TOUR 1A: From MASSACHUSETTS LINE (Newburyport) to PORTSMOUTH, 22.5 m., State 1A and 1B.
Via Salisbury Beach (Mass.), Little Boar’s Head, New Castle.
Accommodations of all kinds available at frequent intervals.
Paved road throughout.
THIS is a short alternate route between Newburyport, Massachusetts, and Portsmouth, and follows New Hampshire’s 18 miles of seacoast along a shore of exceptional scenic beauty and historic interest.
State 1A crosses the State line 6.5 m. NE. of Newburyport, Massachusetts.
SEABROOK BEACH, 0.3 m., is a quiet seaside community of summer cottages.
MILE BRIDGE (fee 15¢ per car), 1.5 m. over Hampton River, a long wooden bridge, was built 40 years ago to carry first horse and then electric cars from Seabrook to Hampton. It has always been a toll bridge and is next to the last one in this part of the country.
East of Mile Bridge a short walk across the sand dunes leads to Bound Rock, which in 1657 marked the boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. This rock was recently unearthed by U.S. Army engineers, with the marking ‘A.D. 1657’ on the top.
At 3.5 m. is the main section of HAMPTON BEACH, a popular resort and the mecca of hundreds of thousands of vacationists each summer. Its surf bathing, up-to-date hotels, theaters and ballrooms combine to attract those in a holiday mood. During the summer, band concerts and a program from the ‘Singing Tower’ are given.
At GREAT BOAR’S HEAD, 4.5 m., the ‘Grisly Head of the Boar’ ‘tosses the foam from tusks of stone’ as it juts into the ocean. Whittier describes this stretch of shore in his poem, ‘The Tent on the Beach.’
At this point begins a curving sea wall of two miles that protects the boulevard and the houses beyond from the ravages of the ocean. It was erected by the State at a cost of $220,000 and represents one of the largest developments in coastal protection along the Atlantic sea front.
At 7.8 m. is a junction with Willow Tree Avenue.
Left on this avenue are the lovely gardens of the Spaulding, Fuller, and Lamprey estates. Of interest is the Hobson apple orchard, where not apples, but operas and concerts by celebrated artists are given every summer. This avenue leads back to the highway, 0.5 m.
LITTLE BOAR’S HEAD, 8.5 m., a precinct of North Hampton, is the show place of eastern New Hampshire. Approaching it from the south and rounding the curve in the road appear in order the Studebaker estate, and the Nutting, Fuller, Spaulding, Manning, and Studebaker mansions.
At RYE BEACH, 9.1 m., can be traced at low tide the shelf of rock, geologically a remnant of an ancient plateau, that stretches out to the Isles of Shoals, lying east from the shore. The best time to observe them is in the early morning or in the twilight when the ocean colors vividly accentuate the white of the islands.
Opposite the Hotel Farragut (L) is the Playhouse, the summer home of the Farragut Players.
The Beach Club at Rye Beach is private, but the bath-houses adjoining it are open to the public.
Left at the Rye Beach Club on a side road, 0.8 m., passing through Rye Beach center are: right, the Abenaqui Golf Club (open to the public; fee $3), 18 holes, named after the Abnaki Indians, and the impressive Tudor-style home of Stoneleigh College (L), a junior college that combines practical and cultural training for girls.
At Rye Beach a fresh-water pond (L) is an anomaly, for although the water is fresh and has no apparent connection with the ocean in any way, it contains a great variety of fish, both fresh- and salt-water. Bass, pickerel, hornpout, eels, trout, clams, oysters, and lobsters are found here, together with, other fresh- and salt-water fish and crustaceans.
At JENNESS BEACH, 10.2 m., when the tide is extremely low the Drowned Forest is visible with the original Atlantic cable running through it. According to geologists the forest submersion is probably due to the return to the sea of the water that had been locked up in the ice-sheet during the glacial period; and so, as for time it would seem to mark the close of the Ice Age following closely the late glacial upwarping. Only the great stumps are now visible, held in position by huge gnarled roots that the pounding surf of centuries has been unable to dislodge. It was here that the first cable across the Atlantic was completed in 1874. The receiving station of the cable is an unpretentious building on the southerly side of Straw’s Point.
STRAW’S POINT, 10.5 m., originally called Locke’s Neck, has a tablet (R) marking the killing of an early settler, John Locke, by Indians in 1694. John Locke cut holes in the beached canoes of a raiding party of savages so that they were compelled to put back to shore and make their way south by land amid great hardships. Later a party of Indians returned to kill him and surrounded him as he was reaping grain in his field, his gun, some distance away against a rock. An Indian picked up the gun and shot him. Locke fell prostrate, but as the savages ran up to tomahawk and scalp him, he struck at one with his sickle and cut off his nose. This is the story the Indian told when he was captured years afterward.
At RYE HARBOR, 10.7 m., a new development is in process. The original Rye harbor was dredged by hand by the early settlers to provide a cove for their fishing boats because the water was shallow and no large vessels could enter. It is hoped that the harbor may be dredged for the anchorage of pleasure boats of all kinds and sizes.
At RYE NORTH BEACH, 11.2 m., is a junction with a paved road.
Left on this road RYE CENTER, 2 m., on the crest of what was once known as Break-back Hill, is a splendid example of the best of early Colonial town planning. The square white village church dominates the summit. Spreading out from the village Green many of the spacious white homes under great elms, are several centuries old. There are 25 houses in Rye dating back to the 18th century. Their pleasing proportions and simple lines, lacking the elaboration of houses in Portsmouth and Exeter, have been preserved despite the alterations necessary to make them modern homes. In them still live members of such original families as Locke, Brackett, Philbrick, Drake, Jenness, Trefetheryn, Walls, Rand, Blake, and Garland, and on Town Meeting Day the list of registered voters shows that 90 per cent of the names are those of the early settlers.
Rye was incorporated as a part of New Castle in 1693 and was not separated until 1726. The present church, the First Congregational, was built in 1837. Opposite the church is a delightful old house of early Georgian design with old-fashioned flowers growing in profusion all over the estate. A large two-story house with the typical five-window front and two dormers breaking the sharp line of the pitched roof, it bears on the immense central chimney the date 1747. In Colonial times the house was known as Garland Tavern (not open): The interior has been little changed. The heavy oak timbers are apparently as sound as ever. The bar where Prince, the Negro servant, mixed drinks remains intact as does the old wine cellar with its kegs and casks.
Directly across the street is the Parsons Homestead (not open), a two-story house with gable roof. Built in 1810, it was once a store and ‘githering’ place. The front room on the second floor, formerly a ball room, has an egg-shaped recess in the ceiling of bright blue, stencilled with gilt fleurs-de-lys. This curious arrangement, either for acoustical or decorative purposes, has only one known counterpart — in Nantucket.
The Rand Store (open; free), combining dwelling-house and store in an ell-shaped building retaining the original small-paned windows in the front part, just west of the school, is the last general store in this area. Blake Rand, whose family has owned the store for 200 years, no longer maintains it as a business, but keeps it as it used to be. The oak rafters with the hooks for hanging merchandise of all kinds are intact. The oak floor has the wide planks of the period. The shelves hold tea and coffee canisters. The high desk, the antique toys, the chairs and tables all stand as they did a century ago.
At PARSONS’ POINT, 14.9 m., there is a particularly fine surf, and down among the rocks the water boils in a natural kettle. Foam is scattered over the rocks and flecks up in the kettle itself.
At 15.6 m. is (R) ODIORNE’S POINT, one of the oldest bits of land historically in the United States. Here David Thompson, a Scotsman, and a group of Englishmen landed in 1623 and established the first settlement in New Hampshire, under a grant from the Plymouth Council. There were several reasons why he selected this point as a ‘fitt place to build their houses for habitacons.’ It was high, it had good harbor and a fine spring of water, and the great salt marsh to the west made it easily defensible against savages. Thompson named the new plantation, ‘Pannaway’ and built a house, later called Mason Hall by Captain John Mason. Remains of Mason Hall, the old well and burying ground of those early settlers, can be seen today (L).
Although the first to remain, Thompson was not the first to have landed here. In 1603, Martin Pring, commanding the vessels ‘Speedwell’ and ‘Discoverer,’ stopped here in search of sassafras, which he did not find. According to their records, Samuel de Champlain touched at this point in 1605, and Captain John Smith in 1614. The latter wrote: ‘The sea there . . . is the strangest fish pond I ever saw. What sport doth yield a more pleasant content and less hurt or charge than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle over the silent streams of a calm sea.’
At 16.4 m. is (R) the old Seavey Homestead, now Miriam’s Tea Room, built in 1730. In 1652 a grant of 50 acres of land was made to William Seavey that has come down to the present without a break in family ownership.
At 16.5 m. is a junction with Brackett Road.
Left on this road about thirty rods (L) is the Wendell Farmhouse, a white rambling structure, where there is a one-horse chaise built in England during the year 1690 for the French consul. It is a one-seated affair, the body underslung on riders of leather that have stood the wear and tear of nearly 250 years of usage. Just in front of the dash is an iron dickey seat for the coachman, while behind the riding compartment is space for two footmen. This chaise was imported into Portsmouth by Colonel William Gardiner in 1750, a famous figure in Colonial days. It was the carriage of honor for Marquis de Lafayette and Washington when they came to this section for a visit. After the Revolution the carriage came into the possession of the Wendell family.
At 17.2 m. is a junction with State 1B.
Right on 1A, 0.8 m., is the junction with Little Harbor Road.
Left on this road is the Benning Wentworth Mansion (open by permission of the owner), 1 m., overlooking the harbor, the oldest wing of which was built in 1695. As Longfellow described it in his poem ‘Lady Wentworth’:
It was a pleasant mansion, an abode
Near and yet hidden from the great highroad,
Sequestered among trees, a noble pile,
Baronial and colonial in its style.
Gables and dormer windows everywhere,
And stacks of chimneys rising high in air,
Pandaran pipes, on which all winds that blew
Made mournful music the whole winter through.
The mansion now has 32 rooms, seven having been removed and ferried to a near-by island some years ago. Its gables and wings all center about the great Council Chamber, where Benning Wentworth. Royal Governor of New Hampshire, held court in high-spirited style, keeping up the aristocratic tradition of beeswing port and high play at cards.
The Council Chamber is guarded with a heavy oak door, hung with massive hinges and fastened with a large wooden lock; within the Chamber is an elaborate mantel, with carvings of Indian princesses, chaplets, and garlands. In the hall gunracks hold 12 French flintlock guns thought to be from the siege of Louisburg. These are kept in perfect condition with fixed bayonets.
The billiard room, adjoining the Council Chamber, is set off by small card-rooms, just large enough to seat four people comfortably. Window seats built in 1750 and the buffet remain unchanged, and the original floor of Portsmouth oak shows few signs of wear.
The dining-room is in the oldest part of the house, and is joined to the main structure by a party wall. Here are kept three small ovens used to warm rum for toddies. The many valuable paintings in the parlors once included a portrait of Dorothy Quincy by John Singleton Copley, mentioned in Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poem ‘Dorothy Q.’ The cellars had ample room for stabling 30 horses, tradition says, but the stalls have been torn down.
It is easy to confuse the Wentworths, three of whom were Royal Governors, because when they didn’t marry their cooks, they usually married each other’s widows. Benning, the most aristocratic, was an able administrator for 26 years (1741–67). At the close of a banquet celebrating his sixtieth birthday and attended by the cream of New England’s aristocracy, he called in Martha Hilton, his housekeeper, and bade the Rev. Arthur Brown, rector of St. John’s Church in Portsmouth, read the ceremony then and there, which the astonished prelate did.
For some years this was the summer home of Francis Parkman, the historian, who spent his summers here in historical research. It is now the home of J. Templeman Coolidge, Boston artist.
Return to junction of State 1A with State 1B. Bear left on State 1B.
The highway passes (L) the celebrated Hotel Wentworth, 18.7 m., on Little Harbor, in which the delegates to the Russo-Japanese peace conference were entertained in 1905 during the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, which brought to an end the Russo-Japanese War. The Wentworth Golf Club is at the western end of the bridge.
At 19.2 m. is a junction with a road marked Wild Rose Lane.
Right on this road is Fort Stark at Jaffrey’s Point 0.5 m., a part of a United States Military Reservation, and the site of the oldest defense works along the coast.
Next to the Fort is (R) the old Jaffrey Collage, remodeled as a part of the Fellows estate. This house was the meeting place of the Provincial Assembly in 1682–83 when Cranfield was Lieutenant-Governor. During the War of 1812 soldiers were drilled in its parlor. Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many other distinguished guests stayed in this house.
NEW CASTLE (alt. 10, pop. 378), 20 m., is like an English fishing village with its narrow, winding streets and houses flush with the curb. Many of these Colonial houses of the Cape Cod or salt-box type, surrounded by bright gardens, are several centuries old. New Castle was an island town, early known as Great Island, and for many years was without bridges to the mainland. Horses and carriages were unknown, and the streets are outgrowths of convenient footpaths from one house to another.
It is a charming and sleepy old place today, but in the years preceding the Revolution it was alive with intrigue and excitement. Here lived the Governor and his officials; here were held the councils and the courts of law. The prison for the whole province was at New Castle as was its fort under the command of Captain Walter Barefoot. Its taverns were crowded with gay, philandering soldiers of fortune, and its prisons were full of traitors and ministers in danger of the Tower of London, or of the gallows.
The prosperity of New Castle, however, depended for the most part on its fisheries for more than 200 years. In early spring the small vessels fitted out for a cruise to the Newfoundland banks and eastern shores, returning in the fall. Whittier, in his poem, ‘Amy Wentworth,’ pictures one of the many romances growing out of the motley group of people crowded on this little island.
In New Castle Square (R) is a simple, little Graveyard with headstones running back to 1713. The frequent appearance of the ‘God’s Acre’ on this tiny island is a reminder that here are nine generations of dead to one living.
The white frame Meeting-House (key obtainable at the village store) (L), opposite the burying ground, was built in 1828 on the site of the original church, organized in 1682. In the Library (R) is a copy of the charter (the original is in the archives of the Historical Society in Concord) given to New Castle by William and Mary in 1693, establishing it as a township:
William and Mary, by the Grace of God, of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, King and Queen, Defenders of the Faith &c., to all people to whom these presents shall Come Greeting. Know yee that Wee of our especiall Grace, certain knowledge, and meer motion, have Given and Granted . . . to our beloved Subjects, Men and Inhabitants within and upon Great Island, within our Province of New Hampshire, in New England . . . that the same be a Towne Corporate by the Name of New Castle to the Men and Inhabitants thereof forever.
In 1873, the ancient records of the town from 1693 to 1726, including the charter, were discovered in Hertfordshire, England, and returned to New Castle.
At a curve in the road east of New Castle Square is Fort Constitution (R). Here in 1774 one of the first blows for liberty was struck when the British garrison at Fort Constitution, then called Fort William and Mary, was overpowered and arms and powder seized by the colonists. On December 13, 1774, Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth to inform the Committee of Safety of the British Order that no gunpowder or military stores would be exported to America. The next day the Portsmouth Sons of Liberty with the patriots of New Castle, in all about 400 men under command of John Sullivan, afterward major general in the Continental Army, and Captain John Langdon surrounded the fort and summoned Captain John Cochran and his five guards to surrender. They could do little else, being 5 against 400, and 100 barrels of powder were carried away and secreted under the meeting-house pulpit in Durham. From there it was later carted by oxen to Bunker Hill just in time to be issued to the soldiers on the eve of the battle of Bunker Hill.
The fort is now a grass-grown ruin, not having been used since the Revolution. From it is visible the medieval-looking Walbach Tower (built during the War of 1812 under a German Count, Colonel Walbach), New Castle Beach, Portsmouth Light, and in the distance, Whaleback Light and Gerrish Island.
The Fort Point Lighthouse at the southeast angle of Fort Constitution is a successor to one built by Governor John Wentworth in 1771.
As early as 1765, while Benning Wentworth was Governor, a petition was presented by sundry inhabitants of Portsmouth setting forth the necessity of a lighthouse at some suitable place near the mouth of the Piscataqua Harbor. A committee was appointed to examine the matter, and a sum was appropriated for the erection of such a building, but the sum being entirely insufficient, nothing more was done. In April, 1771, Governor Wentworth made an appeal to the Provincial Assembly to have money appropriated to keep at least a lantern lighted on the mast supporting the flagstaff in the castle, or fort, saying in his appeal: ‘Every future expiring Cry of a drowning Mariner upon our coast, will bitterly accuse the unfeeling Rescusant that wastes that Life to save a paltry unblessed Shilling.’ A sum was accordingly granted; but in December of the same year, the Governor announced that having found this mode of lighting impracticable, he had himself exceeded the grant, and caused the needed edifice to be erected. The debt thus incurred was paid the next year. Ceded by the State to the United States, in 1789, the lighthouse was torn down and replaced with an iron tower that, as one writer said, ‘resembles nothing so much as a length of corpulent stovepipe set on end.’
A large and solitary oak tree (L), 20.5 m., marks the Site of the Walton House that in 1682 was possessed of a ‘stone-throwing devil’ who was reported to have performed so many antics that they at last reached the distinguished ears of Cotton Mather and were set down in his famous book. The history of the case by Richard Chamberlain, Secretary to the Province, who was a guest of Walton’s, is preserved in a very rare pamphlet published by him on his return to London. The title page reads as follows:
Lithobolia; or the Stone-throwing Devil. Being an Exact and True Account of the various actions of infernal Spirits or (Devils Incarnate) Witches, or both; and the great Disturbance and Amazement they gave to George Walton’s Family, at a place called Great Island in the Province of New Hampshire in New England, chiefly in throwing about (by an Invisible hand) Stones, Bricks, and Brick-bats of all sizes, with several other things, as Hammers, Mauls, Iron-Crows, Spits, and other domestick Utensils, as came into their Hellish Minds, and this for the space of a Quarter of a Year.
These stones, supposedly hurled by the ‘Devil,’ have passed from one generation to another in several New Castle families.
At the top of the hill west of New Castle the white, two-story house of early Colonial square construction (R) opposite the old Burying Ground is the John Pepperell Frost House, built in 1730 and restored to its original condition by Edmund C. Tarbell, Boston artist, who makes his home here.
State 1B runs west across the Three Bridges. Here, where that arm of the sea, the Piscataqua River, joins the ocean, lies a mosaic of tiny islands, rich in history and charm. Four creeks flow into the waters that surround them; two of them, Spruce and Chauncey, from the river side (R); Seavy and Sagamore from Little Harbor (L). The first bridge connects New Castle with Goat’s Island; the second, between Goat’s Island and Shapleigh’s Island, was originally used for drying fish. The third bridge is crossed between Shapleigh’s Island and Frame Point, Portsmouth, and from it is (R) a good view of the older portion of Portsmouth, first known as Strawberry Bank, because of the wild strawberries growing there when the first settlers came.
The view from any of these bridges deserves a few moments’ stop. On the right are Pierce’s, Seavey’s, and Clark’s Islands. On Pierce’s Island the Revolutionary framework of Fort Washington is visible. East of Seavey’s Island is the United States Navy Yard where the Portsmouth Naval Prison with the appearance of a feudal castle stands out conspicuously. Right from the first bridge, near New Castle, at the swiftest and most dangerous mile of the Piscataqua is Pull-and-be-Damned Point, where fishermen curse the current as heartily as did their ancestors who named it 300 years ago. In the background lies Kittery, on the Maine shore.
On the left of the Three Bridges, on the largest island, called Leach’s Island, were the slaves’ quarters of Governor Benning Wentworth’s mansion. Among the smaller islands are Snuff-Box, Clampit, and Pest, the latter being used in Colonial days for the isolation of smallpox victims. On Blunt’s Island, a small point of land with one house on it, lived Captain John Blunt, who, it is said, piloted George Washington’s boat in his famous crossing of the Delaware.
The only deep water on the left of the Three Bridges is near the middle one, and is called The Pool. This was the anchorage of the mast ships that made annual visits from England to the Piscataqua, returning laden with white pine masts for the Royal Navy. Only the tallest and straightest pines in the forest were chosen for His Majesty’s fleet, and these were marked with a broad arrow with a heavy penalty imposed on any Yankee woodsman who dared to fell one for his own use.
PORTSMOUTH, 22.5 m. (see PORTSMOUTH).
Portsmouth is the junction with State 16 (see Tour 2, sec. a); with State 101 (see Tour 17, sec. a); and US 4 (see Tour 15, sec. a).