Haverhill was prospering but among its trades it did not have a sawmill. A sawyer was desirable for the local production of boards and planks to meet the needs of the growing community. A sawmill meant progress and finer building materials like clapboards and shingles for houses. Up until then materials were brought in by horse and wagon from Newbury, an inconvenient and costly trek. As a result the town was anxious to build its own mill and identified a fine location on Little River. Isaac Cousins was granted the rights to operate the mill and to retain a one-sixth interest with other investors owning the rest. In exchange the mill would pay to the town, every twelfth hundred shillings earned. However mill ownership and operation was a vexing problem and disputes over remuneration, adequate production and upkeep persisted for years.
Several other trades were critical to the prosperity of the early settlement not the least of which was that of blacksmith. In 1657 John Johnson of Charlestown was contracted to move to Haverhill and given a house and land “provided he live here seven years, following the trade of blacksmith in doing the town’s work.” Blacksmiths worked with iron to make and repair tools people needed for farming, household tasks, and other trades. When roads were established in the settlement, Johnson also fixed carts and wagons and shod stage horses. His descendents carried on the trade through several generations and kept several sturdy shops at the same Water Street location.
More improvement was apparent when Mill Street was laid out. For more than a century this would be known as The Great Road leading to and from the village. It later received its more common name for the millstream that flowed from Plug Pond to the river providing the power necessary to run a small gristmill.
The population increased rapidly as word spread of its desirable location, prosperous inhabitants and welcoming disposition toward new comers. Efforts to expand its boundaries, however, were met with resistance by the General Court when the town claimed a tract of land just six miles from Andover near the Spicket River. The claim was eventually denied though western boundary disputes persisted for years. None-the-less the laying out of more highways encouraged the division of more meadowlands and the establishment of new common lands. Common lands were owned collectively but gave individuals traditional rights, such as the opportunity to graze their livestock on common pasture and access to woodlands in order to harvest cordwood for household fuel.
Town meetings were important gatherings for conducting town business and the debate and discussion of other affairs of the settlement. It was a strongly held ideal that every citizen had an obligation to attend to town management and to neglect such an important duty was a punishable offense, which they did not hesitate to administer. Stocks and a whipping post were later erected for such occasions at the east end of the meetinghouse on the common. Likewise they considered religious worship a fervent duty. These were stern Puritans who believed in the Sabbath as a day set apart from everyday responsibilities and they were uncompromising in their beliefs.
Some inhabitants however, were more of a threat to the tranquility of the colony. In April 1654 Robert Swan of Haverhill, was accused of stealing the heifer belonging to John Williams and then intimidating those who would appear against him in a Court of Law. Later in Salisbury Court, he was presented for being drunk and for cursing. Menacing behavior continued throughout the Swan family as his son Samuel was accused of wantonly stabbing one of Simon Wainwright’s horses with a half pike.
The Swan men were ruffians, constantly brawling and often involved in disputes with the town over property rights and taxes. They burned down fences they didn’t like and moved stone boundaries they didn’t agree with. Their neighbors regarded them as agitators and malcontents. As the clan became more and more intolerable they eventually migrated west toward the Spickett River and the remote area that eventually became Methuen.
Indian Troubles
King Phillip’s War was an interruption to the growth and prosperity of Haverhill as the town braced itself for the defense against Indian uprisings. King Phillip was no king but the grandson of Massasoit with whom the Plymouth colonist had a treaty. As the chief of the Wampanogs in Rhode Island he hated the whites because of their encroachment on tribal lands and hunting grounds. He was a charismatic leader and united the tribes of the region to wage a war to eradicate the white settlements.
Haverhill was fortunate. While other settlements recorded savage raids that burned homes, killed landowners and made captives of women and children, Haverhill suffered no major attacks to that point in time. The threat of these uprisings, however, was real and a constant source of fear and alarm to the settlers to the point where they were afraid to leave the safety of the village for the more remote and exposed fields and planting grounds.
When trouble did occur it began with the misdeeds of two Christian Indians named Symon and Samuel. Christian Indians were indigenous Native Americans who had been converted and lived among the members of the settlement. Symon and Andrew were Haverhill converts known to be troublesome and devious. They stole an Englishman’s horse and were fined five shillings according to court records, and in apparent acts of revenge, engaged in several brutal assaults. On May 2, 1676 Indians stalked and killed Ephraim Kingsbury. Although his assailants were not confirmed, the next day the house of Thomas Kimball of Bradford was raided by the well known Symon and Andrew along with a third converted accomplice named Peter. Mr. Kimball was murdered and his wife and five children were taken captive for six weeks. Mrs. Kimball was later released through the intervention of Wonalancet and identified Symon who thought he had negotiated a deal with the English. Instead, authorities confined them to a Dover jail. They eventually escaped and continued their rampage with their eastern brethren in the Indian Wars throughout the Piscataqua region.
The bloody raids lasted for three years until the colonists responded in armed pursuit. The annihilation of large numbers of hostile warriors including King Phillip and the severity of the winter season caused a general attrition that ultimately brought the war to a close. The fate of Symon and Samuel is not known but they were most likely killed when Indian fighters were dispatched to Maine to capture or kill the last of the hostile Indians.
Uprisings continued sporadically whenever the French were at war with England, since they liked to stir up trouble from Canada. The French armed the Indians and encouraged them in their brutality, planning many of the assaults on the New England settlements. Whatever good fortune Haverhill had found in avoiding the earlier hostilities was now waning as news of sudden and brutal attacks on frontier settlements reached the alarmed townspeople. War parties most often set upon their victims before daybreak slaughtering some and taking away others to Canada where they were sold to the French until and unless their freedom could be paid for by anxious relatives. In the village and beyond, people were in a constant state of fear and plans were devised for the defense of the isolated frontier settlement. Colonel Saltonstall appealed to the General Court for soldiers to help fortify the garrisons. Six such fortified homes including the Peaslee Garrison were strategically located throughout the settlement, constructed of bricks with ports or loopholes through which defenders could direct gunfire.
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