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The Fishing Master of Appledore

© Virginia Marin

There is much interest today in family history and family folklore. To this end, there is much to add to the bulk of folk lore by including family folk tales in the genre. Some tales are true, while others are purely fictitious. Still others are based on a combination of fact and fiction...

Such is the fact/fiction case of one of my immigrant ancestors, Phillip Babb. While some facts about him are easily available, much is legend. But is the reason for Phillip's coming to America fact or legend? Were the reasons for making his home on the rugged and bleak Isles of Shoals, six miles off the coast of New Hampshire, fact or legend?

An interesting book on the area in which some mention is made of Phillip Babb is The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend by Lyman V. Rutledge and much of the following is from that book. It answers some of my questions.

According to Rutledge, there are some who believe that the Isles of Shoals (nine small, bleak, rocky islands about six miles from the mainland at the closest point, which straddle the Maine-New Hampshire line) were visited by the Vikings long before the time of Columbus. However, the earliest written mention of the group is found in Captain John Smith's Description of New England written in 1616. But it is in the writings of Sir Christopher Levette, who had been given a patent to 6,000 acres of his own choice in Maine that is found this description:Upon these Isles I neither could see one good timber tree, nor so much ground as to make a garden.

But in spite of such bleak surroundings the fish were abundant around the islands and the quality so good that that even before the first permanent settlement in America, European fisherman were operating from the Isles. After a hard day's catch, the fishermen sat around campfires talking, drinking, eating and telling tales of wonder.

The island boasted an excellent fresh water spring as well as several small but safe anchorages. There was no evidence of savages, so the fishermen built temporary shelters for living quarters, stages and frames for processing the dunfish (the name given to the salted and dried fish which was in such great demand in the European markets), and storage sheds for the curing process.

These early inhabitants of the Isles were strictly transient people. They brought nothing of a permanent nature with them. In time this was to establish a precident which prohibited anyone from bringing a woman to live on the Islands. The fishermen also did not take an Oath of Allegiance to any of the colonial governments, resented any attempt to be governed, and prefered to settle their differences by personal combat. When in later years an attempt was made to tax the tonnage of fish they were exporting, the fishermen refused to pay.

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