Captain John Huddleston and the Hiltons
Both William and Edward Hilton were members of the Fishmongers Guild of London, and were part of a fishing fleet run by the Hiltons. (they had a monopoly for salt production from sea water using salt panns in Elizabethan times - essential for preserving fish stocks caught in American waters) It would be interesting to know if Captain John Huddleston was a member of the same guild. The letter he sent to Plimoth was addressed to his "good friends at Plimoth" warning them about the Indian massacres at Jamestown..
On receipt of the letter, a party of menfrom Plimoth (presumably including William Hilton who had arrived on the Fortune in 1621) set sail for the Maine fishing grounds, almost 150 miles to the north east to see if they could "buy, beg or borrow provisions from the English ships there, for famine begane now to pinch them sore"
John Huddleston gave them all the stores he could spare and refused payment of any kind for them, urging other skippers to do the same, many of whom responded
They returned as quickly as possible to Plimoth - to find planters and their wives staggering with hunger as they went about their exhausting daily chores, some of them now reduced to skin and bones, others painfully puffed and swollen"
Source- Saints & Strangers, George R Willison.
Other settlements, too, continued to be planted along the coast, Robert Gorges, who had received a grant of some three hundred square miles on the northeast side of Massachusetts Bay, but who had settled his men at Wessagusset, left some of them there when he returned to England, and the permanent occupation of that section was begun.3 In 1623, David Thompson established himself at the mouth of the Piscataqua; while, Edward and William Hilton may soon after have settled some, miles up the river, thus founding the modern towns of Ports. mouth and Dover. Christopher Levett, who was one of Robert Gorges’s Council, made a short-lived plantation at York, and a permanent colony was effected on Monhegan.4 For the greater convenience of their fishing operations, which were never successful, the Pilgrims had secured a grant of land at Cape Ann, and erected a fishing stage there, although the grant, which was derived from Lord Sheffield, was of questionable validity.5A fishing company was formed of Dorchester men in England, who made a little settlement on the Cape, holding 3 Haven, Lowell Lectures, p. 154; Adams, Three Episodes, vol. I, p. 144; Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. I, p. 391. In regard to the settlement by Thompson, we have documentary evidence in New Hampshire State Papers, vol. XXV, pp. 715, 734; but there is no such proof of the traditionary settlement by Hilton, until 1628, although it is accepted by the earlier historians. Cf. W. H. Fry, New Hampshire as a Royal Province (New York, 1908), pp. 18, 32. Also, J. G. Jenness, Notes on the First Planting of New Hampshire (Portsmouth, 1878), pp. 4, 14 ff.
4 Burrage, Colonial Maine, pp. 169-75; J. P. Baxter, Christopher Levett of York, Gorges Society, Portland, 1893; Bradford, Plymouth, p. 154.
5 J. W. Thornton, The Landing at Cape Anne (Boston, 1854), pp. 31 ff.
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Re: Captain John Huddleston and the Hiltons
Roy Huddleston 1/04/04