USA > Maine > Waldo County > Unity > A history of the Town of Unity, Maine > Part 21
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6. Unity Town Records, Vol. III, April 23, 1867, pp. 95-112. Also see Maine Reports, Vol. LXII, p. 148.
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A HISTORY OF UNITY, MAINE
that the meeting be adjourned.7 The motion was doubted and an- other line was formed to determine whether to carry through the adjournment. There was a majority of only thirteen votes in favor of adjournment. The opposition did not easily give up and another town meeting was called in September, but the results were exactly the same with a slightly higher majority.8 So far the town approved of taking the stock.
Soon after this the railroad company decided not to lay the tracks through the town. As a result Unity felt justified in withdrawing its subscription to thirty thousand dollars worth of stock. At a later date in order to obtain funds the company began a negotiation with the Portland and Kennebec Railroad Company, which agreed to build a line from Brooks to Bangor. The directors of the Maine Central fear- ed the consequences of this arrangement and made a better offer to the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad Company. The Maine Central offered to pay an annual rental of six percent on eight hun- dred dollars providing that the rail connection be made at Burnham. Under the former agreement with the Portland and Kennebec Com- pany no track would go through Unity, but under the latter ar- rangement it was decided to return to the original route. Meanwhile Unity people got confused and irritated by the dilatory actions of the Belfast Company. The town held that it was not bound to take the stock as the original contract had been broken. Thereupon the Belfast and Moosehead company sued the town of Unity.
Meanwhile in June 1870 laborers began laying track. Work was started on both ends about the same time.º "An engine is expected soon to assist in transporting sleepers and iron."1º Toward the be- ginning of fall there were over three hundred men working night and day to hasten its completion before October. A news item in September said forty cars, four engines and four hundred men were
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 112.
9. Maine Farmer, July 2, 1870.
10. Ibid., July 23, 1870. During the second week of July 1870 ap- proximately one hundred workmen from New Brunswick arrived to hasten the laying and graveling of the track. From Burnham a locomo- tive hauled sleepers and iron. Gravel from Unity's horseback helped to make the roadbed. During the first week of August the track had been laid as far as Unity; then, the railroad builders directed another steam engine to assist hauling gravel, meanwhile the part of the mid- dle section yet unfinished was hastened. The last rail was spiked down on Saturday morning, Sept. 24, at a point between Thorndike and Brooks. Many citizens were present, but there was no wild demonstra- tion except the excited tooting of the exultant locomotive engineer. On Sunday morning the engine, Windsor, with two platform cars went through from Burnham to Belfast carrying some twenty citizens of Unity and Burnham. By the end of October everything was ready for inspection. On the afternoon of October 31, the directors of the rail- road traveled up the track as far as Unity, where they were met by a special train carrying the president and director of the Maine Central R. R. and ex-Governor Abner Coburn. The new line was ready for business.
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THE BELFAST AND MOOSEHEAD LAKE RAILROAD
accomplishing the work which was expected to be completed by Oc- tober fifteenth. A spur track was laid into the gravel pit near Unity Pond and a locomotive hauled loads of gravel for the road bed. Volunteer crews helped on Sundays and holidays in order to complete the work.11 The job was completed early in the fall and the first passenger service commenced. Two trips were made a day. A paper quoting the "Belfast Age" wrote, "Business on the Belfast Moosehead exceeds anticipation." The number of passengers increased and there was more freight than the limited rolling stock could handle.12 The 1872 Railroad Commissioners' report showed that the station buildings were in good order.13 The first known accident happened the third of June 1872 when Moses Parsons of Thorndike was unloading wood at a crossing. His horses became restless and in an attempt to hold them he was thrown on the track and run over by the locomotive.14
The Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad continued operation as a branch of the Maine Central Railroad until 1926.15 At that time the city of Belfast assumed the large part of the stock although the town of Brooks also was part owner.
Now to return to the lawsuit in which the town of Unity became involved. The details will be omitted and only the main points will be explained here. Unity agreed to take three hundred shares of the company's non-preferred stock for which they were willing to pay thirty thousand dollars. Accordingly James Fowler, Jr. and Reuel Mussey, selectmen of Unity, entered upon the company's books the following quoted agreement,
We the undersigned, being a majority of the selectmen of the town of Unity do hereby, in our official capacity, for and in behalf of said town, subscribe for three hundred shares . . . stock of the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railway, at the par value of one hundred dollars each, amounting to thirty thousand dollars, in accordance with the vote of said town, and the rules and regulations of the directors as herein re- corded. Selectmen not personally liable.16
At a directors' meeting of the railroad held June 29, 1868, the company voted to change the specified route so that it would not
11. Joseph Williamson, History of the City of Belfast, Maine, Portland, 1877, p. 674.
12. Maine Farmer, January 14, 1871.
13. Railroad Commissioners' Report, Maine, 1872, Augusta, 1873,
p. 31. The present Unity station was built in 1896.
14. Ibid., p. 38. There was a terrible accident in the morning of July sixteenth 1923 when six persons were killed at the railway cross- ing at the station. That morning a special train went through and hit a touring car filled with six adults from Burnham and a baby a year and a half old. The child was thrown several feet, but survived. Wa- terville Sentinel, July 17, 1923.
15. The lease arranged with the Maine Central Railroad expired in 1921, but was extended subject to termination by either railroad at six months notice. Maine Central gave notice and terminated its lease January 1, 1926.
16. Maine Reports of Supreme Judicial Court, Vol. LXII, Port- land, 1875, p. 149.
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A HISTORY OF UNITY, MAINE
pass through Unity. At the annual March town meeting held the next year the town considered an article, "To see if the town will vote to rescind the vote, whereby the town voted to take thirty thousand dollars of non-preferred stock in the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railway Company." The inhabitants decided in favor of rescinding by a vote of seventy-eight "yeas" and sixty-three "nays".17 Nearly a year later on the twenty-first of February 1870, the Railroad Company tendered the selectmen of Unity a certificate of three thousand shares of the capital stock, and demanded payment. The selectmen refused payment and declined the certificates. Then on March sixteenth 1870 the Belfast and Moosehead brought suit against the town of Unity, with the purpose of compelling the town to pay for the shares.
The law held that at the time Unity accepted the subscription the railroad was going through there. By the fact that the company on June 29, 1868, voted to locate their road upon a route which did not lead through Unity, the court ruled that this was a "direct refusal of their assent to the terms offered by the defendants." By the vote re- scinding the offer at town meeting March fifteenth 1869, Unity there- fore withdrew its offer. "This it was certainly competent for them to do at any time before the offer had been accepted .. . "18 The court ruled in favor of the town and Unity never took the bonds.
Without doubt the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad was a great asset to the town of Unity especially in the days before automo- biles and trucks. A great deal of freight was shipped over the rails. As the farmers in this locality shifted to growing potatoes, many car- loads of potatoes were loaded at Unity and shipped. A great deal of lumber and pulpwood has been sent by rail. A milk car leaves Unity every day in the week for Boston. A great deal of grain is shipped in for dairy and poultry farmers. The railroad handles all the mail for most of Waldo county. Thus the railroad plays an important function to the towns through which it passes.
17. Ibid., p. 149.
18. Ibid.
CHAPTER XV
THE CALL OF THE WEST
The constant migration westward was one of the outstanding fea- tures of the nineteenth century. Men and whole families caught the western "fever," and the desire for better opportunity kept this movement alive as long as there was land or ore available. First, there was the Ohio "fever" of 1816 and 1817, then other similar migrations to Illinois, Wisconsin, or Minnesota. Somewhat later there was the California gold rush, and finally in the 1870's and 1880's the opening up of the great plains to ranching or homesteading. All drew their quota from the towns and cities of the east.
The first of these great migrations, which affected Unity, was the "Ohio fever." There is no way of telling how many persons left Unity for Ohio between 1816 and 1820, but there were several. The sum- mer of 1816 was one of unusual cold weather. Because of the low temperatures during June and July, crops failed. Below freezing weather, combined with snow or hail, ruined any prospects for a suc- cessful farming year. Farmers called this season the year of "1800 and froze-to-death." Many a farmer discouraged by this disastrous summer decided to seek a location elsewhere. Ohio lands beckoned and the "fever" spread.
A story illustrates the plight of the wretched inhabitants during the "cold year." A respectable citizen of Beaver Hill (Freedom) strolled into a Belfast store. He listened to the conversation, much of which included the subject of the weather and "hard times". A casual old-timer inquired, "How is it out at Beaver Hill?"
"Bad enough - just as much as we can do to keep from starving." "All poor - not one rich among you?"
"Wall, yes, there is one rich man; very rich, Squire Sibley."
"What do you mean by very rich?"
"Wall, Squire Sibley can afford to have pork with his beans every day in the year."
In the 1840's several Unity families moved to Ohio or Illinois. Among these were the families of Amos and Thomas Jones who set- tled near Columbus, Ohio and Aaron and Eleazar Kelley who settled in Bureau County, Illinois. Several letters written from Ohio soon after their arrival there tell of the trip and conditions of those times. On the sixth of September Peter Moulton wrote to Edmund Mussey of Unity the following letter from Columbus, Ohio.1
1. Peter Moulton also a Unity and Thorndike, Maine resident trav- eled with the Jones family. Evidently they left Unity on August 20 or 21, 1845 for Ohio.
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"Dear Brother, this will inform you that I arrived here last evening and found the doctor and his family in good health and somewhat anxiously awaiting our arrival. I was sixteen days on the way, and it is not likely that Thomas (Jones) and family will arrive before next Monday evening. I left them at Cleveland last Thursday morning and came through here by stage one hundred and thirty-two miles. They are coming by the canal which is about 100 miles further and will take about five days. When I left them, they were all well and had been since we left Maine. Indeed, there has not been the least accident or occurrence to mar our happiness on the way, excepting the slow prog- ress whilst on the canal. I became so tired that I left the towboat last Sunday afternoon, eighty miles below Buffalo and took a packet boat and arrived in Buffalo the next morning at seven, - not finding a steamboat coming up the lake until evening, I took a trip to the falls and saw all the wonderful things there and returned at four p. m. But not liking the appearance of things on board the boat that was coming up the lake, I concluded to stop in Buffalo twenty-four hours longer. Meantime Thomas and family arrived with many other choice friends that we had found on the canal. We all took passage in a boat called the "Great Western" on Tuesday evening at seven o'clock and arrived in Cleveland at three o'clock Wednesday afternoon . . . From Cleve- land I came across the country to Columbus by stage and believe me I actually wept and could not refrain from tears on seeing this won- derful country and reflecting that I had spent the flower of my days in so inhospitable a region as Maine . .. Many of the farmers are vastly rich as we should say and I have invariably learned from my inquiries that the industrious farmer always becomes rich, and that, too, in a few years. Why sir, I came past farms that were taken up by poor lads thirty years ago, that could not now be bought for a hun- dred thousand dollars, and be assured the labour to make their farms has not cost half as much as that of yours . . . For instance, a man supposes he shall want some wheat next year. He goes into his corn- field, and sows a few acres anytime between June and October, takes his old horse and double-mold board plow and runs a furrow between each row, and this is all that he does to it until it is fit to reap . . .
Yours, Peter Moulton
Other letters reveal much about Ohio agricultural conditions and observations of Ohio development. On the sixteenth of November 1845 Thomas Jones wrote:
the soil of Ohio is good as needed, but very little cultivated; they cut the small trees and girdle the large ones and plough and plant corn, but the limbs of the trees are continually dropping down in the way, but the trees are so large and the ground so flat that it would be about impossible to clear it clean. The white oaks of which they make rails are from three feet to six feet through. I cut one a few days ago that three cuts of it eight feet long made 114 posts for board fence. We are comfortably situated and have a good house of three rooms and chambers ... furnished with a cooking stove, an airtight in the parlor, carpeted the parlor floor, two sets of dishes, two tables, a bu- reau, and one dozen chairs . .. We have been arranging a nursery; have set out 819 peach trees, that will be suitable for budding next September; have set out 19 apple trees for standard trees and expect about fifty more from New York ... the land is good but very little done on it, only about six acres cleared, but well fenced. I shall make an addition of 10 acres or more to our farm this winter and we have a man cutting wood now at thirty-one cents and boards himself. He has cut 100 cords split and piled the brush .. . there is probably 5000 hogs fattening in this township mostly on the Siota bottom on corn; some are turned into corn fields; others gather their corn and feed them husks and all.
On June 14, 1848 from Columbus Amos Jones wrote to his Maine home. His letter shows that he longed for the New England hills,
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THE CALL OF THE WEST
yet he became reconciled. Jones objected to the poor roads. Speak- ing of what he disapproved of in Ohio, Jones wrote:
. . and one of them is the extreme difficulty and sometimes almost impossibility of traveling in the winter; the roads in this country are never as good as in Maine and after the fall rains comparably worse. The mud in wet times is generally from four to eight and not infre- quently twelve inches deep and sometimes even deeper and when this mud becomes hardened by frost (which seldom continues long) or the sun, you may not imagine the traveling much better in either case. It is almost as hard as brick and a long time must elapse before roads that are most traveled will become smooth . .. In Maine you can go 20 miles to market and back the same day; here when the roads are so they venture out, it takes two days to go a less distance with a much
lighter load and still lighter the purse that contains the pay for it - for corn seldom sells so high as twenty-five cents per bushel, oats may be had frequently for nine pence, wheat usually for about fifty cents . . . and pork on the round hog dressed from two to three dollars per hundred . .. I would say unhesitatingly to any New Englander that values good society, health, comfort, & conveniences make that coun- try still your home. It is very true if a man's only object is to accumu- late property that this country offers greater facilities for that, than the East, for then he would, if a farmer, go into the corn growing business and instead of drawing it to market feed it to the hogs and beeves and sell them to the drover and try good management, (he) make money fast.
Jones remained in Ohio, even for his good advice.
The population of Unity grew steadily until 18502 and there was no noticeable change until 1850. With the discovery of gold in Cali- fornia in 1848, there were many lured by the prospect of sudden wealth who set forth for the gold fields in 1849 and onward.
Among the first to seek the California "el Dorado" from Unity were William H. Weeks, a lawyer, and George C. Burrill, black- smith. They responded to an advertisement of the twentieth of De- cember 1848 in the Belfast Republican Journal along with forty-three others that soon after the first of January the new barque, Suliote would sail for San Francisco. A day before the vessel sailed, the Bangor delegation was escorted into town to martial music. The California-bound persons were honored at Washington Hall, where William H. Weeks spoke about the wonders of the new territory. On a bitter cold morning of January 30, 1849 the decks of the Suliote crowded with passengers unfurled her sails for San Francisco. Six months later the Suliote dropped anchor in San Francisco Bay.3
Several Unity men departed for California in 1850 and 1851. Previously, on the fifteenth of September 1849, Stephen Thayer Rack- liff, Crosby Fowler, Joseph Rackliff, and forty-four other State of
2. The population for 1810 was 793; in 1820 was 978. John Hans- com and James Wilson moved to Ohio at this time. In the eighteen forties Amos and Thomas Jones moved to Columbus, Ohio. Hale Jackson and family settled in Rutland, Illinois in 1867. Eleazar and Aaron Kelley settled in Illinois. Joshua Sinclair and sons moved to Ohio and later to Wisconsin.
3. Republican Journal, 1870.
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A HISTORY OF UNITY, MAINE
Mainers sailed on the Hampton from Bath.4 They sailed around Cape Horn arriving in California six months later. Crosby Fowler wrote shortly before his death about his memories of 1849.
It was in 1849, and I was but a mere stripling of twenty years, when I left home on the ship Hampton of Bath. . . It was a weary trip. .. I can remember that I was 21 years old on the day we crossed the Gulf Stream ... fair sailing to San Francisco, which we reached after a trip of six months lacking a few days. San Francisco was but a hamlet largely of tents and shacks. I didn't stay there but a few days, so missed the excitement of the vigilantes. .. I went to Sacremento on a brig loaded with lumber. There was nothing there at that time to keep me, so I started for Middle Fort, on the American River where placer mining was going on. It was a new camp and life what might be expected. Privations of every kind were ours, although we had enough to eat, such as it was. I mined with a cradle and would take out from two bits to one dollar and a half a day according to luck. It was great work and great excitement. . . There was no money and everything was bought and sold in gold dust, but we were never very careful to see how accurately it was weighed. A dollar or two in a pound of coffee made no difference one way or the other. Law on the whole was well observed . .. most of the toughs hung out in San Francisco.5
Also Dutton Fowler, Simon L. Knight, William Weeks, left for California in 1849 as well as John H. Scribner, who died en route sailing around the "Horn," and Solon Carll who died a few months after he reached there.º
On July seventh 1851 four Unity men, Jonathan F. Parkhurst, Seth Thompson, Amaziah Trueworthy, and Rufus B. Libby started together for California. They took a steamer from Hallowell to Boston. Park- hurst recorded in his diary, "Fell in with about forty more Maine boys going to California and joined into a company."" To New York they traveled by train and steam arriving there on the ninth. "We all went to the Pacific House and stopped." In the morning Parkhurst bought a steerage ticket for one hundred and twenty dollars to Chagres on the Georgia. In New York three other Unity men and one from Freedom joined them, Joseph Kelley, G. C. Connor, Bradstreet Full- er, and Benjamin Woods. They all sailed together on the tenth. They stopped at Havana, and Tobago, arriving at Chagres on the isthmus in the middle of August. They walked across the isthmus getting lost once, but procured a boat and arrived in San Francisco, California, the first of September. Amaziah Trueworthy came down with fever a little while out of Acapulco, Mexico, and was buried at sea.6 Two months after his arrival Parkhurst wrote to a brother Ma- son, James Connor of Unity :
4. Maine Farmer, September 20, 1849. This was the third ship to sail for California from Bath. See Taber, p. 36. He has the ship named the Hampden. Joseph Rackliff drowned in Yuba River, California, 1851.
5. Lewiston Journal, Magazine Section, February 6, 1916.
6. Many died en route like Riley Webb, Harrison Seavey, who died in Virgin Bay, Nicaragua on March 2, 1854 and Luke Moulton.
7. Jonathan F. Parkhurst Dairy, July 8, 1951, in possession of Mrs. Mary P. Noyes of Bangor.
6. Parkhurst Diary. Trueworthy buried at sea, August 11, 1851.
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THE CALL OF THE WEST
According to agreement I embrace the present opportunity to in- form you of my health and to give my opinion of California and its mining facilities. California has a very healthy climate and many fer- tile valleys which yield very great crops of barley and potatoes, etc. of the richest kind and vegetables of all descriptions. The mode of living has greatly improved for the past years and the prices of pro- visions vastly reduced; potatoes are worth ten cents per pound; cab- bage, fifteen; flour, ten; turnip, five; beef from twelve and one-half to twenty-five; pork, eighteen; onions, twenty-five; dryed (sic) apples, twenty-three; beets, fifteen; these are the prices we have to pay for pro- vision in the mines; they are cheaper at Sacremento probably. Many parts of the mines are very rich and a great many parts are poor and yield but little to the hard working miner. Quartz mining will in a few years be the principle business carried in the mining vicinity. Yet the rivers will be worked for sometime and the new bank diggings dis- covered that will be very rich. At Yankee Slide on the river (Bank Diggings) they panned out $2100. to one pan. But it is a hard site for a man that first comes to this country and some will be very lucky and get their pile, while others will hardly get enough to pay their way. If I were to give my advice (which I will do) to my friends it will be to stop at home they can enjoy the pleasures of good social fireside chat and pumpkin pies. "Hurrah." Yet I feel well contented and am bound to have some gold before returning home unless my health should fail me. I have had a turn of sickness which lasted me six weeks (billious fever). I have now got able to work . .. I winter in this place and have got my stock of provisions in and all paid for and some gold left . .. But mind and stay at home and be quiet and not excited with the foolish stories that are afoot about the gold re- gion ... I have one-half share in a quartz claim we intend to have machinery or in the spring. It's assayed to pay (?)" twenty-six cents to the pound; some of it has paid as high as three or four dollars, but if it will average five cents to the pound it will be a fortune to any man, but as luck will be if it proves hard it will be hard for us, there is but eight shares in the lead . . . 9
Yours respectfully, J. F. Parkhurst
P. S. I wrote this morning on the bottom of a small tin pan, it being uneven; chance it is very porely (sic) written.
Both Seth Thompson and Jonathan F. Parkhurst returned to Unity in 1852. In March 1851 Job C. Bartlett, one of Unity's finest young men left for California. There is a romantic story in connection with his farewell. Job was engaged to Lydia Harmon, a young lady of the village. She promised to join her fiance as soon as he sent the money for the boat passage. In due time she received the necessary funds, but a year or more had passed and Lydia declined to risk the long trip which was so far from home. She returned the money preferring to stay in Unity. Job Bartlett married in San Francisco, California, and never returned to Maine. Allen T. Bartlett, a cousin, probably accompanied Job; at any rate both settled in California early. Other Unity persons departing for California in the gold rush days were Harrison G. Otis, Joseph Chandler, and Gorham Hamilton. In 1851 Curtis E. Mitchell, Charles E. Taber and his cousin, Albert Taber of Albion, left for the gold fields.
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