Christianity and civilization. They were for a long time the abode of
intelligence, refinement, and virtue, but were afterwards abandoned
to a state of semi-barbarism.” The first intelligence of the place
comes to us from the year 1614, when John Smith is supposed to have
discovered them. The next date is of the landing of Christopher
Leavitt, in 1623. In 1645, three brothers, Robert, John, and Richard
Cutts, emigrated from Wales, and on their way to the continent paused
at the Isles of Shoals, and, finding them so pleasant, made their
settlement here. Williamson mentions particularly Richard Gibson,
from Topsham, England, and various other men from England and Wales.
Many people speedily joined the little colony, which grew yearly
more prosperous. In 1650, the Rev. John Brock came to live among the
islanders, and remained with them twelve years. All that we hear of
this man is so fine, he is represented as having been so faithful,
zealous, intelligent, and humane, that it is no wonder the community
flourished while he sat at the helm. It was said of him, “He dwells as
near Heaven as any man upon earth.” Cotton Mather thus quaintly praises
him: “He was a good _grammarian_, chiefly in this, that he still _spoke
the truth from his heart_. He was a good _logician_, chiefly in this,
that he _presented himself unto God with a reasonable service_. He was
a good _arithmetician_, chiefly in this, that he _so numbered his days
as to apply his heart unto wisdom_. He was a good _astronomer_, chiefly
in this, _that his conversation was in Heaven_.... So much belonged to
this _good man_, that so _learned a life_ may well be judged worthy of
being a _written one_.” After him came a long procession of the clergy,
good, bad, and indifferent, up to the present time, when “divine
service,” so-called, has seemed a mere burlesque as it has been often
carried on in the little church at Star.
Last summer I was shown a quaint little book entitled “The Fisherman’s
Calling. A brief essay to Serve the Great Interests of Religion
among our Fishermen. By Cotton Mather, D. D. Boston in New England.
Printed: Sold by T. Green. 1712,” and I found the following incident
connected with Mr. Brock’s ministry at the Shoals: “To Illustrate and
Demonstrate the Providence of God our Saviour over the Business of
fishermen, I will entertain you with Two short Modern Histories.” Then
follows an account of some Romish priests upon some isles belonging to
Scotland, who endeavored to draw the poor fishermen over to popery.
The other is this: “When our Mr. Brock lived on the Isles of Shoals,
he brought the Fishermen into an agreement that besides the Lord’s
Day they would spend one day of every month together in the worship
of the Glorious Lord. A certain day which by their Agreement belonged
unto the Exercises of Religion being arrived, they came to Mr. Brock,
and asked him, that they might put by their meeting and go a Fishing,
because they had Lost many Days by the Foulness of the weather. He,
seeing that without and against his consent they resolved upon doing
what they asked of him, replied, ‘If you will go away I say unto you,
‘Catch Fish if you can!’ But as for you that will tarry, and worship
our Lord Jesus Christ this day, I will pray unto Him for you that you
may afterwards take fish till you are weary.’ Thirty men went away
from the meeting and Five tarried. The thirty that went away from the
meeting with all their Craft could catch but four Fishes. The Five
which tarried went forth afterwards and _they_ took _five Hundred_. The
Fishermen were after this Readier to hearken unto the Voice of their
Teacher.”
If virtue were often its own reward after a fashion like this, in what
a well-conducted world we should live! Doubtless the reckless islanders
needed the force of all the moral suasion good Mr. Brock could bring
to bear upon them; too much law and order they could not have; but I
like better this story of the stout old fisherman who in church so
unexpectedly answered his pastor’s thrilling exhortation, “Supposing,
my brethren, that any of you should be overtaken in the bay by a
northeast storm, your hearts trembling with fear, and nothing but death
before, whither would your thoughts turn? what would you do?”--with the
instant inspiration of common-sense, “I’d hoist the foresail and scud
away for Squam!”
The first church on Star was built principally of timbers from the
wrecks of Spanish ships, but it has been partially burned and rebuilt
twice. Various rough characters, given over to hard drinking, and
consequently lawless living, have joined the colony within the last ten
years, and made the place the scene of continually recurring fires. On
going down to Appledore one spring I was surprised at the daily and
nightly jangling of the dull bell at Star,--a dissonant sound borne
wildly on the stormy wind to our dwelling. “What is Star Island ringing
for?” I kept asking, and was as often answered, “O, it’s only Sam Blake
setting his house on fire!”--the object being to obtain the insurance
thereupon.
On the Massachusetts records there is a paragraph to the effect that,
in the year 1653, Philip Babb, of Hog Island, was appointed constable
for all the islands of Shoals, Star Island excepted. To Philip Babb we
shall have occasion to refer again. “In May, 1661,” says Williamson,
“being places of note and great resort, the General Court incorporated
the islands into a town called Appledore, and invested it with the
powers and privileges of other towns.” There were then about forty
families on Hog Island, but between that time and the year 1670 these
removed to Star Island and joined the settlement there. This they were
induced to do partly through fear of the Indians, who frequented Duck
Island, and thence made plundering excursions upon them, carrying
off their women while they were absent fishing, and doing a variety
of harm; but, as it is expressly stated that people living on the
mainland sent their children to school at Appledore that they might
be safe from the Indians, the statement of their depredations at the
Shoals is perplexing. Probably the savages camped on Duck to carry on
their craft of porpoise-fishing, which to this day they still pursue
among the islands on the eastern coast of Maine. Star Island seemed
a place of greater safety; and probably the greater advantages of
landing and the convenience of a wide cove at the entrance of the
village, with a little harbor wherein the fishing-craft might anchor
with some security, were also inducements. William Pepperell, a native
of Cornwall, England, emigrated to the place in the year 1676, and
lived there upwards of twenty years, and carried on a large fishery.
“He was the father of Sir William Pepperell, the most famous man Maine
ever produced.” For more than a century previous to the Revolutionary
War there were at the Shoals from three to six hundred inhabitants,
and the little settlement flourished steadily. They had their church
and school-house, and a court-house; and the usual municipal officers
were annually chosen, and the town records regularly kept. From three
to four thousand quintals of fish were yearly caught and cured by the
islanders; and, beside their trade with Spain, large quantities of fish
were also carried to Portsmouth, for the West India market. In 1671
the islands belonged to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. This
man always greatly interested me. He must have been a person of great
force of character, strong, clear-headed, full of fire and energy. He
was appointed governor-general of New England in 1637. Williamson has
much to say of him: “He and Sir Walter Raleigh, whose acquaintance
was familiar, possessing minds equally elastic and adventurous,
turned their thoughts at an early period of life towards the American
hemisphere.” And the historian thus goes on lamenting over him: “Fame
and wealth, so often the idols of superior intellects, were the
prominent objects of this aspiring man. Constant and sincere in his
friendships, he might have had extensively the estimation of others,
had not selfishness been the centre of all his efforts. His life and
name, though by no means free from blemishes, have just claims to the
grateful recollections of the Eastern Americans and their posterity.”
From 1640 to 1775, says a report to the “Society for Propagating the
Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America,” the church at
the Shoals was in a flourishing condition, and had a succession of
ministers,--Messrs. Hull, Brock, Belcher, Moody, Tucke, and Shaw, all
of whom were good and faithful men; two, Brock and Tucke, being men
of learning and ability, with peculiarities of talent and character
admirably fitting them for their work on these islands. Tucke was
the only one who closed his life and ministry at the Shoals. He was
a graduate of Harvard College of the class of 1723, was ordained
at the Shoals July 20, 1732, and died there August 12, 1773,--his
ministry thus covering more than forty years. His salary in 1771 was
paid in merchantable fish, a quintal to a man, when there were on
the Shoals from ninety to one hundred men, and a quintal of fish was
worth a guinea. His grave was accidentally discovered in 1800, and
the Hon. Dudley Atkins Tyng, who interested himself most charitably
and indefatigably for the good of these islands, placed over it a
slab of stone, with an inscription which still remains to tell of the
fine qualities of the man whose dust it covers; but year by year the
raindrops with delicate touches wear away the deeply cut letters, for
the stone lies horizontal; even now they are scarcely legible, and soon
the words of praise and appreciation will exist only in the memory of
a few of the older inhabitants.
At the time of Mr. Tucke’s death the prosperity of the Shoals was at
its height. But in less than thirty years after his death a most woful
condition of things was inaugurated.
The settlement flourished till the breaking out of the war, when it
was found to be entirely at the mercy of the English, and obliged
to furnish them with recruits and supplies. The inhabitants were
therefore ordered by the government to quit the islands; and as their
trade was probably broken up and their property exposed, most of them
complied with the order, and settled in the neighboring seaport towns,
where their descendants may be found to this day. Some of the people
settled in Salem, and the Mr. White so mysteriously murdered there
many years ago was born at Appledore. Those who remained, with a few
exceptions, were among the most ignorant and degraded of the people,
and they went rapidly down into untold depths of misery. “They burned
the meeting-house, and gave themselves up to quarrelling, profanity,
and drunkenness, till they became almost barbarians”; or, as Mr.
Morse expresses it, “were given up to work all manner of wickedness
with greediness.” In no place of the size has there been a greater
absorption of “rum” since the world was made. Mr. Reuben Moody, a
theological student, lived at the Shoals for a few months in the year
1822, and his description of the condition of things at that time is
frightful. He had no place to open a school; one of the islanders
provided him with a room, fire, etc., giving as a reason for his
enthusiastic furtherance of Mr. Moody’s plans, that his children made
such a disturbance at home that he couldn’t sleep in the daytime. An
extract from Mr. Moody’s journal affords an idea of the morals of the
inhabitants at this period:--
“May 1^{st}. I yet continue to witness the Heaven-daring impieties
of this people. Yesterday my heart was shocked at seeing a man about
seventy years of age, as devoid of reason as a maniac, giving way to
his passions; striving to express himself in more blasphemous language
than he had the ability to utter; and, being unable to express the
malice of his heart in words, he would _run at_ every one he saw. All
was tumult and confusion,--men and women with tar-brushes, clenched
fists, and stones; one female who had an infant but eight days old,
with a stone in her hand and an oath on her tongue, threatened to dash
out the brains of her antagonists.... After I arrived among them some
of them dispersed, some led their wives into the house, others drove
them off, and a calm succeeded.”
In another part of the journal is an account of an old man who lived
alone and drank forty gallons of rum in twelve months,--some horrible
old Caliban, no doubt. This hideous madness of drunkenness was the
great trouble at the Shoals; and though time has modified, it has
not eliminated the apparently hereditary bane whose antidote is not
yet discovered. The misuse of strong drink still proves a whirlpool
more awful than the worst terrors of the pitiless ocean that hems the
islanders in.
As may be seen from Mr. Moody’s journal, the clergy had a hard time
of it among the heathen at the Isles of Shoals; but they persevered,
and many brave women at different times have gone among the people to
teach the school and reclaim the little children from wretchedness
and ignorance. Miss Peabody, of Newburyport, who came to live with
them in 1823, did wonders for them during the three years of her stay.
She taught the school, visited the families, and on Sundays read to
such audiences as she could collect, took seven of the poorer female
children to live with her at the parsonage, instructed all who would
learn in the arts of carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing,
braiding mats, etc. Truly she remembered what “Satan finds for idle
hands to do,” and kept all her charges busy and consequently happy.
All honor to her memory! she was a wise and faithful servant. There is
still an affectionate remembrance of her among the present inhabitants,
whose mothers she helped out of their degradation into a better life. I
saw in one of the houses, not long ago, a sampler blackened by age, but
carefully preserved in a frame; and was told that the dead grandmother
of the family had made it when a little girl, under Miss Peabody’s
supervision. In 1835 the Rev. Origen Smith went to live at Star, and
remained perhaps ten years, doing much good among the people. He nearly
succeeded in banishing the great demoralizer, liquor, and restored law
and order. He is reverently remembered by the islanders. In 1855 an
excellent man by the name of Mason occupied the post of minister for
the islanders, and from his report to the “Society for Propagating the
Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America” I make a few
extracts. He says: “The kind of business which the people pursue, and
by which they subsist, affects unfavorably their habits, physical,
social, and religious. Family discipline is neglected, domestic
arrangements very imperfect, much time, apparently wasted, is spent
in watching for favorable indications to pursue their calling.... A
bad moral influence is excited by a portion of the transient visitors
to the Shoals during the summer months.” This is very true. He speaks
of the people’s appreciation of the efforts made in their behalf; and
says that they raised subscriptions among themselves for lighting the
parsonage, and for fuel for the singing-school (which, by the way, was
a most excellent institution), and mentions their surprising him by
putting into the back kitchen of the parsonage a barrel of fine flour,
a bucket of sugar, a leg of bacon, etc. “Their deep poverty abounded
unto the riches of their liberality,” he says; and this little act
shows that they were far from being indifferent or ungrateful. They
were really attached to Mr. Mason, and it is a pity he could not have
remained with them.
Within the last few years they have been trying bravely to help
themselves, and they persevere with their annual fair to obtain
money to pay the teacher who saves their little children from utter
ignorance; and many of them show a growing ambition in fitting up
their houses and making their families more comfortable. Of late, the
fires before referred to, kindled in drunken madness by the islanders
themselves, or by the reckless few who have joined the settlement,
have swept away nearly all the old houses, which have been replaced by
smart new buildings, painted white, with green blinds, and with modern
improvements, so that yearly the village grows less picturesque,--which
is a charm one can afford to lose, when the external smartness is
indicative of better living among the people. Twenty years ago Star
Island Cove was charming, with its tumble-down fish-houses, and ancient
cottages with low, shelving roofs, and porches covered with the golden
lichen that so loves to embroider old weather-worn wood. Now there
is not a vestige of those dilapidated buildings to be seen; almost
everything is white and square and new; and they have even cleaned out
the cove, and removed the great accumulation of fish-bones which made
the beach so curious.
The old town records are quaint and interesting, and the spelling and
modes of expression so peculiar that I have copied a few. Mr. John
Muchamore was the moderator of a meeting called “March ye 7th day,
1748. By a Legall town meeting of ye Free holders and Inhabitence of
gosport, dewly quallefide to vote for Tiding men Collers of fish,
Corders of wood. Addition to ye minister’s sallery Mr John Tucke, 100
lbs old tenor.”
In 1755, it was “Agred in town meating that if any person shall spelth
[split] any fish above hie water marck and leave their heads and son
bones [sound-bones] their, shall pay ten lbs new tenor to the town, and
any that is above now their, they that have them their, shall have them
below hie warter in fortinets time or pay the same.” In another place
“it is agreed at ton meating evry person that is are kow [has a cow]
shall carry them of at 15 day of may, keep them their til the 15 day of
October or pay 20 shillings lawful money.” And “if any person that have
any hogs, If they do any damg, hom [whom] they do the damg to shall
keep the hog for sattisfaxeon.”
The cows seem to have given a great deal of trouble. Here is one more
extract on the subject:--
“This is a Leagel vot by the ton meeting, that if any presson or
pressons shall leave their Cowks out after the fifteenth day of May
and they do any Dameg, they shall be taken up and the owner of the kow
shall pay teen shillings old tenor to the kow constabel and one half he
shall have and the other shall give to the pour of the place.
“MR DAINEL RANDEL
“_Kow Constabel_.”
“On March 11^{th} 1762. A genarel free Voot past amongst the inhabents
that every fall of the year when Mr Rev^{d.} John Tucke has his wood to
Carry home evary men will not com that is abel to com shall pay forty
shillings ould tenor.”
But the most delightfully preposterous entry is this:--
“March 12^{th} 1769. A genarel free voot past amongst the inhabents to
cus [cause] tow men to go to the Rev^d Mr John Tucke to hear wether he
was willing to take one Quental of fish each man, or to take the price
of Quental in ould tenor which he answered this that he thought it was
easer to pay the fish than the money which he consented to taik the
fish for the year insuing.”
“On March ye 25 1771. ”then their was a meating called and it was
_gurned_ until the 23^{rd} day of apirel.
“MR DEEKEN WILLAM MUCHMORE
“_Moderator_.”
Among the “offorsers” of “Gospored” were, besides “Moderator” and “Town
Clarke,” “Seelekt meen,” “Counstauble,” “Tidon meen” (Tithing-men),
“Coulears of fish,”--“Coulear” meaning, I suppose, culler, or person
appointed to select fish,--and “Sealers of Whood,” oftener expressed
corders of wood.
In 1845 we read that Asa Caswell was chosen highway “sovair.”
Very ancient tradition says that the method of courtship at the Isles
of Shoals was after this fashion: If a youth fell in love with a maid,
he lay in wait till she passed by, and then pelted her with stones,
after the manner of our friends of Marblehead; so that if a fair
Shoaler found herself the centre of a volley of missiles, she might
be sure that an ardent admirer was expressing himself with decision
certainly, if not with tact! If she turned, and exhibited any curiosity
as to the point of the compass whence the bombardment proceeded, her
doubts were dispelled by another shower; but if she went on her way in
maiden meditation, then was her swain in despair, and life, as is usual
in such cases, became a burden to him.
Within my remembrance an occasional cabbage-party made an agreeable
variety in the life of the villagers. I never saw one, but have heard
them described. Instead of regaling the guests with wine and ices, pork
and cabbage were the principal refreshments offered them; and if the
cabbage came out of the garden of a neighbor, the spice of wickedness
lent zest to the entertainment,--stolen fruit being always the sweetest.
It would seem strange that, while they live in so healthy a place,
where the atmosphere is absolutely perfect in its purity, they should
have suffered so much from ill health, and that so many should have
died of consumption,--the very disease for the cure of which physicians
send invalids hither. The reasons are soon told. The first and most
important is this: that, as nearly as they could, they have in past
years hermetically sealed their houses, so that the air of heaven
should not penetrate within. An open window, especially at night, they
would have looked upon as madness,--a temptation of Providence; and
during the winter they have deliberately poisoned themselves with every
breath, like two thirds of the rest of the world. I have seen a little
room containing a whole family, fishing-boots and all, bed, furniture,
cooking-stove in full blast, and an oil lamp with a wick so high that
the deadly smoke rose steadily, filling the air with what Browning
might call “filthiest gloom,” and mingling with the incense of ancient
tobacco-pipes smoked by both sexes (for nearly all the old women used
to smoke); every crack and cranny was stopped; and if, by any chance,
the door opened for an instant, out rushed a fume in comparison with
which the gusts from the lake of Tartarus might be imagined sweet. Shut
in that deadly air, a part of the family slept, sometimes all. What
wonder that their chests were hollow, their faces haggard, and that
apathy settled upon them! Then their food was hardly selected with
reference to health, saleratus and pork forming two of the principal
ingredients in their daily fare. Within a few years past they have
probably improved in these respects. Fifteen years ago I was passing a
window one morning, at which a little child two years old was sitting,
tied into a high chair before a table drawn close to the window, eating
his breakfast alone in his glory. In his stout little fist he grasped
a large iron spoon, and fed himself from a plate of beans swimming in
fat, and with the pork cut up in squares for his better convenience.
By the side of the plate stood a tin mug of bitter-strong black coffee
sweetened with molasses. I spoke to his mother within; “Ar’n’t you
afraid such strong coffee will kill your baby?” “O no,” she answered,
and held it to his lips. “There, drink that,” she said, “that’ll make
you hold your head up!” The poor child died before he grew to be a man,
and all the family have fallen victims to consumption.