For the first half of the 1700s, Dover Monthly Meeting was the most northern and eastern Quaker body in New England.

Friends were more or less accepted as members of the wider community, and in the 1720s they even built a second meetinghouse for those living near the village around the Lower Falls of the Cochecho – today’s downtown – in addition to the first meetinghouse serving those on Dover Neck.

A distinctive Quaker culture had set in, one that included Plain dress and thee-and-thou language. Friends referred to First-day rather than Sunday, for example, and First Month rather than January.

There was a tightening of discipline over daily conduct and over marriages within the faith.

The Meeting and its families were also visited by traveling ministers, some of them staying for extended stretches.

~*~

Relations between the town and its taxes and other civic requirements could often be touchy. For one thing, those appointed as constables were required to serve or pay stiff fines.

In reviewing the early history of New Hampshire and Maine, I presumed that titles like Major, which we’ve seen with Richard Waldron, reflected their role in the militia. Thus, when I came across a rank applied to a Quaker surname, I figured that the individual was no longer a member of Meeting. That changed when I came across a reference to Capt. John Canney as “a Quaker who ‘affirmed'” rather than take an oath of office when he became a representative to provincial assembly, 1742-1745. Most likely, then, is that Captain was a term given to constables, the way police and fire officers today can be given ranks. Or it could also be applied to skippers of vessels.

Quakers serving as constable did face moral quandaries. On October 10, 1729, for instance, “A petition from several Quakers in behalf of themselves and their friends at Dover, praying to be exempted from gathering the Minister’s rates as Constables, was presented to the Assembly.”

The issue of collecting taxes for a minister the Friends didn’t use or respect remained.

On May 3, 1731, “The ‘people called Quakers’ again petitioned to be excused, when constables, from gathering Minister’s rates; and the Assembly excused them by enacting that such persons shall be exempted from gathering such rates of any other persuasion, and that the town should make choice of those who were not Quakers to gather the same.”

There were also tensions over expenses for the First Parish meetinghouse, which doubled as town hall.

George Wadleigh notes that March 31, 1760, appears to have been the last “public town meeting held at the old meeting house on Pine Hill,” but instead of shifting the sessions to the new building, on October 13, “At a public town meeting held at the Quaker meeting house, a committee was appointed to sell the old school house standing on Pine Hill and pay the proceeds thereof to the selectmen.”

This would have taken place at the Friends second meetinghouse, a block west of the newer First Parish home.

On January 28, 1761, “The Quakers of Dover, by Joseph Austin, Thomas Tuttle and that many persons who had agreed to do so, by the purchase of pew privileges, had neglected it, &c. a town meeting was held at which the committee for examining their accounts made report that the whole amount expended,” for the Congregational church, ” was 248pds. 18s. 4d, old tenor: which report was accepted and the building committee was empowered to sue those men who owe money towards building the house.”

That wasn’t the only issue Friends were fired up about. At that same town session, “The Quakers of Dover, by Joseph Austin, Thomas Tuttle and Samuel Austin, for and on behalf of themselves and the rest of their brethren and by order of their monthly meeting held at Cochecho the 18th day of the 10th mo. 1760, petitioned the Assembly, setting forth that they were burthened with a tax to hire soldiers into the service, and praying, for reasons assigned, to be relieved therefrom. The Assembly assigned a day for a hearing thereon, and ordered them to cause the chief officer of the Regiment, & the selectmen of the town to be served with a copy of the petition and order thereon, at their own cost and charge, that they might appear and shew cause, if any they had, why the prayer should not be granted.”

On February 6, “It was voted that the prayer thereof be granted and that the tax ordered by the Treasurer’s warrant to be assessed on the people called Quakers in the towns of Dover, Durham, Somersworth, Rochester and Barrington in the year 1760, be remitted and that the same be added to the Province Tax of said towns for the year 1761.”

On March 30, “At a public town meeting it was voted to petition the General Court for a law to empower the First Parish to transact their affairs exclusive of the other town business.”

On June 11 the next year, the church was incorporated as a parish distinct from the town government. Though this separated the two, taxes would continue to support the church and its minister perhaps as late as 1819, when the state passed its religious toleration act.

Still, on July 2, 1761, “The committee for building the new meeting house having complained that the money for that purpose had not been fully paid them, that many persons who had agreed to do so, by the purchase of pew privileges, had neglected it, &c. a town meeting was held at which the committee for examining their accounts made report … and the building committee was empowered to sue those men who owe money towards building the house.”

Though the town paid for the First Parish meetinghouse, it also used the new Quaker meetinghouse for public events. Possibly the building was larger, intended to accommodate Friends from the smaller neighboring Meetings when they came together as a Quarter.

~*~

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

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.

Quakers have always faced an inherent conflict in trying to uphold a community of faith predicated on a personal experience of the Divine. How do you know you’re not being deluded or misled? You have to turn to others. (I’d say this is a great value in marriage, as well!)

This is further complicated by the profession of embodying an eternally unchanging Truth while acknowledging shortcomings in our human comprehension and changing social conditions.

I’m convinced that when the Friends movement first burst forth in Britain, anti-blasphemy laws precluded them from fully articulating the scope of their theological vision. They couched some of that by referring to the Light rather than Christ, and focused on daily conduct, or “walking in the Light.” And, no, it was never “Inner Light,” not until the late 1800s, but rather “Inward Light” or some variant. Light pouring into oneself, like a lighthouse beacon. Well, that’s the thrust of my pamphlet Revolutionary Light, available as a free download at my Thistle Finch site.

~*~

BY THE END OF THE 1600S, Quaker leadership had resolved to push away from theological correctness in favor of right daily practice – orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy.

The choice has come back to bite us repeatedly.

What we did inherit was a system of unique decision-making.

First is the organization of Meetings designated by the frequency of their decision-making sessions.

The local body is called a Monthly Meeting, and this is where memberships are “held” or recorded. A Monthly Meeting likely encompassed smaller neighborhood bodies of worship within it, such as Preparative Meetings (so called because they might “prepare” items for the monthly business session) or Indulged Meetings or, nowadays, a Worship Group.

Thus, Dover Monthly Meeting over time included Sunday and midweek worshiping bodies on Dover Neck and Cochecho Village, as well as in Kittery/Eliot, Berwick, Rochester, Lee, Barrington, New Durham, Wolfeboro, and Sandwich. In time, those that survived were set off as their own Monthly Meetings and then included in Dover Quarterly Meeting.

Which leads us to the way neighboring Monthly Meetings joined four times in a Quarterly Meeting, for mutual nurture and the resolution of lingering issues. These could be a kind of holiday that Friends and family spent together. I’m told that the local meetinghouses were closed on these occasions, because everyone was away, together.

And once a year, a regional Yearly Meeting gathered, essentially uniting a common discipline and practice for the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings within it. For Dover, this was New England Yearly Meeting, which gathered in the haven of Newport, Rhode Island. And those present were largely representatives who could afford to be away for a week.

~*~

SECOND, AND UNIQUELY, Friends developed sets of Queries and Advices to guide practice. At each Monthly Meeting, a few questions would be pondered, personally and then collectively, and a written response would be drafted and sent to the Quarterly Meeting, which would then draft a summary to be considered at the Yearly Meeting.

Until the late 1800s, business was done by the men’s “side of the Meeting” and by the women’s – the meetinghouse had interior dividing shutters that could be opened for worship and closed for business – and each half had its own responsibilities. If there were problems in a marriage, for instance, the man had to report to the women’s Meeting. Or at least, more privately, to its elders.

~*~

THIRD, FROM THE DUTCH MENNONITES, via the General Baptists they influenced in England, was our recognition of ministers and elders (aka bishops within a Meeting) and, by extension, overseers.

Through them, we also gain our peace testimony, Plainness, even anti-slavery plank.

~*~

AND, YES, WE’VE COME TO APPRECIATE “continuing Revelation.” That is, an awareness of our own human fallibilities combined with some flexibility.

If only that had come more fully into Quaker awareness earlier. Instead, at times, we’ve fallen under a deadly legalism.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.

Through the waves of warfare between the English settlers and the French and their Native allies to the north and the east, Dover Friends were caught in a bind.

Quakers espoused a pacifist Peace Testimony as part of their Christian faith, but in New England all fit adult males were compelled to participate in the militia. In some cases, accommodations may have been made, such as allowing the Friends to not carry arms or to serve as watchmen or in other non-combatant service. But some no doubt refused to do even that because it still supported the fighting.

Quaker testimony of non-violence was anything but an idealistic, abstract statement. It meant placing their lives – and their children’s – in jeopardy. The final fatal forays in Dover were on a Quaker family.

John Hanson’s house at Nock’s Marsh (more commonly known as Knox Marsh) was in an exposed position. Because of the renewed troubles, he was advised by neighbors to move into the more compact area of Cochecho village. Instead, as a “stiff Quaker” upholding the Friends’ witness of good relations with the Natives, he stayed put.

Life looked good to him. On August 9, 1725, his eldest daughter, Hannah, and Israel Hodgdon junior wed in a Quaker service. Four days later, Hanson’s wife gave birth to daughter Mary (also known as Mercy).

Only two weeks after those celebrations, though, 13 Natives, including French Mohawks, lay in wait for several days, looking for an opportunity to attack. On August 27, while Hanson and daughter Hannah attended midweek Quaker worship and his two oldest sons were work at some distance, the Natives swept in and “all naked with their guns and tomahawks” entered the house.

Elizabeth Meader Hanson was at home, along with a servant and three children. Two young sons, playing in the orchard, would have escaped but just as the Indians had finished rifling the house, the boys – Ebenezer, age five, and Caleb, four – came in sight and made such noise that the invaders immediately killed them by bashing out their brains and scalping them – in front of their mother – to stop the alarm. Daughter Sarah entered the house and was also taken. The raiders promptly started for Canada, with their captives in tow – Elizabeth Hanson, who had given birth to daughter Mary just two weeks before, plus seven-year-old son Daniel, daughters Sarah, 16, and Elizabeth, 14, and the servant girl.

The attack and departure came swiftly and quietly. Newly-wed Hannah discovered the carnage on her return from worship.

Not knowing the Natives were resolved to strike again, her father stayed briefly with a brother who, though Quaker, had three lusty sons with firearms loaded for big game. Still, John moved back to the farm. When three men came by on September 25, 1725, the raiders hid in the barn before promptly shooting and killing either 37-year-old Benjamin Evans or his likely nephew William. Slightly wounded but profusely bleeding was John Evans, whom the Natives thought was dead. They scalped him, turned him over, pounded him with their guns, and moved on. Making their escape, they took 12- or 13-year-old Benjamin Evans as a captive. He was later ransomed. John Evans, meanwhile, was taken to a nearby garrison where he recovered to live another 50 years. He was the last Dover man to lose his scalp.

The large Evans family was no stranger to Native attacks. Among the victims were patriarch John Evans, chained to Major Waldron’s barn and burned in the 1689 carnage at Cochecho village, and his son John, who died in captivity in 1692.

Elizabeth Hanson’s arduous ordeal, though, turned into five months of captivity, which she later related in detail. The trek to Canada was merciless, leaving the captives wet, cold, bruised, and hungry. At one stretch, they had nothing to eat but tree bark, and Elizabeth feared for her infant as her milk began to dry up. Once in Quebec, all her children except the baby were separated from her, and in one instance, she was informed that her captor was very displeased with her and was planning to murder her the next night.

Funds for the family’s ransom included a large sum collected by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and her husband quickly went to Canada to redeem them. The price for Elizabeth and baby Mary was around 700 pounds. He also obtained the release of son Daniel and daughter Elizabeth, but the Natives would not release Sarah on any terms, though they did allow the father and daughter several hours together.

The chief’s wife had plans of having the girl become their son’s bride, even though the name they gave her translated as “the woman of the burning of the cooking.”

Back in Dover, John and Elizabeth had yet another child, Abigail, but he could not be content until rescuing Sarah, too. On April 19, 1727, he set out with a kinsman for Canada but fell ill at Crown Point, New York, on the west bank of Lake Champlain, and died.

The kinsman, Ebenezer Downs, and his wife continued on in hopes of redeeming their own children as well.

In Quebec, Frenchman Jean-Baptise Sabourin had interposed with the Natives and persuaded Sarah to obtain her freedom by marrying him, which she did on June 27, 1727. The record names her as Sara Ennson, daughter of Jean Ennson, deceased, and Elizabeth Midor, English of the village of Touba in the government of Boston.

Apparently, Downs had managed to meet with her and inform her of the death of her father. But she had been baptized at age 17 and renamed Catherine, perhaps as a step in gaining her release from the Natives.

With Jean-Baptiste, she had at least eight children, two of whom married children of Deerfield, Massachusetts, captives, two who died in infancy, and one who became a nun.

On March 24, 1730, her sister Elizabeth married Ebenezer Varney, the son of Ebenezer Varney, whose garrison had survived the 1689 attack on Cochecho village, and Mary Otis, who had been captured and returned.

Two first-person accounts of Elizabeth Hanson’s experience became widely known. The first, God’s Mercy Surmounting Man’s Cruelty, Exemplified in the Captivity and Redemption of Elizabeth Hanson, appeared in 1728 in Philadelphia.

A second, more detailed version was by English Quaker minister Samuel Bownas, who knew the Hansons from his travels to America. It was first published in London in 1760: An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, Now or Late of Kachecky, in New-England: Who, With Four of Her Children and Servant-maid, Was Taken Captive by the Indians, and Carried into Canada. This volume, especially, gives insights into life within a tribal culture. Both narratives lean heavily on a Quaker religious framework.

Kachecky, of course, was another variant of Cochecho, while Touba was a French attempt at Dover.

Widow Hanson, as Bownas repeatedly referred to her, never remarried and died in 1737.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.

One of the unanswered questions in Colonial history is why the anti-Quaker acts weren’t applied uniformly. Only in bursts, apparently to curb their political influence. In small communities across New England, Friends were important parts of the economy and social life – and often related by marriage to the dominant Puritans.

Still, during the yearly years of Quaker existence, much of the activity continued more or less underground. Friends’ absence from the town church may have been condoned if for no other reason than to avoid their nuisance.

Then, in 1679, the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay colony’s charter reestablished New Hampshire’s independence and also allowed for Friends both there and in New Hampshire to finally formally establish their Meetings.

After decades of worshiping in homes, barns, outdoors, or other places, Friends could finally build their own meetinghouse.

Dover’s first meetinghouse, just south of today’s St. Thomas Aquinas High School, was one of the oldest in the New World. After the erection of the town’s third Quaker meetinghouse, in 1768, the first building was shipped across the Piscataqua to a site a mile away up Sturgeon Creek.

Salem, Massachusetts, claims to have built the oldest, but Dover’s may have been earlier – now, if only some solid documentation existed to support that claim.

Around 1680, with the lessening persecution, Dover Friends were able to formally organize into a Monthly Meeting, although they were already the fifth oldest worshiping body in New Hampshire. After years of gathering together wherever they could find, the Quakers erected their first meetinghouse, choosing a site on Dover Neck on a site between today’s Pinkham Cemetery (begun in 1700) and across today’s Dover Point Road from the Roberts farm and First Settlers Cemetery (1633). The structure remained there until Dover Friends erected a third meetinghouse in 1768, and the original was disassembled, ferried across the Piscataqua River, and rebuilt in Eliot – about a mile to the east, not far from the site of the Shapleigh manor where the three Quaker women had earlier found haven. By road, incidentally, the two meetinghouse sites are more than ten miles apart. Although Eliot/Kittery is sometimes honored as the first Quaker meetinghouse in the Maine colony, that designation may belong to Friends at Falmouth, who are believed to have constructed their own in the 1750s.

The Dover Neck Friends meetinghouse was among the first in the American colonies. Between 1672 and 1682, only seven had been constructed in heavily Quaker New Jersey, and perhaps only four in Pennsylvania. Third Haven, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was open by 1682 and remains the oldest Friends meetinghouse in continuous use. The oldest confirmed date for a Quaker meetinghouse in New England is 1688 in Salem, and a reconstruction of that building is on the grounds of the Peabody-Essex Museum.

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

Although it’s offshore of Cape Cod and close to Rhode Island, Nantucket Island was purchased by investors mostly from the Merrimack River watershed just south of the Piscataqua. Prominently, however, one was from Dover – Edward Starbuck. And his son-in-law, Peter Coffin, was another.

Edward’s the origin of the Starbuck surname in America, a signer of the 1640 Dover Combination, and a prominent figure in Dover’s early history. The name also shows up as Starbird or Starboard.

And, no, these Starbucks weren’t known for their coffee.

Before the arrival of the Quakers, Edward was an elder in First Parish, but historian George Wadleigh cites two curious controversies.

In 1648, “The Grand Jury presented Elder Starbuck for disturbing the peace of the church, and for refusing to join with it in the ordinance of baptism; for which he was admonished and discharged.”

Discharged, we can assume, from the office of elder, and not simply having the charges discharged.

(This was a month before future Quaker Richard Pinkham was ordered to start beating the drum to summon congregants to the Sunday service.)

In 1649, the baptism issue apparently involved the matter of children, perhaps his daughter Shuah, but then spread to his very hairstyle.

“The Court being informed of a great misdemeanor committed by Edward Starbuck of Dover, with profession of Anabaptism, for which he is to be proceeded against at the next Court of Assistants, if evidence can be prepared by that time, and it being very far for witnesses to travel to Boston at that season of the year, appointed Captain Thomas Wiggin and Mr. Edward (George?) Smith to take the testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution of Starbuck, whose offence, apparently, was the wearing of his hair beyond the statute length, ‘after the manner of ruffians and barbarous Indians,’ which had been decreed by the Court to be ‘sinful.'”

Let’s note that Anabaptism here doesn’t mean Mennonite. The term was applied to many who objected to the Puritan orthodoxy.

I suspect that some of Edward’s opposition to infant baptism was stimulated by Hansard Knollys before his hasty departure from the First Parish pastorate. Knollys, after all, then became a founder of the Particular Baptists back in England, and as elder, Edward would have been close to him.

I’m uncertain whether Edward had any connection with Quakers in Dover before he removed with his family to Nantucket around 1660, but his Dover-born son Nathaniel definitely identified as a Friend.

In fact, Nathaniel’s wife, Mary Coffin, was a powerful Quaker minister who’s credited with converting the whole island to adopt the faith or at least make it the official town church. Besides, by doing so they wouldn’t be taxed to support an ordained minister.

Mary’s father, Tristram, was one of the island’s proprietors and originally from Devonshire as well as the progenitor of a line in Dover.

Edward Starbuck, meanwhile, was from Derbyshire.

Further connecting the two families as the marriage of Edward’s daughter Abigail to Dover resident Peter Coffin, also prominent in the settling of Nantucket Island and a cousin of Mary.

Another daughter, Sarah, married Joseph Austin, who showed up in Dover around 1647 as part-owner of a sawmill. He was born about 1616 in Dover, Kent, England, and appeared in Hampton, New Hampshire, in 1642.

They had six children before his death on June 27, 1663. She then married Humphrey Varney. Many of her descendants by each husband were Quaker.

Four of the children moved to Nantucket Island: sons Benjamin and Nathaniel and daughters Mary, who wed Richard Gardner, and Deborah, wife of John Coffin.

Their son Thomas remained in Dover and married Ann Otis, daughter of Richard Otis and Rose Stoughton. Together they had fourteen children who then became the stem of the family that proliferated in Dover Friends Meeting.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary. Its influence is wider than anyone I’ve found has suspected.

Puritans had many fears regarding the Quaker outbreak and thus targeted Friends far more severely than any others. Quakers, for all their objections, were in debt to radical Protestantism like the Puritans’ more than they were (and are) willing to admit, yet they also stridently demanded that believers take holy perfectionism to a higher order than the Puritans would or could. More inflammatory, Friends openly criticized and even ridiculed Puritans for falling far short of that goal.

Puritans, in response, viewed Quakers as a chaotic threat to godly and social order and watched suspiciously and intently for signs of witchcraft.

Nothing, apparently, inflamed Puritan authorities more than the Quaker embrace of endorsing both men and women in public ministry.

Quite simply, Friends touched a sore, raw spot in the Puritan worldview. Sometimes, the ones you criticize most harshly who are those most like you. (That’s something that’s been observed in literature, especially.)

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WHILE FRIENDS DID NOT ORDAIN or hire individuals to prepare sermons for delivery from a pulpit each week, they did welcome appropriate vocal messages arising in their otherwise silent gatherings in worship. Appropriate were utterances deemed prophetic – explosive mixes of personal perception and Scripture that Quakers felt were being delivered by oracles of the divine – and those who voiced them consistently were endorsed as ministers. Quickly, a unique incantatory style evolved, regardless of the speaker’s background. It did, however, baffle many stuffier types, including the Puritan clergy.

The three Quaker women who were stripped and whipped out of Dover in 1662 were far from alone. Anne Hutchinson had already born its weight in New England earlier. Her adherents had, in fact, nearly toppled the Puritan polity from its position.

Other women Quaker ministers soon returned to Dover, notably the elderly Elizabeth Hooton.

She appears to have been a public preacher among the General Baptists in England, even before she took under her wing a young George Fox, who is generally considered the founder of the Quaker faith. Contrarian that I am, I consider her to the first Quaker, the one who converted you, George.

What she suffered in New England was horrific.

Quite simply, Hooten was a tough old bird. God bless her!

You’ll find a lot more about her in my new book.

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MANY FOLKS THINK OF A QUAKER SERVICE as silent, or what we sometimes call “open worship,” and while many Meetings today have pastors, others – including Dover’s – observe mostly a profound silence occasionally punctuated by a vocal message, song, or prayer.

Historically, though, a Friends Meeting often had long, impromptu preaching, often of a half-hour or more. Among the Dover members recorded in that role were Tabitha and Mehitable Jenkins, Valentine Meader, Mary Bunker, John Twombly, Benjamin H. Jones, and Amos Otis.

Dover Friends also welcomed itinerate ministry from visitors, some of whom spent protracted time in town. One was the English Friend Samuel Bownas, who may have “learned silence” here. He’s best known for his book, A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Minister, which sought to curb affectations that had crept into the practice. His guidance still helps.

From their journals, we glean sharp insights into the life of Dover Meeting and nurture of spiritual experience. Even their encounters addressing the wider rough-and-tumble community.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary. It wasn’t just any old town.

We’ve been looking at fundamentals that set early Dover apart from the rigid Puritan culture that dominated the Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut colonies.

What we’ve also seen is that other localities settled before the great Puritan migration also had conflicts in the face of what is widely presumed to be characteristically colonial New England. Notably, these were Cape Cod; Salem, Massachusetts; Hampton, New Hampshire; and Maine – all of which harbored Quakers. Merrymount, we should note, was one settlement the Puritans outright eradicated through violence.

I’ve been arguing that folkways from Devonshire were far more influential in Dover’s soul than was the commercial nature of the early charters. The Puritans who put down roots in Dover were largely from Devon, not the East Anglia of the Massachusetts Bay arrivals.

One thing that puzzles me is the reticence of the Church of England to establish parishes in New England colonies before Massachusetts subsumed New Hampshire and then Maine. Many of the inhabitants identified as Anglican and preferred its rites but were without priests and guidance. They privately chafed at the Calvinist strictures, and some openly welcomed Quakers who ultimately entered as the principal alternative.

I suspect it wasn’t our message that attracted the early converts as much as our very presence and timing. You know, that “perfect storm” thing.

The upshot was that by the time Dover entered its fourth decade, it was primed for a Quaker seed to land and sprout, with roots here reaching all the way back to one of the very first settlers of the province as well as a few other independent spirits.

The ground itself and surrounding waters proved to be fertile for Friends. Not that the first decades would be easy.

Let’s just say it’s not just size that makes Dover different from Boston.

~*~

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.

Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400^th anniversary.