old friend sailed again the voyages of their youth, disputing and agreeing again after the fashion of old-time cronies. The most notable instance of a fortune made upon the seas is that of the Pepperell family. The first William Pepperell came from Tavistock, England, to the Isle of Shoals, where he and his partner, Mr. Gibbons, sent out their fishing smacks on the shores, and later set up an establishment on one of the islands for the curing and sale of their fish. On a visit to Kittery Point, Pepperell made the acquaintance of John Bray, from Plymouth, whose seventeenyear-old daughter, Margery, he fell in love with and married, a successful venture on the part of the suitor having given Mr. Bray sufficient confidence in him to be willing to accept him as a son-in-law. Mr. Bray gave his daughter a tract of land upon the Point, where William Pepperell built a house, which was considerably added to by his son, Sir William Pepperell. From this small beginning, in a little more than half a century, the largest fortune in New England was accumulated. The Pepper ells built vessels and sent many to the West Indies laden with lumber, fish, oil, and live-stock, to be exchanged for dry goods, wine, and salt, or to sell both vessel and cargo. Their largest business was in fisheries, however, and they are known to have had as many as a hundred small vessels on the Grand Banks at one time. While the Southern Colony of Virginia had her great planters who, like "King Carter," were renowned for the sumptuousness and state in which they lived, New York could boast her famous Dutch traders who lived in substantial comfort in their "Bouweries" upon the outskirts of New Amsterdam, and Massachusetts could claim such successful merchants as Elias Hasket Derby, the eccentric Timothy Dexter, and "King Hooper," whose stately home, later known as the Collins and the Peabody House, from subsequent possessors, is still standing. Robert Hooper, Esq., of Marblehead, who built his house at Danvers, once Salem village, was something of a Tory, and when General Gage found Boston too hot for him, he removed to Danvers and took up his abode in the Hooper House, where he resided for several months, protected by two companies of troops which were encamped in its vicinity. Madam Knight, in her famous journey on horseback through the country that stretches between Boston and New York, doubtless gives a faithful picture of the rough and uncomfortable living of that early time; this, however, was country living, and even then presented a great contrast to the life in villages and towns. She records of the Indians whom she meets, that they are "the most salvage of all the salvages of that kind that I had ever seen," yet they do not appear to have molested her, and if her entertainment was so hard at one "Ordinary" that she walked out, having paid, as she remarked, her sixpence for "the smell of her Dinner," and at another time objected to "the Pumpkin and Indian mixt Bred, and the Bare Legged Punch," and at Norwalk to her bed of corn husks, which," when scratched up by Little Miss, Russelled as if she'd been in the འ ༽ Barn amongst the Husks," there were other places, as Saxton's at Stonington, the widow Prentice's at New London, New Haven, and Fairfield, where she was "well accommodated as to victuals and Lodging," and hospitable entertainment was offered her in the homes of the Rev. Gurden Saltonstall, of New London, and Governor John Winthrop, of New Haven. One of the most amusing passages of Madam Knight's diary, and one that best illustrates the crudity of the life of the time and place, as well as her own native wit, is the account of her experience at "Haven's Tavern in the Narragansett Country," where, having retired to her room, which was parted from the kitchen by a single board partition, and "to a bed which tho pretty hard, was yet neet and handsome," she finds herself unable to sleep because of a dispute of some topers in the next room over the signification of the name of their country, Narragansett: "One said it was named so by ye Indians, because there grew Brier there, of a prodigious Highth and bigness, the like hardly ever known, called by the Indians Narragansett; And quotes an Indian of so Barberous a name for his Author, that I could not write it. His Antagonist Replyed no-It was from a Spring it had its name, wch hee well knew where it was, which was extreem cold in summer, and as Hott as could be imagined in the winter, which was much resorted too by the natives, and by them called Narragansett, (Hott and Cold,) and that was the originall of their places name—with a thousand Impertinances not worth notice, wch He utter'd with such a Roreing voice and Thundering blows with the fist of wickedness on the Table, that it peirced my very head. I heartily fretted, and wish't 'um tongue tyed; but with as little succes as a freind of mine once, who was (as shee said) kept a whole night awake. on a Jorny, by a country Left, and a Sergent, Insigne and a Deacon, contriving how to bring a triangle into a Square. They kept calling for tother Gill, wch while they were swallowing, was some Intermission." This draught having had the effect of augmenting the turmoil, or, as she says, "like Oyle to fire," increasing the flame, the philosophical traveller set her candle upon a chest and in the following lines endeavored to turn the roisterers' own weapons against them: "I ask thy Aid, O Potent Rum! To charm these wrangling Topers Dum. |