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Benning Wentworth

Fame, Fortune, Fire and Brimstone: The Legend of Jonathan Moulton

In 1763, Jonathan Moulton of Hampton, N.H., took his prize oxen north to Portsmouth, N.H. He decorated the impressive 1,400-pound animal with a flag across his horns. It was a gift for colonial Governor Benning Wentworth.

No, Moulton insisted, he could take no payment for the animal. It was a tribute. But he would, if the governor insisted, accept a grant of land. In addition to what is now Center Harbor and Moultonbough (named in Moulton’s honor), perhaps the governor would like to give him additional property. The governor assented and gave him the property now known as New Hampton.

Yet 20 years later, Moulton – a master at ingratiating himself with those in power – would have changed loyalties and led a brigade of soldiers in the Revolutionary War. First he guarded Hampton and later supported the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga.

Jonathan Moulton

Portrait of Robert Rogers

Moulton maintained his presence as a Hampton political leader from early youth to his death in 1787. Few men managed to straddle the politics of the age as well as Moulton. And few men were as reviled.

Born in 1726, Moulton came into life with little. He was indentured into labor to a cabinet maker as a child. But he soon showed a passion for business. And by adulthood, historians considered him the wealthiest man in Hampton.

Even his critics agreed he worked hard to get his start in life. New Hampshire Senator William Plumer noted in his diaries:

“By his unwearied attention in buying and selling small articles, he soon became an extensive dealer in English and West India goods. The property that he obtained from a valuable ship wrecked on Hampton Beach, gave him increased credit and business.”

The 1764 shipwreck was a considerable bone of contention. Moulton managed to seize most of the goods from the ship Saint George, which wrecked in Hampton, and used the sheriff to keep other would-be scavengers at bay.

Owner of mansions and slaves, Moulton had procured his business success at an early age. His political success stemmed from his military service in the French and Indian War, where he fought with the likes of legendary New Hampshire general Robert Rogers. He fought ruthlessly against the Indians and rose to the rank of colonel and later general. According to one story, he chased the last member of an Indian party he had routed on the frozen shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. Seeing the retreating Indian headed out onto the ice, Moulton loosed his dog on the man to finish him off.

Seeing Opportunities

During the wars he discovered the opportunities for land development in central New Hampshire. He sought and received extensive grants of land in the New Hampshire interior in thanks for his service to England in the wars.

In business, Moulton was a ruthless as he was in war.

Plumer wrote of him: “The instances of his fraud and deceit, injustice and oppression are numerous; he has reduced many families from affluence to beggary. For 20 years he has been a constant suitor in the courts of law, where he has often attempted to corrupt judges, bribe jurors, suborn witnesses, and seduce the counsel employed by his opponents. I have evidence of his conveying a right of land to a judge who was to decide the title to that and all the other lands that he claimed in that township. The fact was discovered, and the judge never decided the case. I know an instance of his making liberal promises to an influential juryman.”

Despite his questionable business practices, Moulton served as Hampton’s town moderator and representative to the legislature for many years. When President George Washington made his way to New Hampshire on his celebratory tour to thank his supporters, he stopped at Moulton’s home to pay his respects. But Moulton had already died.

Barnburner

Jonathan Moulton steamrolled most people he met in court. Not so with Jonathan Swett, his neighbor and fellow veteran from the French and Indian War. When Swett and Moulton tangled in court, Moulton won. But in following years Moulton’s barn would be burned down four times. Though he suspected his neighbor started the fires, Moulton could never make a case stick.

By the end of his life, Moulton complained that he could no longer get justice in the courts. Unable to sell his 80,000 acres of lane, he overextended himself and his debtors were driving him into poverty. His political allies wouldn’t help. And as Plumer pointed out, it may simply have been that he had cheated so many people he could no longer get a jury to side with him.

Plumer recalled that at the time of his death, Moulton was reviled:

“It was in the later marsh season. September 18, 1787, and the haymakers were working on the extensive salt marshes between Hampton village and the Merrimack River. My grandfather, who remembered it well, assured me that the news of Moulton’s death ran across the meadows as fast as a bird can fly, repeated from one gang of rakers to another. — “The old devil’s dead!” Perhaps his memory has suffered unjustly, but such was the fact.”

Legends of Jonathan Moulton

Moulton died and was buried in an unmarked grave. But his legend was just getting started. In the years that followed three legends arose about him.

The first legend held that Moulton got his wealth by selling is soul to the devil. In the story, Moulton made a deal that the devil would fill a boot with gold for him each month that he lived. Moulton procured the largest boot in the state of New Hampshire for the purpose, and when that proved inadequate he cut the sole out of the boot and placed it on the floor over the top of a hole he bored into the room below, thereby tricking the devil into filling the room with gold.
Suspicious gossipers said that after his burial, someone opened his coffin and found no body. The devil took it and replaced it with gold coins.
The third and final legend held that Moulton was so cheap he stripped his first wife of her wedding ring upon her death from smallpox. He later gave it to his second bride. But one night the ghost of his first wife returned to his home to reclaim her ring from the new wife.

This last legend was immortalized by the writer John Greenleaf Whittier in The New Wife and The Old. For more about Jonathan Moulton, visit Hampton’s Lane Memorial Library’s page dedicated to his story. This story was updated in 2022.

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6 Places That Used To Be Part of a Different State

For centuries, New England’s borders were anything but stable, and New Englanders didn’t agree on what they were. Maine was once part of Massachusetts, New Haven and Plymouth were separate colonies and Vermont belonged to New Hampshire – or was it New York? At least six places – cities, towns and parts of towns – used to belong to a different state until a border dispute was settled.

Of course all of Maine once belonged to Massachusetts, but that’s a separate story.

Here then, are six places that used to be part of a different state. Or so it was claimed.

Enfield and Suffield, Ct.

The Southwick Jog

Enfield and Suffield — two towns in Connecticut — began their American history as part of Massachusetts.

The two towns’ transition from Massachusetts to Connecticut took 162 years to fully accomplish.

The confusion about which state owned the towns dates back to 1642. With Connecticut seeking a charter from the King of England, Massachusetts officials decided it would be wise to survey the southern border of their territory.

To carry out the assignment, Massachusetts hired two English surveyors — Solomon Saffery and Nathaniel Woodward.

The two men had determined the border’s location by using the most southerly point of the Charles River for reference. From there, they established a point from which they could draw a line directly westward. But when they drew the line, the two surveyors actually placed one end of the line at the wrong location. The result was a diagonal line that extended some seven miles below where Massachusetts’ border was supposed to end.

This mistake set off the 162 years of fighting. Rightly or wrongly, people have pilloried Saffery and Woodward over the years. Some historians had said the pair were drunks, and that explained the mistake. Others have said they were unqualified — that they were sailors, not surveyors (though Woodward, at least, had a track record as a surveyor).

More charitable historians have suggested the instruments available to surveyors at the time were not the most reliable. Further, they note, Saffery and Woodward took a shortcut to their surveying — extrapolating from mathematical calculations rather than walking the land. They had to, in part, because they worked on land the Indians considered to be theirs.

Back and Forth to a Different State

Regardless, at first Massachusetts had the upper hand in the debate (Connecticut didn’t even have a charter). However, Massachusetts had one difficulty in maintaining its claim: it was clearly wrong. Every time surveyors from both Massachusetts and Connecticut investigated, they concurred Saffery and Woodward got it wrong in 1642.

In 1713, the two colonies got together and reached an agreement. Though the 1642 line was wrong, they both agreed to accept it with regard to the towns of Suffield, Enfield and the newer town of Woodstock. The towns would stay in Massachusetts. In return Connecticut would receive unsettled land in Massachusetts as payment.

A stake marks the southernmost point in the “Southwick jog” of the Massachusetts-Connecticut boundary. Seen from East Street in Granby, Conn.

The 1713 compromise satisfied everyone but the people who lived in the disputed towns. They still wanted to be part of Connecticut — probably because Connecticut had lower taxes and a more progressive government. In 1749, the disputed towns declared themselves part of Connecticut. This later prompted residents of Southwick, now bounded on three sides by Connecticut, to petition to join Connecticut, too.

This eroding away of Massachusetts was too much for its officials to accept. But negotiations had to be put on hold while the American Revolution was decided. Finally, in 1804 representatives from the two states got together and agreed that Southwick would stay in Massachusetts. The others would stay in Connecticut. The result was a small, square cutout in the border known to this day as the Southwick Jog. In Southwick today you can stand at the corner of Two States Road and Two States Avenue.

Seavey’s Island, Maine

Seavey’s Island

When Maine became a state in 1820, her 95,640 people lived in 232 cities and towns that had already been incorporated by Massachusetts.

Maine’s border disputes with Canada erupted in 1838 with the bloodless and often comical Aroostook War. The boundaries were famously settled by Daniel Webster.

But it was New Hampshire that caused the most recent border dispute.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, created in 1800, lies in the middle of the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine. It was cobbled together over the years from five islands, now called Seavey’s Island.

The federal government owns the island, and for decades the U.S. Navy viewed it as part of New Hampshire – hence the name, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Different State

Shipyard workers come from New Hampshire, which doesn’t have an income tax, and from Maine, which does. New Hampshire shipyard workers had to pay Maine income tax because Maine claimed Seavey’s Island.

In 2001, New Hampshire went to the U.S. Supreme Court and tried to get Seavey’s Island back.

New Hampshire claimed it owned the Piscataqua River to the Maine shoreline. Maine claimed the boundary between the two states ran down the middle of the river.

Unfortunately for New Hampshire, it had agreed in a 1977 lawsuit over fishing rights that the border ran between the middle of the river.

Maine got Seavey’s Island.

Fall River, Mass.

Fall River. The pink section at the bottom was once Tiverton.

Fall River started out as a rural outpost of the Plymouth Colony. In 1694, its southern neighbor Tiverton was incorporated as part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which by then had merged with Plymouth. In 1746, Tiverton was annexed to Rhode Island colony by Royal Decree. (So were Little Compton, Barrington, Bristol and Cumberland.)

In 1856, Tiverton decided to spin off its northern industrial section. It was called Fall River – Rhode Island. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court moved the state boundary to create one Massachusetts city of Fall River.

Bellows Falls, N.H.

The International Paper Co. in Bellows Falls, Vt., starred in the final chapter of the border wars between New Hampshire and Vermont in 1934. These disputes had gone on for hundreds of years, predating Vermont’s creation as a state.

In the 1600s, governors of both New York and New Hampshire were merrily giving away sections of Vermont to their friends. The King of England intervened in 1624. He established the New Hampshire border as the western edge of the Connecticut River. This border was largely accepted, though a group of dissidents in New Hampshire decided to secede in the 1770s. In 1778, the 22 New Hampshire towns from Chester to Haverhill declared themselves part of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vermont (after toying with and rejecting the idea of creating a new state altogether called New Connecticut).

New Hampshire took the news badly. It threatened to withdraw support for the American Revolution and to send 1,000 troops into Vermont to restore its borders. Even George Washington had to get involved in whipping the towns back into line. Under pressure from the Continental Congress, Vermont announced it was rejecting the towns’ bid to secede and returning them to New Hampshire.

Bellows Falls at high flow.

When Vermont was granted admission to the union as a state, one condition was that it renounce all claims to any lands to the east of the western edge of the Connecticut River as measured at low water. That settled the matter for more than 100 years, but the Vermonters would once again challenge New Hampshire.

Power struggle

From 1909 on, New Hampshire towns tried to assess taxes on power plants, canals and the International Paper Company’s mill at Bellows Falls in Vermont. The logic was this: the mill was powered by water in the river and, to get access to that water, it had to extend part of its plant beyond the low-water mark and into the middle of the river. Hence the subject properties were in New Hampshire. Vermont sued. The correct location of the border, it now asserted, was the center of the river.

As the dispute dragged on, some novel solutions were proposed – including diverting the Connecticut River altogether to move the border with it.

But swift and steady are the wheels of justice. Well, steady at least. In 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court finally settled the matter, granting New Hampshire ownership of the entire river to the western low water mark. By that time, International Paper Co. had abandoned its Vermont plant, for unrelated reasons, and the Bellows Falls economy was in a tailspin.

Pawtucket, R.I.

Fall River’s neighbor Pawtucket, R.I., comes from the Algonquin name ‘River Fall.’ And when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1861 gave Fall River, R.I., to Massachusetts, it gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island as a consolation prize.

The original Pawtucket actually consisted of several towns. Part of it was known as Rehoboth, east of the Blackstone River. Rehoboth was part of Plymouth Colony. West of the Blackstone River a thriving industrial town (thanks to Sam Slater) was part of North Providence.

In 1828, Massachusetts carved out part of Rehoboth and called it Pawtucket, Mass. Pawtucket, Rhode Islanders were not happy.

After the Supreme Court gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island, the North Providence land west of the Blackstone River went to Pawtucket. The two towns – East Pawtucket and West Pawtucket — then incorporated as the city of Pawtucket.

A Different State 4X

Windham County, Vt. Vernon is circled in red.

Vernon, Vt., received a charter as Northfield in 1672 as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth, who grabbed much of Vermont for his own state, gave part of Vernon to another town he chartered, Hinsdale.

By 1779, four states claimed Vernon (then Hinsdale) due to bad surveying and squabbling over ownership: New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Vernon has successively had the names Northfield in Hampshire County, Mass.; Hinsdale in Cheshire County, N.H.; Hinsdale in Cumberland County, N.Y.; and Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt.

But the Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt., had a problem On the other side of the Connecticut River sat a Hinsdale, N.H. The Vermonters wanted their own identity and voted in 1802 to change the name to Vernon. They supposedly chose it after President George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon.

This story about places that belonged to a different state was updated in 2022.

Image: Southwick Job By Dynzmoar – This file was derived from: Southwick-stake.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31670390

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Vermont Statehood, Never A Sure Thing Until New York Got Paid Off

The American Revolution finally ended for Vermont in Oct. 28, 1790, when the state offered to pay New York $30,000 ($770,000 in 2014 dollars). In exchange, New York would release all claims against land in the future Green Mountain State. New York accepted the deal, clearing the way for Vermont statehood the following year.

Ira Allen (Smithsonian Institution)

Vermont’s tortured journey to statehood was mired in a decades-old struggle between New Hampshire on one side and New York on the other. In between stood the irascible Allen boys, Ira and Ethan (with their Onion River Land Company). Also in the way: Thomas Chittenden, Vermont’s first governor (and president of Vermont when it operated as an independent republic).

Vermont Statehood Uncertain

By 1790, the issues over Vermont statehood were pretty well resolved, but 10 years earlier nothing had been certain. The trouble started decades earlier when Benning Wentworth, New Hampshire’s colonial governor, began issuing land grants in Vermont.

Gov. Benning Wentworth

The King of England invalidated those grants, instead authorizing New York governor George Clinton to distribute the land.

Not surprisingly, the Vermonters already occupying the land took the decision badly. Calling themselves the Green Mountain Boys, they then began running off New York surveyors, judges and anyone else who came to Vermont to enforce the king’s wishes.

Flag of the Green Mountain Boys

When the American Revolution broke out, Vermont found itself in a strange predicament. Its people mostly supported the American side. But New Hampshire and New York blocked it from having much influence in the Continental Congress. Both resisted Vermont’s efforts to form a government of its own and join the Congress.

For a while the Allens even entertained the notion of attaching to Quebec as a British colony. Faced with the prospect of losing Vermont altogether, representatives of other colonies then began softening their positions.

Chittenden Deals

Settling first with New Hampshire, Vermont established the Connecticut River as a boundary. However, many towns along both sides of the river wanted to remain united as part of the same state (either Vermont or New Hampshire). Vermonters then agreed to make no claims west of the western border of Massachusetts, though some in the border regions wanted to remain part of New York.

Presumed likeness of Thomas Chittenden

Finally, the leading families of Vermont, with Chittenden in the lead, agreed to make the offer that New York accepted in 1790.

Ethan Allen never made it to statehood, dying unexpectedly in 1789. By the time of his death, he had made himself widely unpopular, not only for trying to ally with the British but for publishing a book attacking the Bible. News of his death brought no mourning from many public figures. Ira and Chittenden, however, made it to the goal line.

With Vermont established, Ira Allen would move on to cook up a scheme to take over Canada, with French assistance. The British, however, stopped him before he put his plan into action.

This story last updated in 2023. Images: Ira Allen By pohick2 – originally posted to Flickr as 1941.5.3, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6076872.

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