Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/202

 194

��THE FIRST CHURCH IN DOVER, AND ITS PASTOR.

��south; and from Bellamy river to the Newichawannock west and east.

To that church came the people, not only of Dover Neck, but from Bellamy, and Nock's Marsh, and — save in the win- ter—from Cochecho and a mile still farther north. To the toll of its bell came the canoes across from Back River side, and across the turbulent waters of the Pis- cataqua from Bloody Point, and even from the southern shores of the Great Bay. The Durham people, then the Oyster River part of Dover, had a meet- ing house of their own, but rarely had a minister ; and when they had none they, too, came, or rather generally rebelled against coming, so far as to Parson Rey- ner's. And taxes for the ministry were laid upon all the people, from the south shore of Great Bay to the woods of Lee, and from Boiling Rock on the main Pis- cataqua to Newichawannock falls.

The people were required by law to go to church. Five shillings a day was the penalty of absence. In 1662, numbers were suddenly prosecuted. William Rob- erts had been absent twenty-eight Sun- days. James Smith, fourteen days, and paid ten shillings extra for one day at a Quaker meeting. James Nute, sen., wife and son, twenty-six days, "and for entertaining Quakers 4 hours in one day," was fined forty shillings an hour. Jellian Pinkham,thirteen days, but as her husband refused to pay, she was set in the stocks one hour.

Mr. Reyner, the then minister of the town, as he was from 1655 till his death, was an educated man ; " a man of meek and humble spirit, sound in the truth, and every way irreproachable in his life and conversation." He was a man of some wealth ; owning, and dying pos- sessed of, an estate in Batley, Yorkshire, in the old country. He lived in Dover, near the meeting house, across the road. From the southeast corner of the work go down the road fourteen rods ; then cross the road, and four rods due east from the fence is a partially filled old cellar. Over that cellar stood the house of Parson Reyner, and there he died, April 20, 1669.

Mr. Reyner's church officers were, — Elders Hatevil Nutter and William Went-

��worth ; and Deacon John Hall.

Hatevil Nutter was certainly in Dover in 1637, and probably in 1635. He took a house lot in the division made by Capt. Thomas Wiggin, and lived near the church, on the opposite side of the road. He died in a good old age, ancestor of all the Nutters.

John Hall was deacon from about 1655 until his death, about 1692. The spot where he lived was lately traceable. It was southwesterly from the church, on the last firm ground above the Back river. Ancient bricks have been ploughed out of his cellar. His spring, still known as " Hall's Spring," on the west side of the railway, still flows as briskly as in 1667. Of his mul- titude of descendants, two Dover law- yers now bear his family name, and an- other descendant is the present Mayor of the city.

William Wentworth is more noted. He was one of Wheelwright's adherents, and connected with him by some circuit- ous family alliances. He followed Wheel- wright from England to Boston, from Boston to Exeter, and from Exeter to Wells. Thence he came to Dover. He lived on the Wentworth property, still in the family, east of Garrison Hill. He was of an old Saxon family, descendant of Reginald Wentworth, a Saxon lord of the time of the Norman Conquest. His immediate ancestry had become rather decayed by descent from younger sons. The great estates went through elder lines, and are now held by the present Earl Fitzwilliam, owner of the magnifi- cent " Wentworth House," one of the finest structures in England. Elder Wentworth, in the wilds of New Hamp- shire, may not have known that Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, beheaded in the troublous times of Charles I., was his remote kinsman in the eldest line. In the year in which the Elder saw our earth-work rising, his kinswoman, Hen- rietta Maria, became fifth Baroness Wentworth, and both died in the same spring, that of 1696, — her title being now held by the twelfth Baron Wentworth, grandson of the tenth Baroness Went- worth, better known as Lady Byron, wife of the poet. It is curious to con-

�� �