The Rev. Mr. Tompson's pastorate lasted almost as long as Parson Wise's. It was in his time that the present First Congregational Church was built to replace the ancient one at Old Fields, where he preached so many years to Judge Chadbourne, Judge Green, Gen. Lord, Col. Hamilton, and the men and women of that time. A second parish had been formed at Blackberry Hill, with which were long associated the honored names of Rev. Mr. Meriam and Mr. Hilliard, but which has now ceased to exist. There was also the Baptist Church (MAP), where Parson Boyd preached for many years. This was later used, for many years, as a town house, being conveniently situated for that purpose, and it was a great pity that it should have been unnecessarily destroyed. The moderator used to occupy the high pulpit with its sounding board, while the citizens and voters made a more or less discreet congregation.

I remember that the unpainted woodwork had taken a beautiful brown tint with age, and that it used to be a vast pleasure in my childhood to steal into the silent place, and to sit alone, or with small, whispering friends, in one of the high, square pews. The arrangement of the pews and benches reminded one of the time when there was such careful attention paid to social precedence, and provision made for the colored people, of whom there were formerly a large number in Berwick, and many of them have been excellent citizens. Most of the prominent families in this part of New England, near tide water, possessed one or more African slaves in the last century; and one may still hear delightful stories of their strange traits of inheritance and their loyal affection to the families which they adopted as their own, and were always ready to champion. A little sandy hill, just below the Landing, and above the old river path that leads to Leigh's, now Yeaton's mills, still bears the name of Cato's Hill, from the fact that the sunny sand bank near the top was the favorite retreat of an ancient member of the household of Gen. Lord. Cato was a native Guineaman, and the last generation loved to recall the tradition of his droll ways and speeches.

Below Quampeagan.

At Doughty's Falls, or what is now North Berwick Village, there were in the last century a large number of families belonging to the Society of Friends. It is an interesting fact that the first meeting of Friends (or Quakers as they were then called) in the province of Maine was at Newichawannock, in December, 1662. "At about the same time in Dover," says Williamson, in his "History of Maine," was "issued the famous warrant commanding three women to be whipped out of the state." There was no persecution in Maine, however. In North Berwick the Husseys, Buffums and others have taken active part in the great interests and potent achievements of their society.

To the north of this now large and enterprising village (which owes much of its growth to the business capacity of the late William Hill, or Friend Hill as he was familiarly known, and to the Hobbs family) is the old estate of one branch of the Goodwin family. The pleasant old house which stands by the river, between its great forests and open fields, was always called by the unexplainable and dismal name of Execution, which must be legal in its remote origin; though there are relics of lost traditions about a regicide judge, only a few miles away, and the hospitality of the family may have harbored him here. There is one thing certain: Capt. Goodwin, the friend and contemporary of Sir William Pepperell and high sheriff of York County, never levied an execution without breaking off a twig and pulling a tuft of grass, to make literally true his oath that he had delivered possession by twig and turf. This was the father of Gen. Ichabod Goodwin of Old Fields; and grandfather of Rev. Dr. Daniel R. Goodwin, late president of Trinity College, Hartford, and chancellor of the University of Pennsylvania, and of Gov. Ichabod Goodwin of New Hampshire, who belonged to that remarkable group of men known as the war governors, who held the executive powers of the Northern states in 1861-62. No man among them was more "prompt, methodical and clear-sighted, and intensely devoted to their one duty." These brothers bear two of the best known names on the Berwick Academy roll of honor. Nor must we forget their younger relative, Hon. John Noble Goodwin (MAP), one of the many well-known lawyers of the town, who was a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and later governor of Arizona and its representative.

Goodwin House. Old Fields.

It grieves me more and more that the meeting-house of the old First Church and Parish has not been allowed to keep something of its look of antiquity. It was originally a most tasteful building, well proportioned, as all the older village buildings are, and finished in the best fashion of a day when simple good taste in architecture seems to have been instinctive with almost everybody in the town, judging by the fine roofs and good outlines which remain. But owing to successive changes, this oldest church has lost its handsome front with the three doors and Corinthian columns, its high panelled pews, gallery, great mahogany pulpit, and, more to be regretted than anything else, its beautiful windows of the best hand-made sash-work, which it would cost hundreds of dollars to replace. The quaint little sofa and other furniture of the communion table are the only relics of the past, and poorly represent the long continuance of an historic parish like this. Such changes are often made in good faith and with the best intentions; but we must add to our inheritance whatever will best represent our own time, without taking away anything which has the power to speak of those old associations which are beyond all price. I have dwelt on this point because we Americans are only just beginning to value properly what has belonged to our past.

Many of these details are interesting in themselves only to Berwick people; but I do not leave them out, because I have always the belief that so old a town must be typical and representative. Those who never saw old Berwick will put other names in the place of these, and be reminded of other old houses and landscapes and stories of the past. There are, however, certain characteristics, I had almost said individualities, of the town: I do not know any prospect that rivals the view from Powder House (or Butler's) Hill, or that down the river from the Lower Landing, near the Hamilton or Goodwin house. From the hilltop, which is high and bare like a Yorkshire moor, the eye follows a great procession of the New Hampshire mountains along the horizon from Saddleback to Mount Washington. If you look eastward you have a sense of being at the door of the great forests of Maine, -- a dark, pine-clad region stretches over and beyond Agamenticus. This way you are reminded of the loneliness that the settlers found, and westward you discover the smiling country of towns and farms that they began to build.

The Village Street.

Another characteristic of the village of South Berwick is the sound of all the river falls, almost always to be heard by day, when one stops to listen, and loudest and most jarring in the dead of night to the wooden houses that vibrate to their constant notes. Then the many bells of the mills and churches give one at certain hours the feeling of being in a foreign town. Nine of them ring in their high belfries within little more than a mile of distance. I do not know any other New England village which has so many pleasant bells within hearing. Three of them belong to the sister town of Rollinsford, on the other side of the river.

This region bore its part in all the wars with generosity and bravery. The famous crew of John Paul Jones and the "Ranger" was mainly gathered from the shores of the river. One of the last of his sailors was, in his extreme old age, my father's patient. There was much shipbuilding up and down the river (MAP); and hardly a household in the old seafaring days of New England did not find itself anxious when the wind blew, or the mother did not give a heavy sigh as she said that it was a hard night for sailors coming on the coast. This part of the industry of the town is so completely at an end that younger people can hardly believe that the river was once such a highway for traffic. Even so lately as forty years ago there was a picturesque fleet of twenty gundalows with lateen sails, sailing from the Landing wharves (MAP) to Portsmouth, beside a good-sized packet boat which went every other day. We know so little of the ways of the people a hundred or two hundred years ago, that it is a pleasure to be able to recall the customs of only fifty years since, and to be able to picture to ourselves, not only the people, but the way they lived in their pleasant houses and spent their time in the same pleasant houses and along the quiet streets that we ourselves know. When you see the last of the gundalows coming up the river, you will like to remember that its ancestor was copied from a Nile boat, from which a sensible old sea captain once took his lesson in shipbuilding. The high peaked sail looks like a great bird's wing, and catches the flawy wind well in the river reaches.

A Gundalow At The Landing.

The northern country was covered then, for the most part, with heavy pine growth; and the chief business at Berwick was buying this from the lumbermen, and sending it to Portsmouth, there to be reshipped, or direct to the West Indies, where the usual course of the ships was to load with rum, tobacco and molasses, and then to Russia where this second cargo was exchanged for iron, duck and cordage, then back to Liverpool for another trade, and so home. The little ships made money fast enough, and in the winter time the Berwick streets were crowded with ox teams and huge timber pines and piles of plank and boards. Sometimes gangs of teamsters, with their oxen, came in great companies from the White Mountains, and even from Vermont through the Crawford Notch. Sometimes there were two or three bronzed sea captains rolling up the street in company. It was a business full of all sorts of interests and surprises, and the cords which were fastened at one end to the Landing wharves seemed to wind all about the other side of the world. You found a plain old man who knew all about some distant corner of the mysterious earth, not because he had read about it in a weekly newspaper, but because he had been there himself and perhaps taken his wife with him. There was somebody, perhaps your own great-grandfather, who had wintered at Valley Forge. One might meet Dr. Usher Parsons, the biographer of Sir William Pepperell, and a distinguished writer on medical subjects, who had been Commodore Perry's surgeon, at the great fight on Lake Erie, who was of Berwick stock, and had come to pay a summer visit to his relatives in the town. There would be Judge Green, a most dignified and elegant man, wearing his cloak with scarlet facings; and Judge Hayes, who had the instincts of an English country squire, and lived like one on his great estate, bringing up his handsome sons and daughters to be ladies and gentlemen, to walk and to speak as ladies and gentlemen should, and to be self-respecting and respectful of others. You might see his brother-in-law, President Lord, of Hanover, walking gravely past the Corner on his way to call upon his brother John, who had been the early friend of Daniel Webster, and law student with him in Jeremiah Mason's office at Portsmouth. You might meet Hon. William Burleigh (MAP), another lawyer and member of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses, who had just won great approval from his townsfolk for getting a longed-for appropriation from the government for dredging and blasting the river channel between the Upper and Lower Landings, so that commerce was expected to take a new start in these busy waters.

Madam Cushing's House.

If you saw a dignified, straight little lady coming down a wide box-bordered walk to the street, from a noble house that stood behind a close planted row of poplars that long ornamented the village street, you might be sure that it was old Madam Cushing, who had known Lafayette when they were young together in Boston, and the battles of the Revolution were being fought. It was she whom the old man remembered and came to Berwick to see in his last visit to America. Only the other day, a dear old friend of mine told me that she remembered seeing the old French general go "with his gentlemen" up that same box-bordered walk to pay the visit. And with Madam Cushing might be her son-in-law, Mr. Hobbs, a tall, fine figure of a man just in the prime of his activity, and one of the most useful and careful secretaries and trustees of the academy during many years. He, too, was a lawyer, -- all these men were lawyers, -- and so were Mr. Cogswell and Mr. John Hubbard, who died young and so disappointed many hopes. They knew what was going on in the world, bought good books, knew the best men in other places, and lived handsomely at home. If Judge Hayes was the village squire, then that delightful man, called by everybody "Old Parson Allen," in spite of as young a heart as ever beat, -- Old Parson Allen was the village clergyman, and stood in Parson Wise's shoes with no room to spare. Grave, compassionate, full of sympathy with the present and reverence for the past, he magnified his office in a lovely and most noble way. His contemporary, Mr. Richardson, was a younger man, to whom a great parish looked with respect and affection. The doctors were known men. The Berwick women were famous for their housekeeping and their hospitality; they had their Social Library, which held the best books of the day; they were fond of ceremony, and they had their maternal meetings and their sewing societies, and made them answer well for discussion clubs and all the subdivisions of club life at the present day. Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Leigh and the Cushings, Hardings, Fergusons, Rices, Nasons, Parkses and Lords, -- what a list one might make! They make the social affairs of to-day seem pale and prosaic. Perhaps in their time, however, everybody was saying that society in Berwick was nothing to what it had been in Judge Chadbourne's and Judge Hill's day. It is natural to look at the past through the mists of glamour and imagination.

I find myself always speaking of my native town as Berwick, though the original town was long since divided and divided again. South Berwick is really the oldest of the three, to which most of the earliest history and tradition belongs; and the newer settlements and townships are its children; but the old people never seemed to make any difference in their own minds. I feel myself to be a little pedantic when I speak unnecessarily of the points of the compass. It is all one Berwick to me, except for post-office conveniences and things of that sort. The courage of the Plaisteds, and the nameless heroine who saved all her neighbors in the Tozer garrison, are as much my inheritance as if an imaginary line had never been struck across the land in 1814. I am proud to have been made of Berwick dust; and a little of it is apt to fly in my eyes and make them blur whenever I tell the old stories of bravery, of fine ambition, of good manners, and the love of friend for friend and the kindness of neighbor to neighbor in this beloved town. Her children and the flock of her old academy are scattered everywhere. They can almost hear each other's voices round the world, like the English drumbeat. They have started many a Western town; they are buried in Southern graves for their country's sake; they are lost in far northern seas. They sigh for the greenness of Old Fields and Pound Hill, for Blackberry Hill and Cranberry Meadow, from among the brick walls of many a crowded city; but some of the best have always stayed at home, and loved the rivers and the hills as their fathers and mothers did before them. They keep to the old ambitions, they mean to carry the flag of their town and state as high and free as they can! There is no town that has done its duty better than old Berwick, in war or in peace, in poverty or pride, in the days of her plain, hard-fighting youth, or the serenity of her comfortable prime.

Cramberry Meadow.

 

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