USA > Maine > York County > Witch trot land; being a bit about the mother of Maine, York county, or Yorkshire, or New Somersetshire, from which all Maine counties came. Of her hopes and dreams and heart-breaks, and of the first incorporated English city in America > Part 1
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Gc 974.101 Y8mo 2000315
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01085 7867
WITCH TROT LAND
Maine
Being a bit about the Mother of Maine, York County, or Yorkshire, or New Somersetshire, from which ALL Maine counties came. Of her hopes and dreams and heartbreaks, and of the first incorporated English city in America. . ... Credit is freely and gratefully giren to everything we could lay our hands on-we had to-we weren't here in the 1600's.
BY A COUPLE OF WITCHES
(ANNE MOUNTFORT)
(KATHERINE MARSHALL)
78 7310
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TORT HOTH
2000315
Mountford, Anne Witch Trot land (Maine )
Palm Beach
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Published 1937
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KITTERY
"Old Ketterie", with its Boiling Rock, Bord Wigwam, Dirty, Swamp, Dumpling Hill, Ballyhock, Fagotty Bridge, Godmorrocke, Kurremuck, Mast Creek, Nine Notch Country, Pipe Stave Hill, Puden Hole, Slut's Corner, Stair Falls and Mast Cove Way is the oldest town in Maine and here more events of world interest have happened than almost anywhere else.
Settled in 1623, or even earlier, by scattered fish, fur and lumber men, it was the first town in the state to receive a charter from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1647 and only one to have been visited by Geo. Washington. The name comes from the Vitterys who, with Chan- pernownes and Shapleighs from New Dartmouth, England, settled it, Capt. Francis Champernowne being Gorges' favorite nephew.
This was the birthplace and home of Sir Wm. Pepperell, conqueror of Louisburg in 1745, even though Wm. Vaughan of Damariscotta's spe- cially constructed ladders did prove to be 10 feet too short to scale those exceptionally high double walls with the 80-foot ditch between. Louis- burg was considered so strong that a hundred men, or even a handful of women, could hold it against a thousand, but, impregnable as it was, those undisciplined Yankees were resolutely determined. They built a brush fire where the wind would blow the smoke in the Frenchmen's
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eyes, rushed in, hung somebody's red flannels up for a flag, bored out the hastily spiked guns and turned them against the city, then har- nessing 200 of their men together like a team of horses, they hauled up their own cannon through the mud and slime. That victory be- gan the downfall of the French in America.
Here, on Badger's Island, first Maine soil after crossing Memorial Bridge, the Ranger was built and launched May 10, 1777, and from here, the next November 1, com- manded by John Paul Jones, she The Ranger, 1777-Badger's Island --- Kittery set forth, the first government ship to fly the Stars and Stripes (flag fashioned by local women out of their petticoats), and first to receive a salute to them-at Brest, France, from the French fleet, Feb. 14, 1778.
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The Ranger carried across the Atlantic the first news of the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga.
Even after Martin Pring with his Speedwell and Discoverer sailed up in 1603 both sides of the Piscataqua river had been famed for fishing and shipbuilding, but Master Badger's yard turned out, also, the America, presented to Louis XIV of France, and the Kearsarge, launched in 90 days from the laying of her keel, that battled and sank the Confederate cruiser Alabama in the War Between the States, off Cherbourg, France.
As for John Paul Jones himself, as soon as the treaty with America had been received at Paris he paid the flag of France another salute and the Ranger received 11 salutes for the 13 given, two more than republics were supposed to get.
From Brest the Ranger went after British ships, getting what loot she could, with no other commands from home except just "to proceed as he judged best for distressing the enemies of the United States". Jones liked that free-lance commission and he captured British ships right and left, finally bringing up at Whitehaven, his old home. It was after dark and the wind was so strong it blew out' their lighted candles, neverthe- less, they succeeded in firing one boat, hoping it would set fire to the rest, but the wind shifted and it didn't. They scaled the walls of the fort, locked up the guards, spiked the cannon-but by now the townspeople had heard the commotion and came rimming. Jones wouldn't risk hurt- ing his own people so, with an unloaded pistol, he stood them off while his own men got back aboard, then ran, dodging shots, to safety himself.
His men had been clamoring for prize money. Kirkcudbright, his birthplace, was only a short ways north, so he sent them to take the Earl of Selkirk's silver plate. They found the Earl away, seized the plate from the Countess, but took nothing else, and years later Jones went to much trouble to re-colleet the different parts and send it back just as it had been, even to the tea leaves in the pot.
Wars were conducted differently then, but always John Paul Jones behaved honorably according to the standards of his time. Most of the men who shipped with him were local men, patriots, even as they had been back in 1675 when Kittery sent 180 men to the Yorkshire militia.
Our most easterly naval base, best dry dock in the United States, Kittery, sometimes called Portsmouth, Navy Yard, covering several small islands, was established in 1806. In the Commandant's quarters Admiral Farragut died in 1870; Gen. Greeley and the other survivors of his ill- fated Arctic expedition came in 1884; and in 1898 it held, as prisoners of war, Admiral Cervera and men from the battle of Santiago, Cuba. In 1905 the Russo-Japanese Peace Conference was held and the treaty signed in No. 86, supply department building, then just built and not yet used, a brass plate in the floor marking the spot.
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This is the town that contributed Stephen Decatur, famed at 25 for firing, at Tripoli, the captured U. S. S. Philadelphia, preventing her from being used by the Tripolitan pirates in their war with us. On a bright moonlight night he sailed past the fortifications into the harbor in a ketch he had seized while it was loaded with virgins being sent by the vassal bey of Tripoli to the Turkish sultan in Constantinople, and he was made the youngest captain in the navy's history.
In the business center of the village stands the Pepperell man- sion built in 1682, home of Col. Wm., Sr., birthplace of his son, Sir Wm., who was received and knighted in 1749 by King George of England for his Louisburg services. The house was once 30 feet longer, so large it was used as a barracks for Rev- olutionary soldiers. By its side Pepperell Home, 1682, Once 30 Feet Longer -- Kittery rest the Pepperell dead. The Pep- perells, being Tories, fled during the Revolution and their property was confiscated.
Just cast is the old Bray house, built in 1662, girlhood home of Margery Bray, wife of the Colonel, mother of Sir William.
Young Col. Wm. Pepperell came from Tavistock, Cornwall, England to the Isles of Shoals to fish. Something went wrong with one of his vessels and he had to come to the mainland to get Shipbuilder Bray to fix it and there met and courted pretty Margery. Papa Bray gave him a house lot right next door and the young Colonel transferred his business to the mainland.
He and Margery were both badly smitten but he didn't seem to have a proper sense of Bray House, Built 1662-Kittery responsibility, so necessary in a family man, and Margery had to tell him there wasn't enough jingle from his saddle bags. He promptly got busy with his lobster pots and fishing nets, soon owned a brig and made a trip to Hull, returning with so much silver a-jingling in his saddle bag's that Margery hastened to sew her quilts and linens for the wedding.
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Her son, Sir William's saddle bags must have jingled plentifully for he could drive 30 miles from his home in Kittery to his business in Saco and never get off his own land, and he built a shipyard where a hundred sail could anchor at one time.
The old Rice Tavern stands where Thos. Withers' ferry used to dock, daughter Mary later marrying Thos. Rice. The ferry finally quit for the new (now old) wooden toll bridge ? up river, at pres- ent being used by therailroad, hence the Inn was no longer needed.
That shrub- bery - surrounded, gray-with-yellow- trim house on Locke's Cove was Rice Tavern-Kittery built by Robt. Cutt, Jr., for a garrison house. His daugter Mary mar- ried Capt. Wm. Whipple of Ipswich, Mass., and Gen. Wm., their son, was
Whipple House, Birthplace of Gen. Wm. Whipple, June 14, 1730, Signer of Declaration of Independence- on Locke's or Whipple's Cove-Kittery
a signer of the Declaration of In- dependence.
Nearby lived Elder Wm. Serev- en, first Baptist minister, 1682, who had been im- prisoned in Bos- ton for his be- liefs. He mar- ried another Cutt daughter and moved to South Carolina to es- cape persecution (from Boston, not his wife).
John, Rich- ard, Robert and
Anne Cutt started coming over in 1636 and continued until they all got here. All had money, engaged in business and land buying until they be- came the wealthiest people in the colony. John was a member of the
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council for the government of the province and in 1669 the crown ap- pointed him its first president.
FICO
Thaxter Home on Site of Champernowne's Home, Cutts Island -- Kittery
In the cemetery on Cutts Island, marked only by a cairn of field stones, is the grave of Capt. Francis Champernowne, of royal descent. Kittery merchant from 1630 on, nephew of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and who bought this whole island, then Champernowne's, for two "kowes or heifers".
Fort McClary, in 1690 called Fort William and commanded by Sir Wm. Pepperell, present one started in 1715 by Massachusetts, was garri- soned during the Revolution and again in 1812 but looked so fierce the
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Fort McClary, 1690-1715-Kittery
British never even tried it. The Pepperells, pro-British and in disfavor for Kittery was so loyal it sent over 600 men, the fort was re-named for Andrew McClary who fell at Bunker Hill, rebuilt and garrisoned in the 60's, although never completed, and here Hannibal Hamlin enlisted.
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Across Spruce Creek on a wooden pile bridge that was built in 1837 to Kittery Point and that stately house in the field to the left is Sparhawk Hall built in 1742, home of Capt. Nathaniel Sparhawk, son-in-law of Sir William Pepperell who gave it to his daughter Eliz- abeth on her wed- ding day, when she scratched her name on a win- dow pane up- stairs. To the right is the Lady Pepperell home, built in 1760 by his widow, Lady Mary Hirst Pep- perell, after Sir Sparhawk House, 1742 -- Kittery William's death, so she might be near her daughter, and it was here that Washington visited her.
Robt. Follett married Merey Mitchell in 1765 and built a home on the site of the old Champernowne hotel.
Lady Pepperell House, 1760-Kittery
There's a house at Intervene that was old in 1735 and no one knows by whom or when it was built.
From Portsmouth it is but an hour's sail to the Isles of Shoals, dis- covered and named Smith's Isles by Capt. John Smith in 1614, who placed a cairn of stones on Appledore and wrote of Cedar island that he saw there three or four short, scrubby old cedars.
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One, Leighton, peeved at something in Portsmouth, moved to White island to keep the lighthouse, vowing never to return to the mainland. He was transferred to Appledore and later took a few summer boarders, found it profita- ble, built a hotel, for all these is- lands are nice in summer. His lit- tle daughter Celia who helped him with his lights and boarders lat- er became Mrs. Thaxter, well known for her knowledge and writings of the Robt. Follett House, 1765, Where Once the Champernowne Hotel Stood - Kittery islands and their legends.
On these islands Capt. Kidd was wont to conceal his treasure, and there's Betty Moody's hole where she strangled her children so their cry- ing wouldn't betray her whereabout to the Indians. Old Babb, ancient constable of the isles, haunts one of Appledore's beaches and snatches out a villainous knife whenever he meets a stranger.
Here came Capt. Teach (Blackbeard) and Scott and lady, buried their treasure, went to get more, Scott showing the lady the place and mak- ing her promise to guard it until his return. Soon they met enemies who blew up their ship and themselves, but, to this day, a golden-haired, long-coated figure stands guard at White island, high up on a rock, hand-shaded eyes peering far out over the waters as she mutters: "He will come back".
In 1641 Rev. Benj. Hall, excommuni- cated minister, preached on the islands to as many as 30 or 40 families, but, strongly Royalist, at the beginning of the Revolution the islanders went to Brit- ain or Canada and a
Star Island Light, Isles of Shoals -Kittery
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moral decline followed until they became known as the "godless isles". Ministers were sent and Rev. John Brock instituted an extra Lord's Day each month, but after a poor fishing season a group asked to be excused when the fishing looked good. Fearing they might not obey if he forbade, he told them, and it later proved true, the 30 who went caught but four fi h, while the five who tarried went out later and caught 500. That the islanders needed that extra Lord's Day can't be doubted, for, in a drunken orgy, they burned their meeting house and a stone one was then built on Gosport or Star island where the steamer lands, now owned by the Uni- tarians and the Congregationalists who hold summer conferences there and where also is the Oceanic hotel and the Capt. John Smith monument.
There are nine islands, five belonging to Maine, four to New Hamp- shire. Maine's five: Appledore, Smutty Nose, Malaga, Cedar and Duck. A submarine connects them with the mainland and Appledore, once Hog island, has a coast guard station. On Smutty 'Nose are the graves of 14 Spanish sailors wrecked there in the long ago. For 300 years shipwrecks have been common here, hence often headquarters for pirates. So perverted did these islands at one time become it was deemed no fit place for the gentler sex and a law was made that no woman be per- mitted on them. In 1647 the Rev. John Reynolds brought his wife, household goods and stock, prepared to make it his home. Soon came "the humble petition of Richard Cutts and John Cut- tings" objecting to the lady's presence and also averring that the only spring of water, that Gosport Church, Star Island, Isles of Shoals -Kittery on Hog island, was being pol- luted (by the stock, not the lady). So the court ordered Reynolds to re- move his swine and goats from the island within 20 days, but as to "the removal of his wife it is thought fit by the court that she may enjoy the company of her husband".
Although Kittery was the first town to be incorporated in Maine the first road was not laid out until 1649. In 1670 began the war against witchcraft, York, adjoining, having already made laws against it. Famed for her witch bridle yoke was an old erone living on Brimstone Hill in Kittery who would catch her victims and drive them, terror-filled, through the wilderness.
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People were made to be good in those days-there was a whipping post down by Spruce Creek.
Kittery's oldest church, the First Parish Congregational, society or- ganized 1714, present church built 1730, third on same site, boasts a silver service given by Lady Pep- perell. Rev. John Newmarch, first settled minister, came in 1694, his pastorate continu- ing for 60 years, and after him Rev. Benj. Stevens for 40, just two ministers for 100 years! In the old parsonage adjoining, built 1730, now the Benjamin Stevens Commun- ity House, Washington was entertained when he came to visit his private secretary, Tobias Lear.
St. Rapheal's Catholic Church was metamorphased from the foundations of an unfinished stable.
First Parish Church, 1730-Kittery
Bra'boat or Brave Boat Harbor, dividing line between Kittery and York was once the home of old Pirate Trickey, for earthly misdeeds con- demned forever to bind a rope of sand, and when the wind roars he may still be seen, a ragged, shaggy creature, busily binding his rope of sand. His grave is stationary but his Bible in Old York Gaol Museum will never stay open.
One day Skipper Perkins was hoisting sail and Esther Booker asked him for a fish. He told her it would cost her six pence. All day his boat rocked and tossed. At night he had no fish. A storm came up. He barricaded his door Congregational Parsonage, 1730-Kittery but Esther came anyway. He got in bed and pulled the covers up over his head, but she yanked him out, put the witch bridle over his head and rode him all over York, a whole train of witches clinging to her back. Afterwards he was bruised and lame and sick and sore for weeks.
Esther Booker and Betty Potter, barely existing by raising hens and vegetables and picking berries, had a house on the dividing line between Kittery and York, "their feet in Kittery, their heads in York", and, by
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successfully keeping litigation alive, evaded paying taxes in either, but, lo, in 1837 Pres. Jackson declared a rebate on excess revenues-their names weren't even on the tax rolls, their property was non-existent, and they didn't get a penny! Betty, too, was supposed to deal with "sperrits", died at the home of a kindly but badly scared neighbor who had her buried in a grave 10 feet deep.
ELIOT
Eliot was of the original Kittery or Chitere, and the Kittery of other years, embracing Kittery, Eliot and the three Berwicks, was called Pis- cataqua. Eliot remained a part of the original until 1810.
Always there had been a Leighton's Point settlement, Royalist and Episcopalian, against Cromwell and opposed to Massachusetts-until finally set off as Eliot.
Here Miss Farmer's Greenacre experiment was tried out, due to her possessing a big, elm-shaded field, for thinkers (who are rare), writers (less so), and the broad-minded generally. Miss Farmer was the daugh- ter of the inventor who first made the electric light bulb to glow, and then applied it to trolleys. With a culture and charm far above the average, its historic spots beautifully marked, and boasting Lanier camps, pottery, wrought iron and other home industries, Greenacre influence is still evi- dent in Eliot's fine lectures and musicales.
The first normal school in Maine, Eliot Academy, was built in 1839, and Maine's first Quaker meeting house, built in Dover, N. H., was taken down and re-erected here, piece by piece, in 1766.
At Wm. Everett's Tavern all Pis- cataqua citizens signed their submission to Massachusetts.
First Law Office in Maine, 1725-Eliot Frost Garrison House was built in 1733 by relatives of Major Chas. Frost who was ambushed and killed by Indians July 4, 1697 at Ambush Rock on the old road between Portsmouth and South Berwick.
Maine's first law office was opened here in 1725.
YORK
A band of Gorges' settlers nosed into a friendly harbor and saw, in- land, a mountain the Indians called "this side of the river", or Agamen- ticus, and that was the name they gave their new little town and the river as well.
Mount Agamenticus is the highest point between the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Desert and was the birthplace, abode and burial place of the Christian Sachem Saint Aspinquid, patron saint of York. Born about 1588, this Algonquin Indian lad fought, hunted and fished much like the others but he seemed to have super- natural powers, could restore from the ashes of a burned leaf the leaf itself, or raise a live serpent from a dead skin, even change himself into a flame of fire, until, at 43, he was influenced by Preacher John Eliot. After that he traveled among 66 different Indian tribes, as far as the Great Lakes, preaching and performed miracles until at 100 he returned to his mountain, gathered his tribe about him for a feast, bade them : "Light not the fires of vengeance in your hearts, for sure the flames will turn against yourselves-be pru- dent, wise and always slow to strike"-and then he left them.
Fourteen different tribes sent their sachems to his funeral and more than 600 wild animals were burnt on his St. Aspinquid, pyre when he was buried on the mountain's summit. An Patron Saint of York apostle of peace and honorable living, his epitaph : "present, useful; absent, wanted; lived, desired; dead, lamented"; is now gone and only a cairn of mountain rocks marks his last resting place.
After a time the colonists became a bit homesick and changed the name from Agamenticus to Bristol, their English home. Later Sir Ferdi- nando Gorges named its Gorgeana, gave it a city charter and it became the first incorporated English city in America in 1642 (and the original royal charter is still in existence), capital of the Royalist province of Maine, nephew Thos. Gorges its first mayor with his "serjeants of ye white rod", with great ambitions to be an ecclesiastical center with bishop and other church dignitaries, but, alas, in 1652 Massachusetts Bay Colony that could brook no traditions of the Church of England and was un- sympathetic towards aristocratic Gorgeana anyway, took away its city charter and reorganized it as the town of York.
The only manor house in Maine was built for Sir Ferdinando in 1634 at Point Christian when Thos. Bradbury came over as steward. This was to have been headquarters, capital for the whole of New England. Now all that remains is the cellar on the northeasterly bank of th? York
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river a few rods above Rice's Ridge on Route 1 and an old pewter teapot inscribed "1644, Fer. Gor.", in the Gaol Museum.
In 1568 near London a little boy Ferdinando was born to the Gorges, Normans, who, like other little boys of his class, was educated for a military career and statesmanship. Europe was in a depression, and all the common man could do was get in the army or navy, fight and kill and
Maine's Only Manor House-from an old print-York
be killed. His own future was safe enough, yet he brooded, thought colonization would help. In 1611 Capt. Harlow brought home five Indians, took Epenow to Gorges and Capt. Dermer brought Tisquantum (probably both stolen at the same time), rekindling his interest. Gosnold was at York in 1602, Pring in 1603, and Capt. John Smith brought maps in 1614. one with Agamenticus marked Snadoun Hill and the Indian village at its base, Boston.
The king gave Sir Ferdinando a big grant of land which he adver- tised after the manner of his time, and many responded. In 1631 his grandson was granted 12,000 acres with 100 additional for each colonist transported within seven years. In 1635 the Council for New England surrendered its charter and King Charles appointed Gorges Lord Palatine of the Province of Maine, governor of ALL New England, with more political and ecclesiastical powers and privileges than had ever been grant- ed before, but the Pilgrims didn't like him, the Puritans hated him, and home affairs (Cromwell being in the ascendant) kept him from ever
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taking office, nephew Wm. Gorges acting as governor of Maine from 1636 until nephew Thomas took over in 1640.
Sir Ferdinando died in 1647, his last thoughts of the New World he had never seen but into which in 30 years he had sunk a fortune and all his dreams. Massachusetts gobbled up New Hampshire, then, carefully examining her char- ter, found her line ex- tended farther east. Bitterly protested here, yet, put to a vote, in 1653 she took as far as Saco, in 1658 to 指间 Spurwink. Vines of Saco, disgusted, sold out and went to Bar- daboes.
Here America's first saw and grist mill Gorges' Old Grist Mill, 1623-York were built by Sir Fer- dinando's orders in 1623, and members of his family, with others, rest in the old burying ground at the site of the first York church of 1636.
York Gaol or King's Prison was built in 1653, oldest public building of the English colonies still standing, and that same year, with proper Puritanical spirit, Massachusetts prescribed : "Each county shall have a
Old Gaol, 1653-York
house of correction", (also ordering stocks, cage and ducking stool in- stalled in each town or it would be fined, but Maine never used hers much) and the prisoner "shall first be whipped not exceeding 10 stripes". Maine
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had to raise the money to build it but after the massacre of 1692 when the work of 70 years was burned up, York was so poor it had to petition Massachusetts to be lenient as to sheriff's fees. Until 1760 this was the prison for the whole state, local one until 1860, now a museum. Its first keeper, Henry Norton was also the first sheriff for the district.
Two-storied, it was also used for court, for between two down-stairs rooms was a door that could be hooked up to the ceiling, besides parlor, dining room, kitchen and two stone dungeons for the most dangerous, each with a grated window for the passing in of food, but every room had a fireplace. Upstairs a bedroom and three cells with outside win- dows, several prisoners sharing a cell.
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