In 1676, during King Philip’s War, a number of Natives fleeing from the Massachusetts Bay colony militia received shelter among the Pennacook tribe living around Dover. The refugees were part of what’s called a rebellion that began the previous year, the first in a series of armed campaigns between the colonists and the Indigenous peoples in and around Dover and beyond.

The existing accounts, of course, are one-sided, but the devastation afflicted innocent non-combatants on both sides.

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Up to this point, most of the fighting was to the south, though there were fatal attacks in Oyster River, still part of Dover, among others.

Not all of the tribes aligned with the rebellion. The Narragansetts, for one, were neutral, yet more than 600 were killed by the colonists in revenge.

Dover’s Richard Waldron and Maine’s Charles Frost led colonial forces in an incursion on the Mi’kmaq in French-held Acadia – today’s Downeast Maine.

In the midst of this, two events in Dover added fuel to the conflagration. Until now, Dover had largely mutually positive relations with the Natives, Waldron aside.

Waldron was ordered to attack the Natives who had found refuge nearby and turn any combatants over to the Massachusetts militia. He instead invited about 400 Natives to participate in a mock battle against the New Hampshire militia. After the guests had fired their guns, Waldron took them prisoner and sent them to Boston, where the leaders were executed. Others were sold into slavery in “foreign parts,” mostly Barbados.

The usual take on the “mock battle” comes from Waldron’s account and often has most of the captives being returned peacefully. In contrast, the Indigenous version handed down orally has the event being an invitation to a feast. Only twenty of the Natives were armed, and at least 350, mostly women and children, were taken, sold, and never returned. Among the consequences was the fall of the peaceful, Christian Wonalancet as sachem and the rise of the warlike Kankamagus.

Quakers were no doubt appalled by Waldron’s dishonesty and physical violence as well as the enslavement – New England Friends, including children, had faced being sold into slavery by Puritan authorities at the height of the persecutions. Moreover, Friends cherished good relationships with the Natives.

They were not alone.

“The local Indians were released but never forgave Waldron for the deception, which violated all the rules of honor and hospitality valued by both sides,” as one version, drawing on the colonial record, relates.

Despite its brevity, King Philip’s War is considered the greatest calamity in 17^th-century New England and the deadliest war in Colonial American history. Within a year, many of the towns had been destroyed or damaged, and the economy of Plymouth and Rhode Island colonies was all but ruined. Hundreds of Wampanoags and their allies were publicly executed or enslaved, and the Wampanoags were left effectively landless.

For northern New England, it was only the beginning of a series of wars connected to European conflicts that would devastate the frontier until 1763, when New France was surrendered to Britain.

 

Along the Piscataqua, the Natives were patient, waiting 13 years for revenge. As historian Jeremy Belknap related: “Friday the 28th June, 1689, was the fatal day in the morning of which Major Richard Waldron was murdered and the destruction of Cochecho perpatrated by the Indians of Pennycook and Saco. This caused the absence of Mr. Pike for some years.”

Was the town’s minister permanently injured in the attack? Or suffer mental illness as a consequence?

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The Reverend John Pike noted “the eastern Ind joyning with those of Pennicook (thro the Instigation of Hawkins & a Sagamore) suddenly seized on Cochecho, about break of day, wn all things were silent & secure. Killed 23 persons … and carried captive 29.”

This was the beginning of King William’s War, a series of massacres orchestrated by Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin and Father Louis-Pierre Thury.

In New England, the conflict originated in the failure of the settlers to adhere to the treaties and agreements made at the end of King Philip’s War, but the renewed outbreak of hostilities was also the North American theater of hostilities originating when King James II, the last of England’s suspected secretly Roman Catholic kings, was deposed and replaced by Protestants William and Mary. Hence, the “William” in what was also known as Father Baudin’s War and Castin’s War. Baudin was a French Sulpician priest who had trained to become a musketeer and later ministered in Acadia. This segment would continue for nine years, ending in 1697.

Waldron had dismissed concerns about renewed hostilities, telling residents to go and plant their pumpkins, and he would take care of the Natives.

Instead, in the attack, the sword-wielding elderly Waldron was cut across his belly with knives, with each warrior saying “I cross out my account.” Five or six dwelling houses were burned, along with the mills. Fifty-two colonists, a full quarter of the entire population, were captured and carried off to Quebec or slain.

The Indigenous account of 80-year-old Waldron’s demise is more detailed. His nose and ears were cut off and stuffed in his mouth, as were his thumbs. To the Natives, he had turned his nose to injustice, refused to hear all sides, and cheated on weights in trade – placing his thumb on the scale. He also avoided trading them useful goods they desired and instead paid them in rum or trinkets.

The garrisons were houses that had been fortified from 1675 and on, set within palisades and designated as places of shelter in the event of attack. At the time of the 1689 attack, there were an estimated fifty such sites within and around the sprawling town.

The most extensive toll came at Richard Otis’s garrison, where the 64-year-old blacksmith, his son Stephen, and daughter Hannah were killed. His third wife, Grizel, three-month-old daughter Margaret, three daughters from his first marriage, Judith, Rose, and Experience, and at least two grandchildren were taken captive. One adult son, Richard Jr., escaped. The garrison was burned.

The Otis family was Quaker.

~*~

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.

 

Alexander Shapleigh, an eminent merchant, sailor, shipowner, and shipbuilder from Kingswear in Devon, knew the New World coasts early. For instance, on September 20, 1610, he was recorded as master of the Restitution of Dartmouth when it was seized by the pirate Robert Stephens while returning from a fishing voyage to Newfoundland and bound for Portugal.

It wasn’t the only ship he owned. The largest was the Golden Cat, of 450 tons – twice as large as most of the ships of the time, such as the Mayflower, and three times as large as Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind.

Alexander and his descendants were soon pivotal in the founding of Maine. His son-in-law, James Treworgy, served as his principal agent.

Treworgy was instrumental in the purchase of five hundred acres at Kittery Point in 1636 and the erection of the first house in today’s town of Kittery – one that would later be occupied by William Hilton when he moved from Dover Point. Under the agreement, he was “to pay annually 100 of Merchandable Codde dride & well conditioned as Acknowledgmt to the Royaltie of Sir Ferdinando Gorges Knight … to be payd … uppon the Feast of St. Michaell ye Arch Angell. Moreover if hereafter there shall be any Profitt to be raised for Keeping a ferre within the sd Limmetts yt then Sir Ferdinando Gorges Knight … is to have One Halfe of the Benefit & Mr John Treworgy … the other Halfe.”

Perhaps the Hiltons had a similar agreement with Mason and his heirs.

On January 10, 1637, Shapleigh also obtained another eight hundred acres in today’s Eliot, where the next year he built a large dwelling known as Kittery House, named after his manor of Kittery Court overlooking the River Dart in Kingswear and lending the Maine town its name. The new house was two stories that included a kitchen, cellar, and garret – ten rooms in all, plus a brewhouse, barn, and outbuildings. It is said that the first cup of tea in this country was brewed here.

The Eliot site was on Sandy Hill straight across the Piscataqua from Hilton Point, at what’s sometimes referred to as Watts Fort or Point Joslyn. Here he also built a sawmill and another mill both powered by the tide at today’s Shapleigh Old Mill Pond, which adjoins the river. Tide pouring into the pond in one direction ran the mill, as did the release of impounded tidewater on its release. The Eliot estate soon emerged as the base of Shapleigh operations rather than the property at Kittery Point downstream from Portsmouth.

The proximity to the Hiltons across the river underpins a much different understanding of early development of the region than I’d previously imagined. Barely a mile separated the two settlements. The importance of today’s Eliot and the three Berwicks in those years turns out to be greater than the conventional histories convey when they refer to the locations as Kittery, the town that encompassed them, suggesting that those events took place far downstream in the shadow of Portsmouth. Not so.

Quite simply, the development Dover – and later, its Quakers – was closely intertwined with that of Eliot and the Berwicks along the river, and more flourishing than assumed.

~*~

Treworgy appears to have still been in the area in 1647 but disappeared sometime before July 1650, when his wife is described as a widow. As one genealogy notes tersely, “like other males of the family, he vanished early and without record.” Or, by another account, he was killed by Indians.  Or a third, with him in Nova Scotia in 1650, where he had gone in the interests of fishing.

Nothing is known of Alexander after 1642, other than he, too, was deceased by 1650.

~*~

Treworgy’s widow, Catharine Shapleigh, then wed Dover founder Edward Hilton sometime after the death of his first wife. You could say it was an example of “marrying the girl next door.” They then relocate to Exeter, where their children marry eminently.

William Hilton, meanwhile, moved into the Kittery Point house after relocating from Dover, and then less conspicuously on into Maine. Makes me wonder about the nature of the brothers’ relationship – or how their wives interacted.

~*~

The figure who most interests me is Alexander Shapley’s son, Nicholas.

In 1641 Treworgye sold his holdings, including his boats and other fishing trade equipment as well as his real estate, to his wife’s half-brother, Nicholas, for 1,500 pounds, to pay off creditors.

Just north of the Kittery House compound on the Piscataqua riverbank is Sturgeon Creek, an impressive inlet at high tide and about two miles downstream from Newichawannock, or South Berwick, and it was soon attracting inhabitants. The neighbors dwelling around Sturgeon Creek even convinced the elder Shapleigh and Treworgy to enlarge the house into a garrison for protection against Native raids.

~*~

Once Nicholas Shapleigh arrived for good in his own vessel in 1644, he quickly amassed great wealth as a lumber merchant, building a sawmill and gristmill and gaining great influence. During the troublesome times of the changing governments in the in the Province of Maine, he was either elected or appointed to most of the offices in the hands of the government or the people. He was one of the first three selectmen of Kittery after its incorporation.

He managed to balance forces. He was a loyal follower of Gorges and his King, yet was among the first to take the oath of allegiance to Massachusetts after it took control of Maine in 1652. Despite being a leader of the Royalist movement that opposed Puritan rule, as Provincial Councilor, he nevertheless accepted appointment by the Massachusetts authorities to be treasurer of the Maine province and be the major in command of its militia. Nor did his strong royalist views prevent him from becoming business partners with Puritan merchant Humphrey Chadbourne, his niece’s husband.  A staunch Anglican, he sheltered Quakers and yet owned slaves. As a soldier, he and Richard Waldron were appointed on February 21, 1676, to treat with the Indians for peace during King Philip’s War. (In September, however, Major Waldron shattered any hopes for ending the hostilities.) In 1678, with Captain Francis Champernowne, once of Dover, and Captain Fryer of Portsmouth, he was appointed by Massachusetts to settle a peace with Squando and all the Sagamore upon the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers. They met the Natives at Casco and entered into articles of peace on April 12, 1678. This treaty put an end to the distressing wars which had existed three years and had greatly reduced the number of inhabitants in Maine.

Nicholas was sympathetic to the itinerant Quakers, so much so that he, too, was often considered one.

In 1663, for instance, when he was accused of favoring the Quakers, the town constable was ordered to go to Shapleigh’s house on First-days to prevent the holding of meetings there. In 1669, he and another selectman plus the town clerk were all accused of being Quakers and removed by the county court. The town then had to elect others.

In 1674 he was imprisoned in Massachusetts but released on the plea of his half-sister Catherine Hilton and the payment of two hundred pounds.

Nicholas Shapleigh died in 1682, age sixty-four, killed by a falling mast at a ship launching at John Diamond’s, across the river from Portsmouth.

As I look at the many purchases and sales of lands by the Shapleighs and others, it appears unlikely they were planning to settle long there themselves. I’m left wondering if the real purpose had to do with shipbuilding – waterside sites where the vessels could be launched, as well as proximity to lumber. That would also explain the many sawmills we find mentioned, for more than just houses or barns.

~*~

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

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.

 

As Dover gears up for its big 400^th anniversary next year, folks need to be alerted to the fact the early history spills far beyond today’s city limits – and that includes both sides of the state line.

While much of the settlement is along Dover Neck and then grows around the Lower Falls of the Cochecho, the town itself sprawled across today’s Durham [but then Oyster River], Newington, Madbury, Lee, Barrington, Rochester, Somersworth, and Rollinsford. That’s a lot of geography.

It’s sparsely populated, at least by Europeans, as is reflected in the 42 signers of the Dover Combination, essentially all of the freemen in the town even if a number of them are soon living elsewhere in the watershed or even returned to the mother country.

When the itinerant Quaker troublemakers arrive two decades later, the town has maybe 60 households. There are perhaps no more than a thousand English total all in New Hampshire.

In 1679, when New Hampshire is separated from Massachusetts and becomes an independent provincial government, Dover has just 61 qualified voters; the remainder of the province, 148.

The picture magnifies when we look at the Piscataqua watershed.

The tiny outpost at Hilton Point becomes the center of settlement in 1630 when Captain Walter Neale arrives to settle Strawbery Banke, today’s Portsmouth, downstream on the Piscatauqua, the same year Newichawannock, a fortified trading post, was established at today’s South Berwick, Maine, upstream from the Hiltons. Some accounts have the parties arriving on the same boat. I’m not getting into those intricacies.

Besides, it leads to an argument over whether Newichawannock or an hermit who stayed the winter at York was Maine’s first permanent European settlement.

What is clear to me is that Hilton Point is the center of development, more than the other three towns in New Hampshire – Exeter, Hampton, and Portsmouth – by 1638. Yes, only four towns in the entire colony until New Castle is admitted, and nothing in New Hampshire’s Merrimack Valley until the next century.

As emphasis, a 1631 observer reports only three houses or settlements in the entire Piscataqua watershed: today’s Dover, meaning Hilton Point; Portsmouth; and South Berwick.

The history gets more interesting when there’s mention of Sturgeon Creek, which is straight across the Piscataqua River from Dover Neck and in today’s Eliot. We’ll get into that later.

At the time, all of the Maine side of the Piscataqua is considered Kittery – but as it turns out, the first settlement is Newichawannock, not Kittery Point on the Atlantic. That is, much further inland than folks assume today.

During many of the early years, settlements on both sides of the river are often called Piscataqua. Many of the legal cases from the Maine side wind up in the courts of provincial New Hampshire, and the other way around, adding further difficulty in determining exactly where certain activities occur.

That, too, indicates how closely both sides of the river interacted with each other, with the center of gravity for “upper Kittery” being Dover.

Even more, it’s hard to envision a feudal society with Edward Hilton on Pomeroy Cove. Or even later, with Captain Wiggin’s troupe of Puritan settlers along Dover Neck. Not that we really know their names – there’s controversy when it comes to listing them.

The more I look at these early situations, the more I’m amazed that any of it actually survived.

~*~

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.

As I ask just what made Dover so ripe for the Quaker message, I see how much earlier conflicts over the town’s official church open the way for an alternative congregation, once itinerant Friends visit town.

Dover’s first minister, solidly Puritan William Leveridge, arrives in 1633 and conducts the first religious service in New Hampshire, but he’s gone in 1635, leaving “for want of adequate support,” meaning salary, which he then finds around Boston and on in Long Island. His surviving scriptural notes are in Latin.

Perhaps two years later, maybe earlier, George Burdet shows up in the pulpit, while also taking over as “governor,” the proprietors’ agent, overseeing the northern half of the New Hampshire province. He feigns sympathy with the Puritans but secretly corresponds with Church of England Archbishop William Laud, who will eventually be executed by the Puritans. Before Burdet flees in adulterous disgrace in 1639 – or a year or two later – things get really interesting, though I’ll spare you the details now. Among other things, he gives the settlement the name Dover, not reflecting the famed English town with the white cliffs but rather an anti-Puritan wit and attorney who also founded the notorious Cotswold Olimpick Games, which included horse-racing, coursing with hounds, running, jumping, dancing, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with swords and cudgels, quarterstaff, wrestling, and gambling.

In contrast, the main sports New England Puritans accepted were hunting, fishing, and the mock battles the militias used for military training.

How did Burdet become the pastor in Dover, in the first place? Specifics are often lacking or blurred in the available records.

The Puritans organized their churches on a congregational structure, where the members themselves managed the affairs, including the selection and dismissal of ministers. The concept also grew into the New England town meeting system for managing secular affairs. It’s about as democratic as you can get.

The Church of England, in contrast, relied on an episcopal hierarchy, where the Archbishop of Canterbury and subordinate bishops ruled.

The differences between the Puritans and the Anglicans go far beyond organization and polity. They include baptism, marriage (a civil contract for Puritans at the time), funerals and burial, prayer (the Anglican Book of Common Prayer versus extemporaneous), liturgy (hocus-pocus, as some Puritans would say) or none at all, rituals and genuflection (superstition to the Puritans), the Virgin Mary and saints (ignored by the Puritans), Christmas (no holiday for the Puritans), and, especially, eternal salvation or damnation (the Puritans being certain that at least some of their brotherhood will be among the Elect God had chosen at the time of Creation). I’ll venture that the Church of England offers more creaturely comforts to its faithful than do the Puritans.

Quite simply, there are tensions within Dover and beyond. The Massachusetts Bay colony has just banished Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Samuel Gorton, who all scoot off to the new refuge of Rhode Island – and Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, heads north to found Exeter, New Hampshire, near Dover. They’re all major figures in American dissident history.

Two mysterious figures then approach a newly arrived minister in Boston and lure him to Dover.

As a young Anglican priest in England, Hanserd Knollys had suffered a religious crisis that led him to resign from the pulpit and begin a quest that brings him to a Mr. Wheelwright, “a silenced minister,” near Lincoln, England. Yes, the same one who founds Exeter. Something in their discussions rekindles a flame within Knollys, liberating him to preach again but with such an intensity that he’s soon imprisoned in Boston, England, until he somehow escapes and sails in 1636 during a difficult voyage with his wife and only child, who dies en route, to Boston, Massachusetts. While living in impoverishment there, and prevented from preaching because of his antinomian theological views, he’s met by “two strangers coming to Boston from Piscattuah, hearing of me by a meer accident, [who] got me to go with them to that plantation, and to preach there, where I remained about four years.”

The only problem is that Burdet is still minister or at least physically present, but the governor’s role has been handed to John Underhill, himself in flight from Massachusetts after leading the militia in the Pequot massacre and running his mouth off.

Burdet forbids Knollys from preaching in Dover but is countered by Underhill.

Within this backdrop, Knollys is credited with formally organizing in 1638 the First Congregationalist Society, now known as First Parish, United Church of Christ (Congregational), and out of its longstanding worship together from 1633, it is regarded as the oldest church in the state.

If only it were that easy.

Adding to the conflict is Knollys’ evolving theology which will lead to his becoming a founding father of the Particular Baptist denomination, though he’s not yet quite there during his time in the Piscataqua parish. Otherwise, Dover might have been the first Baptist church in America, rather than the one in Providence, Rhode Island, founded in 1639.

From a later Baptist perspective, Knollys “preached with much acceptance upwards of three years. … However, his church in New Hampshire was split on the issue of infant baptism. This brought persecution on him by the Congregationalists. He, with others from his church, fled to New Jersey and eventually back to England.”

To put it mildly.

More directly, from a Baptist point of view, “America does not seem to have been a peaceful place for … Hanserd. While in New Hampshire, conflict arose between Hanserd and another minister, Thomas Larkham, who had arrived in New Hampshire in 1640. Larkham had wealth and influence, and had very lax standards for membership. This produced much division within the congregation, and Larkham at one point had Knollys removed from the pulpit. Many congregants then removed Larkham and restored Knollys as pastor. Larkham had armed men march up from nearby Portsmouth [still known as Strawbery Banke], conducted a trial which found Knollys guilty, fined him, and ordered him to leave. During his time reports circulated that Knollys was also censured for having a ‘filthy dalliance’ with some young females living in his house. Records indicate that this was a false report as other ministers spoke of Knollys with respect. There is also a record that Hanserd had filed suit with a claim of slander. It was never prosecuted, as the Knollys did not stay in the colonies.”

There were even reports of an armed skirmish between factions of the church.

But Larkham, too, suddenly departed from Dover in 1641 and returned to England.

There’s more, as Jeremy Belknap’s History of New Hampshire, reveals:

Larkham “came to Dover, and being a preacher of good talents, eclipsed Knollys, and raised a party who determined to remove him. He therefore gave way to the popular prejudice, and suffered Larkham to take his place; who soon discovered his licentious principles by receiving into the church persons of immoral characters, and assuming, like Burdet, the civil as well as ecclesiastical authority.” Except that Larkham was never “governor.”

Belknap continues: “The better sort of the people were displeased and restored Knollys to his office who excommunicated Larkham. This bred a riot in which Larkham laid hands on Knollys, taking away his hat on pretence that he had not paid for it; but he was civil enough afterward to return it. Some of the magistrates joined with Larkham, and forming a court, summoned Underhill, who was of Knollys’s party to appear before them, and answer to a new crime which they had to allege against him. Underhill collected his adherents; Knollys was armed with a pistol, and another had a bible mounted on an halbert for an ensign. In this ridiculous parade they marched against Larkham and his party, who prudently declined a combat, and sent down the river to Williams … at Portsmouth, for assistance.

“He came up in a boat with an armed party, beset Knollys’s house where Underhill was, guarded it night and day till a court was summoned, and then, Williams sitting as judge, Underhill and his company were found guilty of a riot, and after being fined, were banished from the plantation. The new crime which Larkham’s party alleged against Underhill was that he had been secretly endeavouring to persuade the inhabitants to offer themselves to the government of Massachusetts, whose favor he was desirous to purchase, by these means, as he knew that their view was to extend their jurisdiction as far as they imagined their limits reached, whenever they should find a favourable opportunity. The same policy led him with his party to send a petition to Boston, praying for the interposition of the government in their case: In consequence of which the governor and assistants commissioned Simon Bradstreet, Esq. with the famous Hugh Peters, then minister of Salem, and Timothy Dalton of Hampton, to enquire into the matter, and effect a reconciliation, or certify the state of things to them. These gentlemen travelled on foot to Dover, and finding both sides in fault, brought the matter to this issue, that the one party revoked the excommunication, and the other the fines and banishment.”

Yes, once again, religion and politics mixed.

George Wadleigh, reviewing the events, adds an extra element to the conflict. Larkham and Knollys “fell out about baptizing children.” Remember, Baptists would insist it was for consenting, informed adults only.

Let it not be said that Dover was a sedate fringe habitation.

And I’m certain these events all lead up to the faction that welcomes itinerant Quakers a decade later. After all, Dover would have a ready audience and prime examples for the Quaker criticism of “hireling priests” who saw the position as a rewarding salary more than as utter discipleship.

Until then, lingering tensions simmer.

~*~

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

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.