Merchant and Millwright The Water Powered Sawmills of the Piscataqua By RICHARD M. CANDEE Researcher in Architecture, Old Sturbridge Village UMBERING in southern Maine is especially interesting because of the saw and New Hampshire during the mills erected by two other English mem- L seventeenth and early eighteenth bers of the Laconia Company. In Decem- centuries parallels the growth of those ber, 1633 the company divided portions colonies. Its development along the tribu- of the Pascataway Grant among the mer- taries of the Piscataqua and rivers of the chant patentees. Captain John Mason re- Maine coast illustrates the complex rela- ceived a tract in Maine beginning at the tionship between traditional English econ- lowermost falls, omy and technology, and the environ- and see upward along the Newichwannock ment of the New World. The early de- River to the end of ye Patent which is estimated velopment here of water powered saw about fifteen miles and a quarter being almost mills raises questions of English familiar- fower miles more than his proportion cometh unto. Yet it is allowed him in regard he is see ity with power milling technology, while farre distant from the Sea.2 the interest of English and colonial mer- chants in northern New England saw On March 13, 1633/34, John Mason mills suggest the importance of lumber- contracted with three carpenters “to goe ing in the economy of the settlements. over unto the said lands” in New Eng- Among the earliest records of New land. James Wall, William Chadbourne, Hampshire is a letter from Thomas Eyre, and John Goddard agreed to one of the English merchants who owned make and build such howses Two mills and the Laconia Patent (Maine and New other frames and things. Thone of Wcn Hampshire), written to Ambrose Gib- mills to be a sawe Mill wen shalbe made and sette uppon good sufficient and workmanlike bons and dated the “last of May, I 63 I .” sort and manner. and thother of the said Gibbon was the agent for the Laconia Mills shalbe a water Corne Mill. .3 company at their trading settlement at Newichawannock (present-day South Less than twenty years later, when Berwick, Maine). From London, Eyre Mason’s heirs tried to gain title to New replied to a series of lost letters: Hampshire, James Wall testified that this contract had been fulfilled. The three I like it well that your Governor will have a carpenters were brought to Mason’s grant stock of bords at all times readie. I hope you in 1634 by Henry Josselyn, “Captaine will find something to relade both the rshiusl Pide-Cowe and thewarwicke. I will now put Mason’s agente”, on the sending of you the model1 of a saw-mill and there did builde upp at the fall there that you may have one g0ing.l (called by the Indian name Asbenbedick) for the use of Captaine Mason & ourselves one Reference to a model of a saw mill, sawe mill and one stampinge mill for come most likely a drawing rather than a work- w* we did keep the space of three or foure ing model, sent in I 63 I to the Piscataqua years next after. .4 ‘3’ 132 Old-Time New England It appears that John Goddard did not bitious Englishmen in Massachusetts Bay, complete his part of the contract, as nor upon those influential men of the Pis- Joseph Mason brought suit against God- cataqua towns in the 1640’s and 1650’s. dard in 1653 and won. After Captain After the deaths of the major proprie- Mason’s death in I 636, the three carpen- tors, the tight to timber lands and privi- ters moved across the Piscataqua. Wil- leges of erecting saw mills was given by liam Chadbourne appears in Portsmouth, each town. Because few records survive N. H., in 1642, although his son is found for this period, it is difficult to determine as a carpenter and millwright near Ma- whether any other mill grants were made son’s mill soon after. James Wall con- prior to the mid- I 640’s. In all probability tinued building other saw mills in Exeter there were none, as an insufficient labor and Dover, N. H. The quality of his force was matched only by the lack of work, however, may be doubted when in capital. The earliest New Hampshire 1653 he was sued for taking excessive court cases, prior to unification with wages for building a saw mill which Massachusetts Bay in 1642, involved proved insufficient.5 payment in pipe staves and clapboards John Mason was not the only patentee which were hand-riven rather than who contracted with English millwrights “merchantable sawn boards” as became to build saw mills in New England. Fer- common after mid-century.’ dinando Gorges described his own activi- Throughout the seventeenth century, ties in 1623 in his Brief Narration (pub- land grants were made some years before lished in 1658) : the actual site was laid out to the owner. For example, in 1647 Dover granted I sent over for my Son, my Nephew Captain William Gorges. with someother Craftsmen 200 acres to Hatevil Nutter and Edward for the building of houses, and erecting of Starbuck “for Accomadation of a saw Saw-Mills. .6 mill at Lamperell River” which the two While this saw mill does not seem to men agreed to divide in 1649. Nutter re- have succeeded, Gorges did finance an- ceived the south side of the lower falls other one at the same time that Mason near an earlier grant: sent over his carpenters. Winthrop noted And it is ffurther agred that if one Bulds a mill in his Journal on July 9, 1634 that Sir before the other, that when the Other Bulds Ferdinand0 Gorges and Captain Mason hee shall paye to him that bult firs one halfe the valew of what Indeferent men shall Judg the had sent carpenters “to Pascataquack and mill Dam to be worth at said time of the latter Aguamenticus, with two sawmills, to be Bulding of a mill. .s erected, in each place one.“’ As with their other speculations in One such mill was in the process of com- Maine and New Hampshire, too much pletion as the century neared mid-point. rested upon the personal activities of In A ugust, I 649, Gorges and Mason in supplying the Richard Waldren of Quechecho in Piscataq fledgling saw mills at Berwick and York river granted to James Wall of Exeter Car- to survive beyond their deaths. From the penter all his right for erecting a saw mill at scant early records, however, it is evident Quechecho, together we sixty Acres of land that both mills were operating during the at the ffalls of Quecheco & fifteen hundred of trees. And all work that hath beene done (both 1630’s. What could be foreseen by these timber & yron work) towards erecting the sd English patentees was not lost upon am- mill.*o Merchant and Millwright 133 Wall paid for this mill right with “money from 1645 to 1650. This manufactury received, worke done, & a bill for one C. had been promoted and partially owned thousa foote of merchtable boords.“ll This by John Winthrop, Jr., with various suggests that there was a lack of local English and local shareholders. Caught capital for the completion of the mill, dam between the interference of the English and iron saws. Certainly, lack of sufficient Undertakers of this corporation and the capital may be seen in the mill grants local problems of an infant industry in the made to a number of Massachusetts mer- Puritan state, Leader gave up his post for chants who acquired land in Maine and other occupations. A letter between some New Hampshire at this time. of the investors written on August 28, Edward Gilman emigrated to Hing- 1650, notes that Leader “hath dismist ham, Massachusetts, with his parents and the works by the Consent of the Company their family in 1638 from Hingham, Nor- and is mynded to follow his other occa- folk, England. He was accepted as an in- tions. .“I4 habitant of Exeter in I 647 and given I oo By Christmas of I 650, some idea of his acres with mill and timber rights. As Ed- new interest was reported to John Win- ward began to purchase other lands, his throp by his uncle Emanuel Downing brothers John and Moses joined him in writing from Salem. 1648 to help in these activities. The first I suppose you have heard how mr Ledder Late sign of financial difficulties caused by the left the Ironworks, and lives at prsent in Boston, building of Edward’s mills is a mortgage he is about erecting a saw mill at a place nere for ho0 made in 165 I. It was held by his pascattaway that shall work wtb nere 20 sawes at once. .I5 father-in-law, Richard Smith, of Strop- ham near Hingham, England. Smith had By March I 650/5 I Richard Leader was lived in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and re- in Kittery, Maine, where he made “ser- turned to England prior to I 65 I when he taine propositions” to the Court “for the provided the needed support for Erectinge of a Mille or Milles for the im- one saw mil, on p Easterne side of ye River, provement of these parts and the advance- & also ye one halfe of three parts of a saw mill ment of trade here amongest US.“” on the other side of the river . and ye one Meanwhile, Leader had sailed to Lon- halfe of all my land in Exiter.