In May, 1630, the barke Warwick found its way up the Piscataqua and Newichawannock rivers. On board were Ambrose Gibbons, Roger Knight and probably Thomas Spencer. Their wives came the following year. It is reasonable to assume that there were a few other servants of Capt. John Mason in this first ship’s company. Anchor was cast at the foot of Little Johns Falls, where even at low tide the water is deep. The neighboring shore on the eastern side of the Newichawannock river soon came to be called the Lower Landing, or Pipe Stave Landing. The adventurers came to plant a colony, to carry on trade with the Indians and to obtain lumber. They meant also to explore a large region, hoping to find various mines (12).

The leader, Ambrose Gibbons, must have been somewhat acquainted with the river and his landing place. He was not sailing in the dark to a wholly unknown destination. Probably he had been there before and consulted with Sagamore Rowles at Quamphegan, giving some presents for a piece of land on which to establish a trading post. As early as 1621 the Council of New England at old Plymouth, Devonshire authorized Ambrose Gibbons to deliver to Capt. Mason possession of Cape Anne. For eight years he had been Mason’s factor at Cape Anne, where he built houses, brought cattle and set up the trade of fishery. In 1630 “the Massachusetts Colony violently seized upon that part the Province . . . “and turned the servants and tenants of John Mason out of their possessions.” (N.H. Prov. Papers, XVII, 534) The advantages of trade, the water powers the forest of pine, and the abundance of salmon and sturgeon determined his choice of this locality for a permanent settlement (12).

This original settlement at “Newichawannock” was built and fortified with a palisade and was used as a “trading post” until it burned and nothing remains of this settlement except the site of the old “well” which Ambrose Gibbons dug to accommodate the Newichawsannock settlers.

William Chadbourne, father of Humphrey Chadbourne built