Chapter 10 - Portsmouth (continued--Temperance, church pews, laws) from History of Rockingham County, NH
From: Ida Ransom - iransom@earthling.net

Source:  History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens
          by Charles A. Hazlett, Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co., Chicago, Ill., 1915

Page 138                               
                                          CHAPTER X
                              PORTSMOUTH.  --  --  (Continued.)

Temperance -- Use of Tobacco -- Church Pews and Customs - Observance
     of Sunday -- Cost of Living -- Early Laws -- The Massacre at the Plains
     
     Temperance. -- In matters of temperance early settlers are not apt to be
the best examples.  Yet there is nothing which shows so well as history
the progress the temperance cause has made.  The convivial habits of one
hundred, two hundred years ago would not be endured for a moment any- 
where.  Anyone who will take the trouble to look up the social life of the
English or Scotch, or of our own land, beyond the present or last century,
is amazed at the custom of intoxication or excessive drinking.   While among
the greatest of the evils we have still to deal with, the change has been very
marked, and the excited and unfounded statements that we are intemperate
beyond all other people, or that, proportionately. the vice is greater in our
day than in the past, are made in utter ignorance and the extremest party
or fanatical zeal.  All these settlements were well supplied with aqua vity,
as it is spelled (acqua vitoe, water of life), being the common name of brandy,
or the spirit of wine.  It comes in all the inventories as a part of the goods,
and sack, the name of a Spanish wine now called sherry, is not infrequently
in the accounts.
     In Londonderry, at the close of the last century, the evil was so great
that at the installation of a clergyman a hogshead of rum was drank, and in
one part of the house in which the minister lived was a tavern where spirits
was sold and drank on Sunday by members of the church, and so wide- 
spread was the custom that on a fast-day, when the minister was supposed
to be free to indulge in some special topic, he was widely denounced for
preaching upon temperance.
     Use of Tobacco. -- The use of tobacco, then comparatively novel, but a
habit which has a tendency to make its subjects forget how disagreeable it
may be to others, early became subject to legal restrictions. In 1646 we
find, "Whereas there is great abuse in taking tobacco in a very uncivil
manner in the streets, if any person or persons shall be found or seen doing
so hereafter he shall be subject to punishment;" and, again, "any person or
persons who shall be found smoking tobacco on the Lord's day going to or
coming from the meeting within two miles of the meetinghouse, he shall be
fined."   Within two miles was construed to have no bearing on such as had
a mind to smoke in the meeting-house, and so the loud snapping of tobacco- 

Page 139

boxes after loading the pipes; the clinking of flint and steel, followed by
curling wreaths of smoke, were not infrequent in the house of worship.
     Church Pews and Customs. -- We have referred to the old South Church
being for a long time without any pews.  The church at Hampton had
at first but one pew, and that for the use of the minister's family, the rest
of the house being furnished with seats for the accommodation of the
people.   Each man was obliged to build his own pew, keep it in repair, to
maintain all the glass against it, and he must build on the spot assigned him.
In the town of Stratham there was an exception, where by a vote of the
town "Mr. Andrew Wiggin shall have liberty to set in what seat he pleaseth
in the meeting-house," while the general law was "that when the committee
have seated the meeting-house, every person that is seated shall sit in these 
seats, or pay five shillings per day for every day they set out of these seats
in a disorderly manner to advance themselves higher in the meeting-house.
Persons were seated in church according to their rank or station in life or
society, and Mr. was at that time a title of great distinction.  The distance
persons walked for worship is almost incredible in our degenerate day.
They came on foot from Rye, New Castle, and Greenland to the Old South
Church over the bridge, and it was no uncommon thing for women to walk
six or eight miles, and sometimes carry an infant child.  Before the town
of Bedford was set off its inhabitants for some time attended worship at
Londonderry.  They performed the journey on foot, and generally carried
one or two children a distance of twelve mites.
     There is an order of public worship in Boston as follows: "It begins by
ringing of a bell about nine of the clock or before."   The pastor prays a
quarter of an hour.  The teacher reads and explains a chapter.  A psalm is
dictated by one of the ruling elders and sung.  The pastor preaches a
sermon, and sometimes gives an exhortation without notes.  The teacher
closes with prayer and benediction.  Services begin at two in the afternoon,
and proceed in the same order .
     When a minister exchanged, the ruling elder said to him publicly, after
the psalm was sung, "If this present brother hath any word of exhortation
for the people at this time, in the name of God say on."  Before departing
in the afternoon one of the deacons said, "Brethren of the congregation, as
God hath prospered you, so freely offer;" then the magistrates and chief
gentlemen first, and then the elders and all the congregation of men, and
most of them that were not of the church, all single persons, widows, and
women in absence of their husbands, went up one after another one way,
and brought their offering of money or chattel to the deacon's seat, and
passed by another way to their seats. Persons were appointed to have
inspection of the audience during the public exercises, whose frequent rounds
kept the children in order.  The badge of their office was a pole with a
knob on one end and a tuft of feathers on the other; with the one they
rapped on the men's heads, and with the other they brushed the ladies' faces
when they caught them napping.  Music in these early days, as in the latter,
was deemed a necessary part of worship, and had its attendant criticisms
and disaffections.  The custom was from the earliest days to deacon the
hymn, the precentor or leader of psalmody reading two lines and all singing

Page 140 

them, and so on to the end; but the singers wanted to break up the old habit
of "lining" or "deaconing" and have it all their own way.  At Stratham
the matter was settled by a compromise, the deacon by vote of the town
to read half the time; but still he complained of the bass viol, saying "they
had got a fiddle into the church as big as a hog's trough;" while at London- 
derry the precentor and choir both kept on at the same time, one reading
and the other singing, until the latter gained the victory and sang the reader
down.
     Observance of Sunday. -- The observance of Sunday was strict and gen- 
eral, but hedged round by so minute and constant command of the law that
it is questionable if its true helpful keeping was ever so great as now.  Those
were good times for dull ministers, when every seat in the church was filled,
without regard to weather or the difficulty of traveling, by the tenor of the
magistrate more than the fear or love of the Lord, and they were pretty
serious times for such as some of you who would forsake the sanctuary for
a walk, a ride to the beach, or an excursion to the Shoals, or the enjoyment
of a cigar.
     In 1682 it was enacted, -- 
     "For prevention of the prophanation of the Lord's day that whosoever
shall, on the Lord's day, be found to do unnecessary servile labor, travel,
sports, or frequent ordinaires in time of public worship, or idly straggle
abroad, the person so offending. shall pay a fine of ten shillings, or be set in
the stocks an hour; and for discovery of such persons it is ordered that the
constable, with some other meet person whom he shall choose, shall in the
time of public worship go forth to any suspected place within their precincts,
to find out any offender as above."
     The Plains Massacre. --  The most murderous attack by the Indians that
our local history records occurred at the Plains two miles west of the river
on the morning of June 26, 1696.  They burned five houses and nine barns
and killed fourteen people; in the desperate struggle several others were
severely wounded, while a number were made prisoners and taken away in
their retreat through Great Swamp.  The inhabitants, who were unaccom- 
panied, were mostly killed or taken prisoners, but those who kept together,
in the main, succeeded in reaching the garrison house, the site of which is
on the little knoll of rocks 660 feet northerly from the old Sherburne house,
on the westerly side of Islington Road.  As soon as the attack by the
Indians was known in the town, a train-band under Captain Shackford was
sent out to intercept them in their retreat.  They overtook the savages while
breakfasting in the woods, at the junction of Lafayette and Greenland
Roads at what is known as Breakfast Hill.  The soldiers fell upon them
and recovered the prisoners and the plunder, but the Indians made a hasty
escape.
     Mrs. Mary Brewster was severely wounded and left for dead, her scalp
having been entirely removed from her head, but she recovered and after -- 
wards became the mother of seven children, from whom most of the Brewster
families in this vicinity have descended.

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