ABSTRACT
Travellers aboard Knight’s Ferry felt the reluctance of spring to command winter in the icy breeze skimming the cold water of the Piscataqua River. Knight operated his ferry year-round, even during the coldest months of winter, courtesy of the rapid, uctuating currents of the river, which rarely froze. e waters of half a dozen rivers of New Hampshire and Maine meet o Dover Point, which divides the currents owing from the Squamscot, Lamprey, Back and Oyster rivers, which mingle in the estuaries known as the Great Bay and Little Bay, from the Piscataqua, formed from the Cocheco and Salmon Falls rivers. Added to the churning mix is the tidal brine of the Atlantic, which inexorably rises and falls through the maze of islands and narrows that mark the Piscataqua between Dover Point and the mouth of the river. Twenty years in the future the Piscataqua Bridge would make the ferry obsolete, but until then Knight’s Ferry was the only way for the traveller to cross the river from the southern shores of Newington by way of Bloody Point to Dover Point. is year, 1775, was the seventieth that the Knight family had operated the ferry, the right to which Captain John Knight obtained in 1705.1
Belknap was frequently at Knight’s Ferry coming or going, as he was on ursday 20 April. Belknap regularly travelled by horseback or on foot to Portsmouth from his home built near the Cocheco Falls; the road led through Dover Point to the con uence of the Piscataqua and waters of the Great Bay, across which was Bloody Point, reached only by means of the ferry. e pastor had many friends and colleagues in Portsmouth and the neighbouring towns of Greenland, Kittery and Newington, having lived in Portsmouth and outlying towns since 1764, initially teaching primary school and studying for his Master’s degree under two local ministers, Samuel Haven of Portsmouth and Samuel MacClintock of Greenland. He was in uenced by other divines as well, such as Samuel Langdon, pastor of Portsmouth’s North Parish, later president of Harvard College. Belknap became pastor of the First Parish of Dover in 1767. Once established in Piscataqua society, Belknap became friends with local leaders such as Captain omas Waldron of Dover, eodore Atkinson of Portsmouth, and most notably, Governor John Wentworth. e governor and pastor shared an
interest in natural and human history. When in 1773 Belknap had deposed on the Governor’s behalf with the statement that New Hampshirans were ‘equally loyal to their King and jealous of encroachments on their rights and priviledges [sic]’, he doubtless thought that Wentworth would agree. e two had conversed at length over the natural and political history of New Hampshire, and Governor Wentworth had assisted Belknap in acquiring sources for the latter’s work-inprogress, the History of New-Hampshire; indeed, Wentworth had recently read with a critical eye initial chapters of the manuscript, and had sent it back to the minister with his complements.2
