Through the first century of English habitation in New Hampshire, the other Quaker Monthly Meeting was at Hampton, and like Dover, it soon had satellite worship groups before coalescing in today’s Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Its full history is one that needs to be told. I’d like to know more about how it and Dover interacted.

Its Hussey family was one that came to be part of Dover Meeting. The family had two well-know weddings that occurred in the present Dover meetinghouse – May 3, 1769, of Samuel Hussey and Mercy Evans, and October 3, 1804, of their daughter Abigail to John Whittier of Haverhill, Massachusetts – another of Hampton/Amesbury’s Preparative Meetings.

Dover’s Hussey farm was on Baer Road in today’s Rollinsford but Somersworth at the time of the second wedding. It’s some beautiful farming country.

John and Abigail Hussey Whittier became the parents of the influential poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, who was a frequent visitor to Dover Friends. Her portrait, reproduced in my recent post about the Whittiers, hangs above the stairway from the main floor to the lower level of the meetinghouse.

The Hussey family has a significant presence in New England Quaker history. Settler Christopher Hussey, described as the most prominent man in early Hampton, was one of the purchasers of Nantucket Island in 1659, where son Stephen eventually moved as it became a Friends stronghold.

Though Christopher was not a Quaker, his other son, John, was severely fined and threatened as an early Quaker, as Elizabeth Hooton related from her American visits. He was a Friends minister, married Elizabeth Perkins from another distinctive Hampton Quaker family, and they had 17 children, mostly daughters, before migrating as Friends to New Castle, Delaware, in 1688 or 1692.

There is argument whether John and Rebecca Hussey’s son Richard (1660-1733) remained behind and moved to Dover or whether it was an immigrant. Either way, a Richard Hussey who was a weaver moved to Dover by 1691, wed Jane Canney, and had a dozen children. Among them was Joseph (1699-1762), who then married Elizabeth Robinson and sired Samuel Hussey (1714-1814), leading to the Whittier connection.

Some of the Nantucket line, however, reconnects in Berwick, Maine, complicating the picture, especially when a Hussey marries another Hussey.

Stephen Hussey’s second son, Bechelder, moved from Nantucket to Biddeford, Maine, which leads to son Stephen, who had 12 children, the last three born in Berwick.

More prominent among the Berwick Quakers were the children of Ebenezer Hussey, Stephen’s fifth son, who wed Abigail Hale.

What is known is that in 1770, James Hussey – possibly Richard and Jane’s grandson or great-grandson – moved from Dover to North Berwick. His son William (1800-1870) created an efficient plow in the 1830s.

The enterprise drew on Quaker connections, beginning with Joseph David Hoag’s relocation from Charlotte, Vermont, to North Berwick in 1825. The son of famed Friends minister Joseph Hoag, he brought with him a cast-iron plow created by blacksmith Jethro Wood of Scipio, New York, another Quaker. Wood’s mother, incidentally, was Diannah Hussey, a niece of Ann Starbuck on Nantucket.

Got all that? Just go with the fact it was a potent mix.

As a farmer, William Hussey felt that the plow’s moldboard was much too short. After pouring lead to make a rough pattern of a longer board, he had castings made at a foundry in Newmarket, New Hampshire. The results were carted by horses to North Berwick, where skilled carpenter Henry Estes made the wooden framework. William then traveled among his farmer friends to sell the plows.

With the distinctive size and shape of the furrow board, the plow could be pulled by less power than its rivals. As the company’s business envelopes proclaimed, “If I don’t hold easy, draw lightly, and turn a flat furrow, after five days return me.”

In his later years, William Hussey ran the N. Hobbs Inn at Bracey’s corner, but as a staunch temperance advocate, he refused to sell liquor. He was also an ardent abolitionist.

That led his son, Timothy Buffum Hussey (1831-1913), to establish the T.B. Hussey Plow Company, now operating as Hussey Seating and the oldest business in Maine.

The company’s early headquarters.

After graduating from Friends School in Providence and teaching there, his son, Timothy Buffum Hussey (1831-1913), took over the business in 1855. With his younger brother, William Penn Hussey, he also operated a foundry nearby.

After the American Civil War, he bought up cannons and melted them down in the foundry to make plows – wryly upholding the swords-into-plowshares prophecy of the book of Isaiah.

After an 1895 fire nearly destroyed the firm, the Husseys refocused on building steel products including fire escapes and bridge supports. I like to think that the shift in focus came to their mind during Quaker Meeting.

Through much of this, Berwick was an independent Monthly Meeting – but it was still part of Dover Quarter and, thus, my history. Besides, when Berwick was laid down as a Meeting, its remaining members, including Husseys, once again were in Dover’s rolls.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in an iBook edition at the Apple Store.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.

I’ve long been fascinated by what I’ve come to call the “shadow Meeting” – people who continued to worship as Quakers and uphold many of the values after being “read out of Meeting” for violating its discipline, usually over marriage procedures.

It’s a fact for several generations of my own ancestry in North Carolina.

One place I see it in Dover is with the Varneys.

The patriarch of this prolific Quaker line was Humphrey Varney (1636-1714), a brickmaker who moved to Dover from Ipswich, Massachusetts. He married Sarah Starbuck, widow of Joseph Austin, as her second husband.

After the Dover’s disastrous massacre, their son, Ebenezer Varney (1664-1753), married Mary Otis after her return from captivity, and their son Peter (1666-1732) wed Elizabeth Evans.

After that, well, it seems the Varneys married into all of the other Dover Friends families. Many of them also spread, most notably across Maine.

The family made its imprint on Dover, though I’m not sure how many remained Friends.

Jesse Varney was a morocco shoemaker when his store was consumed in flames in December 1810.

By 1837, Varney’s Block stood at Lower Square on Central Avenue near Washington Street. In 1844, a bigger building was erected.

In 1847, 99-year-old Eunice Varney died. She was the oldest resident and a member of the Society of Friends.

There’s Varney Road, extending Long Hill Road to Blackwater Road. And Varney Cleaners, founded by Fred Varney.

The Varney School on Washington Street, used from 1861 to 1953 and now as law offices, was named in honor of Judge John R. Varney. He died in an 1882 fire that destroyed the Washington Street Baptist Church building.

George Varney was a prominent merchant for more than 40 years and owned a drug store on Washington Street before retiring in 1920 at age 65 and passing the next year. He built a large home on Arch Street in 1913.

John R. Varney was co-owner of two newspapers – the Dover Enquirer, purchased in 1868, and the Dover Daily Republican, acquired in 1880.

My curiosity, of course, wonders how many of the Quaker values continued in their lives, as well as what directions their faith took. I like to think it worked like yeast.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in a Nook edition at Barnes & Noble.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.