USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Rye > History of the town of Rye, New Hampshire, from its discovery and settlement to December 31, 1903 > Part 2
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The late John Scribner Jenness of Portsmouth, who was an earnest student of the early history of New Hampshire, and whose extensive and intelligent research had given him prob- ably as full and accurate an acquaintance with the facts con- nected with the first settlements in this section of the state as any person ever possessed, in a little book entitled " The First Planting of New Hampshire " (Portsmouth, 1878), printed for private circulation only-a circumstance to be sincerely regret- ted-gives a lively and interesting story of Thomson's settle- ment at Odiorne's Point, and from it we make liberal extracts in what follows :
In December, 1622, an indenture or agreement was executed between Thomson and three merchants of Plymouth, Abraham Colmer, Nicholas Sherwill and Leonard Pomerie, in which is set forth Thomson's grant of November 22 of the same year, and the three merchants agree to share in the expense of found- ing and carrying on the new plantation, they to share also in
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its property at the expiration of the partnership in November, 1627, the continuance of the partnership being limited to five years. The original indenture was discovered among the an- cient Winthrop papers in the latter part of the last century, and provides that the colony, " so landed, shall and will use their best endeavor [by the direccon of said David Thomson ] with as much convenience as may be, to find out . some fitt place to settle and Build some houses or buildings for habitacons, on which they are to begin with as muche expedicon as they maye ; to the lymits and precincts of which habitacons or buildings soe intended to be there erected, there shall be allotted of the lands next thereunto adjoining, at or before the end of five years next ensuing the date hereof, the full quantity of six hundred acres of land or neere thereabouts."
In pursuance of this clause of the indenture Thomson and his men (the latter numbering probably not more than ten ) selected the point at Little Harbor as a " fitt place to build their houses for habitacons," the site being selected with excellent judgment by Thomson, it being easily defensible against the savages, hav- ing a good harbor for small vessels and 'a fine spring of water on the harbor shore; and " from the Little Harbor fronting the north side of the promontory a salt water creek [Seavey's creek] runs back so far towards the ocean as almost to convert the enclosed point into an island of about six hundred acres area, which was the precise amount of land required by the indenture to be allotted to the new plantation." Mr. Jenness says that as Thomson "had visited New England in previous years, and was familiar with the coast, it seems probable that the site of his settlement had been determined upon before he left England upon his present enterprise." He named the new plantation, "perhaps from the Indian appellation, 'Pannaway,' a name which seems, however, not to have survived the period of Thomson's own occupation and ownership of the plantation."*
*The name Little Harbor, by which the early historians designate Thomson's settlement, and which was probably adoped by the settlers themselves after Thomson's departure for Massachusetts, was taken from the sheet of water on the southerly side of the Great Island (now Newcastle) and north of the peninsular which Thomson called Pannaway, which con- sists of about five hundred acres of land now wholly in the town of Rye, including Odi-
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"The principal dwelling house erected at Pannaway was built of stone, and of considerable size. Hubbard informs us that ' the chimney and some part of the stone wall was standing in his day' (1680). The house, which a few years after its erection passed into the hands of Capt. John Mason and his associates, was afterwards called by these proprietors ' Piscata- qua House,' and sometimes, in popular parlance, 'Capt. Mason's stone house.' It was never designated, we believe, 'Mason's Hall,' though Hubbard and his followers have stated to the contrary. The term 'Mason's Hall' was sometimes, though rarely, applied to the ' Great House' at Strawberry Bank, erected by the adventurers of Laconia about 1631."
About twenty years ago there was discovered, and is now in the British museum, a document entitled " A Brief Relation of New England," written in 1660 by Samuel Maverick, and drawn up as a report to be laid before King Charles II, after the restoration. Maverick was a churchman and staunch roy- alist, who came to Boston bay in 1624, where he built and for- tified (it is said with Thomson's help) a house at Winnesim- met, near Chelsea, on a site near the river, now included in the grounds of the United States naval hospital. Hackett, in his anniversary address (Portsmouth, 1903-and from which the statements in this paragraph are taken ), refers to this report, the original manuscript of which he had recently inspected, as giv- ing us the only description we have of the building erected by Thomson at Pannaway. Maverick relates that Thomson built "a strange and large house and enclosed it in a large and high palizardo and mounted gunns and being stored extraordinarily with shot and Ammunition was a terror to the Indians, who at that time were insulting over the poor, weake and unfurnished planters of Plymouth. This house and Fort he built on a point of land at the very entrance of the Pascataway river."
orne's Point, which, though not fronting on the body of water now known as Little Harbor, was the site of the first "habitacon " of Thomson's colonists. Odiorne's Point, though it has borne that name for probably more than a century, a family of the name having lived there for a number of generations, did not bear it in the early days of the province. In the Records of New Hampshire, under date of 1704, this peninsular is mentioned as "Rendez- vous Point," and it was called by that name during the Revolutionary war.
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Maverick may be accepted as trustworthy authority. He was, it is known, intimately acquainted with Thomson, and probably before either of them left England. Afterward Thompson went to Massachusetts, on the expiration of his stay at Pannaway, and selected and built a house on an island in Boston harbor that still bears his name. He and Maverick were neighbors, and not long after Thomson's death, which occurred within a year or two after his removal to Massachusetts, Maverick married
OCEAN VIEW, RYE BEACH.
his widow. It is probable that Maverick visited Thomson at the Pannaway plantation ; and certainly he must have had ac- curate descriptions of the buildings there from his wife, who as Mrs. Thomson had passed several years there. He does not say the strange and large house was built of stone, which would have been a strange omission if it had been wholly built of that material, stone being little used in building by the earliest settlers. The foundations may have been carried up higher than usual, perhaps to the full height of the first story ; and this
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might have sufficed to give the building the popular designa- tions of the " stone house."
Again from Mr. Jenness' book : " Pannaway house must have been a structure of considerable size to have afforded accom- modation to Thomson and his new colony ; and as it was put up by ordinary English workmen we may reasonably conjecture that it followed the general plan and presented the general appearance of the dwelling houses of the time of James I, vast numbers of which still remain in good preservation all over the old country. As soon as his buildings were put in habitable condition, Thomson entered actively into the prosecution of his enterprise at the Piscataqua, and he continued engaged in that business at Pannaway until about the expiration of the stipulated term of copartnership with the Plymouth merchants, in Novem- ber, 1627." "Neither was the society of women wholly lack- ing at Pannaway during this period. David Thomson's wife resided with him, and it is reasonable to believe that she came not without female companions. And it was here that John Thomson, the son of David, it is believed first saw the light- the first-born of New Hampshire." " Pannaway plantation be- came at once well known along the New England coast, and was visited within its very first year by many of the most inter- esting and striking characters connected with our early history," one of them being Phinehas Pratt, and another " Mr. Thomas Weston, the faithful friend and agent of the Pilgrim fathers in England before they sailed away for the new world, though at present they entertained towards him sentiments of distrust and unkindliness. His political and religious sentiments did not accord with those of the separatists at New Plymouth. Weston had been cast away while cruising along the New Hampshire coast between Boar's Head and Merrimack river; his shallop was wrecked, and himself afterward assailed and stripped of his clothes by the Indians." He was in a bad plight when he reached Pannaway, where he received every attention. Later, that summer, came Capt. Miles Standish, who had been sent to buy provisions " for the refreshing of the Plymouth colony," and who returned to Plymouth in July " laden with the provisions
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he was in quest of, and bringing along with him our Mr. David Thomson from Pannaway."
In November, 1623, Capt. Christopher Levett arrived at the Isles of Shoals, and in the following spring passed a month at Pannaway. Captain Levett was an officer of the royal navy, high in favor at court and of much distinction in the old coun- try, and his design in coming to New England was to establish at some eligible spot along the coast a city to be named York, after the metropolitan city in England, and to found there, with all pomp and circumstance, a full prelatical establishment all over New England. The fact that the first settlers of the Piscat- aqua were not Puritans, but staunch Churchmen, may have influenced him to come here in preference to any other point. Early in the spring of 1624 he visited Pannaway, where he re- mained a month awaiting the arrival of his men from England ; and while he was at Pannaway, Governor Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando, who had received a commission under the Great Seal appointing him " Lieutenant-General and Governor of New England," and designating Captain Levett as one of his council, arrived with a considerable company, and at Pannaway the ceremony of installing Captain Levett in his high office was performed. In " A Voyage into New England in 1623-'24, by Christopher Levett" (London, 1628), he says: "The first place I set my foot upon in New England was the Isles of Shoulds, being islands in the sea about two leagues from the main. Upon these islands I could see neither one good timber tree nor so much good ground as to make a garden.
The next place I came into was Pannaway, where one Mr. Thomson hath made a plantation. There I stayed about one month, the weather being very unseasonable and very much snow. In these parts I saw much good timber, but the ground it seemed to me not to be good, being very rocky and full of trees and brushwood. There is a great store of fowle of diverse sorts, whereof I fed very plentifully. About two English miles further to the East I found a great River, and a good harbor called Pascataway. But for the ground I can say nothing, but by the relation of the Sagamore, a King of the place, who told
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me there was much good ground up in the river about seven or eight leagues."
Commenting on the bearing Levett's narrative may have on the claim that has been made that Edward and William Hilton came over at the same time as Thomson, in 1623, and settled at Dover Neck, Jenness says: " Certainly, if Hilton had settled a plantation at Dover Neck in 1623, Levett must during his long visit to David Thomson have heard of such a settlement, and would not have been compelled to rely upon an Indian saga- more for a description of the Piscataqua river; nor is it likely that he would have passed over without mention so important a circumstance as the foundation there of a new English colony. It is fair to conclude, in the absence of direct testimony on the subject, that up to the time of Levett's visit to Pannaway in 1624, the Piscataqua above its mouth still remained a solitude unbroken by white settlers.
The notion among historians and antiquaries that the Dover settlement was contemporaneous with that at Pannaway in the spring of 1623 is founded wholly and solely on a statement in Hubbard's history, which is as follows: "Some merchants and other gentlemen in the west of England sent over in that year [1623] one Mr. David Thomson with Mr. Edward Hilton and Mr. William Hilton, who had been fishmongers in London, with some others that came along with them, fur- nished with necessaries for carrying on a plantation there [at the Piscataqua]. Possibly others might be sent after them in the years following 1624 and 1625; some of whom first, in probability, seized on a place called the Little Harbor, on the west side of the Piscataqua river, toward or at the mouth thereof ; the Hiltons in the meanwhile setting up their stages higher up the river toward the northwest, at or about a place since called Dover. But at the place called Little Harbor it is supposed was the first house set up that was built in those parts."
This statement was written more than half a century after the occurrences it assumes to relate, and upon hearsay only, of which it bears internal evidence. Possibly others might be
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sent, some of whom in probability seized upon the Little Har- bor, where it is supposed was the first house set up that was built in those parts. This is not the language of a historian sure of his facts. It is certain that Hubbard was mistaken about William Hilton coming over with Thomson in 1623, for he was living with his family at Plymouth in 1624; and no set- tlement at Dover Neck until several years subsequent to that of Thomson at Pannaway is referred to by any New England writer of the time, or in any contemporaneous paper, letter, affidavit, or document of any kind whatever. The first and only authority for the statement that the Hiltons-or either of them-settled at Dover Neck, at or before the time that Thom- son settled at Little Harbor, is what Hubbard says, and a care- ful reading of his statement shows that he does not say that. What he does say is that "in the meanwhile," somewhere be- tween 1623 and "the years following 1624 and 1625," the Hil- tons set up their stages higher up the river.
The Hilton's Point (Dover Neck) patent was granted to Edward Hilton on March 12, 1629 (1630 according to our present style of reckoning), about seven years after Thomson settled at Pannaway. The patent granted to him recites, as was usual with such instruments, what he claimed to have done at the point previous to that year. It recites " that Edward Hil- ton and his associates hath already at his and their own proper cost and charges transported sundry servants to plant in New England aforesaid at a place called . Hilton's Point, lying some two leagues from the mouth of the river Pascataquack, in New England aforesaid, where they have already built some houses and planted corn, and for that he does further intend by God's divine assistance to transport thither more people and cattle," etc. It will be seen that Hilton made no claim to having set- tled a plantation at Hilton's Point as early as 1623, as he natur- ally would have done had such been the fact; nor is there any mention made in the patent that he had set up fishing stages there, as Belknap and others, following Hubbard, have asserted.
A prudent and judicious man, as his subsequent record shows him to have been, Edward Hilton would hardly have waited
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seven years after founding a settlement before getting a title to the land his plantation stood upon ! The indenture between Thomson and his partners makes no mention of the Hiltons, and gives no hints of any other expedition coming with Thom- son's, though Hubbard says Thomson and the two Hiltons were sent over by the same parties, and came together. Captain Levett, an explorer and investigator, in a month passed at Pannaway in 1624, evidently heard nothing of any settlement higher up the Piscataqua; and not a particle of contempora- neous testimony has ever been discovered tending to show Edward Hilton's residence at the Piscataqua previous to 1628. The claim-based solely on Hubbard's loosely expressed state- ment-that the Hiltons settled at or near Dover in 1623, was never made by Edward Hilton himself.
But positive testimony as to the date of the Hilton's Point settlement is found in a declaration made in 1654 to the Mas- sachusetts general court by John Allen, Nicholas Shapleigh, and Thomas Lake, wherein the Hilton's Point patent was relied upon by the declarants as a protection against certain alleged encroachments made by the Massachusetts authorities. These three declarants, familiar with the whole history of Hilton's Point, and interested to make out Hilton's title and possession as ancient as they could, presented the following as the first article of their case: "That Mr. Edward Hilton was possessed of this land about the year 1628, which is about twenty-six years ago." Edward Hilton was then living in the vicinity of Great Bay, well and intimately known to all the declarants, and the date of his first possession of Hilton's Point must have been within the familiar knowledge of them all. Not only all the probabilities and various circumstances bearing upon the ques- tion of the date of Hilton's settlement, are adverse to the state- ment that it was made in the same year as Thomson's, but the only positive evidence there is in regard to the matter is even more so.
Thomson left Pannaway for the Massachusetts Bay about the time his partnership with the three Plymouth merchants expired in 1627, and died there not long afterward. The
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settlement he founded continued, and in 1630 the plantation, through some means not as yet clearly to be made out, passed into the possession of Capt. John Mason or the Laconia Com- pany, and Capt. Walter Neale, governor of the company, took up his residence in the house built by Thomson, which thereafter became "Captain Mason's stone house."
Such, in brief, is a record of the first settlement of New Hamp- shire and of the town of Rye. After the death of John Mason, in 1635, an active, grasping, and not over-scrupulous Puritan element from the Massachusetts Bay secured control of affairs, and in 1641 annexed all the New Hampshire settlements to Massachusetts, the latter claiming nearly all of New Hampshire to be within the limits of its charter. But in 1679, Puritan ascendency in England having ceased with the restoration, a royal commission established a separate government over the province of New Hampshire, and in 1692 another royal com- mission established a new government for the province, which continued until overthrown by the war for the independence of the colonies.
With all the intrigues, plots, wrongs and oppressions of those early days, a History of Rye is not concerned ; but the reader of New Hampshire history should bear in mind that the state was not founded by the Puritans, nor by John Mason, or the Company of Laconia, of which he was a member. A perma- nent settlement had already taken root on its soil before the bark Warwick first appeared in the waters of the Piscataqua, and that settlement was in what is now the town of Rye.
HISTORY.
Hubbard says that at "the Little Harbor" it is supposed was the first house set up that was ever built in those parts. The chimney and some parts of the stone wall are standing at this day (1680), and certainly was it which was called, then or soon after, Mason Hall, because to it was annexed three or four thousand acres of land, with intention to erect a manor or lordship there, according to the custom of England; for by
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consent of the rest of the undertakers, in some after divisions, that parcel of land fell to his share, and it is mentioned as his property in his last will and testament, by the name of Mason Hall. By the " first house" subsequent writers have supposed that the first habitation was intended, and that a large mansion was built by Thomson on his landing, the same that was sub- sequently occupied by Neal in 1630, and known as Mason ยท Hall. Hubbard gives countenance to this idea so far as to say that the agents of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain Mason with the rest, had by their order built a house and done some- thing also about salt works some time before the year 1630.
Hubbard infers the agency of Gorges and Mason from the mention of a house and salt works as already on the place, in the indenture cited of 3d November, 1631. There seems to be some evidence that the agents of the Company of Laconia occu- pied a house at Piscataqua that had been built before they came over. In a deposition of William Seavey, aged about seventy- five years, in 1676, he said he came over to the Isles of Shoals upon a fishing account, about a year before Neal left the coun- try (in 1633), and he was credibly informed that Neal, when he came over in 1630, lived in a house in Little Harbor of Piscataqua, which by common report was built by some mer- chants, etc., of Plymouth, England. Also in a recital made by the council of New Hampshire in 1681, consisting of Richard Waldron, president, and others who were opposed to Mason's claim, they say that " the vast expanse of estate " as claimed to have been made by John Mason in the settlement of New Hampshire, "is mostly if not merely a pretense." A house was hired in this province, but the disbursements laid out were on the other side of the river-Province of Meyn-and for carry- ing on an Indian trade in Laconia, in all which his grandfather was but a partner; however he would appear amongst us as sole proprietor ;- that Thomson during his three years' resi- dence at Little Harbor, by assistance of his partners, built a large house there, and left it. But that Thomson or any one after him built a house there, known as " Mason Hall," is ex- tremely improbable. Hubbard evidently got his notion of
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" Mason Hall" from Mason's will, made shortly before his death, in which he designates his whole grant of New Hampshire as "my County of New Hampshire or Mason Hall, " or in another place " my County of New Hampshire or Manor of Mason Hall." Mason wrote to Gibbons in 1634: " I have disbursed a great deal of money in the Plantation and never received one penny, but hope if there were a discovery of the Lakes that I should in some reasonable time be reimbursed again."
In a statement of Robert Mason's claim in 1674-'75, reference is made to John Mason's various franchises, afterwards enlarged and called "New Hampshire." Were it not for the accidental circumstances of the prosecution of this claim, thus bringing forward a name used in John Mason's Patent, it is not improb- able that New Hampshire would have rejoiced to-day in the old, euphonious Indian name of "Piscataqua." By the appoint- ment of a commission for the government of the territory as a royal province in 1679, the name of New Hampshire became fixed upon the place.
II. The Parish of Rye.
For a century after the first settlement of white men within its borders-that of David Thomson's party, at Pannaway,- Rye has no history as a town, because as such it did not exist. The settlement at Pannaway has always been treated by histo- rians as the first settlement of Portsmouth, as indeed it was, the peninsular, and the remainder of Rye as well, having been a part of Portsmouth until toward the end of the seventeenth cen- tury ; but certainly it was no less the first settlement of Rye,. for the site of that settlement-the Pannaway of Thomson and the Little Harbor of John Mason-is now in Rye and not in Portsmouth.
Settlements were made on territory now in this town as early as 1635 .* It was called Sandy Beach for some years, and was. connected with Portsmouth until the incorporation of Newcas- tle, May 30, 1693, and was thenceforth a part of the last named town until separated by an act passed April 30, 1726, and, in connection with portions of Portsmouth and Hampton incorpo-
* This statement ignores the unquestionable fact that the settlement of 1623 was "made on territory now in this town," and evidently refers only to settlements made outside the boun- daries of the Pannaway, or Little Harbor plantation. As to just when, where, and by whom such settlements were made the records give us no aid in determining. The town records of Rye do not, of course, antedate its being set off from Newcastle as a separate parish ; and in 1652 the town records of Portsmouth (of which Newcastle and Rye were then a part) were destroyed by the selectmen of the town-as audacious and indefensible a piece of official rascality as ever was perpetrated. There is reason for believing that one of Rye's early set. tlers was Henry Jocelyn, son of Sir Thomas Jocelyn, who came over in Capt. Walter Neal's party in 1631, and became governor of Mason's plantation after Neal's departure. By 1636 he had removed to Saco; he became bankrupt in 1666, and surrendered all his property to pay his debts. About 1673 his fort was attacked by Indians and after a time surrendered, and he then went to Pemaquid, Me., where he was living in 1682. He died previous to May 10, 1683, leaving a good memory. This Henry Jocelyn was probably the man who located some- time prior to 1635, at what was known as " Josling's Neck " up to 1700, later called " Locke's. Neck," and now "Straw's Point."
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