in Dover in the spring of 1623. Here he resided from fifteen to twenty years, and then removed to Exeter. He died in 1671, leaving a large estate. His son Edward married the granddaughter of Governors Winthrop and Dudley. IIis son Winthrop, the fruit of that marriage, was better educated than most young men of the day, and was early introduced into public life. He was distinguished as a soldier,- "among the most fearless of the brave, the most adventurous of the daring." He was, of course, much in service, for he lived in stirring and troublous times, in the reigns of William and Anne. His uncle, the second Governor Dudley, was then governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and had great confidence in him. Hilton was particularly obnoxious to the Indians, having been successful in many encounters with them. "His sharp black eye and his long bright gun" struck terror into the hearts of the savages. They long watched for an opportunity to ent him off on his plantation at the Newfields. He was largely concerned in the masting business ; and in 1710, while so employed in that part of Exeter now Epping, his party was suddenly surprised, and Colonel IIilton fell at the first fire. He was then under forty, and a mandamus councillor, and died universally lamented. IIe was, indeed, an honest and brave man.
We have seen that Exeter was an independent State from the settlement till 1643. There was no connection between the four towns then, and for sixty years after, composing the whole State. Our records were then well kept, and the votes and orders well penned, perhaps with as much correctness as at this day. From these we are able to derive some information concerning the sentiments, temper, views and condition of the people. Their laws and regulations were few,-such only as their peculiar cir- cumstances required.
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The besetting sin of this day is, to multiply statutes ; many of which are a dead letter, and some worse. It is many times the hardest task imposed on our judges, to find out their meaning. In making the attempt, we often find reason to believe that the makers did not understand their own meaning. The Combination was no doubt from Wheelwright's pen, and compares well with similar compositions before and since. It is the only act of incor- poration our town has ever had. We are a self-created body politic.
We cannot now determine how many of our inhabitants were church members, certainly all were not. All who owned the soil participated in the goverment. The attempt to exclude all but church members is visionary and impracticable. It cannot last long, and generally the society is not a quiet one while it does last. The Massachusetts government of church members was in fact an aristocracy. With us the legislative power was conven- iently exercised by the people. The executive and prudential functions were vested in a Ruler, with two assistants. The Ruler and the people were mutually bound by oaths in the form pre- scribed. Treason and sedition were punished with death. Texts of scripture were added to this law, which show the respect of the framers for the Jewish polity ; a worse model, and one less adapted to their circumstances and condition, they could hardly have chosen. Our law makers had a most exalted opinion of the dignity of rulers. Nothing could exceed their zeal to preserve, pure and untarnished, their good name. Insolence to magistrates and contempt of authority were never suffered to escape severe punishment. As they are the mirrors in which the majesty of the people is beheld, this evinced the great respect the people had for themselves.
Our notions are quite different ; we treat our rulers as if they were usurpers, and chose themselves instead of being the work of our own hands. They are the butt,-the target at which every man may safely thrust his poisoned arrows. Whether this tends to make them high-minded and faithful to us and our interests. I will not pretend to say. If they are, it is at a considerable sacrifice ; for it has been observed that few men leave office with the same purity of character and reputation they enter upon it. What is the equivalent they receive for this? Calumny and slan- der of individuals were also made highly penal. Such prosecutions were, of course, frequent.
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There were laws, also, for the protection of the few Indians that seem to have remained a short time among us. Trade with them in arms, ammunition and strong waters was strictly for- bidden. If any purchase was made from the Indians, it belonged to the town, if they chose to have it. This was politic, and tended to prevent fraud. Town meetings were the subject of regulations, and all the voters required, under a penalty, to attend. Regula- tions were made for the organization of the militia,-the appoint- ment of officers was, in the train band, subject to the approbation of the ruler. Laws also were made for the assessment and collec- tion of taxes ; and various and minute regulations respecting animals of all kinds. Even dogs did not escape their notice. The same may be said of fishing, and lumber, and laws were enacted to prevent waste and destruction of timber. There was a fore- cast on this subject hardly to have been expected in the midst of so great abundance. The highways and bridges came in for their share of attention. There was a law against setting fire to the woods ; and, what we should hardly have expected, a law requiring trees overhanging the adjoining owner's land to be cut down, or lopped. And there was also a law, copied I believe from that of Massachusetts, about digging pits and leaving them open. The sale of wine and strong waters was subject to license. A few orders were also made regulating trials and judicial proceedings, and, as far as we can now judge, justice was impartially adminis- tered. A society more homogeneous in its elements, more affectionate and correct in morals, can hardly be imagined ; and without these no new settlement can be made. Weston's company at Weymouth, and Morton's at Mount Wollaston, sufficiently establish the fact. The latter was for a while called the Merry Mount. Its appropriate name soon became that of Mount Misery.
As a mere physical being, man must be governed as animals are - by others ; generally by force. As a moral being, he must be instructed in morals, and that can hardly be without religion. Our Constitution treats of them as existing only in union. A few settlers, unaccustomed to the ownership of wild lands, might be expected to err in the management and disposition of a large tract. They seem to have been troubled with no doubts about their title ; and, in fact, never were disturbed. The same number of the people of 1835-6-7 would have made shipwreck at once. The whole territory would have been granted out in the first year. Here, more than one hundred years were occupied in the disposi-
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tion of the lands. Every man had his share as he needed it. There was no speculation. Liberal grants were made to the mill owners, and a small rent reserved for the support of the ministry, while the timber lasted.
In May, 1643, there was a great scarcity of corn through the land, and it was severely felt here. Authority was given by the town to four of the most respectable inhabitants to search the houses, and where more was found than they should judge neces- sary for the use of the family, they were to take it at the usual price, and dispose of it among the poor for such pay as they could make. The measure was arbitrary, but justified by the occasion. If the laws and regulations of that day were not the best possible, I have no doubt they were much better than those framed by the Solomon of the age for his colonies.
Whatever may have been the case as regards Dover and Ports- mouth, it does not appear that this settlement could not have con- tinued many years in their independent state. They were the last to yield to Massachusetts, and seem never to have been favorites. The connection lasted thirty-six years, and the dissolution was not occasioned by any dissatisfaction on the part of the New Hampshire towns. A new county was created, called Norfolk, of which Exeter and Hampton were parts ; Salisbury the shire town. The separation was in 1679, - twelve years before the disgraceful tragedy of 1691-2 was enacted. We thus narrowly escaped the shame and guilt of the prosecutions for witchcraft.
A very brief account will now be attempted of the ecclesiastical affairs of the town-chiefly of the first century. The church established here by Mr. Wheelwright was composed of men doubly tried in the fiery furnace of persecution. They suffered on his as well as on their own account. They came here because he came, and on his third banishment many removed with him. Indeed, the church was hroken up - how short lived ! - the first church established in New Hampshire ! But I trust religion did not depart. Our settlers were religious men -Puritans. They could say, as Massachusetts did in that " transcript (as they called it) of loyal hearts to the best of kings," as they called Charles II., " We could not live without the public worship of God, without human mixture, and without a sinful yoke of conformities." They could not live without a preached gospel. They were small in number, and by no means in affluent circumstances, but they had lands to bestow. With these, and the lumber they sent to market, they could support a stated minister.
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A number of the inhabitants early expressed the desire to settle the aged Mr. Bachellor, lately dismissed at Hampton for irregular conduct ; but the town took no part in the matter, and the friends of the measure luckily were unable to satisfy the civil authority in Massachusetts, without whose consent no church could be formed. The magistrate must be satisfied of their fitness for a church estate, and of the qualifications of the minister best adapted to their wants.
In May, 1646, Mr. Nathaniel Norcross was invited to settle here. This man was a university scholar. He declined, and probably soon returned to England. A year or two afterwards it was agreed to invite Mr. Tompson of Braintree, and the com- mittee were instructed to consult with the Elders of Boston, Charlestown and Roxbury.
Mr. Emerson of Rowley was soon after called. He declined. These failures, -- doubtless blessings in disguise,-did not dis- courage our people. The committee, probably by the advice of the Elders they were required to consult, directed their course to Mr. Samuel Dudley, the eldest son of Governor Thomas Dudley. The son was born in England about 1606, and came to this country with his father in 1630. IIe was educated in England, but probably not at either of the Universities. It is not certain he was designed for the ministry. He had resided in Boston, Cambridge and Roxbury ; probably teaching school, and perhaps occasionally preaching. He was admitted a freeman in 1640. He had served at one time as a lieutenant under Underhill. About 1633 he married Mary, the daughter of Governor Winthrop, who had followed her father hither. By her he had three sons and a daughter. As early as 1641 he removed to Salisbury, where his wife died. The daughter was afterwards married to Edward Hilton of Exeter, and Winthrop Hilton was the fruit of this marriage. We thus see the origin of the Christian names of Winthrop and Dudley, common in this vicinity. Mr. Dudley married a second and third wife, and had fifteen children. He represented Salisbury in the General Court in 1644. Ilis youngest daughter was married to Kinsley Hall.
The old historian Johnson, in his Wonder- Working Providence, is of opinion that it is not easy to purge out the sour leaven of Antinomianism and familistical opinions, yet thinks that hard labor and industry, and he might have added poor living, has
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some tendency that way. Our society had taken a pretty strong dose of this harsh medicine. But if any should happen to remain, it was a politic step to choose for minister the son and son-in- law of such influential men as Dudley and Winthrop. The choice of Mr. Dudley was unanimous, in May, 1650. He could not regularly be ordained till a church was formed. In the meantime he was to do the duty of a minister, and was to have the house and lands, purchased of Mr. Wheelwright, as a parsonage, and forty pounds sterling a year. For such improvements as he should make he was to be compensated on his leaving, either by death, or "by some more than ordinary call of God other ways." The ordinary call guarded against was, no doubt, an invitation from a richer society with the offer of a higher salary. The salary was to be paid half yearly in corn and English commodities, at current price. Various modifications of the contract were after- wards made. The salary was, no doubt, inadequate even in that day, but it appears from the records that liberal grants of lands were made from time to time to Mr. Dudley and his numerous family. He was, doubtless, soon after ordained, and the connec- tion a happy one. His learning and gifts seem to have satisfied his people, and it was not the fashion of that day to starve the minister to enrich the flock.
Mr. Dudley was well acquainted with the business of civil life ; and as the town were wholly destitute at that time, and for nearly a century after, of that great blessing, a lawyer, Mr. Dudley's services were in demand ; and the records and papers I have seen furnish abundant evidence that they were skilfully as well as usefully performed. He was, it would seem, a catholic, liberal and tolerant man - which was no small improvement on the old stock. ITis father was a violent persecutor of all who differed from him in their religious opinions, and one of the bitterest enemies, among the laity, of our Wheelwright, whom his son suc- ceeded. He viewed toleration as among the seven deadly sins, and when he came to die I suppose he found no sin of this sort to trouble his conscience.
In 1656 Mr. Dudley was invited to settle in Portsmouth, at a salary (the money part) double that of Exeter. He seems at one time to have listened favorably to the proposal. Probably a new arrangement of his first contract prevented. Mr. Dudley died the tenth of February, 1683, at the age of seventy-seven.
On various occasions Mr. Dudley was honored with marks of confidence by the General Court of Massachusetts ; and it gives
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me unfeigned pleasure to mention an act of kindness and confi- dence done to him by his own people. It appears from the records, that soon after his settlement a commissioner was appointed to vindicate, at the expense of the town, " the credit and reputation of Mr. Dudley against the speeches and calumniations of a certain person " (I believe a Hampton man). Mr. Dudley made the proper return for this kindness. In 1665, when we ineurred the displeasure of Massachusetts, in consequence of a report that some Exeter men had signed a petition to the Royal Commissioner sent out by Charles II., which was supposed to reflect on the General Court, Mr. Dudley at once stepped forward and vindi- cated the men of Exeter, declaring them to be "clever fellows, and incapable of any such baseness."
The first house of public worship, of which we have any mention in our records, was built in 1650, and was twenty feet square. There was afterwards a gallery and lean-to added. It stood on the left-hand side of the road leading to Newmarket, in the north- erly part of the present village, near to which Mr. Wheelwright lived. I am sorry the Norfolk records show it was not kept, small as it was, " in a proper state for Christians to worship in." This our disgrace is a matter of record.
Mr. John Clarke succeeded Mr. Dudley in 1698. He was much esteemed and beloved. He married the granddaughter of the celebrated Mr. Woodbridge, the first minister of Andover, and the great-granddaughter of the first Governor Dudley. Mr. Clarke died in 1705, greatly lamented, at the early age of thirty- five. One of his sons, Ward Clarke, was afterwards minister of Kingston. From one of his daughters was descended our late respected townsman, Ward Clarke Deane.
Mr. John Odlin was the successor of Mr. Clarke, and was settled in 1706. He married the widow of his predecessor, by whom, and a second wife, he left a numerous issue, one of whom, Woodbridge, became his colleague in 1743. The father died in 1754, at the age of seventy-two. The son married a daughter of Brigadier Gilman, and died in 1776, at the age of fifty-seven.
The new parish was formed about the time of the second Odlin's settlement. Their first minister was Daniel Rogers, a descendant in the seventh degree through a line of ministers of the gospel, except one, from the Rev. John Rogers, Prelate of St. Paul's, and Reader in Divinity, who was burnt at Smithfield in 1555, the first martyr of the bloody Mary's reign. Mr. Daniel Rogers was
30
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settled in 1748, and died in December, 1785, aged seventy-eight.
From this period our church history is fresh in the recollection of you all. In 1695 or 1696, the second-meeting house was erected on the spot where this house now stands. It is stated in the records as on the hill between the great fort and Nathaniel Folsom's barn. In 1728 the third house was erected on or near the site of the second. This house had double galleries, as most of you remember. A steeple and bell were added in 1739, and a new bell in 1762. The steeple was blown down in 1775, and rebuilt soon after.
Newmarket was set off in 1727, Epping and Brentwood in 1741, and Poplin from the latter in 1764.
An account of the early settlement of Exeter would be miserably deficient, without some notice of the sufferings of its inhabitants from Indian hostilities and depredations. The Indians, at and near Swamscot Falls, seem to have been few in number, and less savage in character than most others, and especially the Eastern tribes. The improvements of such as remained, after the settle- ment by the white men, were secured to them till they voluntarily made sale to our people, and they were fully protected in their persons and property. In 1643 great fears were entertained that the Indians in Rhode Island, Connecticut and other places were uniting in a conspiracy to expel the new comers from their country. They did not like us on trial quite so well as they had expected. This alarm occasioned the union of the New England colonies, which lasted till 1680. There continued to be, at intervals, fresh alarms, and much apprehension of open hostilities. Some depredations were actually committed on Connecticut river and other distant places. It excited, also, much apprehension in our quarter, that the New Hampshire Indians, about 1672, quitted their settlements here, and sat down on the Hudson, near Troy, in the neighborhood of fiercer tribes. These alarms were not without foundation, for, in 1675, thirty-seven years after the settlement here, King Philip's War began.
The scene was more than one hundred miles from us ; but savages, you know, have swift feet,-and on every breeze was borne the war-whoop and it required little aid from the imagina- tion to see the glittering tomahawk raised to strike the blow. Forty houses were consumed in Groton and murders committed in Chelmsford, and nearer still in Berwick, York, Winter Harbor, etc. But Exeter escaped actual hostilities till 1690. I have drawn
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a circle round our village as a centre, thirty-five miles in diameter. The number of killed and captives, within this circle, during a period of forty years, exceeded seven hundred. The actual suffer- ings of Exeter were in six years, between 1690 and 1710, when the much lamented Winthrop Hilton fell. The killed and captives were between thirty and forty. It is to be remembered, too, that our population was, from a variety of causes, then extremely small. Our settlement had advanced slowly. Among the names of the killed, as appears from our records, were Ephraim Folsom, Sr., and Goodman Robinson. The loss to the country of Colonel Hilton was irreparable. Berwick, Durham, Haverhill and Dover suffered the most. Unfortunately they and we lay directly in the track between the Eastern and Western Indians, who were constantly uniting with each other for mischief, and separating for safety ; - always on the march.
You can conceive, or rather, you cannot conceive, the misery this dreadful state of things inflicted on our small plantation. We had three garrisons, the principal one was near this spot. Our people lived in continual fear of the savage enemy. Their home was in the garrison, and their cultivated fields became the fields of battle and of blood. There can be no true happiness where we do not sleep quietly in our own habitations, whether they be log huts or palaces. A garrison is, at best, but a misera- ble substitute ; and who can sleep with the sword of Damocles suspended over his head by a brittle hair, ready to break at any moment?
The effect of this state of things on husbandry must have soon become manifest. There was but little cultivation in places remote from the garrisons. The planter, who is obliged to carry his musket with his hoe and axe, will soon find a diminished crop. Implements of husbandry and arms to defend our lives, do not go well together. War and population are in an inverse ratio to each other.
I must be allowed here to say, that our government in those days seems to deserve little credit for the management of their Indian affairs. The French seem to have understood the Indian character much better. It is no reproach to the Protestant relig- ion that the Catholic is better adapted to the savage tribes. They. understand it better than Calvinism.
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