Chesterfield New Hampshire Historical Society
The Pine Tree Riot
Rebellion Against the King's Board Arrow Acts!
The 1763 Treaty of Paris brought an end to the French and Indian Wars. To recoup the British investment in protecting their American lands, Parliament imposed taxes on the colonies. The Sugar, Stamp, and Townsend Acts, although annoying, had little effect on New Hampshire’s frontier settlers. On the other hand, timber was a vital commodity.
In 1698, Parliament expanded the King’s Board Arrow Acts to include NH. These acts allowed the Surveyor of the King's Woods or his designated deputies, to inspect a settler's land for "mast" pine trees. With three slashes, qualifying trees were Crown owned and destined for the Royal Navy. After this inspection, the landowner had to pay a substantial fee for a license to cut the remaining pines. A deputy surveyor also had the right to inspect buildings and sawmills. He would inspect the size of planks in buildings and logs at mills. Any wood thought to be illegally harvested resulted in heavy fines. Mills with logs regarded to be illegal were shut down until the fine was paid.
In 1722, a mast tree’s diameter was reduced from 24” to 12”. Due to the remoteness of the interior NH settlements from Exeter and Portsmouth, the Act wasn’t really enforced for about 50 years. In 1766, newly appointed Governor John Wentworth was also appointed Surveyor General of the King's Woods. This made him responsible for the royal forests “from New England down to the Carolinas". He quickly realized that a great deal of revenue was being lost from illegally harvested trees. He commissioned numerous deputies to crack down on violators. Wentworth also conducted his own inspections of Piscataqua Valley mill yards by having a servant drive him around in his coach.
In the winter of 1771-72, Deputy Surveyor John Sherburn found six mill owners in Goffstown and Weare who had broken the law. He marked for seizure 270 mast-worthy logs at Clement's Mill in the town of Oil Mill (now part of South Weare).
The mill owners hired local attorney Samuel Blodgett to represent them. He was to meet with Wentworth and convince him to drop the charges. Instead, Wentworth offered Blodgett the job as a Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Woods. With the new title in hand, Blodgett returned to his clients and convinced the Goffstown mill owners to pay their fines. However, the Weare men refused and were labeled "notorious offenders" or "obstinate and notorious", depending on the source.
On April 13, 1772, the Hillsborough County Sheriff, Benjamin Whiting of Hollis, and his Deputy, John Quigley from Francestown, set out for South Weare with a warrant to arrest the leader of the Weare mill owners, Ebenezer Mudgett. Whiting and Quigley arrived late in the afternoon and arrested Mr. Mudgett; they released him with the understanding that he would return early the next morning to pay his fine. Whiting and Quigley retired to the nearby Quimby’s Inn for an overnight stay.
Meanwhile, a group of men from Weare gathered at Mudgett’s home. Some wanted to help pay his fine, but the vast majority wanted to run the sheriff and deputy out of town in a way they would never forget.
Very early the next morning, led by Mudgett, twenty men disguised with black face and brandishing pine switches, barged into Whiting’s room.
“Whiting seized his pistols and would have shot some of them, but they caught him, took away his small guns, held him by his arms and legs up from the floor, his face down, two men on each side, and with their rods (switches) beat him to their hearts' content. They crossed out the account against them of all logs cut, drawn and forfeited, on his bare back….They made him wish he had never heard of pine trees fit for masting the royal navy. Whiting said: "They almost killed me."
“As for Deputy Quigley, the Weare men removed the floorboards from the room above his and commenced to beat him with long poles. Unfortunately, the horses of the lawmen did not avoid the anger of the men. They cropped the animals’ ears and shaved their manes and tails. (This reduced their value.) To “jeers, jokes and shouts ringing in their ears” the sheriff and deputy rode toward Goffstown and Mast Road, named for the logs that were moved overland to the sea and off to England for the king’s ships.”
Later in the spring, the recovered and still irate Sheriff Whiting recruited Colonel Moore of Bedford and Edward G. Lutwyche of Merrimack to organize a posse to go back and capture the rioters. However, by the time they returned to Weare, the offenders had vanished into the countryside. Undaunted, they managed to locate one offender. Also, they were able to get the names of some of the others who were then ordered to post bail and report to court.
Eight men were charged with being rioters and disturbers of the peace and for "making an assault upon the body of Benjamin Whiting, Esq., Sheriff, and that they beat, wounded and evilly intreated him and other injuries did so that his life was despaired of." They were also charged with going "against the peace of our Lord the King, his crown and dignity."
(Quotes: William Little, History of Weare, New Hampshire 1735-1888, (Lowell, MA: published by the town, printed by S.W. Huse & Co., 1888).
Their cases were heard in September 1772 before four judges of the Amherst Superior Court. All the plaintiffs humbly plead guilty, and were fined 20 shillings each, plus the cost of the court hearing. This small fine (about $2 in today’s money) for such a serious crime, reflected a great deal of sympathy from the bench. It was a demonstration of the general displeasure many of the citizens of NH had with the King’s Board Arrow Acts.
Some historians believe that rebellion at Quimby’s Inn laid the groundwork for the 1773 Boston Tea Party, a famous confrontation which steamrolled into the American Revolution!
The Pine Tree Flag
The Pine Tree Flag represented the “Appeal to Heaven”, an expression from John Locke meaning the “right of revolution”. New England colonists adopted the pine tree symbol as early as 1704. It was a reflection of the high regard New England colonists held for timber, especially the pine tree. The Pine Tree Flag was the official flag flown on six schooners commissioned by Congress in Oct. 1775. Historians believe it was flown at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
