Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/13

 EARLY SETTLERS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.

��EABLY SETTLEBS OF NEW HAMPSHIBE.

��BY PROF. E. D. SANBORN.

��No bells, bonfires nor cannon an- nounced the arrival of the little barque which sailed up the "deep waters" of the Piscataquack in 1623, and landed on Odi- orne's Point, the founders of a new State. Tradition does not repeat nor history re- cord the name of the ship nor of the cap- tain who commanded it. The Mayflower and the men who landed on Plymouth Rock, in 1620, are as famous in history as Jason and his associates, who sought the Golden Fleece, are in ancient mythol- ogy. New England men never weary of eulogies of forefathers' day; and they will, probably, never cease to commem- orate the heroism and piety of those forty- two god-fearing men, who signed the first written constitution known to hu- man history. Still, the Plymouth Colo- ny, by itself, wrought no nobler or bet- ter work for mankind than the unnoticed, almost unnamed colonists who founded New Hampshire. Massachusetts Bay set- tlers, the Puritans, eclipsed the humbler efforts of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The Pilgrims bore the sufferings of exile, pri- vation and toil ; but the Puritans at a later date appropriated the fame and the honor which rose from the laws, government and institutions of Massa- chusetts. Capt. John Mason, the Propri- etor of New Hampshire, sent over fifty Englishmen and twenty-two women, be- sides eight Danes who were employed in sawing lumber and making potash. This number exceeded that of the Mayflower. It is not probable that all these men and women came in the first ship. Many of them arrived several years after the first company of planters occupied Odiorne's Point. There is no reason to suppose that many women, possibly not one, came in 1623. Some writers suppose that the Hiltons and a few other leading men brought their wives with them. For, ten years after the first settlement, the

��letters of the proprietor and his agents in Loudon, speak of sending the wives of some, of the colonists or of supporting them, at the company's expense, at home. The very slow progress of the settle- ments at Cocheco and Strawberry Bank show that the laborers were few; for only three houses had been built, on the Bank in seven years, and only three in ten years, at the upper plantation. If families were united in these labors, six houses would scarcely suffice for eighty persons. Why were these colonists less renowned than the Pilgrims of Plymouth? The previous history of the Pilgrims, their persecutions at home, and their res- idence in Holland made them famous. Religion occupied the thoughts of all Englishmen. The Pilgrims were exiles for conscience' sake; they suffered for the common liberties and rights of the whole people.

The first settlers at Portsmouth and Dover were adventurers, bold, hardy, and resolute, like all pioneers who go into the wilderness to better their condition. Such is generally the character of em- igrants who found new states. Philoso- phers tell us that from the race, the epoch and the surroundings of a people, their future history may be accurately pre- dicted. Here then is a problem for the prophet's solution. The race is Saxon; the epoch is one of progress, enterprise, discovery and controversy, both with the pen and the sword. The surroundings are the wilderness before them and the ocean behind them. The soil is rugged ; the climate is severe. Tell me, then, thou boasting seer, what will be the fate of this handful of men, as destitute and helpless as though they had dropped upon the earth from some distant planet. Will they die of starvation, be devoured by wild beasts or be massacred by savages? By o.e-cupation, they were fishmongers,

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