by Jonathan Tucker

Charlestown

Under Augustine Walker’s experienced captaincy, the Unity of Boston made its early winter crossing of the North Atlantic from London to Boston in 5 weeks and 5 days—a relatively fast crossing for the time.  The trip ordinarily took 6-8 weeks.  On December 21, 1650, the Unity docked at Charlestown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, just upriver from Boston.  The Scots prisoners chained in its hold must have been aware of the changes as the ship slowed approaching the harbor and then slipped into its berth.

The Scots had endured weeks of abuse and neglect prior to boarding the Unity.  Some may have died of disease while waiting at anchor on the Thames.  The Unity was a ketch—not an overly large merchant vessel, and quarters belowdecks were very tight.  Built by Thomas Gillam at his shipyard near Copp’s Hill, the Unity of Boston has a near identical twin—a reproduction of a ketch called the Nonsuch, located in a museum in Winnipeg, Canada.  Built in Benjamin Gillam’s Boston shipyard in 1649, the Nonsuch was used to explore the possibility of a Northwest Passage.

Seek out and take the virtual tour of the Nonsuch online.  You will be struck by how small and cramped the quarters belowdecks must have been.  The Unity of Boston doubtless carried other cargo as well, and the 150 or so Scots prisoners were stuffed in as best they could be fit below decks.  It is entirely possible—even likely—that more died during the winter crossing of the North Atlantic.  There no ship’s list or other records for the Unity survive, but average mortality rates for passengers on 17^th century transatlantic trips could be as high as ten percent (10%). 

At the same time, these men were the ones that had been selected as “such as are well and sound, and free from wounds”—i.e., the most fit prisoners still alive in Durham Cathedral.  It is likely they averaged slightly older than those who succumbed to disease in the cathedral—dating of the skeletons found in two mass graves there in 2013 have shown that most of the dead were in their mid-teens.  The Dunbar Scots in the hold arriving at Charlestown were survivors. Augustine Walker was probably relieved and glad to be home.  The dock at Charlestown was his home berth.  Carrying prisoners of war—potentially dangerous soldiers—was very different from carrying cargo.

On that pale late December day upriver from Boston in Charlestown, the surviving Scots prisoners were brought ‘stinking and blinking’ up out of the hold into the cold and the grey winter light.  From the docks, they were led onshore, cleaned, fed, probably given new clothes, had their more obvious illnesses and injuries tended, and were temporarily housed. Those who were ill may have been allowed to recover their health as the process of dispersing their indentures was organized.  The Reverend John Cotton of Boston, in a letter to Cromwell describing how the men were being treated after they arrived in the Bay Colony, mentioned that some of the men had scurvy.

In the process of travelling from Durham cathedral to London to New England, these men had been partially transformed from troublesome imprisoned warriors into potential laborers, and this made them more valuable.  Treating them reasonably well—at least well enough to keep them alive—was part of caring for the investment they represented.

In December 1650, there had already been heavy snows in New England, and it was cold.  In some cases, it took just days to sort out the sale and disposition of all of the Scots’ indentures and to begin to transport groups of the former prisoners to their new destinations by smaller boats or overland.  In other cases it may have taken some weeks.

Boston area trader Thomas Kemble was principally responsible for disposition of the Dunbar Scots.  He owned several ships and was, with other Boston area merchants and businessmen, intimately involved in colonial ventures up and down the New England coast.  By prior arrangement, he disposed quickly of the Dunbar prisoners who were bound for the Lynn iron works.  They were on a boat bound up the coast to Lynn by December 24, 1650 (Christmas Eve Day—Puritans deliberately did not celebrate the Christian high holiday in “popish” ways).  Disposing of other prisoners took more time.

Some may have been auctioned off at the market in front of or inside the Three Cranes Tavern in what is now City Square in Charlestown (only the foundation is visible there now).  The building had been owned by the Winthrop family, and so had served for a time as the seat of government for the Bay Colony.  At the time the Dunbar prisoners were being sold off, the building was owned by the Long family, and was being operated as a tavern, but was still part of a larger market area.

Dispersal

Hammersmith

Sixty-two (62) of the men were divided up among different destinations associated with the Lynn (Saugus) ironworks, also called ‘Hammersmith’ after an English iron works at which many of its English craftsmen had worked.  The site is now a National Historic Site operated as a living museum by the U.S. National Park Service.  See:

https://www.nps.gov/sair/index.htm.

Thirty-two (32) of these men were reserved as laborers for the iron works itself.  Seventeen (17) were assigned to work at warehouses, mostly in Boston.  The remaining nine (9) of these men were parceled out to overseers of the project, sent to the iron works at Braintree, had their indentures sold to specialized English craftsmen who worked for the iron works (what we would now call subcontractors), or had their indentures sold to local merchants or farmers.

As noted, on December 24, 1650—three days after they had arrived in Charlestown—the Dunbar Scots bound for Hammersmith and its surrounding communities were sent north from Boston to Lynn by boat.  A coastal trader named William Robinson was paid for transporting them.   On that short trip by water (about 10-12 miles along the coast), one of Scots prisoners—a man named Davidson, said to have been a schoolteacher back in Scotland—died aboard the transport ship.  There is a record of the bill for his winding sheet.

The transport vessel turned west into the mouth of the shallow Saugus River and was rowed upstream until it reached the site of the iron works.  The first outside shipment of food for the Scots working at Hammersmith did not arrive until April 1651, so the iron works may have prepared for their arrival with food, shelter, and other basic necessities stored and ready.  It can be assumed that some of our Scottish prisoners of war spent their first Yule and Hogmanay (the Scottish New Year) in the New World there in Lynn, and others in Charlestown.

At Charlestown, other Dunbar prisoners not destined for the Lynn iron works were being divided up among colonial proprietors, merchants, farmers and others.  We know that the indentures of some prisoners were sold to merchants and farmers who lived near Hammersmith and were involved in activities that supported and profited from the large iron works operation—these men may have been transported on that December 24^th ship.  Other prisoners were sold to any interested party.  Some may have been sold or resold to merchants or farmers from more southern colonies in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, or Virginia, and transported away.  We do not yet know how all of the men were disposed of, or even who all of them were.

Sometime during the three days after their arrival on December 21^st and the departure of the boat to Lynn on December 24^th, Micum and his brothers Robert and Philip parted.  We do not know if they ever saw one another again.  In the first few months after the men arrived at Hammersmith iron works in Lynn, there were several entries for the iron works managers paying for “physsicke”—medical services—for the Scots slowly recovering from their prolonged ordeal—battle, a death march, incarceration and disease in the cathedral at Durham, a winter crossing in cramped, unsanitary quarters, and a cold reception in wintry New England.  One healer who provided that service to the men was a woman named Goody Burte, who lived nearby.

Robert McIntire – We assume that middle brother Robert McIntire was one of the men on that boat headed for Hammersmith on December 24, and that Philip might have been on board, too, because his destination was near the iron works.  Robert’s indenture had been purchased by Thomas Wiggins—a “furnace filler” (provider of charcoal) and an iron works specialist—who lived near and worked at the iron works.  Robert’s labor was apparently traded back and forth (possibly rented) between Wiggins and John Gifford, the iron works manager.  We know that Robert carted coals (charcoal) there and loaded pig iron onto the company boat.  We know that he was still living as of November 24, 1653, when, at age 24, he was deposed for a lawsuit involving the iron works.  We lose track of Robert after that.  He may have died there at Hammersmith.  In Chapter 19 we will spend some time considering Robert’s records in more detail, because his fate remains an intriguing mystery.

Philip McIntire – We suspect, but cannot yet prove, that the youngest brother Philip McIntire was also one of the ‘outside indenture’ men.  There is no indication in the records that he ever labored at the iron works itself.  He probably worked for a merchant or farmer who operated in a nearby community and did business with the iron works.  This collection of stories will not review the life of Philip McIntire in any detail, as that is better encompassed by Robert Harry McIntire’s 1941 genealogy of Philip (see Bibliography) and other sources.  See also the online review of associated Philip McIntire sites entitled “McIntire Country,” prepared by Philip’s descendant Stuart MacIntire of Andover, MA:

https://www.electricscotland.com/webclans/m/mcintire_country.htm.

After his indenture was completed, Philip McIntire settled in Reading, MA, just north of Salem and close to Lynn.  Like Micum, younger brother Philip has many descendants.  We have a lot of family.

Great Works

Another project undertaken by New England Puritan entrepreneurs using the labor of indentured Dunbar prisoners was the Great Works mill complex, located up at the northern edge of the English colonial frontier in Newichawannock (South Berwick, Maine).   The Great Works project constructed a complex of water-powered grist mills and sawmills to generate lumber for colonial construction and English consumption.  The project was led by Richard Leader, an engineer who had been involved in the Lynn iron works early on, but had left over disagreements about management of the iron works.

Departing from Charlestown, Leader’s transport boat took between 15-25 of the Dunbar Scots from the Charles River and the port of Boston north about 75 nautical miles along the Atlantic shore to the mouth of the Piscataqua River (where Portsmouth, NH is now located).  The boat entered the river—probably on an incoming tide—and went west upriver across the inner Great Bay toward the confluence of the Piscataqua River and its northern tributary the Newichawannock River.  The Newichawannock was named by and for the resident Native Americans (part of the Algonkian-speaking Pennacook confederation), and is now called the Salmon Falls River.  The Leader transport ship traveled north up the Newichawannock River to a fortified trading post (also first called Newichawannock).

Under Leader’s direction, the Scots built and operated the Great Works mills on the Asbenbedick River (a smaller eastern tributary) and the Quamphegan (Salmon Falls) mills at the cascade falls on the main river.  Mills were also built along the Salmon River by others, and the indentured Scots moved back and forth between them, especially after their indentures ended.  The settlement around the mills was later called Unity Parish (the area around the mills where the Scots lived), then interchangeably Salmon Falls and Kittery North Parish, and now South Berwick, Maine.

In 1652 and again in 1654, Richard Leader and Boston soap manufacturer David Selleck jointly hired out the ship Goodfellow, to stop at ports on the eastern shore of Ireland, where it picked up kidnapped Irish women and children who had been made refugees by Cromwell’s wars in Ireland.  They then trafficked the women and children at the ports at Boston and Portsmouth, dispersing the women for indenture as domestic servants, much as the Scottish prisoners had been.

Oyster River

Malcolm/Micum – In Charlestown, the indentures of Micum McIntire and six other Dunbar Scots were purchased by frontier entrepreneur Valentine Hill.

Valentine Hill was a high level merchant (“mercer”) and developer overseeing settlement and development of the plantation township of Dover, which included the villages of Oyster River and Cocheco in what is now southern New Hampshire.  Among Hill’s projects was a complex of two mills—a grist mill and a sawmill—set on either side of a dam just upstream of the end of the tidal reach of the Oyster River (Durham, NH).  Hill also owned land in the Cocheco settlement (Dover, NH) about 5 miles north of Oyster River, where he logged and operated mills on the Cocheco River.  More about Hill in Chapter 8.

We have not found a record of exactly when Micum and the other six Dunbar Scots departed Charlestown or arrived in Oyster River.  Some earlier historians asserted that Micum first spent time at the Hammersmith iron works, but no documentary evidence supports that contention.  Micum and the other Dunbar Scots whose labor Valentine Hill had purchased may even have travelled north on the same boat with Richard Leader’s Scots.  If so, once on the Piscataqua River, the boat would have turned to the west across the inner Great Bay to the tributary Oyster River and then upstream, dropping off Hill’s men at the end of that river’s tidal reach before returning downstream to the Great Bay and turning north up the Newichawannock River toward South Berwick.
When Micum set foot on shore at the Oyster River settlement, he arrived at his first ‘home’ in the New World and his new life began.  The Dunbar Scots with him included Henry Brown, Thomas Doughty, Robert Junkins, James Orr, and others.  Over time, Valentine Hill purchased the indentures of other Dunbar Scots, including but not limited to Niven Agnew, Peter Grant, and William Furbish.   About a year later, a second group of Scottish prisoners captured at the Battle of Worcester arrived in New England and their indentures were similarly parceled out.  Some of their indentures were purchased by Valentine Hill, as well.  Those men, including John Carmichael, joined Micum and the Dunbar Scots at Oyster River.