USA > New Hampshire > Sketches of the history of New-Hampshire, from its settlement in 1623, to 1833: comprising notices of the memorable events and interesting incidents of a period of two hundred and ten years > Part 2
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Liable to be overturned by every fluctuation of popular feel- ing, these little Republics subsisted but a short time. The leading men felt the need of a more stable and energetic gov- ernment ; but saw no prospect of attaining it but by a connec-
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PERIOD I .- 1623-1641.
1641.]
tion with the large and flourishing Colony of Massachusetts .-- They made overtures for this purpose which were favorably entertained. Gladly availing herself of an opportunity to en- large her jurisdiction, Massachusetts in 1641 received the Pas- cataqua plantations into union on terms extremely advantageous to the latter. Probably at this time their whole population did not much exceed 1000 souls. By the terms of union they ac- quired the right of representation in the General Court at Bos- ton ; the privilege of having Courts of Justice erected within their own limits; freedom from all taxes except for their own exclusive benefit ; and exemption from the operation of the Massachusetts Test Act, by which exemption their freemen were allowed to vote in town meeting and their Representatives to sit in the General Court, though not church members. The union thus peaceably and happily formed, long subsisted ic the satisfaction and benefit of both parties.
During the occurrence of the events already related, the tide of emigration from the old world poured into other parts of New-England a continued stream of' population. A consider- able company arrived at Salem in 1628; many others soon followed and founded Charlestown in 1629, and Boston in 1630 -the peninsular form of these places being finely adapted both for trade and defence. In 1635, emigrants from Massachusetts, allured by the fertile intervals on Connecticut river, crossed the wilderness, driving before them the cows on whose milk they depended in part for subsistence, and planted themselves at Hartford and the vicinity. Plantations were soon made at Providence and New-Haven. The current of population dif- fused itself rapidly on the eastern shore of Massachusetts, the northern shore of Long Island Sound, up the Connecticut riv- er to Springfield and Northampton, and down the coast of Maine from Kittery to Wiscasset. In 1640, about 20,000 per- sons, distributed into 4000 families, had come here from Eng- land in the course of twenty years, in 198 ships, of which only one was lost at sea. From this original stock have descended most of the present inhabitants of New-England, together with vast numbers in New-York, Ohio, and other States, amounting perhaps in the whole to 4,000,000 souls! An immense increase for two centuries. The tide of New-England population has already crossed the Mississippi, and in another century will roll westward over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific! We are reminded of the declaration of Moses to Israel : " Thy fa- thers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons, and lo, the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of Heaven for multitude,"
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PERIOD II.
FROM THE UNION WITH MASSACHUSETTS IN 1641, TO THE SEP- ARATION AND ERECTION OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE INTO A DISTINCT . PROVINCE IN 1679 ; INCLUDING THE EVENTS OF THE FIRST GENERAL INDIAN WAR, CALLED PHILIP'S WAR.
No sooner had Massachusetts spread the wing of her juris- diction over the Pascataqua settlements as New-Hampshire was then called, than she made provision for the due admin- istration of justice in her new acquisitions. Exeter and Hampton were annexed to the county of Essex, while Ports- mouth and Dover retained distinct jurisdictions. Francis Williams, Thomas Warnerton, and Ambrose Gibbons were appointed magistrates for Portsmouth, and Edward Hilton, Thomas Wiggin, and William Waldron, for Dover. These were the influential men of the day. This arrangement was however temporary ; two years afterwards these four towns, whose ancient limits were much more extensive than the pres- ent, together with Salisbury and Haverhill in Massachusetts, were made a distinct county by the name of Norfolk. Each town had an Inferior Court of three persons, for the trial of causes not exceeding twenty shillings, and Portsmouth and Dover had what was called a Court of Associates, whose ju- risdiction extended to causes where the matter in dispute did not exceed twenty pounds, from whose decisions lay an appeal to the County Court. The laws of Massachusetts now operated in New-Hampshire, and the history of the two plantations during the period embraced in this chapter is blended together. Against immorality of every kind the laws were severe: trea- son, murder, perjury, blasphemy, idolatry, adultery, rape, un- natural lusts, man-stealing, and rebellion against parents, were made capital crimes. The Sabbath was scrupulously guarded from violation, and even the expenses and modes of dress were regulated by legal enactments.
Apprehensive of some molestation under the new order of things, the Rev. Mr. Wheelwright of Exeter, whose sentence of banishment from Massachusetts was still in force, thought proper to retire beyond the jurisdiction of the authorities of that Province, to Wells in Maine. He was followed by sev-
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PERIOD 11 .- 1641-1679.
1644.]
eral members of his church, who formed a new church in that place. Being a man of talent and unblemished character, he was soon permitted to return and exercise his ministry at Hampton. Some time afterwards he went to England, and found a kind reception from the Lord Protector Cromwell, who remembered him as an old college acquaintance. He re- turned to New-England, exercised his ministry in Massachu- setts, and lived to an advanced age.
Serious apprehensions were excited in 1642, by reports of a plot being formed by the Indians to exterminate the English by going to their houses on pretence of trade, and killing them by surprise. An armed party, sent by the government to dis- arm Passaconaway, who then resided for a time near Haver- hill, Mass. failed to reach his weekwam on account of a great rain, but made one of his sons a prisoner. As they were conducting him towards Boston, he attempted an escape, when one of the party rashly made a shot at him and narrowly missed him. It being soon discovered that the reports of the plot had but a slender foundation, an apology was made to the father for the act of violence committed on the son, which the old Chief accepted ; and not long after, as a pledge of his ami- cable intentions, voluntarily delivered up his guns. However groundless might have been the alarm, it had the effect the next year of inducing the four Colonies of Massachusetts, Con- necticut, New-Haven, and Plymouth, to form a league for mutual defence in case of attack, either by Indians or foreign enemies. As a constituent part of Massachusetts, the New- Hampshire towns were of course included in the union. It subsisted more than forty years, rendered the Colonies for- midable to the Indians, and contributed essentially to their preservation.
Of early New-England simplicity, we have an amusing in- stance in the mode of electing some of the public officers. By an order of the Massachusetts General Court, corn and beans were to be used in voting for Counsellors, the corn to manifest elec- tions, the beans the contrary. On putting in more than one kernel of corn or one bean for the choice or refusal of a can- didate, the law imposed a heavy penalty.
In 1644 occurred an important change in the form of the government. Hitherto the Magistrates and Representatives who together constituted the General Court, had holden their sessions in the same apartment and acted as one body. From this time, the Magistrates met in a separate apartment, consti- tuting an Upper House : and bills were sent from one House to the other for mutual concurrence in a parliamentary way.
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HISTORY OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE.
[1647.
In a few years after Mason's widow had left the New-Hamp- shire colonists to shift for themselves, her principal agents and stewards had taken their leave of the Pascataqua, and her goods and effects were scattered to the four winds. Thomas Warnerton, who had for some time resided at the Great House on Strawberry Bank, the name by which Portsmouth was distinguished for thirty years from its settlement, went to No- va Scotia with a quantity of goods and military stores, formerly the property of Mason, which he sold to the French ; and was afterwards slain in that country in a rencontre with the inhab- itants. The next year Norton, the chief proprietary agent, drove an hundred head of cattle to Boston, where he sold them at twenty pounds sterling a head. They were of the Danish breed, the first cattle brought into the State having been imported from Denmark.
Massachusetts began in 1647, that admirable system of com- mon school education which has since spread so extensively in the United States. A law was passed requiring a school to be kept in each town of fifty families, in which all the chil- dren might learn reading and writing. This provided the means of education for the poor as well as the rich, and brought them almost to every man's door. As the popula- tion increased in the several towns, they were afterwards divi- ded into sections or districts. To this ancient law, so evincive of the wisdom of our Fathers, we may clearly trace the origin of the present system of popular Education in the State.
About the same period was commenced that course of be- nevolent effort to evangelize and civilize the Indian tribes, which reflects so much lustre on many of the Fathers of New- England. Mayhew, Eliot, and other good men, visited many of the Indian villages in Massachusetts and Plymouth Colo- nies, making long journeys on foot through the pathless wil- derness, lodging in their smoky weekwams, and preaching to them the plainest and simplest doctrines of the gospel. At first the Indians asked many strange questions, like these :- Why sea water is salt and river water fresh ? Whether Christ understood prayers in the Indian language ? How the English came to differ so much from the Indians, if both sprang from one Father ? But these good men persevered in their efforts, and were successful. In the course of twenty years, numer- ous societies of Christian or praying Indians were formed in Massachusetts, many of whose members exhibited good evi- dence of intelligent Christian piety. For the New-Hamp- shire Indians, we regret to say, little of the kind was done. Mr. Eliot however visited Pawtucket now and then, a noted fishing
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PERIOD 11 .- 1641-1679.
1647.]
station in the vicinity of Lowell, and preached to the Indians in that quarter. The celebrated Passaconaway was one of his auditors, and shewed himself friendly to the preacher and somewhat inclined to the Christian doctrine. He urged him to visit thein more frequently, remarking that the preacher's com- ing once a year did them but little good, "because they had soon forgotten what lie taught, it being so seldom and so long between the times," also that he had many subjects " who would not believe him, that praying to God was so good," who might be convinced by the preaching itself. Some of the Christian societies formed among the Indians of Massachu- setts subsisted half a century, till death cut off most of the members, and the extension of the English settlements drove the survivors into the wilderness. With immense labor, Mr. Eliot, deservedly called the Apostle of the Indians, translated the whole Bible into their language.
Bright as the character of the founders of New-England shines, in the traits just exhibited, truth requires the admission that it was not free from some serious defects. Their zeal was sometimes directed to objects trifling, and even puerile, as in their violent opposition to the use of wigs, and the wearing of long hair by men. But their most glaring error was a dis- position to coerce those of a religious persuasion different from their own. We read the accounts of their arbitrary pro- ceedings against Baptists and Quakers, with grief and won- der that men, but just escaped from the gripe of persecution, could find it in their hearts to inflict on others the very evils under which themselves had so severely smarted! The trait is incapable of vindication : the only apology that can be of- fered is the old one, that it was the fault of the age in general, and that the principles of religious liberty were at that time imperfectly understood. But after all just abatements, their character certainly presents many excellent points. The love of civil liberty glowed in their bosoms. Of slavery they had a deep abliorrence, of which we have an instance in the case of one Williams of Portsmouthi, who having bought a slave whom a shipmaster had kidnapped and brought away from Africa, was ordered to give him up that he might be sent back to his own country. Their piety was in numerous in- stances exemplary. For the name, word, and laws of God, many of them exhibited profound respect. Whenever they settled a new town, one of the first cares was to build a com- modious house of public worship, and settle a pious and learned minister. For a long period, there were few families in most parts of New-England, in which the Bible was not
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HISTORY OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE.
[1652.
daily read, and prayer offered morning and evening. It was the testimony of one on his return to England from a long residence in this country, that in all this period he had not heard a profane oath, or seen a person drunk. This testimo- ny, though by no means applicable to all places, was doubtless true to a happy extent. The first Ministers of New-England had been educated at the English Universities, and they brought with them extensive and valuable libraries.
That New-Hampshire had a less proportion of religious men among her early settlers than Massachusetts and Connec- ticut, is not to be denied. The grand object of the Puritans from Holland who landed on the rock of Plymouth, was the maintenance of pure religion, and the preservation of their children from the contaminating influence of bad examples .- Their brethren from England, who soon after established themselves at Salem and Boston, had the same aims. Of the Company of Laconia-of Mason and Gorges-the main ob- ject was commercial, rather than religious. Thompson and the Hiltons, who began the settlement of Portsmouth and Do- ver, came over to fish, trade, and search for mines of precious metals. But the influence of Plymouth and Massachusetts soon extended to the Pascataqua. That New-Hampshire must have had a considerable number of religious men, at quite an early period, is plain from the fact that Christian in- stitutions were sustained in all the towns. In 1643, the Rev Daniel Maud, a pious and worthy man, was settled at Dover and in 1650, the Rev. Samuel Dudley, as successor to Mr Wheelwright, at Exeter, where he exercised a long and usefu ministry. Hampton also sustained the Christian Ministry : and though Portsmouth had not a settled minister till some years afterwards, there is evidence that numbers of the people were not insensible of the importance of public worship. If wis dom is to be measured by the results it produces, our Father. must be pronounced to have been in many respects wise : for they established institutions, civil, literary, and religious, which have secured to their posterity an unusual share of prosper ity.
For several years near the middle of the seventeenthi cen tury, the transactions in New-Hampshire, present little that i interesting. The times were still and peaceable ; times lik those of which it has been said, that " though best to live in they are the worst to write of," as affording to the historial the least variety. In 1652, Dover had so increased in popula tion, as to be allowed to send two representatives to the Mas sachusetts Assembly, each of the other towns sending but one
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PERIOD II .- 1641-1679.
1658.]
For a series of years one of the two was Major Richard Wal- dron, now become the most conspicuous character in the Province, who was occasionally elected Speaker of the Mas- sachusetts Assembly. Portsmouth contained at this time less than sixty families, and exchanged the old appellation of 'Straw- berry Bank' for its present name.
Not without uneasiness did the heirs of Mason in England notice the assumption of jurisdiction by Massachusetts over the settlement on the Pascataqua : but the civil wars then ra- ec- ans the heir 8,- hed ging in the mother country precluded all hope of immediate redress. They however, sent over an agent to observe the state of affairs. His arrival induced Massachusetts to order a survey of what they then claimed as their northern boundary. On this business, two Commissioners, attended by surveyors and Indian guides. went up the Merrimac in 1653, to the con- the fluence of its two main branches. Some gemeinen of die ob- vicinity have recently discovered on a rock in the Winnepise- and ogee, an ancient inscription, unquestionably made at that time, Do- containing the initials of the names of the Commissioners, and ious he name of John Endecott, at that time Governor of Massa- setts, chusetts. To the rock itself has been given the appropriate shire appellation of " The Endecott Rock."
n, at At Portsmouth there was some agitation in 1658 about n in- witchcraft. Several individuals were accused of the crime ; Rer. stories were circulated of witches appearing in the shape of over;seats, and scorching persons by sudden flashes of fire ; and one Mr.of the accused was bound over for trial. The intended prose- seful lution was however dropped, and the delusion was of far less : and extent and duration than a similar one which afterwards ori- years inated in Salem. One of the accused brought an action of were lander against an accuser and obtained a judgment of dama- res and costs of court. The occurrence is interesting as a pecimen of the superstition unhappily prevalent at that day.
It were to be wished that truth did not require us to lift the which eil from another trait of the age worse than even superstition osper- - the disposition to religious intolerance. Massachusetts began at his time a series of enactments against the Quakers. The i cen-erst forbade their coming to that Colony on pain of imprison- that isent, whipping, and transportation, and imposed a fine on the s likethaster of the vessel bringing them. The second subjected ive innem, in case of a repetition of the offence, to the loss of their storian popula- e Mai- ars; and in case of several repetitions, to have their tongues ored through with a hot iron. This dreadful measure pro- ing inadequate to keep them away, a third law doomed them ut one death in case of a return after transportation. Under these
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HISTORY OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE.
[1658.
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inhuman enactments a few unhappy objects suffered death in in Massachusetts ; but none in New-Hampshire. Three Qua- ker women having come to the Pascataqua, were conducted from town to town by the respective Constables under a warrant from Major Waldron, till they arrived at Boston, to be thence transported out of the country. This extreme rigor brought upon Massachusetts the reprehensions of the dissenting minis- ters in London, and the censures of the English government- till these cruel acts were softened, and finally repealed. Some of the Quakers suffered with the calm spirit of martyrs : and though it be true that others displayed extreme imprudence and presumptuously rushed upon death, still these laws stand on the historic page as a dark stain on the characters of men, whose conduct in many other respects merits high en- comiums.
An unusual occurrence marked the spring of 1658 :- a sud- den prevalence of cold, when the apple trees were in full blos- som, so insupportable that in a Hampton fishing boat ther happening at sea, one man died of the cold before the boat could make the land, another was so chilled that he died soor after, and a third lost his feet. This must have been in the latter part of May. There have been frequent instances of the concurrence of snow on the ground and blossoms on the trees but no occurrence since of so intense a cold so late in the sea- son.
The restoration of the royal government in England placed the supreme authority in the hands of men far less favorably disposed towards New-England than the Administration under the protectorate of Cromwell. Charles II., dissolute and un principled, disliked extremely the strict religious principles o most of the people here. He resented as an invasion of hi prerogative their establishment of a mint at Boston, where were coined three-pences, six-pences and shillings. Com plaining of this one day to Sir Thomas Temple who had been in America, Sir Thomas took from his pocket a New England shilling, and shewed the King the figure of the pin tree stamped upon it, who asked, What tree that was? "Th royal oak," was the reply-in allusion to the oak in which th King when once in imminent peril, had found concealmen and safety. Pleased with the fancied allusion, he smiled ane said, " They are a parcel of honest dogs." This however wa but a gleam of good humor, and could not dispel from hi mind the dark clouds of distrust. He was jealous of the spiri of liberty prevalent among the New-Englanders, and wishe to see them reduced to a complete dependence on the crown
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PERIOD II .- 1641-1679.
1665.]
in On the part of the Indians a friendly temper still continued to be manifested. An English gentleman intimately acquainted with them was invited to a great dance and feast, at which 5 anı Passaconaway, now become very old, made his farewell ad- dress. Having told them that he had tried, but in vain, all the gb: Dis t- arts of sorcery to prevent the white people from gaining foot- hold in this country, he earnestly advised his own people to avoid quarrelling with them and to preserve a good under- standing ;- assuring them that a war would prove disastrous to themselves. That the address of the dying Chief had a pow- erful influence is plain from the neutrality observed by the an Penacooks in a subsequent war, which arrayed against the English almost all the other tribes of New-England.
en- sud The well known disposition of the King encouraged Rob- ert Mason, the grandson and heir of the original grantee of New-Hampshire,to make an effort in 1660 to establish lis claim oleto the territory on which his ancestor had bestowed so much the bož expense. As stated in a preceding page, he had some years before this date sent over an agent, who found that Massachu- som setts had given a construction to ler Charter which made it cover the most of Mason's claim, as well as a large section of Maine ; and that nothing could be done to the purpose without
Mason presented a petition he interposition of the King. . complaining of Massachusetts for exercising jurisdiction over ands that had been granted to his ancestor ; and the attorney general, to whom it was referred, reported in favor of the jus- ice of his claim. Nothing further was immediately done in is behalf; but his petition, together with other complaints of he proceedings of the New-England Colonies, particularly Massachusetts, finally induced the King in 1664 to appoint Col. Nichols, Sir Robert Carr, George Carteret and Samuel Maverick, Esquires, his Commissioners to visit the Colonies, vith power to examine and determine complaints and appeals of every kind. To this Commission the Colonists were strong- y opposed, deeming it an infringment of their Charter privi- eges. With the exception of Col. Nichols, the Commmission- rs executed their office in a very offensive manner, reversing ecisions of the courts, giving protection to criminals, and ad- hitting persons to the privileges of freemen and of church hembership, contrary to the usages of the country.
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