In the ancient church record book there is almost no hint of all these sorrows and anxieties that had come upon the people. In these same dreadful years of 1690 and 1724, when the village was completely destroyed, when they must have feared to sleep in their beds or to take the shortest walk afield, and for a long time after the houses were built only of logs for better defence, there are only the brief records, grown sadly few, of marriages and baptisms and "owning the covenant," and now and then an amusingly serious account of the settlement of disputes and desperate animosities between ill-tempered sisters of the congregation.

Of course, through the better part of the first century of occupation, the colonists had all belonged to the church at Portsmouth; and then when Gorges and Mason divided their lands, practically by the natural boundary of the river, and later still, when the town of Kittery was formed, the people of the Great Works and its neighborhood belonged to the Kittery church. The long distance soon became too perilous and difficult; and there had probably been a separate church service for the Parish of Unity for a good many years, before the church itself was formed and the Rev. John Wade ordained as pastor, in 1702. A meeting-house was built at Old Fields, between the busy riverside at the Lower Landing, or Pipestave Landing as it was first called, and the settlement at the Great Works. As early as the 8th of May, 1669, the town of Kittery made Sturgeon Creek the line dividing the town into two parishes, the upper parish being Berwick. In July, 1669, it was voted at town meeting to lay out one hundred and fifty acres of land in each of these parishes for the use of the ministry. The glebe land belonging to the upper parish was on the southern side of the Great Works River, and was sold many years ago and its price added to the ministerial fund. I do not know why it has always had the extremely secular name of the Tom Tinker lot.

We come now to the time when there are careful church and town records practically interchangeable at times. To quote a recent writer, "In the beginning each settlement or town was before all things a congregation, and the town meeting was in most cases the same thing as the assembly of the congregation."

The town of Berwick was incorporated in 1713, and Elisha Plaisted was the first representative to the General Court of Massachusetts the next year.

The Rev. John Wade preached for some years before the establishment of the church. He was born in Ipswitch, and graduated at Harvard in 1693. In 1698 he was chaplain of a garrison to the eastward, and died in 1703, hardly two years after his ordination. He wrote a beautiful, scholarly hand, and has left three most interesting, closely written pages of records, describing the founding of his church and early ministry. David Emery was the first deacon, and Nathan Lord the second. Capt. Ichabod Plaisted gave two silver cups, which are still preserved, and a cloth and napkin for the communion table. The second minister, who for half a century was truly the spiritual father and priest of his people, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wise. In his pastorate the town passed through most severe afflictions from its foes; but through his influence everything made for peace, as far as regarded the parish's own existence and government. Again and again "ye chh. voted in ye negative," when it was invited to attend the settling of grievances in neighboring churches; and the church in Salem is rebuked in solemn session as "a chh. obstinate and impenitent in scandal," and the First Church of Christ in Berwick decides to stay at home when "ye Separatists" in Exeter desire delegates.

Parson Wise lived in a house near the old meeting-house, at the upper left-hand corner of the road after you pass the Old Fields burying ground. Beside the constant dread of Indian frays in this border town to which he ministered, there were the two great excitements of the coming of the Quakers and the Salem witchcraft; but there is no record of any real persecution of either Friends or witches, on the eastern side of the Piscataqua. There is no word at all about the latter offenders, but Parson Wise piously records the baptism and owning of the covenant of a certain "Mary Foss, wonderfully recovered from ye Quakers," in 1716. One seems to know the good man familiarly after reading the age-browned pages of the old church book. He wrote a quaint wind-blown-looking hand, that makes the pages look more and more like a bent field of grass. You can see how his fingers grew stiff and old and were sometimes cramped by December cold. Such pastorates are no longer common. We can imagine the loss of the people when he died; the winter funeral the end of the long dependence and friendship.

There is one incident connected with the Salem witchcraft delusion which has given an unforgetable name and association to a certain part of the present town of South Berwick, in connection with the summoning of the Rev. Stephen Burroughs, of Wells, to appear before the judges in Danvers. The whole history of Burroughs is most interesting and perplexing. He was a man of amazing strength and a curious knowledge of woodcraft, but was accused of cruelty and various misdeeds. An enemy of his in Danvers, where he had formerly preached, was despatched to Wells on the welcome errand of bringing him to justice, with the help of two constables, -- the strength and cleverness of Burroughs being quite enough to found the charge of witchcraft upon, and cover the desire of revenge for a private grudge. They found the man at his parsonage; and, sure of proving his innocence, he readily agreed to accompany them, but suggested that they should take a shorter path than by the road they had come, -- round by the old coast or post road through York. They pretended afterward, or perhaps believed, that he cast a spell on them, and led them into a gloomy forest, presently coming out on a high, strange ridge, like a backbone to the country. As it grew dark a great thunder-storm gathered, but Burroughs alone seemed to know no fear, and kept on his way. The messenger and his two constables nearly perished with fright, and believed the whole situation to be diabolic. The horses seemed to fly, and the lightning flashed blue and awful gleams about Burroughs, as he rode ahead; and so things were at their worst as they hurried up and down the steep hills of what has ever since been known as the Witch Trot Road. Suddenly the storm ceased, as thunder-storms will, and the moon shone out; and they found themselves near the calm water of the river, near Quampeagan. This was proof enough in that moment of Burroughs's evil powers, and his fate is a matter of history. The Danvers men told the story of their fearful ride, with great glory to themselves no doubt, for many years; and though those who were familiar with the country insisted that the road to the river was shorter by half than the long way through Cape Neddick and Ogunquit, it was easier to accept the marvellous than the reasonable.

There may have been witches in Berwick; but I never heard of any nearer than York, where one has always been said to lie under a great stone in the churchyard; and a terrible person in Portsmouth, described as wearing a white linen hood tied under her chin, a red waistcoat and petticoat, with a green apron, and a black hat upon her head; and she vanished away, green apron and all, in the shape of a cat!

The Last Of A Family.

It is interesting to see how many of the still familiar names of the region appear early in the old records; like Bragdon, Butler, Hodgdon, Grant and Gray, Hooper, Emery, Guptill, Weymouth, Jellison, Warren and Gowen; but other names equally common then are now, as far as I know, extinct in the Berwicks: like Wincal, Broughton, MacPhedris, Kilgore, Hamilton, Bolthood, Reddington, Andros, Shackley, Stockbridge and Percy, and especially Chadbourne, which was for so many years most prominent. We find in the church book Major Charles Frost, an honored parishioner and great Indian fighter, declining to take the responsible office of elder, "because the service is incoherent with his civil and military office." There is a fine picture preserved of Richard Shackley, "ye last of ye Elders." "He was a man of very grave countenance of the old Puritan stamp (which does not seem to appear very often in the Piscataqua plantations), sound in the faith, and very tenacious of his Hopkinsian opinions. He used to wear a red cap in church, and when he heard a minister whose preaching he relished, he would rise in his seat, which was beneath the pulpit, and stand there looking intently at the preacher. When not pleased, he would keep his seat." He wrote a fine, dignified hand: in fact, all these records show the first two ministers and the leaders of the parish to have been men of education and refinement. There is practically no misspelling, though some archaisms of speech, and a general tone of dignity and discretion.

After the death of Mr. Wise, a new handwriting in the old book somewhat afflicts the unprejudiced reader. It is commonplace, tiresome and insistent; and somehow the poor man's troubles with his parish are discovered, as if by instinct, to begin with a mean-spirited self-pity for himself; and one dismisses him, even at this distance of a hundred years, as willingly as his parishioners seem to have done. He tries to use force to bring certain stray-aways into church. He plans about getting more money, and goes on pitying and cherishing himself, and blaming his people, until the end. He was always signing his name as if it stood to him for something very remarkable, while Parson Wise's signature hardly once appears. Directly after his departure, old Richard Shackley, the solemn elder, calls for a day of fasting and prayer, "on account of the maloncholly state of religion in the church and town."

There followed him a man who is still remembered by some of my older friends, the Rev. John Tompson, who was a far more worthy successor of Parson Wise. He, too, was a college-bred man, of Harvard, 17--, and a descendant of the Parson Tompson of Braintree, so celebrated by Cotton Mather, in his "Magnalia," for his "constellation of converts." Mr. Tompson evidently plucked up his courage in accepting the call to Berwick. It was not only that he succeeded his predecessor, but the call was given in the darkest days of the Revolution, by a poor and anxious parish, with whom he frankly condoles upon its divided and languishing state. Berwick, as neighbor to her parent town of Kittery, had shared in the glorious successes of Pepperell in the siege of Louisburg; and no doubt some of her men marched with the company, formed about Saco, that was present at the fight on Bunker Hill. There is a devout assurance of Mr. Tompson's "Requests at the throne of Grace, that the God of Peace may be with us and bless us," as he ends his letter of acceptance.

These were days of discouragement. The town's business was stopped; the country was making a bitter struggle, and drawing away the best energies of the men to the seat of war. It was manifestly a time when the pine forests were in process of growth, and there was no market for timber, even if it could yet be cut. Some of the richer families had become extinct or had gone away. Judge Hill, the leading citizen, had died just before the great struggle came on. The country was more and more impoverished, and we can hardly imagine the discouragement that met both minister and people at every hand. It is a temptation to follow the history of the town closely, and to follow with it the closely interwoven fortunes of the sister town of Somersworth, across the river; but it is increasingly difficult to choose the leading threads, where everything is so locally important and interesting.

Two of the most interesting figures of the last century, however, who must by no means be forgotten, were John (or Owen) Sullivan, always called Master Sullivan (MAP), and his wife, Margery, who came over to New England from Ireland about 1723. They first landed at York, and spent some time there on the McIntire farm, still occupied by descendants of the royalist exiles. Master Sullivan always surrounded himself with more or less mystery, but insisted that he had "four countesses to his mother and grandmothers, which has been proved true." He feigned great ignorance at first to match his poverty; but at last, tiring of his humble position, tradition says that he wrote a letter to Parson Moody, of York, in seven languages, and presently removed himself to the upper part of Berwick, a few miles above Quampeagan, to the neighborhood of the Great Falls, and opposite the present city of Somersworth. Here he kept a school for a great number of years, and owned a small farm. He is reported to have been indolent according to the standard of his contemporaries, but to have been always reading and a man of great wit and natural powers of mind. His wife was a woman of quick temper, but great tenderness of heart, joined to all the practical ability which Master Sullivan seems to have lacked, except that most noble gift of awakening young minds. Margery Sullivan, -- "the small, beautiful, energetic, courageous woman, who worked in the fields, so that her thoughtful and studious husband might not be obliged to do it; who drove a cow some thirty miles through woods and along bad roads for her son; who nursed the neighbours when they were ill, and quarrelled with them horribly when they were well; who gloried in her sons' careers, boasting that she never did anything contrary to the will of her husband. He was her father in age, her master in knowledge, and her husband by marriage." The writer has heard another boast of Margery Sullivan's repeated: that she had dropped corn many a day with two governors: a judge in her arms and a general on her back. Old Master Sullivan died in 1796, at the great age of nearly one hundred and five years, keeping his love for books until the last. His wife died in 1801. Two of their sons, Daniel and Ebenezer, were captains in the Revolutionary army: the first dying on his way home from a captivity in the Jersey prison ship; the second was a lawyer at South Berwick, but died at Charleston, S.C. John Sullivan, the younger, was one of the distinguished officers of the war, major-general by rank, and afterward first president or governor of New Hampshire. James lived at first in Saco (it was to him the cow was driven), and later he became a citizen of Boston; a judge of the Superior Court, attorney-general, and in 1808 governor of Massachusetts.

There is a charming story of his being on circuit in the District of Maine, and going out of his way to pass the night with his old father and mother at Berwick. In the evening he and his father lost their tempers over some political argument and parted in anger. The judge was obliged to leave the house very early in the morning before day, but he was so troubled as he rode away by the thought that he had been disrespectful, that he turned his horse at last and rode back again several miles to beg his father's pardon.

This was the author of the "History of Maine," so often quoted; a delightful work, eloquent at times, and naturally very full of interest when its author touched at any point the history or traditions of his native town. Berwick has had few sons of whom she has such good reason to be proud. The family burying place, at the old farm on Pine Hill, was unfortunately destroyed by the laying out of a road; and the graves of the father and mother being disturbed, the poor ashes that were left and the stone erected by their son James were removed by a descendant to the burial ground of their son and daughter, Gen. John Sullivan and Margery (Mrs. Hardy), at Durham, N. H.

Section III

Old Town of Berwick
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