Local History

Leonard Weeks (1633-1707). See the Weeks Genealogy Page for a biographical sketch of Leonard Weeks.

Thomas Avery, Thomas Beck, John Berry, Joseph Berry, John Cate, Isaac Cole, John Cutt, Nathaniel Fryer, William Furber, Samuel Haines, John Hall, John Hatch, John Holmes, George Huntress, John Johnson, John Kennison, Philip Lewis, Richard Martyn, Walter Neale, Henry Nutter, Thomas Packer, James Pendleton, John Philbrick, Henry Sherburne, John Sherburne, Elias Stileman, and Leonard Weeks. Please note that this list is not a comprehensive, official list of 17th-century settlers.

The mid- and late- 17th-century economy of the area was dominated by farming, fishing, timber harvesting, and coastal trading.

Farming. The region’s soil proved to be good for farming, and like so many early coastal settlements in New England, agriculture at first supported only a very local, self-contained, but vitally necessary economy. Family subsistence farming was complemented by barter and exchange among friends, family, neighbors, and community. The production of the earliest grist mills, for example, was almost entirely for local consumption.

Fishing. The brackish waters of the Winnicut River meant, at least at that time, a large population of smelt and river herring, which became an important source of food and income for residents of Greenland.

Timber Harvesting. When inland forests were cleared for farming, logs were floated down the Winnicut River to the sawmills. The processed lumber was shipped through Great Bay to Portsmouth, and then on to England.

Coastal Trading. As the region grew, the lumber trade became tied closely to the increase in the regional shipbuilding activity. Bolstering the regional economy was the development of a shallow-draft vessel ideal for the tidal waterways of Great Bay, the gundalow. As important as the money-making goods going out of Greenland at the time, was the access to goods coming into Greenland, as the late 17th century was a time when overland transportation was difficult, roads were little more than oxcart paths, and material goods were few.

Early Mills on the Winnicut River (1660s-1680s). The first dam, millpond, and sawmill on the Winnicut River were constructed by Philip Lewis & Isaac Cole about 1660, near what is now the intersection of the river and Rte. 33. Between 1670 and 1790, seven sawmills and gristmills were built on the upper Winnicut River. In the early 18th century, additional mills were constructed further up the Winnicut, about one mile south of the river’s Rte. 33 intersection.

Today, the Town Landing is all-but-forgotten — at the end of the line, off the beaten path, a dead-end at a deserted marsh. Today it is difficult to fathom that there was once frequent traffic of goods hauled to-and-fro on Tide Mill Road. And it might be difficult to believe today that in the 17th and 18th century, the tidal waterways actually provided the easiest way to move heavy materials like lumber, or large-volume goods in barrels.