Drake Samuel Adams
Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast
Belknap says further that there was no provision for public institutions. Schools were unknown, and they had no minister till, in pity of their deplorable state, two went thither from Boston on a voluntary mission.
There are yet some interesting objects to be seen in York, though few of the old houses are remaining at the harbor. These few will, however, repay a visit. Prominent among her antiquities is the meeting-house of the first parish. An inscription in the foundation records as follows:
"Founded a. d. 1747
The Revd. Mr. Moody, Pas."
The church is placed on a grassy knoll, with the parsonage behind it. Its exterior is plain. If such a distinction may be made, it belongs to the third order of New England churches, succeeding to the square tunnel-roofed edifice, as that had succeeded the original barn-like house of worship. Entering the porch, I saw two biers leaning against the staircase of the bell-tower, and noticed that the bell-ringer or his assistants had indulged a passion for scribbling on the walls, though not, as might be inferred, from Scripture texts. The interior is as severe as the exterior. Besides its rows of straight-backed pews, it was furnished at one end with a mahogany pulpit, communion-table, and sofa covered with black hair-cloth. Hanging in a frame against the pulpit are fac-similes of letters from the church at York to that of Rowley, bearing the date of 1673. The tower is an ingenious piece of joinery that reminded me of Hingham church.
Shubael Dummer, the first minister of this parish, was killed in 1692, at the sacking of the place by the Indians. He was shot down in the act of mounting his horse at his own door, a short distance toward the harbor. Mather, in his "Magnalia," indulges in a strain of eulogy toward this gentleman that we should now call hifalutin. Dummer's successor was Samuel Moody, an eccentric but useful minister, still spoken of as "Parson Moody." He was Sir William Pepperell's chaplain in the Louisburg expedition, and noted for the length and fervor of his prayers.
After the capitulation Sir William gave a dinner to the superior officers of the army and fleet. Knowing the prolixity of his chaplain, he was embarrassed by the thought that the parson's long-winded grace might weary the admiral and others of his guests. In this dilemma, he was astonished to see the parson advance and address the throne of grace in these words: "O Lord, we have so many things to thank thee for, that time will be infinitely too short for it; we must therefore leave it for the work of eternity."
A second parish was formed in York about 1730. Rev. Joseph Moody, the son of Samuel, was ordained its first pastor, in 1732. At the death of his wife he fell into a settled melancholy, and constantly appeared with his face covered with a handkerchief. From this circumstance he was called "Handkerchief Moody." He was possessed of wit, and some dreary anecdotes are related of him. Mr. Hawthorne has made the incident of the handkerchief the frame-work of one of his gloomiest tales. I know of no authority other than tradition to support the statement made in a note accompanying the tale, that "in early life he (Moody) had accidentally killed a beloved friend."79
It is only a short distance from the church to the old burying-ground, and I was soon busy among the inscriptions, though I did not find them as interesting as I had anticipated. The place seemed wholly uncared for. The grass grew rank and tangled, making the examination difficult, and at every step I sank to the knee in some hollow. The yard is ridged with graves, and must have received the dust of many generations, "going back even to those who acknowledged the first James for their dread lord and sovereign." As usual, the older stones, when I had found them, were too much defaced to be deciphered, and I remarked that the slate grave-stone of Parson Moody preserved but few of its original lines. Beside him lay the remains of his wife. The following is his own epitaph:
"Here lies the body of the
Rev'd SAMUEL MOODY, A.M
The zealous, faithful, and successful pastor of the
First Church of Christ in York
Was born in Newbury, January 4th, 1675
Graduated 1697. Came hither May 16th,
Died here November 13th, 1747
For his farther character read the 2d Corinthians,
3d chapter and first six verses."
In the corner of the ground next the main street is the monumental tablet of Hon. David Sewall. A plain slab of slate at his side marks the resting-place of his wife. On this are enumerated some of the public offices held by her husband, and the two monuments might furnish the reader with materials for a biography.
Mr. Adams, in his "Diary," notes meeting his "old friend and classmate" at York, when he was going the circuit in 1770. Sewall had just returned from a party of pleasure at Agamenticus, and the talk was of erecting a beacon upon it. At this time he was looked upon as a Tory, but became a zealous Whig before hostilities with the mother country began.
In 1640, says Lechford, nothing was read nor any funeral sermon made at a burial, but at the tolling of the bell all the neighborhood came together, and after bearing the dead solemnly to the grave, stood by until it was closed. The ministers were commonly, but not always, present. In these few and simple rites our fathers testified
"The emptiness of human pride,
The nothingness of man."
On a rising ground opposite the town-house is the old jail of York. I have deemed it worthy a passing notice. It is a quaint old structure, and has held many culprits in former times, when York was the seat of justice for the county, though it would not keep your modern burglar an hour. It is perched, like a bird of ill omen, on a rocky ledge, where all might see it in passing over the high-road. Thus, in the early day, the traveler on entering the county town encountered, first, the stocks and whipping-post; continuing his route, he in due time came to the gallows, at the town's end. The exterior of the jail is not especially repulsive, now that it is no longer a prison; but the inside is a relic of barbarism – just such a place as I have often imagined the miserable witchcraft prisoners might have been confined in. The back wall is of stone. The doors are six inches of solid oak, studded with heavy nails; the gratings secured with the blades of mill saws, having the jagged teeth upward; the sills, locks, and bolts are ponderous, and unlike any thing the present century has produced.
The dungeons, of which there are two, admitted no ray of light except when the doors were opened; and these doors were of two thicknesses of oaken planks banded between with plates of iron, and on the outside with rusty blades of mill saws, as were also the crevices through which the jailer passed bread and water to the wretched criminals. The gloom and squalor of these cachots oppressed the spirits of even the casual visitor, free to come and go at pleasure; what must it, then, have been to the wretches condemned to inhabit them? Above these dungeons were two or three cells, secured by precautions similar to those below; while other apartments were reserved for the jailer's use. The house was inhabited, and children were playing about the floor. I fancied their merry laughter issuing from solitary dungeons where nothing but groans and imprecations had once been heard. Perchance there have been Hester Prynnes and Cassandra Southwicks immured within these walls.
As I never feel quite at home within a prison, I made haste to get into the open air again. I noticed, what is common in the country, that an underpinning of boards had been placed around the foundation at the distance of a foot, the space within being filled with earth. "That," said a whimsical fellow, "is to keep the coarsest of the cold out."
They have a jail at Alfred hardly more secure than the old. I was told of a prisoner who coolly informed the jailer one morning that if he did not supply him with better victuals he would not stay another day. He was as good as his word, making his escape soon after. Wagner, the Isles of Shoals murderer, also broke jail at Alfred, but was recaptured.
I should have liked to devote a few moments to the old court-house, its eminent and distinguished judges and barristers of the provincial courts, not forgetting its crier and constables. I should, I repeat, like to open the court, and marshal the jurors, witnesses, and even the idlers to their places in the king's name. I should like to hear some of those now antiquated, but then oft-quoted, scraps of law from the statutes of Richard II. or Sixth Edward. But it is all past. Bag-wigs, black gowns, and silver buckles are no more seen, except in family portraits of the time, and the learned counsel of to-day no more address each other as "Brother A – " or "B – ." There do remain, however, in front of the old court-house four beautifully spreading elms, planted by David Sewall in 1773. To look at them now, it is not easy to fancy they could be grasped with the hand when the battle of Lexington was fought.
I passed on by the old tavern-stand where Woodbridge, in 1770, swung his sign of "Billy Pitt," and underneath, the words "Entertainment for the Sons of Liberty" – a hint to Tories to take their custom elsewhere. I should have enjoyed a pipe with that landlord, as John Adams says he did.
In Old York they have a precinct known as Scotland, said to have been first settled by some of the prisoners of Cromwell's victory at Dunbar, and shipped over seas to be sold as apprentices for a term of years. I was bound thither to see the garrison houses that had withstood the onset of the Indians in King William's war.
It is four miles from the village to Scotland parish, the road passing through broad acres of cleared land or ancient orchards, with now and then a by-way of green turf leading to a farm-house on the river, or a gleam of the stream itself winding through the meadows as you mount the rocky hills in your route.
Cider Hill is a classic locality, which the traveler must pass through. It is well named, I should say, the trees, though old, being laden with apples, fit only for the cider-press. I was struck with the age of the orchards, and indeed with the evidences on all sides of the long occupancy of the land. In going up and down the traveled roads of York the impression is everywhere gained of an old settled country.
By the side of the road is the withered trunk of an ancient tree, said to have been brought from England in a tub more than two hundred years ago. Nothing remains but the hollow shell, which still puts forth a few green shoots. Next to the rocks, it is the oldest object on the road. At a little distance it has sent up an offshoot, now a tree bearing fruit, and has thus risen again, as it were, from its own ashes. This tree deserves to be remembered along with the Stuyvesant and Endicott pear-trees. There is, or was another apple-tree of equal age with this in Bristol.
"You have a good many apples this year," I said to a farmer.
"Oh, a marster sight on 'em, sir, marster sight; but they don't fetch nothing."
"Is the cool summer injuring your corn?" I pursued.
"Snouted it, sir; snouted it."
The Junkins's garrison is the first reached. It is on the brow of a high hill overlooking the river meadows, where, if good watch were kept, a foe could hardly have approached unseen. It can not survive much longer. It is dilapidated inside and out to a degree that every blast searches it through and through. The doors stood ajar; the floors were littered with corn-fodder, and a hen was brooding in a corner of the best room. Having served as dwelling and castle, it embodies the economy of the one with the security of the other. The chimney is of itself a tower; the floor timbers of the upper story project on all sides, so as to allow it to overhang the lower. This was a type of building imported from England by the early settlers, common enough in their day, and of which specimens are still extant in such of our older towns as Boston, Salem, and Marblehead. Its form admitted, however, of a good defense. The walls are of hewn timber about six inches thick, and bullet-proof. On the north-east, and where the timbers were ten inches thick, they have rotted away under their long exposure to the weather. I observed a loop-hole or two that had not been closed up, and that the roof frame was of oak, with the bark adhering to it.80
In one room was an old hand-loom; in another a spinning-wheel lay overturned; and in the fire-place the iron crane, blackened with soot, was still fixed as it might have been when the garrison was beset in '92. Between the house and the road is the Junkins's family burying-ground. The house attracts many curious visitors, though it lacks its ancient warlike accessories, its lookouts, palisades, and flankarts.
A few rods farther on, in descending the hill, is the M'Intire garrison. It is on the opposite side of the Berwick road from the house through which I have just hurried the reader; and, except that a newer addition has been joined to the garrison part, does not materially differ from it. Mr. M'Intire, now the owner of both houses, showed me an opening in the floor of the projection through which, according to the family tradition, boiling water was poured upon the heads of any who might try to force an entrance.
It has been supposed that these two garrisons were erected as early as 1640 or 1650. As no motive existed for building such houses at that time, the tradition is not entitled to credit. Few of the Indians were possessed of fire-arms, as the sale to them was strictly prohibited in the English colonies. The digging up of the hatchet by the eastern Indians, in 1676, during Philip's war, probably first led to the building of fortified houses in all the sea-coast towns. During the attack of 1692, the four garrisons in York saved the lives of those they sheltered, while fifty of the defenseless inhabitants were killed outright, and one hundred and fifty were led prisoners to Canada.
It is not my purpose to pursue farther the history of ancient Agamenticus. The state of the settlement five years after its destruction by the Indians appears in a memorial to the French minister, prepared in order to show the feasibility of a thorough wiping out of the English settlements from Boston to Pemaquid:
"From Wells Bay to York is a distance of five leagues. There is a fort within a river. All the houses having been destroyed five years ago by the Indians, the English have re-assembled at this place, in order to cultivate their lands. The fort is worthless, and may have a garrison of forty men."
As a memorial of the dark days when settler fought with savage, the Junkins's garrison-house appeals for protection in its decrepit old age. Its frame is still strong. A few boards and a kindly hand should not be wanting to stay its ruin. I left it as for nearly two hundred years it has stood,
"On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,
And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid."
CHAPTER X.
AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE
"We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates."
Longfellow.
Louis XV. said to Bouret, the financier, "You are indeed a singular person not to have seen Marly! Call upon me there, and I will show it to you."
Our way lies from Old York to Kittery Point.81 To get from the one to the other you must pass the bridge over York River, built in 1761. It inaugurated in New England the then novel method of laying the bridge super-structure on a frame-work formed of wooden piles driven into the bed of the river. The inventor was Major Samuel Sewall, of York, whose bridge was the model of those subsequently built over the Charles, Mystic, and Merrimac.
Kittery Point is separated from Kittery Foreside by Spruce Creek. It is also divided from Gerrish's Island, the outermost land of the eastern shore of the Piscataqua, by Chauncy's Creek. It is important at Kittery Point to get used to the names of Cutts, Gerrish, Sparhawk, Pepperell, Waldron, Chauncy, and Champernowne. They recur with remarkable frequency.
If coming from Portsmouth, the visitor will first traverse the village, with its quaint little church, built in 1714, its secluded cemetery, and fine old elms. They say the frame of the meeting-house was hewn somewhere about Dover, and floated down the stream. There are few older churches in New England, or that embody more of its ancient homeliness, material and spiritual. Since I was there it has been removed about sixty feet northward, and now fronts the south, entirely changing the appearance of that locality.
Formerly, in leaving the church door, you were confronted by a sombre old mansion, having, in despite of some relics of a former splendor, an unmistakable air of neglect and decay. The massive entrance door hung by a single fastening, the fluted pilasters on either side were rotting away, window panes were shattered, chimney tops in ruins, the fences prostrate. It was nothing but a wreck ashore. This was the house built by Lady Pepperell, after the death of Sir William. Report said it was haunted; indeed I found it so, and by a living phantom.
Repeated and long-continued knocking was at length answered by a tremulous effort from within to open the door, which required the help of my companion and myself to effect. I shall never forget the figure that appeared to us:
"We stood and gazed;
Gazed on her sunburned face with silent awe,
Her tattered mantle and her hood of straw."
Poor Sally Cutts, a harmless maniac, was the sole inhabitant of the old house; she and it were fallen into hopeless ruin together. Her appearance was weird and witch-like, and betokened squalid poverty. An old calash almost concealed her features from observation, except when she raised her head and glanced at us in a scared, furtive sort of way. Yet beneath this wreck, and what touched us keenly to see, was the instinct of a lady of gentle breeding that seemed the last and only link between her and the world. With the air and manner of the drawing-room of fifty years ago she led the way from room to room.
We tracked with our feet the snow that had drifted in underneath the hall door. The floors were bare, and echoed to our tread. Fragments of the original paper, representing ancient ruins, had peeled off the walls, and vandal hands had wrenched away the pictured tiles from the fire-places. The upper rooms were but a repetition of the disorder and misery below stairs.
Our hostess, after conducting us to her own apartment, relapsed into imbecility, and seemed little conscious of our presence. Some antiquated furniture, doubtless family heir-looms, a small stove, and a bed, constituted all her worldly goods. As she crooned over a scanty fire of two or three wet sticks, muttering to herself, and striving to warm her withered hands, I thought I beheld in her the impersonation of Want and Despair.
Her family was one of the most distinguished of New England, but a strain of insanity developed itself in her branch of the genealogical tree. Of three brothers – John, Richard, and Robert Cutt – who, in 1641, emigrated from Wales, the first became president of the Province of New Hampshire, the second settled on the Isles of Shoals, and the third at Kittery, where he became noted as a builder of ships.
This house had come into the possession of Captain Joseph Cutts82 about the beginning of the century. He was a large ship-owner, and a successful and wealthy merchant. Ruined by Mr. Jefferson's embargo and by the war of 1812, he lost his reason, and now lies in the village church-yard. Two of his sons inherited their father's blighting misfortune: one fell by his own hand in Lady Pepperell's bed-chamber. Sally, the last survivor, has joined them within a twelvemonth.
Poor Sally Cutts! She rose to take leave of us with the same ceremonious politeness which had marked her reception. Her slight and shrunken figure was long in my memory, her crazy buffet, and broken, antiquated chairs, to which she clung as the most precious of earthly possessions. It was one of her hallucinations to be always expecting the arrival of a messenger from Washington with full reparation of the broken fortunes of her family. Some charitable souls cared for her necessities, but such was the poor creature's pride that artifice was necessary to effect their purpose. Flitting through the deserted halls of the gloomy old mansion – dreading the stranger's approach, the gossip of the neighborhood, the jibes of village urchins – Sally remained its mistress until summoned to a better and kindlier mansion. I said the house was haunted, and I believe it.
A short walk beyond the cemetery brings you up with Fort M'Clary,83 its block-house, loop-holed for musketry, its derricks, and general disarray. Not many would have remembered the gallantry of Major Andrew M'Clary at Bunker Hill, but for this monument to his memory. The site has been fortified from an early day by garrison-house, stockade, or earth-work. It should have retained its earliest name of Fort Pepperell. John Stark's giant comrade might have been elsewhere commemorated.
It is said no village is so humble but that a great man may be born in it. Sir William Pepperell was the great man of Kittery Point. He was what is now called a self-made man, raising himself from the ranks through native genius backed by strength of will. Smollett calls him a Piscataquay trader, with little or no education, and utterly unacquainted with military operations. Though contemptuous, the description is literally true.
Sir William's father is first noticed in the annals of the Isles of Shoals. The mansion now seen near the Pepperell Hotel was built partly by him and in part by his more eminent son. The building was once much more extensive than it now appears, having been, about twenty years ago, shortened ten feet at either end. Until the death of the elder Pepperell, in 1734, the house was occupied by his own and his son's families. The lawn in front reached to the sea, and an avenue, a quarter of a mile in length, bordered by fine old trees, led to the house of Colonel Sparhawk, east of the village church. With its homely exterior the mansion of the Pepperells represents one of the greatest fortunes of colonial New England. It used to be said Sir William might ride to the Saco without going off his own possessions.84
There is hanging in the large hall of the Essex Institute, at Salem, a two-thirds length of Sir William Pepperell, painted in 1751 by Smibert, when the baronet was in London. It represents him in scarlet coat, waistcoat, and breeches, a smooth-shaven face and powdered periwig: the waistcoat, richly gold-embroidered, as was then the fashion, was worn long, descending almost to the knee, and formed the most conspicuous article of dress. In one hand Sir William grasps a truncheon, and in the background the painter has depicted the siege of Louisburg.85
Smollett accredits Auchmuty, judge-advocate of the Court of Admiralty of New England, with the plan of the conquest of Louisburg, which he pronounces the most important achievement of the war. Mr. Hartwell said in the House of Commons that the colonists took Louisburg from the French single-handed, without any European assistance – "as mettled an enterprise as any in our history," he calls it. The honor of the Louisburg expedition has also been claimed for James Gibson, of Boston, and Colonel William Vaughan, of Damariscotta. But the central figures appear to have been Governor William Shirley and Sir William Pepperell.86
The year of Louisburg was an eventful one, for all Europe was in arms. The petty German princes were striving for the imperial crown vacant by the death of the emperor, Charles VII. France supports the pretensions of the Grand Duke of Tuscany with a powerful army under her illustrious profligate, Maurice de Saxe; Austria invades Bohemia; the old Brummbär swoops down upon Saxony, and his cannon growl under the walls of Dresden; the Rhenish frontiers, Silesia, Hungary, and Italy, are all ablaze.
England must have a hand in the fighting. Lord Chesterfield's mission to the Hague, the Quadruple Alliance at Warsaw, are succeeded by the stunning blow of Fontenoy. The allied army recoiled, and drew itself together under the walls of Brussels. The Duke of Cumberland was defeated by a sick man.87
It was at this moment of defeat that the news of the fall of Louisburg reached the allies. The Dunkirk of America had capitulated to a "trader of Piscataquay." It put new life into the beaten army, and was celebrated with great rejoicings in its camps.88
Among those who served with distinction under Pepperell were Richard Gridley, who afterward placed the redoubt on Bunker Hill; Wooster, who fell at Ridgefield; Thornton, a signer of our Magna Charta; and Nixon and Whiting, of the Continental army. It was sought to give the expedition something of the character of a crusade. George Whitefield furnished for its banner the motto,
"Nil Desperandum, Christo Duce."
A little more family history is necessary to give the reader the entrée of the four old houses at Kittery Point.
The elder Sir William, by his will, made the son of his daughter Elizabeth and Colonel Sparhawk his residuary legatee, requiring him, at the same time, to relinquish the name of Sparhawk for that of Pepperell. The baronetcy, extinct with the death of Sir William, was revived by the king for the benefit of his grandson, a royalist of 1775, who went to England at the outbreak of hostilities. The large family estates were confiscated by the patriots.
The tomb of the Pepperells, built in 1734, is seen between the road and the Pepperell Hotel.89 When it was repaired some years ago, at the instance of Harriet Hirst Sparhawk, the remains were found lying in a promiscuous heap at the bottom, the wooden shelves at the sides having given way, precipitating the coffins upon the floor of the vault. The planks first used to close the entrance had yielded to the pressure of the feet of cattle grazing in the common field, filling the tomb with rubbish. About thirty skulls were found in various stages of decomposition. A crypt was built in a corner, and the scattered relics carefully placed within.90
Dr. Eliot, the pioneer among American biographers, says Dr. Belknap often mentioned to him that his desire to preserve the letters of Sir William Pepperell led to the founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society. This object does not seem to have been wholly accomplished, as it is well known the baronet's papers have become widely scattered.91
Not far from the mansion of the Pepperells is the very ancient dwelling of Bray, whose daughter, Margery, became Lady Pepperell. It was long before the old shipwright made up his mind to consent to match his daughter so unequally. This house is considered to be two hundred and twenty-five years old, and is still habitable. Down at the water-side are seen the rotting timbers of the wharf where the Pepperells, father and son, conducted an extensive trade.
A little east of the hotel and the pleasant manse below the river makes a noble sweep, inclosing a favorite anchorage for storm or wind bound craft. Not unfrequently a hundred may be seen quietly riding out a north-easter at snug moorings. At such times this harbor and Gloucester are havens of refuge for all coasters caught along shore. The sight of the fleet getting under way with the return of fine weather is worth going to see.
When at Kittery Point the visitor may indulge in a variety of agreeable excursions by land or water; the means are always at hand for boating and driving, and there is no lack of pleasant rambles. I first went to Gerrish's Island on a wild November day, and in a north-east snow-storm. I never enjoyed myself better.
In the first place, this island is one of the headlands of history as well as of the Piscataqua. It was conveyed as early as 1636, by Sir F. Gorges, to Arthur Champernowne, a gentleman of Devon.92 The island was to take the name of Dartington, from the manor of the Champernownes.93 In this indenture Brave Boat Harbor is mentioned. The Province of Maine was then sometimes called New Somersetshire.
There is something in this endeavor of all the promoters of New England to graft upon her soil the time-honored names of the Old, to plant with her civilization something to keep her in loving remembrance, that appeals to our protection. These names are historical and significant. They link us to the high renown of our mother isle. No political separation can disinherit us. I think the tie is like the mystery of the electric wave that passes under the sea, unseen yet acknowledged of all, active though invisible.
The island, with many contiguous acres, became the property of Francis, son of Arthur Champernowne, and nephew of Sir F. Gorges, who is buried there, his grave distinguished by a heap of stones. Tradition said he forbade in his last testament any stone to be raised to his memory.94 In the hands of subsequent proprietors the island was called Cutts's, Fryer's, and Gerrish's Island. It is usually spoken of as two islands, being nearly though not quite subdivided by Chauncy's Creek. The venerable Cutts's farm-house on the shore of the island is two hundred and thirty years old by family account.
All the islands lying northward of the ship channel belong to Kittery.95 Many of them have interesting associations. Trefethren's, the largest, projects far out into the river, and is garnished with the earth-works of old Fort Sullivan, from which shot might be pitched with ease on the decks of invading ships. Fernald's, now Navy Yard Island, became in 1806 the property of the United States, by purchase of Captain William Dennett, for the sum of five thousand five hundred dollars.
