![]() Eight men were ordered to post bail and appear in court to answer charges of rioting, disturbing the peace, and "making an assault upon the body of Benjamin Whiting." None of the men were charged with animal cruelty. One of the men suspected of assaulting Whiting in his sleep was located, arrested, and revealed the names of the others involved. The rioters ran and hid in the woods before the posse arrived. Whiting engaged Colonel Moore of Bedford and Edward Goldstone Lutwyche of Merrimack, who assembled a posse of soldiers to arrest the perpetrators. The rioters then cut off the ears and shaved the manes and tails of the horses, after which Whiting and Quigley were forced to ride out of town through a gauntlet of jeering townspeople, shouted at and slapped down the road towards Goffstown. ![]() The sheriff and deputy's horses were brought around to the inn door. Quigley was also pulled from his room and received the same treatment from another group of townsmen. Whiting later reported that he thought the men would surely kill him. Rioters grabbed him by his arms and legs, hoisted him up, face to the floor, while others continued to mercilessly assault him with tree switches. The sheriff tried to grab his pistols, but he was thoroughly outnumbered. They began to beat him with tree branch switches, giving one lash for every tree being contested. ![]() With their faces blackened with soot for disguise, more than 20 townsmen rushed into Whiting's room. Whiting was still in bed, and Mudgett burst in on him. Īt dawn the next day Mudgett led between 20 and 30-40 men to the tavern. They decided to physically assault Whiting in his sleep and abuse Whiting's horses by maiming their faces. A few offered to help pay his bail, but the majority wanted to run the sheriff and deputy out of town. That night, many of the townsmen gathered at Mudgett's house. The sheriff and deputy spent the night at Aaron Quimby's inn, the Pine Tree Tavern. Mudgett was subsequently released with the understanding that he would provide bail in the morning. On April 13, 1772, Benjamin Whiting, Sheriff of Hillsborough County, and his Deputy John Quigley were sent to South Weare with a warrant to arrest the leader of the Weare mill owners, Ebenezer Mudgett. The mill owners from Goffstown paid their fines at once and had their logs returned to them. When the governor offered Blodgett the job of Surveyor of the King's Woods, he accepted, and, rather than getting the charges dropped, he instructed his clients to pay a settlement. The mill owners hired lawyer Samuel Blodgett to represent them, who met with Governor Wentworth. The owners of the mills were named as offenders in the February 7, 1772, edition of The New Hampshire Gazette. His men found that six mills in Goffstown and Weare possessed large white pines and marked them with the broad arrow to indicate that they were Crown property. John Sherman, Deputy Surveyor of New Hampshire, ordered a search of sawmills in 1771–1772 for white pine marked for the Crown. Although often sympathetic to the colonists, he held firm on this issue. The 1722 law was not strictly enforced until John Wentworth was appointed governor of the New Hampshire colony in 1766. The laws contributed to growing discontent with colonial rule, reflected in a series of demonstrations and riots through the 1700s. "Surveyors of the King's Woods" were assigned by the Crown to identify all suitable "mast pines" with the broad arrow wherever they were found. In 1722 a new law reduced the diameter to 12 inches. Violators faced a fine of 50 pounds for each illegally harvested tree. The act replicated a 1691 law in England and declared all pines with diameter greater than 24 inches to be property of the Crown. In order to preserve suitable timber for the Royal Navy, the New Hampshire General Court passed an act on to preserve all trees in New Hampshire suitable for masts for use by the Royal Navy. British success in the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–1748) and the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) were due in large part to the control of the seas by the Royal Navy. To maintain Britain's naval and trading advantage, laws were passed in North America to protect selected white pines for British shipbuilding. Eastern white pines from colonial New England were superior timber for the single-stick masts and booms of the day. īy the late 17th century the construction and maintenance of the huge number of ships required to build and defend the British Empire left few trees in Britain suitable for use as large spars. The Pine Tree Riot was an act of resistance to British royal authority undertaken by American colonists in Weare, New Hampshire on April 14, 1772, placing it among the disputes between Crown and colonists that culminated in the American Revolution. ![]()
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