Qass. Book. 1-5 7 ^ ^ NOTES FIRST PLANTING Ne^n Hampshire AND ON THE PI SCAT AQUA PATENTS. JOHN S. JENNESS. PRIVATELY PRINTED. PORTSMOUTH : PRINTED BY LEWIS W. BREWSTER. 1878. NOTES FIF\ST PLANTING EW HAMPS H AMI ON THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. JOHN S: JENNESS. FRIA^-A-TEL^^^- FE-IIsTTErD. PORTSMOUTH: I'RINTl'Ii I'.Y LEWIS \V. HKEWSTF.K, 1S78. TEE \m PLiTlM; (IF W Whether the first settlement within the limits of ISTew Hampshire Avas made at Little Harbor near the mouth of the Piscataqua, or at Dover IsTeck some six miles aj3 the river, is a question which has long- employed the studies and pens of our lo- cal antiquaries, and of late has found its way into the discussions and acts of our Legislature. Each of these localities has its warm partizans, who have brought to the controversy research and ingenuity in such equal measure, that the question seems, in- deed, to have been buried still deeper in doubt and obscui-ity by their confusing speculations. It is much to be regretted that uncertainty should rest ove)- the most intei'esting of all periods in the his- tory of our state, that of its birth and infancy; and we feel that an effort to clear away this uncer- tainty and to bring out into the light the truthful picture of those earliest days, will well be worth the making. 4 THE FIEST PLANTEtsTG The date of the settlement upon the promontory, now called Odiorne's Point, at the smaller mouth of the Piscataqua river, is not a matter of dispute. Mr. David Thomson, a resident of Plymouth, Eng- land, having' procured from the Grand Council of Plymouth, Nov. 15, 1622, a patent for six thousand acres of land to be selected by him in Xew Eng- land, sailed from Plymouth in mid-winter with a handful of colonists in the good ship called the "Jonathan of Plymouth," (the Mayflower of New Hampshire,) and arrived at the Piscataqua in the early spring of 1623. Mr. Thomson's design was to found a plantation, convenient for trade and the fisheries, somewhere near the mouth of the Piscat- aqua river, and as he had visited ]S^ew 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. David Thomson is de- scribed by Morton in"T/?e New England Canaan,'" published in 1637 as being "a Scottish gentleman, that was conversant with those people (the natives) a scholar and traveller that was diligent in taking- notice of these things, as a man of good judgment.'" The original agreement or indenture, under which Thomson came over, was recovered several years ago among the ancient Winthrop papers, and has recently been published by Charles Deane, Esq., accompanied by copious and learned notes. OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 5 Prom this it appears that Thomson had three Ply- mouth merchants as partners or co-adventurers with him in his enterprise, named Abraham Col- mer, Nicholas Sherwill and Leonard Pomerie, who were to contribute to the expenses of founding- and carrying on the new plantation, and to share in its j)ropei'ty at the expiration of the partnership. David Thomson's colony, which first landed with him at Little Harbor, comprised probably not more than ten men. The indenture referred to provides that the little colony "so landed, shall and will use their best en- deavor (by the direccon of said David Thomson) with as much conveniencie as maye be, to find out 4f*y-*^* some fitt place to settle and Builde 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 intented to be there erected, there shall be allotted of the lands next thereunto adjoin- inge, at or before the end of five years next ensu- ing the date hereof, the full quantitie.of six hun- dred acres of land or neere thereabouts." In pursuance of this clause of the Lidenture, Thomson and his men selected the Point at Little Harbor as a "fitt place to build their houses for habitacons" and began upon them with as much expedicon as they could. The site selected for the settlement was chosen with excellent judgment. 6 THE FIRST PLAXriiN^G From the Little Harbor fronting the north side of the promontory a salt water creek runs back so far towards the ocean, as almost to convei't the en- closed 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. The soil is good, and among the i-ocks on the harbor shore is a living spring of fresh watei'. The harbor is safe and accessible at all times to vessels of light draught, and most commodiously situated for the prosecution of the fisheries, as w^ell as for the peltry traffic with the Indians of Saga- more Creek and Piscatacpia river. Above all oth- er advantages in those perilous times, the Point, rising on every side towards its centre and almost surrounded by water, was easily defensible against the assaults of savages. These considerations probably determined Thomson in the selection of this site for the new plantation, which he named, perhaps from the Indian appellation, "Pannaway" — a name, which seems however not to have survived the period of Thomson's own occupation and own- ership of the plantation. The principal dwelling house erected at Panna- way was built of stone, and of considerable size. Hubbard informs us that ''the chimney and some part of the stone wall were standing in his day" (1680). The house, which, a few years after its erection, passed into the hands of Capt. John Ma- OF NEW TIAMPSHIKE. 7 son and his associates, was afterwards called by these i)i"oprietoi"s "Piscataqua House," and some- times in popular parlance, "Captain Mason's stone house." It was nev^er designated, we believe, Ma- son'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 adven- turers of Laconia about 1631."^ Thomson's House, erected in 1623 at Pannaw^ay, seems from its remains to have been laid upon a foundation of sea sand and small stones packed close into a trench. The sea sand is identical in appear- ance with that still abundantly founil on the harbor shore in front of the house. There was no cellar beneath the building. The walls above the foun- dations were built of a slate-like shale laid in blue cla}^ both of which material are abundant in that immediate neighborhood. Gov. Winthrop built for himself a dwelling house at Mistick of similar ma- terial a few years later. f When not greatly exposed to the rain, the tough clay of Little Harbor is as durable as the best mortar. The chimney of the ancient Jaflfrey house at I^ew Castle, as Mr. Albee, its present occupant, informs us, was laid in this clay two centuries ago, and still stands strong and solid. *See Jenness Orig. Docs, relating to New Hampshire, fl Wlnthrop 63. 8 THE FIRST PLANTING With these materials close at hand, Thomson and his colony could have erected a comfortable and spacious habitation in a short time after their landing. Little or nothing would have been re- quired from England for that purpose beyond win- dow glass, hardware and househokl utensils. The site of the Pannaway house is still confidently pointed out by the present owners of the territory, and part of the foundation walls are believed to have been exposed by the excavations for a I'oad, which, about thirty years ago, was laid out from the main highway to the harbor. Close by llie house, the foundations of a small building, supposed to have been a blacksmith's shop, are pointed out. Among its debris have been recently found, by very slight excavations along the road-side, charcoal and ash- es, nails, pieces of iron, a pipe-stem, etc , and also, strange to relate, parts of a human skeleton. No doubt, several other buildings wei-e erected around the principal dwelling, such as a cooper's shop, a carpenter's shop, storehouses, boat houses and barns, but no remains of these have as yet been discovered. The fishing stages and fish houses, we conjec- ture, were put up in the sheltered coves upon the ocean side of the point, and in close proximity to Flake Hill as it is called, where, according to tradi- tion, the fish were dried. In one of these cove© are still to be seen numbers of wooden spiles driv- OF NEW HAMPSHIEE. 9 en into the sand, which once served, probably, as a foundation for fish houses or boat houses. Be- tween Fhike Hill and the main building lies a well filled cemetery, which holds all that remains of the first settlei'S of Xew Hampshire. From the long s|)ace between the head stones and foot stones, many of which are still standing, this cemetery seems to have been a grave yard of men. We found no small graves in this ancient GocVs Acre. Nature herself has erected a most appropriate mon- ument to the memory of the hardy, daring men who laid the foundations of our state amid the dan- gers and pi'ivations of the wilderness, and have here at last taken up their rest. Out of the very graves near the centre of the small cemetery rises a rug- ged gnarled walnut tree, bent and distorted in its struggles of two centuries against the elements — a memoi'ial and symbol of the courage and fortitude of the ancient Pannaway men, Avhose long slum- bers the noble tree defiantly protects. Pannaway house must have been a structure of considerable size to have afforded accommodation to Thomson and his new colony; and as it was put up by ordinary English workmen, we may reasona- bly conjecture, that it followed the general plan and presented the general appearance of the dwel- ling houses of the time of James L, vast numbers of which still remain in good preservation all over the old country. As soon as his buildings were put 10 THE FIEST PLANTING in habitable condition, Thomson entered actively into the prosecntion of his enterprise at the Piscat- aqua, and he continued engag'ed in that business at Pannaway until about the expii'ation of the slijnila- ted term of co-partnership with tlie Plymouth Mer- chants, in Xov. 1627. Pannaway plantation became at once well known along the iS^ew Englnnd coast, and was visited within its very first year by many of the most in- teresting and sti'iking characters connected with our early histor3\ Phinehas Pratt came there as early as May, 1623, and befoi-e the great crackling fires of a cold spring, recounted, no doubt, the stor^' of the teri'ible winter he had passed at Wessaguscus; of his marvellous escape from the murderous sav- ages across a trackless frozen forest for near fifty miles into New Plymouth in quest of succor, and of the valiant achievements of the redoubtable Miles Standish, who, with a small band of soldiers, set out the very next day from the Pilgrim village, and slaying Pecksuot, the savage chief, with his own hand, succeded in dispersing the Indians and res- cuing the trembling, exhausted planters of Wessa- guscus from impending annihilation. A month or two later, came into Pannaway a half-drowned, half-naked man, imploring succor and ])rotection. He proved to be Mr. Thomas Weston, the fiiithful friend and agent of the Pil- grim fathers in England before they sailed; awav OF IVEW HAMPSHIRE. 1] for the new world, though at present they enter- tained towai'ds him sentiments of distrust and un- kindhness. His poHtical and religious sentiments did not accord with those of the separatists at New Plymouth. Weston had now been cast away, while cruising along the New Hampshire coast be- tween Boar's Head and Merrimack river; his shal- lop was wrecked, and himself afterwards assailed and stripped of his clothes by the Indians, The miserable man succeeded at last, however, in making his way along the coast into Pannaway, and there he was clad and restored to health and furnished with means to return to Plymouth. About this same time, the Pilgrim hero, Miles Standish himself, made his appearance at Panna- way. "Standish," says Hubbard, "had been bred a soldier in the Low countries and never entered the school of Christ or of John the Baptist, or if ever he was there, he had forgot his first lessons. A little chimney is soon fired, so was the Plymouth captain, a man of very small stature yet of a verv hot and angry temper.'"^ The valiant captain, at the conclusion of his stout achievements in the res- cue of Wessaguscus, was employed to buj^ provi- sions at the eastward "for the refreshing of the Plymouth colon}'." He must have been at Panna- way about the last of June, as he returned to Plymouth in July, laden with the pi'ovisions he *Hubbard N. E. p. 84. 12 THE rmST PLANTIXG was ill quest of, and bi'iiiging along in his company our Mr. David Thomson from Pannaway.* The next imjDortant visitor at Pannavvay was Capt. Christopher Levett, "his majesty's woodward for Somersetshire," as he describes himself. Lev- ett's design was to establish a city at some eligible spot along the JSTew England coast, to be named "York," after the metropolitan cit}^ in England, and to found there, in all pomp and circumstance, a full prelatical establishment over all N^ew Eng- land. Capt Levett was an officer in the royal navy, high in favor at court, and of much distinc- tion in the old country. He stayed at Pannaway about a month during the early spring of 1624, awaiting the arrival of his men^ to begin his search along the coast for some suitable site for his pro- jected city. While Levett still remained at Pannaway, Gov- ernor Kobert Gorges arrived there with a consid- erable company. Robert Gorges was the son of Sir Ferdinand© Gorges and "like his fathei-, of an active enterprising genius, and had newly re- turned from the Venetian war."f He came out with a commission under the Great Seal, appointing him "Lieutenant General and Governor of New Eng- land," and designating Capt. Christopher Levett, before mentioned, as one of his Council. It was *Mourt's Relation. t Belknap, Life of Gorges. OF IS^EW HAMPSHIRE. 13 at Pannaway that the ceremony of installing Lev- ett into his high office was performed by Governor Gorges, assisted by three others of his Council, and in the presence of all the people, no doubt, then at the plantation. We may be sure that this ceremony, to which it was desirable to give as much distinct- tion and publicity as possible, was performed in a most imposing manner on that great and stirring day in the annals of Pannaway. That the Indians were visitors at Pannaway dur- ing the very first year of its foundation, appears from the narrative of Phinehas Pratt, who writes that " at the time of his (Capt. Levett) being at Pas- cataway a sachem or Sagamor gave two of his men, one to Capt. Levett and another to Mr. Thomson:" but one that was there said, "How can you trust those savages? Call the name of one 'Watt Tyler' and the other 'Jack Straw,' after the names of the two greatest Pebills yt ever were in England." x^either was the society of women wholly lack- ing at Pannaway during this period. David Thom- son's wife resided with him at his new plantation, and it is reasonable to believe that she came not without female companions. And it was here at Pannaway, that John, the son of David, it is be- lieved, first saw the light — the first-born of ^ew Hampshire. We have thus sketched, as briefly as possible, some of the principal events in the history of Pan- 14 THE FIRST PLAXTING naway for the first year of its existence, fi-oin tiie spring of 1623 to the spring of 1024. It is not within the design of this pa])er to follow its history any fnrther. It will suffi(.'e onr present i)ai'pose to add, that the plantation founded by David Thom- son and his co-adventurers at Little Harbor passed in 1630, by way of lease, into the hands of the company of Laconia. It was then that the doughty soldiei' of fortune, Capt. Walter Neale, the Gov- ei'uor for that company, and the woi'thy compeer of Miles Standish himself, took possession of Pan- naway as his ^'chiefe habitacon," and thus preserved the nucleus of the future State of Xew Hampshire. The Pannaway plantation, the story of whose birth and inf\incy we have thus outlined, was, we are convinced, prior in date to any other settle- ment within the limits of our State, and sevei-al years anterior to that of Edward Hilton at Dover Point. The earliest period to which the latter set- tlement can be referred upon any of the testimony which has come down to us, is the year 1628, oi' possibly the yeai- 1627. If there had been any set- tlement at Dover Neck prior to that period, there exists the testimony of no contemi)oi'ary, to the ef- fect that he had visited it or had seen it, or had heard of it from rumor or I'eport. And certainly it is highly improbalde that such a settlement could have existed for four or five years up the Piscata- qua river, without having been known to the Pil- or NEW HAMPSHIRE. 15 gv'un historians, such as Bradford and Winslow, nor once spoken of or refen-ed to by any of the numerons visitoi'S at Pannaway. If Hilton's Point had been settled as early as 1G23, would not the planters and servants employed there have found occasions to meet constantly and familiarly with their countrymen at the thriving plantation of Pannaway onl}^ six miles distant? would not the existence of a Hilton's Point colony have been as well and widely known as that of Pannaway itself? And yet no settlement at Hil- ton's Point until several years subsequent to that of Thomson at Little Harbor, is refei-red to by any Xew England writer of that time or in any con- tempoi'aneous paper, letter, affidavit or document of any kind. On the contrarj^ Christopher Lev- ett, Esq. who, as we have seen, spent a month at Pannaway in the early spring of 1624, so far from having heard of any English settlement up the river, writes thus on his leaving for the Eastward: ''About two miles further to the East, I found a great river and a good harbor, called Pascattaway, but tor the ground I can say nothing, but by the relation of the Sagamore or King of that place, who told me there was much good ground up in the river about seven or eight leagues."'* Certainly, if Hilton had settled a plantation at Dover I^eck in 1623, Levett must during his long *2 Maine Hist. Col. p. 80. 16 THE FIKST PLANTING visit to David Thomson have heard of such a set- tlement, and would not have been compelled to rely upon an Indian Sagamore for a description of the Piscataqua river; nor is it likely that he would have passed over without notice so important a circumstance as the loundation 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 patent of Hilton's Point was granted to Edward Hilton, March 12, 1629 (1630, according to our , present style of reckoning,) about sev&n years after the settlement of Thomson at Panna- way. Can it be believed that Hilton founded a plan- tation at Hilton's Point, in 1623, seven years before he got a deed of the land his plantation stood upon? No great expense would certainly have been incurred by him until he had first acquired title to the soil. JSTor did Edward Hilton himself ever to our knowledge make any pretence to having begun a plantation on the Piscataqua at so early a date. The patent granted to him in 1630 recites, as usual with such instruments, the utmost that he claimed to have done at Hilton's Point be- fore that year. The language is this, "that Ed- ward Hilton and his associates hath already at his and their own projjer costs and charges transported OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 17 sundry sei'vants to plant in New England afore- said at a place there called by the natives Wecana- cohunt, otherwise Hilton's Point, lying some two leagues from the mouth of the river Pascataquack in New England aforesaid, where they have al- ready built some houses and planted corn, and for that he does further intend by God's Divine As- sistance to transport thither more people and cat- tle, &c."* It will be seen that Hilton made no claim to having settled a plantation at Hilton's Point so early as 1623. as he naturally would have done had such been the fact. Nor is their any pretence in the patent that he had set iq^ fishing stages there, as Belknap and others, following Hubbard, have asserted. The language of the Grant imports simply that the plantation at Hilton's Point was to be carried on for trade and agriculture, and that feeble beginnings in that direction had been very lately made, to be followed by a more strenuous exertion and a largei* outlay upon the acquisition of title to the plantation. Edward Hilton lived on the Piscataqua for many years after founding his plantation, and was a gentleman of energy and jjrobity. His territory was sold by him shortly af- ter he obtained his patent, to Capt. Thomas Wig- gin and his associates of Shrewsbury, England. * See Hilton's Point Patent at large, Appendix No. 1. 18 THE FIRST PLANTING This patent became for many after yeai'S the source of much conflict and litigation. Yet never did Hilton, nor those claiming title under him, un- dertake to strengthen that title by avei-ring a seven years' ])OSsession and actual occupation be- fore his patent was issued. Positive testimony as to the date of the Hilton's Point settlement may, however, be found in a care- ful declaration made in 1G54 to the Mass. Generrd Court, by John Allen, iSTicholas Shapleigh and Thomas Lake, wherein the Hilton's Point I^atent is relied upon by the declai-ants as a pi-otection against certain alleged encroachments made by the Mass. authorities. These three declarants, familiar with the whole history of Hilton's Point and inter- ested to make out Hilton's title and possession as ancient as they could, present the following as the first article of their case. "1, that Mi'. Edward Hilton was possessed of this land about the year 1628, which is about 26 years ago." * Edward Hilton was then living in the immediate 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. The notion among our historians and antiquaries that the Dovei' settlement was contemporaneous with that of Pannaway in the spring of 1623, is * 1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 157. OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 19 founded wholly and solely, so far as we can dis- cover, upon a certain careless statement contained in Hubbard's Hist, of New England, written moi-e than half a century after the settlement of New Hampshire — a loose statement, made upon hearsay, in a paragraph (as printed) conspicuous in all re- spects for inaccuracy. And worse than all, the little ot truth the paragraph of Kev. William Hub- bard of Ipswich did contain, has been most gross- ly distorted and misunderstood. Hubbard's lan- guage is this : "Some merchants and other gen- tlemen in the w^est of England * ^ * sent over that year (1623) one Mr. David Thomson with Mr. Edward Hilton and his brother Mr. William Hilton, who had been fishmongers in London, with some othei's that came along with them, furnished with necessaries for carrying on a plantation there (about Piscataqua River.) 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 oi"'at the mouth there- of; the Hiltons, in the meanwdiile, setting up their stages higher up the I'iver toward the northwest at or about a place since called Dover. But at that place called Little Harbor it is supposed was the first house set up that was built in those parts."* An examination of this statement by Hubbard *Hubbard's Hist. pp. 214, 215. 20 THE FIRST PLANTIN(i will satisfy the student that it amounts to this: First, that the first house or settlement on the Pis- cataqua was made at Little Harbor. Second, that the Hiltons set up their stages up the river some- time in the 7neanwhUe between 1G23 and the years following 1624 and 1625; and IIubl)ard has not said nor meant to say that Hilton's settlement was made in 1623. Third, that the Hiltons set up their stages at or about a place since called Dover. Hubbard has not stated nor meant to state that these stages were set uj) at Hilton's Point precisely, but only at some place about that Point. A little consideration will convince us that Hub- bard could hardly have intended to say that the Hiltons did ever set up stages at Hilt(nis Point; and certainly Hilton himself in the preamble to his grant of 1630 never made any pretence, as we hav^e seen, to having set up any fishing stages there. The stages referred to, were large and ex- pensive structures, intended for use in the fishing husiness. Hilton's Point is situated some six oi- seven miles above the mouth of Piscatacpia riv^er — a tidal stream of such rapidity that it is often impossible for a boat to overcome its current, whik' on the other hand the great codfisheries lie several miles out to sea beyond the river's mouth. A fish- erman leaving Hilton's Point at the very turn of the ebb tide, might, perhaps, under favorable cir- cumstances, reach the fishing banks in the coui'se OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 21 of four hours; if he intended to return by the next flood tide, he would be compelled to turn back without casting a hook. If he stayed two or three hours to fish, he would not be able to get home the same day. Can it be believed that experienced fishermen would have selected such a site as Hil- ton's Point for a fishing establishment, when as good land or better could have been taken up any- where at the river's mouth or along the coast? Where, indeed, it really was that these fishing stages were set up, (if at all,) Hubbard has not definitely informed us, nor can we now discover; but it hardly seems probable that a site was select- ed above the river narrows. Taking the whole case together, we may perhaps conclude from Hub- bard's statements, if we chose to place any reliance whatever upon them, as they stand i^rinted^ that the Hiltons sometime between 1623 and 1626 founded a fishing establishment somewhere up the river between Dover and the river's mouth. This may be the truth, without conflicting in the least with the testimony we have adduced, that the trad- ing and agricultural establishment on Hilton's Point itself was founded by Edward Hilton in the year 1627 or 1628. "VVe perceive, therefore, that Hubbard is no au- thority whatever in support of the alleged settle- ment of Hilton's Point in 1628, and as no other ev- idence has been adduced to prove such a settlement 22 THE rmsT planting contemporaneously with that at Pannaway, we may justly consider the question at rest, and accord the prioi'ity in the first planting of New Hampshire by several years to David Thomson and his men at Pan naway. Indeed a close scrutiny- of Hubbard's statement by the light of other facts will convei't his misunderstood narrative into an authority for our conclusion. He tells us that the settlement ■'at 01" about a place since called Dover" was made by the two Hiltons, Edward and William. If that were so, it could not have been made in the year 1623, because William is fonnd residing at Ph- mouth with his family as late as 1624, and indeed is not mentioned as living on the Piscataqua until several years later. We venture to add, though unnecessary to oui- argument, that the time and mannei' of Edward Hilton's arrival in the Piscataqua is also very un- certain. Hubbard writes that both Edward and William came over in company with Thomson in 1623. That the careless historian made a gross er- ror as to William we have just pointed out, and it is probable he fell into a similar mistake as to Ed- wa7'd. At all events, the Indenture between Thom- son and his partners gives no countenance to Hub- bard's loose expressions; and not a particle of con- temporaneous testimony has been added tending to show Edward Hilton's residence at the Piscataqua before the year 1628, when he first appears as as- OF NEW HA3IPSHIHE. Zo sesscd £1 towards the expense of Morton's baiiish- nieiit. A strong- concin-rent body of testimony wonld, indeed, be necessary to satisfy a rational mind, that Edward and William Hilton, or Edward alone set- tled at Dover Neck as early as 1623. At that pe- , riod not a white man dwelt within all the borders of New Hampshire, tribes of bloodthirsty "nefan- dous" savages i-oamed thi'ongh the pine forests and gathered aronnd the falls ol the rivers. Hilton's Point, from its close proximity to the Cocheco, where large bands of Indians made their homes, w^as particnlarly exposed to savage assault. Is it credible that Hilton, without any colony to assist him, (for, as we have seen, no colony came over to Dover Neck until 1628 or 1629,) should have, as early as 1623, removed from the succor of all his friends, six oi- seven miles from Pannaway, and taken up an almost, if not altogether, solitary resi- dence in the midst of treacherous and cruel savages; when the whole country practically lay open to him to go in and occupy where he would ? A wise and pi'osperous merchant, as Edward Hilton was, a prudent and judicious gentlemen, as he ever af- terw^ards proved himself to be, w^ould never, we be- lieve, have undertaken an enterprise as unnecessary and profitless, as it would have been rash and fool- hardy. It was some years, we conclude, after the settle- 24 THE FIRST PLANTING ment of Pannaway, whether we conyider the testi- mony or weigh the intrinsic probabilities, before the pkmtation at Hilton's Point could have been begun; and it is much to be regretted, that the an- tiquaries and historians of our State should have permitted the Legislature to fall into the erroi- of incorporating a body of men to erect a monument at Dover Neck, '"^in commemoration of the settle- ment of the Point in 1623." THE PISCmOlIi PiTElTS, In the pi-eceding monograph we have sought to dispel the obscurity which has so long enveloped the very cradle of New Hampshire history. We have endeavored to establish that the first English settlement wilhin the hmits of that State was made by David Thomson and his company in 1G23, at Pannaway, Little Harbor, about five years earlier than Edward Hilton began his plantation at Hil- ton's Point, now called Dover Neck Advancing from this starting point only a few steps further into the early history of New Hamp- shire, the student is again shut in bj^ a dense fog, through which for a long time he is compelled to grope his uncertain way. Before the year 16o2 is passed, he finds himself in the midst of a number of patents on the Piscataqua, none of which can he clearly make out and define. He pei'ceives long and bitter contests between these rival patents, the true o-i'ound of which he cannot understand. He 26 THE PISCATAQL^V PATENTS. discovers that at last all these contending paten- tees and planters are in some way swept into the jurisdiction of Massachnsetts Bay, bat the dexter- ons legerdemain by which the annexation was ef- fected, entirely escapes his dt^tection. In vain does he seek for light in the pages of the Pilgiim or the Pnritan historians. That whole confiatei'nity, in- deed, avowedly look npon the Piscataqua phmta- tions with utter contempt, and waste little or no time upon the annals of those "sons of Belial," who haunted about the lower part of the river. Moreoveiv it happens, as we shall see in the se- quel, that it became the policy of the Bay Colony, in prosecuting their designs over the Piscataqua, to say or write as little as possible on the subject, so that in case they should ever be called to account for their conduct in the matter, they could not, in any event, be condemned out of their own mouths. The true story of the Piscataqua Patents has thus never been told; and, indeed, until the ivcent discovery of important documents in the English Archives, bearing on the subject, that ])oi'tion of our early histoi"y was incapable of any clear rela- tion. Let us attempt to dissipate some of the mists, w^hich have so long hung over Piscataqua River. Let us enquire what these patents really were, what was theii" real meaning, what nnist be their true construction, what conflicting interests arose under THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. ; 27- them ; let us .sketc-li tlie outlines of their history down to theii- extinction, and discovei', if possible, in ^Yhat wny these patents were at last merged iii-| to the Bay Colony. Such an enquiry, in the pres- ent state of oui" knowledge, must needs be delicate and difficult; nor, in so novel au undertaking- is it likely to attain absolute success. Our hopes will be fully gratified, if these few pages shall succeed in letting in some measure of light upon this ob- scure and confused portion of our early history. The instrument which has been the (hief cause ^ of the confusion and obscurity i-eferred to, was the Patent, mentioned in the preceding monogi-aph, granted in 1(529-30 by the Grand Council for New Euii'land to Edward Milton and his associates — a jietty conveyance of a small tract of land around Dover ISTeck, but wliich in the course of events having been elevated into some ])olitical importance, l)layed a leading part, a;- we shall see, in the early annals of Xew Hampshire. It was during the years 1G2S and 1629, that Mr. . Edward Hilton, a member of the ancient and hon- . orable Guild of Fishmongers of London, Avith the aid of a number of Bristol mei-cliants, put up a few cabins at the Point which look his name, and laid the feeble foundations of a tradin*)- and lumberin<>- l)lantatiou. This occupation was, it seems, unwar- lanted by any previous grant of title from the Gri'and Council; though probably some agreement 28 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. or understanding had been arrived at, for the exe- cution of a good and sufficient deed of conveyance, as soon as the plantation should be fairly under way. It was not uncommon for the Grand Coun- cil to require from petitioners for land in I^ew England, some evidence of efforts alread}^ made and expenditures actuall}' incurred towards the improvement of the desired territory, before the patent was actually executed and delivered. As the quitrents on these conveyances were merely nominal, the Council could hardly have hit upon a better way of testing the sincerity and ability of those who solicited from them gratuitous grants for the alleged design of founding plantations in the New World. Edward Hilton and his associates having in 1628 and 1629 '^transported sundry servants to plant upon Hilton's point, now Dover Neck, built some houses, planted corn, etc.," and having thus satis- factorily shown their intention and ability to carry forward the plantation already begun, at length received from the Grand Council a conveyance or Patent for the> territory they had taken up. This Patent was executed March 12, 1629 (old style), or according to our present supputation of time, March 23, 1630.^ The territory conveyed to Hilton and his associ- ates by this Patent is bounded and described in the * See the Patent in the Apjiondix No. 1. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 29 instrument, as follows: '^ All that part of the rivei- PascataquacJc, called or Icnown hy the naine of We- canacohimt or HiltoTi's Point ivith the south side of the said river, up to the fall of the river and three miles into the maine land by all the breadth afore- said.'''' We invite particular study into the true intent and meaning of this brief description, because of the falsification of its terms and the strange distor- tion of its meaning, which we believe was subse- quently ]3Ut upon the patent by the authorities of Massachusetts Bay ; whereby the patent was split into two distinct parts, and a large tract of territo- ry on the southerly or Rockingham County side of the river was, by construction, brought within its limits. To the consideration of this subject in greater detail, we shall return in the sequel, after several other necessary preliminaries have been brought to the student's knowledge It seems clear to us, that the terms of the Pat- ent are intended to bound and limit, not two en- tirely separate and disjomed bodies of land, (as Massachusetts afterward contended,) but only the one contiguous compact territory, on which Hilton and his associates had already begun their planta- tion. Such, indeed, is the express declaration of the preamble to the grant. Beginning at Hilton's Point, (now called Dover ^eck— a well-defined projection into Piscataqua river,) the boundary 30 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. line, as we construe the Patent, ran up along the southerly side of that river to the lower or (.^uaui- pegan Falls— a distance of some seven or eight miles — and reached back into the interior country ' . . . ^ ^■ three miles along the entire livei' fiontage; thus Embracing a considerable portion of the present towns of Dovei", Rollinsford and Durham, and in- cluding the falls of the Cocheco and Oyster I'ivers.^ Soon after obtaining his Patent, Mr. Edward Hilton returned to the Piscata((ua with reinfoice- nients and supplies, and settled down at the Point, which already bore his name. Formal possession or liverij of snziii was given to him July 7, 1()31, by Thomas Lewis. Hilton's Point, now called Dover Xeck, ui)on which Hilton and his men pitched their settlement, is, in the language of Dr. Belknap, " a high neck of land between the main branch of Pascata- qua and Back River, about two miles long and half a mile wide, rising along a tine road and de- clining on each side like a ship's deck. It com- mands an extensive and variegated prospect of the rivers, bays, adjacent shores and distant mountains. It has often been admired by ti'avellers as an ele- gant situation for a city, and by military gentlemen for a fortress. "t .* See the Sketch Map, infra, wliereon the territoiy within these bounds is colored in nd. t ?> Belknap, X. H. 14!>. THE PISCATAQITA PATENTS. 31 But on the otliei" hand, the new-come phinters soon felt the sore need of meadow hind and pas- turajre, not to be found on the sandy Point itself, nor in its convenient vicinity within their own g-rant. Aci-oss the wide waters to the south, how- ever, reposed unoccupied a country- ot virgin beau- ty, heavily timbered with primeval foi'ests, and fringed all round its watered sides with emerald fields, and meadows both salt and fresh. It was very natural that the Hilton Point planters should soon fall into the eas}^ way of ferrying their flocks and herds across the river to graze upon these va- cant lands. Before long* they came to mowini*- grass and felling timber and planting the fields; and then one after another put up dwellings and barns and entered into full adverse possession of the territorv, now embraced in Xewino-ton and Greenland. Legal title to these forests and mead- ows, we believe, they had none. In after years, it is true, these trespassers undertook to rest their title upon some ancient Indian grant, but, as is well known, Indian deeds to New^ England lands wei'e not in law held to be any better "than the scratch of a bear's claw.'' They occupied these lands, in the beginning, as racuwn d()miciliu7ti, in the absence of any effective oppositioii fi-om the true owners. Let us then enquire, who trere the real proprie- tors of these Rockingham County lands at the time the Hilton Point planters trespassed upon them. 32 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. As a pi'eface to this enquiry, we need to state, that in N'ov. 1629, about four months prior to the execution of the Hilton Patent, a hirge tract of territory, situated in the present State of New York around Lake Champlain, had been granted by the Grand Council to 8ii' Ferdinando Goi-ges, Capt. John Mason and seven other associates.* This province was named Lacoyiia, by reason "of the great Lakes therein." The design of the Laconia adventurers was to seize upon and engross to their own profit the I'ich peltry traffic of that vast region, then in the hands of the French and the Dutch. It was believed, in the absence of accurate knowledge of the interior country, that Lake Champlain (then called the Iroquois) could be reached from the Xew England coast by a journey of about 90 miles, and that only a narrow portage separated it from the head waters of Piscataqua river. Under this delusion, the Laconians hii-ed the buildings which had been put up seven years before ])y David Thomson at the smaller mouth of the Piscataqua, and estab- lished there, under command of Capt. Walter Neale, a factory or entrepot, as a basis for their magnificent designs upon the New York lakes. The company of Laconia were in the actual pos- session of Pannaway at Little Harbor when Hilt(jn and his company sailed up the river to establish * Seethe Patent of Laconia, Jenness' Isles of Shoals, 2ncl Ed. p. 180. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 33 their plantation at Hilton's Point eight miles above. And before Hilton's title was ])erfected by livery of seizhif Strawberry Bank had begnn to be set- tled ; no less than sixty men were employed in the comjiany's bnsiness on the Piscataqna,* and a |)lantation had been established at T^ewichwannock, not far from Qnampegan Falls, and on the oppo- site side of the I'iver from Hilton's grant. It seems to ns obvious from these considerations, that the charaeter and extent of the Hilton patent must have been familiarly known and understood by the C/ompany of Laconia and the eonsideral)le body of men in its employment. The Laeonia adventnrei'S ex])ended a great deal of time and money in quest of an easy way from the Piscataqna to their coveted J5JI Dorado of bea- ver and otter skins, but all their efforts miserably failed, and after a struggle of some two years, their design was finally abandoned. f But during these two years' occujiation of Pis- cataqna I'ivei", the Laeonian associates had acquired * Adams'" Annals of Portsmouth, 18. •j- We will add here, as a piece of curious information, that al- though the original design of the Laconians to reach Lake Champ- lain by ascending the Piscataqua was so soon abandoned, yet t/iiir patent of the province of Laconia was never, it seems, surrendered nor forfeited, but was considered as vesting in them a valid subsist- ing title down almost to the period of our Revolution. Jonathan Carver, who visited Lake Champlain iiy-^767, writes in the vvell- known account of his travels, as tollows : '••A. vast tract of land between the two last mentioned lakes (Lakes Champlain and Ontario) was granted in the year 1G:>9 by the Ply- 34 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. an accurate knowledge of that ret^ion and its many advantages for traffic and commerce; and now, upon the faihire of their original designs upon La- conia, the same body of associates, nine in inuu- l)er, resolved to tui'u their future eftbrts towards the development of the Piscataqua itself in the way ot the fisheries and the lumber trade and of such moderate peltry traffic as could be j^rosecuted in the vicinity. As the Laconia Patent conveyed to the advMi- turers no ])oi"lion of Piscataqua I'ivei', nor indeed any teiM'itory whatever within the present State of New Hampshire, it was their first care to pi-ocure a grant of the desired region, or at least so much of it as had not been previously conveyed to Ed- ward Hilton and his associates. Accordingly, the same nine men, who constitu- iiiouth company * * * to Sir Ferdinando (iorges and to ( :ij)t. John Mason." "This immense space was granted by the name of the l'i<)\ inee of I^aconia to the aloresaid gentlemen on speciHed conditions and under eertain penalties; but none of these amounted in ease of omission in the fulfilment of any part ot them tnts of the French and th(^ Indians, this grant lias l)een suffered to lie dormant by the real proprietors. Notwithstanding which, several towns have been settled, since the late war, on the borders of I^ake Champlain and grants made to different @r)ple by the (jovernor of New Y'ork of part of these territories which are now bet.ome annexed to that j)rov- ince." (Carver's Travels p 17:).) THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 35 ted the Company of Laconia, procured from the Grand Council a conveyance, dated Xov. 3, 1631, (some twenty months hiter than the Hilton Patent,) of a considerable territory on both sides of the Piscataqua river. This important Patent, entitled 'Uhe Grant and Confirmation of Pescataway," hith- erto unknown to our historians, except from a brief and grossly inaccurate abstract in Hubbard's print- ed history, was discovered by the writer a few years ago among the English Archives, and will be found in the Appendix.'^ There is not the slightest difficulty in running out the boundaries of this "Grant of Pescataway,'' as will be apparent from an inspection of our Sketch map of the Piscataqua country, on which the two river patents are laid down. The river called Pascassorle in the description is the same, no doubt, now named Lamprey River, which emp- ties into the head of Great Bay at New Marlvct. By the terms of the Patent, the boundary line, it will be seen, ran through the middle of the Bay, called Pascaquaciv (now Great Bay) in a westioard and southwest ward direction to the bottom or low- er falls of the river P-ascassocke. The Lamprey is the onl}^ rivei-, which answers to this description. Indeed, the original Indian name of the river Avas Piscassett;t and that name has been retained by * Appendix No. 2. t Favmei' and Moore's Col. p. 50. 36 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. its principal branch, in the form of Piscassic, even to the present clay. The boundaries of the territory covered by the "Grant of Pescataway" began at or near Rye Ledge, not far from the present southerly line of Rye, and sweeping around the coast into the « mouth of Piscataqua river, continued up the river to Fox Point, thence to Great Bay and through the middle of Great Bay to Lamprey River lower falls, and thence across the country about nine miles to the point of beginning; together with the Isles of Shoals and a strip of land three miles wide along the northerly side of the river. So much of the Pescataway Grant as lay on the southerly side of the river and around Great Bay is now embraced in the towns of Portsmouth, Xew- ington, Greenland, ISTew Castle and Rye. It will be seen, on a comparison of Hilton's Pat- ent with the "Grant of Pescataway," that there is not the slightest conflict between them, as we have laid down the two conveyances. The Pescataway Grant expressly mentions and locates the Hilton Plantation and carefully excludes it f)'om the con- veyance. The two patents are thus entirely con- sistent with each other and stand well together. Both of them were executed by the same grantor, the Grand Council, some of whose most active and efficient members were then maintaining a consid- erable establishment on the Piscataqua, and were THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 37 entirely familiar with its topography, as the minute accuracy of the description in their patent clearly attests. JSTeither ignorance nor mistake can be rea- sonably^ imputed to the Grand Council, nor to eith- er set of gi-antees in the two river patents. We may be moi-ally certain that these patents did not conflict at all with each other, and that the Hilton Patent was not understood between the par- ties to it to cover any portion of the "Pescataway Grant." Nor do we believe that any such pretence would ever have been set up, but for the appear- ance upon the scene of a new Power — the govern- ment of Massachusetts Bay. The Great Charter of Massachusetts Bay had been granted by King Charles I. March 4, 1628-9 — antedating thus both of the Piscalaqua patents as well as Capt. Mason's Patent of the* Province of New Hampshire which had been issued Nov. 7, 1629. In the summer of 1630, Gov. John Win- throp with a considerable company of colonists, brought the Charter over to New England. It was, indeed, a grand resounding Charter, but the extent of territory embraced within it was almost ludi- crously disproportionate to this large document. Its sea-coast hardly stretched to forty miles; and more than the half of even that scanty line— to wit: from near Salem to the Merrimack — seems to have been the property of Capt. John Mason.* * Jenness' Orig. Docs. p. 75. Title of Robert Mason. 38 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. Very naturally therefore, did the Founders of the Ba}' Colony begin at once on their arrival to feel about for more land and to scan attentively the lan- guage of their Charter. On the south they found themselves hemmed in by theii* friends, the Ply- mouth colony; the west was a wilderness difficult of access. It was thus to the north that their hearts most earnestly yeai'ued. The same year of Winthrop's arrival, the Mass. colouy, it is said, vio- lently seized upon Mason's patent of Cape Anne, "stretching their bounds three miles to the North- wards of Merrimack River, and turned the servants and tennants of the said John Mason out of their possessions."* They next cast their eyes over the Piscataqua region, which they particularly coveted. "Because ye river o-f Pascataqua is very beneficall for plau- tacon," writes George Burdett in 1638, " having also an excellent harbour, w^ch may much pfit or anoy them in case of warre, therefore they (the Massachusetts) endeavour with all their skill &: might to obtain the comand thereof. "f A plausible pretext for the anuexation of the de- sired region w\as found in the somewhat ambiguous language of their Charter. By its terms they were granted "all the lands which be within the space of three English miles to the northward of the * Jeniiess' Orig. Docs. p. 75. Title of Robert Mason, t Id. p. ol. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 39 river, called Mei'rymack, or to the norward of any and evei-y part thereof." The Massachusetts at once contended with great ingenuity, that under these terms their northern boundary reached a par- allel of latitude drawn three miles above the most noi'therly point on the Merrimack river — a con- struction which would include Captain Mason's Patent of jSTew Hampshire, and all of Maine below Clajjboard island in Casco Bay. It is here to be repeated that the Charter of Mass. Bay passed the seals March 4, 1628-9; thus ante- dating Mason's Patent of I*^ew Hampshire as well as hot]} the Piscataqua river grants. If the Massa- chusetts construction of their Charter should pre- vail, then all of the patents on the river would be swept away; the whole of that I'cgion would fall by prior title into their hands and jurisdiction; and neithei' Mason, nor Hilton and his associates, nor the grantees of "Pescataway" could have of- i'ered auy effectual opposition. This ingenious interpretationof the Charter hav- ing been hit upon, there appeared as early as 1631 upon the banks of the Piscataqua, one Ccqjt. Thoin- as Wiggm, a stern Puritan and a confidential friend of Governor John Winthrop of Mass. Bay. We find Wiggin wi'iting from that place to Gov. Win- throp in Oct. 1631, persuading the latter to take re- venge on a party of Indians for a mui-der commit- ted on Walter Bagnall, called Great Wed, at Rich- 40 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. man's isle. There is an implication in this request, that jurisdiction over the offence was in Mass. Bay, although Richman's island lies almost as far north as Portland harbor. The governor, however, says Winthrop, "thought best to sit still awhile."* At this time (Oct. 1631) no special grant of the lands around Great Bay had been issued; the "grant and confirmation of Pescataway" being dated in Nov. 1631, in usual course would not reach NcAv England until the early spring of 1632. In 1632, however, upon the arrival of the new Patent of "Pescatawa}^," a collision occurred between Capt. Wiggin and Capt. Walter ISTeale, the lattei- acting in behalf of the Pescataway grantees. Hub- bard informs us, that Wiggin, being forbidden by Neale "to come upon a certain point of land, that lieth in the midway betwixt Dover and Exeter, Captain Wiggin intended to have defended his right by the sword, but it seems both the litigants had so much wit in their anger as to wave the bat- tle, each accounting himself to have done very manfully in what was threatened; so as in respect not of what did^ but what might have fjillen out, the place to this day retains the formidable name of Bloody Point."t Hubbard does not infoi'm us what and whose title it was, which Wiggin intended to defend, but * 1 Winthrop, 63. t Hubbard's Gen. Hist.,p 217. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 41 as at that time he had no interest whatever in the Hilton Patent, even though that Patent could be construed to cover Bloody Point, it seems clear that he could only have set up as against ISTeale that title, which, as we have seen, he had already asserted, and which he spent his whole after life in maintaining — the title of Mass. Bay under their gi-eat Charter of 1628. As the construction the Bay Colony put upon their charter would, if enfoi'ced, have sw^ept away the entire property of all the Piscataqua planters, It must have encountered a hot and detei'mined op- position from the whole river. The Massachusetts perceived that the Piscataqna planters were bitter- ly hostile to them in political and religious princi- ples, and would on that account be likely to receive efficient aid from the old country, in case of an open conflict. Again, they mnst have known that the real intention of the King was only to g'rant them as their northern boundary a strip of land three miles wide following the course of the Merrimack river. The strip or selvage of that breadth, was intended, we snppose, to protect the river from the artillery of any adjoining province — the range of artillery of that day being usually computed at three miles. The Privy Council, as the Massachusetts well knew, were inimical to the Bay Colony, and would seize with avidity upon the slightest transgression of their chartered limits or 42 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. corporate powers, as a ground for vacating the charter itself. In these difficulties, the Bay Magistrates deemed it prudent to break up and confuse, if |)ossible, the solid front of opposition, betoi'e making an open attack; and to that end they resolved to get into their own hands the entire Hilton Patent, and thus extinguish the hostihty of its present pi'o- prietors to their schemes and desires. Accordingly, after concerting the plan with Gov. Winthrop and his assistants Capt. Wiggin shortly after his quarrel with Capt. ^eale went out to Eng- land in 1632, and forming a company of "honest meyi^'' as Winthrop calls them, succeeded, with their aid, in purchasing from Hilton and his Bristol asso- ciates the entire Hilton Patent, at the price of £2150. The purchasers were Lord Say, Lord Brook, Sir Richard SaltoustalK Sir Ai-thur Hazle- rigg, Mr, Whiting and other men of Shi'ewsbui-y, all ot them Puritans and friends to Mass. Bay, who had been 'Syrit unto," we are informed, ""by the Gov- ernor and Magistrate of Massachusetts, who en- couraged them to purchase the said lands of the Bristol men, in respect they feared some ill neigh- borhood from them."* Capt. Wiggin, appointed manager for the new company, returned to iS^ew England Avith reinforce- ments and supplies, and a ^' godly minister," arriv- ing at Salem Oct. 10, 1(533. * N. H. Prov. Pap. 157. THE PI8CATAQUA PATENTS. 43 f As soon as he had entered into possession of the newly purchased territory, he took immediate steps, in accordance with the original understand- ing, to submit that territory to the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Early in the following month he wrote to Gov. Winthrop " that one of his people had stabbed another and desired he might be tried in the Bay, if the party died. The Governor an- swered, that if Pascataquack lay within their limits (as it was supposed) they would try him."'^" Before the next winter was passed, Capt. Wig- gin again wrote to the Governor of Massachusetts, offering jurisdiction over crimes committed at the river, to the Bay Colony. "The Governor," says Winthrop '^and divers of his assistants met and conferred about it, but did not think fit to try them here."t The fact is, the scheme to purchase the Hilton Patent and then turn it over to Mass. Bay, had for the present utterly failed. Wiggin found it impos- sible to deliver his teri-itory according to the bar- gain and understanding. Intense hostility against their design spi'ang up at once among the original Hilton Point planters, who were in occupation of the ground. Edward Hilton Avas himself a royalist and a churchman, and the planters brought over by him during the * 1 Wintlu-op, 116. t Td. loo. 44 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. period the patent was in his hands, were naturally of the same feather. These men had now taken up and improved the lands on Bloody Point and around the easterly side of Great Bay in consider- able numbers, though without any legal title to them whatever. But, as none of the patents of the Piscataqua country, not even that of Capt. Mason of the Province of New Hampshire, conferred any rights of government and jurisdiction, but were all ol them simply indentures or deeds of territory, it is obvious that there were no courts or tribunals on the land, liefore which these squatter rights could be called in question; and of course the tri- fling value of these little pi-operties would deter any resort to the King in Council. The squatters upon the Piscataqua thus found their possessory ti- tles practically unquestionable, so long as they kept aloof from Massachusetts. But on the contrary, if Massachusetts were permitted to stretch her boun- daries over the river, in her train would come or- ganized courts of Law, betore which land titles could be brought up for trial. This view must have been appalling to most of the planters. These squatter planters could produce in Court no instru- ments of title to their lands; nor had their posses- sion been long enough continued to raise a pre- scriptive title. What reasonable hope of protec- tion then could they place in a Massachusetts Court on the trial of a real action brought by the THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 45 favored proprietors of the Hilton Patent? In this emergency the planters, threatened by a common calamity, gathered together for resistance to Capt. Wiggin's designs, and with such vigor did they carry on the contest, that those designs were for a time baffled; and by a sort of petty revolution Wig- gin was deposed from his office as Governor, to which he had been appointed by the proprietors of the Patent, and the people set up an independent government among themselves, under the name of a Combination. In that year, 1637, Geoi-ge Burdet, a staunch churchman, succeeded AYiggin as Gov- ernor. In 1638, that inconsistent, unstable charac- ter, Capt. John Underbill, having been disfran- chised, brought under admonition and banished from Massachusetts, came to Dover and was cho- sen Governor over the Combination, upon the un- derstanding, no doubt, that his principles were hos- tile to the Bay. After Capt. Underbill had held his office about three years, however, his principles or interests in that matter underwent a change. Although a new Combination was draAvn up, dated Oct. 1640, and was signed by Underbill himself, the people soon discovered that he was plotting, after all, to bring the Piscataqua under the Mass. jurisdiction,'* and following the lead of Thomas Larkham, a conformist clergyman, they raised an:- other rebellion in the interest of their independence. * 1 Winlhrop, 27. 46 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. The quarrel, embittered by religious dissensions, waxed hot and came to open violence. Hanserd Knollys, who was the minister of the Underbill faction, fulminated a bull of excommunication against Larkham; and in return Larkham knocked off Knowles' hat. Captain Underbill and Knowles flew to arms, expecting help from the Bay, and "so marched out to meet Mr. Larkham, one carrying a Bible on a halberd for an ensign — Mr. Knowles ])eing armed with a pistol. When Mr. Larkham saw them thus jDrovided, he withdrew his party and went no farther, but sent down to Mr. Wil- liams, Governor of Strawberry Bank for assist- ance, who came up with a company of armed men, and beset Mr. Knowles' house, where Capt. Un- derbill was, kept a guard upon him night and day till they could call a court, and then, Mr. Williams sitting as judge, they found Underbill and his com- pany guilty of a riot and set great fines on them and ordered him and some others out of the Plan- tation."* During the long continuance of these broils and dissensions, Massachusetts still hesitated to seize violently upon the Piscataqua. They feared the opposition of the planters under the river patents, to which we have already referred. They dreaded the bitter hostility of the numerous persons who had been banished from the Bay on account of * Hubbard, 363. THE PISCATAQITA PATENTS. 47 their Aiitinomian principles, and taken refuge on the Piscataqua; they feared, perhaps, the vengeance of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and his grantees, whose territories in Maine would also be absorbed by the Mass. construction of their charter. But the Bay magistrates never permitted their claim over the Piscataqua to fall into oblivion. In 1636, for in- stance, Gov. Winthrop wrote to Dover, that if the latter dared to receive any persons that had been "cast out" from the Bay, it would be taken ill, and threatening them, that if such exiles were received, "they should survey their utmost limits and make use of them."* But now at last, in 1640, amidst the turmoils and bitter quarrels among the inhabitants, Massachu- setts saw her long awaited opportunity to spread her jurisdiction over the Piscataqua. The Compa- ny of Laconia had long since broken up; the grantees of Pescataway had nearly all of them withdrawn from turther interest in the country; Capt. John Mason, the patentee of New Hamp- shire, had died in 1635, leaving that Province to an infant grandson; and all fear of the royal inter- ference was dispelled amid the fast growing dis- sensions in the old country. Again the planters on the upper Piscataqua were, as we have seen, torn and paralyzed by civil and religious dissen- sions ; and those on the lower plantation, who since * 1 Winthrop, 276. 48 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. Mason's death had laid claim to the ownership of the lands on which they resided, though without any legal title, and now lived in terror of Mason's heir, even they, though antipodal in every senti- ment to the Bay Puritans, were inclined to seek pro- tection for their property from the strong ai-m of the Massaehnsetts. In this propitious juncture of affairs, Massachu- setts sent forward to the Piscataqua the famous Hugh Peters, with two others, 'Ho understand the minds of the people, to reconcile some differences between them and to prepare them."^ Peters spent a considerable time on the rivei*, and npon his return in the spring of 1641, reported to Gov. Winthrop, that the Piscataqua people were, in his own words, "ripe for our Government, as will ap- pear by the note I have sent you. They grone for Government and Gospel all over that side of the Country. Alas! poore bleeding soules."f The precise methods used in preparing the \)qo- ple foi- the Puritan annexation have never been fully disclosed. Edward Hilton's assent was pur- chased by a covenant from the Massachusetts, that his estate should be ever after exempt from county rates. J Gov. Francis Williams of the lower plan- tation was secured for the measure, writes Peters, * 2 AVinthi-op, 38. t 6 Mass. Hist. Col. (4th ser.) 108. X Mass. Archives, vol. 100, p. 133. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 49 but the manner is not revealed. The chief induce- ment, however, held out to the population at large, seems to have been the promise of the Bay Colo- ny, that they should --enjoy all such lawfuU liberties of fishing, planting felling timber as formerly they have enjoyed in the said ryver."* The genertil propositions having been settled upon, a committee was appointed on the part of the Piscataqua planters to come to au agreement with the agents of the Massachusetts uj^on all the various terms of the annexation. Such an agree- ment was soon ai'rived at, and thus at last the en- tire Piscataqua region passed in 1641, under the jurisdiction of Mass. Bay. The formalities adopted in perfecting the trans- action were, first to procure from the then proprie- tors an absolute conveyance to the Massachusetts Colony of the jurisdiction over the Hilton Patent. This conve3'ance was made June 14, 1641, and ex- ecuted by George Willis, gent, and others in be- half of the rest of the patentees ;t and was followed the next October by an Act of the Mass. Gen. Court, accepting and declaring "the ryver Pascat- aquack" to be within the jurisdiction of the Massa- chusetts. J It is now, in 1641, that we first hear of the * 1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 159. t See the Instrument, Appendix No. 3. J Appendix Jso. 4. 50 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. Strange distorted construction of the Hilton Patent, which ever afterwards seems to have prevailed. It will be remembered that the territor}^, really covered by the Hilton Patent, was, if oui- views are correct, only that small portion of the Piscat- aqua, extending from Dover Point to Quampegan falls and three miles back into the country. But such a narrow construction was by no means suf- ficient foi' Massachusetts, if the submission of that patent was to be relied on as a justification for their seizure of the entire river. It became nec- essary to seek some widely different construction from ours, in order to stretch the patent over the lands on the opposite side of the river down to its mouth. The Massachusetts and the patentees of the Hilton Patent easily found means to make such a construction in a slight ambiguity of its terms, to explain which we must invite a moment's careful attention to the topography of the country. The Piscataqua river, taking its rise from the Wakefield ponds, descends in a southeasterly course and passes Hilton's Point (now Dover Point) on the lower or easterly side. At this prominent neck it meets a large body of water coming down at ebb tide from the westward, and then the two flow on together to the ocean, about seven miles below. As one ascends this large western body of water from Dover I^eck, he reach- es, about a mile above it, a prominent Point, now THE PISOATAQITA PATENT^. 51 called Fox Point — so named, according to tradi- tion, from the circnmstance that, in olden times, when the conntrj-side was np for a fox hunt, it was the custom to beat over a considerable extent of the neighboring cover and drive the game out upon this sharp promontoiy, from whence, as a fox never takes the water, there was no escape. At Fox Point, the river turns sharp about, at an acute angle, and ascending in a southerly direc- tion expands into a lake, now called Great Bay, about four miles wide at its upper end. Great Bay is a tidal lake, not at all dependent upon the Piscataqua for its waters. At high tide, when this large basin is filled by the sea, the prospect over its pellucid surface, framed all ai'ound with green meadows and waving grain and noble woods, is truly enchanting. But when the tide is out, a vast bed of black ooze is exposed to view, traversed here and there by narrow canals, bearing the scan- ty waters of the several small sti'eams, which emp- ty into this great lagune. One of the largest of these streams, coming from the south and emptying into the upper extremity of this lagune, is now called Exeter river, and some five miles above its mouth are the Squamscott Falls Now the Hilton Patent, if we recall its terms, conveyed the Point itself, "with the south side of said river [Piscataqua] up to the falls of the rivei* and three miles into the mainland by all the breadth aforesaid." iyJi THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. Why might not the words, "the south side of said river," reasoned the Bay authorities, appropri- ately designate the line drawn from the mouth of the river up to Fox Point and thence around Lit- tle and Great Bays to Squamscott river, and thence up that river (now called Exeter river) to the falls?* Great Bay and Exeter river might be made to pass as the Piscataqua; and Squamscott falls would an- swer well enough for the falls referred to in the description. At all events there was no power on the river, as we have before stated, to dispute what ever construction the Massachusetts chose to put upon the instrument Accordingly, the construc- tion we have mentioned was adopted and enacted into a law by Mass. Gen. Court, in June 1(341, and made a part of the very instrument of submission, by which the Hilton Patent was put under theii" jurisdiction. The language of the preamble to that ccnven- tion,t was as follows: "Whereas some Lords, Knights, gentlemen, and others, did ]nn-chase of Mr. Edward Hilton and some merchants of Bristol, two patents, one called Wecohannet or Hilton's point, commonly called or known by the name of Dover or ]N^ortham, the other pattent, set forth by the name of the south part of the ryver of Pascata- quack; beginning at the sea-side or near thereabouts * See the Sketch Map . t See Appendix, No. 3. THE PISCATAQLTA PATENTS. DO & coming round the said land by the river unto the falls of Squamscott as more fully appears by the said grant, &e." Then follows a concession to the Mass. government, of jurisdiction over all the said territory, "Provided always," continues the instru- ment, "& it is hereby declared that one of the said patents, that is to say, that on the south side of the ryver of Pascataquack & in the other pattent one third part of the land with all improved land in the said pattent to the Lords and gentlemen & other owners shall be & remain unto them, their heirs and assigns forever as their proper right and as having true interest therein, saving the interest of jurisdiction to the Massachusetts." "And this honored Court of the Massachusetts hearby prom- ise to be helpful to the maintenance of the right of the Patentees in both the said Pattents in all the legal courses in any part of their jurisdiction."* * Apijendix, No. 3. The preamble, it will be noted, recites that the Lords, &c., had pui'chased ot Edward Hilton two patents, the one called Hilton's Point oi" Dover patent; the other "set forth by the name of the south part of the ryver Pascataquack, &c.'" Some of our ablest antiquari- ans have charged the Massachusetts with having designed by this phraseology to raise a false belief in the public mind, that the Hil- ton Point or Dover Patent was a separate and distinct instrument from that which conveyed the south side of the river, on which latter, about this time they conferred the name ot the Bloody Point Patent or more frequently, the Squamscott Patent. We think injustice has been done in this matter, from not attending with sufficient care to the meaning of the word Patent, as used in those days. That word was employed to designate the territory granted as well as the instrument of convey- 54 THE PISCATAQUA PATEXTS. Now, we enquire, does the Hilton grant purport to begin "at the sea-side or near thereabout," as the Gen. Court has enacted in 1641? Does it spec- ify the " Falls of Quamscott" as the upper limit of the grant? Does it describe the boundary as "coming round the said land by the river," as the Mass. authorities have declared? We find no such language nor any such meaning in the Hilton Patent. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether at the the time the Hilton Patent was granted, the name Piscataqua was ever applied by the English or the ance. Thus Dover Patent meant that jjortion of the lands (conveyed by the Hilton Patent lying on the Dover side of the river; so, Bloody Point or Squaniseott Patent designated the territory, con- strued to be covered by the Hilton Patent, which lay on the Squani- seott side of the river. Indeed the land embraced within the present town of Stratham was called Squamscott Patent, until the incorpora- tion of the town in 1715. (9 X. H. Prov. Pap. 778.) It was natural and convenient, when a Grand Council grant covered two distinct parcels of territory, that these parcels should take distinct names. The "Grant and Confirmation ot Pescataway,'' for instance, embrac- ing as it did lands on both sides ot the river, for convenience was split into two distinct portions in common parlance, and that portion which lay on the southerly side of the river went by the name of the Great House Patent or twenty thousand acre Patent. There is no de- sign in the preamble, above quoted, to convey a false impression that the titles to the Dover and the Squamscott Patents were founded upon two separate and distinct instruments of conveyance ; but, on the contrai'y, the preamble expressly recites that both these tracts were bought from Edward Hilton, who, as was well known, was proprietor, with his associates, of only one Patent, though about this time it took distinct names for the two divisions for convenience of designation. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 55 Indians to the Exeter Kiver, on which the Sqnam- scott falls are situated.* The Patent of ISTew Hampshire, for instance, issued to Mason in 1G29, applies the name Piscataqua to the main stream, which comes down over Quampegan falls. So also the *"■ Grant of Pescataway" in 1631 uses that term in the same sense. * The Indian name of our noble river was, as nearly as it can be expressed by English letters, Paskataquauke — or otherwise Puskdta- fpiayh — the last syllable being pronounced with a guttural sound and H forcible expulsion of the breath, not capable of representation by our letters, but closely resembling the sounds of the Gaelic or some of the Oriental tongues. This syllable quauke or quagh is clearly the Indian word auke signifying a place or locality — a word found scattered abundantly all over the Abenaki country, in combination Mith various descriptive prefixes. The prefix Pa-ska.ta, as the Indi- ans seem to divide the word, (with a strong accent upon the lastsvl- lable,) we have recently been led to believe signifies a branch, divi- sio7i, separaHon. Some fifteen years ago. as we are informed by Rev. Dr. Alonzo H. Quint ot Dover, there happened to be a small party encamped at Do- ver Point, one of whom was then an Indian undergraduate in col- lege, or recently graduated. Elder Samuel Sherburn, of Barrington, was there at the same time, engaged in the melancholy search for the body of his son, who had been lost oft" a gundaloxo at Boiling Rock. One day Elder S. asked the educated Indian the meaning of the name "Piscataqua." The Indian at once held up three extended fin- gers and said, "you see that? well, three rivers make one," referring of course to the fact that the two main branches (jf the Piscataqua and the Bellamy or Back river, all meet together at Dover Point. A few days after receiving this information from Dr. Quint, the writer chanced to meet on the steamboat that plies between the Shoals and Portsmouth, two Oldtown Indians on their return to the Penobscot. They were both men of middle age, apparently intelli- gent, and could converse, though with some difficulty, in English. On my enquiry of them as to the signification of "Piscataqua'' 56 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS, Looking again carefully at the Mass. legislative construction of the Hilton Patent, we are curi- ous to know what has become of the twenty-five square miles oi* thereabouts, really granted l)y that instrument, as we understand it. We find its en- tire rear boundaries carried away; nothing is left of the territory except what might pass under the two (which they pronounced Pa-skata-quauke,) their answer was prom2?t and unpremeditated. Holding up their hands and extending two or three fingers, just as had been done by the Indian at Do^-er Point, they said Pa-skata meant a branch or division of the river into two or more parts — the whole word Paskataquauke meaning a place where boats and canoes ascending the river together from its mouth were compelled to separate according to their several destina- tions. Since that interview, the writer has conversed, on the same subject, with another jjarty of Indians encamped for the summer at the Farragut House, Rye Beach. Their translation of the word Piscat- aqua was the same as above given. And that definition is also con- firmed by Thoreau, who informs us in his "JNIaine Woods '" on the authority of an Abnaki Indian, that Piscataquis, the name of a river in that State which empties into the Penobscot above Bangor, signi- fies "■branch of a river,'''' in the Abnaki dialect. It will be remembered that some of the permanent settlements of the Indians were at the falls of Squamscott, Piscassocke (Lamprey) and Shanhassick, (Oyster river,) the way to which lay up the tvesiem branch of the Piscataqua waters, and other settlements laj' at Nee- ineek-ivan-auke (my ivigioam j^lace), access to which was up the east- ern or main branch of the river. The water course to the Indian hab- itations at Cochecho falls and along Bellamy or Back river, lay on the north and the north-west sides of the . ame Hilton's Point. That Point was thus to the Indians the most important and most striking natural object on the river. From the convenience of access to this conspicuous promontory for all the river Indians, it must always, we think, have been the chosen scene for the gathering of all tlie tribes, for their po,wwows and their war-dances, and their green corn-dan- ces and their general assemblies for purposes of war or the chase. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 57 words "Hilton's Point" — at the utmost a few acres of barren ground, quite inadequate to the purposes of a trading and lumbering plantation such as Hil- ton intended to establish.* Another serious consequence of this construc- tion, if cari'ied out, would have been the confisca- tion of almost the entire peninsula on the south side of the river, granted in 1631 to the nine And it was also tho place where the Indians of the various villages on returning to their homes branched off from each other and pad- dled their canoes up the pellucid streams to their several wigwams. Whether the native tribes had any general name for the whole riv- er does not as yet appear. Pi'obably not, if we are to reason by analogy from their usual custom in similar cases. The word Pas- caf/iquauke designated the branching of the river at Dover Point, and if we may be permitted to go a little way further into these du- bious speculations, we infer from the Indian names above Dover Point that the branch of the great river particularly designated by that title was the westerly branch which reaches up to Fox Point and thence through Great Bay to Lamprey river. Our inference is drawn from the Indian names of these latter bodies of water. Great Bay was called by them Pasaiquack, and Lamprey river bore the name of Paacassocke, both ot which words are but slight modifica- tions of Pat^cataquauke. The easterly or main branch of the inver from Hilton Point to the Cochecho was called by them the Winnaka- hannet; above the Cochecho to the Great Falls it was named Ne- laichwannock. It was, we suppose, by the English that the word Piscataqua, ap- plied by the aborigines only to the branching of the stream at Do- ver Point, was first used to designate the entire river from its source in the Wakefield ponds to its mouth. * The Point must be carefully distinguished from the Neck. The former name as appears from Dover Records, we are informed by Dr. Quint, was always confined between the very end of the prom- ontory and a low huckleberry swamp, a short distance in the rear. 58 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. Laconia adventurers. The plantation at Little Harbor, all the buildings, lands and improvements at Great Island and Strawberry Bank, the result of large expenditures of money and ten years oS labor and hai'dship, would have passed into the hands of the pi-oprietors of the Hilton Patent, without the slightest compensation. The Mass. construction of that Patent was, however, never fully carried out, as we shall see in the sequel. The chief purpose of that constiuc- tion was to furnish the Bay Colony with such a pretext of jurisdiction over the ]N^ew Hamj)shire plantations, as, in combination with the ambiguous terms of their own chailer, might justify or excuse the advance of their northern limits to tht^ l);H!ksof the Piscataqua. A few preliminaries having then been arranged, such as conferences with the in- habitants and the j)rocurement of signatures to pe- titions for union w^ith the Massachusetts, the lattei- colony, in Oct. 1641, took all the south Piscataqua plantations into their government, and i-etained them for nearly fort}^ years, until, in 1679, ]N"ew Ilampshire was reclaimed from the Massachusetts by the King, and erected into a Royal Pi'ovince. On finally draughting the Statute of annexation, the question arose for determination, whether the Piscataqua should be taken into the Bay jurisdiction upon the voluntary suhmission of the planters and patentees of the Hilton Patent; THE PISOATAQUA PATENTS. 59 or whether jurisdiction over that region should be assumed, as being ivitJilii the Massachusetts hounds.^ Feehng, we conjecture, that their title to the river under the Hilton patent, just submitted to their jurisdiction, was at least questionable, if not clearly worthless, the sagacious governuient of the Bay resolved, now that opposition was dis- armed, to rest theii" right to the Piscataqua upon the vigor of their own charter. This position was highly advantageous for the Massachusetts, as it was already meditated to advance their chartered limits across the Piscataqua far north into the Province of Maine, upon the strength of that same construction of their charter. Accoi'dingly, the Act of Annexation, consummated Oct. 9, IG^tl, making no mention whatever of the Hilton Patent, nor of the sui'render of jurisdiction over it by its proprietors, nor of the voluntary submission of the people, though by these means only had the Mas- sachusetts got the control of the river, now, in the preamble, rests the Massachusetts title upon the sole and simple declaration, that the annexed terri- tory lay within the original chartered limits of the Bay Colony ;f and it is thereupon enacted 'Hhat from thenceforth the said people inhabiting there (on the rivei- Pascatiiquack) are and shall be ac- cepted and reputed under the Government of the * 2 Winthrop, 42. t Appendix, No. \. 60 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. Massachusetts as the rest of the inhabitants within the said jnrisdiction are."* N^ow that the jurisdiction of the Bay Colony had, in the way we have described, been securely extended over the long coveted Piscataqua, the Massachusetts had little or no further interest in the river patents, and no doubt would gladly have withdrawn from any fuither intermeddling in the matter. But difficulties and injustices of many sorts soon sprang up all over the annexed territo- ry, which long disturbed the quiet of the new Gov- * By the terms ot this statute ot annexation of Oct, 1641, certain pri\"ileges were guaranteed to the Piscataqua people, as an induce- ment, no doubt, to their yielding to Mass. jurisdiction. One of these was that "the inhabitants there are allowed to send two deputies from the whole ryver to the Court at Boston." This article was one of prime importance to the Piscataqua people, and flattered them with the hope that under its provisions they were really to secure a representation in the Gen. Court at Boston. This hope proved quite delusive as to the planters of the lower Piscataqua. The Act of Un- ion undoubtedly granted them a right to send a deputy to General Court, but the laws of Massachusetts, it was found, rejected all dep- uties except freemen of their colony and members of the Congrega- tional church in good standing. Now, as there was not tor some years after the annexation any congregational church gathered "in a church way"' at Strawberry Bank or Great Island, there were no suitable deputies to be found on the lower river. (1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 167.) Those benighted people succeeded in finding among them "a godly man" from Massachusetts, named James Parker, and him they deputed to Gen. Court in 1642 and 1643. In 1644, they sent Mr. Stephen Winthrop ; but with the exception of these three years, no deputy came from the lower Piscataqua until the year 1653 (Id. 367) ; by which time the control ol that region had fallen entirely and absolutely into the hands of the Puritan friends of Massachusets. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 61 ernment. Only a slight outline of these feuds and contentions, however, will the general subject oi this paper permit us to present here. The inhabitants of Bloody Point in particular, who had formerly crossed the rivei" from Dover, as before stated, now found themselves in danger of being stripped of their farms. Under the Mass. contract with the owners of the Hilton or Squam- scott patent, the latter's title to the whole of these lands was acknowledged and warranted by Act of Gen. Court, and more than this, upon the laying out of the limits of Dover in 16^2, it would seem that the whole of Bloody Point was excluded out of Dover township, so that these now isolated planters had neither title to their farms, nor the protection of any organized town govei'ument, nor any rights in the town common lands. In these straits they applied earnestly to the General Court for relief, and the latter, whose favor to the propri- etors of the Squamscott Patent was fast fading away, granted their prayer, and in 1643, an Act was passed, that "all the marsh and meadow grounds lying against the great bay or Strawber- ry Bank side shall belong to the town of Dover, together with 400 acres of upland ground adjoin- ing or lying nere to the said meadow."'^ This Act was passed without the consent and against the protests of the proprietors of the Hilton Patent.f * 1 N. II, Prov. Pap. p. 172. t Id. 158. 62 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. The following year (1644) the Mass. Gen. Court granted to the township of Dover the entire neck of land, known as Bloody Point, bounded on the southward by a line drawn from Canney's creek to Hogstie Cove.* (See Sketch Map.) This latter grant, like the former, was made, it would seem, in disregard of the rights of the owners of the Hil- ton Patent, cowards whom, now that the jui'isdic- tion of Massachusetts had become firmly fixed over the Piscataqua, the friendship of the latter had sensibly cooled. So, too, the inhabitants of Strawberry Bank, though by the Act of 1641 all their estates were liable to seizure by the proprietors of the Hilton, or then more generally called Squamscott Patent, manfully struggled against that Patent and defied Capt. Wiggins 'Ho bring his Pattent to this pres- ent Court. "t And some of the Dover people, even after the considerable concessions above mentioned had been made them, maintained a hostile spirit to the Hilton Patent, as it had been construed, declar- ing in their Petition of 1654, that this "Patent wee conceive, (under favor) will be made voyde if it be well looked into. "J Meantime, in the twenty years and upwards since the Puritan Lords and gentry of Shrewsbury had * 1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 175. t Id. 207. t Id 213. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 63 purchased the Hilton Patent for the convenience of Mass, Bay, its ownership had in various ways passed mostly into the hands of other proprietors, some of whom were by no means friendly to that colony. The property had been originally divided into twenty-five shares of one hundred pounds each, which shares passed from hand to hand by bills ot sale, many of which are still to be found on record. At the period to which we have now arrived, from 1650 to 1656, the Hilton Patent had thus come to he largely owned in various proportions by a con- siderable number of N^ew England persons, among whom were the Quaker, ISTicholas Shapleigh, Ed- ward Colcord, a man subsequently convicted by the Massachusetts "of many notable misdemeanors and crimes,"* and others perhaps of similar stripe. On the other hand, the lower plantation on the Piscataqua had, since 16-11, undergone a complete transformation, civil and religious. A party of strict Puritans had, by the aid of the Massachu- setts, gotten possession of that plantation, and un- der the system of the Bay Colony were enabled to ]3erpetuate theii* power at their own pleasure, and to allot among themselves — some eight or ten in number — nearl}^ all the valuable common lands within their limits. If we may trust the language of a petition to the King made in 1665, by some of the non-freemen of Portsmouth, "five or six of * 1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 238. 64 THE PISCATAQUA PATE:N^TS. the ritchest men of this parish ruled, swaied and ordered all offices both civil & military at their pleasure." These men, continues the petition, "have kept us under hard servitude, and denyed us in our publique meeting the Common prayer Sacramts and decent burial of the dead," "and not only so, but have also denied us the benefit of free- men ^ ^ and likewise at the election of offi- cers, the aforesaid party * * have always kept themselves in offices for the manageing of the gifts of lands & setling them * * and have engrossed the greatest part of the lands within the precincts and limits of this plantation into their own hands, and other honest men, that have been here a con- siderable time have no lands at all given to them."'" In this posture of affairs, it was not to be ex- pected that the shareholders of the Hilton Patent should receive any further special favor from Mas- sachusetts, as against the Piscataqua settlements. For a considerable time, indeed, the General Court declined, though urgently petitioned, even to order a partition of the Patent, but at last, in 1655, the Court partially yielded and appointed a Committee "to make a just division of the (patent) of Squam- scott only & that which hath reference to Dover be resjnted untill another time."t The Report of this Committee,J made the fol- * Jenness' Orig. Does. rel. to N. Hamj). p. 48, t 1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 217. t Id. 221. THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 65 lowing year, in view, no donbt, of the impolicy if not impossibility of making a partition of all the territory declared to be within the Patent by the Act of 1641, proceeds npon the idea of effecting a compromise among the now numerous and discor- dant interests. In the preamble, the Committee first lay down the extent of territory to be divided. They do not pretend to quote the exact language of the Pat- ent, but content themselves with putting their own construction upon it. "TVhen we came to peruse the Pattent," they say, "we found it to extend for the length of it from the lower part of the river Pascataquack on the south side of said river unto the falls of said I'iver at Exeter and for breadth along the said river 3 miles from the falls of the head-line for the breadth of it." The last clause of this description is, as it stands, uttci-ly unintelligible. The obscurity seems to have been caused by the negligence of the trans- <-i'iber of the Report. It so happened that in our reseai-chcs among the original Mass. Records, we came upon another report of the Partition Com- mittee made about a week before the Report final- ly adopted. As this first Report, not having been acted upon, was not printed among the Mass. Rec- ords, it has escaped the notice of our antiquaries. The preamble to the first Report,* which was obvi- * The most striking ditFerence between these two Reports consists 66 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. oiisly intended to be copied into the second, sup- plies the words (here printed in itaUcs) which are necessary to give that second Report a meaning. Its language is this: "when we came to peruse the patent, we found itt to extend for the length of itt from the lower pait of the river Pascataquack on the south side of the said river unto the falls of said river at Exeter; and for breadth along the said river three viiles into tlie land, upon ii^Mch wee measured three miles from the falls for the Head Lyne for the breadth of itt."* On comparing the preamble to this final Report (as corrected) with that of the Act of Submission of 1641, we find a material variance between them. By the former, the Hilton patent only reached down to the lower part of the river, while by the Act of Submission it is declared to begin ''at the sea-side or thereabouts P In their Report, the Com- mittee fix upon Trolling rock as the lower bounda- ry of the patent on the river, and in this easy and arbitrary manner, the entire settlements below Boiling Rock were excluded from the patent. in this, that by the fii"st nothing whatever is allowed out of the Patent to the Dover people or to the planters upon Bloody Point, though considex-able tracts had been granted them in 1643 and lG-44 by Act of Gen Court. We sup^wse it vv^as this strange or crafty omission which roused the people of Dover and Bloody Point (then a part of Dover) to active resistance to the adoption of the Commit- tee's first Report ; and led to the amended Report, which was finally approved. * 3 Mass. Archives, 452. THE PISOATAQUA PATENTS. 67 The committee, in their final Report, al8o except out of the patent all the extensive lands grant- ed to and incorporated with Dover b}' the Mass. Gen. Conrt, together with a hundred and filty acres added; and they also restrain the limits of the patent along the easterly part of Great Bay to a depth of one and a half miles into the land, instead of the three miles allowed by the Act of 164:1; on the gronnd, they say, that "the land was so narrow to the seaward, that we can allow no more according to the intent of the Patent as we understand it." It seems plain that the Commit- tee in making their partition, acted and assumed to act not as judicial officers, but rather in a spirit of compromise, in the hope of composing the long- standing dissensions among the Piscataqua planters. Their scheme was to satisfy as far as possible, or at least to appease all the conflicting interests in the Squamscott territory. To the lower plantation they granted all the land below Boiling Rock; to Dover they confirmed the territory on Bloody Point and around Great Bay, which had been granted to the town in previous years; to the pro- prietors of the Hilton or Squamscott Patent they reserved only the remainder, which they then pro- ceeded to divide up among the three classes oi* ranks of these proprietors in the general manner, as we understand the Report, designated upon the accompanying Sketch Map. The portion colored 68 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. upon the map in yelloio was assigned to the "Shrewsbury men;" that in hhie was laid off to Capt. Thomas Wiggin and his partners;* that in red, which had long since been granted by Massa- chusetts to Dover, was confirmed to that township, and that colored green was allotted to Gai'diner, Lake, and their partners.f The partition thus made of the Hilton or Squam- * It is curious to notice, on comparing the northern boundary of Capt. Wiggiu's portion with the southerly bound ot the "Pescataway Grant," how nearly, if not precisely, they correspond. The Great Bay would, of course, constitute the natural northern bound of the second division granted to Wiggin and his partners, and it isdifiieult to understand why the committee adopted the limit laid down in their Report, unless they were acquainted with the bounds of the Pescata- way Grant, and desired to keep the Captain's own lands out ot harm's way against any contingencies. t The various localities marked upon our sketch map, indispensa- ble to any clear understanding of our subject, have been ascertained from documents, records, statutes, &c. with as much of care and pains as the dilHculty of the research required. Canney\s Creek or Cove (erroneously called Kinges Creek in the printed Report of partition) lay on the Long Reach ot the Piscataqua, about half a mile above Boiling rock, and next below the lower bound ot the ancient Rawlins favui, still in possession of that family. Its exact location appears from the terms of the grant made by Ports- mouth in 1661, to Capt. Brian Pendleton of a tract of 240 acres of land "next to James Rawlins," "which takes its beginning," says the record, "at Kenney'scove and runs down by the riverside 80 rods to Pyne cove and thence into the woods 480 rods to the edge of the Pitch pine plain upon a W. S. W. Lyne." (1 Ports. Rec. p. 77.) The several grants made about the same time to other persons, of all the remaining lands down the river to Boiling Rock, establish the dis- tance of Canuey's cove above that prominent land mark. The rea- son why this little cove was selected as the lower boundary of Bloody Point was, we conjecture, that it just embi-aced the land of James SKETCH MAP B^S€i?tT^^^^^- ;-^p; p; I Isles^f Sholes W ^'zMUes /a fijt Inch . THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 69 scott Patent in 1656, as we. have described it, was accepted as final so lar as it related to the two por- tions set oft' to the "Shrewsbnry men" and to Cap- tain AViggin — those colored on the map in blue and in yellow. As to these portions there had nevei" existed any conflicting title, except that of Rawlings, an eai'ly and influential Dover man, whose farm had the cove for its lower boundary. ''Hogstye Cove''' is ascertained from the terms of a survey made by Portsmouth in 1695. Mr. George Snell and Willian) Vaughan, the surveyors, "run the line," they report, "from Canney's Cove in the longe rech to Hoggstye cove at the mouth of ye great Bay, and from the middle of the mouth of ye one cove to the middle of ye mouth of 3'e other is West and by South and East & by North and strikes Mr. William Furber's Barne." (1 Ports. Rec, p. 330.) Welshman's Cove on the Little Bay is still known as Welsh Cove among the ancient families in the vicinity. The entire neck of land lying above the line di'awn from Canney's Creek to Hogstye Cove was originally called, trom the circumstan- ces of the quarrel between Captain Wiggin and Neale, before re- fer-red to, Bloody Point — a name still retained by a projection into the I'iver nearly opposite Dover Point. '' Cotter ilTs DelighC' was a location at the extreme south-east cor- ner ol Great Bay near the mouth of Winnicot river, or perhaps Packer's creek. (1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 208, 222. 1 Ports. Rec. Anno 1666.) We have been unable to discover the origin or meaning of this name. The site of Ccqjtain Chamijernoicnc's house upon the magnificent farm of the late Col. Joshua W. Peirce at Greenland, is still pomted out to the delighted antiquary. Here dwelt for many years, in some- thing of antique breadth and state, that relative and almost compan- ion of Rawleigh and Gilbert ; that noblest born and bred of all New Hampshire's first planters. Grand old English oaks, planted, as tradition has it, by the Cap- tain's own hands, still lift their brave vigorous heads over the fertile meadows — ti'ue Heme's oaks, we exclaimed at the fix'st glance — 70 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. John Mason and his heirs under his patent of New Hampshire — a title, which, in the then political con- dition of England under Cromwell, hardly amount- ed to a cloud. The remainder of the Hilton or Squamscott pat- ent, as laid down by the Committee, lay wholly within the Pescataway Grant.* But though the unique in New Hampshire — a scene as beautiful as that from AVind- sor castle over Datchet Mead. The ancient name, Samhj Point, is retained to the present day. Not far from this Point is still discernible the cellar of the famous Squamscott house. Capt. Thomas Wiggin, so often referred to in these pages, as the constant friend of Mass. Bay, erected this house about 1650, and here he died in 1667. For fourteen years he had held the high office of Assistant to the Governor of Mass. Bay ; the only Piscataqua man. we believe, ever chosen to that position. Having, in 1651, purchased of Thomas Lake a large interest in the Squam- scott Patent, there was alloted to him and his partners, (who subse- quently released their interests to him,) a territory three miles square, along Exeter river, now embraced in the town of Stratham In close proximity to the "Squamscott House," in a field which slopes north towards the Bay, and almost upon the northern boundary of his land, are buried the bodies of that grim, sturdy Puritan and several generations of his family. The present owner of this burial ground, a lineal descendant of Capt. Thomas, conducted us to the cemetery. Headstones, footstoues, inscriptions, were all gone. Great maples and oaks were growing over the ancient Oocfs acre; dead leaves rus- tled along the weird and shadowy ground. As the Puritan had in his life resembled Joshua, the son of Nun, who lead the children of Israel into a land flowing with milk and honey, so, like Joshua was he fitly buried "in the border of his inheritance, in Timmath-serah, on the north side of the hill of Gaash." * This latter grant was still held as the cheiished property of the town of Portsmouth. Even so late, for instance, as 1660, Ports- mouth appointed Commissioners to run out the line between that town and Hampton, "always provided," says the record, "that not THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. 71 owners of the Pescataway or Great House Patent had, as we have argued, a superior title to the whole peninsula, embraced within their limits, yet in the present posture of affairs, now that all the land below Boiling Rock was reserved to them by the Committee for Partition, it was deemed better by John and Richard Cutt, Capt- Brian Pendleton, Richard Martyn, Joshua Moodey and the few oth- ers who then ruled the lower plantation under the Massachusetts, to negociate peaceably for the pur- chase of the small remainder of land, left to the Squamscott proprietors, than to undertake a proba- bly fruitless appeal to the Courts of Law. Having resolved on this course, the above named gentlemen so managed the affair, that in a few years they themselves became owners of nearly the entire tract. In 1658, oi" before that year, the selectmen of Portsmouth bought of Thomas Lake the entire tract of land between Kenney's creek and Boiling Rock, on the river, and running back nearly a mile and a half into the land "to the edge of the pitch pine plain upon a W. S. W. Lyne." The consid- any of the lauds belonging to the Great House Patent be granted to be in the township of Hampton by tliose empowei'ed by us.'' (1 Ports. Rec, p. 66.) The Great House Patent seems to have been the familiar title of the old "grant and confirmation of Pescataway," so far as it applied to the southerly side of the river. This southerly section of the Pescataway Grant appears also to have been some- times entitled the "Twenty Thousand acre patent." (1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 83-96.) 72 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. eration ^^a^'cZ hy the town was £'50. In 16G1 this large tract was divided and laid out among Capt. Brian Pendleton and his associates;* 240 acres each to Capt. Pendleton and John Cutt, 80 acres to Joshua Moodey, and52 acres to Richard Martyn. The large and valnable tract stretching from Winnicut Kiver along Great Bay to Sandy Point seems to have lain unappropriated until 1(369, at which time the town, having determined to assert their own superior title over it against the Squam- scott patentees, granted two-thirds of the entire tract to John Cutt, Nathaniel Freyer, Capt. James Pendleton and others, "provided," continues the Record, "the parties abovesaid maintain and de- fend the same in the towne's behalf at their, the aforesaid parties owne proper cost and charge against any that shall oppose — further that the town grants and confirms unto Mr. Andrew Wiggin the right and title to his land, as was granted to him by Capt. Lake and Capt. Waldron with the priviledges of our town, provided wee recover the land aforesd by law."t A few grants to private individuals seem also to have been made by Lake and Waldron out of their portion of the Squam- scott Patent, but on quite nominal considerations. In these several ways, the pretended claim of the Hilton Point proprietors to any of the land * 1 Ports. Rec. p. 61-68-77. t Id. p. 135. THE PISCATAQUA PATEJ^'TS. 73 covered by the " Grant of Pescataway," or " Great House Patent," was at last extinguished, or repudi- ated, and nearly the whole of that territory (ex- cept what remained to Dover) fell into the hands of a knot of men at Portsmouth, as rapacious as they were harsh and bigoted. As to the " Dover Patent,^'' or northerly portion of the Hilton Patent, as it was construed by Mas- sachusetts, we do not find that any steps were ever taken to lay out and bound the land covered by it, but the township of Dover having been partly bounded out in 1642, shortly after the union of the Piscataqua to Massachusetts, received in 1656, con- cui-rently with the partition of Squamscott, a quit claim from the planters of all their interest in Do- ver, with a slight reservation of about 16 acres.^ The only substantial advantage derived from the Mass. construction of the Hilton Patent was taken by the Massachusetts themselves. Jurisdiction over the Piscataqua had been obtained by the skil- ful use of that instrument, and when once got, it was firmly kept, after that instrument had disap- peared. But this usurpation, of which it has been said " a more unjust and tyrannical act never was perpetrated on this continent,"t was not destined to endure for many years. The people of the low- er Piscataqua were in spirit deadly hostile to the * 1 N, H. Prov. Pap. 223. t Potter's Hist, of Manchester, p. 116. 74 THE PISCATAQUA PATENTS. Mass. Bay. Shortly after the annexation, a few of the Pnritan sort and faith had crept into the country, and by the aid of the Bay had seized on the offices and places of power and approjjriated to themselves nearly all the common lands; but the original planters grew daily more and more in- censed. In 1651, the inhabitants of Strawberi-y Bank oj^enly rebelled and attempted to withdraw their subjection to the Boston govei-nment.'^ Bat this outbreak was suppressed. Another effort was. made to the same purpose on the arrival of the Royal Commissioners in 1664, though without per- manent success. But in 1679, the Massachusetts usurpation over the Piscataqua was terminated by the erection of 'New Hampshire into a Koyal Prov- ince. Thus did the last fruits of the Hilton Patent de- cay and perish ; thus were the angry broils of foi'ty years composed. The proprietors of the Patent had after all profited little or nothing by the at- tempted appropriation of Piscataqua lands; the Massachusetts were in the end compelled to dis- gorge the purloined jurisdiction they had so un- easily obtained and kept, and thus retributive jus- tice was at last meted out to all the actors in the transaction. In conclusion and recapitulation ot the views presented in this monograph, we have endeavored * 1 N. H. Prov. Pap. 195. THK PrsCATAQUA PATENTS. 75 to show, that it was the desire of Mass. Bay to in- clude the Piscataqua region within her limits and to secure there a good neighborhood of " honest men," which led her magistrates to effect, through their friend Capt. Thomas Wiggin, in 1633, a pur- chase and transfer of the Hilton Point Patent to the Puritan Lords and gentlemen of Shrewsbuiy; whose successors in Kiil, in accordance, we sup- pose, with the original understanding, made a full submission of the Patent to Mass. jurisdiction. At the same time, in furtherance of the same general design, a sUitutory construction was put upon the Patent, by which it was split into two distinct por- tions, and the lower or Squampscott portion was violently stretched so as to cover the whole south ern bank of the river from Squamscott falls lo its mouth. The Hilton Patent having thus served its politi- cal and religious purpose, was never fully enforced. Large portions of its territory were granted to Do- ver and a still larger part was retained by Straw- berry Bank, and in the conclusion of the whole matter, the Squamscott patentees took but trifling advantage from the distorted misconstruction of their grant. The long controversy was no doubt of trifling importance, but whoe\'er will study it attentively will see displayed such a stubborn conflict between patentee and planter; such a hot contention be- 76 THPJ PISCJATAQUA 3»ATENTS. tween Royalist and Roiindhead ; such fierce hatred between Pnritan and Churchman; and at all times such political sagacity and vigor of thought, as make the story of the Hilton Point Patent (only a brief outline of which we have sketched) the most instructive if not entertaining in the early annals of New Hampshire. The real histoiy ot New Hampshire during the first half century of its existence has not yet been written. Until a very recent date, the only orig- inal materials for such a history, available to our students, wei'c the scanty relics of our town and county records, and a few documents preserved among the Archives of Massachusetts or in pri- vate hands together with some casual hints and prejudiced notices of the Piscataqua to be found among the historians oT Plymouth and the Bay. Dr. Belknap's narrative of this early period, found- ed upon materials such as these — the only ones, howevei", at his command — could at best have drawn a mere outline of its history; and now it turns out that even the outline of our early history made by that elegant historian is utterly mistaken and distorted. The annals of ISTew Hampshire from the time of its fii'st planting down to its erection into a royal province, in 1679, require to be entirely I'cvvritten. A great mass of new mate- rials for that purpose has lately been gathered to- gether by our nntiquai'ians, and now await only the THE PISOATAQITA PATENTS. 77 kindling" pen of an impartial historian to shed a clear and satisfoctoiy light over the tortuons ways and the dark mysteries of onr early history. APPENDIX. The Hilton or Squatnscott Patent. To all X'riau People to whorae these pi-esents shall come, (Ireet- ing, [alter the usual recital oi the great grant by King James in 1620,] Now know yee that the said President and Councell by Vii-tue & Authoi-ity of his ^Nlajties said Letters Pattents, and tor and in consid- eracon that Edward Hilton & his Associates hath already at his and their owne proper costs and charges transported sundry servants to plant in New England aforesaid at a place there called by the natives Wecanacohunt otherwise Hilton's point lying some two leagues from the mouth of the River Paskataquack in New England aforesaid where they have already Built some houses, and plantetl Corne, And for that he doth further intend by Gods Divine Assistance, to transport thither more people and cattle, to the good increase and advan(^emt & for the better settling and strengthing of their plantacon as also that they may be the better encouraged to proceed insoe pious a work will 'h may Especially tend to the prtJijagaeon of Religion and to the Great increase of Trade to his Majties Realmes and Dominions, and the advancement ot publique plantac(m. Have given granted En- feofied and Confirmed, and by ihis their p'sent writing doe fully clear- ly and absolutelj- give grant enfeoflfe and Gonfirmo unto the said Ed- ward HiltDU his heires and assignes for ever, all that part of the Riv- er Pascatacjuack called or known by the name of Wecanacohunt or Hilton's Point with the south side of the said River, up to tlie ffall of 80 appe:n^dix. the River. :uid three miles into the Maine Land by all the breadth aforesaid. Together with all the Shoares Creeks Bays Harbors and Coasts; alongst the sea within the limitts and Bounds aforesaid with the woods and Islands next adjoyneing to the said Lands, not being already granted by the said Councell unto any other jjerson or per- sons together alsoe with all the Lands Rivers Mines minerallsof what kinde or nature soever, woods Quarries, Marshes, Water's, Lakes ffishings, Huntings, Hawkings, ffowlings, Comodities Emolumls and hereditaments whatsoever withall and singular their and every of their Appts in or within the limitts or bounds aforesaid, or to the said Lands lying within the same limitts or Bounds belonging or in any wise appertaining. To have and to hold, all and singular the said Lands and p'mises, with all and singular the woods Quarries Mai'shes, Waters, Rivers, Lalies, fiishings, flfowlings, Hawkings, Huntings, Mynes, IMineralls of wliat kynde or nature soever, privi- ledges, Rights Jurisdieons Libbertyes Royalties and all other proffits Comodities Emoluments and hereditaments whatsoever, before in and by these p'sents given and granted, or herein meant intenconed or intended to be hereby given t)r granted, with their and every of their appts and e\'ery part and parcell there of (Except before Except- ed) unto the said Edward Hilton his heires. Associates and Assignes forever to the onely proper use and behoofe of the said Edward Hil- ton his heires Associates & Assignes for ever, yielding and paying unto our Soveraigne Lord the King one ffifth part of Gold and Silver Oares, and another ffifth part to the Councell aforesaid and their suc- cessoi's to be holden of the said Councell and their successors by the rent hereafter in these p'sents Reserved, yielding and paying there- for yearly for ever unto the said Councell their successors or Assignes for every hundred Acres of the saiti Land in use the sume of twelve pence of Lawfull money of England into the hanils of the Rent gath- erer for the time being of the said Councell yr successors or Assignes for all services whatsoever, And the said Councell for the affaires of Nevi' England in America aforesaid, Doe by these p'sents nominate Depute, Authorize appoint and in their place and stead put William Blackston of New England in America aforesaid clerk William Jef- fries and Thomas Lewis of the same place Gent and either or any of them Joyntly or severally to be their true and Lawfull Attorny or Attorneys and in their name and stead to enter into the said part or porcon of Land, and other the p'mises with the appts by these p'sents APPENDIX. 81 Given and granted or into some part theveof in the name of the whole, and peaceable & quiett possession and seisin thereof for them to take and the same soe had and tai