Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony ...

PART I. HISTORICAL A 'history of the town from 1633 TO 1700, CONTAINING THE LETTERS

OF MAJOR SAMUEL APPLETON, LISTS OF SlOLDIERS IN THE INDIAN WARS,

RECORDS AND DEPOSITIONS OF THE USURPATION PERIOD, AND

FACSIMILES OF ANCIENT DOCUMENTS, BEARING MANY

AUTOGRAPHS OF THE EARLY SETTLERS

Part II. Houses And Lands An Account Of The Original Grants Of House Lots And The

SUCCESSIVE OWNERS OF LANDS AND HOUSES, TO THE PRESENT

TIME, ILLUSTRATED WITH DIAGRAMS, ANCIENT MAPS,

AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF MANY ANCIENT HOUSES

SEVEN APPENDICES

By Thomas Franklin Waters

President of the Ipswich Historical Society

The Ipswich Historical Society

ipswich, mass.

Bl 5BRARY or nONGRESS I T\»u QopiBs rtaceivot

Sooyrmni cnu->

Copyridht, 1905.

UY

Thomas Franklin WATf;Rs.

Salem press: The Salem Press Co., Salbm. Mass.

Preface

In the preface of his History of England, Macaulay observed : ' ' I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors." My own aim and method in the writing of this book could not be described more fitly.

I have tried to tell, accurately but in readable fashion, the story of the builders of our Town: their homes and home life, their employments, their Sabbath keeping, their love of learning, their administration of Town affairs, their stern delusions, and their heroism, in War and in resistance to Tyranny. The seventeenth century was a brilliant and thrilling period in Ipswich history, and it seemed best to me to consider it somewhat at length, and to close my historical study with the end of that century rather than to attempt a briefer summary of the complete history of the Town. If this work finds favor, I shall begin at once to gather material for another volume, in which the historical and topographical studies will be carried on to completion.

No attempt has been made to construct a genealogical appendix. The magnitude of the undertaking, properly carried out, seemed too great, and the forthcoming i)ublication of the Vital Statistics of the Town, by the Essex Institute, renders it unnecessary. In Part Two, however, a topographical study has been made, from the beginning to the present generation- Nearly two thousand citations from the County Records have been carefully verified, and the likelihood of error has been reduced to the lowest possible degree.

(iii)

IV PREFACE.

I wish to acknowledge my great indebtedness to the late Daniel Fuller Appleton Esq. for the original incentive to this work, and for his constant and substantial encouragement. 1 am indebted as well to Mr. Francis R. Apj^leton, Mr. John B. Brown, Mr. Charles A. Campbell, Mr. Moritz B. Philipp, Mr. Charles H. Tweed, and Capt. Augustus P. Gardner for valuable assistance. Mr. Robert Dudley Winthrop of New York generously contributed a now photograph from the original portrait of John Winthro)) Jr., now in his possession, and the Essex Inslit uto of Salem kindly allowed tlic use of ancient maps. Mr. Jolin W. Nourse has contributed greatly to the interest and value of the topographical studies by his skilful diagrams.

Ipswich, June, 1UU5. T. F. W.

CHAPTER XVII. War of William and Mary and other Indian

Troubles, 301

PART II.

Houses and Lands, 317

APPENDIX A.

Names of the First Settlers, 490

APPENDIX B.

Some Early Inventories, 495

APPENDIX C.

Letters of Rev. Nathaniel Ward, 504

APPENDIX D.

Dr. Giles Firmin's Letters, 508

APPENDIX E.

Letters OF Samuel Symonds, 511

APPENDIX F.

A Valedictory and Monitory Writing by Sarah

Goodhue, 519

APPENDIX G.

The Narrative of Rev. John Wise, 525

Index, 539

LIST OP ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGK

'Portrait of John Winthrop Jr., . . . fronti.'^jiiece, Map op New England from Hubbard's History op

THE Indian Wars in New England 7

^ The original deed of Mttsconominet, 9

J Facsimile of petition of remonstrance against the

departure of John Winthrop Jr., 50-

vi Monument with tablets near the Meeting House of

I the South Church, •'>4

r Home of Ma.ior Samitel Appleton, 224-

'J. Home of Rev. John Wise, Essex, built in 1703, . . 271

"i Grave of Rev. John Wise, Essex, 271

^ Diagram No. 1, 319

n/ Whipple House, the home of the Ipswich Historical

; Society, rear view, 325

Whipple House, end view, 327

{ Diagram No. 2, 338

I Col. John Appleton house, 344

"' The Caleb Lord house 355.

The John Caldwell house, 355

■i Facsimile of petition of citizens against Corporal

John Andrews, 360

^ Rev. Nathaniel Rogers house, 385

Diagram No. 3, 386

- Capt. Matthew Perkins house, 389

H The Hovey house, 389

V The Stone Bridge, 1764, 443

■ Diagram No. 4, 445

Col. Samuel Appleton house, 446

The Ross Tavern, 446

Andrew Burley hoxtse, 458

: Dr. Joseph Manning hottsb, 458

/ Dr. Philemon Dean house, used as a Lace Factory,

1824-1827, 460

/ Dea. Thomas Norton hou.se, 468

/ "Dutch's house," 473,

' Col. Nathaniel Wade house, 473

n/ Diagram No. 5, 477

^ The Howard house, 481

\j Plan of Ipswich Village, 489

PART I

HISTORICAL

I

Chapter I. Primeval Agawam

The long, simple, uneventful ages of the wilderness period that ended when the white man came, nuist ever remain too dim, shadowy and ghost-like to be subjected to the historian's rigid method. But a fine sense of justice to the unnumbered generations of Indian men and women, that preceded our own ancestors in ownership, as truly men and women as ourselves, however rude or cruel, compels us not to ignore their unrecorded history, but to construct it as best we can.

In many localities they have left enduring memorials of their presence and the manner of their life. On the sandy tract sheltered by forest, bordering the way to Pine Swamp, where arrow heads innumerable have been found, and the ground is still strewed with chips struck off by their cunning hands, we can believe they made their winter home, and spent many an hour in fashioning their implements for the chase and for agriculture, their arrows and spears, axes and hoes. That level field by the Lower Falls, now included in the County House grounds, must have been occupied for generations and centuries as a compact village of bark-covered wigwams. Here and there upon Eagle Hill and Jeffrey's Neck, and all the fields skirting the river on either bank and near the beaches, the abundant shell heaps, rich in debris of early ages, attest their presence. How vivid the ancient village life becomes as we burrow into these simple cairns !

Here are the very stones, blackened and chipped, and the charcoal of the camp fire. Near by, the black, grimy wigwam stood. Hither the warriors brought the bear, deer or beaver, their skill in arms had given them. Soon with their stone knives they have skinned and dismembered it roughly, and a feast is prepared, to which we arc not drawn, for their cookery was of the simplrst, fingers and teeth were not nsecl daintily, and cleanliness was not a virtue. Anon,we see them at their toil. The skins are smoothed and cured and reserved for robes, or divested of hair, softened and shred into strips for bow-strings and strong cords for fishing or domestic use; or cut and shaped and sewed skilfully to make them garments, squaw work, we presume, carried on most industriously, with sleek little pappooses slung up in the bushes near by, and naked children playing their rude games. Here are the very smooth stones, and bone awls and needles which they lost or left behind long years ago. Here, too, are the fragments of the clay dishes and bowls used in their housekeeping, skilfully fashioned and ornamented . Their stone pestles, gouges, axes ami hoes, tell of rude agriculture in the fields adjoining, toilsome carpentry anil deadly fights with other tribes.

Now and then, one of these cairns tells a more thrilling tale. On the seaward side of Treadwell's Island a large and deep deposit of shells, patiently examined, has yielded abundant returns. No less than foiu* feet of shells of the clam, oyster and mussel indicate a prolonged occupation of this site as a village. Mingled with these are bones, large enough to belong to the largest game, teeth of the beaver and the bear, vertebrae of large fish, the coals of the fires, and circles of stones. But the gruesome remains are the human bones, not laid in order as for burial, but broken and scattered and mixed with shells, and the bones of the head crushed and juml)lcd together in a little heap as though they had been cooked in some primitive kettle and thrown out in a mass — traces of a horrid feast on human flesh, we think though no other suggestion of such appetite has before been discovered. It is the body of some dreaded foe, perhaps, slain at last and now ignominiously consumed ; or can it be, that some living man was tortured here, while the wilderness round rang with the shouts of the torturers, though he scorned to give one dying groan before his bones were torn asunder? Some rods back from the highway at the Village, on the farm of John W. Nourse, a few years ago, the ploughshare disclosed a cache of finely fashioned stone spearheads, some forty or more, the buried treasure, perchance, of an Indian brave, or some armorer of the centuries past.

PRIMEVAL AGAWAM. 3

Save for these remains, scant in variety, though wondrously abundant in quantity, this ancient people has passed away hke a dream. Not even their bones are left. Now and then, indeed, a solitary skeleton has been discovered; but where are the remains of the hundreds and thousands who dwelt here, who died in childhood and youth as well as mature age? Record remains, of a consuming pestilence that raged among them in 1616-17 and swept away full nine-tenths of their numbers. That pestilence, which reduced the red men of Eastern Massachusetts to a handful, broke their pride and made them the victims of the strong Tarratines of the Maine coast, seems a providential factor in the planting of the English settlement. Save for this the little group at Plymouth and the feeble companies of the later Colony might have been annihilated by the forest peoples. These strong children of Nature died tliat the more delicate pale face might live; but deep pathos attaches to the thought of the destruction of a whole nation by loathsome disease, which filled the land with gloom and strewed the earth with unburied corpses.

But a knell of doom, surer than the pestilence, was sounded when the first white man amazed them by his appearance, and when William Jeffrey bargained with them for a trifle for what we still call Jeffrey's Neck, and John Winthrop purchased the fair, broad fields of their cherished Agawam for £20. They were doomed to disappear; but before they vanished there came observing men who were interested enough in these rude people to describe them as they saw and knew them, when their primitive modes of life were just feeling the influence of higher civilization.

The excellent Francis Higginson, pastor at Salem, described their personal appearance as early as 1629. "They area tall and strong-limned people, their colours are tawney, they goe naked, save only they are in part covered with beasts' skins on one of their shoulders and wear something before them." "Their haire is generally black and cut before like our gentlewomen, and one lock longer than the rest much like to our gentlemen, which fashion I think came from hence into England."

Thomas Lechford writingin 1641, completes the story of their hair dressing, by informing us that they wore the long lock on the side of their heads and "weave feathers of peacock and such like, and red cloth or ribbands at their locks, beads of wanipumpeage about their necks, and a girdle of the same two fingers Ijroad about the loins." "Some of the chief men wear pendents of wampum in their ears, and the women, some of the chief, have fair bracelets and chains of wampum."

"John Jossclyn, Gentleman," as he subscribes himself, v(>ntured from England in two voyages to these shores in 1638 and in 1663. He wrote a narrative which is not always judicious and trustworthy, as may be seen from his descriptions of the moose as an animal with huge horns, "the tips whereof are sometimes found to be two fathom asunder, " "and in height from the toe of the foi efoot to the pitch of the shoulder, twelve; foot, both which," he naively observes, "have been taken by some of my scepti(iue Readers to be monstrous Lyes. " He says he has seen radishes, too, as big as a man's arm, and hens, with spurs like a cock, that crew often.

Subtracting our grain of allowance from our Munchausen's tale, we still find much that is credible and vivid in Josselyn's record. The Indians but rarely wore beards, he informs us. "Their teeth are very white, short and even. They account them the most necessary and best parts of a man. " Their noses were inclined to flatness, yet their appearance was prepossessing. They were "of a disposition, " he adds, "very inconstant, crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, and very ingenious, soon angry and so malicious that they seldom forget an injury, and barbarously cruel, witness their direful revenges upon one another; all of them cannibals, eaters of human flesh." This extreme statement, which he substantiates by the tale of cruel maiming, joint by joint, and burning with hot embers, of two Mohawk Indians while he was in this country, until the agony was finished by tearing out the heart, which was bitten into by every old Squaw, finds confirmation in the Treadwell's island cairn.

Their wigwams built of poles, he describes, as generally round, but sometimes square. Leaving a hole at the top for the smoke, "the rest they cover with the bark of trees, and line the inside of their wigwams with mats made of rushes, painted with

PRIMEVAL AGAWAM. 5

several colors. Round by the walls they spread their mats and skins where the men sleep, whilst their women dress their victuals . They have commonly two doors, one opening to the South, the other to the North, and according as the wind sets they close one door with bark and hang a deer's skin of the like before the other."

Daniel Gookin's painstaking "Historical Collections of the Indians of New England " of the date 1674 give us light as to the cooking utensils. "The pots, they seeth their food in, which were heretofore and yet are in use among some of them, are made of clay [or earth, almost in the form of an egg, the top taken off; but now they generally get kettles of lirass, copper, iron, as the clay or earth they were made of, was very scarce and dear. Their dishes and spoons and ladles are made of wood, very smooth and artificial. Their pails to fetch water in are made of birch-bark. Some of their baskets are made of rushes, some of bents, others of maize husks, others of a kind of silk grass, others of a kind of wild hemp, and some of barks of trees, many of them very neat and artificial with the portraitures of birds, beasts, fishes, and flowers upon them in colours. Also they make mats of several sorts for covering their houses and doors, and to sleep and sit on. The baskets and mats are always made by their women, their dishes, pots, and spoons are the manufacture of the men." A scouting party of the Pilgrims discovered within a sand heap "a fine great new basket full of very fair corn of this year, with some six and thirty goodly ears of corn, some yellow, and some red, and others with mixed lilue. The basket was round and narrow at the top. It held about three or four bushels, and was very handsomely and cunningly made."

Birch-bark furnished material for their canoes, as well, which were so light that a man could easily carry one a mile, and yet large enough sometimes to transport ten or twelve savages at once. William Wood records that they also made canoes of pine trees, which "they burned hollow, scraping them smooth with clam shells and oyster shells, cutting their outsides with stone hatchets ; these boats be not above a foot and a half or two foot wide, and twenty foot long."

The century was well gone, in 1G85, when the bookpeddler

John Dunton came to Ipswich, with his stock of books and improved the opportunity to go to Wonasquam, an Indian village, "after a long and difficult ramble. " On the way he found some Indians, with faces blackened with soot, who rather alarmed him, though their greeting, Aseowequassummis, which was being interpreted, "Good morrow to you," relieved his fears. They were in mourning for a dead chief and they buried him that night. Dunton remained and made a note of the funeral ceremony.

"First the gravest among them wound up and prepared the deafl body for the coffin; when the mourners came to the grave they laid the body by the grave's mouth, and then all the Indians sat down and lamented, and I observed tears to run down the cheeks of the oldest among them, as well as from little children.

"After the dead body was laid in the grave (and in some parts some of their goods are cast in with them), they then made a second great lamentation. Upon the grave they spread the mat that the deceased died on, the dish he eat in, and two of the Iiidians hung a fair coat of skin upon the next tree to the grave, which none will touch, but suffer it there to rot with the dead."

Map of New England from Hubbard's History of the Indian Wars in New England.

Chapter II. The Coming Of The English

Just when and whore the first white man stepped upon the shores of Agawani we may not hope to discover. As earlj- as 1G08, as Captain John Smith mentions in his History of Virginia, Captain HaHow, Master of the ship Ordnance, touched here, wliile on a voyage in the interest of an English company, which inchided John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England, to the grant it had obtained about the Kennebec. But one item of that visit has been preserved, — "the people at Agawam used them kindly." Smith, himself, landed here in 1614, and sa)^s of Augoan, as he calls it, "this place might content a right curious judgement; but there are many sands at the entrance of the Harbour, and the worst is, it is iml^ayed too farre from the deepe sea. Here are many rising hills, and on their tops and descents are many corne fields, and delightfuU groves. On the East is an Isle of two or three leagues in length ; the one half plaine marish ground, fit for pasture, or salt ponds, with many faire high groves of mulberry trees and gardens. There is also C)kes, Pines, Walnuts and other wood to make this place an excellent habitation, being a good and safe harbor."

Thomas Morton in his "New English Canaan," and William Wood in "New England's Prospect" record the habit of the Indians of biu'ning over the country in November. B}^ this means, the dense undergrowth was destroyed, large tracts were made passable for the hunter, and easily capable of tillage, and the heavy woods grew like groves in a great park. The Pilgrim explorers found "a high groimd, where there is a great deal of land clearetl and hath been planted with corn," and good Pastor Higginson, of Salem, wrote to his friends in the old country, that he had been told, that a man might stand on a little hilly place about three miles from Salem and "see divers thousands of acres of ground as good as need to be, and not a tree in the

8 IPSWiriT, IN THE MASSAOIITTSETTS BAY COLONY.

sanio." When t he lands wore apportioned among the settlers, the broad suniniits of Heartbreak, Hagamore and Town Hills were assigned as i)lanting lots, and the mystery attending the choice of the hill tops for tillage instead of the rich and level lowlands may be solved by these records. The Indians had cleared these slopes with' patient industry anrl planted them with corn, and the new owners of the land enjoyed the fruits of their toil.

News of the pleasantness of the Indian village, its gof»d land and rich fisheries spread abroad. The Pilgrims, shivering in their rude huts at Plymouth, debated whether they should not migrate at r)nce to this Land of Promise. Mourt, in his Relation under date of December, 1620, says that some of them, "urged greatly the going to Anguum or Angoum, a place twenty league? off to the Northward, which they .heard to ])e an excellent harbor for ships, better ground and better fishing." But they chose to remove to some less distant spot should removal become necessary.

From time to time, settlers came and built their cal)ins, to fish for sturgeon, cod and salmon, a?id gather beaver skins and other ix>ltry from the natives by barter, ijxlividual adventurers or empkn^ees of some English trading company, and they were not molested by the Indian warriors. The first Englishman, whose name has been preserved, was William Jeffreys. Jeffreys was never a resident, so far as is known. In 1623, he came over in Robert Gorges' company and settled at Wessagussett, now Weymouth, and in 1630 was reckoned one of the principal men of that little hamlet. Prior to 1633, however, he must have been in this neighborhood, for Great Neck was called Jeffrey's Neck from the Ijeginning. As late as 1666 he claimed ownership, and the General Court voted him 500 acre elsewhere, "to ])e a final issue of all claims by virtue of any grant, heretofore made by any Indians, whatsoever."

The formal occupation and settlement of Agawam were now at hand. By a grant of King James, on Nov. 3, 1620, the whole country from the 4()th to the 4Sth degree of latitude, reaching from Philadelphia to the Bay of Chaleur had been granted to the "council at Plymouth" so called, headed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges. This company made no serious attempt

The original deed of Musconominet, preserved among the papers

of the Winthrop family and given to the Essex Institute

by Robert C. Winthrop Jr.

I Musconominet, Sagamore of Agawam, doe by theise p'sents acknowledge to ha\e Received of M"" John Winthrop the some of Twenty poundes, in ful satisfacon of all the Right, property and Cleame, I have or ought to have, imto all the land lying and being in the Bay of Agawam, alls Ipswich, being soe called now by the English, as well alsuch land as I formerly reserved unto my owne use at Chibocco, as alsoe all other lands belonging unto me in those parts, M' Dummers farme excepted onh^ And I herby relinquish all the Right and Interest I have mito all tlie Havens, Rivers, Creekes, Islands, huntings and fishings, with all the woodes, swampes, timber and wliatsoever ells is or may be in or upon the said ground to me belongeing, and I doe hereby acknoledge to liave received full satisfacon from tlie said J" Wintropp for all former agreements touching the p''mises or any part of tliem, and I doe hereby bind my selfe to make good the foresaid bargaine and saile mi to the said John Wintrop his heires and assignes forever, and to secure him against the tytle and claime of all other Indians and Natives whatsoever. Witnesse my hand this 28 June 1638.

MUSKONOMINET

his marke.

Witnesses hereunto.

Thomas Coytmore.

James Downinge.

RortERT Hardixge.

Jno Jollife.

This deed above written, so signed & witnessed, being compared w*'' the original (4 : B. p 381 : 2) word for word, stands thus entred & Recorded at the request of Captaine Wayte Winthrop this IS"* of february 1682, as Attests

Edward Rawson, Secret.

THE COMING OP THE ENGLISH. 9

at settlement, and on the 19th of March, 1627-28, issued a patent to Sir Henry Rose well and others, covering the territory bounded by a line three miles south of the Charles River, and reaching northward to a line three miles north of the Merrimac. Charles the First confirmed this patent by royal grant to the re]-)resentatives of the Massachusetts Bay Company on the 4th of March, 1629, and on the 20th of June, the ship George, bearing John Endicott and the first company of colonists reached Salem. Ship followed ship, and hundreds of sturdy Puritans were soon found in the various settlements.

The attention of the Court of Assistants was soon directed toward the squatter settlers at Agawam. On Sept. 7, 16.30, it was "ordered, that noe p'son shall plant in any place within the lymitts of this pattent without leave from Gounr and Assistants or the maior parte of them;" and, more specifically, "Also that a warrant shall p'sently be sent to Aggawam to coiiiand those that are planted there forthwith to come away."

But it was not until March, 1633, that the Court made any effort toward peopling this attractive region with settlers after its own heart. "On the 17th of January, 1632-3," as Rev. William Hubbard, our famous Ipswich historian relates in his History of New Pjigland, "they had intelligence that the French had bought the Scottish plantation near Cape Sables, and that the fort there, with all the annnunition was delivered to them and that the cardinal of France (supposed to be Richelieu) having the managing of that affair, had sent some companies already, and that preparation was made to send more the next year, with divers priests and Jesuits among them. This news alarmed the Governor and Council to stand upon their guard and look to themselves, and upon further debate and consultation with the chief of the country, it was agreed with all expedition to finish the fort began at Boston, antl raise another at Nantasket, and to hasten the planting of Agawam (since Ipswich) one of the most commodious places in the country for cattle and tillage, lest an enemy should prevent them by taking possession of the place." Hubbard adds, "the settlement was well advised, but they were more afraid than hiu't, for the French aimed at nothing but trade."

No less a person than John Winthrop, son of the Governor.

10 IPSWICH, IN THE MASSACHUSETTS RAY COLONY.

was selected as the leader of tiiis expedition. He was but twenty-seven years of age, yet a man of large ))ractical sagacity, and nndou])ted gifts of leadership. Twelve men were assigned him, with the promise of more when the ships arrived, but of these twelve, the names of only nine have been preserved. These were Mr. Clerk. Robert Coles, Thomas Howlett, John Biggs, John CJagc, Thomas Hardy, William Perkins, Mr. Thorndike and Will .Sergeant. i

The urgency of the settlement is indicated by the departure of the colonists in March, as early as possible after the severity of the winter was spent. There were no roads, and the journey was made undoubtedly in a shallop, skirting the coast. Tn imagination we can see the hills that stand like sentinels on either side of the River, densely wooded and white perhaps with snow, the marshes laden with the stranded ice floes, and that little craft, with the tide at flood, slowly sailing up the river, eager eyes scanning every rod of the banks to guard against Indian assaults. It rounded Nabby's Point, and dropped anchor in the still cove, where there was firm landing place' near\at hand.

We hope their wives and children did not accompany them, for those bleak March days must have been days of hardship, if not of suffering. If the squatter settlers, who had been driven away, had grace to leave their cabins undestroyed, temporary shelter might have l)cen found in them, or they may have lived al)oard ship awhile, if they really came that way. Yet for all we know, the planters at Agawam may have had the same experiences that Edward Johnson describes in his "Wonder Working Providence," as frequently falling to the lot of those opening up the wilderness. "After the}'- have found out a place of aboad," he writes, "they burrow themselves in the Earth for their first shelter, under some Hill-side, casting the earth aloft upon timber; they make a smoaky fire against the earth at the highest side, and thus these poor servants of Christ provide shelter for themselves, their wives and little ones, keeping off the short showers from their lodgings, but the long rains penetrate through, to their grate disturbance in the night season; yet in these poor wigwams, th(\v sing Psalms, pray ami

I Wlntlirop'8 History of New England, ed. 1863, 1 : 120.

I praise their God, till they can provide them homes, which ordinarily was not wont to be with many till the Earth, by the Lord's blessins;, broiii>,ht forth bread to feed them, their wives and little ones."

The long snnmier afforded ample opportunity to build comfortable homes, and make preparation for the winter, in striking contrast with the unfortunate experience of the Pilgrims, landing at Plymouth when winter was already begun. Nature lent kindly aid. The meadows abounded in grass, "both verie thicke, verie long, and verie high in divers places, with a great stalk and a broad and ranker blade" as Pastor Higginson of Salem records, and a letter of Master Graves mentions that it was "up to a man's face." The broad marshes afforded a plentiful supply of salt hay and thatch for their ropfs.

Mr. Higginson found the vegetables grown in the virgin soil very comforting. "Our turnips, parsnips and carrots are here both l^igger and sweeter than is ordinary to be found in England. Here are stores of pumpions, cucumbers, and other things of that nature I know not. Plentie of strawberries in their time, and penny-royall, winter saverie, sorrell, brook-lime, liverwort, carvell and water-cresses, also leeks and onions are ordinarie." Great lobsters abounded, weighing, it was affirmed from sixteen to twenty-five pounds. As for drink, Mr. Higginson declared, "a sup of New England aire is better than a whole draught of English ale."