Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/109

 THE BELLAMY RIVER MILL SUIT. 89

��THE BELLAMY RIVER MILL SUIT.

��BY FRANK W. HACKETT.

THE saw-mill was obviously an institution of prime necessity to the first settlers of New Hampshire. " I will now put on the sending of you the moddell of a saw-mill, that you may have one going," writes Thomas Eyre from London, under date of May, 1631, — one of the Laconia Company, — to Ambrose Gibbins, the company's agent, at Newichwannock (South Berwick). Three years later, the ship Pide-Covve brought out from England the much needed equipment. Gibbins soon had four mills at work. Half a century passes away, and we find saw-mills on the Piscataqua and its branches, busy not only in furnishing forth material for house building, but in supplying return cargoes to the ships that sailed by the fort on Great Island into the river, from England or from the Windward Islands. Noble masts went hence for the royal navy, and pipe-staves in abundance. " The trade of this Province," say the President and Council in their report of May 7, 1 681, to the Privy Council, " exported by the inhabitants of its own produce, is in masts, planks and boards, staves, and all other lumber." The President who thus wrote had himself owned and carried on mills for " masting," — as getting out masts for ships was called, — and the sawing of other timber. No early settler evinced greater enterprise than Major Richard Waldron ; no one showed himself wiser in council, or braver in Indian fight. His name is conspicuous in our annals as a foremost man at Cocheco, where he met a tragic fate, — it will be remembered, — at an advanced age, in the terrible massacre of 1689.

As early as 1640, Major Waldron had built a saw-mill at the falls, where the compact part of Dover now stands. A few miles away another settler, William Pom fret, carried onatahttle later date a saw-mill on what is now known as Bellamy, or Back river, — " Bellemie's banke freshett," the records of that day term it. In 1652, Waldron entered into an agreement with the selectmen of Dover, — which was subsequently ratified by formal vote in town meeting, — to build a meeting- house upon a commanding site on Dover Neck. The structure was to be forty feet long, twenty-six wide, and " sixteen foot stud." In compensation therefor the town granted him timber on Bellamy river, — excepting that already granted to the Pomfret mill, — and three hundred acres of land there, together with the right of setting up mills on the river wherever he should see fit. Waldron erected the meeting-house " upon the hill near Elder Nutter's." Instead of going up the river and setting up new mills, he purchased the Pomfret mill of four individuals who had come to own it, viz. : William FoUet, PhiUip Lewis, Thomas Laighton, and Thomas Beard.

Major Waldron had two sons-in-law, the brothers Gerrish, both men of prom- inence : Captain John Gerrish, of Dover, who was a sheriff and counsellor of New Hampshire ; and Joseph Gerrish, a minister at Wenham. The former married Elizabeth Waldron, and the latter her sister Anna. As a part of the dowry of his daughters. Major Waldron made over to the Gerrishes the mill, together with an extensive tract of adjoining land. The mill, under their management, gave employment to a goodly number of hands. An account book of the business of "masting," in 1686-87, i^ '^^^^^ preserved. Here are recorded the names of several persons, in and about Cocheco, who a few years later fell victims to the attacks of Indians upon the settlement, a foremost name being that of Colonel Winthrop Hilton, whose bravery and efficiency

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