USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Portsmouth > Portsmouth records : a transcript of the first thirty-five pages of the earliest town book, Portsmouth, New Hampshire > Part 4
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P. 15, 1. 5. Thomas Williams in June, 1649, released the island to Richard King. Page 31. I am satisfied that by Clampering Island is meant what is now known as Leach's Island. I have looked in vain for Clampering, as a geographical, or family name. It may have been the name of a locality in England.
Ib., l. 14. See also page 31 At the edge is a memorandum, made some years later by Stileman (to judge from the hand- writing) as follows: " * * of her husband e right of dower in fo II Com'iser." Consult Rockingham County History (1884), Article RYE, p. 456.
Ib., 1. 22. The word " twentie " is overwritten ; it may be " sixtie."
Ib., 1. 27. The mills were on the northeast side of Sagamore creek. II MS. C. R., 50. On the 22. 1. 1649, Sampson Lane granted to Ambrose Lane, among other property, “ one saw mill now in building at Sagamores creeke in Pascataq . river." I Suffolk Deeds, 137. The transaction is minuted at Exeter. A Strawberry Bank petition of May, 1653, com- plains that while other towns had saw mills, " there is none in this Towne, but only one which was never perfected nor like to bee." I Pr. P., 208.
The charter of Newcastle (1693) speaks of a point of land on the south side of Saggamore's creek, called " Sampson's Point." May not the name have been derived from Sampson Lane, one of Mason's stewards, who owned land in that neigh- borhood, and probably lived there ?
P. 16, 7. 20. The northwest corner of Great Island, called "Musketo Hall," appears to have had several owners. Francis Matthews had a lease of it in 1637. I Pr. P., 98; 11 MS. C. R., 8. The town 17 May, 1656, granted to Mr. Richard Tucker the " neck of land on great Illand called Mosketto Hall . . . which was formerly the land of John Wottons and so reported
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to be." Page 37. Thomasine, widow of Francis Matthews, " entered her caution " for it, 23 July, 1653, as bought by her husband from John Hurde, of Sturgeon Creek. George Wal- ton also claimed to own it, by sale from Hurde, and entered a similar caution 25 July, 1653.
The old doctor's field belonged to Renald Fernald. Tradi- tion says that he resigned the post of surgeon in the British navy, to come over with Mason's company.
P. 16,1. 21. There is reason to believe that page one origi- nally began with this entry of April 5, 1652.
P. 17, l. 17. This is a second extract from the record of the town meeting held 15 August, 1646, the first, on page 15, reciting a like grant of four acres each of fresh and salt marsh to Renald Fernald.
All that is now left of the " great pond," on the south side of the Great House, is what in later days has borne the name of Puddle Dock. There was a time doubtless when the waters of the South Mill Pond and Puddle Dock united at high tide. That there was a ford somewhere across this outlet appears from an entry at Exeter, 2 October, 1644. It is " Ordered that the inhabitants of Strawberry Banke shall make a sufficient ffoote Bridge at the wading place beyond the great house be- fore the last of May next upon payne of 5 £." I MS. C. R., 26.
In a deed by John Pickering, of house and land at Picker- ing's Neck (a part of this town grant) to his daughter Mary, wife of John Plaisted, 23 January, 1691, mention is made of running a fence "toward ye creek going in by ye great house to ye burying place & so eastward to ye water side." IV MS. C. R., 33.
P. 18. The petition of 20 October, 1651, will be found printed in I Pr. P., 192. Consult also pages 205 and 207.
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Ib., l. 27. The "Randavow" was what is now Odiorne's Point. The earliest mention I find of a ferry is late in 1642, or early in 1643, in the MS. Court Records, at Exeter, vol. I, p. 14 : " Henry Sherborne ordered by the court to keepe a fferry & to have for his paynes from the great house to the great Island 2d, And to the prouince 12d. To Rowes 2d to Strawberry banck 6d for one man And if there come 2 or more to have 4d a pts to Strawberry Banck 8d a pts to the Province & 2d a pts for all the other fferrys And tis further ordered that he shall keepe an ordinary qt. 8d meale And this order to continue till the general Court take further order."
"To Rowes " may refer to the house of Nicholas Row, one of the grantors of the glebe, 1640.
"Sherborn's Poynt," I should say, was the land lying on the north side of Sagamore creek, where the old Wentworth mansion stands.
On the south side of the creek was Sanders' Point, the oldest English name on the Pascataqua. It was the site of a bridge from Great Island as early as 1663 (VIII N. H. Hist. Soc., 133) which a great storm broke in the middle 22 February, 1683-4. I Pr. P., 531.
A letter from Mason and others, dated London, 5 December, 1632, to their factor Ambrose · Gibbins, at Newichewannock, says, " You desire to settle yourself upon Sanders' Point. The adventurers are willing to pleasure you, etc" I Pr. P., 69. John Elwyn, a descendant of Gibbins, says that Gibbon (as he calls him) "lived till he went Upstream in Captain John Mason's Garrison house at the mouth of Witch creek," another name for Sagamore. Gibbins signed the glebe grant at Straw- berry Bank in 1640, and later was a selectman of Dover. Elwyn, who knew every foot of ground in the neighborhood, and its every association, gives us reason to believe that his ancestor was laid to rest at this spot, which is not far from where the first settler landed. "There is a good many graves since a few rods from our Garrison houses cellar, will I guess once a
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little churchyard, will I half guess too that we brought Gibbon down and buried him here, a Saunder's Point the mouth of the creek." Some Piscataway Things And A Good Deal Else, p. 47.
The present bridge from The Wentworth crosses to Sanders' Point. The name is preserved there as late as 1757. IX Pr. P., 567.
P. 20, 1. 7. "Strawberry Banke creek," afterwards Islington creek, and now the North Mill Pond, is sometimes called "The Fresh Marsh creek." Clement Campion owned eight acres, on " Campion's Neck," which comprised what stretches from the North burying-ground to Raynes' ship-yard. Richard Sew- ard's grant lay upon "Christian Shore." Campion bought a house of Francis Raines, that stood probably not far from what is now the corner of Green and Market streets. See page 30.
P. 21, 1. 3. Whoever applies himself to a study of the Ports- mouth records will surely find in the brief entry that recites their mutilation, a source of almost never-ending perplexity. George Walton, whose name often recurs, kept an ordinary at the Great Island, where he was licensed to draw wine. Under his roof, on the night of the 13th January, 1652 (1653, N. S.), the select- men met and proceeded to examine the old town-book. They were Bryan Pendleton, Henry Sherburne, Renald Fernald, John Pickering and James Johnson, men of force and charac- ter, and all of them prominent in our early annals. So much of the contents as did not meet their approval they " crossed out," and the little they deemed worth saving they directed should be recorded in a book to be begun anew (the "first book" we now have) and to be confirmed by themselves.
This extraordinary performance appears not even to have had a vote of the inhabitants to justify it. On the contrary, the fathers of the town of their own arbitrary notion deliberately set themselves at the work of spoliation, leaving behind them as a memorial of the deed two or three lines that not so much
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as hint at a pretext for their conduct, or in the faintest way re- veal the purpose that inspired it. Tampering with a public record is treated as a criminal offence at the present day, but here the open and avowed manner of its perpetration shows that it must have been regarded as a mere incident of official duty. A procedure so strange to our eyes cannot fail to arrest and fix attention, as we interest ourselves in the story of the first settlement of the Pascataqua region; and once enquired into, the mystery that envelopes it but stimulates a desire to fathom its meaning.
Doubtless much that is now apparently past finding out will yield some day to further study, aided, as it surely will be, by the papers that are coming to light both here and in Eng- land, as a reward of the faithful labors of the antiquarian. Whatever progress we may make to-day, we cannot hope to reach the true character of this transaction, unless we take into account and rightly estimate the relations subsisting between our town authorities and the Massachusetts, who since 1642 had held sway over the settlements at the Pascataqua.
The wording of the entry leaves it an open question whether the selectmen actually made way with the old town-book itself, or kept it, perhaps in a mutilated condition, as a part of the town records. This uncertainty is enhanced by the fact that there seems to be found no trace whatever of the book at the present time. I am disposed, upon the whole, to doubt whether its disappearance is necessarily to be assigned to this memorable act of the 13th January, 1652. In saying this I do not overlook the fact that Dr. Belknap speaks of the book as "destroyed." His statement has been uniformly fol- lowed, and yet he cites no authority other than the entry itself that is under consideration.
The manuscript history by the Rev. Jabez Fitch, of which Belknap had the use, now in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, is silent on this point. A writer to whose opinion great deference is due, is the late John Elwyn, of
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Portsmouth, a man without a superior in his knowledge of what pertained to our early history. Speaking of his ancestor, Henry Sherburne (one of the selectmen, as we have seen), Elwyn styles him, "A church warden of our little English chapel the Bay broke up, All there is left of our Fasti earlier than the Bay puritans got ours burned and the Saco ones both, this is the instrument of Forty." (Some Piscataqua Things and a Good Deal Else, 1870, p. 48.) The Saco records, it may be added, are lost prior to 1653, the date when the Massachusetts took possession. Curiously enough Bryan Pendleton removed in 1665 from Portsmouth to Saco, where the selectmen in 1672 were ordered to procure a town-book, and Pendleton was re- quested to transcribe the records into it. Says Edward P. Burnham, who is familiar with the early history of that locality: "The Saco records prior to 1653 were probably destroyed. It is too late to ascertain what discretion Pendleton exer- cised as to what was unfit and what was suitable to be tran- scribed, or what became of the former record books." Letter of 21 August, 1886.
A reason for hesitating to believe that the selectmen de- stroyed the book itself is this : A new book was begun in De- cember, 1664. Into it was copied everything that the town- book contained, and thereafter all entries made in the town-book were carefully copied into the "new book," the two being kept side by side. The record thus reads :
" At a meeting of the selectmen the 27th of December 1664 it was agreed upon by a joynt consent as followeth : That the Toune Booke shall be carefully copied out into a new Booke, which coppie of the original being compared by the selectmen now in being shall be as authentick as the originall and that all the town acts which are to be recorded for the future shall be from yeer to yeer transcribed into the sayd Booke the ground of which agreement is to prevent all confusions which for the future may arise through any casualtie by fire water or otherwise that may happen to the said originall Booke & being
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compared by the selectmen for the time being shall be as au- thentick as the originale booke ; as is aforesaid." Rec. 92.
At intervals thereafter the selectmen certify over their signa- tures that they have correctly transcribed the entries " from this Booke into the new Booke." The last certificate, at the close of the first book, is as follows : "Thus farr transcribed into ye new book to ye last of March 1694 and compared ac- cording to towne order Wm Vaughan, John Pickering, Tobias Langdon, Geo. Snell, Selectmen."
Now upon turning to page 121, we read under date of 22 April, 1667, the following entry, in the well known hand of Elias Stileman, town clerk and one of the selectmen : " The present selectmen motioning to have the town boo . . in their hands for the better management of the town affa . . which the Towne grants viz the two ould bookes."
Of course, the reader does well to be on his guard lest the the brevity of the entries mislead him. It seems to me, how- ever, that the expression "the two ould bookes" points to the ex- istence of another old town-book than that which has come down to us, and which, as we have just seen, became an old town- book in 1664, when by order of the selectmen a new book was opened. Not unlikely is it that the original book was left in existence, shorn of authenticity, at least in regard to what had been crossed out. Besides it happens that the signatures to the entry of 13th January, 1652, are not originals but copies, in the handwriting of Renald Fernald. This fact indicates that the five selectmen may have signed their names to an en- try in the old, original book, so that what we have is only the town clerk's version of that entry. If this be so, it strengthens the belief that the book itself did not perish.
Again, among the theories that have presented themselves is this, and it is not wholly lacking in plausibility. There were certain entries in the town-book, which the party in control wished to get rid of. To effect their purpose, the authorities cut out the leaves on which the entries had been written ; and
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wherever a leaf chanced to contain another entry, to which they had no objection, the town clerk saved it by copying it into the present first book. This hypothesis would account for the meagre number of items transcribed, and yet leave the record, thus curtailed, to stand as theretofore. It is an objec- tion well nigh fatal, however, that the extract from page 92 - just given speaks of "the town book," as if there were but one.
The above entry, I ought to explain, is the sole reference I have come across lending probability to the suggestion that crossing out did not go to the extent of destroying the book itself. The enquiry is perhaps after all rather curious than important; for the main fact remains that the public record was despoiled, and its sanctity violated. Even if we come to believe that the book was kept, with the obnoxious portions crossed out in ink only, this would not materially change our estimate of the character of the proceeding, or mitigate the censure to be visited upon so high-handed a transaction. A knowledge of the precise truth might modify, it is likely, our views of the purpose with which the act was committed. More- over the discovery would serve to keep alive a spark of hope that by some miracle of fortune the book itself may yet be brought to light.
There is indeed a mere possibility that this town-book was still in existence in the early part of the last century. We find from an entry of 25 March, 1725, that Mr. William Vaughan was thought to have in his possession a book. or books of the town, and the selectmen were empowered to demand them of him, or of any person suspected ; and if need be to employ attorneys to recover them. There appears to be no further mention of the subject. It is to be explained that carrying off the record books and hiding them was a trick not unknown in some of the stormy times of the Province. John Pickering is a prominent figure in this kind of work ; and later Major Wil- liam Vaughan tries his hand at it. In 1699 the latter hid certain
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books, probably the court records of 1682-1684, and when he delivered them up in June, 1702, to Mr. Penhallow, it was discovered that twenty-four leaves, covering the judgments in Mason's suits, had been cut out. II Pr. P., 303; III Ib., 298.
But it is time to enquire what motive governed the select- men-what was it that they had determined to suppress in the record. Here, it must be confessed, we straightway enter a region of speculation. Of one thing, however, we may be certain, that the act accorded with the views of the Massa- chusetts, if not done at their actual dictation. And this leads us to glance at the relation that had subsisted between Straw- berry Banke and the Bay colony, to divine if we may how it could have served the latter's purpose to have our earlier records con- signed to oblivion.
It is not easy to recite how it was brought about that the Pas- cataqua settlements in 1642 passed under the control of their more powerful neighbors, for the devious paths pursued by the Bay authorities in claiming jurisdiction here under their patent, are every now and then lost in obscurity. We have no records of our own to recur to, and the Massachusetts people took good care that at every turn events should be represented in a light most favorable to their interests. Besides, with slight excep- tion Massachusetts has written the history.
Was the movement to come under the Massachusetts govern- ment a spontaneous one, or was it an encroachment, artfully planned and as artfully carried out ? So far as I can discover, after the most thorough examination that I have been able to make, not a petition, or other document, is now accessible that bears a list of names, or sets forth reasons, from which we may de- termine how large a proportion of the planters favored the union, or what was the real sentiment that prevailed here. We are obliged to depend almost exclusively upon brief records of Mas- sachusetts origin. We may indeed catch a glimpse of Hugh Peters, after his visit to the Pascataqua region, exclaiming with true missionary fervor, in a report to Winthrop, that the people
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are "ripe for our Government. They grone for government and Gospel all over that side of the country Alas poore bleed- ing soules." (vI. Mass. Hist. Col., 4th Series, 108.) But Win- throp's own account of " those of the lower part of Pascataqua" in 1642, reckons above forty of them who, having been "pro- fessed enemies to the way of our churches," became con- verted by the teaching of the Rev. James Parker, of Weymouth, " a godly man," who labored with them, most of whom, how- ever, fell back in time, embracing this present world. (II Vol. 93.) In 1643 the inhabitants sent Mr. Parker as their deputy to the General Court at Boston, humbly saying, " in the state we now stand we know not whether any of us may be admitted to a Deputy." I Pr. P., 167.
The Reverend Jabez Fitch was pastor of the North Church from 1724 (when he came from Ipswich) until his death in 1746. His historical manuscript above referred to consists of about threescore small leaves closely written. He cites few au- thorities. A fair sample of his style is afforded by the follow- ing extract, which embraces all he has to remark upon this par- ticular point:
"These combinations continued not long ; for the number of the People increasing and enormities prevailing to such a degree that they could not be suppressed by so feeble a gov- ernment, and the Inhabitants being uncapable to defend them- selves in case of a rupture with the Indians about the year 1642 they petitioned the Massachusetts to take them under their Jurisdiction & Protection by whom they were kindly received and admitted to the same privileges with themselves. Repre- sentatives were sent from hence to their General Court and Major Waldron of Dover was frequently chosen speaker of the House of Deputies. Mr. Thomas Wiggin Proprietor of Swampscot was then chosen one of the Magistrates. Courts of judicature were erected in Dover and Portsmouth. But Exeter was annexed to the County of Northfolk which was then a County of the Massachusetts consisting of the towns on
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Merrimack River and Hampton belonged to the said County, who had put themselves under the Massachusetts from the be- ginning of their settlement
" It was a very favorable Providence which then brought this People under the Government of the Massachusetts, for by this means Prophaneness & Immorality were discounte- nanced, and a Learned Ministry encouraged to settle with them, without which they would have been as ignorant and heathen- ish as some other parts of the Kings Dominions in America."
Felt characterizes the change as " agreeable to those who were for the revolution in the mother country, and offensive to such as were opposed to it." I Eccl. Hist., 452.
The late John Scribner Jenness has traced with a vigorous hand the progress of the Massachusetts towards an assumption of full control over the Pascataqua, in a contribution to the early history of his native state, entitled The Piscataqua Patents (Portsmouth, Privately Printed, 1878). " The planters on the upper Piscataqua," he concludes, " were torn and par- alysed by civil and religious disensions, and those on the lower plantation, who since Mason's death had laid claim to the ownership of the lands on which they had resided, though without any legal title, and now lived in terror of Mason's heir, even they, though antipodal in every sentiment to the Bay puri- tans, were inclined to seek protection for their property from the strong arm of the Massachusetts." Page 47.
This view, from a writer well qualified to treat of the subject, may perhaps be accepted as upon the whole just and rea- sonable. How far a well grounded fear of dispossession at the hands of the heir of Mason may have operated, it is diffi- cult if not impossible to discover. Perhaps it tended in indi- vidual cases to make easier an acquiescence in the plan of aggrandizement; but a doubt yet lingers over the origin of the movement, whether it began with the planters themselves ; and if so, how large a number favored it. Herein, it seems to me, lies the significance of the silence of the Massachusetts records. 8н
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According to Belknap, " the affair was more than a year in agitation;" and it seems that the planters were tenacious of their privileges, the union being effected only upon a conces- sion that the Bay people must have found it hard to allow. I refer to an order that dispensed with church membership as a condition precedent to the right of voting. In 1631 the Bay colony had restricted the franchise to such only as were church members; and says Lechford in 1640, three parts of the people of the country remain out of the church. (Plaine Dealing, 73.) As late as 1676 five-sixths of the men in the colony were non- voters because not church members. I Mem. Hist. Boston, 156.
Of the exception made in favor of the Pascataqua settlers, Felt says ingenuously : "Could the Bay authorities have had the submission of Piscataqua without such liberty, they would undoubtedly have preferred it, rather than granted this indul- gence, which tended to weaken its opposite and continued rule for their previous jurisdiction." I Eccl. Hist. 502.
One ground for deploring the loss of our earliest records is, that it deprives us of an opportunity of tracing the origin and growth of the town meeting. It would be highly interesting to know when the first meeting was held, how it was conducted, and particularly what proportion of the inhabitants at the pe- riod of union with the Massachusetts had exercised the right of freemen. We are told by Belknap that Francis Williams, sent over by the adventurers, was continued as Governor "by annual suffrage." (Vol. I., p. 47.) Williams signs the grant of the glebe in 1640, as "Governor," and it is perhaps fairly inferential that he had held the office continuously, but I fail to discover upon what evidence Dr. Belknap bases his state- ment that there was an annual election.
Cranfield, writing in 1682, speaks of the old record book of the Province, from which it appeared that in Captain John Mason's life time the inhabitants entered into a combination to govern themselves by His Majesty's laws as well as they could. "A copy of which I have herewith sent, " he adds (Jenn. Doc.,
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127), but what he sends turns out to be a copy from the orig- inal of the Dover combination of 1640, with all the signatures. (Ib., 36.) Hubbard, in 1680, speaks of this instrument as " left upon record." If Cranfield had before him the record of com- binations bearing an earlier date than 1640 (and he could not have been ignorant of the fact that Mason died about Novem- ber, 1635,) it is a pity that he did not transmit a copy that would have borne out his statement. He is to be understood as giving the Lords of the Committee information in the line of contention made by the opponents of the Mason claim. A Letter from the Council of New Hampshire to the King, 31 May, 1681, indicates the existence at that date at Portsmouth of the Strawberry Bank Combination : "We were possessed of the Soyle long before the Massachusetts medled with us. In- deed we at length desired them to govern us, when experience had taught as yt by our Combinations where into we entered (the originals of which signed by the Inhabitants are yet ex- tant) to prevent the confusion of Anarchy we could not govern ourselves " (Ib., 100.) It may be added that George Burdett, in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 29 November, 1638, urges that measures be taken to settle His Majesty's Government in the Pascataqua, "there yet being none but com- binacons ; because ye severall patents upon ye river are thought to comprize no commission of jurisdiction." (1b., 32.) In the first volume of the records at Exeter, of the courts held at Dover and Portsmouth, page 14, is an entry "John Pickering inioyned to deliver the old combination at Strawberry banck the next Court." The next court was holden at Dover 5. 5 mo., 1643.
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