National Register Listing

Endicott Rock

Weirs Channel, Laconia, NH

In the 1640s, as Massachusetts Bay Colony was expanding in population and ambition, the tiny proprietary colonies of New Hampshire (Mason's Grant) and Maine (Gorges' Grant) were in the midst of political and economic chaos. The four towns of New Hampshire
(Dover, Exeter, Hampton, and Portsmouth/Strawbery Banke) eventually petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for admission to Massachusetts Bay Colony. After the death of Sir Fernando Gorges in 1647, the settlers of Maine (often called Acomenticus) also petitioned for admission to the Massachusetts colony.

The General Court of Massachusetts Bay had to be able to justify absorbing the new settlements to the north under the terms of the original Bay charter of 1629. That document had given the colony all the land to the west it wanted to the Pacific Ocean); however, the northern boundary of the colony was fixed by the charter as a line three miles north of the Merrimack River. Those who drafted the patent evidently believed that the Merrimack River ran in a generally east-west direction; subsequent exploration of the river, however, demonstrated that while the lower portion of the river (from the coast to Dracut Falls, now Lowell, Massachusetts) did flow southwest to northeast, the remainder (and greater length) above the falls ran north-south.

On May 31, 1652, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay voted:

"... that the extent of the line is to be from the northernmost part of the River Mer imacke, & three miles more north, where it is to be found, be it an hundred miles, more or less, from the sea, & thence uppon a streyght line east & West, to each sea; & this to be the true interpretation of the termes of the limitts northward graunted in the patent."

This was done in anticipation that the straight line east & west, to each sea" would be well north of the settlements in New Hampshire and Maine, thus justifying their incorporation into Massachusetts Bay.

In the same year, a commission was established to implement the legislation by finding the northernmost point on the Merrimack, or, as it was assumed, the headwaters of the river. The two commissioners appointed were Simon Willard, and Captain Edward Johnson, author of Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Savior in New England (1659), one of the most-read early histories of Massachusetts Bay. The two surveyors were John Sherman of Water town, and Jonathan Ince, a Harvard student (class of 1650). The party's two Indian guides were named Pontauhum and Ponbakin.

Upon reaching what is now Franklin, New Hampshire, the commissioners discovered that the river separated into two branches. They felt that the Merrimack went northward, along the present Pemigewasset River. However, the Indians insisted that the river they were following went toward the east, along the present Winnipesaukee River, to Lake Winnipesaukee. (Had the party followed the Pemi, the Massachusetts boundary would have extended to Franconia Notch, almost forty miles north of Endicott Rock.) They reached the outlet of Lake Winnipesaukee on August 1, 1652, referring to it as "Aquedahian." Documentary evidence indicates that a Jesuit mission had been established ca. 1650 in the nearby Indian village of Aquadoctan, but may have been abandoned by 1652, as no records mention contact between the English Puritan explorers and the French Roman Catholic missionaries.

Local significance of the site:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1980.