By Geoff Smith
Captain John Locke came to Rye when it was known as Sandy Beach sometime after 1656 and before 1665. Prior to this he had lived in New Castle and Portsmouth, and his name is recorded numerous times in town records. He was a carpenter as well as a farmer, and framed the first meeting house in Portsmouth in 1645. Having established a farm at the far end of Sandy Beach, it is evident that he considered himself under the jurisdiction of Portsmouth, and vice-versa, as evidenced by continued assessments to support the church there.
But Hampton took a different view. According to Hampton records, “He sat down on the public lands at Josselyn’s Neck” and began clearing a farm without saying “by your leave”, and as the inhabitants claimed the right of saying who should become citizens of the town, they chose a committee May 24, 1666, to pull up his fence, and March 12, 1667, to warn him to desist from improving his farm. He was labelled “Trespasser” and was warned to appear at the next town meeting and give an account of himself.
On the 18th of March, 1667, the town voted “Upon the motion of John Lock who desireth to yield himself to the town of Hampton as an inhabitant here among us, living already settled upon Josselyn’s Neck in Hampton bounds, the town hath accepted of the said John Lock for an inhabitant accordingly.”
Thus, John Locke went from being a notorious squatter to a founding settler in the north reaches of Hampton, and Josselyn’s Neck became Locke’s Neck.
Over the next decade relations with the local Indians soured. Captain John Locke’s house was the strongest in the area, and when Indian incursions occurred, his neighbors would garrison there. Locke himself had a fearsome reputation and success in skirmishes with the Indians. But in 1696 good fortune failed him. A revenge party of eight Indians arrived with the express intent of killing him, and surprised him as he was reaping grain, mortally wounding him with his own gun that he had left against a rock. One account says that when the Indians ran up to scalp him, he had just enough strength to cut off the nose of one with his sickle.
His house and farm were located near the corner of present-day Locke Road and Old Beach Road, where the original Locke family cemetery still stands. (And not far from the original Berry homestead – see last month’s Founding Family.) The sickle, along with his sword, are now at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord. The Locke Family Association still meets every year and undertakes a pilgrimage to view these artifacts about every ten years.
