OLD HAMPTON IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
By Newton Marshall Hall

On the morning of the 14th of October, 1638, there was unusual excitement in the little settlement of Newbury on the Merrimac. Men and women left axe and loom, and came trooping down to the riverbank to say farewell to a company which was to sail away to found a new plantation in the wilderness. It was not along nor an adventurous voyage which their shallop made, down to the sea with the tide, and across a short stretch of blue water to another river which came winding through level marshes. Winacunnet (beautiful place of pines) the Indians called the broad reaches of fertile salt meadow and pine-clad upland which Father Bachiler had previously explored and had pronounced, with the customary shrewdness of the English pioneer, "a reasonable meet place for a settlement." With a favoring wind and tide, the end of the voyage must have been reached before nightfall, and in the morning no doubt work was begun which must needs have been extraordinarily diligent if comfortable homes were provided before winter.

In a region so beautiful as well as "meet," the location of the first houses seems a strange one. Probably the edges of the marshy tract of land known as the "Ring Swamp" were selected through some consideration of shelter in the shadow of the black woods or of convenience to field and stream, not now apparent. One of the early acts of the settlers was characteristic: they promptly changed the musical Indian name of the place to plain Hampton, not for Hampton Court as has been supposed, but in honor of old Southampton. Although this was the first permanent settlement of Hampton, a house had been built two years before within the limits of the town. This building, known as the "Bound House," has a somewhat mythical character. There is a record of the General Court of Massachusetts, granting power to "presse" men to build the house; but where it was located, or whether it was ever occupied, were matters of dispute even fifty years later.

Father Bachiler and his company must have known, when they received the generous grant of one hundred square miles from Massachusetts, that the gift was of a somewhat dubious nature. They were in fact, as well as the settlers at Exeter and Dover, trespassers upon what Captain John Mason considered his baronial demesne. The bluff old governor of Newfoundland was not the man to submit in silence to such an invasion of his rights. The bitter controversy which he began with Massachusetts, and later with the New Hampshire settlers, was carried on by his heirs, until the large family property was exhausted, and the Revolution put an end to all proprietary claims. The history of this contest, to be found now in fragmentary for only, in musty law reports, in family and town records, is one of romantic and absorbing interest. What a splendid dream it was which came to Mason and his friend Gorges, as they sat smoking Virginia tobacco in the dingy London office of the wealthy merchant! On the banks of our humble Piscataqua they built in fancy grander castles than ever graced the Rhine; they saw rich vineyards stretch away, and long trains of Indian slaves brining down from the mysterious hills of the North gold and silver and furs and perhaps even the "Great Carbuncle" itself. Is it any wonder, then, that Mason's indignation rose, when the crop-headed Puritans from Massachusetts invaded his estates, bringing with them all sorts of ideas subversive of proprietary ownership? Moreover, Mason's title to the soil was unquestionably valid. The claim of Massachusetts was based upon the somewhat ambiguous wording of the charter, and it was never sustained before any impartial tribunal.

As for the men of Hampton, they cared not a fig for Mason or Massachusetts, so long as they remained undisturbed in the occupancy of their rich farms, and they fought either claimant with equal cheerfulness as occasion demanded. The most interesting period of the controversy was between the years 1682 and 1685, when Robert Mason, with the assistance of his tyrannical governor Cranford, made a desperate attempt to levy taxes upon the unwilling inhabitants of New Hampshire. During these stormy years the colony, and particularly the town of Hampton, was practically in a state of insurrection.

In 1683 occurred what has been somewhat pretentiously called "Gove's Rebellion." Edward Gove was a prosperous farmer of Hampton, who indignation got the better of his judgment. He went from house to house, "talking seditiously," as witnesses afterward testified, announcing that his "sword was drawn" and that he "would not put it down until he knew who held the government." On the twenty-seventh of January, he rode into Hampton at the head of a company of twelve followers, Exeter and Hampton men, with swords brandished and a trumpet blowing. The authorities of the town were not intimidated by this warlike display, but promptly suppressed Gove and his incipient rebellion. At a subsequent trial the leader of the outbreak was convicted of treason and sentenced to be drawn and quartered. The sentence was not executed, but the unfortunate man passed two years in close confinement in the Tower of London.[1] Resistance did not end however. Everywhere the officials of the hated government were defied and assaulted. At Dover, an enterprising officer attempted to levy an execution while the people were at church, whereupon he was promptly knocked down, the weapon being a Bible in the hands of a person whom the good old historical Belknap admiringly calls "a young heroine." At Hampton a sheriff was seized and cruelly beaten. After he had fallen exhausted in the snow, a noose was adjusted suggestively about his neck and he was driven out of the colony, bound upon the back of a horse. Mason was himself assaulted in his house at Portsmouth by two men who threw him into the great open fire, "where," he says in his interesting deposition, "my coat, perriwig & stockings were burnt, & had it not been for ye Dept. Governr, I doe verily believe I had been murthered." Truly, the lines did not fall in altogether pleasant places for a Lord Proprietor of New Hampshire, in the good old colony days. Not unnaturally discouraged, Mason soon after sailed for England, to renew his hopeless struggle in the courts.

Meanwhile the Hampton folk were building up a village commonwealth of their own, quite regardless of Mason's dreams of manor houses and landed estates. They were not always peaceable among themselves, they were no doubt bigoted and superstitious; and yet there was enough of sturdy independence, of downright common sense, of originality and shrewdness, to make the story of their lives of interest and value.

It is remarkable how naturally these men, who had never owned a foot of land, who had lived so long under civil and religious exactions, reverted to the simple and democratic institutions of their Saxon ancestors. From the very first day, it was not Stephen Bachiler or any other leading spirit who governed the community; it was the voice of the majority of freemen in open meeting assembled, where each man had his say without let or hindrance. So much importance was placed upon this meeting in the early days, that the penalty for non-attendance was a heavy fine. The rules of order adopted in 1641 were simple and dignified. The meetings were opened and closed by prayer. A moderator presided, who was chosen at each session. When anyone spoke, he must "putt off his hatt," he must not interrupt another, and he might speak "only twice or thrice to the same business," without special leave. It is to be feared, however, that the meetings were not always as decorous as these excellent rules would imply, for a later vote was passed as follows: "Itt is ordered yt if any prson shall discharge a Gunn in the Meeting House, or in any other House without leave of the owner or Householder, Hee or they shall forfeit five shillings: nor shall any prson Ride or lead a Horse into this Meeting House under the like penalty."

Membership in the community was rightly esteemed a valuable privilege and it was not lightly bestowed. Paupers and criminals were rigorously excluded, and no one was permitted, under heavy penalties, to harbor strangers who did not possess proper credentials. None of the village communities of New England showed greater wisdom in the disposal of its public land than did Hampton. The General Court of Massachusetts granted to each of the original settlers a house lot, and all rights to the remaining soil were vested in the town. For many years much of this land was, under restrictions, the common property of all householders. What was practically a forestry commission was early appointed. It was the duty of three men who were called "wood-wards" to see that no trees were cut without permission, and to regulate the amount of timber which might be used for legitimate purposes during the year. Certain great tracts of marsh land were held in common and used for pasturage. The marsh which Link to photo of Boar's Head lies to the south and west of the highway which now leads from the village to Boar's Head was called the "great ox common." Into these commons the cattle were turned at certain seasons of the year, under the charge of a herdsman appointed by the town. At various times in later years these public tracts were divided into equal shares, and these shares were apportioned by lot to the various householders of the town. Certain rights in common were even then reserved, and it is only within recent years that all the public lands have passed unreservedly into private hands.

No sooner had the first settlers provided a shelter for themselves than they erected a meeting-house, a primitive structure of logs which was rebuilt in 1650, this in turn giving place to new structures in 1675 and 1719. None of these meeting-houses made any pretence to architectural beauty, except the last, which was ornamented by the addition of a "turret." The first church was unusually fortunate in possessing a small bell, the gift of Father Bachiler, which called the worshippers to service, instead of the customary conch-shell or drum. There were no pews in the first houses, and the people sat on wood benches, the women on one side, the men on the other. A committee was appointed to "seat the meeting-house," which must have been a sufficiently difficult and delicate task, even in those days. The order of seating has in many cases been preserved in the records. One of these memoranda reads as follows: "the ferst seett next Mistriss whelewrit ould mistriss husse her dafter husse goody swaine goody Pebody goody brown mistriss stanyan Mary Perkenges;"--which would mean that the seat of honor, next Parson Wheelwright's wife, was reserved for the aged Mistress Hussey and her daughter; Goodwives Swaine, Peabody and Brown, Mistress Stanyan, and Mary Perkins. There was of course no way of heating the church, and even these sturdy Puritans were obliged to defer somewhat to the rigor of the New England winter. It was intended at first to hold communion eight times a year. "But finding ye days in winter so short and sharp, it was thought meet to omit yt of ye winter quarter viz between December 1 & March 1 & so to hold it but seven times a year." Across the end of the church a gallery was built, where all the children of the village sat together. Under these circumstances it may be easily understood why it was necessary to detail two elderly and reponsible [sic] "inhabitants" to remain in the gallery to see that its occupants should sit "orderly and inoffenseively."

Hampton was fortunate in having among its early pastors men whose ability was recognized throughout New England. Stephen Bachiler, the first pastor and the founder of the town, deserves more than a passing mention. He was a man over whose life hangs the shadow of a mystery. Was he stern and morose, subject to violent outbreaks of passion? Did he carry through life, like Arthur Dimesdale, the burden of a secret sin? Was his old age blackened by scandalous conduct? Or was he a man of heroic mould, moved by a serene and dauntless purpose, who life was at last thwarted and ruined by the attacks of relentless enemies? There is ground for each of these views in the scraps of legend and history which have come down to us. He was born in England in 1561, and was accordingly an old man when he settled at Hampton. An early dissenter, he "suffered much from the bishops," and in common with other Puritans found refuge in Holland. He may have witnessed the sailing of the Mayflower; at all events, an adventurous and restless spirit like his could hardly have failed to be aroused by the stories of the new land of freedom, which must have been eagerly told in the little colony of refugees. A company of which he was the pastor and leader was formed to follow in the Mayflower's wake to New England. This organization was called the "Company of the Plough," perhaps because a plough was prominent in the Bachiler coat-of-arms. All preparations were made for departure, when sudden misfortune fell upon the project. Through a dishonest agent all the property of the company was lost. Dismayed by the disaster, Bachiler returned to England. But a romance had been going on in his family, which was destined to have far-reaching consequences. Christopher Hussey, a young Quaker of Dorking, had fallen in love with Theodate, Stephen Bachiler's fair daughter. However liberal the Puritan preacher might be in other respects, he was orthodox on the subject of Quakers. He would have no broad-beavered follower of Fox in his family, and he sternly forbade the match. The young Quaker may have reflected that there were creeds many but only one Theodate Bachiler, for he renounced his religion and married the Puritan's daughter. After such unfaithfulness to his beliefs, it is a little singular that he should have become the ancestor of the Quaker poet Whittier.[2] The young couple bravely set their faces westward. They made a home in Lynn, and two years later were followed by Bachiler and several members of the little church which he had previously founded in Holland, and which he immediately reorganized at Lynn without the permission of the colonial government. Quarrels arose, which resulted in the summary removal of Bachiler from the colony. Followed by his devoted church, he started on foot in the dead of winter to found a colony at Yarmouth on the Cape. The enterprise ended in failure, and must have been attended with much suffering. Returning to Newbury, the grant of Hampton was secured, and its settlement successfully accomplished. After such desert wanderings the fair fields of Winacunnet must have seemed like the promised land to the travel-worn and buffeted little church. But even here there was to be no peace for the aged pastor. Shortly after the settlement, Timothy Dalton was chosen pastor's assistant, or "teacher," as he was universally called. The two men were not congenial; jealousies and bitterness arose, and for the next eight years the church seems to have been in a continual brawl. The majority of the church finally turned against their old leader; he was charged with immoral conduct, disgraced and excommunicated, and although afterward restored to fellowship he was never permitted to resume his office. It is at this period that Whittier pictures his "half mythical ancestor," in "The Wreck of Rivermouth."

    "And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
    Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.
    But his ancient colleague did not pray,
       Because of his sin at fourscore years;
    He stood apart, with the iron-gray
       Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears."

The parish records of the unromantic suburb of London, Hackney, show that "the ancient Stephen Bachiler of Hampton, New Hampshire," died there in the one-hundreth year of his age. From the glimpses we have of him, we may infer that the founder of Hampton was a bold and original spirit, tenacious of purpose even to obstinacy. He must have possessed some strong and winning traits of character, or he never could have retained so long the loyal devotion of his followers. There can be no doubt, however, that the fairer and more attractive side of his nature was marred by occasional lapses of judgment, and even by serious irregularity of conduct. He seems to have lacked at critical times that moral dignity and self-control essential to religious leadership.

Of Timothy Dalton we know very little. He was in good repute with the authorities of the province, and he seems to have had the confidence of the majority of the church in his controversy with Stephen Bachiler. At his death the town records commended him as "a faithful and painful laborer in God's vineyard."

Rev. John Wheelwright was the second Hampton minister who was a refugee from Massachusetts. A brother of the famous heretic, Mrs. Ann Hutchinson, he expressed sentiments in a Fast Day Link to photo of Rev. John Wheelwright discourse delivered at Boston, which were exceedingly distasteful to the authorities. The men of the Bay had a cheerful method of dealing with such offenders at that time. The magistrates went to the unfortunate person whose views did not coincide with theirs and informed him that he would not be expected to continue his residence in the colony after a period of two weeks. In this way great harmony of belief was maintained within the colony, and the surrounding settlements received valuable acquisitions. John Wheelwright, after a perilous journey through the deep snows of February, found refuge at the Strawberry Bank settlement. Possessed of an indomitable spirit, he struck out into the wilderness, and became the founder of Exeter, New Hampshire, and afterward of Wells, Maine. While at Wells he received a call to become the pastor of the church at Hampton. But Hampton was at this time under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Wheelwright, however, wrote and apology to the authorities of Massachusetts, recanting his former beliefs and affirming that he had been "dazzled by the buffetings of Satan." This pious explanation ought to have been satisfactory, but only after much petitioning on the part of the people of Hampton was he permitted to become the pastor of their church. Even then the pastoral relation does not seem to have been altogether pleasant. The old heresies broke out afresh, and after a short period of service Wheelwright resigned and sailed for England.

The troubled waters of the church were quieted during the pastorate of the talented Seaborn Cotton. He was the eldest son of the famous John Cotton of Boston, and was born on the Atlantic, August 12, 1633. He was a graduate of Harvard, and married for his first wife Dorothy, daughter of Governor Bradstreet of Massachusetts. The advent of these cultured people must have made a powerful impression upon the life of this frontier settlement; and how great must have been the Link to photo of Rev. Seaborn Cotton's Records sensation, when the "unmitred pope of the New England churches" journeyed from Boston to visit his son, and perhaps even to grace with his august presence the pulpit of the little church! We have few records of Seaborn Cotton's long pastorate of twenty-nine years. A little, time-stained manuscript book in the possession of the New England Historical-Genealogical Society, gives a few brief notes of his family life. The following are extracts:

       "I was marryed to my Second wife, Mrs. Prudence Crosbey The Daughter of Mr Jonathan Wade of Ipswich, the 9th of July, 1673, by Maior Dennison."
       "My 2d childe by her & 14th in all was borne october 6 about 5 of ye clocke in ye morning 1676, & baptised oct 8, 1676, and was named Wade in honour of his Grandfather Wade, & to put him in mind of wading through all trialls to heaven."

Poor child! His wading was of brief duration, for the record adds simply, "he dyed and was buried october 11. 76."

Seaborn Cotton was succeeded in the ministry by his son John, who was also a graduate of Harvard, and a man of great ability. In view of the desirability of securing him as pastor the town Link to photo of Rev. John Cotton voted to offer him a munificent salary, "£85 a yeare to be paid every half yeare in wheat at 5s per bushel, Indian corn 3s malt and rye each 4s per bushel, pork at 3d per pound, and beef at 2d, together with sixtie load of wood--such loads with fower oxen, that two load shall make a cord when cutt." After a ministry of thirteen years, Mr. Cotton, according to the Boston New Letter, "died in a very sudden and surprising manner, having been very well all the day, and in the evening till just after Supper, when he was taken with a Fitt of Apoplexy." The same high authority informs us that he was "esteemed and mourned for his eminent Piety and great Learning, his excellent Preaching, his Catholic Principles, and Universal Charity." [3]

During the pastorate of the beloved Nathan Gookin occurred the great earthquake of 1727, which was especially severe at Hampton, and which secured for Parson Gookin considerable celebrity as a prophet, inasmuch as he preached on the morning of the earthquake day a powerful sermon from the text, "The day of trouble is near." The sermon produced a profound impression, and when in the evening the shock of earthquake came, the people of the town were in a state of abject terror. In the interesting account of the earthquake and of the religious revival which followed it, which Mr. Gookin afterward published, he says: "It is hard to express the consternation that fell both on man and beast in the time of the great shock. The brute creatures ran roaring about the fields, as if in the greatest distress, and mankind was as much surprised as they."

The church was greatly disturbed during the following years by dissensions which led finally to an open breach and the formation of a Presbyterian church in 1792. Under the vigorous ministry of Link to photo of Rev. Jesse Appleton the distinguished Dr. Jesse Appleton, from 1797 to 1807, the Congregational church regained its lost prestige, and a union was effected with the Presbyterian element in 1808. Doctor Appleton was called from his Hampton pastorate to become president of Bowdoin College. One of his daughters, born at Hampton, afterward became the wife of Franklin Pierce.

In 1735 a scourge more terrible than the earthquake swept the town. In May of that year, a mysterious disease broke out in Kingston, a part of the old town of Hampton. It was called the throat distemper, and was doubtless allied to our modern diphtheria. It speedily became epidemic, spreading throughout New England and ultimately along the entire Atlantic coast. It was most severe, however, in the immediate vicinity of its origin. At Hampton Falls twenty families lost all their children, and one-sixth of the inhabitants died. At Hampton there were seventy-two deaths, while in the Province of New Hampshire there were one thousand victims, more than ninety per cent being under twenty years of age. We can hardly imagine the terror of that year of plague, when the face of God seemed to be averted from his people and the mark of destruction was on every door.

Hampton was a spirit-haunted town. Ghosts and witches, and even the Evil One himself, often appeared to its terrified inhabitants. One could not lie down in his bed at night, with the peaceful certainty that no alarming spectre would stalk through his room to trouble his slumbers. Nor could one jog quietly along the country lanes without the disturbing possibility that some broomstick rider might be hard upon his track. The good people of Hampton were perhaps no more superstitious than men and women usually were who lived in rural communities in Colonial days, and especially those who homes were near the sea; but it is certain that they people the quiet streets of their village with personages our modern eyes do not see.

However it might be with ghosts, witches were tangible enough, and the Hampton authorities made short shrift with them. The delusion found its chief victim at Hampton, in the person of Eunice Cole,--Goody Cole, as she was called. The usual evil powers were ascribed to her by the people of the town. Two young men were drowned in Hampton River, and their boat was believed to have been overturned through her agency. The village children who indulged in the fearful pleasure of peeping in at her window reported that the Evil One in the shape of a little black dwarf with a red cap on his head, sat at her table, and that she frequently cuffed his ears to keep him in order. She is the witch of Whittier's "Wreck of Rivermouth."

    "'Fie on the witch!' cried a merry girl,
    As they rounded the point where Goody Cole
    Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,
    A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.
    'oho!' she muttered 'ye're brave today;
    But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
    "The broth will be cold that waits at home;
    For it's one to go, but another to come."'"

Again, in "The Changeling," the poet uses the story which was common at the time, that Goody Cole had changed Goodwife Marston's child to an ape.

Goody Cole was tried before the county court of Norfolk in 1656. At the trial Thomas Philbrick testified that she had said, "If any of his calves should eat her grass, She wished it might poysen them or chocke them. Immediately after one of the calves disappeared and the other came home and died about a weeke after." Goodwife Sobriety Moulton and Goodwife Sleeper testified that, "while talking about goodwife Cole & good wife Marston's childe, they on a sudden heard something scrape against the boards of the windowe, which after they had been out and looked aboute and could see nothing and had gone into the house again and begun to talk the same talke as before, was repeated and so loud that if a dogg or a catt had done it, they should have seene the marks in the boards." Such evidence was of course conclusive, and the poor woman was sentenced to be whipped and then imprisoned for life. She remained in prison fifteen years, when she was released, and the town ordered to contribute to her support. Shortly after she was again arrested on a new charge of witchcraft, but after a few months' confinement she was discharged, the court rendering this remarkable decision: "In ye case of Unis Cole now prisoner att ye Bar not Legally guilty according to Inditement, butt just ground of vehement suspisyon of her having had famillyarryty with ye devill." She went back to Hampton to die soon after, unattended, in bitter poverty and distress. The malignant hatred of her persecutors followed her to the grave. The tradition still lingers among the older people of the town that the witch was denied Christian burial; that her body, impaled upon a stake to drive out the evil spirit, was thrown into a hastily dug trench in the ditch by the roadside. This unfortunate woman, with her quarter of a century of persecution and suffering, was surely as much a martyr as those to whom death came quickly on the scaffold of Witches' Hill.

In 1680, the superstition broke out again. The whole town was thrown into a state of alarm. A man affirmed that he had seen a company of witches on the marsh, seated about a cake of ice and comfortably taking tea. Eight men and two women were "cried out against," but they were discharged when the excitement died out the next year.

The feeling against Quakers was scarcely less strong than that against suspected witches. Shortly after the first Friends landed at Boston, William Marston Senior of Hampton was fined £15, for "keeping two Quaker books and a paper of the Quaker's in his possession." In December, 1662, Captain Richard Waldron of Dover issued his savage order, commanding that three Quaker women whom he had arrested should be whipped by the constables of each town, until they were out of the jurisdiction of the province. His cruel decree was obeyed at Dover and Hampton only. Whittier has made this incident the subject of his spirited ballad, "How the Women Went from Dover."

    "At last a meeting-house came in view;
    A blast from his horn the constable blew
    And the boys of Hampton cried up and down,
    'The Quakers have !' to the wondering town.

    From barn and woodpile the goodman came;
    The goodwife quitted her quilting frame,
    With her child at her breast; and, hobbling slow,
    The grandam followed to see the show."

There is no historical evidence for the existence of the tender-hearted little maid and the pitying woman of the poem. We may hope for the credit of Hampton, that Whittier had access to some tradition to some tradition now forgotten. In 1674, thirteen persons all residents of Hampton were convicted before the court, "for ye breach of ye law called Quaker's meeting, and were all admonished & so upon paying ye fines of ye court are discharged for ye present." But sentiment was rapidly changing in Hampton now Seabrook; but the Friends were still subjected to some annoyances after they were allowed to worship in peace.

In common with many of the frontier towns Hampton suffered severely during the long succession of Indian wars. Prompt measures were taken for the common defence, when after a time of immunity from danger King Philip's war broke out in 1675. None of the old garrison houses are now standing, except the Toppan house which was not properly a garrison, but was stockaded and used for that purpose. The chief means of defence was a strong fort of logs which surrounded the church, enclosing a space sufficient for several houses, and capable of withstanding a prolonged siege. no attack was made by the Indians in force upon any of the Hampton garrisons, and no massacre occurred like those at Dover and Durham. The people who lived on the outskirts of the town were not so fortunate. From time to time, many houses were burned by war-parties of the Indians, and more than a score of the settlers lost their lives. While Hampton thus enjoyed at home comparative immunity from attack, abroad her sons bore a conspicuous part in the arduous service of the long campaigns. Hampton men were to be found in almost every important expedition. During King Philip's war, the Massachusetts authorities planned an attack upon the Indian strongholds in Maine. The command of this important expedition was entrusted to Captain Benjamin Swett of Hampton, who was already a famous fighter of Indians. His little force of ninety white men and two hundred friendly Indians fell into an ambush at Black Point, in Scarborough, and was defeated with heavy loss. Sullivan, the historian of Maine, says in his account of the battle: "Swett fought the enemy hand to hand, displaying upon the spot and in a retreat of two miles great presence of mind as well as personal courage, in repeated rallies of his men. At last, wounded in twenty places and exhausted by loss of blood and fatigue, he was grappled, thrown to the ground and barbarously cut in pieces at the gates of the garrison. With this intrepid officer fell sixty of his men, forty English and twenty Indians. Seldom is the merit of a military officer more genuine; seldom is the death of one more deeply mourned." Two prominent officers of Hampton, Captain Samuel Sherburne and Captain Anthony Brackett, were killed at another disastrous battle near Casco, Maine. In the army which marched under Col. William Pepperell to the brilliant siege and capture of Louisburg were many men from Hampton, including Dr. Nathaniel Sargent and Dr. Anthony Emery, who served as surgeons. In the French and Indian War, Hampton men saw much important service. They fought in that bloody battle in the woods between the forces of Johnston and Baron Dieskau, they were among the victims of the terrible massacre of Fort William Henry, and they saw the flag of France go down forever on the Plains of Abraham.

Footnotes
[1] The story of "Gove's Rebellion" is known only from the standpoint of the authorities. Had he lived just before the Revolution he would probably have been hailed as a hero and a martyr to the cause of liberty. Return
[2] This commonly accepted belief, held by Mr. Pickard, Whittier's biographer, has been vigorously assailed by Rev. A. H. Quint, whose arguments, however, are not considered conclusive by Mr. Pickard. Return
[3] This portrait, given in Drake's History of Boston as a portrait of the great Boston minister, is believed on good grounds by Mr. John Ward Dean and others to be his grandson, the Hampton minister. Return

Retyped and reformatted by Kathy Leigh© August 11, 2001