of the Declaration sojourned here at various
times. It was here General Knox " that
stalwart man, two officers in size and three in
lungs" was wont to order his dinner, and in
a stentorian voice compliment Master Stavers
on the excellence of his larder.

A record of the scenes, tragic and humorous,
that have been enacted within this old yellow
house on the corner would fill a volume. A
vivid picture of the social and public life of the
old time might be painted by a skilful hand,
using the two Earl of Halifax inns for a back-
ground. The painter would find gay and som-
bre pigments ready mixed for his palette, and a



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 217

hundred romantic incidents waiting for his can-
vas. One of these romantic episodes has been
turned to very pretty account by Longfellow
in the second series of The Tales of a Wayside
Inn the marriage of Governor Benning
Went worth with Martha Hilton, a sort of
second edition of King Cophetua and the Beg-
gar Maid.

Martha Hilton was a poor girl, whose bare
feet and ankles and scant drapery when she was
a child, and even after she was well in the bloom
of her teens, used to scandalize good Dame
Stavers, the innkeeper's wife. Standing one
afternoon in the doorway of the Earl of Hali-
fax, 1 Dame Stavers took occasion to remonstrate
with the sleek-limbed and lightly draped Martha,
who chanced to be passing the tavern, carrying
a pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly
says, "the shifting sunbeam danced."

" You Pat ! you Pat ! " cried Mrs. Stavers
severely ; " why do you go looking so ? You
should be ashamed to be seen in the street."

1 The first of the two hotels bearing that title. Mr. Brew-
ster commits a slight anachronism in locating the scene of this
incident in Jaffrey Street, now Court. The Stavers House
was not built until the year of Governor Benning Wentworth's
death. Mr. Longfellow, in the poem, does not fall into the
same error.

" One hundred years ago, and something more,
In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,
Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows."



2i8 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

" Never mind how I look," says Miss Martha,
with a merry laugh, letting slip a saucy brown
shoulder out of her dress ; " I shall ride in my
chariot yet, ma'am."

Fortunate prophecy ! Martha went to live
as servant with Governor Wentworth in his
mansion at Little Harbor, looking out to sea.
Seven years passed, and the "thin slip of a
girl," who promised to be no great beauty, had
flowered into the loveliest of women, with a lip
like a cherry and a cheek like a tea-rose a
lady by instinct, one of Nature's own ladies.
The governor, a lonely widower, and not too
young, fell in love with his fair handmaid.
Without stating his purpose to any one, Gover-
nor Wentworth invited a number of friends
(among them the Rev. Arthur Brown) to dine
with him at Little Harbor on his birthday.
After the dinner, which was a very elaborate
one, was at an end, and the guests were discuss-
ing their tobacco-pipes, Martha Hilton glided
into the room, and stood blushing in front of
the chimney-place. She was exquisitely dressed,
as you may conceive, and wore her hair three
stories high. The guests stared at one another,
and particularly at her, and wondered. Then
the governor, rising from his seat,

" Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown :



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 219

' This is my birthday ; it shall likewise be
My wedding-day ; and you shall marry me ! ' "

The rector was dumfounded, knowing the
humble footing Martha had held in the house,
and could think of nothing cleverer to say than,
" To whom, your excellency ? ' which was not
clever at all.

" To this lady," replied the governor, taking
Martha Hilton by the hand. The Rev. Arthur
Brown hesitated. " As the Chief Magistrate of
New Hampshire I command you. to marry me ! '
cried the choleric old governor.

And so it was done ; and the pretty kitchen-
maid became Lady Wentworth, and did ride in
her own chariot. She would not have been a
woman if she had not taken an early oppor-
tunity to drive by Stavers's hotel.

Lady Wentworth had a keen appreciation of
the dignity of her new station, and became a
grand lady at once. A few days after her mar-
riage, dropping her ring on the floor, she lan-
guidly ordered her servant to pick it up. The
servant, who appears to have had a fair sense
of humor, grew suddenly near-sighted, and was
unable to find the ring until Lady Wentworth
stooped and placed her ladyship's finger upon it.
She turned out to be a faultless wife, however ;
and Governor Wentworth at his death, which
occurred in 1770, signified his approval of her



220 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

by leaving her his entire estate. She married
again without changing name, accepting the
hand, and what there was of the heart, of Mi-
chael Wentworth, a retired colonel of the British
army, who came to this country in 1767.
Colonel Wentworth (not connected, I think,
with the Portsmouth branch of Wentworths)
seems to have been of a convivial turn of mind.
He shortly dissipated his wife's fortune in high
living, and died abruptly in New York it was
supposed by his own hand. His last words
a quite unique contribution to the literature of
last words were, " I have had my cake, and
ate it," which show that the colonel within his
own modest limitations was a philosopher.

The seat of Governor Wentworth at Little
Harbor a pleasant walk from Market Square
is well worth a visit. Time and change have
laid their hands more lightly on this rambling
old pile than on any other of the old homes in
Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold
you immediately step into the colonial period.
Here the Past seems to have halted courte-
ously, waiting for you to catch up with it. In-
side and outside the Wentworth mansion re-
mains nearly as the old governor left it ; and
though it is no longer in the possession of the
family, the present owners, in their willingness
to gratify the decent curiosity of strangers,



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 221

show a hospitality which has always character-
ized the place.

The house is an architectural freak. The
main building if it is the main building is
generally two stories in height, with irregular
wings forming three sides of a square which
opens on the water. It is, in brief, a cluster of
whimsical extensions that look as if they had
been built at different periods, which I believe
was not the case. The mansion was completed
in 1750. It originally contained fifty - two
rooms ; a portion of the structure was removed
about half a century ago, leaving forty -five
apartments. The chambers were connected in
the oddest manner, by unexpected steps lead-
ing up or down, and capricious little passages
that seem to have been the unhappy after-
thoughts of the architect. But it is a mansion
on a grand scale, and with a grand air. The
cellar was arranged for the stabling of a troop
of thirty horse in times of danger. The coun-
cil-chamber, where for many years all questions
of vital importance to the State were discussed,
is a spacious, high-studded room, finished in
the richest style of the last century. It is said
that the ornamentation of the huge mantel,
carved with knife and chisel, cost the workman
a year's constant labor. At the entrance to
the council-chamber are still the racks for the



222 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

twelve muskets of the governor's guard so
long ago dismissed !

Some valuable family portraits adorn the
walls here, among which is a fine painting
yes, by our friend Copley of the lovely
Dorothy Quincy, who married John Hancock,
and afterward became Madam Scott. This
lady was a niece of Dr. Holmes' s Dorothy Q.
Opening on the council-chamber is a large bil-
liard-room ; the billiard-table is gone, but an
ancient spinnet, with the prim air of an ancient
maiden lady, and of a wheezy voice, is there ;
and in one corner stands a claw-footed buffet,
near which the imaginative nostril may still
detect a faint and tantalizing odor of colonial
punch. Opening also on the council-chamber
are several tiny apartments, empty and silent
now, in which many a close rubber has been
played by illustrious hands. The stillness and
loneliness of the old house seem saddest here.
The jewelled fingers are dust, the merry laughs
have turned themselves into silent, sorrowful
phantoms, stealing from chamber to chamber.
It is easy to believe in the traditional ghost that
haunts the place

" A jolly place in times of old,
But something ails it now ! "

The mansion at Little Harbor is not the only



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 223

historic house that bears the name of Went-
worth. On Pleasant Street, at the head of
Washington Street, stands the abode of an-
other colonial worthy, Governor John Went-
worth, who held office from 1767 down to the
moment when the colonies dropped the British
yoke as if it had been the letter H. For the
moment the good gentleman's occupation was
gone. He was a royalist of the most florid
complexion. In 1775, a man named John Fen-
ton, an ex-captain in the British army, who had
managed to offend the Sons of Liberty, was
given sanctuary in this house by the governor,
who refused to deliver the fugitive to the peo-
ple. The mob planted a small cannon (un-
loaded) in front of the doorstep and threatened
to open fire if Fenton were not forthcoming.
He forthwith came. The family vacated the
premises via the back yard, and the mob en-
tered, doing considerable damage. The bro-
ken marble chimney-piece still remains, mutely
protesting against the uncalled-for violence.
Shortly after this event the governor made his
way to England, where his loyalty was rewarded
first with a governorship and then with a pen-
sion of ,500. He was governor of Nova Sco-
tia from 1792 to 1800, and died in Halifax in
1820. This house is one of the handsomest
old dwellings in the town, and promises to out-



224 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

last many of its newest neighbors. The parlor
has undergone no change whatever since the
populace rushed into it over a century ago.
The furniture and adornments occupy their
original positions, and the plush on the walls
has not been replaced by other hangings. In
the hall deep enough for the traditional duel
of baronial romance are full-length portraits
of the several governors and sundry of their
kinsfolk.

There is yet a third Wentworth house, also
decorated with the shade of a colonial gover-
nor there were three Governors Wentworth
but we shall pass it by, though out of no
lack of respect for that high official personage
whose commission was signed by Joseph Addi-
son, Esq., Secretary of State under George I.



OLD STRAWBERRY BANK

THESE old houses have perhaps detained us
too long. They are merely the crumbling shells
of things dead and gone, of persons and man-
ners and customs that have left no very distinct
record of themselves, excepting here and there
in some sallow manuscript which has luckily
escaped the withering breath of fire, for the old
town, as I have remarked, has managed, from
the earliest moment of its existence, to burn
itself up periodically. It is only through the
scattered memoranda of ancient town clerks,
and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten
newspapers, that we are enabled to get glimpses
of that life which was once so real and positive,
and has now become a shadow. I am of course
speaking of the early days of the settlement on
Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and
eventful days. The dense forest which sur-
rounded the clearing was alive with hostile red
men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with
his firelock at his bedside, not knowing at what



226 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

moment he might be awakened by the glare
of his burning hayricks and the piercing war-
whoop of the Womponoags. Year after year
he saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of flame,
as he peered through the loopholes of the
blockhouse, whither he nad flown in hot haste
with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse
at Strawberry Bank appears to have been on an
extensive scale, with stockades for the shelter
of cattle. It held large supplies of stores, and
was amply furnished with arquebuses, sakers,
and murtherers, this last a species of naval ord-
nance which probably did not belie its name.
It also boasted, we are told, of two drums for
training-days, and no fewer than fifteen haut-
boys and soft-voiced recorders all which sug-
gests a mediaeval castle, or a grim fortress in
the time of Queen Elizabeth. To the younger
members of the community glass or crockery
ware was an unknown substance ; to the elders
it was a memory. An iron pot was the pot-of-
all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten
pewter. The diet was also of the simplest
pea-porridge and corn-cake, with a mug of ale
or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could
get it.

John Mason, who never resided in this
country, but delegated the management of his
plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 227

to stewards, died before realizing any appre-
ciable return from his enterprise. He spared
no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosper-
ity. In 1632, three years before his death,
Mason sent over from Denmark a number of
neat cattle, "of a large breed and yellow
colour." The herd thrived, and it is said that
some of the stock is still extant on farms in the
vicinity of Portsmouth. Those old first families
had a kind of staying quality !

In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settle-
ment petitioned the General Court at Boston
to grant them a definite township for the
boundaries were doubtful and the right to
give it a proper name. " Whereas the name
of this plantation att present being Strabery
Banke, accidentally soe called, by reason of a
banke where straberries was found in this place,
now we humbly desire to have it called Ports-
mouth, being a name most suitable for this
place, it being the river's mouth, and good as
any in this land, and your petit'rs shall humbly
pray," etc.

Throughout that formative period, and during
the intermittent French wars, Portsmouth and
the outlying districts were the scenes of many
bloody Indian massacres. No portion of the
New England colony suffered more. Famine,
fire, pestilence, and war, each in its turn, and



228 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

sometimes in conjunction, beleaguered the little
stronghold, and threatened to wipe it out. But
that was not to be.

The settlement flourished and increased in
spite of all, and as soon as it had leisure to
draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-
house and the jail two incontestable signs
of budding civilization. At a town-meeting in
1662, it was ordered "that a cage be made or
some other meanes invented by the selectmen
to punish such as sleepe or take tobacco on the
Lord's day out of the meetinge in the time of
publique service." This salutary measure was
not, for some reason, carried into effect until
nine years later, when Captain John Pickering,
who seems to have had as many professions
as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a cage
twelve feet square and seven feet high, with
a pillory on top ; " the said Pickering to make
a good strong dore and make a substantiate
payre of stocks and place the same in said
cage." A spot conveniently near the west end
of the meeting-house was selected as the site
for this ingenious device. It is more than
probable that " the said Pickering " indirectly
furnished an occasional bird for his cage, for in
1672 we find him and one Edward Westwere
authorized by the selectmen to " keepe houses
of publique entertainment." He was a versatile



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 229

individual, this John Pickering soldier, miller,
moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and innkeeper.
Michelangelo need not blush to be bracketed
with him. In the course of a long and varie-
gated career he never failed to act according to
his lights, which he always kept well trimmed.
That Captain Pickering subsequently became
the grandfather, at several removes, of the
present writer was no fault of the captain's,
and should not be laid up against him.

Down to 1696, the education of the young
appears to have been a rather desultory and
tentative matter ; " the young idea ' seems to
have been allowed to " shoot ' at whatever it
wanted to ; but in that year it was voted " that
care be taken that an abell scollmaster [skull-
master !] be provided for the towen as the law
directs, not visions in conversation." That was
perhaps demanding too much ; for it was not
until " May ye 7 ' of the following year that
the selectmen were fortunate enough to put
their finger on this rara avis in the person of
Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed "to be scoll-
master for the towen this yr insewing for teach-
ing the inhabitants children in such manner as
other schollmasters yously doe throughout the
countrie : for his soe doinge we the sellectt men
in behalfe of ower towen doe ingage to pay him
by way of rate twenty pounds and yt he shall



230 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

and may reserve from every father or master
that sends theyer children to school this yeare
after ye rate of 16 s. for readers, writers and
cypherers 20 s., Lattiners 24 s."

Modern advocates of phonetic spelling need
not plume themselves on their originality. The
town clerk who wrote that delicious "yously
doe ' settles the question. It is to be hoped
that Mr. Tho. Phippes was not only "not
visions in conversation," but was more conven-
tional in his orthography. He evidently gave
satisfaction, and clearly exerted an influence on
the town clerk, Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever
after shows a marked improvement in his own
methods. In 1704 the town empowered the
selectmen "to call and settell a gramer scoll
according to ye best of yower judgment and
for ye advantag [Keais is obviously dead now]
of ye youth of ower town to learn them to read
from ye primer, to wright and sypher and to
learne ym the tongues and good-manners."
On this occasion it was Mr. William Allen, of
Salisbury, who engaged "dilligently to attend
ye school for ye present yeare, and tech all
children yt can read in thaire psallters and
upward." From such humble beginnings were
evolved some of the best public high schools at
present in New England.

Portsmouth did not escape the witchcraft de-



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 231

lusion, though I believe that no hangings took
place within the boundaries of the township.
Dwellers by the sea are generally superstitious ;
sailors always are. There is something in the
illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates
the imagination. The folk who live along
the coast live on the edge of a perpetual mys-
tery ; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock
separates them from the unknown ; they hear
strange voices in the winds at midnight, they
are haunted by the spectres of the mirage.
Their minds quickly take the impress of un-
canny things. The witches therefore found a
sympathetic atmosphere in Newcastle, at the
mouth of the Piscataqua that slender paw of
land which reaches out into the ocean and ter-
minates in a spread of sharp, flat rocks, like the
claws of an amorous cat. What happened to
the good folk of that picturesque little fishing-
hamlet is worth retelling in brief. In order
properly to retell it, a contemporary witness
shall be called upon to testify in the case of the
Stone-Throwing Devils of Newcastle. It is
the Rev. Cotton Mather who addresses you
" On June n, 1682, showers of stones were
thrown by an invisible hand upon the house of
George Walton at Portsmouth [Newcastle was
then a part of the town]. Whereupon the
people going out found the gate wrung off the



232 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

hinges, and stones flying and falling thick about
them, and striking of them seemingly with a
great force, but really affecting 'em no more
than if a soft touch were given them. The glass
windows were broken by stones that came not
from without, but from within ; and other instru-
ments were in a like manner hurled about.
Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some
were as hot as if they came out of the fire ; and
marking them they laid them on the table ; but
in a little while they found some of them again
flying about. The spit was carried up the
chimney, and coming down with the point for-
ward, stuck in the back log, from whence one
of the company removing it, it was by an invisi-
ble hand thrown out at the window. This dis-
turbance continued from day to day ; and some-
times a dismal hollow whistling would be heard,
and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a
horse, but nothing to be seen. The man went
up the Great Bay in a boat on to a farm which
he had there ; but there the stones found him
out, and carrying from the house to the boat
a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him
through the woods as far as his house ; and at
last went away and was heard no more. The
anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt
the boat. A cheese was taken out of the press,
and crumbled all over the floor ; a piece of iron



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 233

stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon.
Several cocks of hay, mow'd near the house,
were taken up and hung upon the trees, and
others made into small whisps, and scattered
about the house. A man was much hurt by
some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and
suspected that a woman, who charged him
with injustice in detaining some land from her,
did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural
occurrences. However, at last they came to
an end."

Now I have done with thee, O credulous and
sour Cotton Mather ! so get thee back again to
thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp's
Hill, where, unless thy nature is radically
changed, thou makest it uncomfortable for
those about thee.

Nearly a hundred years afterward, Ports-
mouth had another witch a tangible witch
in this instance one Molly Bridget, who cast
her malign spell on the eleemosynary pigs at
the almshouse, where she chanced to reside
at the moment. The pigs were manifestly
bewitched, and Mr. Clement March, the su-
perintendent of the institution, saw only one
remedy at hand, and that was to cut off and
burn the tips of their tails. But when the tipr
were cut off they disappeared, and it was in
consequence quite impracticable to burn them.



234 AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

Mr. March, who was a gentleman of expedi-
ents, ordered that all the chips and underbrush
in the yard should be made into heaps and con-
sumed, hoping thus to catch and do away with
the mysterious and provoking extremities. The
fires were no sooner lighted than Molly Bridget
rushed from room to room in a state of frenzy.
With the dying flames her own vitality sub-
sided, and she was dead before the ash-piles were
cool. I say it seriously when I say that these
are facts of which there is authentic proof.

If the woman had recovered, she would have
fared badly, even at that late period, had she
been in Salem ; but the death-sentence has sel-
dom been hastily pronounced in Portsmouth.
The first execution that took place there was
that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny,
for the murder of an infant in 1739. The
sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official
who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable
notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The
circumstances are set forth by the late Albert
Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long
to quote in full. The following stanzas, how-
ever, give the pith of the story

" And a voice among them shouted,
' Pause before the deed is done ;
We have asked reprieve and pardon
For the poor misguided one.'



AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA 235

" But these words of Sheriff Packer

Rang above the swelling noise :

' Must I wait and lose my dinner ?

Draw away the cart, my boys ! *

" Nearer came the sound and louder,
Till a steed with panting breath,
From its sides the white foam dripping,
Halted at the scene of death ;

" And a messenger alighted,

Crying to the crowd, ' Make way !
This I bear to Sheriff Packer ;
T is a pardon for Ruth Blay ! ' "

But of course he arrived too late the Law
led Mercy about twenty minutes. The crowd
dispersed, horror-stricken ; but it assembled
again that night before the sheriff's domicile
and expressed its indignation in groans. His
effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows, was
afterward paraded through the streets.

" Be the name of Thomas Packer
A reproach forevermore ! "

Laighton's ballad reminds me that Ports-
mouth has been prolific in poets, one of whom,
at least, has left a mouthful of perennial rhyme