It’s hard for modern Americans to understand a basic reality of European colonies in the New World.

None of the players in the story own the land they’re dealing with.

Not the settlers, even though they’re clearing it and building on it.

Nor the proprietors or investors, either. They’re more like developers who offer leasing opportunities. Think of rental agents.

Nor the Indigenous tribes, surprisingly, even though many of the settlers also negotiate a payment to them for their land. The use of their land, more accurately. Admittedly, the payments are largely symbolic – a bushel of corn a year, for example.

No, quite simply, all land “belongs” to the king, and he allocates the privilege of using it as a means of leveraging his own prestige and power.

Under the feudal system, that would mean grants to barons and other lords in return for their fealty.

They, in turn, could dole some out to knights, who then become wealthy, as well.

Add to that the gentlemen farmers, living off the rents to their estates.

And then yeomen, who are still free on their own tenants, as their small holdings were called.

And husbandmen.

And, somewhere below that, the serfs who are bound to the land and its holder. Well, by this point in time, they’d been freed but were still at the bottom of the ladder.

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THIS IS THE MODEL OF LANDHOLDING – not landownership – up through the American Revolution.

Its assumptions are quite different from those of modern Americans. What do you mean? I don’t own the ground under my house and barn?

No, you don’t. And you still have to pay rent on it.

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AS A FURTHER COMPLICATION, charters could be revoked or rewritten.

Falling out of the king’s favor would have costly and dire consequences.

As my upcoming book describes, this land arrangement affected Dover and the rest of New England through a series of realignments and controversies and attempted evictions.

In fact, it almost leads to a rebellion in Boston Harbor against the king a century-and-a-half before Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Well, that’s one aside I don’t develop. There’s too much else going on along the Piscataqua.

 

From the git-go, there’s been a rivalry between Portsmouth and Dover, though a closer look reveals it’s more nuanced than what we usually think.

The 1622 contract for developing the Piscataqua watershed allows for more than one vessel to arrive and more than one settlement to be planted along the river.

Scotsman David Thomson is the head of the operation. He sets forth in the Jonathan and establishes his fortified Pannaway plantation at the mouth of the river in today’s Rye – not Portsmouth, contrary to the Port City’s claims of founding. He’s highly placed politically, somehow having the ear of King James I. And specifically, he’s the only one named in the grant.

Pannaway faces the open Atlantic, with salt marsh to its back.

~*~

IN CONTRAST, when the Providence arrives a month later, she apparently sails straight up the river to today’s Hilton Point aka Dover Point, where Edward Hilton and Thomas Roberts then set up operations. They disembark at Pomeroy Cove, which they name for Leonard Pomeroy, one of the three principal backers of the project. He’s also Lord Mayor of Plymouth, England, home of the company, and co-owner of the ship that’s brought them this far.

As I detail in my upcoming book, Hilton likely knew of the site even before setting sail. It was far enough inland to be sheltered from violent storms. Vast forests extended from the riverbanks, with timber for shipbuilding, piers, and barrels as well as homes and bridges and wild game for the taking. Best of all, the point was a confluence of rich tidal waters, with the Great Bay estuary on one side along with its tributary streams and, on the other side, the Piscataqua and its Cochecho and Salmon Falls rivers. Cod, salmon, sturgeon, eels, herring, oysters, clams, and lobsters are bountiful. Why go out to sea when the fish come right up to you?

While Pannaway is thoroughly documented, in part through its stream of visitors, its existence is short-lived, and the site’s abandoned by 1626, when Thomson relocates to an island in Boston Harbor and disappears soon after. His widow then promptly marries Samuel Maverick – yes, the source of that word. It’s a rough-and-tumble world.

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OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT of documentation, Hilton and Roberts continue on, in time joined by Edward’s brother William and their sister or possibly cousin Rebecca along with more family.

Either way, Roberts and Rebecca soon marry and start a farm about a mile from the point – they later move it another mile-and-half – but theirs will still be the oldest family-owned farm in the future United States well into the 20^th century.

It must have been lonely through much of that first decade. The Hilton-Roberts clan was definitely on the frontier, and ongoing war in Europe cut off much ship traffic.

Edward Hilton is, however, definitively rewarded for his six years of habitation and hard labor by a charter giving him clear control at Dover Point. And they must be prospering, as seen in assessments placed on their province or his brief return to England for the legal document, perhaps a fish delivery, and definitely a marriage.

While Thomas and Rebecca Roberts remain in Dover for the rest of their lives, her brothers eventually move on – Edward to Exeter and William, by degrees along the Maine side of the Piscataqua. All of their lives take colorful turns along the way, which I relate in the book.

Even though Portsmouth baldly claims 1623 as its founding date, it had no European settlement until the Laconia Company chose to set up operations there in 1629 or 1630, calling their site Strawbery Banke. Yes, that was one more convolution of investors.

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AND THAT’S THE BARE-BONES VERSION. There’s plenty in my upcoming book to flesh it out, some of it rather earthy – especially when we get to the contemporaneous and scandalous Merrymount plantation down on Plymouth Bay.

Fact: New Hampshire is the second-oldest state to be settled in New England. Older than Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, or Vermont.

To understand why a third of Dover became Quaker in the mid-1600s, we need to go back to the very founding of the colony.

The common presentation of history has New England settlement being prompted by a quest for religious liberty – you know, the Pilgrims and then the Puritans – but close examination finds that’s not the full story.

For instance, the first permanent English habitation, Plymouth in southern Massachusetts, is only half Pilgrims – the other half is diverse individuals looking for economic opportunity. The colony is also heavily in debt to investors in London who dictate much of its operation. Religion isn’t on their radar.

There’s nothing altruistic in the investors’ role. They’re looking for quick returns on their money. Their eye is on gold and silver or at least a shortcut to the Far East and its lucrative spices. Trade for furs could also be lewdly profitable. And then there’s the possibility of creating landed estates in the New World, where they could live at ease as gentlemen farmers supported by the rents paid by their tenants once the time’s ripe.

All of that puts the investors at odds with settlers who are out to establish homes, livelihoods, and security.

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AS A FURTHER COMPLICATION, the investors come in layers. One company holds rights to the development of all of New England and then enters agreements with others interested in specific tracts, sometimes within a specified timeframe.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges is the godfather of all this and plays a crucial role in the birth of Maine, which emerged largely on its border with Dover. Quite simply, the Maine side of the Piscataqua River is a big part of early Dover’s community.

Sir Ferdinando’s business associate, Captain John Mason, emerges more directly as the proprietor of New Hampshire itself.

Together, only two years after the Pilgrim venture, they negotiate with a band of Devonshire merchants to settle on the Piscataqua River, today’s border between New Hampshire and Maine.

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THEIR AGREEMENT SPECIFIES seven settlers – and, as we will see, that implies their families, servants, and laborers – intent on commercial opportunity. Forget religion.

The Puritans, pointedly, are nowhere to be found. They’re still seven or eight years off in the future. Their arrival to the south of New Hampshire will, however, spark a culture clash and ongoing power struggle that will include Maine. As you’ll see, the plot thickens.

In the meantime, the odds are greatly against the survival of the Piscataqua enterprise.

Other attempts in New England have failed, some without a trace, as would others. The Plymouth colony is faltering.

Remember, nobody finds gold or silver or that shortcut to China.

Even so, Gorges and Mason leave a deep imprint on the future Dover.

As do Edward Hilton, a member of the powerful fishmongers’ guild in London, and his apprentice, Thomas Roberts. Their outpost at Dover Point is the start of the seventh oldest permanent European settlement in the United States – and the third oldest in New England.

Edward has been recognized as the Father of New Hampshire.

Thomas, however, is generally neglected, even though he has a more central role in its continuing development. He even becomes Quaker, for all intents and purposes. And though an apprentice, he’s not a disadvantaged youth looking for a step upward. He comes from a privileged family, and his father, by some accounts, is about to become a baron.

~*~

ALL OF THAT’S PART of what we’ll be celebrating next year – 400 years after their arrival. And my new big book tackles some of the story.