THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are merely the shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up periodically. It is only through the of ancient town clerks, and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that we are enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of the early days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and eventful days. The forest which surrounded the clearing was alive with hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with his firelock at his bedside, not knowing at what moment he might be by the glare of his burning hayricks and the piercing war-whoops of the Womponoags. Year after year he saw his harvest reaped by a of flames, as he peered through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither he had flown in hot haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse at Strawberry Bank appears to have been on an extensive scale, with for the shelter of cattle. It held large supplies of stores, and was amply furnished with arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a species of which probably did not its name. It also boasted, we are told, of two drums for training-days, and no fewer than fifteen hautboys and soft-voiced recorders—all which suggests a mediaeval castle, or a grim in the time of Queen Elizabeth. To the younger members of the community glass or crockery was an unknown substance; to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the pot-of-all-work, and their table were of beaten pewter. The diet was also of the simplest—pea-porridge and corn-cake, with a mug of ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could get it.
John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the management of his at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to , died before realizing any return from his enterprise. He spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosperity. In 1632, three years before his death, Mason sent over from Denmark a number of neat cattle, “of a large breed and yellow colour.” The thrived, and it is said that some of the stock is still extant on farms in the vicinity of Portsmouth. Those old first families had a kind of staying quality!
In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the General Court at Boston to grant them a definite township—for the boundaries were doubtful—and the right to give it a proper name. “Whereas the name of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe called, by reason of a banke where strawberries was found in this place, now we desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most suitable for this place, it being the river’s mouth, and good as any in this land, and your petit’rs shall humbly pray,” etc.
Throughout that formative period, and during the French wars, Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the scenes of Indian . No portion of the New England colony suffered more. Famine, fire, , and war, each in turn, and sometimes in conjunction, the little stronghold, and threatened to wipe it out. But that was not to be.
The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as soon as it had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-house and the jail—two incontestable signs of budding civilization. At a town meeting in 1662, it was ordered “that a cage be made or some other meanes invented by the selectmen to punish such as sleepe or take tobacco on the Lord’s day out of the meetinge in the time of publique service.” This salutary measure was not, for some reason, carried into effect until nine years later, when Captain John Pickering, who seems to have had as many professions as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a cage twelve feet square and seven feet high, with a on top; “the said Pickering to make a good strong dore and make a substantiale payre of stocks and places the same in said cage.” A spot conveniently near the west end on the meeting-house was selected as the site for this ingenious device. It is more than probable that “the said Pickering” furnished an occasional bird for his cage, for in 1672 we find him and one Edward Westwere by the selectmen to “keepe houses of publique entertainment.” He was a individual, this John Pickering—soldier, , moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and innkeeper. Michelangelo need not blush to be bracketed with him. In the course of a long and career he never failed to act according to his lights, which he always kept well trimmed. That Captain Pickering subsequently became the grandfather, at several removes, of the present writer was no fault of the Captain’s, and should not be laid up against him.
Down to 1696, the education of the young appears to have been a rather and tentative matter; “the young idea” seems to have been allowed to “shoot” at whatever it wanted to; but in that year it was voted “that care be taken that an abell scollmaster [skullmaster!] be provided for the towen as the law directs, not visious in conversation.” That was perhaps demanding too much; for it was not until “May ye 7” of the following year that the selectmen were fortunate enough to put their finger on this rara avis in the person of Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed “to be scollmaster for the the towen this yr insewing for teaching the inhabitants children in such manner as other schollmasters yously doe throughout the countrie: for his soe doinge we the sellectt men in behalfe of ower towen doe ingage to pay him by way of rate twenty pounds and yt he shall and may reserve from every father or master that sends theyer children to school this yeare after ye rate of 16s. for readers, writers and cypherers 20s., Lattiners 24s.”
Modern advocates of spelling need not themselves on their . The town clerk who wrote that delicious “yously doe” settles the question. It is to be hoped that Mr. Tho. Phippes was not only “not visious in conversation,” but was more conventional in his . He evidently gave satisfaction, and clearly exerted an influence on the town clerk, Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever after shows a marked improvement in his own methods. In 1704 the town empowered the selectmen “to call and settell a gramer scoll according to ye best of yower judgement and for ye advantag [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye youth of ower town to learn them to read from ye primer, to wright and sypher and to learne ym the tongues and good-manners.” On this occasion it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury, who engaged “dilligently to attend ye school for ye present yeare, and tech all childern yt can read in thaire psallters and upward.” From such beginnings were evolved some of the best public high schools at present in New England.
Portsmouth did not escape the , though I believe that no hangings took place within the boundaries of the township. by the sea are generally ; sailors always are. There is something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that the imagination. The folk who live along the coast live on the edge of a perpetual mystery; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates them from the unknown; they hear strange voices in the winds at midnight, they are haunted by the spectres of the . Their minds quickly take the impress of uncanny things. The witches therefore found a sympathetic atmosphere in Newscastle, at the mouth of the Piscataqua—that slender paw of land which reaches out into the ocean and terminates in a spread of sharp, flat rocks, lie the claws of an cat. What happened to the good folk of that little fishing-hamlet is worth retelling in brief. In order properly to retell it, a contemporary witness shall be called upon to testify in the case of the Stone-Throwing Devils of Newcastle. It is the . Cotton Mather who addresses you—“On June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown by an invisible hand upon the house of George Walton at Portsmouth [Newcastle was then a part of the town]. Whereupon the people going out found the gate off the hinges, and stones flying and falling thick about them, and striking of them seemingly with a great force, but really affecting ‘em no more than if a soft touch were given them. The glass windows were broken by the stones that came not from without, but from within; and other instruments were in a like manner about. Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some were as hot as if they came out of the fire; and marking them they laid them on the table; but in a little while they found some of them again flying about. The spit was carried up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward, stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This continued from day to day; and sometimes a hollow whistling would be heard, and sometimes the and snorting of a horse, but nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on to a farm which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying from the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came after him through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was heard no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the boat. A cheese was taken out of the press, and all over the floor; a piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon. Several cocks of hay, mow’d near the house, were taken up and hung upon the trees, and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the house. A man was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and suspected that a woman, who charged him with in detaining some land from here, did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural occurrences. However, at last they came to an ............