Wessagusset

“ We have Governor Winthrop’s authority for the assertion that, both going and returning, they were here most hospitably feasted on the turkeys, geese and ducks of the neighborhood. [53] Two years later again Wessagusset was summoned by the General Court to assume charge of one of its pauper inhabitants, who had seen [Pg 45] fit to fall ill at Dorchester; [54] and in 1635 the Court established a commission to fix the boundary line between what are now Braintree and Weymouth,—then Mt. Wollaston and Wessagusset. ”

“ Unlike the others, Thomas Walford, who I take it began his American experiences here at Wessagusset in 1623, was not an educated man or of the better class, so-called, in England; a smith by trade, he was one of John Winthrop’s “common people,” those who became two centuries later, Abraham Lincoln’s “plain people.” ”

“ Mr. Barnard, who died here after a ministration [Pg 36] of eleven years. [43] With the departure of Captain Robert Gorges the Wessagusset settlement practically vanishes from the page of cotemporary history, only to re-appear again four years later in connection with a very famous incident. By one authority only during the intervening time do I find its name mentioned. Mr. Thomas Morton of Merry Mount, he of cobbler atonement memory, refers to it as a place to which he had recourse in winter “to have the benefit of company” ”

“ But the Wessagusset men repaid the terribly taxed hospitality and courtesy of the Pilgrims by attempted thefts of corn and insolent demeanor while at Plymouth; then they provoked their heathen neighbors, with whom they competed in bad behavior; and finally their remnant accepted the guidance of Myles Standish to the fishing fleet off the Maine [53] coast, whence they returned to England for the good of America. ”

“ Any sign of faltering on the part of the Plymouth people would have been fatal. Had they abandoned Wessagusset to its fate, the settlers there would have been exterminated, and the savages, maddened by a taste of blood, would have turned upon Plymouth. The woods would have rung with war-whoops and the feeble colony could scarcely have survived the ordeal of blood treading hard on that of famine. Standish crushed out the danger in the incipient stage. By ruthlessly murdering seven men he re-established the moral ascendency of the whites, and so saved the lives of hundreds. ”

“ For the chronicles of the church and minister during the next ten years we have to rely mainly upon a single statement, we might almost say tradition, and that somewhat vague and unsatisfactory. The passage in “Prince’s Chronicles” relating to this settlement seems not to be credited by Mr. Adams, yet it is of such a nature that we can hardly pass it by as entirely without foundation. It reads as follows: “This year comes some addition to the few inhabitants of Wessagusset, from Weymouth, England, who are another sort of people than the former.” ”

“ Thus through eleven years, from 1624 to 1635, the early settlers of Weymouth only occasionally emerge from the oblivion of the past and are dimly shadowed on the mirror of New England history. But now, at last, in the year 1635, Wessagusset was by the order of the General Court made a plantation under the name of Weymouth, and the Rev. Mr. Hull, with twenty-one families from England, were allowed to establish themselves here. ”

“ The colony was planted at Wessagusset in present Weymouth, Mass., after sixty or so “lusty men” had lived at the charge of the Pilgrims during the summer of 1622. Weston was devoted to America as well as profit and shady deals, though, and went to Virginia and Maryland as a planter for several years before dying in England, deep in debt. C. M. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History (1934) , 1, 261-265, 330-331.
[80] Capt. Standish and his company went to the Wessagusset settlement to warn the men of the conspiracy. ”

“ These were never over-friendly, and the later Salem and Boston colonists found their own numerical strength was a needed preventive of further native hostilities after the first had been suppressed. The wrath of the red northerners was fanned into fury by the wicked and abusive conduct of sixty Wessagusset settlers, a worthless and improvident lot which Thomas Weston imposed upon Plymouth in the time of scarcity, until they went up the coast by themselves. ”

“ Weston's people removed to Wessagusset (modern Weymouth) , on Massachusetts Bay, where they conducted themselves in so reckless a manner that they ran the double risk of starvation and destruction from savages. ”

“ What is known is, however, full of suggestion. With the new life came turmoil; and, in those times, the turmoil was sure to be theological in character.
It is safe to surmise that the departure of the Rev. William Morell to England, in 1624, and the withdrawal of Blackstone somewhat later, wearing doubtless the “old canonical gown” in which Winthrop six years later found him clad, did not, as things then went, deprive the little Wessagusset settlement of all spiritual nutriment. ”

“ In their necessities they had made the fatal mistake of degrading themselves before the savages. In their utmost needs the Plymouth people had always borne themselves defiantly to the Indian; making him feel himself in presence of a superior. It was not so at Wessagusset. The settlers there alternately cringed before the Indian and abused him; and he, seeing them so poor and weak and helpless, first grew to despise and then to oppress them. Naturally, starving men of their description had recourse to theft, and there was no one to steal from but the Indians ”

“ The Indians were now watching the Wessagusset settlement very closely. In spite of their terror, the settlers, however, lived on in a reckless way, mixing freely with the savages and taking no precautions against surprise. [21] But one at least of their number was thoroughly alarmed, and had resolved to make his escape to Plymouth. This was Phinehas Pratt, one of the seven who had come on in the shallop during the previous May in advance of the body of the enterprise. The journey he now proposed to himself was both difficult and dangerous. ”

“ Savage’s Winthrop, v. 1, p. 192.
[53] In 1633 Wessagusset was thus described: “This as yet is but a small village; yet it is very pleasant, and healthful, very good ground, and is well timbered, and hath good store of hay-ground. It hath a very spacious harbour for shipping before the town, the salt water being navigable for boats and pinnaces two leagues. Here the inhabitants have good store of fish of all sorts, and swine, having acorns and clams at the time of year. Here is likewise an ale-wife river.” Wood’s New-England’s Prospect; Young’s Chron. of Mass. (p. 394) . ”

“ Between Old Spain and Quincy Point, or Wessagusset and Mount Wollaston as they then were called, a ferry was authorized as early as 1635, and the rate of ferriage was fixed at a penny for each person and at threepence for each horse; two years later this rate was raised and the ferryman of the day was licensed to keep a house of call. But so far as the whole great outer world was concerned, the earlier dwellers in Weymouth were, through four generations, what we should consider as entombed alive. ”

“ A single American winter sufficed for Gorges and the bulk of the Wessagusset colony. Relinquishing his magisterial powers, necessity compelled him to return home before spring, accompanied by some of his people. Others were carried to Virginia, only a few remaining in Weymouth. Thus quickly terminated the assumption of external, delegated authority at Plymouth as a separate Colony, the British government being usually content to grant, though unofficially and by sufferance, its autonomy, even to the choice of its chief executive, which was not the case at Massachusetts Bay. ”

“ In addition to their swords, many men also carried knives or daggers. Miles Standish and his followers used knives effectively in liquidating the trouble-makers at Wessagusset, and there are numerous other references to their presence at Plymouth.
Unfortunately no specimens used by the Pilgrims or their 17th century descendants at Plymouth have survived. There is a knife that belonged to John Thompson in Pilgrim Hall, but it is a table or general utility knife, and not a weapon. In all probability the most popular form of dagger employed at Plymouth was the quillon or left-hand dagger. ”

“ The Weston people now discovered that they had had enough of life in the wilderness, and wholly declined to tarry any longer at Wessagusset. Standish asserted his readiness to hold the place against all the [Pg 27] Indians of the vicinage with half the force of the Weston party, but they were not Standishes, nor did they feel any call to heroism. So, the choice being given to them, they divided,—one portion, on board the Swan, following Sanders to the coast of Maine, while the rest accompanied Standish home and cast in their lot among the Plymouth people. ”

“ This is wholly different from colonization in good faith. Thomas Weston acted on a well-defined plan, when, early in 1622, he dispatched his company to establish themselves somewhere on the shores of Massachusetts bay. He himself expressed it:—“Families,” he said, “were an encumbrance in any well-organized plantation; but a trading-post occupied by able-bodied men only could accomplish more in New England in seven years than in old England in twenty.”
Nor was his, here at Wessagusset, by any means the earliest attempt of the sort. ”

“ Either he was incompetent or his people were very hard to manage; but, in either case, the squandering of the supplies continued, and the prudent Plymouth settlers complained that, through improvident dealings with the Indians, their neighbors ruined the market, giving for a quart of corn what before would have bought a beaver-skin. [11] At length, however, about the beginning of the New Year, the Wessagusset plantation found itself face to face with dire want. The hungry settlers bartered with the Indians, giving everything they had for food ”

“ It is already five months since your Society celebrated the completion of its twenty-fifth year. It may be said to have then attained its majority. Yet, perhaps, this middle period of September is more appropriate for your anniversary than a day in April; for towards the middle of September, 1623, that is, two hundred and eighty-one years ago at this time,—possibly on what was then the thirteenth of the month, now the twenty-third,—Captain Robert Gorges, at the head of a little company of adventurers, sat down at Wessagusset. ”

“ The Wessagusset settlers, who had been reduced to great want and dependence on the Indians, abandoned their place, most going to the Maine coast to work for the fishermen and get passage back to England. The story is told most fully in Edward Winslow, “Winslow’s Relation,” in Young (ed.) , Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (“Everyman’s Library,” 1936) , 313-332, or some other edition of Winslow’s Good News from New England.
[81] Flag.
[82] Adventurers and Planters were both members of the Company under the terms of the agreement made in 1620. ”

“ White immigrants to the Old Colony found them especially weak there; and in Patuxet, or Plymouth, they were extinct, except for friendly Squanto.
At this time the people revealed their trust in Bradford's judgment by leaving him to decide what measures should be taken in a crisis so acute, of which he informed them on the annual court day. Captain Standish was sent to Wessagusset, with only [54] eight men, as more would excite suspicion; and they equipped the shallop for trading. ”

“ Naturally the old settlers did not look upon them as a very desirable accession to the colony, especially as they early evinced a disinclination to all honest labor and an extremely well developed appetite for green corn. [7] Having landed them, the larger ship sailed for Virginia, and during her absence preparations were completed for removing the party to the site selected for its operations at Wessagusset, as Weymouth was then called. In the course of a few weeks the ship returned, the healthy members of the expedition were taken on board and sailed for Boston Bay. ”

“ Nor would it be profitable so to do; for the salient facts are indisputably established that (1) , the first Gorges contingent came out and set themselves down at Old Spain in September, 1623; that (2) , the settlement there has been continuous from that day to this; (3) , some of those thus sent out under the auspices of Gorges had families and left descendants; and finally, (4) that, starting from Wessagusset, these first planters established themselves at points favorable for commercial dealings in pelts and supplies on the north, as well as the south, side of Boston bay. ”

“ Those freemen who were elected deputies attended the sessions of the General Court; and now and then the clergyman or the magistrate took part in some solemn conclave of his brethren at the capital or in a neighboring town. Of the young men, a few went with the fishing fleet to Cape Sable, or sailed on trading voyages to the West Indies or to Spain, thus catching glimpses of the outer world; but it may well be questioned whether any Weymouth-born woman ever laid eyes on the shores of the mother country during the first hundred and sixty years of the settlement of the town. ”

“ Fortunately the long trial now drew near its close. The towns of Massachusetts were thoroughly exhausted and neither men nor money could be procured. In spite of the large sums offered, recruits were no longer forthcoming, and finally Weymouth as one of many delinquent towns, became liable to a heavy fine. The wonder, however, was not that the towns were delinquent, but rather where they found so many able-bodied men as they then supplied. Weymouth, at that time, could not well have mustered over two hundred men of the age of military service. ”