Landmarks in Ancient Dover, New Hampshire by Mary P. Thompson, 
Durham, N.H. ©1892, Printed by the Republican Press Association, 
Concord, N.H. 


LANDMARKS:	Bloody Point.	

NAMES: DUDLEY, Gov. Joseph; WIGGIN, Capt. Thomas; NEALE, Capt. Walter; 
	ADAMS, John; ADAMS, Rev. Joseph

	Bloody Point.  This name was given as early as 1633 to a neck of land
between the Long Reach and the western branch of the Pascataqua river, 
which for eighty years formed part of ancient Dover.  The lower bound of 
this neck originally extended from Canney or Kenney's creek, on the shore 
of the Long Reach, to Hogsty Cove at the mouth of the Great Bay.  Nearly a 
year after Bloody Point was made a separate parish, its name was changed to
 Newington by Gov. Joseph Dudley.  This was done May 12, 1714.  (N.H. Prov. 
Pap., 3: 562.)                    
	The story generally related to account for the name of Bloody Point 
seems ridiculously inadequate to an appellation of such tragical import.  
But the real history, too long to be given here, is not of mere bloodless 
encounter between Neale and Wiggin in 1632, but of a far more serious contest 
about rival patents, that involved the title to all the lands along the 
Pascataqua.  Capt. Wiggin, from the first, was devoted to the interest of 
Massachusetts Bay, which sought control over New Hampshire.  Capt. Neale, 
who was Mason's attorney, was strongly opposed to the pretensions of Mass-
achusetts.  
	Their conflict, therefore, was not whollypersonal, but represented 
the strife of contending parties.  The Bloody Point region was a kind of 
debatable ground--a border land between Strawberry Bank and Hilton's Point, 
along whose pleasant shores the members of both factions were disposed to 
lay out lands for themselves; and their alarm, their sanguinary mood, and 
their resolution to defend their claims, are all embodied in the name they 
gave this point as a perpetual defiance to those who would dispossess them 
-- a name far better suited to their temper of mind than to the actual en-
counter between Walter Neale and Thomas Wiggin.                    
	The Indian massacre, to which some writers ascribe the name of Bloody 
Point, from a popular tradition in Newington, if it ever took place at all,
must have occurred too long after this name had been given it to be worthy 
of any consideration                    
	The early settlers at Bloody Point gave this name, in a restricted 
sense, to the projection directly, opposite Hilton's Point, now the Newington 
terminus of the bridge across the Pascataqua from Dover Point.  A little to
the west is the old landing-place of Knight's ferry.  This ferry is often 
called Bloody Point ferry in the early records.  It is mentioned in the 
Diary of John Adams, afterwards President of the United States, who gives 
an account of a visit to his uncle, the Rev. Joseph Adams of Newington, 
June 30, 1770.  He says that after " a cheerful and agreeable dinner," 
he "then set off for York over Bloody Point ferry, and arrived at Wood-
bridge's half an hour after sunset."     
	 In connection with Bloody Point and Dover (once called Northam) it 
might be mentioned that a place near the village of Northam, Eng., has for 
centuries been known by the name of the Bloody Corner, from a fight with 
the Danes which occurred there in the reign of King Alfred.	 	

PG 26-27





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