A Puritan Who Wouldn’t Conform- Reverend Stephen Bachiler

PHOTO IMAGE: Great Boar’s Head, Hampton Beach, NH. Hampton was founded by the controversial figure Stephen Bachiler, according to many history books. He is also a distant relative of History writer Robert Hanaford Smith who explains that genealogy and tells the story of Bachiler. PHOTO FROM THE PUBLISHER’S COLLECTIONS

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

Grandpa Stephen.
My grandchildren probably don’t know they had a Grandpa Stephen, and I’m not sure it’s the proper way to describe him, but this is the thing: In thinking about the Puritans I realized that I am descended from one of them. You see, not long after the Pilgrims, who were also Puritans, came to this country, there was a migration of more Puritans, including Stephen.
Stephen had a daughter who married a man named Christopher Hussey. The Hussey’s had a daughter, Huldah, who married John Smith’s son, John in 1667. The Smith’s had a son whom they named John who also had a son named John. John’s son, John, also had a son named John. This John, produced another John Smith of that line who had a son whom he named Thomas. Thomas and his wife named one of their sons Bradley. Bradley and his wife, Laura, were parents of a son they called Raymond, and Raymond and his wife Dorothea named one of their sons Robert.
That’s me.
So my great (eight times or so) grandfather has many other descendants, some who may not want to admit the relationship because of Stephen’s controversial life. To some he was a saint, to others he was a sinner.
Like his fellow Puritans this man came to America seeking a better life where he could not only freely practice his faith but also teach others.
He didn’t arrive on the Mayflower, coming a decade or so afterwards, but, though he died in 1656 at around one hundred years of age, he is still talked about in our present time. His name is Stephen Bachiler, and he is mentioned in history books as the founder of Hampton, New Hampshire.
You are apt to find his last name spelled in different ways and to find out that many Sanborns are descended from him, but I can confidently tell you that he has Smith descendants as well as those with a number of other last names. I can also tell you that he was no ordinary Puritan and his life in America was accompanied with controversy.

The Puritans, who were not welcome in England to freely practice their faith, tried to keep their colonies in America pure from the presence of unbiblical teachings and unnecessary rituals. They were not tolerant of those who wouldn’t follow their teachings, but wanted to settle in their towns. Whether in England or America in those days there was no separation of church and state with the clergy in the early settlements in this country having a strong influence in local governments.
Stephen Bachiler was born in England where he served as a clergyman until he was removed from his position because of his Puritanic teachings which were at odds with some of the practices of the Church of England. He is thought to have moved to Holland with other Puritans where he served as a clergyman for many years before coming to America as the leader of a group called the Company of the Plough.
The group had a charter to settle in Maine, but apparently the rocky coast didn’t appeal to them so they ended up in Massachusetts with Bachiler as their spiritual leader.
There is some controversy concerning the preacher’s movements in New England, but one of the accounts written about him was from Victor C. Sanborn in 1917. Bachiler seems to have preached first at Newtown, now Cambridge, and then to have gone to Saugus, which is now Lynn, Massachusetts.
The preacher was always a Puritan, but a Puritan who, during his decade in America, was constantly getting into trouble with the Puritan authorities. He was a liberal Puritan, believing in the separation of church and state, and being less strict in matters of conduct than most of his fellow preachers in the settlements of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
He did not at first sign “the freeman’s oath,” a requirement for participating in town affairs, so was told by the Colony Court to “forbeare exercising his gifts as a pastor or teacher publiquely except for those who came with him.” He had also left the first church in Lynn and started a second one. He later signed the oath. Incidentally, when I moved to Vermont in the early 1970’s I was required to sign a “freeman’s oath” before I could vote.
In October of the year 1635 Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts by the authorities with one person voting against that move. It is thought by some that the dissenting vote was cast by Rev. Stephen Bachiler which didn’t help him in the popularity category.
Leaving Saugus the preacher is said to have ministered in Ipswich and Newbury and on one occasion to have walked to Cape Cod with the intention of starting a church there, though that venture was short-lived.
In 1638 Rev. Bachiler was granted land at Winnicunnet and with a company of parishioners established a town which was soon renamed Hampton, the name apparently being chosen by Bachiler.
Despite his many problems caused by his non-conformist ways, Rev. Bachiler was apparently an influential and forceful preacher and respected in many ways. He had come to America with his second or third wife (depending on the source of information), and one or more of his children and grandchildren (more likely several).
While at Hampton he was accused of immorality. Governor Winthrop wrote: “Mr. Stephen Bachiler, the pastor of the church at Hampton, who had suffered much at the hands of the Bishops, and having a lusty, comely woman to his wife, did solicit the chastity of his neighbor’s wife.”
Bachiler, who was 80 years old at that time, denied the charge against him, charges that were brought by an assistant at Hampton, Timothy Dalton. The two men were opposites in a number of ways, and didn’t get along well. The charges were heard in Court, with an eventual verdict of the charges being “not proven.”
Bachiler had, however been excommunicated from the church, but was restored to a position where he was allowed to continue preaching, and had calls to preach at Exeter or Casco in Maine. He chose to go to Exeter, but the authorities over him denied him that opportunity.
I should point out that he was around 70 years of age when he came to this country and was a powerful and learned preacher who was considered by none other than Governor Winthrop to be an “honest man.”
The controversial preacher, whose home and his extensive library burned while at Hampton, eventually went to Strawbery Banke (Portsmouth) as a missionary where he “preached to the godless fishermen of that seaside parish.”
He still could not escape trouble, though. His wife, Helena, had died, and he married again to a woman much younger than himself. This wife had an affair with another man and Bachiler filed for divorce which was denied by the Court, telling the two that they must live together as man and wife.
Rev. Bachiler (or Grandpa Stephen) had his fill of trouble by this time however, and returned to England where he lived for about another twenty years.
The wife, who had been left behind, claimed that Bachiler had remarried and did so herself.