The Legend of James Cate

Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  August 1732. 

            Edward Cate lay dying in his bed.  He was seventy-seven years of age.  Elizabeth, his wife, sat in a nearby rocking chair knitting a quilt.  Bursts of warm summer air periodically entered the open windows and enlivened the otherwise drafty old wooden room.   

            “James and Sam will be over soon,” Elizabeth told her husband, unsure if he could hear her or not. 

James was Edward and Elizabeth’s oldest son, named after his paternal grandfather whom he never met.  James was in his early forties.  Sam was James’s third son and fourth child.  He was eight years old.  Edward had remained in bed for nearly a week and had barely spoken a word to anyone, including Elizabeth.  As soon as Elizabeth mentioned James and Sam, Edward opened his eyes and slowly turned to her.

“My son and grandson are coming over?” the old man asked.  “What about the other grandchildren?”

“The older boys are tending to the land, and Margaret is at home with the youngest three children.  She is pregnant again, you know, so the doctor wants her to rest.  Seven children make a woman awfully tired.  I should know!”

“Oh,” Edward lamented.  “Well, at least I’ll be able to see one of them.  I want to talk to James, too.  We have some last-minute business to discuss regarding my affairs.”

Elizabeth sighed and nodded.  All she could think about recently was the demise of her husband’s health.  He had been her partner for forty-five years. Edward worked like a bull all his life.  He was a good worker, a good father, and a good husband.  There would never be a convenient or good time to say goodbye to him. 

Someone outside knocked on the door.  Elizabeth stood up and greeted the visitors.  James and Sam had finally arrived from the next town over, Greenland.  There, his family dwelled near the majestic Great Bay.  Elizabeth welcomed the boys into her home. 

“How’s Father doing?” James asked his mother. 

“He’s awake now.  Go see him,” she stoically replied. 

Sam smiled at his grandmother and followed his father into Edward’s room to visit the old man.

“Hello, son!” Edward beamed.  “And where’s my favorite grandson?”

“Hello, Father,” James nodded.  “Sorry the others couldn’t make it.”

“Hi, Grandpa,” Sam shyly piped up. 

Edward chuckled after hearing his grandson’s soft voice.  What a delightful boy, Edward thought.  So much like me when I was his age. 

“Your letter said you had some business for me to execute,” James reminded his father. 

“Ah, yes!” the old man remembered.  “I need you to look at some land deeds and make sure they’re accurate.  Mother can show you where they are.”

James nodded and followed Elizabeth out of the room.  Sam remained behind with Edward. 

“How are you doing, Sam, my boy?” Edward inquired with a grin. 

“Fine,” the boy laconically responded. 

“Tell me how things are going,” the old man persisted.  “How is school?”

“Pretty well.  Right now in history we’re learning about how New Hampshire was founded.  Teacher wants us to write about our own family’s history.  How we got here and stuff like that.”

Edward’s ears pricked up.  He rarely had an opportunity to talk to his grandchildren about his family’s origins.

“Would you like me to tell you what I know about our family’s history?” Edward eagerly asked. 

“Okay,” Sam half-heartedly agreed. 

“Have a seat, son,” Edward instructed his grandson, who sat in Elizabeth’s vacant rocking chair. 

“The Cates have been in New Hampshire for a long time.  My father, James, who is your great-grandfather, was among this state’s pioneers,” Edward explained. 

“Grandpa, was your father born here?”  Sam asked.  He was intrigued about his family having some link to New Hampshire’s colonial beginnings.

Edward sighed.  He would have to admit the limits of his genealogical knowledge.

“I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know where Father was born,” the old man reluctantly confessed.  “You see, Father wasn’t a talkative man.  He was very intense, but also very plain and not eager to discuss himself.  I was my parent’s oldest child, so I spent the most time with Father, but he never talked about his life before he met Mother.  Some say he came to this land from Europe.  Others have said he was born here.  Most men of his generation traveled here from western Europe, so that’s what I believe Father did.”

“When did your mother meet your father, Grandpa?” the boy asked. 

Edward smiled.  Although he did not know when or where his parents first met, Edward knew about his parents’ infamous fornication charge from 1656 that resulted in them publicly acknowledging the sin and paying court costs from its adjudication.  What a scene that must have caused at a time when Puritan Massachusetts effectively controlled New Hampshire’s government.  Edward thought of a less explicit answer to give Sam.

“My parents never really discussed that subject with me, so I don’t know when they met each other.  I do know that they took to each other, er, rather quickly and remained together until father’s death in 1677.”

It was true.  James and Alice Cate remained married for more than two decades until James died on May 15, 1677.  Edward was only twenty-one when his father died.  He never forgot that day. 

“Grandpa, how many brothers and sisters did you have?” little Sam eagerly inquired.  He was starting to enjoy his grandfather’s storytelling. 

“Oh my,” Edward thought.  “Let’s see.  There was John, Rebecca, and Sarah...  Um...  Who else?  Oh right!  Mary, Elizabeth, and Isabel...  And I’m forgetting someone else.  Who is it?  Ah!  William.  My poor brother William!”

“Did something happen to William?” Sam asked with concern.

Edward sighed and looked towards the window beside him, as if his thoughts were reaching outside beyond it to a faraway time and place.   

“William endured a tragedy that none of my other siblings had the misfortune of facing.  In June 1696, I never forgot, a group of Indians raided Portsmouth Plains, where William and his family lived at the time.  The Indians killed some fourteen villagers, including William’s oldest son, William Jr., and injured five others, including William’s three younger children.  One of the injured who survived was a woman in her mid-seventies.  The Indians cut off her scalp and left her for dead, but somehow she survived.  After recovering the injured victims of the raid, a group of men chased the Indians from the Plains to Breakfast Hill.  The Indians then rowed out to the Isle of Shoals and disappeared after that.”

Sam was simultaneously awed and reviled. 

“Wow.  That’s awful!  So what happened to William and his family?” the boy wondered aloud. 

“They moved far away.  I don’t remember where they ended up going, but it was as far from the Plains as possible.  William was never the same after his oldest boy died. It was a tremendous loss for him, poor fellow.”

“Grandpa, were you and William close as brothers?” Sam asked.

“We got along well enough.  When he grew up, he didn’t move quite as far away from home as our brother John did, but William still wanted a life of his own, as all men do when they reach a certain age.  One time I will never forget is when William defended me from an attack by some crazed neighbors of ours back in 1681 or so.  I was around twenty-five at the time.  A local ruffian named Christopher Kenniston tore down John Johnson Sr.’s fence for some reason, so John Jr., William, and I went to put the fence back up for John Sr.  Out of nowhere, Thomas Every, his wife, and son Tom Jr. approached us and started attacking William and me with stakes from the old fence.  One of the Everys beat William over the head with a stake.  What an awful event that was.  It took all of our effort for John and I to fight the Everys off and take William away.  Why they attacked us I still don’t understand,” Edward lamented. 

“What bullies,” Sam remarked.  “Sometimes I see kids at school do that.  It’s not right.”

“No, Sam, it’s not.  Fortunately, we brought the Everys to court and won a judgment against them.  They had pay for William’s injuries and court costs.  Served them right.” 

“What did your parents think about the fight?” Sam inquired. 

“Well, Father died in 1677, so he wasn’t around at the time, but I recall Mother being quite upset about it.  But she was tough.  She had her fair share of fights in the past.”

Sam cocked his head in disbelief.  He could not imagine a woman fighting because he thought only boys did that. 

“What kind of fights did she have, Grandpa?”

Edward chuckled.  He immediately remembered a fight involving his mother that occurred two decades before his own fight with the Everys.  In August 1661, Alice Cate accused Sarah Abbott of causing Alice to lose a child she was carrying.  Edward could not remember the specifics of the accusation, but it incensed Alice enough to bite Abbott’s thumb and scratch up her face.  Nearby witnesses had to separate the two women before they killed each other.  Abbott eventually won a court judgment against Alice, who was to be whipped ten times, but James spared Alice that fate by paying a fine and court fees.  Edward summed this all up in a way that Sam could digest. 

“Mother and another woman got into a fight, and Mother ended up being punished for it.  The moral of the story is to avoid fights at all costs, unless you truly can’t.  Never fight unless it’s for self-defense, Sam.”

The boy nodded.  Since they were on the subject of fighting, he wondered about his great-grandfather’s exploits. 

“Grandpa, did your father ever get into fights?” 

Edward took a moment to process his thoughts.  His father would be harder to explain than his mother. 

“Father was a complicated man.  As a carpenter, he was never rich or well off.  We lived a very meager lifestyle.  A few years after Mother’s fight with Sarah Abbott, Father incurred a debt to a prominent wine merchant and innkeeper, Walter Abbott.  Unfortunately, Walter Abbott was the husband of Sarah Abbott, whom Mother had her fight with, so that made the situation even more taxing.  Another man named John Paine loaned a lot of money to us as well.  Both Abbott and Paine sued Father in 1663, I think, and forced him to pay up on the debt, which only made life even harder for our family.”

“It’s never good to be a debtor, is it, Grandpa?” Sam asked with sympathy for his beleaguered great-grandfather.

  “No, lad, but sometimes work was hard for Father to come by, so turning to borrowing was all he thought he could do until he received new commissions.  At those jobless times, Father would become melancholy and take to drinking alcohol.”

Edward failed to tell Sam that at around the same time his father was sued for not repaying the Abbott-Paine debts in early 1663, Father was also charged with drunkenness and property destruction.  James acknowledged in court that he had too much alcohol to drink one night and that he subsequently destroyed the sign and door of the local tavern owned by the colorful Rachel Webster.  Rachel inherited the tavern from her late husband, John, and later appeared in court several times as a defendant.  She ultimately had to close her pub in 1671 for illegally selling rum and wine, and for keeping an unclean establishment. 

“There were other times when Father went to court for issues he had no part in,” Edward continued.  “When I was around twelve, he served on a jury of inquest to determine whether a man had died by drowning or not.  Father was also a witness to a fight between Sarah Abbott and her second husband, Henry Sherburne.”

Edward smiled as he recalled this situation. 

“I can only imagine what Father was thinking at the time, because Sarah was the woman my mother beat up some nine years earlier.  Maybe Father thought that Sarah’s fight with Sherburne proved that my mother didn’t truly start the fight with Sarah in 1661.  Sarah Abbott went back to court several times for fighting with other people; Mother didn’t.”

Sam nodded and then let out of quiet yawn.  Edward smiled at his grandson and realized that the sun was starting to set on the horizon.  He wanted to get a few last stories in before Sam had to go home.

“One time, when I was around seventeen, Father and I were with a bunch of men who were drinking flip in the streets, which is something you should never do because it’s stupid.  Anyway, the group became too rowdy for us, so Father and me returned home.  Unfortunately, the other men kept drinking.  While Lodowick Fowler was walking ahead of the group, his gun went off and killed a man named John Ellis.  Fowler was convicted for Ellis’s death.  I remember Father being so glad that we had gone home when we did.  Like I said earlier, always avoid trouble if you can.  If things don’t look good, get as far away from them as possible.  It will serve you well in the long run.”

“Yes, Grandpa,” Sam agreed, even though he did not entirely understand the story. 

“We all do things that we’re not proud of, Sam,” Edward sighed.  “Even though Father and I were smart on the night of John Ellis’s death, we weren’t so smart the following year.  We got into some trouble for starting a fight with the servant of another well-known Portsmouth man, John Cutts.  As you may know, Cutts became the first president of New Hampshire two years after Father died and was one of the state’s largest landowners.  In any event, I always taught my children to avoid fights, because I remembered how much trouble my own parents got into by refusing to back down.  As much as I admired them for their boldness, I also reviled them for being so foolish sometimes.  Unfortunately, Father died when I was only twenty-one, so I didn’t have a chance to ask him any of the questions that occurred to me as time moved forward.”

“Couldn’t your mother answer some of those questions?” Sam wondered.

“Yes, some, but there were many things Mother never knew about Father either.  Plus, relations between Mother and I became more strained after Father’s death.  Father died without a will in 1677, so Mother went to court to account for Father’s possessions.  I kept many of his tools to work with in my own carpentry trade.  However, Father’s estate went unsettled for another twenty-five years until Mother and I came up with a settlement agreement in court.  Mother didn’t worry about creating Father’s estate because she remarried to a man named John Westbrook within two years of Father’s death.  She lived with Westbrook until he died in 1697.  He was fairly well off, so he took good care of Mother.  I just felt like Father’s affairs had been neglected during that time and needed some resolution, for the family’s sake.” 

“That stuff sounds complicated.  I don’t really get it,” Sam complained as he yawned again. 

Edward chuckled.  He enjoyed talking to Sam about his family’s past.  Even though much of the material was a bit too dense for an eight-year-old boy, hopefully the lad would retain some of it.  James then walked into the room with Elizabeth. 

“Ready to go home, Sam?” James asked his sleepy son.

“Yes, Father,” the boy replied. 

Edward left Sam with one last nugget before his father took him home. 

“Sam, one more thing.  I lost my father when I was a young man.  There were always many questions that I wanted to ask him but never had a chance to.  Will you be a good boy for me and cherish your parents?  I know that they love you very much.”

James smiled at his father and then looked to his son.

“Yes, Grandpa.  I’m very lucky to have my parents,” Sam said seriously. 

“Good boy,” Edward wearily replied.  “Now come give me a hug.”

Sam hugged his ailing grandfather and then returned home with his father.  Elizabeth sat down beside Edward and stroked his right hand. 

“What did you boys talk about while James and I were reviewing the deeds?” she asked. 

“Sam told me that his class was talking about family history, so I told Sam about my parents.  They were the first in my line to live in this colony.”

Elizabeth smiled and nodded.

“I never had a chance to meet your father.  We married some ten years after his death.”

Edward looked back at his wife blankly and pondered her words.  It was true.  Elizabeth never had a chance to meet James Cate.  Perhaps because of his father’s loss, Edward cleaved all the more willingly to his father-in-law, Philip Tucker.  Edward was honored to administer Philip’s estate when he died in 1695.  Too bad Edward’s father couldn’t have lived that long.  James Cate went before his time. 

“I’m tired, dear,” Edward muttered to his wife in a sleepy daze.

“Of course,” Elizabeth replied.  She kissed her husband’s head and left the room.  He dreamed that night of his father and grandson meeting, which they never did in reality.   

Edward died a few days later.  Like his father, he never created a will. 

Edward’s grandson, Samuel Cate, lived to be ninety-two.  He had the opportunity to meet all of his great-grandchildren. 

Author’s Postlude

            Although the scenario of this story is fictional, I grounded it in facts about my family’s history.  All of the characters were real people.  Much is unknown about my earliest American ancestors, especially the first James Cate, but the purpose of this story was to give them new life and put their stories in a narrative, emotional context that would make them more human than how court records and other documents present them.  I dedicate this story to my own family and all living beings who appreciate the value of family.