HISTORICAL REFERENCES TO THE FISHERIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



THE FISHERIES OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 



A brief statement of the condition of the fisheries of this State in 1791 is given above on page 105. The following 

 additional references from official records and histories show the development of the industry during the past two 

 hundred and fifty years: 



FISHING BY THE COLONISTS. 



THE SETTLEMENTS IN 1623. " To include the early inhabitants of New Hampshire with Puritans," writes Sabine, 

 " and among refugees from religious persecutors, as some do, is to degrade to mere fable many of the best-authenti- 

 cated facts in history. The sole purpose of the first and of the subsequent proprietors was to acquire wealth by fishing 

 and trading." In 16215 several gentlemen merchants and others, belonging to Bristol, Exeter, Dorchester, Shrews- 

 bury, Plymouth, and other places in the west of England, formed an association under the title of <: The Company 

 of Laconia." They obtained patents from the Council of Plymouth for the country between the Merrimack and the 

 Keunebeck, and back to the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence. Being encouraged by the colonists at New Pljm- 

 outh, and the reports of fishermen who had made voyages upon the coast, they sent over David Thompson, together 

 with Edward Hilton and William Hilton, who had been fishmongers in London, and some others, provided with the 

 necessary tools and provisions and with instructions to establish a fishery. 



The Hiltons set up their stages some distance above the mouth of the Piscataqua, near the present site of Dover. 

 Another division about the same time established tliemselves at the place now called Odiorne's Point, where they 

 built the first house and established salt works, to provide salt for curing their fish. - The site of this house with 

 three or four thousand acres of the surrounding land was assigned to Capt. John Mason, and the house took the 

 name of "Mason Hall." 



Odiorne's Point received its name from John Odiorue, who resided there in 1660, and his descendants have 

 remained in that vicinity until the present day. The point is near the mouth of the river and three miles from the 

 present market square. Certaiuly no better locality could have been selected for a fishing station, since here was a 

 safe and fine harbor, and a river which was the home of the salmon, alewife, menhaden, and other varieties of fish, 

 while the best of fishing grounds for salt-water species were in the bay close by the mouth of the river. 



SOME EARLY SETTLERS. Mr. William Pepperell, of Cornwall, and a Mr. Gibbous, from Topsham, in the west of 

 England, two respectable gentlemen, were among the first settlers at the Shoals. For a year or two they carried 

 on the fisheries at this place. They soon found it too-limited for their views and concluded to remove to some part 

 of the main. " To determine them whither they should go they set up each a stick and left them to fall as Providence 

 should direct. Pepperell's fell northwest, Gibbens' fell towards the northeast. Each pursued with enthusiasm the 

 course his stick pointed him, and the former established himself at the mouth of Piscataway River; the latter is said 

 to have obtained a grant of the tract since called Waldo Patent. 



"Sir William Pepperell, the commander of the memorable expedition against Louisbourg, was the son of this 

 William Pepperell. As a merchant at Kittery, the oldest incorporated town in Maine, where he was born, where he 

 lived and died, and where strangers are still shown his large mansion-house and his tomb, he was personally con- 

 cerned in the fisheries. He acquired great wealth. The dignity of a baronet of Groat Britain, an honor never before 

 nor since conferred on a native of New England, was bestoweu ia reward of his military services; and not long pre- 

 vious to his death he was created a lieutenaut-general." ' He died in 1759. 



GROWTH OP THE COLONY. The building up of the colony was slow work, the colonists being absorbed entirely 

 in the fisheries and the fur trade. In 1631 there were but three houses in the settlement. Laconia soon fell into the 

 hands of Mason and of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of his associates in the company. " Their associates," continues 

 Sabine, " discouraged by the continual demands upon them without returns for the capital invested, relinquished their 

 shares. But Gorges and Mason did nothing to change the original designs of the first patentees. They formed no 

 government ; they merely employed men to fish and trade for them, without erecting any tribunals whatever to pro- 

 tect their own interests or the rights of others. 



"Finally, Laconia was divided into two colonies. To Gorges was assigned, in his own right, the region east of 



1 Coll. Maes. Hist. Soc. ; and Report on the Principal Fisheries of the American Seas, by Lorenzo Sabine. Washington : 1852. 



677 



