In thinking about Jaffrey’s 250th celebration of the town’s incorporation, I began to wonder about settlement patterns in our little corner of New Hampshire. We know that New Hampshire’s (and Maine’s) earliest history is closely bound up with that of Massachusetts, and it is there that and I’m going to start my dive into how these little towns around the grand Monadnock came into being.
While I’m not taking it back to the birth of Cicero – well, almost – I do need to provide some contextual framework for understanding us via the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s. Colonial historians are a dime a dozen, but not everybody buys their books. Hopefully, readers who are not up on the 17th century-up-to-the-Revolutionary war era, or those of us who missed New Hampshire 101 in school, will find this piece informative.
As is well-known, the first wave of English colonization in New Hampshire was all about fish, furs and our forests. The first four settlements in New Hampshire – Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter and Hampton – were the primary communities in New Hampshire throughout the 17th century. Portsmouth and Dover were founded by adventurers from England hoping to make their fortunes in fish and furs. Exeter and Hampton were founded by Puritans from Massachusetts who migrated north seeking greater religious freedom – Puritan Lite, as it were.
Two early explorers to New England, and the New Hampshire seacoast in particular, were Martin Pring, a 23-year-old English sea captain who commanded an expedition of two ships in 1603, and John Smith, who had played a significant role in founding the Jamestown colony in Virginia a few years earlier. Pring’s expedition was looking for sassafras, which was used as a popular medicinal treatment at the time. Pring landed in what would become Portsmouth Harbor. The crew sailed up the various rivers that emptied into the harbor, including the Piscataqua River, but failed to find sassafras. It was the first documented landing of Europeans in New Hampshire.
Smith’s 1614 expedition covered the New England coastline from Maine to Cape Cod, including a stop on the small islands lying off the New Hampshire shore, which he named after himself, Smith’s Isles, later known as the Isles of Shoals. Reports flowing back to England about the natural resources of the area spurred a lot of investment interest. The Eastern white pine was found to be ideal for mast-making; its wood was light and strong, and the tree grew to heights of 250 feet, perfect as a single mast on a large sailing ship.
In 1620, the Crown chartered the Council of New England to settle the area and cultivate the region’s resources. In 1629, the Council of New England granted to Col. John Mason, former governor of Newfoundland, a huge tract of land in New Hampshire, extending from roughly the Merrimack River north along the coast to the Piscataqua River, and then 60 miles inland. Mason named his territory New Hampshire, after his family seat in Hampshire, England.
Mason attempted a fur-trading operation called the Laconia Company, which brought nearly 100 men and women to New Hampshire, spread out over several small settlements. The Laconia Company failed to make a profit and disbanded. Most of its outposts were abandoned, but the group located at Strawbery Banke remained, and thus was the founding of Portsmouth.
Mason died in 1635 before he could do much with his land, but he’s very important to our story because his heirs and legatees prosecuted their claims to it for over 100 years. The Crown, in all its wisdom, made several other generous land concessions at the same time, reaching from ocean to ocean, that clearly overlap Mason’s. These broad, sweeping grants, made with little concern for geographic realities, when combined with the steady stream of Massachusetts settlement streaming north and westward from the Bay Colony, set the stage for a tangle of boundary and title disputes which were to greatly beleaguer our settlers.
Moving along in time, Portsmouth became a leading economic force in New Hampshire, and most people distinctly followed the Church of England and looked toward Puritanism with a jaundiced eye. In fact, one-third of the citizens of Portsmouth were loyalists and did not support the American Revolution, when that time came. The four New Hampshire towns mentioned above were largely left to govern themselves; however, Massachusetts was flourishing and there was a push to settle Mason’s untouched lands.
The homesteaders in these outposts, places like Groton and Lancaster, Mass., looked to Massachusetts for protection of their rights and liberties. In 1653, the Massachusetts General Court placed on record its interpretation of where their northern boundaries lie, which was the headwaters of the Merrimack River, at today’s Lake Winnipesaukee and “forever east and west from there.” It is around this time that Massachusetts annexed Maine, as well.
Having noticed from afar that Massachusetts had just annexed 40,000 acres to her boundaries, the Mason’s grandson, one Robert Mason of London, petitioned Charles II in 1660 for a restoration of his rights to the bottom of half of New Hampshire. A commission was sent over from England to study the matter and the grant was confirmed. Two years later, his heir released his claim to some of the occupied portions, and around that time New Hampshire became an official Royal Province with its own legislature to protect its interests. The formal selling of land by the London Mason heirs again in 1679 was to cause problems down the road.
While the next big important thing that occurred with regard to the settlement of the Monadnock region took place in 1690, I will sketch out a brief survey of what was going on between the 1660s and the 1690s. While London was suffering from the bubonic plague and the Great Fire of London (1666), the colonies were expanding. Connecticut Gov. John Winthrop secured a royal charter for his colony (1662) and Rhode Island procured one as well (1663). The English crown forced the Massachusetts colony to stop hanging Quakers; the Treaty of Madrid was completed between England and Spain and both parties agreed that they will respect each other’s rights in America (1670).
A few more Indian wars were fought; Hudson’s Bay Company was founded (1670). Navigation acts were passed by the English parliament at this time, changing the way shipping was conducted, much to the annoyance of most of New England. The Massachusetts General Court authorized Boston silversmith John Hull to produce local coinage between 1652 and 1682, which the English government considered treasonous. There were also all manner of problems in the settlement of the Carolina colonies and the areas around the Chesapeake to keep the Crown busy. The witch hysteria is about to start in Massachusetts; the Glorious Revolution occurred in England in 1689 and James II was replaced by William and Mary.
Even with this most cursory greatest-hits list, we can see there is a dissatisfaction in the colonies. But for our purposes, pretty much nothing was going on in our woods near Monadnock.
It was in 1690 that the governor of the Massachusetts colony sent an expedition to Canada. “Canada” was the French-bastardization of an Indian term which, liberally translated, means “way the heck up north.” The expedition failed and there were huge losses of men. To compensate the men, or their heirs, for the devalued currency offered them for their service to the colony, they were given huge tracts of land. And since this company of men came from different parts of the Boston colony, the grants were named Dorchester Canada (Ashburnham), Ipswich Canada (Winchendon), Rowley Canada (Rindge), and so on. This is prior to any serious surveying, or even the affixing of the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border, which didn’t come about until 1740.
The 1690 expedition consisted of 2,300 men, including 50 Indians from the townships south of Plymouth, particularly Freetown. Its goal was to bring Quebec under the dominion of the King. But a series of mishaps occurred, such as they left Boston in early August but didn’t arrive until the end of October, the boats couldn’t get near enough due to tidal issues and men were forced to walk in waist-high water. They also ran out of gunpowder on day one, as it came over from England and often took years to arrive in the colonies.
The French were ready for them and they were ambushed. While many men returned with musket balls in the backs, or severe frostbite, many more were lost due to smallpox and influenza epidemics on board. It wasn’t until 40 years later, 1735, that the heirs from each company finally petitioned the Court for relief in the form of land.
Indians were a constant threat to the colonists and broadly speaking, many of the Indian wars can be viewed in the context of the constant struggle between the French and English. The first raid on Groton, Mass., occurred in 1694. Twenty were killed and several taken prisoner. Most prisoners were taken to Montreal and then ransomed; captive-taking was a brisk business.
In 1707, there was another raid on Groton, in which three were killed and two boys taken prisoner. John and Zachariah Tarbell were adopted by Mohawk families and became fully assimilated. They each married daughters of chiefs, had families and became respected chiefs themselves. They were among the founders, in 1750, of Akwasesne (Messena, N.Y.), after moving up the St. Lawrence River. Groton at the time was known as the Plantation of Groton, and it included present-day Groton, Ayer, Pepperell, Shirley, larges swaths of Dunstable, Littleton, Tyngsborough, and smaller portions of Harvard and Westford, Hollis and Nashua.
Colonists began to look at the untouched wilderness in our area with trepidation. Expeditions of men were sent ranging (e.g. rangers) out into our area to scout for Indians. Keep in mind that the “frontier” of the colonies in the 1690s was literally the line or arc where I-495 is now.
Dummer’s War (1722-1725) was the last of the four major Indian wars fought here. The western theater of that war involved points closer to our area. Chief Grey Lock was attacking settlers in Deerfield, Sunderland and Hatfield, Mass. In response Gov. William Dummer of Massachusetts built a fort at Brattleboro, Vt. A bounty of 100 pounds for each Indian scalp was offered. News of the bounty spread far and wide, and eventually Gov. Gurdon Saltonstall of Connecticut wrote to Dummer claiming that his friendly Indians were up around the Monadnock hunting for scalps.
One intrepid ranger of our woods at that time was Jabez Fairbanks of Lancaster, Mass. He policed these woods and valleys for 20 years, and knew the lands around Monomonock ponds (all the ponds in Jaffrey and Rindge) to Wachusett Hills and to Oxsechoxits Hills (Sterling, Mass.) and to the Souhegan River in Wilton and Milford. In July of 1725, Samuel Willard of Lancaster set out for a 40-day trip to the top of Monadnock, and then up to the Pemigewasset River. He found evidence of Indians at Peewunsenn Pond (Contoocook Lake), and on the western slope of Monadnock. Willard’s journal is the first definite record of a white man’s visit to the top of Mount Monadnock.
Dummer’s War ended with peace treaties signed in Maine at the end of 1725. Massachusetts settlers were creeping up into the Monadnock region in the 1730s and 1740s, but they had to retreat to safer areas sporadically due to fear of Indians. Hostilities broke out again in earnest with of the French and Indian War in 1754.
In 1736,petitioners John Tyler and Joseph Pike of Rowley, and 59 others, were granted a township known as Rowley Canada. Its land is present-day Jaffrey and Rindge. It may have been the first granted, but it was not the first surveyed; that distinction fell to Peterborough, Haywood’s grant, at first called Souhegan. It was of dimensions then coming to be recognized as standard for new townships, six miles square, and its boundaries conformed to the cardinal points of the compass. The aberrant trapezoidal shape of the Rowley Canada grant is the result of having to negotiate the boundaries of Peterborough and New Ipswich, which had just been settled by emigres from Ipswich.
For more on Rowley Canada, consult jaffreyhistory.org.
The other grants by the Massachusetts legislature were as follows:
– Cambridge Canada (New Boston, N.H.).
– Newton Canada (Alstead, N.H.).
– Marlborough Canada (Henniker, N.H.).
– Gorham Canada or Gorham’s company (of Barnstable) (Dunbarton, N.H.).
– Beverly Canada (Weare, N.H.).
– Sylvester’s Canada (of Scituate) (Richmond, N.H.).
– Gardner’s Canada (of Roxbury and Brookline) (Warwick, Mass.).
– Hingham Canada (Chesterfield, Mass.).
– Salem Canada (Lyndeborough, N.H.).
– Dorchester Canada (Ashburnham, Mass.).
– Ipswich Canada (Winchendon, Mass.).
– Newbury, Canada (Salisbury, N.H.).
– Weymouth Canada (Ashfield, Mass.).
Massachusetts had a policy for setting up a new township. They wanted a plat returned within 12 months showing where it would be; it had to be six miles square and set out in 63 or so lots, with one set aside for the minister and one set aside for the ministry (church) and one for the school. Within three years, one good family needs to be settled and having built a house. The house had to be at least 18 feet by 7 feet and finished, and six acres needed to be plowed, brought to English grass and fitted for mowing.
They needed to have settled a learned minister, and build and finish a convenient meetinghouse for the public worship of God. If this did not occur, the entire proposition was to be returned to the province for disposition.
Despite Indian depredations and the French and Indian War, settlement was occurring in our region. “Stearns’ History of Rindge,” for example, makes mention of Ezekiel Jewett’s farm in 1753, which had a full nursery that could not have grown up in a day. The boundary, a dispute between Massachusetts and New Hampshire which had been brewing for decades, needed to be affixed. New Hampshire authorities insisted that the boundary should be drawn three miles north of the Merrimack River’s mouth (around present-day Newburyport), while Massachusetts claimed the boundary should be drawn three miles north of the river’s source (Lake Winnepasaukee).
The two parties appealed to the Crown, and they told them to appeal to the governors of surrounding states to help draw the line. Thus, the governors of Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York stepped up to help with the dispute in 1730, but they couldn’t even agree on the points to be arbitrated and the commission never even met. In 1731, another attempt was made for the two parties to meet in Newburyport, but that failed as well. By 1735, all parties were again appealing to the Lords of Trade, and this time Gov. Jonathan Belcher of Massachusetts wrote a letter to the lords largely taking New Hampshire’s side and complaining that the “borderers on the lines live like toads on a harrow,” being run into jails on one side and then the other.
The commission began its work in August of 1737, with John Rindge, agent for New Hampshire, making the claims for his province, and the Massachusetts’ solicitor showing up with maps, plans and endless certified copies of ancient deeds and charters. On March 11, 1740, the council of King George II informed Massachusetts that their dispute was with the Crown and not with New Hampshire, and that the council’s analysis of the evidence reduced their claims to an absurdity. They took New Hampshire’s side, affixed the border, and the 37 townships that Massachusetts had established were rechartered and now became part of New Hampshire.
But there was an unexpected surprise; New Hampshire got an additional 700 square miles to its territory, including Nashua on the east and the entire Monadnock region to the west. The King’s court adopted the western course of the river at the bend at Pawtucket Falls, which was 14 miles south of the point of beginning claimed by New Hampshire.
Alas, what the Crown giveth, the Crown taketh away, and England takes heredity seriously. Mason’s claim was handed down through the generations of his family. In 1741, the Crown also ruled that all of this land was part of the Mason family’s original claim. Mason’s descendants, still living in England, sold the claim – and all the land – to a group of 12 Portsmouth businessmen who became known as the Masonian Proprietors.
Once the line was established between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and the Rowley grants, et als., invalidated, Massachusetts regranted a lot of land to the petitioners, this time in Maine. Richmond, N.H. was regranted to Turner, Maine. It was a hard sell getting people to move to Maine; it took several generations in fact. The towns of Livermore, Poland, Waterford and others in Maine had their beginnings in this fashion. The Masonian Proprietors were investors; wigs and fancy waistcoats from Portsmouth traipsing around our woods were about as popular as smallpox. They went about surveying and establishing 31 towns in their huge grant before they even got to the Monadnocks, which they named 1, 2 and 3, starting at the new state line.
Monadnock 1 became Rindge. Jaffrey was Monadnock 2, and Monadnock 3 was Dublin, together with five more. They hired an able woodsman, Joseph Blanchard, to lay out lots in each township and get them sold and settled as soon as possible. Blanchard proved too much for the settlers in Rindge and Jaffrey; he took over people’s farms and lands, entered their homes and sold their property out from under them. Many people fled south to Lunenburg and other areas, but as many chose to stay and repurchase their homesteads from the new proprietors.
Upon appeal to the Massachusetts Legislature for help, the Rowley Canada settlers were offered Bridgton, Maine, instead. Although the Masonian proprietors were generally good with the settlers, making them town proprietors and forming new townships, Blanchard was a bit disruptive; he chipped away here and there and added to other towns. He took a mile off the north side of New Ipswich, for example, and created Peterborough Slip (now Sharon and Temple). This push for settlement created a lot of title problems, Blanchard’s town lines often overlapped with other grants and other townships and Crown land. A lot of lawsuits were filed and heard.
Still, the population of New Hampshire increased from just over 9,000 people in 1720 to more than 60,000 in 1770, and the counties as we know them were created in 1770 in an effort to provide more coordinated political leadership.
In its earliest phase, the peopling of North America a spillover and an extension of established patterns of mobility in England, but the migration to America in 15 years before the Revolution was remarkable by the standards of the time. By 1775, over 55,000 Protestant Irish, over 40,000 Scots and over 30,000 English landed in New England. These ancestors of ours left indelible imprints on New Hampshire’s culture, and their good qualities would one day be seen as part of the “Yankee” character.