Beside Cold Spring on the west side of the hill a massive block of granite records that
IN THE MIERY SWAMP 166 FEET W. S. W. FROM THIS SPRING,
ACCORDING TO TRADITION, KING PHILIP FELL,
AUGUST 12, 1676. O. S.
The Mt. Hope lands should have fallen to Plymouth by right of conquest, as they were included in the territory originally granted to that colony. But both the Colony of Massachusetts Bay and the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations claimed a portion of the spoils. So delegates of the several colonies were sent to argue the case before Charles II. Singularly enough another claimant appeared in the person of John Crowne, a poet. Crowne was a native of Nova Scotia. His father had purchased a large tract of land in that country which had become practically valueless because of the cession of Nova Scotia to the French. He therefore asked that the small tract of land which had lately come into English possession should be turned over to him as a compensation. But Mt. Hope, though belonging to the English Crown, was not to be Crowne land. The Plymouth Colony agents claimed that the tract, comprising almost 7000 acres, part of it good soil and much of it rocky, mountainous and barren, for which they had fought and bled, should be awarded to them, more especially because it would afford to them the seaport which they lacked. Their arguments were convincing and the land was awarded to Plymouth by special grant, January 12, 1680. The king among other things demanded a quit rent annually of seven beaver skins. No other royal grant was made of conquered lands, but conflicting claims necessitated this.
Plymouth Colony at once placed the lands on the market, and September 14, 1680, sold them for $1,100 to four men of Boston, John Walley, Nathaniel Byfield, Stephen Burton and Nathaniel Oliver. The first three of these became residents of the town they founded. Of them, Byfield was the ablest and most distinguished. He came of good stock. His father was of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. His mother was sister of Juxon, bishop of London and later archbishop of Canterbury, who was a personal friend of Charles I, and attended that ill fated monarch upon the scaffold. Byfield was the wealthiest of the settlers. He had one residence upon Poppasquash near the head of that peninsula, and one upon what is now Byfield Street in the south part of the town. He was a man of unusual ability and large wealth. He was also a man of great liberality in all his dealings with the town. His public service was continuous and distinguished. His liberal mind resisted the insane fanaticism of the people during their delusion on the subject of witchcraft, and in his will he left a bequest “to all and every minister of Christ of every denomination in Boston.” He lived forty-four years in Bristol, only leaving the town when his advanced age made the greater comforts of Boston necessary.
John Walley was also of good stock, his father being rector of one of the London churches. In 1690 he commanded the land forces of William Phipps in the expedition against Canada. He also, in his old age, was forced by disease to seek a more luxurious abode in Boston. Stephen Burton was said to have been a graduate of Oxford. He was undoubtedly the most scholarly man of the four proprietors. Oliver, a rich Bostonian, never resided in Bristol but sold his share to Nathan Hayman, another wealthy Boston merchant.
With men like these as sponsors for the new settlement, it was not difficult to secure settlers. The most noted among them was Benjamin Church, the Indian fighter already mentioned. Capt. Church built a house upon Constitution Street. (Church Street was not named in his honor. Upon that street stood the edifice which gave it its name, the building in which the members of the Church of England worshipped. There were many streets named for a like reason in colonial days.) He was the first representative of the town in the general court of Plymouth Colony and was many times elected to public office. In his later years he made his home in Little Compton, whence many of his descendants drifted back to Bristol. Because the town was to be the seaport of Plymouth Colony, many of the descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims naturally came to dwell within its borders. In choosing Bristol for its name, the settlers cherished a hope that, as in the case of its English namesake, it would become the great city upon the west. Boston on the east shore was the London of Massachusetts.
The new town was laid out on a liberal scale, with side streets crossing each other at right angles, and a spacious “common” in the center of the settlement. The grand articles stipulated that all houses should be two stories high, with not less than two good rooms on a floor. As most of the settlers could not well spare the time, if they had the means, for building a house with four rooms upon a floor, the “camelopard” type of dwelling was much in evidence. This presented a goodly appearance to the eye of him who stood directly in front, but degenerated greatly when one shifted his position, the roof sloping severely and persistently down to a woodpile. One chimney was deemed sufficient for a house. We should deem such a one more than sufficient. If of brick it was about fourteen feet square; if of stone, about twenty feet. All the chimneys had immense fireplaces, into which a man could sometimes walk without stooping, and all were admirably adapted to keep a house cold. The rooms were abominably drafty, and the high backed settle was an absolute necessity. A great pile of logs might be blistering the faces while the snow was drifting in through the cracks upon the backs.
The first house built is still standing just north of the town bridge. Deacon Nathaniel Bosworth was its builder, an ancestor of those who own it today. Only the southwestern part of the present structure was the work of Deacon Bosworth. The best house was naturally that of Byfield. It was two stories high, with a barn roof, and was nearly square, thirty by thirty-eight feet. It was torn down in 1833, and a hard job the destroyers had. The chimney stood in the center of the house. It was built of imported bricks held together by mortar mixed with shell lime. This mortar had become hard as stone. When the chimney was overthrown it fell to the ground almost unbroken, as an oak tree would fall. Byfield had another house at the head of the harbor on Poppasquash. In each room were deep fireplaces, across which ran an oaken beam a foot square. One winter morning the owner of the house was surprised, when he came down stairs, to find the house even colder than usual. The front door was open and the floor was covered with snow drifts. As the door was never locked the phenomenon interested him but little, and he hastened out to feed his cattle. One ox was missing and the farmer went back to the house to organize a searching party, but as he opened the door and turned his eyes toward the fireplace, he changed his plans. There lay the huge creature tranquilly chewing the cud of complete contentment. It had found the door ajar, pushed it open and established itself comfortably upon the still warm ashes.
The town was founded for “purposes of trade and commerce” and early its sails began to whiten the seas. Naturally the first commerce was coastwise only. Then vessels sought the ports of the West Indies and Spanish Main, laden most frequently with that bulb whose fragrance lingers longest in the nostrils, the onion. The culture of this vegetable was one of the three things for which the town was noted for more than two centuries.
There once dwelt in Bristol a man named Sammy Usher, who was noted for his irascibility not less than for his caustic tongue. One day a visitor from Brown University was introduced to him. This young man, though a sophomore, was yet somewhat fresh, and Sammy did not like him. He said, “Mr. Usher, I hear that Bristol is noted for three things, its geese, girls and onions. What do you do with them all?” “Oh,” said Usher, “we marry our girls as soon as they grow up, we ship our onions to Cuba, and we send our geese to college.” The first recorded shipment, however, was not of onions. November 6, 1686, Byfield placed a number of his horses on board the Bristol Merchant bound for Surinam. Possibly they may have been of the Narragansett pacer breed for which the south county was so long famous. Very early in the town’s history, sails were turned to the coast of Africa. The voyage was the most hazardous that could be taken, but the returns from a successful venture were enormous. There was profit on each leg of the voyage. The first leg was from the home port, with the hold filled with casks of New England rum and small crates of trinkets. One cask was ordinarily enough to secure a slave, but before the cargo was complete, all hands were likely to be down with coast fever. When the crew were again strong enough to work the vessel, the “middle passage” to the West Indies was made, and the live freight, which had been handled with as great care as are the cattle on the Atlantic transports today, was exchanged for casks of molasses. Then came the last leg of the voyage. The molasses was carried to Bristol to be converted into rum. This trade the town shared with Newport and Providence.