From the early era of great archaeological discoveries that captured the public imagination to the location of many archaeological sites across the globe where there is some level of public land ownership, archaeology has long had public aspects, if de facto ones. A more intentional public archaeology, including a shift to a higher standard of active engagement with local and descendant communities, often distinguished as community archaeology, really took off in the new millennium (a useful hallmark, perhaps, being the establishment of the journal Public Archaeology in 2000; see also Atalay Reference Atalay2006; Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson Reference Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson2008; Little Reference Little2002; Marshall Reference Marshall2002; Moser et al. Reference Moser, Glazier, Phillips, el Nemr, Saleh Mousa, Nasr Aiesh, Richardson, Conner and Seymour2002; Shackel and Chambers Reference Shackel and Chambers2004; Silliman Reference Silliman2008; Watkins Reference Watkins2000). An impact of these efforts has been that, whether or not we explicitly identify as public archaeologists, the idea that we should have some level of commitment to community engagement is increasingly widespread (Grima Reference Grima2016). However, there is still a vast continuum of practices that are interpreted as meeting this need for community engagement (McAnany and Rowe Reference McAnany and Rowe2015; Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez Reference Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez2015). At the low-investment end of the continuum, the expert (the archaeologist) shares out information with the public to educate them and increase buy-in around the value of archaeology (note, insufficiencies with this kind of low-investment practice were identified very early on in the rise of a more formal public archaeology, categorized variously as the “deficit model” [Merriman Reference Merriman and Merriman2004] and the “education model” [Holtorf Reference Holtorf2007] of public archaeology; see also Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez Reference Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez2015:Table 1). At the high-investment end of the continuum, the archaeologist collaborates actively with local and descendant communities to codevelop research questions and coproduce knowledge, practices increasingly widespread across the globe (e.g., Acabado et al. Reference Acabado, Marlon and Datar2017; Atalay Reference Atalay2012; Balanzátegui Moreno Reference Balanzátegui Moreno2018; Douglass et al. Reference Douglass, Morales, Manahira, Fenomanana, Samba, Lahiniriko and Chrisostome2019; Näser and Tully Reference Näser and Tully2019; Newsom et al. Reference Newsom, Soctomah, Blackwood and Brough2023; Stark Reference Stark2020). If such a continuum of practices can broadly satisfy one’s sense of their obligation to the “community,” we might ask why archaeologists who do not currently engage in high-investment community archaeology would seek to move along the continuum. High-investment, deeply collaborative community archaeology takes time; it requires trust and relationship-building that go beyond the parameters of a project and specific outputs, academic or applied (Newsom et al. Reference Newsom, Soctomah, Blackwood and Brough2023:304), but such investment creates a proactive archaeology that is responsive to, and so matters to, the communities whose pasts we study or whom we work with/serve. If developed robustly, it can contribute to more transformative aims of restorative justice and reclamation (see Laluk et al. Reference Laluk, Montgomery, Tsosie, McCleave, Miron, Russo Carroll and Aguilar2022; Montgomery and Supernant Reference Montgomery and Supernant2022; Montgomery et al. Reference Montgomery, Agbe-Davies, Cipolla, Mrozowski, Acebo, Camp and Campbell2023; and the recent special issue of this journal, “Archaeology as Service” [Herr et al. Reference Herr, van der Linde and Rieth2023]). Few archaeologists today are sitting back satisfied with the status quo of an archaeology disconnected from real-world concerns and impacts (Pitblado et al. Reference Pitblado, Cooley, Deere, Dudley, McLeod, Moore and Palacios2023:325). However, there are certainly those wondering if and how they can accommodate shifts to more service-oriented work in the face of all kinds of varied demands (on resources, time, etc.) and what benefits will emerge from such an investment. Here, we offer an example of practical benefits from our community-engaged project that we hope may encourage movement along the continuum from those in that position, movement that can ultimately contribute to encompassing transformative goals of a proactive archaeology. Our practical example comes from our community archaeology research program, the Great Bay Archaeological Survey (GBAS), which explores the Great Bay Estuary/P8bagok, one of the most complexly recessed estuaries on the Atlantic Ocean, its distinct ecology making it one of 29 National Estuarine Research Reserves in the United States (Figure 1; for more on the biodiversity of this ecosystem, see Short [Reference Short1992] and https://greatbay.org/). Note, P8bagok, pronounced P-ohn-ba-gock, is a general term for a bay in the Indigenous Abenaki language; it is being used by GBAS’s Indigenous collaborators, the head speakers of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki People, in their contemporary engagement with the ecosystem to acknowledge its ancestral roots (learn more at https://indigenousnh.com). Stewarded by Indigenous peoples for millennia, and falling between New England’s two erstwhile northern colonies, Maine and New Hampshire, the Great Bay Estuary/P8bagok formed a distinctive early colonial frontier (ca. AD 1600–1750; Baker and Maurer Reference Baker and Maurer2018; Bolster Reference Bolster2002; Candee Reference Candee1970; DeLucia Reference DeLucia2012).

Figure 1.

The location of the Great Bay Estuary/P8bagok where GBAS has been exploring early colonialism and a more detailed look at the river tributaries and bays that make up the ecosystem that drains a total of 2,334 km², two-thirds in New Hampshire and one-third in Maine (Kelly et al. Reference Kelly, Clark, Palace and Howey2023:3, Figure 1).

Colonial New England, with its many heritage tourist destinations, holds a special place among the public. Holiday celebrations and public commemorations often situate it as the backdrop of what would become America (Blackhawk Reference Blackhawk2023; DeLucia Reference DeLucia2018; O’Brien Reference O’Brien2010). However, much of this reputation is based on popular conceptions of Puritan Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Looking instead at the material evidence left behind by people living on a colonial frontier, one that Puritan Boston struggled to exert control over, GBAS sees an opportunity to recover overlooked stories of life in colonial New England, ones that speak to a more dynamic past. GBAS launched in 2016 and continues as an interdisciplinary and community-engaged archaeological research program being done in place. The project is based out of the University of New Hampshire (UNH), which is itself in Great Bay/P8bagok (on the Oyster River, one of the estuary’s seven inflowing rivers; Figure 1). Living and working here has shaped the dynamics of, and our ability to deeply invest in, community engagement. GBAS’s director, Meghan Howey, a professor of anthropology at UNH and first author of this article, built the project’s team after spending time in the community, talking to people who had knowledge about or who knew people who knew about the area’s early colonial history or archaeology. She decoupled the concept of expertise from academic degrees and prioritized community knowledge keepers. Diane Fiske, second author of this article, is a retired legal assistant who has no formal academic training in archaeology or history but who is the volunteer historian for the First Parish Church in Dover, New Hampshire. Learning this, and knowing that the church was the first civic center on this colonial frontier, Howey met with Fiske and brought her on board as GBAS’s historian. This article offers one glimpse into her detailed and rigorous research for GBAS (explored below and detailed for this case in Fiske Reference Fiske2024). Fiske has grown confident in her role and gives public presentations on GBAS herself. Other core team members have included a retired naval shipyard engineer, an organic farmer, a community college professor, and more (all primarily volunteer-based, though when funding has permitted, small stipends and reimbursements have been provided). All GBAS fieldwork has been open to volunteers; to date, over 100 community members, ranging in age from 14 to 78, have spent time in the field, most from parts of New Hampshire, some from Maine, and some from Massachusetts. GBAS’s field seasons also provide a field school–equivalent experience for free to UNH students. GBAS partnered with the New Hampshire State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program run by the Division of Historical Resources so that especially dedicated students or community volunteers could earn certifications in both field and lab methods. After they gained experience, GBAS was able to hire the most committed students as crew chiefs, and a few of these students have moved into core team member roles in GBAS. The third author of this article, Alyssa Damon, serves as an example of this; she continues to work with GBAS while pursuing her graduate education in the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Master of Arts in Historical Archaeology Program.

GBAS operates in close collaboration with the head speakers of the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki People, regional Indigenous knowledge keepers, a collaboration developed from the earliest stages of the project. At the start of GBAS, we identified together a set of potential site locations and geographic features of interest. We started with a focus on seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English colonial sites, approaching these as not just English sites but deep-time, multivalent places. We have combined a range of Western scientific survey approaches to find archaeological sites (walk-over and shovel-test survey, drones, ground-penetrating radar) with Indigenous knowledge scientific assessments by GBAS’s collaborators. As GBAS has run over the years, target potential English colonial sites, like the one featured in this article, have been brought to our attention that are not of specific interest to our collaborators. Work is done with full transparency, but as Indigenous leaders and activists with many interests and commitments, they make choices about where they want to spend their time contributing knowledge and insights. The head speakers and project director regularly copresent on shared aspects of our work on GBAS in various public and academic venues; we are committed to sharing our work and our model of bridging archaeology and Indigenous perspectives widely. Here, we cannot explore all the richness (and yes, at times, complexities) of GBAS’s community engagement and collaboration with Indigenous knowledge keepers, but we would point the reader to our StoryMap (https://bit.ly/greatbayarchaeology) to hear directly from team members and collaborators, as well as to the forthcoming book The Shock of Colonialism in New England: Fragments from a Frontier (Howey Reference Howey2025). We do want to emphasize how living and working in place has meant there is never really an off season to GBAS. When we are not in a field season, we are giving talks at local schools, libraries, and towns; we are networking with local historical societies to learn of possible sites; we are working with local land conservancies about possible site purchases; we are talking to the press, climate scientists, and students about sea-level rise and cultural heritage risk; we are running a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)–funded summer workshop for 72 K–12 teachers from across the country and helping them develop a curriculum to teach colonialism in new ways in their places (see https://www.fromthefragments.com/); we are connecting with other community organizations invested in the region’s overlooked histories; and we are working to do what we can to build trust and relationships, to share our findings, to be responsive, to make it matter. GBAS’s devotion to public-facing work, to decentering expertise and empowering community members as full research team members, to collaboration with regional Indigenous knowledge keepers, to building strong relationships with local stakeholders, and to making our findings accessible to nonacademic audiences has created an atmosphere for positive cascading effects. The idea that community archaeology can have unfolding impacts is not novel, but we find the concept of cascade effect to be a potentially helpful frame for capturing this process. A cascade effect is when initial events trigger chains of subsequent, and sometimes unforeseen, events, and our experiences with GBAS have shown us that our high-investment community engagement has led us to insights, finds, connections, and impacts we could not have anticipated when we set out. This phenomenon is studied in various fields, from civil engineering (infrastructure risk and collapse) to psychology (development and internalization cascade effects) to ecology (trophic cascades in ecosystems) (e.g., Borer et al. Reference Borer, Seabloom, Shurin, Anderson, Blanchette, Broitman, Cooper and Halpern2005; Seddon et al. Reference Seddon, Abdel-Baki, Feige and Thomassin2020; Zuccaro et al. Reference Zuccaro, De Gregorio and Leone2018). Cascade effects can be negative or positive; in fields that more formally study this phenomenon, these terms are used denotatively, so negative denotes a reduction or decrease, and positive denotes an amplification or increase. An example from ecology of a negative cascade effect is when overfishing of fish at a certain trophic level leads to unexpected collapses (so decreases) in other ocean species (Pinsky et al. Reference Pinsky, Jensen, Ricard and Palumbi2011). An example of a positive cascade effect from developmental psychology is where emotional stimulus results in increased emotional intensity (positive effect) from which behavioral dysregulation ensues (Selby et al. Reference Selby Edward, Anestis, Bender and Joiner2009). This example shows there can be dissonance between the denotative use and the connotative use, or the implied meaning, of the terms negative and positive, as behavioral dysregulation is not something most would connote as positive.

While we are suggesting cascade effect may be a useful frame for talking about the unfolding aspects of doing community archaeology, we are not advocating for a formal approach with a denotative use of negative and positive. Rather, we find more affinity with the idea from exercise science of the exercise positive event cascade that uses positive connotatively, where its implied meaning is good. Exercise is seen as a positive event that produces a positive cascade of more positive events in people’s lives, such as feeling better, which is not something clearly quantifiable as a net increase but that is appreciated as something good (Young et al. Reference Young, Machell, Kashdan and Westwater2018). To us, we suggest that honoring, elevating, sharing, and (when it makes sense) protecting heritage can be described as positive, as in appreciated as good, in archaeology (Pitblado et al. Reference Pitblado, Cooley, Deere, Dudley, McLeod, Moore and Palacios2023:325). This connotation is what we mean when we assign the term “positive” to cascade effects of high-investment community archaeology.

One of the cascade effects we did not foresee from our community engagement was how many tips we would get from local community members and organizations about possible colonial-era sites. Motivations for these tips have ranged, the two most common being tips from people or groups very interested in local heritage and others from people or groups hoping we might find a site on a given piece of land to halt the development process. GBAS has done most of our work on private land, but this has been driven by us identifying a target of interest and approaching landowners to gain permission to work on their land (with a mix of no and yes responses). Almost none of the possible site tips we have received have come directly from private landowners who felt they had a site on their property. We have observed an interesting duality in our work, which is that there is a very high interest in English colonial history and GBAS’s work broadly conceived but a hesitancy to have colonial heritage sites found and excavated on one’s own private land. The case we turn to here is notable because it is a positive example of this cascade effect that illustrates the practical value of a persistent community engagement in place, and that, as we will explore, also connects to more encompassing aims of a proactive archaeology.

When a local landowner noticed an interesting series of large stones that he was about to develop over, he stopped because he had heard about our GBAS project on public radio in one of our efforts to raise awareness about sea-level rise and vulnerable heritage. He then went and vetted us through informal local community channels, and because GBAS has been active in the area for years, he got encouraging feedback. Despite hesitancy about his private property, he invited us to explore his property’s cultural heritage. That invitation led to the discovery of a significant early colonial site and important revelations about overlooked presences in this New England colonial frontier landscape. During our work, we built a relationship with the landowner, and he became invested in the findings. He has committed to the perseveration of the cultural heritage on his property and to an inclusive public commemoration of it.

The Meserve Garrison Example

In 2020, the owner of a lot in the subdivision for Nelson Bolstridge in Madbury, New Hampshire, was clearing part of his property (specific subdivision records in Strafford County Registry of Deeds: “Subdivision for Nelson Bolstridge, in Madbury, NH [July 17, 1992]”; Plans 41–53, prepared by Bruce L. Pohopek, Land Surveyor, Barrington, New Hampshire). He had noticed what he thought was just exposed bedrock he would need to work around. He had also noticed an overgrown but visibly raised and circular feature that he thought was an old well he could fill in and build over. However, when he started clearing, he noticed the stone was not, in fact, bedrock. It consisted of separate large stones in a line, and when he took the thick overgrowth off the raised circular feature, it revealed an interesting brick covering, so he stopped clearing. When he bought his property, he heard it might have once had a colonial-era garrison house on it, the Meserve Garrison, and so he knew what he was seeing might be important. It is not surprising he had heard his property might have a garrison site on it: colonial-era garrisons have been the subject of long-standing interest in the region, and they continue to occupy a special place in public conceptions of the colonial period here. Today, everything from soccer teams to elementary schools to contemporary house styles to breweries across the estuary’s towns bear the name “Garrison.” The term “garrison” conjures images of a large, military-style structure, but, for most of the colonial era here in this frontier landscape, garrisons were homesteads, distinguished from their neighbors only by their larger size and occasional simple defensive features (like gun holes cut in the side boards, special window coverings, etc.). The conception of these early colonial garrisons as something more specialized is largely due to popular histories of the colonial era in this region (starting around the late 1700s and through the early twentieth century) that emphasized English colonists as hearty and brave in the face of harsh conditions, including Indigenous (often Abenaki allied with French) violence. While violence was part of this frontier landscape, it has been prioritized in popular conceptions and commemorations over more widespread, more mundane interactions between English colonists and the Pennacook and Abenaki peoples who lived in, and stewarded, this ecosystem for millennia (Howey Reference Howey2025; Howey and DeLucia Reference Howey and DeLucia2022). Because of this early, and lasting, interest in ideas of adversity and violence, the reality is that garrisons are the best-documented colonial features in the region and tend to have more information available about them than standard homesteads. Indeed, the garrison in question here, the Meserve Garrison, was recorded in one of the most notable early popular works on the region’s colonial history, Mary Thompson’s Landmarks in Ancient Dover, New Hampshire. She begins its entry so: “This is the story about the Misharvie (Misserve, Messervey, Messerve, Meserve, and sometimes ‘Harvey’) family who arrived at the New Hampshire seacoast from the Isle of Jersey around 1678Footnote ¹ and settled on a parcel of land in Madbury, now known as the Meserve Garrison Site on Harvey Hill. Harvey’s Hill, otherwise Meserve’s Hill, is at the upper side of FreetownFootnote ² on the road to Barrington. . . . Meserve’s garrison stood on this hill” (Thompson Reference Thompson1892:94). The landowner remembered that he had heard Dr. Howey and GBAS featured on NHPR (public radio) not long before. As a long-term resident of what is a relatively small set of interlocking communities along the Oyster River (Madbury-Durham-Lee), again, one of the tributaries of Great Bay, he asked around to see if anyone knew about her or the archaeology project in the area. He got feedback from a range of community stakeholders that GBAS had been engaging with since its inception indicating that GBAS was legitimate and exclusively focused on education (not profit) and had done years of fieldwork on private land; he also learned GBAS was attentive to landowners’ privacy concerns. He decided to contact Dr. Howey at the University of New Hampshire to inquire whether she and the GBAS team were interested in exploring what he was seeing.

Archaeological Assessment

Dr. Howey and GBAS’s community historian, Diane Fiske, conducted a walk-over survey on the property. The area where the landowner noticed the stones of interest is at the top of a sizable hill with vast views in all directions (Figure 2; ca. 68 m in elevation; the largest hill in Madbury today is named Hick’s Hill, at 97 m). There, on a clear day, we could see Pawtuckaway Mountains, about 56 km west of this location, in the distance. This hill carries no name today, but it struck us that it might align with the description above of Harvey Hill from Thompson’s Landmarks in Ancient Dover. The property’s position had other interesting aspects that struck us right away. This hill is located between the inland ends of two of the tributaries to the estuary, Oyster River and the Bellamay River (Figure 2). Before this inland end of the Bellamy River was transformed into a reservoir, this hill would have overlooked a vast marsh to the north. Then there is the fact that the road turns less than a kilometer from here and heads north/east to Barrington, again compelling hints of alignment with Thompson’s description of the Meserve Garrison (Figure 2). GBAS’s initial walk-over identified three visible features of interest. Two of these were the features that had been exposed when the landowner started clearing: (1) the series of large stones oriented in a line following north–south directionality and (2) the subterranean structure with a brick vaulted covering located less than 1.5 km past the line of stones (Figure 3). The third visible feature, a large late nineteenth- / early twentieth-century cellar hole along the contemporary road bordering the property today (Figure 4), was known before these other two were encountered. This more recent foundation has been accumulating debris for years, and GBAS did not explore this feature further.

Figure 2.

General locational features of property where cultural foundations of interest were found by private landowner and assessed by GBAS team.

Figure 3.

The two features of interest that became visible to the landowner when clearing for development: the brick covered subterranean structure and the line of large stones running north-south. You can see the clearing process was underway when the landowner stopped and contacted Great Bay Archaeological Survey (GBAS). This photograph is looking westerly, showing the notable views from this hill location. Photograph courtesy of GBAS.

Figure 4.

The third visible cultural feature identified during GBAS’s assessment, this one long known to the landowner, a nineteenth-/early twentieth-century foundation that has accumulated debris over the years. Photograph courtesy of GBAS.

The Linear Series of Stones

To investigate the likelihood that the line of stones the landowner exposed during his clearing were (1) part of a foundation and (2) a foundation that could be from the Meserve Garrison, we opened a 1 m long profile cut that ran north–south and encapsulated an area of stones resting on the surface. The landowner requested as little earth movement as possible, and so we cut the trench back only as far as would allow us to see if and how the stones continued. We conducted this profile exposure using a combination of shovel shaving and troweling, working in 10 cm levels until we hit a depth of 45 cm, where we found no more stones and sterile soil composed of demineralizing rock and shale (presumably nearing bedrock). All materials removed from the trench were screened (using ¼-inch [6.4 mm] mesh). Very few artifacts were found, and the majority of those that were—including asphalt roof tiles, metal wire, steel wire cut nails, and glassFootnote ³—dated from the twentieth century. Only a few historical artifacts were found, these including older hand-cut nails and glazed redware. The artifacts together indicate that the property has seen a range of disturbance, modification, and filling episodes. We did five shovel test pits in the vicinity, placed in areas the landowner approved in order to minimize impact on his lawn/landscaping, et cetera. All of these tests produced the same artifactual results: twentieth-century debris and little evidence of intact soil horizons. Our profile cut did, though, reveal that the stones the landowner had uncovered indeed continued and were part of a foundation (Figure 5). Large irregular stones were stacked and then intricately wedged into place with other smaller stones to support the integrity of the foundation. No mortar was present or recovered. In the early years of colonial settlement in New England, “mortar and other binding materials were seldom used, so that construction of solid freestanding walls was done by the skillful placement of stone upon stone, tightly wedged together for stability. This became known as ‘dry walling’ or dry-stone masonry” (Brandau Reference Brandau1975:26). The use of large, irregular field stones to form foundation walls was also the standard in the early colonial era before quarrying was widespread (Garvin Reference Garvin2001:10). The stone type and construction technique of this foundation suggest an early colonial date, creating another alignment with the potential location of Meserve Garrison. We crawled along the line of stones, using a compass to identify the north–south orientation of this line of stones and evaluating for corners and wall ends and turns. Pushing chaining pins into the ground, we traced out where stones continued without doing any clearing of our own, to keep the area as intact as possible. Using this method, while we found gaps in the stone, we also found enough continuity to develop an estimate of the probable size of the foundation, rectangular, at approximately 24 × 48 feet (7.3 × 14.6 m). The first period houses of New England (that is, those built by colonists who came directly from England), which the Meserve Garrison would have been, were built using postmedieval English construction techniques of framing and a measurement system with a 12-base (Cummings Reference Cummings1979). The dimensions we estimated here are divisible by 12 and fit with the size of other larger late 1600s / early 1700s framed houses found in northern New England that were called garrisons (Garvin Reference Garvin2001).

Figure 5.

The profile cut showing the stones the landowner found during clearing were the top of a dry masoned foundation most likely from the colonial era. Photograph courtesy of GBAS.

Brick-Covered Subterranean Structure

The overgrown raised circular feature that the landowner thought for years was an old well is located less than 1 m outside the linear stones our assessment identified as a dry-masoned foundation (Figure 3). As the landowner was clearing, he found this circular feature had an unusual brick covering that was built over a larger-than-expected subterranean, ruggedly constructed structure/hole. When he cleared off the thicket and brush, the brick covering became visible. In assessing this covering, we found it to be composed primarily of colonial-era brick, with some later brick (ca. 1800s-plus) and mortar included. Colonial brick is distinctive, as it was hand-formed, creating variation in shape and size, and it was fired at a lower temperature, creating a more orange coloring than later-dating, redder bricks that were mass-produced (Garvin Reference Garvin1994). This brick covering was constructed over a subterranean hole/structure that was larger than expected for just a well. It appeared to us that perhaps originally something like a well was expanded by nonmechanized digging, and then this unusual brick covering was erected over the top. Looking inside, we could see late twentieth-century discarded pots, pans, and dishes (and some trash). We did not investigate this seemingly makeshift structure further owing to safety as well as sensitivity concerns expressed to us by the landowner about its possible use before he purchased the land. With so much colonial brick in this covering, we feel it is highly likely that this brick was scavenged from remnants of the central chimney of the colonial-era homestead next to this subterranean structure. While clearly out of their original context, these colonial bricks are further evidence of a once-present colonial homestead.

Documentary and Archival Research

Alongside our archaeological assessment, Diane Fiske (again, GBAS’s community historian) conducted extensive documentary and archival research. As noted above, a key piece of GBAS’s commitment to being a community archaeology project has been a decentering of expertise, meaning we don’t just welcome community members to volunteer on our excavations or share information with them through public talks, but we include and empower community-based experts as full team members. Fiske has led land transfer and colonial family history research for GBAS since 2016. Diane Fiske took the lead on the research for this property and site. Through detailed investigation into deeds, wills, land grants, maps, and early town records, she confirmed the ownership and occupancy of this property by generations of the Meserve family. Tying this contemporary parcel conclusively to the Meserve family further bolsters the likelihood that the colonial-era foundation we found was the Meserve Garrison, the first homestead built by this family. Fiske (Reference Fiske2024) provides a detailed, first-hand exploration of her research process into the ownership and occupancy history of this land from the early colonial period to today (the reader can navigate directly to this account: https://core.tdar.org/document/502866/the-great-bay-archaeological-survey-gbass-archival-research-on-the-colonial-meserve-garrison-site-in-new-england). In this article, we can only explore a few key findings, and so we strongly encourage the reader to turn to this rich, informative, and detailed account to learn more. In her research, Fiske found two key early colonial Meserve land grants. The first grant of land was on May 28, 1701, when “Daniel Misserve” requested a grant of 30 acres (12 ha) from the town of Dover, “Adjoyning to John Bussey’s Land.” This request was approved by the Committee for Granting Land that same day, but it was not actually laid out until June 12, 1719, beginning at the south side of that way that rounds to the hook at a point at the great turn (Old Dover Records 1694–1757, Section 7:13, Section 8:2; www.dover.nh.gov). We do not know if Daniel Meserve settled on this parcel of land prior to 1719, as he also had a grant of 30 acres (12 ha) of land on the south side of Oyster River in Durham, laid out to him in 1712. In 1725, Daniel purchased another 30 acres (12 ha) from Thomas and Samuel Starbird, it being “at or near that part of y^e town caled Madbery on y^e South West Side of y^e highway that Leads to y^e Hook” adjoining to his own grant of 30 acres (12 ha) (Province [New Hampshire] Deeds, Vol. 15:241; https://www.familysearch.org/en/united-states/). The combined parcel of land containing 60 acres (24 ha) was granted to Daniel’s son, Daniel², “that he now livith on” in his will in 1756 (Province [New Hampshire] Deeds, Vol. 19:571; https://www.familysearch.org/en/united-states/). Finding these grants made it clear that the original Meserve homestead parcels were on the southwest side of the road to the Hook, adjacent to each other. We knew “the Hook” established an association with the Bellamay River, but it was not immediately clear how. Knowing the Bellamay River had been flooded to create a reservoir, we turned to historic maps of Madbury to see what the course of the Bellamy River was before the reservoir. An 1805 map confirmed that “the Hook” referred to the course of the Bellamy River in Madbury, where it took a wide turn as it flowed from Barrington (Figure 6). This reference to “the Hook” was also integral to identifying the road that served as the northwest boundary of the two 30-acre (12 ha) parcels. In later deeds it was referred to as “the road from the Madbury Meeting House to Barrington”; Mary Thompson describes the Meserve Garrison as being along the road to Barrington; and today, again, the property of interest here is located on the road that turns from the site to Barrington. The next transfer came when Daniel² died, 17 years later, in 1783. In the division of his property, he granted his widow, Abigail, the 60-acre (24 ha) parcel and the use of the easterly side of the house and barn as her “Thirds” (widows thirds, one of the only ways women could come to own property at the time). Daniel² had acquired other land in Madbury and Barrington and split these lands among his children. Over generations and across different branches, the extended Meserve family came to own notable amounts of land in Madbury, surrounding towns, and beyond. Fiske’s research continued to trace this specific 60-acre (24 ha) original homestead parcel up through today, connecting the land transfers all the way to the current landowner who contacted us about the stones (see Fiske Reference Fiske2024). One Meserve living in proximity to Daniel² at the time of his death, on this same road in Madbury, was Nathaniel Meserve. Nathanial, perhaps a cousin, was born around the same time as Daniel². In the search for information on the original Meserve Garrison, Fiske found information about Nathanial because he was a Meserve living on this road of repeat in the deeds (the road to/from Madbury meetinghouse / Barrington). While he was not directly connected to this specific parcel, the information about him in the records sheds light on the social realities of colonial and postrevolutionary New England that continue to be overlooked, or, more actively, excluded from the ways we remember, research, and commemorate this past. Nathaniel Meserve married Martha (Dame) Meserve in 1769. In 1783, Nathaniel and Martha sold 25 acres (10 ha) (of a homestead farm) to Andrew Hanson on this road excepting “the small house now occupied by two Negroes named Boston & Coor” (Strafford County Registry of Deeds, Book 5:177, dated August 22, 1783). Looking into how these individuals came to be living here in Madbury, Fiske discovered that they were formerly enslaved by Martha’s grandmother, Sarah Dame. In her will in 1767, Sarah Dame granted her land (which had been granted to her by her husband on his death in 1758) to her granddaughter, Martha, upon her marriage (which, again, happened in 1769). She also in her will granted “freedom to ‘my’ Negro man Boston and Negro woman Coor, and to no longer be used as slaves or sold as such, free use of part of the house until the estate is settled, and an allowance out of the estate to live comfortably” (Province [New Hampshire] Deeds, 1767, Record 3416; https://www.familysearch.org/en/united-states/). It appears Boston and Coor stayed on this land for years after gaining their freedom, being present and acknowledged in 1783. It also appears they were Quakers (as was Sarah Dame, who granted them freedom); Fiske found their death records in Quaker records (Bill of Mortality), Boston in 1785 and Coor in 1790 (the latter reported to have been 100 years old). The fullness of their life stories remains unknown, including where they were born, whether they were trafficked across the Middle Passage or born into chattel slavery, when they arrived in and how they were moved through New England, how they came to be owned by Sarah Dame, and what they did in their later years of freedom. However, learning of and bringing to light their presence in colonial and postrevolutionary New Hampshire, a place many tend not to associate with slavery, is important in portraying a more accurate account of the region at that time (Fernald Reference Fernald2007; Mayo-Bobee Reference Mayo-Bobee2009; Warren Reference Warren2017).

Figure 6.

An 1805 map of Madbury before the Bellamy’s River’s course was permanently altered by the creation of a reservoir. This map shows the “Hook” referenced in the first land grants, and it also shows the early roads mentioned in the land grants, those roads aligning with the property’s location today. (Photographed by Diane J. Fiske in Madbury Historical Society.)