Founding Families

Francis Jenness 1634 – 1716

Photo caption: The oldest part of 125 Cable Road may date to before 1700. The Jenness family continuously occupied the house until 1908.

By Marie Fort Withrow

Francis Jenness was likely a young man in his early 30’s when he sailed from Rye, Sussex, England for New England. Though his arrival date is debated, it is generally accepted as 1665 when he took up residence at the Great Island, later to become New Castle. This is where on October 2, 1666 he took the Freeman’s Oath of Fidelity.

The next year Francis received a grant from the selectmen of Portsmouth for one acre of land on Great Neck. It was stipulated that he build a house on the property within one year. Despite the fact that he had not fulfilled this requirement, the town gave him “absolute conveyance” of the lot, for which he paid 20 shillings. For several years Francis worked here as a mariner and fisherman until his marriage on February 15, 1669/70 to Hannah Swaine, daughter of William Swaine and Prudence Marston of Hampton, where they made their first home.

In 1675 Francis built the house wherein he and Hannah would live for most of their lives and raise seven children. The land, laid out by the town of Hampton, extended along the seacoast from Lock’s Neck heading south more than half a mile. He also erected a sawmill, grist mill, and a bakery where he made bread and sea biscuits which he sold along the seacoast from Saco to Boston. With his property so close to the water Francis was able to use small boats, likely ketches, or pinnaces, to ship his wares. During this time he is also listed among the men who served in the military campaign during the Native American uprising.

There is great variation of the spelling of Jenness in deeds, histories, and town and vital records. Just some of the these include Jennings, Gennings, Genis, Jenis, Janis, and Jinnis. It was not until around 1730 that the spelling stabilized as Jenness.

In partnership with others, Francis established a successful sawmill on Cedar Swamp Run in 1695. (For the story of The Mills and Cedars of Rye, please visit https://www.ryenhhistoricalsociety.org/mills-cedars-of-rye .) His business ventures must have been very profitable as Francis continued to purchase property throughout the area. Hannah Jenness died in 1699 and a little more than a year later Francis married twice widowed Salome White of Portsmouth.

Like other early settlers Francis was involved in several boundary disputes. Apparently, he ruffled enough feathers that when he tried to protest during a meeting of the commoners in 1707, he was denied the right to speak. He is often listed as a dissenting vote in meeting notes. Some years after Francis died, his sons successfully gained back all the land that had been disputed.

By the time of his death at the age of 82, Francis Jenness had acquired enough land to leave significant acreage to his wife and his sons, and to also provide for his daughters. His youngest son, Richard, the most educated of his children, was one of the selectmen who began petitioning for separation from Newcastle in 1721. When this effort finally met with success in 1726, Richard was elected to represent the Parish of Rye, a position he held for almost 40 years. It is surmised that the name Rye was chosen to honor Francis Jenness as he was the only founder born in Rye, England. In 1730 Richard Jenness, with other families, petitioned successfully to annex their properties from Hampton. adding roughly eighteen hundred acres of good land to Rye.

Over the next 100 years the Jenness family continued to flourish and to contribute to the growth and stability of Rye. By the late 1800’s there were over 25 separate Jenness families living in south Rye west of Jenness Beach. Many of the heads of these families were farmers and some lived on land originally purchased by Francis Jenness.

Capt. John Locke 1627 – 1696

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.

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William Berry, 1610-1654

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By Mike Berry

In 1629 King James I issued Captain John Mason and others right of settlement in the area now known as New England. Mason focused his initial efforts on the territory of land between the Merrimack River (now Salisbury, MA) and the Kennebec River (now Popham Beach, ME). William Berry, born in Newcastle in northeast England in 1610 and who was then in service as a constable to Mason in England, was selected to be among the group which traveled to the shores of what is now New Hampshire to permanently establish the territory.

He is known to have been at Strawberry Bank (later Portsmouth) as early as 1631 and ultimately would serve as Selectman for the town later in 1646. In 1636, Berry married Jane Locke Hermins and the two had 7 children. In January 1648/49, at a town meeting held at Strawbery Banke, "Granted that William Berry shall have a lot upon the neck of land upon the South side of the Little River at Sandy Beach".  This was later to become part of Rye when it was set apart from Hampton. 

Parson's History of the Town of Rye holds that William was the first to settle in Rye. However, he would have been in his 50s, and given his stature would not have been likely to make such a move. Thus, although William appears to be the first to get a grant in Rye, his son John is known to have settled on this grant and was probably the first settler to actually live there and set down permanent roots. 

William Berry died in June of 1654 of unknown causes in Portsmouth NH. His widow Jane remarried to Nathaniel Drake. His children and the generations of Berrys which followed would establish many homesteads in and around Rye. A Berry Family Cemetery can be found on Breakfast Hill Road in Rye approximately .3 miles from Route 1 (see photo). 

Berry Cemetery with map

Berry Cemetery with map