United States or Aruba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Croix to Pemaquid; Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the province of Maine from Penobscot to Piscataqua; Captain John Mason, New Hampshire and part of Massachusetts as far as Cape Ann, while the coast from Cape Ann to Narragansett Bay fell to Lord Edward Gorges, and the portion from Narragansett Bay to the Connecticut River to the marquis of Hamilton.
Hull, a revered minister formerly settled in Piscataqua," having escaped from captivity among the Indians, about 1689, returned to one of the garrisons on the extreme frontier of New Hampshire. By her presence and courage this out-post was maintained for ten years and during the whole war, though frequently assaulted by savages.
One day when we crossed the Piscataqua from New Hampshire into Maine, and took the trolley-line for a run along through the lovely coast country, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of her own people, who are a little different sort of New-Englanders from those of Miss Wilkins.
So his master carried him away, and I never saw him afterward, till I saw him at Piscataqua in Portsmouth. That night they bade me go out of the wigwam again. My mistress's papoose was sick, and it died that night, and there was one benefit in it that there was more room.
Out of a grant to Gorges and Mason of the stretch of coast between the Merrimac and the Kennebec in 1622, and a confirmation of Mason's right to the region between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua, arose the settlement of Strawberry Bank, or Portsmouth, and accompanying it a controversy over the title to the soil that lasted throughout the colonial period.
There were a few scattered cottages or cabins at Nantasket and at the mouth of the Piscataqua, while Samuel Maverick had fortified himself on Noddle's Island, and William Blackstone already lived upon the Shawmut peninsula, since called Boston. These two gentlemen were no friends to the Puritans; they were churchmen and representatives of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.
The difficulty seems to have been temporarily adjusted by some sort of compromise which restricted the new grant to the Merrimack, for in 1629 we find Mason's title confirmed to the region between that river and the Piscataqua, while later on Gorges appears as proprietor of the territory between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec.
Underhill was the central figure in the disturbances, but at the next election, in 1639, he was defeated and Roberts was elected governor of Cocheco. Dissensions continued, however, till in 1640 Francis Williams, governor of Piscataqua, interfered with an armed force. Underhill returned to Boston, and by humbly professing repentance for his conduct he was again received into the church there.
There is, so far as we know, no historical record of the actual return of these stolen men to their home. A letter is extant, however, addressed in behalf of the General Court to a Mr. Williams on the Piscataqua, by whom one of the negroes had been purchased, requesting him to send the man forthwith to Boston, that he may be sent home, "which this Court do resolve to send back without delay."
In March, 1646, they decided in favor of Rigby, and made the Kennebunk River the boundary-line between the two rival proprietors, thus reducing Gorges' dominions in Maine to only three towns Gorgeana, Welles, and Kittery, which had grown up at the mouth of the Piscataqua opposite to Strawberry Bank.
Word Of The Day