Richard Waldron
Encyclopedia
Major Richard Waldron (1615–1689) dominated the society and economy of early colonial Dover, New Hampshire
and had a substantial presence in greater New Hampshire
and in neighbouring Massachusetts
. He was the second president of the colonial New Hampshire
Royal Council after it was first separated from Massachusetts
.
An "immensely able, forceful and ambitious" member of a well-off Puritan
family, he left his English home and moved to what is now Dover, New Hampshire. He first came about 1635. He built mills on the Cocheco River, amassed local land holdings that endured in his family for over 170 years, controlled much of the local native trade, and was prominent in local politics and as deputy to the Massachusetts General Court
for twenty five years from 1654. He was speaker
several times. When the first president of the colonial New Hampshire council, John Cutt
, died suddenly, council member Walderne became the acting president or governor until Edward Cranfield
arrived from England. "By the 1670s the portion of Dover known as Cocheco had become something like Waldron's personal fiefdom, and citizens in the other areas of settlement rarely challenged his social authority."
, Warwickshire
, England. One of many children of William Walderne and Catherine Raven, he was christened
on 6 January 1615. Little is known of his early life. The name of his first wife is unknown. He married second Ann Scammon. He had several children.
whose stern Puritan action in 1662 toward three persistent Quaker women proselytisers became the stuff of condemnatory poetry by Whittier
. He ordered them to be marched behind a cart through eleven townships and stripped to the waist and whipped in each. When released in the third township they were marched into, the women left for Maine
.
ed homes of the settlers when they requested to stay the night of 27 June 1689, and, after all was still, stealthily opened the doors to waiting armed native warriors. "In one bloody afternoon, a quarter of the colonists in what is now downtown Dover, NH were gone – 23 killed, 29 captured in a revenge attack by native warriors. In one afternoon, 50 years of peaceful co-existence between the Pennacook
tribe and European colonists ended. The massacre of 1689 entered the history books ...." The sword-wielding elderly Walderne, once disarmed, was singled out for special torture and mutilation.
notes that Walderne was placed in a dilemma about 13 years before his death when as leader of the New Hampshire militia
he was required to bring some Massachusetts fugitive natives into custody at the end of King Philip's War
. They were sheltered by the peaceful Penacooks, who had recently signed a peace treaty
with Walderne. Either Major Walderne and the militia would attack to retrieve the "strange Indians" at some risk to local natives and to the militia members, or would not and would fail to carry out orders from his Boston superiors.
He chose what seemed a third way - invite the natives for a friendly wargame, dupe them into discharging their single-shot weapons, and apprehend the Massachusetts native fugitives at gunpoint. This "sham" or play battle that he envisioned did preserve the local natives and satisfy his Massachusetts masters but, as Belknap tells us, the humiliation and the execution or enslaving of some of the native fugitives once back in Massachusetts also stoked within the local Penacooks an implacable fury and thirst for revenge which culminated in the summer slaughter of 1689.
, grandson Richard
, and great grandson Thomas Westbrook Waldron
were successively members of the Royal Council for the Province of New Hampshire
. The influence of this branch of the Waldron family in New Hampshire declined after the American Revolution
, and though Thomas Westbrook Waldron gave his qualified support to the new United States. This decline came despite the combining of families of influence within the Waldrons: President John Cutt
's daughter Hannah married the second Richard Waldron
and, and after her death, Cutt's grandniece Elinor Vaughan also married the second Richard Waldron. The third Richard III
counted two more governors among his family connections; an uncle George Vaughan
and Vaughan's brother-in-law Jonathan Belcher
. Richard III in turn married the only daughter of Colonel Thomas Westbrook
, leader of the eastern militia and a one-time councillor, grand daughter of a successful Portsmouth
sea merchant, Captain John Sherburne, and great-granddaughter of one of the Laconia Company factors and "assistant governor" Ambrose Gibbins. However, "With the disappearance of an old and illustrious family, the release of a third of our central territory to the uses of a new population and the whirl of machinery, old Dover passed away and new Dover began its life."
The family did not entirely disappear with the passing away of the extensive Waldron lands, however. A Thomas Westbrook Waldron
, grandson of Colonel Thomas Westbrook Waldron, moved north to found a Canadian branch of the family in Charlotte County, New Brunswick
. Two other grandsons, Richard Russell Waldron
and Thomas Westbrook Waldron (consul)
became members of the Wilkes Expedition and lent the family name to a Cape
in the Antarctic
, a landmark in Hawaii, and an island in the San Juan Islands
of present-day Washington state
. Another was an early Major of US Marines, and yet another a college principal.
Dover, New Hampshire
Dover is a city in Strafford County, New Hampshire, in the United States of America. The population was 29,987 at the 2010 census, the largest in the New Hampshire Seacoast region...
and had a substantial presence in greater New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
and in neighbouring Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. He was the second president of the colonial New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
Royal Council after it was first separated from Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
.
An "immensely able, forceful and ambitious" member of a well-off Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
family, he left his English home and moved to what is now Dover, New Hampshire. He first came about 1635. He built mills on the Cocheco River, amassed local land holdings that endured in his family for over 170 years, controlled much of the local native trade, and was prominent in local politics and as deputy to the Massachusetts General Court
Massachusetts General Court
The Massachusetts General Court is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the Colonial Era, when this body also sat in judgment of judicial appeals cases...
for twenty five years from 1654. He was speaker
Speaker (politics)
The term speaker is a title often given to the presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body. The speaker's official role is to moderate debate, make rulings on procedure, announce the results of votes, and the like. The speaker decides who may speak and has the...
several times. When the first president of the colonial New Hampshire council, John Cutt
John Cutt
John Cutt was the first President of the Province of New Hampshire. John Cutt was born in Wales, emigrated to the colonies in 1646, and became a successful merchant and mill-owner in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was married to Hannah Starr, daughter of Dr...
, died suddenly, council member Walderne became the acting president or governor until Edward Cranfield
Edward Cranfield
Edward Cranfield was an English colonial administrator. He was governor of the Province of New Hampshire from 1682 to 1685, in an administration that was marked by hostility between Cranfield and the colonists. He left New Hampshire in 1685 for Barbados, where he was appointed commissioner of...
arrived from England. "By the 1670s the portion of Dover known as Cocheco had become something like Waldron's personal fiefdom, and citizens in the other areas of settlement rarely challenged his social authority."
Birth and family
Waldron (or Walderne) was born in AlcesterAlcester
Alcester is an old market town of Roman origin at the junction of the River Alne and River Arrow in Warwickshire, England. It is situated approximately west of Stratford-upon-Avon, and 8 miles south of Redditch, close to the Worcestershire border...
, Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
, England. One of many children of William Walderne and Catherine Raven, he was christened
Infant baptism
Infant baptism is the practice of baptising infants or young children. In theological discussions, the practice is sometimes referred to as paedobaptism or pedobaptism from the Greek pais meaning "child." The practice is sometimes contrasted with what is called "believer's baptism", or...
on 6 January 1615. Little is known of his early life. The name of his first wife is unknown. He married second Ann Scammon. He had several children.
Masonian property dispute
Perhaps because he was a prominent landholder, he was singled out for a lawsuit which was part of a plan seeking to overturn all land titles in colonial New Hampshire in favour of the descendants of John Mason, the adventurer who had named New Hampshire and planted the first British colonists.Whipping of Quaker women
Walderne was the local magistrateMagistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
whose stern Puritan action in 1662 toward three persistent Quaker women proselytisers became the stuff of condemnatory poetry by Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...
. He ordered them to be marched behind a cart through eleven townships and stripped to the waist and whipped in each. When released in the third township they were marched into, the women left for Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
.
Cocheco Massacre
Richard Walderne may be most famous for the way he died. Local native women were allowed into the garrisonGarrison
Garrison is the collective term for a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, but now often simply using it as a home base....
ed homes of the settlers when they requested to stay the night of 27 June 1689, and, after all was still, stealthily opened the doors to waiting armed native warriors. "In one bloody afternoon, a quarter of the colonists in what is now downtown Dover, NH were gone – 23 killed, 29 captured in a revenge attack by native warriors. In one afternoon, 50 years of peaceful co-existence between the Pennacook
Pennacook
The Pennacook, also known by the names Merrimack and Pawtucket, were a North American people that primarily inhabited the Merrimack River valley of present-day New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as well as portions of southern Maine...
tribe and European colonists ended. The massacre of 1689 entered the history books ...." The sword-wielding elderly Walderne, once disarmed, was singled out for special torture and mutilation.
"Sham" battle
Could he have escaped his death? The historian Reverend Jeremy BelknapJeremy Belknap
Jeremy Belknap was an American clergyman and historian. His great achievement was the "History of New Hampshire", published in three volumes between 1784 and 1792. This work is the first modern history written by an American, embodying a new rigor in research, annotation, and reporting.Jeremy was...
notes that Walderne was placed in a dilemma about 13 years before his death when as leader of the New Hampshire militia
New Hampshire Militia
The New Hampshire Militia was first organized in March 1680, by New Hampshire Colonial President John Cutt. The King of England authorized the Provincial President to give commissions to persons who shall be best qualified for regulating and discipline of the militia. President Cutt placed Major...
he was required to bring some Massachusetts fugitive natives into custody at the end of King Philip's War
King Philip's War
King Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–76. The war is named after the main leader of the...
. They were sheltered by the peaceful Penacooks, who had recently signed a peace treaty
Peace treaty
A peace treaty is an agreement between two or more hostile parties, usually countries or governments, that formally ends a state of war between the parties...
with Walderne. Either Major Walderne and the militia would attack to retrieve the "strange Indians" at some risk to local natives and to the militia members, or would not and would fail to carry out orders from his Boston superiors.
He chose what seemed a third way - invite the natives for a friendly wargame, dupe them into discharging their single-shot weapons, and apprehend the Massachusetts native fugitives at gunpoint. This "sham" or play battle that he envisioned did preserve the local natives and satisfy his Massachusetts masters but, as Belknap tells us, the humiliation and the execution or enslaving of some of the native fugitives once back in Massachusetts also stoked within the local Penacooks an implacable fury and thirst for revenge which culminated in the summer slaughter of 1689.
Family legacy
His son RichardRichard Waldron (Colonel)
Richard, son of the Major of the same name, maintained the position of the Waldron family in Dover and colonial New Hampshire through intermarriage with other leading families and inheritance or purchase of many of the positions once held by his father...
, grandson Richard
Richard Waldron (Secretary)
Richard Waldron was a major opponent of the Wentworth oligarchy in colonial New Hampshire. He supported a continued political subordination of New Hampshire to Massachusetts and opposed moves to separation from this traditional senior partner...
, and great grandson Thomas Westbrook Waldron
Thomas Westbrook Waldron
Thomas Westbrook Waldron, a captain in the 1745 expedition against the Fortress of Louisbourg, afterwards a commissioner at Albany, New York, a Royal councillor in 1782 and later described as a Colonel, abandoned a close friendship with the last royal governor of colonial New Hampshire, John...
were successively members of the Royal Council for the Province of New Hampshire
Province of New Hampshire
The Province of New Hampshire is a name first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America. It was formally organized as an English royal colony on October 7, 1691, during the period of English colonization...
. The influence of this branch of the Waldron family in New Hampshire declined after the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
, and though Thomas Westbrook Waldron gave his qualified support to the new United States. This decline came despite the combining of families of influence within the Waldrons: President John Cutt
John Cutt
John Cutt was the first President of the Province of New Hampshire. John Cutt was born in Wales, emigrated to the colonies in 1646, and became a successful merchant and mill-owner in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was married to Hannah Starr, daughter of Dr...
's daughter Hannah married the second Richard Waldron
Richard Waldron (Colonel)
Richard, son of the Major of the same name, maintained the position of the Waldron family in Dover and colonial New Hampshire through intermarriage with other leading families and inheritance or purchase of many of the positions once held by his father...
and, and after her death, Cutt's grandniece Elinor Vaughan also married the second Richard Waldron. The third Richard III
Richard Waldron (Secretary)
Richard Waldron was a major opponent of the Wentworth oligarchy in colonial New Hampshire. He supported a continued political subordination of New Hampshire to Massachusetts and opposed moves to separation from this traditional senior partner...
counted two more governors among his family connections; an uncle George Vaughan
George Vaughan (New Hampshire)
George Vaughan may be best known for being Lieutenant Governor of colonial New Hampshire for only one year. A graduate of Harvard College in 1696, he was also at various times a merchant, Colonel of militia, agent for the province to England, and counsellor.1Sources disagree regarding whether he...
and Vaughan's brother-in-law Jonathan Belcher
Jonathan Belcher
Jonathan Belcher was colonial governor of the British provinces of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.-Early life:Jonathan Belcher was born in Cambridge, Province of Massachusetts Bay, in 1682...
. Richard III in turn married the only daughter of Colonel Thomas Westbrook
Thomas Westbrook
Colonel Thomas Westbrook was a military figure in colonial America. The City of Westbrook, Maine is named after him. Thomas Westbrook's varied career included the role of senior New England militia officer in Maine. He was active during the French and Indian Wars...
, leader of the eastern militia and a one-time councillor, grand daughter of a successful Portsmouth
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire in the United States. It is the largest city but only the fourth-largest community in the county, with a population of 21,233 at the 2010 census...
sea merchant, Captain John Sherburne, and great-granddaughter of one of the Laconia Company factors and "assistant governor" Ambrose Gibbins. However, "With the disappearance of an old and illustrious family, the release of a third of our central territory to the uses of a new population and the whirl of machinery, old Dover passed away and new Dover began its life."
The family did not entirely disappear with the passing away of the extensive Waldron lands, however. A Thomas Westbrook Waldron
Thomas Westbrook Waldron (Canada)
Thomas Westbrook Waldron was the first of his New Hampshire family to immigrate to Canada and was an early resident and farmer of Charlotte County, New Brunswick. He was the senior grandson of his namesake grandfather, yet moved away from his first homeland, where his family had been prominent. ...
, grandson of Colonel Thomas Westbrook Waldron, moved north to found a Canadian branch of the family in Charlotte County, New Brunswick
Charlotte County, New Brunswick
Charlotte County is located in the southwestern portion of New Brunswick, Canada.In most of the county, fishing and aquaculture dominate the local economy, although the town of St. Andrews is a tourist mecca and St...
. Two other grandsons, Richard Russell Waldron
Richard Russell Waldron
Richard Russell Waldron was a purser "and special agent" in the Wilkes Expedition, together with younger brother Thomas Westbrook Waldron . Cape Waldron in Antarctica, and perhaps Waldron Island in Washington state, were named after him. Waldron Ledge overlooking the Hawaiian Kilauea Crater is...
and Thomas Westbrook Waldron (consul)
Thomas Westbrook Waldron (consul)
]Thomas Westbrook Waldron was a captain's clerk on the Wilkes Expedition, and the first United States consul to Hong Kong. His service to the United States consular service was honoured by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a ceremony in 2009...
became members of the Wilkes Expedition and lent the family name to a Cape
Cape Waldron
Cape Waldron is an ice-covered cape in Antarctica, just westward of Totten Glacier. It was delineated by G.D. Blodgett from aerial photographs taken by USN Operation Highjump , and named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for R.R. Waldron, purser on the sloop USS Vincennes of the...
in the Antarctic
Antarctic
The Antarctic is the region around the Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica and the ice shelves, waters and island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence...
, a landmark in Hawaii, and an island in the San Juan Islands
San Juan Islands
The San Juan Islands are an archipelago in the northwest corner of the contiguous United States between the US mainland and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The San Juan Islands are part of the U.S...
of present-day Washington state
Washington State
Washington State may refer to:* Washington , often referred to as "Washington state" to differentiate it from Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States* Washington State University, a land-grant college in that state- See also :...
. Another was an early Major of US Marines, and yet another a college principal.