The Hawk's Head TavernA Riley's Farm Production The Mythology and History of Courage, New Hampshire
In the year 1770, Courage, New Hampshire lies on the frontier of Colonial America, in a half-wild stretch of land occupied by the younger sons and daughters of New England, who have come here in search of land. More than a decade has passed since the close of the French and Indian War, but the early settlers’ memories of raiding war parties lingers on--finding an occasional dark mention around a hearth fire or during the clipped, nervous banter of a bear hunt. There is not a family within the confines of Courage who does not have a story to tell about a ransom, or a rape, or a torture. Life and death are much larger here, not out on the horizon, but right there at the door, rapping loudly. Babies are born nearly every week. Passing plagues and hard winters can put a dozen or more corpses in the ground, sometimes in less than week. For the citizens of Courage, “No man knoweth the day and the hour,” is not an invitation to airily ponder the Lord’s second coming, but a reminder that death brings about a private, personal, and unplanned appointment with Judgment Day. There are, perhaps, a thousand souls in Courage, and just over one hundred and fifty families. The town boasts a public house, or tavern, called the Hawk’s Head, owned by the Strongbow county’s justice of the peace, Silas Rhodes. A new meeting house has just burned to the ground, but the town’s creeks and millponds support a saw mill, a gun powder mill, and something new to these parts—a chocolate mill. For three years, the town has hired preaching in the person of Enoch Rust, a Harvard graduate and the town’s most eligible bachelor. The militia is captained by an exuberant veteran of the last war, Phineas Smith, whose near sighted wife, Anna, shepherds the women of Courage with a dignity that is sometimes quiet and sometimes nearly martial. The town is home to an out of place dandy in the person of Edward Pierce, whose purse cannot match his pretensions and whose anglophile sentiments run contrary to the incipient spirit of liberty and republicanism spreading through the entire county of Strongbow and the New Hampshire frontier.
The People of Courage, New Hampshire Silas Rhodes Keeper of the public house and Justice of the Peace, Silas helped settle the little township on the frontier of New Hampshire in 1742, when he was twenty. He owns a public house and has been selected Justice of the Peace for his writing and moderating skills. One of the Wentworth family saw promise in him as a lad, and offered to send him to Harvard, but the death of his older brother required him back at home—and this has colored his view of life, and his sense of his destiny. He has near total recall and was able to recite entire passages of the Bible, Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Process from memory. He has a hard time admitting he prefers ideas to the company of most people—waxing impatient at the tediousness of small, human transactions. Stupidity annoys him, and when he discovers it in himself, it can be enraging. His reputation as a scholar earned him an appointment as justice of the peace at a very early age—twenty two.He settles disputes and holds court in the tavern. Rhodes grew up with his father’s profound sense of the differences between Old and New England and the events that required one branch of the English family to escape the absolutism of the old country. He’s also old enough to know what mobs can do and steady enough to be Justice of the Peace--the King’s Justice of the Peace, ironically. He tries to take a measured approach to all conflict, but on occasion he yields to a temper, and although he has a right to claim a fee for being a judge, he would rather not hold a court at all, and he routinely makes combatants talk it out before he even agrees to hear them. There’s a weakness for music and gossip here as well. His mill and his apple orchards have brought the first blush of prosperity, and he has a kind of rhapsodic optimism about the future of the frontier; the petty quarrels of the town, over and against the promise of America is the subject of some of his annoyance with the town. He has a weakness for new contraptions. After bearing him seven children, his wife died in child birth with their last. He writes her a letter nearly every day. At the outset of our story, she has been gone four years.
Phineas Smith Captain of the Courage militia. Phineas Smith served with John Stark in the French and Indian War, and he’s the best story-telling source in the township for “the ways of the savage.” He has a weakness for hunting and roaming, to the detriment of his own farming labors. Although he was under the command of British officers in the late war, he still harbors resentment for one of his superiors and an incident he can’t bring himself to mention—and this colors his opinion of British officers. Generally, however, he found war empowering—and he misses it. He is fast to propose a song, and the last one to stop singing. He talks to God, outloud, and he doesn’t care who’s listening. He also practices his cursing, outloud, for best dramatic effect. He’s the sort of man who could look a 600 pound black bear square in the face, (and start ramming cartridge calmly), but the thought of what happens when his wife, Anna, gets angry is enough to make him prepare the town for an earthquake---even though he is clearly seen as the patriarch in their family. (He just knows his wife.) Sally Rhodes The eldest daughter of Justice Rhodes, Peggy serves food, takes in laundry, and keeps short accounts in the tavern. Peggy Rhodes doesn’t want much. She is practical at the center of her being, where accounts are being kept and prices affixed. In the first episode, she just wants a red cloak, something to help with the winter. That’s all. She doesn’t want a pollonaise or fine linen gloves. Just a little warmth. She settles for less. Why should all her countryman demand so much? Why must her father be such a striver? What could possibly be accomplished for the cause of liberty out here? Why can’t she have seven yards of English broadcloath? She has her share of suitors, but she is not “man-crazy,” and talks about potential husbands in terms of measured practicality. She gives no courtesy laugh and has very little patience for small talk. Anna Trowbridge Smith Anna is the wife of Captain Phineas Smith, and the wild, frontier scion of an old Massachusetts family that might be called Puritan Royalty – the Trowbridges. As such she is a 2nd cousin of Edward Pierce. As a young woman, she was held captive by the Indians of St. Francis village, where New England soldiers found over 400 scalps of her fellow hostages. One of her rescuers was Captain Smith, her soon-to-be husband. Anna is severely near-sighted and will not wear spectacles because of her conviction that God has her in this strait for a reason, and this is an endless source of frustration for her husband. (“The Almighty, Anna, did not put the spring peas in your mouth either, and yet you manage to feed yourself on occasion.”) She appears to live in an amusing, not altogether unpleasant, prophetic haze. She has a better nose for the weather than anyone, predicting the arrival of rain to the amused laughter of the assembly on sunny afternoons, only to be proven true within the hour. She speaks long-range enough, however, to have little honor in her own country.
Edward Pierce
Pierce, the youngest of six Marshfield brothers, saw one brother go into the ministry, another practice law, another obtain a commission in the royal navy, another die with posthumous honors in the Seven Years war, and yet another ride the fortunes of a marriage intended for him back to England. Edward was left with two Irish bond servants and a tract of land on the frontier of civilization, something his father purchased by way of speculation. Having been thwarted, mysteriously, in his study for the clergy, he is not happy with country life. Having also now established his household, he is seeking a wife. He knows—and resents—that he will have to make his own fortune, and he has no use for any Whiggish schemes against royal government, and the civil post he sees as key to his future. His schemes for establishing his prosperity are weighed down by the heavy price of keeping up appearances. He doesn’t “get” music. The tavern anthems and country songs give him a brow-furrowing headache. What he really seems to love, with a passion, is regulation. Regulation of the calendar. Regulation of commerce. Regulation of town government. He lives for the moment that he can weigh in on these matters. Darby Hogan
Hogan is a thin, spry Irish bond servant with a sneaky grin and a bear’s appetite. He’s always chewing on something, or squirreling some bit of ship’s bread or hardened cheese or dried venison into a satchel. Any adventure in pursuit of the feast will have the effect of making him momentarily serious. He has the ability, very nearly, to disappear, and this is not one of the qualities that endears him to his master, Edward Pierce. He also has a profound gift for proposing a wager, tagged to nearly any event of the day. (“Do you see that hawk, there, Mr. Pierce, perched on the tree? I wager a farthing he perches on that branch for at least a ten count.” “What rot, Hogan. Why would I wager on such a thing?” “Oh, because Master Pierce, it will add to your fortune if you are proven right in the matter.” “Hogan, you are a poor half-wit who can’t hold his tongue in his head.” “I agree, quite hardily, Master Pierce. That certainly is true. That is why I count myself so very fortunate to be in your employ and to have the guidance as one so wise as your self.” (Darby also has the ability to give compliments that are very ornate in their praise but laden with a sort of irony that makes the beneficiary nervous.) Cullen Doyle
Cullen is a thick, barrel chested, vaguely menacing looking Irishman—a bond servant to Mr. Pierce. There are certain tasks even Edward Pierce will not ask of him. The Rev. Enoch Rust The town’s pastor and pulpit patriot. Parson Rust graduated from Harvard and tutored children for two years, waiting for a call to the pulpit. Until the village finishes the meeting house, he must preach in the tavern. (The meeting house burned down) He is friendly and well-liked, but he also believes in open rebuke. A single man, he is the most eligible bachelor in town.
William Billy McDonaugh William Billy McDonaugh walks a dog cart through these parts from time to time, selling English, Scottish and India goods--linens, pots, tea, spices. He lost an entire family--a wife and four children to the great Maine ice flow of January 1770. He actually answers to the name “William Billy.” He is not exactly a salesman, since his pitch consists of holding something up and wearing an expression of despair, as if to assume that no one could possibly afford the item in question. If someone agrees to purchase, he looks startled and immediately tries to talk them out of it. Whether this is because he is weary of having to re-stock or because he has sympathy for the high price of goods can’t be told. Either way, he walks on, singing softly under his breath to his departed Jenny.
Warren Cooper Cooper is not quite a merchant prince in the mould of John Hancock, but he does own three good coasters and a fine house in Boston, and he is what they have come to call “A High Son of Liberty.” Cooper has been prospering from skirting the navigation acts, like most Boston shippers, for some time. He has a special zeal and a keen talent for encouraging New England industry, mostly, of course, because providing goods closer to home has been his living. He is one of the first Boston sons of liberty to foresee how difficult it will be to keep a family in the city, so he has ventured into New Hampshire to purchase land and contract for the frame of a house. He is one of those fellows who talks about preposterously large projects--river spanning bridges, copper plated war ships, cannon foundaries--as though they could be sketched out, cobbled together, and varnished for weather within an afternoon. Molly Cooper Molly is the young and winsome wife of Mr. Warren Cooper and a not too distant cousin of Governor Hutchinson. She gained a reputation for her witty refusals of young British officers at Boston balls and dinner parties, and enfuriated some in her family for expressing open hostility towards the occupation. “I can’t abide pride in a man. I’d sooner have a glutton or a bore than one of those strutting little red partridges, who can’t open their mouths without spouting Duke this or Viscount that…” “’Major Popsgobbin, of the 4th King’s own, at your service, miss!’ Lieutenant Tidwillow of the Queen’s Dismounted Cavalry, miss!” She says this, though, with a smile that is made possible by her inner calm, which is really her abiding characteristic. She is bubbles and finery on the surface and a very deep sea of faith and dreamy serenity at the core. Of her new husband she exults, “Give me a man who builds things, who isn’t fighting with me for the looking glass!
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