Early Names In Old Dover New Hampshire
Early Names In Old Dover
As has been stated, the first settlement began in Dover at Hilton's Point (Dover Point), in the spring of 1623. The founder was Edward Hilton; two of his associates were his brother William and Thomas Roberts. The place where they landed the ship in w hich they came over is called Pomeroy's Cove, named for Leonard Pomeroy, who owned the ship. It is where the Dover and Portsmouth railroad crosses the tidewater between Dover Neck and Dover Point. Edward Hilton built his house where Hilton Hall now stands. The settlement on the hill, above this cove, began ten years later.
As regards names. At first the locality was Hilton's Point-on-the-Pascat- aqua and that part of the town continued to be called Hilton's Point for more than two hundred years; the present name, Dover Point, is of comparatively recent use. When Hilton sold out to Capt. Thomas Wiggin's company in 1631 and the colony came over in 1633 and began the settlement on Dover Neck, the settlement was called Bristol, as many of the men came from towns in the west of England, along the Bristol Channel; but the whole settlements at Dover and Portsmouth were known by the common name Pascataqua; locally Portsmouth was Strawberry Bank and Dover was Bristol. In 1637 the name was changed to Dover.
When the First Church was organized in November, 163S, a new element was introduced. The second minister. Rev. Thomas Larkham, had been pastor of a church at Northam, England, at the mouth of Bristol channel, and he induced the settlers to change the name from Bristol to Northam, by which name it was known a few years. After Mr. Larkham had left the church and the town had come under the rule of Massachusetts in 1642, the name was changed to Dover. So the names have been Hilton's Point-on-the-Pascat- aqua, Bristol, Northam, and Dover. It is not known that any of the settlers came from Dover. England.
Dover is fifty years older than New Hampshire; that is, the town is half a century older than the province and state. New Hampshire was never a colony, except for a few months in 1775, when it was so called for convenience in acting with the other colonies. The name New Hampshire was not used until about 1675, up to which time Dover was a town in Norfolk county, Massachusetts, and it sent its representatives to the general court in Boston every year and helped make the laws; but in addition to which it made many of its own local laws in town meetings at Dover Neck.
Old Dover comprised the present city and Somersworth, Rollinsford, Durham, Madbury, Lee and Newington. For more than a century, when you find the name Dover in the old records, town and province, it means what we now call Dover Neck. There was the meeting house, what in modern parlance is called town house, and church. There was the business center of the town, and they were strong men who ruled in those days. Other localities had local names for convenience in use in business affairs. Here, where now is the heart of the city and now the center of business, was called Cochecho-in-Dover. Durham was Oyster River-in-Dover, Newington was Bloody Point-in-Dover. The great lumbermen, like Major Waldron, had names for their timber lots, which were granted to them by the town. Many of those names remain to the present time. For example, Tolend is simply an abbreviation of Tolland, England, near where Major Waldron emigrated from when he came to Dover and settled, and built his mill here at the Cochecho falls, in 1642. Mad- bury gets its name from a timber lot up in that territory, which was called Modbury by its owner, who came from the neighborhood of that town in England. The men remembered their old homes. Timber lots had to have names in order to designate transfer titles in buying and selling land, so they applied names that were familiar to them in their old home in England.
There is one name of special interest on account of its origin — "Bloody Point," that section of Old Dover now Newington. It will be seen in the first chapter of these historical sketches, that Capt. John Mason secured a grant from the Council of Plymouth defining the boundary line between his territory and that of Edward Hilton; the local name for Mason's territory was Strawberry Bank; the other was Hilton's Point. At the beginning in 1630, and for several years following, Capt. Walter Neale was Governor at Strawberry Bank; in 1633 and for several years following, Capt. Thomas Wiggin was Governor at Hilton's Point and the settlement on Dover Neck. Captain Wiggin contended that the line between his territory and that of Strawberry Bank was where the present division is between Newington and Portsmouth. Captain Neale contended that Mason's territory extended up to where the Newington railway station is now located, at the east end of the railroad bridge. So, many collisions occurred while the controversy was going on, not only between the settlers, but between Captain Neale and Captain Wiggin, in regard to the division line. On one occasion they came near fighting a duel with swords. The Massachusetts historian, Hubbard, informs us that Wiggin, being forbidden by Neale "to come upon a certain point of land, that lieth in the midway between Dover and Exeter, Captain Wiggin intended to have defended his right by the sword, but it seems both the litigants had so much wit in their anger as to wave the battle, each accounting himself to have done very manfully in what was threatened; so as in respect not of what did, but what might have fallen out, the place to this day retains the formidable name of Bloody Point." So, in the town records of Dover, as well as in common speech among the people, Dover territory on the south side of the Pascataqua river was called Bloody Point in Dover until it was made a separate parish and town in 1712, by the Provincial Assembly, and given the name Newington.
[ History of Dover New Hampshire ]