by Jonathan Tucker

Some of the former Scottish prisoners were able to buy themselves out of their indentures early.  There is no evidence that Micum McIntire did so.  He most likely worked out his full 6-8 year indenture—1651 to 1658-1659, and then continued to work for Valentine Hill after his indenture ended.  Micum was taxed in November 1659 in Dover (the larger township of which Oyster River was a part).  This indicated that his indenture had ended, and as a citizen of the community he was now expected to help pay through taxation for community expenses like hiring a minister.

Micum may have been saving up as much income as possible, anticipating the costs of starting a new life.  If nothing else had changed, he might have stayed on in Oyster Bay indefinitely, continued to work for Valentine Hill, and settled there. But fate intervened two years after he became free.  Valentine Hill, the man for whom he and the other Scots had been working, died sometime between December 1660 and June 1661.   Hill’s projects were numerous and widespread—he was an international merchant and shipper with multiple partnerships going at once.  Upon his unexpected death, his affairs were in disarray.  With his known employer and reliable income gone, Micum had to look for other opportunities.  And he would look first at places where his own community of Scottish prisoners were working.

Micum stayed in Dover for another couple of years, possibly working for one of Hill’s partners at the mills on Oyster River or the Cocheco River in and around what would become Dover center.  He may also have worked part of the time at mills in the nearby settlement of Newichawannock (South Berwick, ME), located about 10-12 miles away on a small tributary on the east side of the Newichawannock (now Salmon Falls) River.  He may have travelled overland, up through Dover, crossing the Cocheco River and then crossing the Newichawannock River.  But it was much easier and faster to travel by boat, and it is more likely that he travelled between Oyster River and Newichawannock by water.

In December 1662, Micum received his first land grant in the New World.  It was located at the far northern end of the Newichawannock (South Berwick) settlement.  He never lived on the land, but he allowed fellow Scot John Neal (probably MacNeill) to live there.  In December 1663, he was taxed again in Dover, as “Micom the Scotchman,” indicating that he was at least maintaining a residence there.

Sometime in 1663 or 1664, it is likely that Micum finally moved across the river to Newichawannock.  Once there, Micum settled in with the existing Scottish community—probably boarding with others—and sought (or continued to) work at the mills in the community.  We know that he worked at Captain John Wincoll’s Mills at Quamphegan Landing on the main Salmon Falls (Newichawannock) River, the site of the current Counting House Museum of the Old Berwick Historical Society.  Wincoll apparently paid his employees inconsistently—in 1671 in a larger settlement of payment disputes, it was determined that he still owed Micum 28 pounds in wages.  Micum may also have worked at the Great Works mill complex on the Asbenbedick River or at one of the other sawmills in the community.  

The village that had grown up around the various mill complexes in Newichawannock came to be called the Parish of Unity, named for the ship that had transported the Dunbar prisoners from London to Charlestown, MA.   So many Scots from the battles of Dunbar and Worcester (a year later) lived and worked in that part of Newichawannock that the parish—the area served by the church and minister there—was named for ‘their’ ship.

There was a certain deliberate aggression and intimidation intended in that naming—purposely reminding them of the ship that had brought them to their exile.  The same impulse informed the naming of the Puritan English communities near where the Scots prisoners lived and worked Berwick, Dover, and York.  All were the names of English cities where Scots had suffered notable defeats.  The English were very used to—and very afraid of—the practice of Scots rebelling in arms against English influence once or twice every generation.  In this practice of creating an intimidating environment, the Puritan English were, whether they knew it or not, imitating southern plantation owners in Virginia and the Deep South who lived in perpetual fear of slave rebellions.

The work at the Salmon Falls mills—logging, woodcutting, and feeding sawmills—was the same work Micum had done in Oyster River.  It was familiar and he had become good at it.  Living in Unity Parish, Micum was among numerous other Dunbar and Worcester Scots who had shared his wartime and exile experience, a group that supported one another and spoke the same Scots Gaelic language among themselves.  Newichawannock was a supportive ‘staging area’ for Micum and other Scots transitioning from indenture to freedom and independence, and preparing to strike out and settle on their own.

The Origins of the Village

Newichawannock was named for the Algonkian-speaking tribal group who lived there until the late 1600s and early 1700s.  Their sagamores (tribal leaders) still maintained territorial claims in the 1600s, and continued to seasonally live on their ancestral lands and negotiate with colonial representatives.  But their presence in and control over their previous territories was diminishing.

After negotiations with the Newichawannock sagamore Rowle, in May 1630, three men—Ambrose Gibbons, Roger Knight, and (probably) Thomas Spencer—arrived at Newichawannock by boat.  They were there to establish an outpost settlement, to trade with the Native Americans, and to harvest, mill, and sell lumber, which was a valuable commodity for England and its colonies.  They cast anchor at Little John’s Falls, a deep hole in the Newichawannock River off the mouth of the Asbenbedick River.

 

Gibbons subsequently built a large log structure—a combined trading post, fortification, and residence–on a hill north of the confluence of the Asbenbedick River with the main river.  With typical English colonial modesty, he named it “Great House.”  It was surrounded by a defensible palisade.

Quamphegan

A short distance north of the trading post was Quamphegan, the seasonal settlement of the Newichawannocks’ sagamore Rowle and his remaining people, who belonged to the Pennacook confederatrion.  The settlement was located next to the cascades on the east side of Salmon Falls, where the people could readily harvest the spawning salmon making their way up the cascade with forked fish spears or dip nets on long poles.  In Algonkian, “Quamphegan” means “place for fishing with dip nets.”  Centuries of use of the area by the Newichawannock meant that there were cleared openings near Gibbon’s trading post on which he was able to use to grow corn and other crops, and to graze some cattle transported from Denmark for the purpose.  Some of the colonists’ wives arrived in 1631.

Ambrose Gibbons was acting as agent for Captain John Mason, who together with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, was seeking to establish a new colony in the larger area.  In 1634, English carpenters and millwrights hired by Capt. Mason arrived to build a first sawmill, “stamping” (grist) mill, and other mills on the upper falls of the Asbenbedick River under Gibbons’ direction.  They did so, and those mills operated for a time, serving both the settlement and other communities as far away as Boston.

In 1634, Henry Jocelyn took over from Ambrose Gibbons as settlement agent.  Gibbons moved west across the main river and helped begin the settlement of Oyster River (Durham).  Captain Mason died in 1635, and that slowed settlement for a time.  His employees sacked the mills for what they could take, and left.  Mason’s widow and family inherited the rights to the settlement.

In 1638, Henry Jocelyn was succeeded as settlement agent by Frances Norton, who also served as family attorney for Captain Mason’s widow.  Norton sold off all the cattle Gibbons and Jocelyn had raised and sent them south for sale.  Settlement proceeded slowly in the decades after Capt. Mason’s death, but it did proceed.  The early mills on the upper falls were abandoned, but others were built—Thomas Spencer, for instance, built mills at the lower falls of the Asbenbedick River immediately upstream of its confluence with the main river.   There was no decrease in demand for the high quality lumber available in the area.

Great Works, In Greater Detail

Richard Leader was a Boston merchant and engineer.  He had in-laws in the settlement of Portsmouth at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, and through them and from talk among colonial leaders in Boston he doubtless heard of the vacancies left by Captain Mason’s demise.  He had been acting as agent for the operators of the irons works at Lynn (Saugus, MA), but did not feel fairly treated by the distant owners of the iron works in England.  He noted the vacuum created by Captain Mason’s death and the pending arrival of indentured Scots labor, and saw it as an opportunity.  In 1651, Leader obtained a land grant for 400 acres in Newichawannock that included the abandoned mills of Captain Mason, and he purchased the indentures of 15-25 of the Dunbar Scots.  Timing is everything.

Leader travelled by boat up the Atlantic coast from Boston with his brother George and 15-25 Dunbar Scots on board.  At Portsmouth, they turned west into the mouth of the Piscataqua River on a slack tide and crossed the Great Bay, turning north up the Newichawannock River.

It is possible that Micum McIntire and the six other Dunbar prisoners whose indentures had been purchased by Oyster River proprietor Valentine Hill had come earlier, or that they were also on Leader’s boat.  If so, before turning north up the Newichawannock River, the boat would have travelled further west across the Little Bay and due west up the Oyster River to the end of its tidal reach, to drop off Micum and the rest of Hill’s Scots.  The boat would then have travelled back eastward across the bay and turned north up the Newichawannock River to its destination.

Soon after their arrival in Newichawannock, Leader and his built housing for themselves near the dams at the upper falls of the Asbenbedick River.  At the upper falls, English millwrights and the indentured Scots laborers built an ambitiously large complex of new water-powered sawmills under Leader’s direction.  Once complete, it claimed to have as many as 19 saws going at once and, like Gibbons’ trading post, it quickly acquired a modest name—Great Works.  Together with other mills downstream on lower falls near the confluence of the rivers operated by Thomas Spencer, the industrial heart of the pioneer community had become impressive, and drew employees from elsewhere in the colony.  Leader obtained 5 more land grants in Newichawannock in 1653 and 1654.

Salmon Falls Mills – Where Micum Worked

A series of owners, including Thomas Spencer and then Captain John Wincoll, also built and operated mills at the natural cascades on the main river at Quamphegan, where a shallow draft landing was established for bringing in supplies and shipping out products (principally milled lumber and white pine ship’s masts).

As previously noted, while in Newichawannock, Micum McIntire worked at Captain Wincoll’s mills at Salmon Falls, and perhaps at other mills, as well.  Micum probably boarded with other Scots, close to the mill where they worked.  Captain Wincoll divided his time between Berwick and Watertown, MA, where he served in various municipal capacities.  Captain Wincoll was a partisan in favoring the extension of the control and influence of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s reach into these frontier communities.  For him, ownership the Salmon Falls mills was an investment, and he probably left its day-to-day management to others, who may or may not have been entirely scrupulous.  As a result, while work at the mills was probably reasonably steady, payment was not always timely or even forthcoming:  “According to John Wilcoll’s list of unpaid bills of the mill for the period Deccember 6, 1662, to April 6, 1671, “Mycombe Micatere of York’ was due 28 pounds.”

However sporadic the compensation for his work apparently was, Micum continued to accumulate income for his eventual settlement.

Trafficking In Refugee Irish Women

In 1652, following the arrival in Boston of the ship John and Sara with its cargo of 272 Worcester Scots, some of those men were sent north and joined the original former Dunbar prisoners who had first accompanied Leader (some also joined Valentine Hill’s crew of Dunbar Scots in Oyster River).  Richard Leader teamed up with David Selleck, a Boston soapmaker, shipowner, and trader, to finance a project to gather up and transport refugee women (especially young women) and children displaced by Oliver Cromwell’s brutal Irish campaigns, to help populate the frontier of Upper Kittery and the rest of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The ship Goodfellow carried these human shipments in 1652 and again in 1654.  The purpose was at least two-fold.  First, as with the Scottish prisoners, trafficking in human beings was simply profitable on its own.  Secondly, the Puritan English were perpetually afraid that the Scots would—as was their wont—organize and rebel in the colonies, as they always had before.  Bringing potential partners and wives into the equation meant that the Scots would be burdened with families, which would make them easier to control and less likely to rebel.  And in fact marriages among the Scots did indeed result from this exercise in human trafficking.  Dunbar Scot James Warren married an Irishwoman named Margaret in Newichawannock.  Dunbar Scot James Webster, a later founder of the Scots Charitable Society in Boston, married Irish refugee and indentured maid Mary Hay.  Alexander Innes, who worked at the Braintree iron works, married an Irish bondwoman named Katherine Elizabeth Briggs at Plymouth.

In 1655, Richard Leader left Newichawannock with Thomas Broughton to explore new ventures on the English colony at Barbados.  He apparently died there, because his estate was being administered in 1661.  His brother George Leader stayed on in Newichawannock, serving as a manager for the mills and the remaining Scots workers.

The Men of Unity Parish

Like Micum McIntire, Scots completing their indentures in the late 1650s travelled from other communities in northern New England to Newichawannock and its Great Works and Salmon Falls mill complexes for reliable work.  Several received land grants in the community, and those who had arrived with Leader were apparently given an early opportunity at land.  In 1656, well before his indenture was complete, Dunbar Scot Alexander Maxwell, later a neighbor of Micum’s in York, Maine, acquired a land grant along the Newichawannock River, south of its confluence of the Asbenbedick River.  So did Peter Grant (who had worked at the iron works at Saugus), John Taylor, and Thomas Abbot, among others.

As a latecomer to Newichawannock, Micum received a land grant there relatively late, in December 1662, along with fellow Scots John Key (prob. MacKay), James Grant (an older Dunbar Scot called “the Drummer” by his fellows), and James Barry.  These four plots had frontage on the main Newichawannock (Salmon Falls) River, well north of the center of settlement, and north of the confluence with the smaller Worster River, located in what is now the town of Berwick. Starting from the main river, the properties—which measured 30 rods wide (495 feet)—went back 267 rods (4,405.5 feet) into the woods to the north and east.  They were a little over 50 acres in size.  Micum’s was the furthest north, located well out beyond the edge of the settled community.  He never built on it or lived there, but he held onto it and allowed fellow Dunbar Scot John Neal to build and live on it.  It was part of Micum’s estate when he died, and was inherited by his middle son Daniel McIntire.

[NOTE:  If you travel north out of South Berwick on Rte. 236 and cross into Berwick, Micum’s land grant was located on the left (west) side of the road just before you reach the intersection with New Dam Road.  Micum’s grant ran up from the Salmon Falls (Newichawannock) River to the original road.  It is currently part of a private farm.]

Others obtaining land grants at Newichawannock included Daniel Ferguson, William Furbish (a companion of Micum’s at Oyster River), Henry Magoun, Henry Hobbs, James Grant (“the Scotchman”—prob. the son of “the Drummer”), Alexander Cooper, John Ross, David Hamilton, George Gray, Niven Agnew (an Oyster River alumnus), Thomas Doughty (another Oyster River alum), and others.

Interestingly, also obtaining a land grant on the east side of the main river on December 11, 1662 was Captain John Wincoll, who obtained an approximately 100 acre parcel on the east side of the river between the Salmon Falls Brook and Worster’s River.  It was just south of another parcel granted to Dunbar Scot John Key (MacKay).

Moving On Once More

Many of the freed Scots worked in Newichawannock, obtained land there, and settled there.  Others worked there for a time, and then moved on to settle elsewhere.  These more restless Scots included several who founded the Scotland District in York—Alexander Maxwell, Alexander Machanere (MacNair), John Carmichael, and Micum McIntire.  Some obtained land grants in Newichawannock before they moved, and then sold them (Alexander Maxwell sold his to John Neal).  Others, like Micum, kept their land grants in Newichawannock, but moved on.

Micum McIntire moved to York sometime between 1662 and 1668.  Robert Junkins, Alexander Maxwell, Alexander Machanere, Daniel Dill, Andrew Rankin, and John Carmichael were already there, the first settlers of Scotland District.  Micum may have boarded with one or more of them as he waited to build or acquire his first home. 

Conflict with Native Americans

As at Oyster River, serious conflict with Native Americans in Newichawannock did not break out until King Phillip’s War (1675-76).   In the summer of 1675, the homes of Richard Tozier and Captain John Wincoll were attacked on subsequent days and several people were killed.  In October 1675, a force of about 100 Native Americans once again attacked Tozier’s house and a few days later ambushed a party of 20 colonists sent out to recover bodies.

During King William’s War, in the spring of 1690, there was a major attack at Newichawannock with about 35 killed and some 54 captured and taken to Canada for ransom.  Among the dead and abducted were some of the resident Scots and their adult children, including members of the Key (McKay), Grant, and Hamilton families.  All homes in the northern part of the community were abandoned, and the community as a whole was abandoned for over a decade.  It was not until 1703 that the community had been resettled and was renamed Newichawannock.

Newichawannock and its Unity Parish was an early center for indentured and then freed Scottish prisoners of war in what is now New Hampshire and southern Maine.  In its original full extent, the township of Kittery included numerous other communities, including Berwick and Eliot.  It was also the first recognized community in Maine.  Through their residence and labor there, Micum McIntire and his fellow Scots were critically important participants in the earliest European colonial development of this region.