South Berwick, Maine — On Mother’s Day this year, I went for a walk with the mothers in Vaughan Woods State Park.
Vaughan Woods is a popular local walking spot, as it includes, along with its three miles of trails, the imposing presence of the 1785 Georgian-style Hamilton House. Walking in Vaughan Woods was a wonderful Mother’s Day gift because I hadn’t been there in many years, and had forgotten the simple beauty of the woodland trail along the Salmon Falls River. After a cold April, everyone we encountered that sunny morning in May was happy to be outside, and we wished a good day to many mothers out strolling with children young and old.
Mothers have walked these 80+acres for centuries. Here are a few of pieces of their stories.
Walking along the trail beside the Salmon Falls River, we came upon the view of Hamilton House, built in 1785 by Colonel Jonathan Hamilton, an enterprising merchant and community leader. The Colonel married Mary Manning in 1771. Mary likely walked on this land with her two children, Betsey and Joseph, born a year apart. But Mary’s wealth couldn’t protect her family from the democratic afflictions common to all in the 18th century. Young Joseph died at age 15, and Betsey a few years later, at age 21, after giving birth to her first child, an infant who died a few months after her mother. When Mary Manning Hamilton died at age 50 in 1800, her obituary noted, among many other qualities, that she was “a peculiarly kind & tender Mother.”
One of the first European-American mothers to walk in this forest was Margaret Warren, mother of five, whose home was located on a high spot in the woods, and probably had a view of Cow Cove, since the site was likely soon cleared of most trees. Margaret, who hailed from Ireland and landed in Kittery, came here after marrying James Warren.
James was a Scotsman who had survived the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, where he was taken prisoner by Oliver Cromwell’s forces , then shipped out to the colonies and sold as an indentured servant.
James probably served the first part of his indenture at the Lynn Iron Works, but came with his master Richard Leader to Kittery – which then encompassed today’s town of South Berwick – around 1651 to build a saw mill at the falls of Great Works River (which enters the Salmon Falls River a short distance above Vaughan Woods). Somewhere along the way he met Margaret, and they married in 1654, by which time James had acquired his land. They had their first child – or perhaps their first surviving child, Gilbert, by 1656.
The slight indention of a cellar hole mark the Warren homesite at Vaughan Woods.
The Warrens both had strong constitutions, with James dying in 1702, at age 81, and Margaret in 1713, who was probably in her 80s by then (date of birth unknown). Margaret and James lived in a time of sporadic but intense conflict between settlers and the Wabanaki. Her daughter Grizel Warren Otis, at age 24, and infant granddaughter Margaret — just a few months old — were taken as captives during the Wabanaki raid at Cocheco (Dover) in June 1689*. I imagine that Margaret could see the smoke billowing in the distance as several houses burned across the river in New Hampshire.
As the crow flies, Cocheco was not far away — across the river and further inland. Word must have spread quickly, with Margaret soon learning of the death of her granddaughter, three-year-old Hannah, along with her daughter’s 64-year-old husband, the blacksmith Richard Otis. She must have worried about Grizel and her fate.
Was Margaret hopeful when she eventually learned that Grizel had been taken to Montreal? Grizel, however, never returned home. She became a Catholic, took the name Madeleine, married a Frenchman, Philippe Robitaille, and started a new family. I’m guessing she was happier in Montreal, where she lived until her death at age 90. Unlike her old goat first husband, Grizel’s Frenchman Philippe was the same age, and together they had five children.
Margaret did not live to see the return of her granddaughter, Margaret, a remarkable woman known as Christine Otis Baker (Hotesse), who after many adventures landed back in Dover in 1734. Christine-Margaret had married in Canada, but after seven years and three children, she became a young widow in 1714. Eventually she married Captain Thomas Baker of Deerfield, Massachusetts, whom she had met in Montreal, first in 1701 when he was a captive and then again in 1714 when he returned to Montreal on a negotiating mission.
French authorities would not allow her to leave Montreal with her property or her children, and she left her children behind to return to New England with Baker. Although she later returned to Montreal to try to regain custody of her children, the authorities would not allow her to see them. Christine soldiered on, had another son, and lived out her years, until her mid-80s, in Dover, New Hampshire, where she was well-known as a tavern keeper.
Almost 200 years after these events, another mother — a stepmother — served as indirect catalyst for reviving and remembering the stories of these earlier mothers.
Emily Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett, in the garden at Hamilton House. Elise Tyson Vaughan, an accomplished photographer, was the photographer (Historic New England photo; citation below).
In 1898, Emily Tyson, the widow of railroad magnate George Tyson, and her stepdaughter Elise (Elizabeth) Tyson purchased the house on the recommendation of their writer friend Sarah One Jewett. The mother-daughter pair wanted to spend summers in Maine, away from the heat and pollution of Boston. By then, Hamilton House had fallen into disrepair, as the Hamilton fortune evaporated in the early 1800s (probably due in large part to Jefferson’s Embargo Act). Several generations of the Goodwin family had tried to farm the property, but could not turn the tide on the steady decline of farming in 19th century Maine.
The two women restored the house to its former grandeur. Along with their York friend Elizabeth Perkins, they were leaders in the Colonial Revival movement** that led to a renewed interest in colonial-era history and the preservation of many colonial-era dwellings.
Elise Tyson married Henry Goodman Vaughan later in life, when she was in her mid-forties, and did not have children, but she nurtured artists and writers who frequented her home, as well as her own craft of photography.
Elise also was the mother of this park, donating the Hamilton House and the surrounding land to the state of Maine upon her death in 1949. Now, on Mother’s Day and every other day of the year, we walk in her footsteps and those who came before.
The Warren home purportedly looked down upon Cow Cove, another historic location where, in 1634, the ship the Pied Cow anchored, and offloaded livestock and supplies to build the first sawmill at the Great Works falls. James Warren and other Scottish prisoners came 17 years later to work on rebuilding and expanding that first mill.
Notes and resources
Although you don’t really need a map to walk the trails of Vaughan Woods, the trail map here provides a good sense of the different locations described in my post.
Hamilton House, owned by Historic New England, is open for tours from June through October. On summer Sundays, visitors enjoy concerts in the garden.
Thanks to the Old Berwick Historical Society for many specific dates and pieces of information from its information-rich website.
Sarah Orne Jewett’s romance novel, The Tory Lover, features Hamilton House as its setting, and features a cast of characters drawn from Maine-NH Seacoast history.
For more on the remarkable story of Christine Otis Baker, see Christine Otis Baker, Captured by Indians, Dover Public Library, Dover, N.H.
For more on James Warren and the Scottish prisoners of Dunbar, see “James Warren, #108 on ‘The Dunbar Prisoners’ List” at the website/blog, Scottish Prisoners of War.
Other sources for this post include www.geni.com, especially for Grizel Warren Otis Robitaille, and the Warren family genealogy at archive.org, especially for Margaret/Christine Otis Baker.
*On the Cocheco Raid: This raid was essentially a revenge attack upon Cocheco, in retaliation for an event near the end of King Philip’s War in which Major Richard Waldron of Cocheco invited hundreds of native people to his trading post for a peace parley. Instead, Waldron maneuvered the situation to capture 100s of native peoples, who were then executed or sold into slavery. The Cocheco Raid was one of the first events of “King William’s War,” or what many called the “Second IndianWar.” For more details, I highly recommend Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War by Lisa Brooks, which includes a companion website, especially Captivity at Cocheco.
**On the Colonial Revival Movement: I am aware that this movement also had its origins in the anti-immigration movement of the early 20th century, a time of peak immigration. Tracing ancestry to the colonial era was a way of establishing legitimacy and superiority to the “hordes” flocking to America. That said, Colonial Revival resulted in the preservation of many buildings that might have been lost to the wrecking ball, as well as of documents, ephemera, and other clues that historians continue to unravel today to tell ever more interesting and complex histories of early America.
Vaughan, Elizabeth R. Full-length informal portrait of Emily Davis Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett standing in the doorway of Hamilton House, South Berwick, Maine, undated. n.d. Web. 06 Jul 2018. <https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:bz60dd41p>.
