Early Opposition to Arbitrary Government Sanborn Family

New Hampshire State Magazine, Volume 23 article by F B Sanborn

This is an article published many years ago some of the information on genealogy may have been updated, but the old records and court documents have not nor will they. I have included pictures, news clippings and links. Please note spelling on names, places and other words are not correct, but I tried edit some of the content.
 

The historical details of the Puritans from Victor C. Sanborn’s genealogy of the Sanborn family, to be published next year, space will be given to an important document for the early history of Hampton, and of the Sambornes (as they then wrote the name) in America. Joshua Coffin, in his “History of Newbury," and Miss Lucy Dow, in her “History of Hampton," have briefly touched on the resistance to arbitrary government, by the early planters of Hampton, in the year 1653, when the persecution 0f the Quakers was about to begin, preceded, as it was, by severe measures against the Baptists. But neither of these chroniclers seems to have quite understood the importance of the act in question, or the significance of the protest made against it. Mr. Coffin had seen the petition of the Hampton planters, but did not print it in full; and naturally be paid more attention to the remonstrances from Newbury, the town of which he was writing the history. The course of events ran something like this:

                                    Robert Pike (1616-1706)  Picture from Bryan Pike

Robert Pike, one of the founders of Salisbury, and, in 1653, a lieutenant, petty magistrate, and active citizen there, at the age of thirty-six, was informed that the General Court of the Massachusetts colony, of which John Endicott was then governor,

We have passed a law making it penal for certain persons to teach religion,— aimed particularly, it was said, at Thomas Macy and Joseph Peasley, of Salisbury, his neighbors,—and was properly indignant at such inter meddling with the conscience of Englishmen. Being accustomed to speak his mind, Lieutenant Pike declared that “such persons as did act in making that law, did break their oath to the country”; for, said he, “ It is against the liberty of the country, both civil and ecclesiastical.” In this he was but echoing the words of Vane and of Cromwell, then in power in England, who had said, “Liberty of conscience is a natural right, and he that would have it ought to give it.” But the Massachusetts bigots held no such liberal doctrine; and they soon sent an officer from Boston to the other side of the Merrimack, to bring Pike before them. Once there, the general court ordered him to pay a fine of twenty marks (about thirteen pounds sterling) and to be disfranchised, disqualified from ever holding office, and bound over to good behavior, like a criminal.

                                Hussey Memorial Stone from Founder's Park, Hampton N.H.

Lieutenant Pike was personally known to every man in Hampton, the next town beyond Salisbury, and much sorrow and wrath was felt at his unjust sentence. Then, and for years after, he was intimate with

Christopher Hussey. a leading citizen of Hampton, and the uncle by marriage of Nathaniel Batchelder, grandson of Rev. Stephen Batchelder, who had founded the plantation in 1638, and of the three brothers Samborne, John, \William, and Stephen, from whom all the American Sanborns are descended. Mr. Hussey seems to have been the man who advised a petition to the court, asking to have Pike‘s sentence revoked; from the handwriting it was probably drafted by John Samborne. They and their kinsmen signed it, and they were joined in this by the two Daltons, brother and nephew of the successor of Batchilder in the ministry, by Robert Tucker, the “ chirurgeon ” of the town, by Jasper Blake, Abraham Perkins, Humphrey Humber, the Marstons, Moultons, and other substantial citizens, to the number of thirty-eight in all. A larger number of signers added their names in Salisbury and Newbury, and a few in Andover and Haverhill; but the first page of the rare old paper is given up wholly to Hampton, and the autographs of its planters. It is still very legible, as will be seen,—and nowhere else is there extant a fuller list of the actual signatures.
 This moderate and numerously signed petition made the Lord Brethren at Boston (if possible) still more angry than they had before been. They had the prudence, however, to repeal the obnoxious order “concerning public preaching without allowance; which order, we understand, is dissatisfactory to divers of the brethren whom we have cause to respect and tender." But they also proceeded to punish the petitioners in these words:

The Court cannot but deeply resent that so many persons, of several towns, conditions and relations, should combine together to present such an unjust and unreasonable request as the revoking the sentence passed the last court against Lieutenant Pike and the restoring him to his proper liberty, without any petition of his own, or at least acknowledgement of his offense, fully proved against him; which was no less than detaining this Court and charging them with breach of oath; etc.—which the petitioners call some words let fall by occasion. The Court doth therefore order, in this extraordinary case, that commissioners be appointed in the several towns,—naine1y, [here those for the other towns] and Captain Wiggan for Hampton,—-who shall have power to call the said petitioners together, or so many of them at a time as they think meet, and require a reason of their unjust request, and how they came to be induced to subscribe to said petition, and so to make return to the next session, that the court may consider further how to proceed herein.

This was the preliminary step. After Captain Wiggin had made his report for Hampton, as given below, and it appeared that Christopher Hussey and his nephew, John Sanborne, would not give up their right to petition, in any manner and for any cause they saw fit, the Lords Brethren then voted (October, 1654,) that those persons “who have not given satisfaction, and whose names are herein written, shall be summoned to give bond, in £10 for each man, to give answers for their offense before the county court.” It does not appear whether my ancestor actually gave bonds or not,—probably only in name, if at all, for he continued to serve the town of Hampton in various capacities, civil and military, till his death in 1692, at the age of seventy-two. He was even recom‘ mended by Sir William Warren to the Lords of Trade, in 1679, as one of the persons in Hampton best qualified for his majesty’s council,~—to which, in fact, his uncle Hussey was

appointed. And it is worth remarking that of the four so named by Sir William (Samuel Dalton, Captain Hussey, John Samborne, and Nathaniel Weare) all who were living in Hampton in 1653 had signed the censured petition.

It may be further remarked that Thomas Wiggin, who made the report, was not strictly a resident of Hampton at any time; but had taken up a large farm in Stratham, not yet made into a town. and was rated and paid taxes at Hampton for convenience, rather than at Exeter; his son Andrew afterwards (1659) married Hannah Bradstreet, daughter of Simon, afterwards governor of Massachusetts, and his wife, the poetess, Anne Bradstreet, whose father was Governor Dudley, one of the strictest of the Lords Brethren.

The Wiggin report, in 1654, was brief and suggestive: 

For Hampton, Captain Wiggin returns that those persons that gave their hands to that petition do acknowledge their ofience. and humbly desire the court to pass it by; except two persons, who refused to make answer, to any satisfaction; whose names (Christopher Hussey and John Samborne) are here underwritten.
It is probable that the uncle and nephew, as heads of the two families of Hussey and Samborne, took upon themselves the reproach that might attach to disobedience, and allowed the younger members to shield themselves from further censure.It is extremely doubtful if either William or Stephen Samborne (the latter had special charge of his aged grandfather, Rev. Stephen Bachiler, then ninety-three years old, and went to England with him not long after), “humbly desired” to be pardoned; but they were probably so reported by Captain Wiggin, who wished to bring the matter to a peaceful issue. Still less is it likely that another of my ancestors, Edward Gove, then registered in Salisbury, but afterwards a citizen of Hampton (in that part which is now Seabrook), made many apologies for his boldness in petitioning; for he was the person who, in 1683, headed a small rebellion against the tyranny of Cranfield and Mason in New Hampshire, and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered for that offense. 

Gove was taken to England, but there pardoned and returned to Hampton, where he died in his bed. John Samborne's son Joseph married Edward Gove‘s daughter. and established himself, about 1680, on the Sanborn estate in Hampton Falls. where I was born, and which has never since been out of the family. John Samborne himself was arrested in October, 1684, at his house in Old Hampton, for not admitting the title of Mason to his property there; the next year he was chosen, with his cousin, Nathaniel Bachiler, to represent Hampton in the general assembly at Portsmouth. He died in 1692, as before said, and his brother William (who was drawn a juryman for the trial of Gove, in 1683, but did not sit) died the same year. From these two brothers are descended all the Sanborns in the United States. and Canada.

Major Pike (he rose to that grade after 1653, when he was only lieutenant,) paid his fine for exercising the privilege of free speech, but was not long disfranchised; his pastor, Mr. Worcester, who preceded the pugna’ cious John Wheelwright as minister of Salisbury, petitioned the general court in Pike’s favor, and the court voted October 23, 16 57, to revoke his sentence.

He was soon after elected representative from Salisbury, and took his seat at Boston, May 10, 1658. At the same session, but without Pike’s vote, a second severe law was passed against the Quakers, of which sect by this time were Thomas Macy and Joseph Peasley, at whom the law of 1653 was aimed. Macy soon went away to Nantucket, of which he and a son of Christopher Hussey were founders, and where Pike was one of the landowners. King Charles II. in 1661 revoked the law against the Quakers, after several of the sect had been hanged in Boston, and others flogged in other towns,—two women, in particular, having been sentenced by Major Waldron of Dover to be flogged, in 1656, all the way from Dover to Ipswich, at the cart‘s tail. When they reached Salisbury, Major Pike, through Walter Barefoot, released them, and forbade their whipping in his jurisdiction, as the tradition goes. In 1682, notwithstanding his liberal opinions, he was made an assistant, that is, a councillor, of the governor of Massachusetts, and continued in that office till he was eighty years old. Lydia Wardwell Perkins Quaker

In the New England Magazine for September last, is a portrait of this old worthy, with a sketch of his life, and an account of the petition here copied; but Mr. Withington, the writer, had apparently never seen the original petition. In the only form now preserved, none but the Hampton petitioners and some of those from Salisbury signed in autograph; the other names are copied on the back of the Hampton petition, which makes the first page with its signers, thirty-eight in number. Only seven of these were unable to write their own names; and the list includes nearly all the principal citizens of Hampton, Hampton Falls, and Seabrook, at that date. Transcribed into legible English, but preserving the antique spelling, this interesting document reads as follows:
To the Honuered General] Court
Nowe assembled at Boston, The humble petition of the inhabitants of Hampton, Salisbury, Newbery, Haveral, Andover, Sheweth: That Whereas our Loving friend Leaftenant Robert Pike of Salsbery hath by occasion, as it is witnessed Against him, Let fall 50111 words for w‘h this hon'rd Court hath bine pleased to censuer him,Wee haveing had Experiance that he hath beene A peaceable man and a usefull instrument amongst us, Doe thearefor humbly desier this honnered Court that the sd. Sentance maye be Revoaked and that the sd. Leaftenant Pike bee Againe restored unto his former Libertye. Soe shall wee still praie, etc.
Christopher Husse, Robart Tucke, Richard Swaine,]ohn Samborne, Francis Swaine, Williem Samborne, Stephen Samborne, Moses Cox, William Fifield, John Redman, Thomas Fletcher [T], Jeffery Miugay, Eliakim Wardell, John Wedgwood, Thomas Marston, The T Mark of Willim Maston, Philemon Dalton, Samuel] Dalton, Robert Page, Will. Moulton, Samuell Fogge, Nathaniell Bachiler, Jisper Blake, Christopher Palmer, John Marston, The V Mark of Josiah Meren, The Mark of Antoni Talier, The V Mark of John Cass, The TMark of John Merin [Marian], Thomas Coullman, Thomas Philbrock, Abraham Perkins, Henry Roby, The 7‘ Mark of William Cole, Nathaniell Boulter, Humphrie Humber, The Mark X of John Clifoord.
Along the lower margin of the page is written by the clerk of the deputies:
The deputies deser the honer’d Magistrates to declare their Apprehentions in this Case in the first place. WILLIAM Tommy Cleric.
No date appears on this petition, but it was signed in the years 1653-54, and presented in the spring of the latter year, I think. This was at the time the Quakers began to be troublesome to the Puritans, although the first English Quakers did not land in Boston till the summer of 1656; and the first law against them in Massachusetts (which still held jurisdiction in the four New Hampshire towns of Hampton, Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth), was published by beat of drum, October 21, 1656. Its savage preamble ran thus:
Whereas there is a cursed sect of heretics lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers, who take upon them to be. immediately sent of God, and infallibly assisted by the Spirit to speak and write blasphemous opinions, despisinz government and the order of God in church and commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turn the people from the faith, and gain proselytes to their pernicious ways, etc.

                              See Founder's Park Some Family Names from Nutfield Genealogy 

During this short persecution of the Quakers, Christopher Hussey and his family seem to have joined the sect, which became numerous in Seabrook and Salisbury, numbering many of the names of Chase, Hussey, Page, Philbrick, Gove, etc. But John Samborne, my immediate ancestor, and his family seem to have remained in the orthodox church; they were friendly to liberty and stout in resisting aggression, but not given to fanatical ways or strange doctrine. Edward Gove may have been tinctured with fanaticism; some of his sayings and doings look like it, and he was the progenitor of many Quakers, as well as of one race of Sanborns. Both he and his daughter Mary’s father in-law, John Samborne, were of the class described by Gray as Some village Hampden who, with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood; and both Samborne and Hussey had no hesitation in withstanding the more formidable tyranny of the bigots who then bore sway in Boston. The right of petition has seldom been more haughtily denied than by these petty rulers who fined Pike, and threatened his neighbors for raising a respectful voice in his behalf.
An examination of the autograph signatures discloses some odd facts. See Hampton's Gove -- Ahead Of His Time By Doug Gove
While many of the Hampton planters use a chirography resembling Shakespeare's peculiar signature, others, as the three Sambornes, have a more clerkly hand, of the early seventeenth century; and still others, like Abraham Perkins, Humphry Humber, and Nathaniel Bachiler, write as do men of the present age. The latter's signature resembles his grandfather's, Rev. Stephen, as preserved in his letters to Governor Winthrop, and given in the GRANITE MONTHLY, by Victor Sanborn contributing his researches in England on the Bachiler and Samborne families. He is soon to publish the copious genealogy, on which he and other New Hampshire Sanborns have been working for more than half a century, and has been fortunate in finding, at the oflice of the secretary of state of Massachusetts, this list which preserves the unquestioned autograph of three brothers who came to Hampton, :50 years ago, to plant there the sturdy race now branching into almost every state of the Union and every province of Canada.

                                                
See Winnacunnet Mike in New Hampshire
From F B Sanborn article on Charles Henry Sanborn The Granite Monthly: A New Hampshire Magazine Volumes 26-27

Some Pictures from New Hampshire Biography and Autobiography Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

 

Picture of Chief Justice Shaw and a few words from F B Sanborn: "In the morning I was taken to Boston by Sheriff Moore and carried to the old court house, near the present City Hall, where the justices of the Supreme Court were holding a law term. My counsel, who volunteered for the case, were Joh n A. Andrew, soon afterwards governor; Samuel Sewall, a cousin of Mrs. Alcott, and my college classmate, Robert Treat Paine. The case was argued by Andrew and Sewall in my behalf, and by C. L- Woodbury, son of the distinguished Justice Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, who had been dead for some years, but whose son was the Democratic district attorney.

The court room was filled with my Concord and Boston friends, among them Wendell Phillips and Walt Whitman; and in the afternoon Chief Justice Shaw, the most eminent jurist in New England, delivered the following decision, setting me free."

 

                                                          Victor Channing Sanborn

 

Sanborn Drug Store at Old Fellows Block Hampton NH

Some pictures from Hampton Public Library

John N. Sanborn of Hampton Falls, N.H. Biography from A History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire (1915)

                       Amanda Sanborn, daughter of V C Sanborn Seabrook NH

A snapshot of Frank B. Sanborn standing in the door of the old house where he was born. Taken on his last visit to this town, September, 1916. fom History of town of Hamton Falls NH

George Berry Sanborn. 1833-1893. Son of Levi and Mary (Berry) Sanborn.

       

John Chandler Sanborn. 1834-1916. Son of John P. and Sally (Cram) Sanborn.

        

Hon. John Newell Sanborn. Son of Levi and Mary (Berry) Sanborn

              

Benjamin Franklin Weare. Son of John and Lydia (Buzzell) Weare.

                

John Harrison Gove was a lineal descendant of the eighth generation from Edward Gove of pre-revolutionary fame; born in Weare, N. H., May 29, 1813, the fourth and youngest child of John and Hannah (Chase) Gove.

Joseph Blake Cram. Son of John S. and Lucy Ellen (Blake) Cram.

              

Moses Emery Batchelder. 1822-1911. Son of Moses and Abigail (Drake) Batchelder.

Samuel Batchelder. 1839-1896. Son of Simeon and Adeline (Farnham) Batchelder.

 
 

 

• The Hard Case of the Founder of Old Hampton: Wrongs of Rev. Stephen Bachiller, Read at the Reunion of the Bachelder Family, Seabrook, N.H., August 9, 1900
• DEBORAH BLAKE IN HAMPTON.
• A few memories and traditions of Sandorton By Hanna Sanborn Philbrook
• Stephen Bachiler's Coat of Arms
• The New Puritan: New England Two Hundred Years Ago: Some Account of the Life of Robert Pike, the Puritan who Defended the Quakers, Resisted Clerical Domination, and Opposed the Witchcraft Prosecution  James Shepperd Pike 
• The National Magazine; A Monthly Journal of American History, Volume 3--Curtis G Hussey
• Robert Pike A Forgotten Champion of Freedom by Nathan N. Withington
• A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers: For the Testimony of a Good Conscience from the Time of Their Being First Distinguished by that Name in the Year 1650 to the Time of the Act Commonly Called the Act of Toleration Granted to Protestant Dissenters in the First Year of the Reign of King William the Third and Queen Mary in the Year 1689, Volume 1 
• Puritans v. Quakers – Trials & Tribulations
• Nantucket Founders
• Records of the Pike Family Association of America
• Whittier News Letter 2012
• Quakers in Exeter
• The old families of Salisbury and Amesbury, Massachusetts with some related families of Newbury, Haverhill, Ipswich and Hampton by David W. Hoyt.
• Excerpts on the Rev. Stephen Bachiler from the History of Lynn by Alonzo Lewis (1829)