Low Tide. The old fishing place.

I have always believed that Martin Pring must have been the first English discoverer of my native town, when he came to the head of tide water in the Piscataqua River (MAP) in 1603. Bartholomew Gosnold had sailed along the coast in 1602, and Pring's pilot was one of Gosnold's seamen. He brought his two little vessels, the "Speedwell" and the "Discoverer," of fifty and twenty-six tons burden respectively, in search of adventure and of sassafras bark, which at that time in England was believed to be a sovereign remedy for human ails. The records say that Pring could find no inhabitants in the Indian villages near the coast, except a few old people, from whom he learned that they had all gone up the river to their chief fishing place. So he followed them at flood tide for a dozen miles or more, finding little wealth of sassafras, but discovering a magnificent wooded country and the noble river itself, with its many tributaries and its great bay. The main branch of the Piscataqua (river of right angles or the great deer drive, as one may choose to interpret it) would lead him to Newichawannock Falls (my place of wigwams), and to Quampeagan (the great fishing place). No doubt there were those who could direct him to this point, for, being in June, it was the time of the salmon fishery at the Newichawannock Falls, to which place all the Indians came to catch and dry their fish for winter use. It was the great fishery for all that part of the country.

The River Bank

I have myself traced for some distance the deep-worn footpath which marks the first day's trail northward and northeastward, as I have been told by a very old person who has preserved many of the earlier traditions of the town. I have heard that one might walk across on the salmon, which wedged themselves into solid masses in their efforts to leap the impossible high fall near the mouth of Chadbourne's or the Great Works River, which flows into the Newichawannock (now called the river of Salmon Falls) at Quampeagan, the high point of sandy land between the two streams. On the opposite bank, near the present village of Great Works, were the chiefs' houses, the deputies of Passaconaway, the great sachem of all this part of the country, and after him of Wonalancet and those other sons whom he commanded to be friendly, like himself, with the English people. Two cellars of their great wigwams may still be seen in a high green slope above the river.

The streams were full of high falls and dashing rapids; they were manifestly full of fish; the pine forests were superb, and in June, Quampeagan is always one of the most beautiful places in the world. If Martin Pring had been looking for a place to come to anchor with his two little vessels in the western world, he could hardly have found greater advantages or temptations than along the great river, with its fine harbor below and such manifest wealth above. The Indians were peaceable and friendly. He must at any rate have gone back to England and told his tales to eager ears and adventurous hearts. Champlain was on the coast in 1605; and Capt. John Smith, in 1614, also returned to carry news of the Piscataqua's advantages for a settlement, and to inspire others to seize upon the great opportunity. He was the intimate friend of Ferdinand Gorges; and when the Laconia colony made its adventure to the region of what is now Portsmouth, in 1623, we find the fisheries and water power of Quampeagan at once made use of and appreciated. In 1630 there was already a busy settlement of two hundred souls at the Great Works (MAP), as they called their little group of mills, -- the first mills of any sort that were built in New England. Ambrose Gibbons, the first agent of the proprietors, built a palisaded house on his arrival, in 1623 or 1624, near his famous mill with its gang of eighteen saws; and there have been mills of one sort and another at the Great Works ever since, and the little place has kept its high sounding name, much to the amusement of strangers who do not know its history. It is a picturesque spot, with steep, rocky cliffs and a bold plunge of the river into what was long supposed to be an unfathomable Great Hole, below the highest fall of water. In those early years, when the people in Plymouth were making their piteous defence against hostile Indians and starvation, this more northern settlement seems to have been busy and fearless and well fed.

The Great Works River.

The Mason colony, as it is usually called, built its first house (called the Manor House) on Odiorne's Point, below Portsmouth, where some relics of its foundation or cellar and an old pear-tree or two were lately to be seen. Their object was "to found a plantation on Piscataqua River, to cultivate the vine, discover mines, carry on the fisheries, and trade with the natives." Gorges and Mason had great expectations of gaining wealth from certain legendary mines, as well as taking high rank from their possessions of manors and immense landed estates. There were fabulous tales of the wealth of the inland country, the three hills of silver beyond the Saco River, and the huge shining carbuncle that was guarded by a spirit somewhere among those White Hills, which every adventurer had seen from his anchorage on the coast. This expedition was not thought unworthy of the interest and fellowship of many men of good family and fortune, and we find them carrying out different social ideas than most of the colonists of their time. Their Great House and Manor House, and the pains they took in maintaining a respectable fashion of life and even a certain degree of state and elegance, strike the reader of their old records at once. There were men of authority among them, and we presently find some of these established at Newichawannock, or Quampeagan.

Perhaps Ambrose Gibbons may be called the first settler of the present town of South Berwick. As we have already seen, he was given charge of the mills and trading post, and attempted also the cultivation of vines in what is still called the Vineyard (MAP), where there were steep, sunny banks about the river basin below his mills. One of the favorite schemes of Mason was vine growing. The early voyagers who brought back tales of the New World had seen the Maine coast only in summer, and could hardly take the winter weather into account. All the early colonists had to undergo bitter suffering from cold, and even, at times, the lack of food, for this reason. Mason evidently thought that it was possible to rival the wine trade of France and Spain; at any rate he writes to Gibbons anxiously, "I pray you look well to our vines"; and Gibbons could only answer, what careful gardeners in this region have ever since found to be true: "The vines that were planted will come to little. They prosper not in the ground wherein they were set; but them that grow naturally are very good of divers sorts."

In the earlier part of this century there were still so many vines left in the Vineyard that it was a favorite place of resort in autumn for all the Berwick boys. One more than half suspects that it was a survival of vine planting in the earlier colonization of the Northmen and their German servants. If the good vines which Gibbons found and praised had come from the North German valleys, they would have done much better than Mason's, which probably came from France. The half-civilized state of the Indians is a hint in the same direction. One of them drew a serviceable map of the coast for Champlain with a bit of charcoal. These and other things show them not to have been entirely barbarous or without acquaintance with the habits of European life and speech.

But whether the Northmen were the first to know the lovely valley called the Vineyard, everybody who has known the region since will remember the high, steep banks and green intervale below, shaded with fine elms and a magnificent hop hornbeam that stand apart or border the sheltered mill pond, entered on one side by the Great Works River and its wild gorge. The fall of water above, so famous in early history, is at least thirty feet in height, and rushes with great force past the cliffs; but below in the intervale it separates into brook-like streams, and flows gently among willows and alders, circling the mysterious Indian mound. Wild grapevines and tangles of clematis are festooned from tree to tree. In August the water brink is gay with cardinal flowers. Everything seems to grow in the Vineyard, and to bloom brighter than elsewhere. As an old friend once told me, "If you want six herbs, you can go right there and find them." The shyest and rarest birds of the region may be seen there, in secret haunts, or at the time of their migration; it seems like Nature's own garden and pleasure ground. The old turf is like velvet, even on the high banks; and here grow great barberry-bushes, as they grow almost nowhere else. There is no doubt that they always mark for us the very oldest New England settlements and the site or neighborhood of old gardens. Brought over from England with other fruits and berries, they found a much more favorable soil and climate. Cotton Mather shows the importance in which it was held, in describing the escape of a woman from an attack of the Indians upon the Dover garrison, when she "hid herself among the barberry-bushes in the garden."

The Berwick barberries have had time enough to stray far afield from the old cellars and garden spots; but among them you usually find that soft fine turf which only grows where the hand of man has dealt much with the ground. The high flavor of the meagre berry has always been liked by people of the ancient New England stock, as if they were indeed grown of the same ancient soil and gardening. Some of us may feel the presence of an inner truth in the childish belief that certain infants were found in a barberry-bush, and that no other kind of dust or fostering neighborhood would suffice to account for their presence. One lingers over these few traces of our earliest forbears.

The settlements that were fostered by Mason and Gorges fared much better than those like Jamestown, which in 1607 had taken first advantage of the famous royal grant to Popham of all the land between Pemaquid and the Delaware. At Newichawannock the dreams of the three silver hills and the great carbuncle had faded before the actual, visible wealth of the fisheries, and the huge timber pines that clothed the valleys and high hill slopes. The little ships of that time could easily come up the river; but as they had to cut the forests farther and farther back from the river bank, and to extend the farming lands, it was impossible to do without cattle, and these were sent over from England, or rather from Denmark, by Mason, in sufficient numbers. There were some traces left of this great yellow or dun-colored breed of oxen in the Agamenticus region, thirty or forty years ago; and Cow Cove, a charming inlet to the river below the Lower Landing, preserves the tradition that the first cow brought to this part of the country was landed there. In the upland pastures above, near Pound Hill and the Old Fields, are many old cellars with the almost effaced graves, and now and then an ancient hawthorn-bush or strayed garden flower of the earliest farms.

The Lower Landing.

Mason had plenty of money at first, and was most generous with provisions of every sort. In 1631 a ship brought many supplies and new settlers from England, and especially a company of Frenchmen, who were to take charge of the salt works.

Few women seem to have come with the first party of colonists. Ambrose Gibbons writes to Mason, in 1634: "A good husband with his wife, to tend cattle and to make butter and cheese, will be profitable; for maids they are soon gonne in this countrie." Gibbons's wife was with him at Quampeagan, and Roger Knight's wife had come also. In a schedule of goods sent out to the colonists in 1634 were "24 children's coates," and among the emigrants that year were twenty-four women. Most of these people were from Devonshire; and they evidently pushed through the Rocky Hills region, or the people with Champernowne and Col. Francis Norton, at York River or Agamenticus, came inland; for the local name of Brixham (a farming district between the great woodland tract and Scotland Parish, later settled) is taken from a fishing town in Devon, from which some of the colonists probably came.

Gibbons did not stay many years at Quampeagan or Newichawannock; and he was succeeded by Humphrey Chadbourne, a man of authority among the early colonists, who had built the Great House at Strawberry Bank (now Portsmouth), and, after living there in considerable state, removed to the sawmills settlement, as if it were the more advantageous and responsible position. He acquired great estates, buying the valuable peninsula between the two rivers, from the sachem politely called Mr. Rowls. Gibbons fades out of sight very soon. He is said to have been buried on Sanders Point at Newcastle. There was a mysterious person called Leaders or Ledgors, who was also prominent at Newichawannock; and we find the familiar names of Cooper and Knight and Norton and Spencer, who bought so large a tract of land, in 1643, that the men of the settlement were called together to ratify the deed. The estates of Humphrey Chadbourne were for two hundred years in possession of his descendants, and the house of his great-grandson, Judge Chadbourne, is still standing. When it was built there was no house between it and Canada.

The early settlers of the town were people of good intelligence and found themselves possessed by many advantages. Mason spent all his fortune to further theirs; and, barring the severe winters, for which they were at first unprepared, and the great distance from the managers of the company, they got on much better than many others in like situation. Some of the agents were untrustworthy, but there was, on the whole, a marked difference between these pilgrims to a new world and those of Plymouth or Connecticut. They were firm royalists and Episcopalians, and were careful at first to mind the interests of both Church and State; but it was only at Portsmouth that the church establishment was permanent. The people were happily not given to dignifying their own personal animosities and squabbles for ascendancy by the name of religion. They seem to have been honest, quiet people, with more self-respect than cant and self-seeking. They lived well, and in fact seem to have cared a good deal more for feasting than fasting, and to have had a sense of propriety in household affairs and great hospitality; and all these traits have come down to their descendants. They were not reformers, or people who made life too much a matter of opinion and lacked some of the finer qualities of such as these, yet held steadily on their way, with hardships enough to make them humble and encouragements enough to keep [heep] hope alive. While they looked to the provisioning and forethought of Mason, their own energies were somewhat enfeebled.

Mason died in 1636, bequeathing his much diminished property to his grandsons, with the New England lands. The family sent over an agent, but things were in a bad way; supplies and remittances ceased on either hand. It is not known when the inhabitants of the eastern shore of the river formed themselves into an order of self-government; but this proving precarious, in 1641, most of these communities of the Piscataqua put themselves formally under the protection of Massachusetts. In 1652 Kittery was formally made a Massachusetts town, and was authorized to send two deputies to the General Court.

It seems to have been many years before anything troubled the settlement at Newichawannock. Humphrey Chadbourne was the father and lawgiver of the little community; but with him we soon associate the Hills, and Plaisteds, and Lords, and Goodwins, from whose intermarriages have descended many distinguished New England men and women. Their garrison houses were not far apart, and this word "garrison" marks definitely the change from a kind of cheerful neighborliness with the friendly people of the Abenaquis tribe to an armed defence against the suspicious and savage Indian foe. In 1673 the old Sawmills settlement at Great Works and the neighboring farms were formally known as the Parish of Unity in Kittery, a name that their lack of history, the surest sign of a peaceful country, seems to have well deserved. It was sometimes called Kittery Commons and then Berwick, but it was not until the year 1713 that Berwick was set off from Kittery and made a separate town, as it had for many years been a separate parish.

The first great impulse to the population and affairs of the region after the original settlement was in the years of the civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament. Emigration had decreased; in fact, according to Hubbard, "The New England colonies were losing, by returns to the mother country, almost as many as they gained by accessions." When the managers of the company had ceased to support the plantations on the Piscataqua, a trade was opened little by little with the West India Islands, in which lumber and dried fish were exchanged for the island products, -- so beginning a commercial relation that was always of great advantage to this part of the country. Yet things were languishing and progress was stopped when Cromwell gained a victory over the royal troops at Dunbar, in the north; and "not knowing how to dispose better of his prisoners, he banished them from the realm of England and sent them to America." From Boston they were despatched down the coast to find fellowship in the more conservative royalist colony planted by Gorges, and were given lands in what is still known as Scotland Parish, in the upper part of York, not many miles from the Great Works and Quampeagan, whither, no doubt, some of them were attracted by the mills and general business. "Among these people," says Sullivan, "were the McIntires, the Tuckers, Maxwells, etc. These came to Gorges's government because he was a royalist." There were also the Lovats (Leavitts), Bradwardines (Bradeens), and others, whose descendants are familiar to our sight in York and South Berwick; and among these North Country men there must have been some one who came from the ancient hamlet of Barwick or Berwick-in-Elmet, in Yorkshire.

One Of The Oldest Houses.

I was always puzzled to know why the old people of the region called our town Barvick, and why the old church record book, begun in 1701-2, has on its titlepage, "The Records of the Church of Christ at Barvick"; though some later hand has attempted to turn the "v" into "w." Berwick-on-Tweed, for which this New England town has always been supposed to be named, is always pronounced Berrik. I should like to know more than I know now about the tiny Yorkshire village, whose existence I only discovered a few months ago, and which some loyal hearts remembered in their new homemaking. They had left a stormy England to find the young colonies beginning a long series of terrible struggles against the Indians, and so fell upon a most anxious time.

The plantations on the Piscataqua, and its upper branch, the Newichawannock (called now above the falls by the English name of Salmon Falls River), suffered more from the first hostile attacks of the Indians than either York or Wells. The river was the great highway, and gave subsistence to the war parties, according to Sullivan's History. We begin to meet on every hand the piteous stories of burned houses and cruelly murdered settlers. The Shorey and Neal garrisons, below Old Fields, and the Plaisted and Tozer and Keay and Wentworth and Spencer garrisons or fortified houses near the Salmon Falls, seem to have been most depended upon for shelter. There was a stockaded fort on Pine Hill, near the Great Falls, called by the name of Hamilton; but this as only a fort, and not a house. Almost every man went armed to his ploughing or to church. The Plaisted garrison was on the high, upland farm, occupied later for several generations by the Wallingford family; and near the site of it may still be seen the relics of a very old burying ground, of which the well-known Plaisted stone is almost the only one now recognizable. In 1675 the Indians made a determined and terrible assault on Berwick, and Lieut. Roger Plaisted, "like a man of public spirit, sent out seven men from the garrison to see what the matter was," and falling into an ambush, three of them were killed. The next day Plaisted went out at the head of a company of twenty, with a cart and yoke of cattle, to find the bodies; and, being surprised, most of the men ran for their lives; "while Lieut. Plaisted, out of the height of his courage, disdaining either to fly from or to yield himself (for 'tis said the Indians were loath to kill him, but desirous rather to take him prisoner) into the hands of such cursed caitiffs, did fight it out desperately, till he was slain upon the place. His eldest son and another man were slain in their too late retreat, and his other son was sorely wounded, so that he died within a few weeks after."

"Such," says Williamson in his "History of Maine," "was the fate of this Spartan family, whose intrepidity deserves a monument more durable than marble." The father had represented Kittery four years in the General Court, and was highly respected for his valor, worth and piety. He and his sons were buried on his own land, near the battle ground, full in view from the highway leading through Berwick, whose lettered tombstone tells succeeding ages:

"Near this place lies buried the body of Roger Plaisted, who was killed by the Indians, Oct. 16, 1675, aged 48 years, also the body of his son, Roger Plaisted, who was killed at the same time."

There is no record of any stone to the second son, but an older inscription on this same large stone reads: "Here lies interred the body of Samuel Plaisted, Esq., who departed this life March 20th, 1731, Æ. 36." This was probably Lieut. Roger Plaisted's uncle, as his father's name was Ichabod. A descendant of the family was one of the recent governors of Maine.

I remember in my childhood a low headstone near by, which bore the name of "Elizabeth Wyat, 18 years." It has quite disappeared with the old apple-tree that it leaned against, but I remember my father's telling me that he had heard from very old people that Elizabeth Wyat was a most beautiful and lovable young creature, whose early death had given the deepest sorrow to all her friends. I somehow take unreasonable pleasure in writing here this brief record, which perhaps no one could write but myself. Her dust long years ago was turned into pink and white apple blossoms against the blue sky, and these, in their turn, faded and fell on the green grass beneath. Mr. Granville Wallingford, the last of his long-respected family, was possessed of a knowledge of much local history, especially about these ancient graves, which are so nearly forgotten; even their very stones are covered deep into the green field out of sight and mind.

In 1678 there were dark days. Two hundred and fifty Englishmen were killed or carried away captive, and almost every settlement beyond the Piscataqua was laid in ashes. Major Waldron of Dover was the great Indian fighter of the region, and there is an account of a hundred Indians captured by him, which were sent to Bermuda and sold as slaves. The disastrous war of King Philip lasted three years, and nearly broke up the flourishing fisheries, upon which the seacoast, and river towns like ours, had begun to depend.

The story of Berwick is like the story of all the mother towns of New England, and she can boast her children's bravery and heroism with the best. In that same sad month of October, 1675, at the Tozer garrison near Roger Plaisted's, and half a mile above the mills at Salmon Falls, fifteen women and children were saved by the courage of a girl of eighteen, -- "that young heroess," as Hubbard calls her, who, while the rest were escaping, kept the door fast against two Indians, until they chopped it down with their hatchets, with which they then knocked her senseless; but "the poor maid that had ventured her life so far to save many others, was by a strange Providence enabled to recover so much strength after they were gone, as to repair to the next garrison, where she was soon after healed of her wounds and restored to perfect health again"; and so, as Hubbard says, somewhere else in his quaint and graphic "Indian Wars," "did happily make an escape from their bloody and deceitful hands."

Perhaps the most famous battle with the Indians was in 1690, when a party under the command of Hertel, a Frenchman, and Hopegood, a sachem, attacked Newichawannock." They killed thirty men, and the rest of the people, after an obstinate and courageous defence, surrendered at discretion." The captives were fifty-four in number, the greater part of whom were women and children. The enemy burned all the houses and mills, and, taking with them what plunder they could carry, retreated to the northward. A party of one hundred and forty men, collected from the neighboring towns, pursued and came up with the savages on Worster's River (MAP), at a narrow bridge. They fought all the afternoon, but with little loss on either side. The French and Indians held their pursuers in check until night, and then continued their retreat, tormenting their captives with shocking cruelty. Among these unfortunate captives was Mrs. Mehetable Goodwin, who may be called the mother of all that representative widely scattered Berwick family, which has shown in different generations so much ability and such marked traits of character. Hetty Goodwin, as she has always been called, was taken by the Indians, with her husband and baby. The man and wife were separated by two parties of the savages, and set forth on their long and suffering journey to Canada, each believing the other to be dead, and leaving behind them their comfortable farm on a beautiful hill above the river, near the Plaisted garrison. In the early part of the march one of the Indians snatched the baby from its mother's arms and dashed its head against a stone; and when the poor mother dragged her weary steps behind the rest and could not still her cries, they threatened if she did not stop weeping to kill her in the same way. At nightfall she was stooping over a brook trying to wash a bloody handkerchief, and her tears were falling fast again. She forgot the threats of her captives. Suddenly, a compassionate squaw, pitying the poor, lonely mother, threw some water in her face, as if in derision. The tears were hidden, and no one else had noticed them. "This squaw had a mother's heart," the old people used to say, in telling me the story. In Canada the captives underwent great hardships, and "Hetty Goodwin, a well-off woman," was so hungry that she sometimes stole food from the pigs. She was bought at last by a Frenchman; and, supposing herself to be a widow and despairing of ever reaching home again, she married him and had two children. Their name, corrupted probably from the French, was Rand; and the Portsmouth family of the name is said to be descended from them. As I was once told, the captive husband "was a Goodwin, and smart"; so after a while he outwitted the Indians in some way and gained his liberty; and, coming to his home, found that his wife was still alive. He went back to Canada and found her and brought her back; after which they managed to live unmolested and were the parents of many children. Hetty Goodwin's half-buried little headstone may still be seen in the Old Fields burying ground (MAP). I never can look at it without a thrill of feeling, or pass the pleasant place where she lived without remembering that she knew that lovely view over hill and dale, up the river, and must often have dreamed and longed for the sound of the river falls, in the far country to which she was carried a lonely captive, in the northern wilderness of Canada.

 

Section II

Old Town of Berwick
Old Berwick Historical Society Homepage