Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/135

FIRST SETTLEMENT IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. 113 by any right, had they not been connected with Thomson's company, and that when in 1630 Edward Hilton obtained a patent from the Council of Plymouth of the land upon which he had settled he had been for some considerable time established thereon. So long, in fact, that the place had come, to be known by his name, for we read that his patent included "all that part of the river Piscataqua called or known by the name of Hilton's Point, with the south side of said river, up to the falls of Squamscot and three miles into the main land for breadth," and it sets forth that Hilton and his associates had "transported thither servants, built houses and planted corn, and intended the further increase and advancement of the plantation."

It is asked if it can be believed "that Hilton founded a plantation at Hilton's Point in 1623, seven years before he got a deed of the land? " Certainly not. If, as it is presumed, he came out with or soon after Thomson, we have seen for what purpose he came. He was one of the men sent out by Thomson's partners, the merchants in England, to assist in the enterprise, and as a representative of their interest in it. He had no legal claim to the soil under the patent. — Thomson gave up his claim and went off before the expiration of the five years when the profits of the enterprise as well as the land was to be divided between the parties. The patent granted was evidently regarded by him as of little value, because neither he or his heirs, or his partners, ever afterwards set up any claim to it. All the interest which they possessed at Little Harbor passed into the hands of the Laconia Company of which Gorges and Mason were chiefs, under a new grant from the Council, when Edward Hilton, for his own security, finding himself abandoned by Thomson and the company by which he had been employed, obtained (in 1630) a patent for the settlement at the Point. This patent he afterwards sold in part to other parties, who appointed Capt. Thomas Wiggin their agent, by whom in 1633, a considerable acquisition was obtained to the population.

The Laconia company, in the meantime, having obtained possession of the lands granted to Thomson at Little Harbor, appointed Capt. Neal as their agent, not for the settlement of a colony, but for the management of a fishing and trading company, a speculation similar to that in which Thomson had been engaged. In a few years this company broke up and the servants were discharged; the whole scheme proving a failure. On a division of the property Mason bought the shares of some of his associates and sent over a new supply of men, set up saw mills, and soon after died.

The Thomson house erected at Little Harbor in 1623, though built of stone, could have been no such substantial structure as is imagined. It is not probable that " it presented the general appearance of the dwelling houses of the time of James I., vast numbers of which still remain in good preservation all over the old country," as Mr. Jenness states. Had it been of this character it would hardly have been reduced to the dilapidated condition in which it was found by Hubbard in 1680, less than fifty years after its erection, when only "the chimney and some parts of the stone wall were standing." It is probable that as it must have been hastily built, it only sufficed for the immediate needs of Thomson and his little party, as a shelter from the elements. Such as it was it passed into the hands of Mason's men, and was sometimes called his "stone-house," though it is now conceded that the term "Mason-Hall" was never, as has been popularly supposed, applied to it.

Further researches, which will undoubtedly be made by those who feel an interest in the early history of the State, may remove any doubts which now exist in relation to its first settlement. In England there are in all probability records which would throw light on the subject. Until this investigation is made Little Harbor, we think, is entitled to the monument which it is pro-