Part 1

[No. 3.]

WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

WESSAGUSSET AND WEYMOUTH,

AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS BY

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.,

DELIVERED AT WEYMOUTH, JULY 4, 1874, ON THE OCCASION OF THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN.

WEYMOUTH IN ITS FIRST TWENTY YEARS,

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY BY

GILBERT NASH,

NOVEMBER 1, 1882.

WEYMOUTH THIRTY YEARS LATER,

A PAPER READ BY

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,

BEFORE THE

WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY,

SEPTEMBER 23, 1904.

PUBLISHED BY THE WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 1905.

SINE LABORE NIHIL

T.R. MARVIN & SON PRINTERS

BOSTON MASS.

ESTABL. 1823.

CONTENTS.

WESSAGUSSET AND WEYMOUTH 5

WEYMOUTH’S FIRST TWENTY YEARS 87

WEYMOUTH THIRTY YEARS LATER 114

INDEX 157

APPENDIX 164

HISTORICAL ADDRESS

BY

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.,

JULY 4, 1874.

Full in sight of the spot where we are now gathered,--almost at the foot of King-Oak Hill,--stands that portion of the ancient town of Weymouth, known from time immemorial as the village of Old Spain. When or why it was first so called is wholly unknown,--scarcely a tradition even remains to suggest to us an origin of the name. None the less Old Spain well deserved a portion at least of that familiar title, for, next to the town of Plymouth, it is the oldest settlement in Massachusetts. And when we speak of the oldest settlements in Massachusetts, we speak of communities which may fairly lay claim to a very respectable degree of antiquity; not of the greatest, it is true, for all antiquity is relative, and that of America scarcely deserves the name by the side of what England has to show; but what is the antiquity of England compared with that of Rome?--and Rome, again, seems young and crude when we speak of Greece; while even those who fought upon the ringing plains of windy Troy are but as prattling children in presence of the hoary age of the Pharaohs. The settlement of Old Spain and of Weymouth is, therefore, ancient only as things American are ancient; but still two hundred and fifty years of time carry us back to events and men which seem sufficiently remote. When the first European made his home in Old Spain,--when the earliest rude hut was framed on yonder north shore of Phillips Creek,--the modern world in which we live was just assuming shape. Few now realize how little of that which makes up the vast accumulated store of human possessions which we have inherited from our fathers--which to us is as the air we breathe,--had then existence. The Reformation was then young,--Luther and Calvin and Erasmus were men of yesterday; the life-and-death struggle with Catholicism still tortured eastern Europe. The thirty years’ war in Germany was just commenced, and the youthful Gustavus Adolphus had yet to win his spurs. The blood of St. Bartholomew was but half a century old, and the murder of Henry IV. was as near to the men of 1622 as is that of Abraham Lincoln to us. The great Cardinal-Duke was then organizing modern France; Charles I. had not yet ascended the English throne; Hampden was a young country gentleman, and Oliver Cromwell an unpretending English squire. While men still believed that the sun moved round the earth, Galileo and Kepler were gradually ascertaining those laws which guide the planets in their paths; Bacon was meditating his philosophy; Don Quixote was a newly published work, with a local reputation; and Milton, not yet a Cambridge pensioner, was making his first essays at verse. Shakespeare had died but six years before, and, indeed, the first edition of his plays did not appear until the very year in which Weymouth was settled. Thus, in 1622, our world of literature, of science, almost of history, was yet to be created. Hardly a single volume of our current English literature was then in existence, and people might well con their Bibles, for, in the English tongue, there was little else to read.

Meanwhile the North American continent was an unbroken wilderness, with here and there, few and far between, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, scattered specks of struggling civilization, hundreds of leagues apart, dotting the skirts of the green, primeval forest. It was at not the least famous of these scattered specks,--at the neighboring town of Plymouth,--that the history of Weymouth opened on a day towards the latter part of the month of May, in the year 1622. The little colony had then been established in its new home some seventeen months. They had just struggled through their second winter, and now, sadly reduced in number, with supplies wholly exhausted, and sorely distressed in spirit, the Pilgrims were anxiously looking for the arrival of some ship from England. The Mayflower had left them, starting on her homeward voyage a year before, and once only during their weary sojourn, in the month of the previous November, had these homesick wanderers on the sandy Plymouth shores been cheered by any tidings from the living world. On this particular day, however, the whole settlement was alive with excitement. There had been great trouble with the neighboring Indians, and the magistrates were on the point of delivering one of them up to the emissaries of his sachem to be put to death, when suddenly a boat was seen to cross the mouth of the bay and disappear behind the next headland.[1] There had been rumors of trouble between the English and the French, and the first idea of the settlers was that some connection existed between the sachem’s emissaries and those on board the boat. The delivery of the prisoner was consequently deferred. At the same time, a shot was fired as a signal, in response to which the boat changed her course, and came into the bay. When at last it touched the shore it was found to contain ten persons, who announced themselves as being in the service of one Mr. Thomas Weston, a London merchant, well known to the elders of Plymouth. They were cordially welcomed with a salute of three volleys of musketry, and thus finished a somewhat dangerous voyage.[2] It appeared they had been dispatched from England some months before, on board a vessel named the Sparrow, which belonged to Mr. Weston, and was bound to the fishing grounds off the coast of Maine: they were, in fact, the forerunners of a larger party which Weston was organizing in London, with the design of establishing a trading settlement somewhere on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. They brought with them letters to the Plymouth magistrates, but they were wholly unprovided with either food or outfit. The Sparrow was one of the fishing fleet which yearly visited those waters, and apparently Weston’s plan had been for these people to leave her near the Damariscove Islands, and thence to find their way by sea to Plymouth, examining the coast as they went along with a view to settlement. There was something curiously reckless in the methods of those old explorers. Weston himself afterwards sought to reach Plymouth in the same way, and encountered many strange adventures by sea and land before he got there. In the present case his messengers do not appear either to have been seafaring men, or especially selected for the work they had to do. It was not until they were actually leaving the Sparrow for their voyage of one hundred and fifty miles in the North Atlantic that they seemed to realize their own utter helplessness, and the extreme vagueness of their errand. Fortunately for them, however, the mate of that vessel was a daring fellow, and volunteered to venture his life as their pilot. They accordingly set sail in their shallop, skirting along the coast. They touched at the Isle of Shoals and at Cape Ann, and thence they ran for Boston harbor, where they passed some four or five days exploring. They selected the southerly side of the bay as the best place for the proposed settlement, as in these parts there seemed to be the fewest natives, and made a bargain with the sachem Aberdecest for what land they needed;[3] but, getting uneasy at the smallness of their number, they determined to go to Plymouth, in hopes of getting news of the larger enterprise. Disappointed in this, they landed to await events. The shallop, accompanied by a Plymouth boat in search of supplies, returned to the fishing fleet, and its seven passengers were, for the time being, incorporated with the colony, and fared no worse than others.

Meanwhile Mr. Weston had organized his larger expedition, and it was already on the sea, having sailed from London about the 1st of April. Thus Thomas Weston played a very prominent part in the early settlement of Weymouth, as he had already done in that of Plymouth. He was always called a merchant, but in fact he was a pure sixteenth century adventurer of the Smith and Raleigh stamp,--a man whose brain teemed with schemes for the deriving of sudden gain from the settlement of the new continent. We first get sight of him in Leyden in connection with the Pilgrim fathers,--the treasurer, the representative, the active, moving spirit of the company of Merchant Adventurers of London, who then were looking for the material with which to effect a settlement within the Virginia patent. Mr. Treasurer Weston had some acquaintance with the Leyden exiles, and, knowing how dissatisfied they were with their experience in Holland, he had pitched on them as the best material for the work in hand. They were then negotiating with the Dutch government for a grant of lands in what is now New York. Weston persuaded them to abandon this scheme, promising them, on the part of his associates, aid, both in money and in shipping. When the Speedwell arrived at Southampton from Delfthaven, bearing the fortunes of the little colony between its decks, it was Weston who came down from London to arrange the last details of the adventure. But the meeting was not a propitious one. The parties fell out as to certain alterations proposed to the original agreement between them, and Weston returned to London, telling the emigrants as a parting word that they must expect no further aid from him. Out of this disagreement grew the scheme of another and independent settlement. Weston apparently concluded that he had made a mistake in his choice of agents. A mere adventurer, he looked only to pecuniary results. The return of the Mayflower in the spring of 1621 without a cargo was a great disappointment to him, and he did not delay writing to the struggling settlers that a good return cargo by the next ship was absolutely essential to the life of the enterprise. They did make an effort, therefore, to load the Fortune with such articles as the country afforded, but before the venture reached England Weston had abandoned the Plymouth colony in disgust, sold out his interest in the Merchant Adventurers’ company and was already meditating his new and rival enterprise. He cared more for beaver-skins in hand than for empires hereafter, and the Plymouth people appeared to him to discourse and argue and consult when they should have been trading.[4] His confidence in the success of a trading post on Massachusetts Bay was not shaken, but he shared in the general belief of the day that families were an incumbrance in a well organized plantation, and that a settlement made up of able-bodied men only could do more in New England in seven years than in Old England in twenty.[5] On this principle he organized his expedition, which, towards the close of April, 1622, set sail in two vessels, the Charity of one hundred tons and the Swan of thirty. It went under the charge of Weston’s brother-in-law, one Richard Greene, and was made up of the roughest material, miscellaneously picked up in the streets and on the docks of London; among them, however, there was one surgeon, a Mr. Salisbury, and a lawyer from Furnival’s Inn, afterwards very notorious in early colonial annals, one Thomas Morton, better known as Morton of Merry Mount.[6] Such as they were, however, they safely landed at Plymouth towards the end of June,--some sixty stout fellows, without apparently the remotest idea why they had come or what they had come to do. Naturally the old settlers did not look upon them as a very desirable accession to the colony, especially as they early evinced a disinclination to all honest labor and an extremely well developed appetite for green corn.[7] Having landed them, the larger ship sailed for Virginia, and during her absence preparations were completed for removing the party to the site selected for its operations at Wessagusset, as Weymouth was then called. In the course of a few weeks the ship returned, the healthy members of the expedition were taken on board and sailed for Boston Bay. The Plymouth people saw them disappear with much satisfaction, and expressed no desire to have them return.

It was August before the party reached its permanent quarters. There is no record of the exact spot on which they placed their settlement, but a very general tradition assigns it to the north side of Phillips Creek[8]. Not improbably there was a better draught of water in that inlet than now; but it is well established that the locality was to the south of the Fore River, and the very sheltered character of the creek would naturally have suggested it to the explorers for the object they had in view. But wherever the exact locality may have been, the adventurers found themselves towards the end of September sufficiently established in it to let the larger ship, the Charity, return to England. The smaller one, the Swan, had been designed for the use of the plantation,--it was indeed the chief item of their stock in trade,--and it now remained moored in Weymouth River. The Charity had left the party fairly supplied for the winter,[9] but they were a wasteful, improvident set, and they were hardly left to their own devices before they were made to realize that they had already squandered most of their resources, though the winter was not yet begun. They accordingly bethought themselves of the people of Plymouth, and wrote to Governor Bradford proposing a trading voyage on joint account in search of corn,--they offering to supply the vessel while the Plymouth people were to furnish the quick capital needed, in the shape of articles of barter. The offer was accepted, and in October the expedition set out, with Standish in command and the Indian Squanto acting as guide. The intention was to weather the cape and trade along the south coast, but they were driven back by adverse winds, and then Standish fell sick of a fever and had to give up the command. Governor Bradford took his place and again the Swan started out; but it was November now, and the back side of Cape Cod shewed a rougher sea than they cared to face, so they prudently put about and ran into Sandwich Bay. Here Squanto, the Indian guide, fell sick and died, bequeathing his few effects to his English friends and praying that he might find rest with the Englishman’s God.[10] Here and elsewhere, however, the partners secured some twenty-six or twenty-eight hogsheads of corn and beans, and with that were fain to return. An equal division was made, and the Swan again came to her moorings in Weymouth Fore River.

The relief she brought with her was, however, only temporary; disorder and waste in that settlement were chronic. Greene had died in Plymouth while they were preparing for the trading voyage, and a man named Sanders had succeeded him in control. Either he was incompetent or his people were very hard to manage; but, in either case, the squandering of the supplies continued, and the prudent Plymouth settlers complained that, through improvident dealings with the Indians, their neighbors ruined the market, giving for a quart of corn what before would have bought a beaver-skin.[11] At length, however, about the beginning of the New Year, the Wessagusset plantation found itself face to face with dire want. The hungry settlers bartered with the Indians, giving everything they had for food; they even stripped the clothes from their backs and the blankets from their beds. They made canoes for the savages, and, for a mere pittance of corn, became their hewers of wood and drawers of water.[12] During that long and dreary winter they must heartily have wished themselves back in the slums of London. Weymouth Fore River, in that season, must then have been very much what we so well know it to be now. Doubtless the cold tide ebbed and flowed before the rude block-house, now lifting on its bosom huge heaps of frozen snow and ice, and then again bearing them in great unsightly blocks swiftly out to sea. The frost was in the ground; the snow was on it. So, through the long, hard, savage winter, those seventy poor hungry wretches shivered around their desolate habitations, or straggled about among the neighboring wigwams in search of food. Their ammunition was nearly exhausted so that they could not kill the game. They ransacked the woods in search of nuts; and they followed out the tide, digging in the flats for clams and muscles. But, insufficiently supplied with clothes, they could not endure the winter’s cold in this slow search for food, and one poor fellow while grubbing for shell-fish sank into the mud, and, being too reduced to drag himself out, was there found dead,--an end to his adventures. In all ten perished.[13]

In their necessities they had made the fatal mistake of degrading themselves before the savages. In their utmost needs the Plymouth people had always borne themselves defiantly to the Indian; making him feel himself in presence of a superior. It was not so at Wessagusset. The settlers there alternately cringed before the Indian and abused him; and he, seeing them so poor and weak and helpless, first grew to despise and then to oppress them. Naturally, starving men of their description had recourse to theft, and there was no one to steal from but the Indians; so the Indians found their hidden stores of corn disturbed and knew just where to look for the thieves. This led to a bitter feeling among the savages, and some who were detected were punished in their sight. But with men like these, punishment was a less terror than starvation, and the depredations and complaints continued. The Indians would no longer either lend or sell them food; and, indeed, it did not appear that they had any to spare.[14] Finally, in their utter desperation, the settlers thought of having recourse to violence, and made ready their stockade to resist the attack, sure to ensue, by closing every entrance into it save one. They were hardly prepared, however, to go to such extremes as this, relying solely on their own strength. Accordingly, towards the end of February, Sanders sent a letter by an Indian messenger to Governor Bradford, informing him of their necessities, and advising him that Sanders himself was preparing to go to the fishing stations at the eastward to buy provisions from the ships; but meanwhile he did not see how the settlement was to live until his return, and he therefore wrote to see if the Plymouth people would sustain him in taking what was necessary from the Indians by force. The answer was not encouraging. The Plymouth magistrates had no intention of embroiling that settlement with its savage neighbors, and therefore very plainly informed Sanders that he and his need expect no countenance from them in any such proceeding as that proposed; and they further intimated an opinion that they would all be killed if they attempted it. Finally, they advised them to worry through the winter, living on nuts and shell-fish as they themselves were doing, especially as they enjoyed the additional advantage of an oyster-bed, which they of Plymouth had not.[15] On receiving this letter, it only remained to give up all idea of a recourse to violence, and Sanders then took the Swan and himself went to Plymouth on a begging excursion. The people there, however, felt unable to supply his vessel even for a voyage to the fishing stations; so he returned to Wessagusett, there left the Swan, and started on a shallop for the coast of Maine.

Meanwhile the depredations still went on, and the Indians grew more and more aggressive. They took by force from the settlers what they pleased, and if they remonstrated, threatened them with their knives. Apparently they treated the poor wretches like dogs; regarding them much as they had four unfortunate Frenchmen whom they had taken prisoners some years before, after destroying their vessel, killing them at last through ill usage.[16] Finally, one unfortunate but peculiarly skillful thief was detected and bitter complaint made against him. The terror-stricken settlers offered to give him up to the savages, to be dealt with as they saw fit. The savages, however, declined to receive him, upon which his companions hung him themselves in their sight. This execution has since been very famous. That the settlers of Wessagusset hung the real culprit does not admit of question, for it is so stated both by those who were present and by the Plymouth authorities of the time, who were perfectly familiar with all the facts.[17] But the humorous Mr. Thomas Morton of Merry Mount, in the New English Canaan, published in London in 1632, reclad the Wessagusset hanging of ten years previous in this new and fantastic garb:

* * * * *

“One amongst the rest an able bodied man, that ranged the woodes, to see what it would afford, lighted by accident on an Indian barne, and from thence did take a capp full of corne; the Salvage owner of it, finding by the foote some English had bin there came to the Plantation, and mad complaint after this manner.

“The cheife Commander of the Company one this occation called a Parliament of all his people but those that were sicke, and ill at ease. And wisely now they must consult, upon this huge complaint, that a privy knife, or stringe of beades would well enough have qualified, and Edward Johnson was a spetiall judge of this businesse; the fact was there in repetition, construction made, that it was fellony, and by the Lawes of England punished with death, and this in execution must be put, for an example, and likewise to appease the Salvage, when straight wayes one arose, mooved as it were with some compassion, and said hee could not well gaine say the former sentence, yet hee had conceaved within the compasse of his braine a Embrion, that was of spetiall consequence to be delivered, and cherished hee said, that it would most aptly serve to pacifie the Salvages complaint, and save the life of one that might (if neede should be) stand them in some good steede, being younge and stronge, fit for resistance against an enemy, which might come unexpected for any thinge they knew. The Oration made was liked of every one, and hee intreated to proceede to shew the meanes how this may be performed: sayes hee, you all agree that one must die, and one shall die, this younge mans cloathes we will take of, and put upon one, that is old and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape death, such is the disease one him confirmed, that die hee must, put the younge mans cloathes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the others steede. Amen sayes one, and so sayes many more.