by Jonathan Tucker

This is the 15th in a series of articles about MacIntyres in general and the life and descendants of Micum McIntire, a Scottish prisoner of war who settled in York, Maine. This article is about the settlement of Oyster River (Durham, NH), Micum’s first ‘home’ in the New World. This article may be revised as new information becomes available.

The most definitive and comprehensive current source for information on MacIntyres in general is the newly-published book, “Clan MacIntyre: A Journey Into the Past,” Martin L. MacIntyre, Regent Press, Berkeley, CA, 2018, second edition. Copies may be purchased by contacting Martin at martin.macintyre@juno.com.

The definitive geneaology is “Descendants of Micum McIntire,” Robert Harry McIntire, revised edition, 1983, Bookcrafters, Chelsea, MI. Used copies can still be obtained from time to time through online booksellers. Those interested in new copies should contact Dan Davis, 1 Stanley Avenue, Kingfield, ME, 04947 (snailmail only). There is an earlier version published in 1940—it is less complete but still useful.

Valentine Hill

In late 1650 or early January 1651, the indentures of Micum McIntire and six (6) other Dunbar prisoners were purchased in Charlestown by Valentine Hill, an English immigrant merchant and entrepreneur.  Hill and Thomas Kemble—the man responsible for dispensing the prisoners’ indentures—knew each other well, and were occasional business partners in the Boston area.  Valentine Hill owned the labor of ‘his’ Scots for a 6-8 year period.  He was intimately involved in the development of the community of Oyster River where they lived and worked out their indentures, so it is worth learning something about him and that community.

Valentine Hill was born March 23, 1610 in Nottinghamshire, England, the son of William Hill and (probably) Katherine Davy.  He and his brother John were merchants in London before Valentine immigrated to the New World.  Valentine was in Boston by 1636 with his first wife Frances Freestone, whom he had married in England.  From 1636-1649, Valentine Hill tried to replicate and expand on his work in London.  He purchased land in central Boston, including waterfront and wharves near what is now Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market.  

Valentine Hill was a “mercer,” an elite category of merchant that had begun centuries before as a guild of cloth manufacturers and sellers.  He operated as an international trader, importing and exporting forest products and agricultural products—tobacco, Indian corn, sugar, horses, and cattle.  In 1641, he was elected a Selectman for Boston.  In Boston and internationally, Valentine Hill was a big deal as a merchant.

He was a leading figure in an extended group of Puritan English entrepreneurs in the Boston area that included Joshua Foote and John Becx—the men had arranged for transport of the Scottish prisoners as cheap labor.  It also included Thomas Kemble, who managed the dispersal of the Dunbar prisoners in Cambridge, and Richard Leader, former engineer for the Lynn Iron Works, as well other merchants and manufacturers like David Selleck, James Moody, and others.  These men were dedicated to the proposition that the New World existed for the purpose of making money for themselves.  This network of men knew the Scots prisoners were coming, and they positioned themselves to take advantage of it.  Yet while Hill had no hesitation in purchasing the compelled indentures of Scottish prisoners of war, there is as yet no evidence that he participated in the growing trade in kidnapped and enslaved Africans along coastal New England.

In 1643, Valentine Hill, still living in Boston, acquired from the Massachusetts Bay Colony a land grant on the northern bank of the Oyster River in the Piscataqua River drainage, part of a fledgling settlement around a trading post there.  In 1644, his first wife Frances died in Boston.  Hill remarried sometime before 1647 to Mary Eaton, daughter of Theopholus Eaton, governor of Connecticut.  Valentine was climbing (and building) the social and economic ladder in colonial New England, and he decided to focus his efforts on the unsettled lands in the north, where lumber, trade, and settlement offered opportunities.

Oyster River

The Oyster River settlement was named for the small tidal river that flows east out of New Hampshire into the large tidal bay (Great Bay) of the Piscataqua River, west of Portsmouth, NH.  The original Abenaki name for the river was Shankhassick, whose meaning is uncertain.  The colonists had named it Oyster River because of the extensive beds of oysters and other shellfish exposed on the riverbed at low tide, which had been used as a source of food by indigenous peoples for 11,000 years.

Oyster River was the last of three small settlements that made up the Dover plantation.  Hilton Point (also called Dover Neck or Dover Point) and Cocheco had both been settled in 1623 by William and Edward Hilton, members of an English fishing guild.  That same year they had established a solitary trading post at Oyster River, but without any accompanying settlement.  Hilton Point was located on a tongue of land that extended out into the Little Bay section of the extensive Piscataqua River embayment.   On its eastern side, the Newichawannock River flowed down (south) into the Piscataqua’s wide bay.

On the western side of the peninsula, the Bellamy River flowed south into the same bay.  Cocheco’s settlement was located further north up on the Cocheco River, which emptied into the Newichawannock.  Cocheco was named for the resident tribal group—a member of the Abenaki confederation—that had previously occupied the area, but had mostly been wiped out by epidemics of European disease beginning in 1611.  The tribe’s survivors had migrated north, but they still seasonally visited their former territory for the salmon runs and other purposes, and still considered it their own.  In time, Oyster River would become Durham, NH.  Hilton Point and Cocheco would become part of Dover, NH.

Among the most prominent among the early landowners and settlers in Oyster River were Ambrose Gibbons, Frances Matthews, John Ault, and John Goddard.  Gibbons was an agent for Captain John Mason who, under charter from King Charles I, was attempting with Sir Ferdinando Gorges to establish a new colony in what is now coastal New Hampshire and southern coastal Maine, distinct and separate from the Puritan Bay colony.   Gibbons was an agent for Capt. Mason, and was also involved in the establishment of Newichawannock (South Berwick, ME).  Mason and Gorges were direct competitors with the Puritan government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston, which also tried to claim this territory.

It was not until 1635 that Oyster River first began to expand as a settlement around its trading post.  In 1647, Oyster River elected its first Selectmen (Ambrose Gibbons was one).  By 1648, 23 of the 53 inhabitants (43%) of the Dover plantation were living in Oyster River.  The other 30 inhabitants lived in the two smaller settlements. 

On September 29, 1649, Valentine Hill and Thomas Beard acquired rights to “the fall[s] of Oyster River,” itself, “for the Erickting and setting up of a sawe mill.”  Valentine Hill and his second wife Mary moved to Oyster River in 1649-50.  He built a thick log house on the north side of the river, on the high bank directly overlooking the settlement’s boat landing.  It’s possible that he moved there temporarily to oversee the construction of the dam and accompanying sawmill and gristmill at the falls of the Oyster River, and to preside in person over the development of the community for which he was now a proprietor.

However, Hill soon built a more elaborate and more comfortable home further east, downriver on the south shore of Hilton Point, possibly because it could provide quicker access to the open water of the bay.  Fellow Boston merchant and trader Thomas Kemble was also part owner of the Oyster River mills.  Kemble was responsible for managing the disposition of the Dunbar Scots’ indentures, so the pending arrival of Scots prisoners representing available (and cheap) indentured labor may have also figured in Hill’s decision to relocate closer to his investment.

In the Dover Plantation, Hill obtained large grants of land, and thereafter sold smaller grants of land to new settlers, and operated profitable land resource-based businesses like sawmills and grist mills.  He also continued his role as an international and inter-colonial trader on a wider scale, selling fish and timber produced at the sawmill at Oyster River within New England, to the southern colonies, and in England, and purchasing and reselling tobacco, horses, and Indian corn from Virginia.  He was a busy and ambitious man.  Again, despite his trade with southern colonies and the West Indies colonies which were founded on slave labor, there has as yet been no record found of Valentine Hill selling or owning Native American or African slaves, although African slaves had been brought into the Boston area and this frontier area by the mid-1650s.  The region-wide conflicts with Native Americans which led to the wholesale enslavement of many had not yet begun.

In early 1651, Micum McIntire and the other six Dunbar prisoners arrived and disembarked at the rudimentary landing on the north shore of the Oyster River.  It is possible that the seven (7) Dunbar Scots whose indentures Hill had purchased travelled north on the same ship that carried the 15-25 men headed for Newichawannock (South Berwick, ME) with engineer Richard Leader.  The two destinations were only about 10-12 miles apart and both were readily accessible by boat within the Piscataqua River drainage.  In the first few months after their arrival (still in winter), Micum and the other Scots at Oyster River may have been put to work completing construction of the mills—a sawmill on the north bank and a gristmill on the south bank.

Later that same year, on May 14, 1651, Valentine Hill acquired 500 acres for an extensive farm “adjacent to his mills at Oyster River, provided it doth not annoy the inhabitants.”  This acreage represented most of what subsequently developed as the village of Oyster River and constitutes most of the area of the current day community of Durham, NH.  As an original proprietor, Hill owned most of the land in and around the village, as well as many of the major economic enterprises (the large farm, timber lands, fishing boats, sawmills, grist mills, etc.).  Settlers bought their homestead properties from him, along with farm produce and supplies like lumber that they would need to construct a home and establish themselves.  For early settlers in Oyster Bay, it was in many ways a form of ‘company town’ for the first few years it took them to get established, and Valentine Hill and a couple of other proprietors were the company.  Hill was also a significant owner of property in the Cocheco settlement section of the Dover plantation.  In 1651, Hill was a member of the Selectmen for Oyster River.

Valentine Hill was the principal owner of the growing Oyster River community, but he was by many reports a fair and generous man who took seriously his responsibilities for others in “his” community.  There is as yet no evidence that he was an unfair or brutal taskmaster.  Micum and his fellow Scots spent much of their 6-8 year indentures working at and/or supplying wood for the sawmill at the dam just upstream of the Oyster River landing, and undertaking Hill’s other building projects.  In 1652, Hill purchased “fower ackers” (4 acres) with frontage on Newmarket Road and the south side of the millpond, right next to the mill.  On this property, his Scots could erect cabins for 2-3 men each or a large bunkhouse, and could plant and tend garden plots for their own use.  Eleven years later, in 1663, the same four (4) acres was purchased by two of the emancipated Scots, Henry Brown and James Orr.

The indentured Scots worked at least four (4) days a week and attended compulsory church services on Sunday.  Beyond that, their time was their own.  They were able to keep most of the money they earned.  Some bought off their freedom before the end of their indenture.  One of Hill’s principal limitations on the lives of his indentured Scots was that they were not allowed to marry (and be distracted from their work by a family) until they had completed their indentures and were free.

In 1652, Hill acquired timber land in the Cocheco settlement, at which time he was reminded by town officials that he had acquired the rights to build mills on the Lamprey River in the part of the Dover plantation that would later become Newmarket, NH to the south, and needed to complete that work.  The same year, Hill and others petitioned the Bay Colony government, asking it to declare the establishment of the Dover township, and to clarify fishing rights in the adjacent bay.  In 1652 Valentine Hill began to serve as Deputy for Oyster River to the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a position he held until 1657.  He was appointed an associate judge by petition of the inhabitants of Dover, a position he held for the rest of his life.

Hill never got around to building his dam and mill on the Lamprey River.  Nor did he build a connecting canal he had planned for the purpose of bringing water from the Lamprey River to the Oyster River, to bolster flow to his existing mills during dry summer weather.  The township of Dover took the unfulfilled grant back after he died.  

In April/May 1652, two hundred and seventy-two (272) Scottish prisoners of the battle of Worcester landed in the Boston area, having been transported on the ship John and Sara.  Cambridge entrepreneur Thomas Kemble owned that ship, and he was once again involved in the disposition of these Scots, some of whose indentures may have been sold or resold to prospective owners from the southern colonies.  As noted, Kemble was also invested in the Dover Plantation and Oyster River.  The indentures of still more Scots prisoners—we know of John Carmichael and Edwin Erwin—were acquired by property owners in Oyster River.  Valentine Hill also employed freemen and recent settlers on his farm, timber lands, and in his mills in Oyster River and Cocheco.

In 1654-55, Valentine Hill built a meetinghouse for the Oyster River inhabitants, locating it on the south side of the river downstream (east) of the landing.  The following year (1656) he built a parsonage nearby for the temporary ministers who preached there.  There was not an “approved” minister occupying the parsonage until 1668.  It is worth wondering whether Hill’s Scots were involved in constructing the buildings.  The parsonage was burned in the 1694 attack on Oyster River described in the previous chapter.

In 1656, Valentine Hill and a committee of two others were authorized to draw the boundary line between the Dover and Exeter plantations, a boundary both communities later ratified.

In 1657, Valentine Hill, serving in his last year as Deputy for Dover township by the Bay Colony government, was paid for his duties and repeated travels back and forth between Dover and Boston.  Valentine Hill owned timber land and mills in Cocheco.  He was involved in Dover’s governance and served as a captain of its militia.

From 1651 through 1659, the period of their indentures, the Dunbar and Worcester Scots working for Valentine Hill probably took on tasks beyond the felling, transport, and sawyering of timber at the sawmills at Oyster River and Cocheco.  This may have included the construction of new buildings, farm work, perhaps some commercial fishing, and other tasks necessary to assist the proprietor of a growing community.   But lumbering and milling to meet the demand from England and a growing colony was central to their work.  Former Dunbar prisoners Henry Brown and James Orr, for instance, went on to become professional lumbermen and sawyers, and claimed they had learned their trade under Valentine Hill.

Indentures End

Indentures were contracts for a person’s labor for a given period of time.  Unlike chattel slavery, indentures were temporary, and they ended.  Indications in the historical record that a Scots prisoner’s indenture had ended included:  1) whether or not he had been accepted as an inhabitant (i.e., a citizen) or, 2) less certain, a record that he was being taxed by the community in which he lived.  An indentured servant was not a freeman, and not eligible to be a citizen, so someone accepted as the inhabitant of a community was no longer indentured.  Nor would an indentured servant have been under any obligation to pay taxes to cover shared community expenses—helping to pay a minister’s salary, for instance.  But it was not unheard of for someone under indenture to acquire enough property for it to be worth taxing.  Once they were free, however, they would immediately assume the full responsibilities and obligations of citizenship.

In 1657, Dunbar Scot Robert Junkins and Worcester Scot John Carmichael were taxed at Dover, indicating that they had possibly bought out their indentures early.  Or, in Robert Junkins’ case, he was possibly being taxed for land he had purchased that same year with fellow Scots Edwin Erwin and Henry Brown.

In 1658, Dunbar Scots Henry Brown, Thomas Doughty, and James Orr were taxed in Dover, along with Worcester Scot Edwin Erwin.  Again, some of them may have bought out their indentures early, but it was also the case that some of them already owned land.
Henry Brown and James Orr are worth singling out among the men that Micum McIntire knew well.  The two men were livelong partners, buying land, living together, and owning personal property in common.  They also bought land jointly with Worcester Scot Edwin Erwin and worked for sawmills in Kittery, York, and Saco with Thomas Doughty.  From Oyster River, they eventually moved north to Wells, Maine where they jointly operated a sawmill and a blacksmithy in Kennebunk village.  Henry died before December 8, 1692, when James is recorded as selling land they had previously owned together.  James died later on an unknown date.

In November 1659, Micum McIntire and fellow Dunbar Scots John Barber, William Furbish (Forbes), and Niven Agnew were taxed at Dover.  It is likely that they were no longer indentured—in 1659, eight years had passed since their indentures had begun in 1651.  From 1657 to 1661, Micum and other Scots obtaining their freedom probably continued to work for Valentine Hill at his mills in Oyster River or on the Cocheco River.  It was reliable work, and they were accumulating income in preparation for starting new lives.

Sometime between December 10, 1660 and June 28, 1661, Valentine Hill died at home in Oyster River, not long after his numerous Scots had completed their indentures.  He was 51 years old.  He died intestate, having made no will or other arrangements for the disposition of his sprawling and complicated international estate.  He had so many different enterprises going at once in so many different places (often in partnership with others), that it took years to sort out his estate.  His widow Mary and his children were impoverished in the meantime, relying on community members for support.

Moving On

From 1661-1663, with their employer Valentine Hill gone, and his properties and commercial enterprises in disarray, most of “his” Scots moved on from Oyster River and Dover.  Several, including Micum, eventually moved north and east to Newichawannock (then Kittery/later South Berwick, ME) to work at the Great Works mills there with other fellow Scots.  From there, many began to acquire land and settle.  Micum obtained his first land grant in Newichawannock in 1662, but that’s the next chapter.

Robert Junkins and Andrew Rankin moved directly from Oyster River to settle in York.  Robert was living in York by 1661, but was still taxed for his Oyster River property in 1663.

Oyster River and the other Dover settlements were very much on the frontier, but they were not targets for Native American conflict during the indentures of the Scottish prisoners.  In fact, there was a fair amount of trade and interaction with tribal groups.  Formerly resident coastal Native Americans like the Cocheco and Newichawannock had almost been wiped out by epidemics from 1611 on, but some seasonally returned, and there was interaction with Native Americans from other more distant tribal groups with whom the colonists traded.

Serious conflict at Oyster River did not begin until King Philip’s War in September 1675, when a small-scale attack resulted in the burning of two houses, the killing of two settlers, and the taking of several captives who later escaped.  But on July 18, 1694, during King William’s War, Oyster River was attacked by a combined force of French officers and 250 Abenaki (Penobscot, Norridgewock, and Maliseet) warriors.  The village was completely overrun, with buildings and crops burned and destroyed, and livestock killed or taken—resulting in starvation for survivors.  Between 94 and 104 settlers were killed that day (accounts vary) and 27 settlers were taken captive to Canada to be ransomed.  By then, Micum and his fellow Scots had settled elsewhere and had already been dealing with similar attacks in the communities where they had made their own homes, including York, which was attacked in 1692.

Oyster River (Durham, NH) Today

There is still a landing at the end of the tidal reach below the now-modern dam at the falls in Oyster River.  There were functioning mill buildings at the dam as late as 1908.  Newmarket Road (Route 108) crosses the river over a highway bridge between the dam and the landing, and there is a footbridge downstream of the road that connects the two sides of the river.  Valentine Hill’s first 1649 home (or work office) was added onto, expanded, and renovated extensively during several different historic periods.  It is now operated as the Three Chimneys Inn (lodging and restaurant), and is located where it always had been, just above the Oyster River landing.  Valentine Hill’s original log building is still inside and part of the structure.

The “fower akers” (4 acres) used by the Scots to build their cabins or bunkhouse is located south of the millpond along the Newmarket Road, and much of it remains open, undeveloped, and visible from Route 108.   There is an historic interpretive trail whose signs knit together and explain the sites in the Durham Historic District.  The Durham Historic Museum is close by in Durham center at 15 Newmarket Road.

If you visit Oyster River—which, as a descendant of Micum McIntire, you should—walk through the parts of the historic district along the river.  Walk out onto the footbridge above the river.  Stand there and listen to the water for a time.  Look downstream and see if you can visualize an early, sail-powered coastal transport boat like a shallop being rowed the last few hundred yards to the landing.  Micum and the others are standing there uncertainly on the deck in the deep cold, taking in the landscape of their first home in the New World.  It was mostly forested and filled with snow at the time.  Their new lives were about to begin.