A history of the town of Industry, Franklin County, Maine, Part 7

Author: Hatch, William Collins. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Farmington, Me., Press of Knowlton, McLeary & co.
Number of Pages: 938

USA > Maine > Franklin County > Industry > A history of the town of Industry, Franklin County, Maine > Part 7

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FRIDAY, SEPT. 28TH. We had now twelve miles to Sandy River and six more to our own camp. We started early, in the cold rain, by the way of the long ridge, six miles,-a better road than the day before. and stopped for dinner at Dummer Sewall, Jr.'s, in Chester [now Ches- terville ]. We found Mrs. Sewall a kind-hearted woman, who had much sympathy for my mother, knowing the hardships and privations she would be exposed to in the desolate place where we were going in the outposts of the settlements on Sandy River. We had got so near our journey's end that we started off with good courage after dinner, arrived at Thomas Hiscock's before night, took a by-path across the river, and reached Solomon Adams's as the sun was setting. Here our company separated. Father, mother and the three children went down the river a mile to Esquire Titcomb's, where the family had an invitation to stop till the log-house was made habitable. We drove our stock about a mile up the river, where provision had been made at Esquire Norton's for keeping them. Mr. Luce went with the furniture another route, on

HISTORY OF INDUSTRY.

the west side of the river a mile further on, and put up at Zaccheus Mayhew's. Our journey was now considered substantially at an end.

We were all alive and well, except the fatigue, having had a con- tinmed series of difficulties during the autumnal equinox and the line gales for sixteen days. I have since, on two occasions, accomplished the distance by the aid of a team in twenty-seven hours. Mr. Luce, by depositing the most valuable portion of his load at the river, made out to get the rest to the camp on Saturday, driving through the woods in a road over which no cart had ever been before. There was constant danger of upsetting and destroying his load. He succeeded, however, and returned the same day to the river on his way home.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 29TH, 1792. We boys, with Indian John to pilot us, went to see our new habitation in the woods, two miles beyond any other house or encampment .* We found it in a rude, forbidding, deso- late looking place. The trees about the house and opening were mostly spruce and hemlock. They had been cut down on about five acres. a strip forty rods long and about twenty wide, on the first of July, and burned over. The whole surface was as black as a coal, the trees on the north side of the opening were burned to their tops, and the timber on the ground was burned black. A small bed of English tur- nips on a mellow knoll, sown soon after the fire, was the only green thing visible on the premises. A log-house forty feet long and twenty wide had been laid on the bank of a small brook. The building was formed of straight spruce logs about a foot in diameter, hewed a little on the inside. It was laid up seven feet high with hewed beams and a . framed roof, covered with large sheets of spruce bark secured by long poles withed down. The gable ends were also rudely covered with bark. The house stood near the felled trees, there was neither door nor window, chimney nor floor, but a space had been cut out near the centre of the front side for a door. The building stood on uneven ground. The corner farthest from the brook was laid on a large log to bring the bottom logs to a level, leaving a space along that end nearly two feet from the ground. We thought it not a safe place to lodge in, as a bear or wolf could easily crawl in. We found our furniture in a pile on the ground. After viewing the premises, we returned to our lodgings at Esquire Norton's with no pleasant feelings in regard to our lonely dwelling-place and future prospects.

OCTOBER IST. We obtained a bushel of corn of Esquire Titcomb. which I carried on horseback to the Falls [Farmington], to mill ; and

* This lot now ( 1892) comprises the farm of Obed N. Collins in the northern part of Farmington .- W. C. II.

JOURNAL OF WILLIAM ALLEN.

then I went by a blind path over bad sloughs to Harlock Smith's, in New Sharon, to get a box of maple sugar which had been bought of him. I found part of the way obstructed with fallen trees lying in all directions, over which I made the horse jump, and succeeded in getting home safe with my meal and sugar. Being provided with bread and other necessary articles, a carpenter was engaged, and the next day we took formal possession of the camp. The carpenter prepared plank by splitting basswood logs for the floor of one room and the entry ; a half a thousand feet of boards were procured for doors and partitions ; one wide board was laid for a floor in front of the hearth to sit on while they rocked the baby, and a few boards were laid as a chamber floor for the boys to spread their beds on. The rest of the chamber floor was made of poles covered with basswood bark, on which the corn was spread to dry. Stones were collected by the boys on a hand-barrow for the jambs of a chimney and the foundation of an oven. In the course of the week the floor was laid, the doors were hung, the jambs of the chimney laid up, a hole was made in the roof for the smoke to escape, a rude entry partition was put up and six squares of glass in a sash were inserted in an opening for a window. Other spaces, opened to let in the light, could be closed with boards when necessary. In this condition, on the eighth of October, my mother, with the children, moved in,-not to enjoy the comforts of life, but to suffer all the hard- ships that pioneers must undergo in a hard battle with poverty, for more than five years, in that desolate place, without friends or neighbors.

Our first business was to harvest our frost-bitten corn, about fifty bushels, which grew in two places, six or seven miles distant. It was brought home in a large sack that would hold six bushels of ears, laid upon the horse's back, over mud and mire, to the annoyance of the driver, Indian John, who had often to go a mile to get help to reload his corn, when the horse was mired, laid down and threw off his load. After the snow came, a sled was used with better success. The corn being harvested, we proceeded to prepare our log-house for winter. The boys collected stones, an oven was built and the chimney carried up to the ridgepole with stones and topped out with sticks laid in clay. The cracks between the logs were caulked up with moss on the inside and plastered with clay on the outside. A hovel was built for the animals which was covered with boughs. The first snow fell in October, and it snowed every week till the first of January, without wind. After that time the snow was badly drifted, so there was but little traveling.

We explored the neighboring forests with our gun and found plenty of game, when the snow was not too deep. John, the Indian, was a

HISTORY OF INDUSTRY.

good sportsman. We kept account of the partridges killed, and found the number to be sixty-five killed during the first fall and the next spring. They disappeared when the snow was deep, and then we could sometimes kill a harmless rabbit. We had hard times during the win- ter, 1792-3, but suffered more intensely the next summer. under our severe tasks and privations, and from the torment of black flies and mosquitoes. Our camp was near a large swamp that swarmed with these pests, which tormented us day and night. We could scarcely see, our eyes were so swollen. Sometimes the boys had their necks bitten till there were raw sores with flies imbedded in them. Our fare was coarse and scanty and our work hard. The land was hard to clear and unproductive when cleared, not one-eighth of it being fit for culti- vation. and that a mile from the house. Our clothes were worn out and torn to pieces going through the bushes ; our bare feet and ankles scratched, and our necks bleeding from the bites of flies and mosqui- toes. When we cleared the land and planted corn on the further end of our lot. the bears ate it up, and we seemed to be doomed to suffer- ing and poverty. When fourteen years old. I once carried corn on my back ten miles to mill, and often carried it five miles, for we were obliged to sell our horse the first year of our sojourn in the forest, and we carried our corn on our backs to mill, or went three or four miles to get a horse, often a poor, lame, stumbling beast-taking a whole day to go to mill-and then two days' work of a boy or one of a man to pay the hire. The longer we lived in that wretched place the harder we fared.

JUNE 28TH, 1793, we were visited with a most destructive hailstorm, accompanied with thunder and lightning. The hailstones-as large as hen's eggs-came through the bark roof of our camp by scores. My little sister was stunned by a hailstone that came through the roof and struck her on the forehead, causing the blood to flow freely. The storm was accompanied with such torrents of rain, beyond all concep- tion, with crashing peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, that it seemed to me that the end of the world had come. I grasped the Bible, but not a word could be read, for the water had drenched every- thing in the house. The torrents lasted not more than two or three minutes and ceased abruptly.

My father moved into his new log-house on land belonging to the Plymouth Company [some four miles from his first abode, on a hill to the east of Allen's Mills], the last day of April. 1798. The house was twenty-four by twenty feet, built of logs. The roof was boarded and shingled ; there was a good floor, with bed-room, kitchen and

JOURNAL OF WILLIAM ALLEN.

buttery partitioned off; a ladder leading to the attic which had two sleeping rooms for the children. We lived in this house till Decem- ber, 1802, making in all ten years of residence in log-houses. Eight acres of trees had been felled the year before and not burned. The ground had been cleared but a little about the house, and when the cut-down was burned there was great danger of the house ; we wet the house and the ground around, but, in spite of all our precaution, the house took fire ; we succeeded, however, in extinguishing the flames, not without danger of suffocation, before much damage was done. We raised a good crop of corn that year, about 200 bushels, and in the following years good crops of corn, wheat and rye were uniformly secured.

Still we suffered for many comforts of life, with no stock at first, but one hired cow which ran in the woods in the summer to pick up a living. We bought calves that year and soon raised up a good stock. Our prospects in our new establishment were quite encouraging com- pared with those in the forbidding and barren spot where we suffered so much for six years in first coming into the wilderness. Now we could look forward with good hope of better times from year to year. We had a good sugar-orchard on the lot, and the first year on our new farm I made nine hundred pounds of sugar with no assistance after the trees were tapped, except one day's work cutting wood, Bartlett my next younger brother being sick, and Truman had left the place to go to sea.

My father having raised a good crop of corn the first year that he lived in town [Industry], prepared a load of forty-five bushels for mar- ket to pay for leather for shoes and to procure necessaries, having bought one yoke of oxen, he procured another yoke on condition that he would pay at Winthrop, fifteen shillings in grain for the hire of them ; got all things in readiness on Saturday in January, 1799, for an early start on Monday morning for a week's jaunt, and I was designated teamster .*

The boys were called up early and one sent two miles for the hired oxen, and before daylight appeared I started with my load. The roads being rough and the track narrow, my father went with me four miles to Col. Fairbanks's, near the Titcomb place in Farmington, to pry up the sled when it run off the track. We arrived at Col. Fairbanks's before sunrise, let the oxen rest and eat half an hour, re-laid the load on the sled and squared up and made all secure, I then proceeded alone ; the road being better, crossed the river opposite Farmington village ; and

* Young Allen was then in his nineteenth year .- IV. C. H.

t Probably Farmington Falls is the village to which reference is here made .- IV. C. H.

HISTORY OF INDUSTRY.

arrived at Lowell's in Chesterville soon after noon, fed my oxen, eat my cold dinner, with a tumbler of cider to wash it down ; stopped an hour and started again, got to Perry's at sunset and put up, having driven nineteen miles. Bought a pint of milk and ate bread and milk for sup- per. Got a warm breakfast and started again at sunrise, drove seventeen miles to Winthrop where I discharged ten bushels off from my load to pay the tanner for our winter stock of leather, tried to sell my load but no one would buy, and had to go three miles further to leave another portion of my load for ox-hire. On a cross road I was directed wrong and found myself at the end of a wood road in the dark. Could find no suitable place to turn, but with much trouble I got my sled turned by taking my forward oxen, with the chain, to one corner of the sled and starting the sled off and then starting the oxen on the tongue, then first one yoke then the other a little at a time till I got turned ; after half an hour thus spent, I at length got on the right track and having traveled twenty miles arrived at Fairbanks, my place of deposit, stopped over night and as my team was beat out I accepted an invitation to stop a day to rest. On the fourth day I started early and drove to Hallowell by noon, carried hay and baited my oxen in the street, sold my corn for four shillings per bushel, got ten dollars in money and the rest in goods ; and started for home without entering any building in the place except the stores. I drove to Carlton's by daylight, a distance of eight miles ; the next day to Lowell's twenty-two miles, and on the sixth day, in the afternoon, got home tired and hungry with about four dollars in money after paying expenses and ten dollars in necessary family stores, salt, etc., the proceeds of my load of corn after paying the tanner.

At a meeting for the organization of the militia, January, 1799, on what was then called the Plymouth Patent, my father proposed as a name for the place, Industry, which was adopted by vote and the name is still retained .* On the incorporation of the town he was chosen town clerk and held that office two years. On clearing up the land in Indus- try it was found productive. It was stony but bore good crops ; and we had bread enough and to spare. In 1799 a beginning was made on my lott by cutting down five acres of trees, and three acres more the next year. So I had eight acres ready to be cleared when I arrived of age. I owned a good axe and had possession of a hundred acres of wild land, without a title ; but I had no whole suit of decent clothes. We all could make shingles, baskets and brooms to sell. and I made shoes for

* See page 59.

t This was lot No. 28 of Lemuel Perham's survey and is now known as the Dea- con Ira Emery farm .- W. C. H.

JOURNAL OF WILLIAM ALLEN.

the family and some for others when I could find no better employment. In the winter of 1799 I was employed to teach a primary school for two months in Farmington for eight dollars a month. The next winter I worked with Enos Field, at North Yarmouth, making shoes at nine dollars a month. The next winter I had ten dollars a month for teach- ing in New Sharon, and in 1802 I had twelve dollars in a town school in Farmington ; but I was not qualified to teach English grammar. In the fall of that year I was persuaded by my friend, Joseph Titcomb, who had been one term at the Hallowell Academy, to join him and go for six weeks. Entering the Academy I was embarrassed with my defic- iencies and during the first week was thoroughly homesick. Preceptor Moody took pity on me -said that he was grieved that I was sick. With the encouragement of this judicious teacher I soon began to make progress in my studies in grammar, geometry and trigonometry. Han- nibal Shepard, one of the students, lent me books.

The preceptor employed me in his garden and charged nothing for tuition ; and at the end of six weeks, without solicitation, gave me a first-class certificate that I was well qualified to teach all the branches of study usually taught in public schools. My clothes were shabby when I left the Academy, November 5th, and started for home on foot ; but before I reached home I had, ragged as I was, two applications to teach in the best schools in the county. The attendance at the Acad- emy was the foundation of my success in business in after life. Mr. Moody was a kind friend as long as he lived.

When he left the Academy he procured my appointment as assistant to his successor for two years. On my journey to Farmington I went out of my way to deliver a letter and message from Charles Vaughan, a land agent, to Captain [Lemuel] Perham, the surveyor, and was em- ployed by him two days in making plans, for which I received two dollars in money and more than ten dollars' worth of instruction in plot- ting lots of a given quantity, in various forms, bounded by a crooked river. I reached home with money in my pocket.

APRIL 16TH, 1801. I left work for my father, who had then nearly completed his spring's work, and went to work for myself in good earnest.

My lot was a mile from my father's and I made a contract to board at home, my mother kindly consenting to do my cooking and other work, on my furnishing provisions. I soon found means to pay for a good cow, so the family were no longer stinted to a tea-cupful of milk at a meal.

I worked early and late burning off the logs ; and by rolling the logs

HISTORY OF INDUSTRY.

two or three in a place I cleared by hand, without assistance, except one or two hours' work, three acres ready for sowing. I sowed two acres of wheat and one acre of rye. Had a yoke of oxen one day to harrow in the crop and had the seed in the ground within a month from the time I began burning off the log. I spent a full day with a hoe cover- ing the grain around the stumps and other places where the harrow had not covered it. When it had grown I never saw a field of wheat that looked so well,-not a weed, bush or stump was to be seen, as the wheat was higher than the stumps, the heads large and hanging down with the weight of the grain.

I had forty-two bushels of choice wheat from the two bushels sown worth an extra price ; much of it was sold for seed. The rye was also very good. I estimated that there were thirty-three bushels from one sown. I burnt the limbs on the other five acres which yielded me one hundred and twenty-eight bushels of corn besides what the birds and squirrels carried off. The whole was a satisfactory result. The pro- ceeds of the year's work, including improvement on the farm, was more than two hundred dollars. Always after, when I cultivated land per- sonally, I had good crops.

In 1799 the inhabitants of the plantation, extending from New Vine- yard through Starks, Oak Hill and Mercer to Norridgewock, - a district reaching more than twenty miles from one extreme to the other, -were organized into a military company. The Captain [John Thompson] and Ensign [Jabez Norton, Jr.] were Methodists. and the Lieutenant [Ambrose Arnold] was a Baptist. I was chosen clerk and it became my duty to see that the men were all warned for training four times a year, to meet with them at trainings and general muster and to note their deficiencies. In May, 1799, there was no road direct from the north part of the district to the south part; and the snow was then so deep in the woods that we could not pass thro' the forest. I was first required to go three miles to see the captain and get his orders ; then to travel through Farmington Village at the Falls, along the border of Chesterville to Cape Cod Hill, in New Sharon, to reach Lieutenant Arnolds's in what is now called Mercer, and receive the orders from him. The river could not be crossed in safety with a horse in a more direct course.

TUESDAY, MAY 5TH, 1799, was the day designated [by law] for the training. The snow was so deep as to be impassable where there was no track except on snowshoes. Some went to the training on snow- shoes ; I followed the only track to get from home to the place of train- ing near Withee's Corner, by going north to Hinkley's Corner [near the

JOURNAL OF WILLIAM ALLEN.

Thomas F. Norton farm], then east to Thompson's Corner [near the old Thomas M. Oliver farm]. and then south to the Withee's Corner, being four times the distance in a direct line, where there was no path. It is therefore not strange that I was soon tired of military honor, and escaped from it, as I could be excused. I did not aspire to any pro- motion in the service, and in due time resigned, having no wish for any office of more honor than profit. That spring of 1799 was more back- ward than any I had ever known. The snow was more than a foot deep in the woods, and the Kennebec was passable on the ice at Norridge- wock, till the tenth of May.

In the spring of 1802 while I was at work on the farm, I was sur- prised by a visit from a deputy sheriff, who served a warrant on me requiring a State tax of forty-four dollars, which was to be assessed on the inhabitants of the plantation.

His directions required him to serve it on some "principal in- habitant, who would be able to pay the tax if he did not cause the same to be lawfully assessed. The deputy said he had been through the settlement and could not find any such person ; but that I had received enough money keeping school the previous winter to answer the purpose. and he therefore lett the warrant with me. After enquiry and receiving directions how to avoid the penalty of neglect, I procured a warrant from Charles Vaughan, Esq., of Hallowell, for calling a meeting and the plantation was duly organized I was chosen one of the assessors and the tax was assessed and paid. A similar tax was assessed the next year. In the month of June, 1803, the west portion of the plantation was incorporated into a town by the name of Industry, and I was chosen one of the selectmen, with Capt. Peter West and Daniel Luce, Senior, for associates.

My new farm did not require all my time for several years. I had time to make shingles and build a grain barn the first summer. I also worked out in haying. In the fall I made shoes, and kept school in the winter, with increased compensation, for twelve years. I did not have to go from home to look up a school, but my success and with the recommendation of my worthy friend, Preceptor Moody, my name was favorably known in the community, it may be, beyond my deserts. I taught town school ten winters, and was an assistant in Hallowell Acad- emy nearly two years. I quit teaching on account of my health, and to cultivate my farm which needed my exclusive attention.

Tumultuous meetings were held in various places on the Plymouth Company's lands in Maine prior to 1802 by reason of the decisions of court which established the proprietors' title to large tracts of land on

HISTORY OF INDUSTRY.

the Kennebec, to which many believed they had no right ; and on which the settlers had entered with the expectation that they would be protected by the State ; and would have the land for a small price. When the Plymouth proprietors obtained judgment in their favor, and demanded hard terms, many of the settlers resisted payment, and great commotions leading to bloodshed in some places arose. The Legisla- ture interposed by appointing Peleg Coffin, Treasurer of State ; Hon. Elijah Brigham, Judge of the Court, and Colonel Thomas Dwight, all high-toned Federalists, who had no sympathy for men who, as they believed, were trespassers on the lands ; a committee to come and view the land and appraise for each settler a lot of one hundred acres,- a very unfortunate committee for the poor settlers. The committee came to Augusta in October, 1802, put up at Thomas's Tavern on the east side, where they fared sumptuously, and notified the settlers on the lands in dispute, to appear and enter into a submission to abide the decision the committee should make as to the conditions of holding the lands. The settlers came from all directions, some from a distance of forty miles. Being at school at Hallowell I waited a week for the crowd to subside, and then I found a schoolboy to ferry me over the river for nothing, and to watch for me when I came back, with his canoe. I went up to Augusta on the east side of the river, more than twice the distance of the road on the west side, to avoid paying toll over the bridge, not having money to pay the toll.

When I came to the tavern, I was obliged to wait some time for my turn, before I was admitted. Here I was confronted by Charles Vaughan. Esq., the agent of the proprietors, who was there with two attorneys. They disputed my claim to be heard, as I had not been of age a year. when the resolve was passed providing only for settlers who had been on the land a year ; though I had been in possession more than a year and had built a barn on the lot. After a full hearing the committee decided that I had a right to be heard, I signed the submission, and my time being exhausted, I had to leave without making any explanation of my case, and without any attorney to do it for me, while the proprietors had an efficient agent and the best lawyers in Augusta to manage for them .* I saw roast beef on the table, but could not eat of it, for I had no money to buy a dinner. I bought a good-sized cracker for a cent, and made a dinner of this, and walked back to Hallowell the same way that I came. The result of the appraisal was contrary to our expectations. Instead of adopting the price of lands made by the State, they doomed us to

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A history of the town of Industry, Franklin County, Maine, Part 7

Author: Hatch, William Collins. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Farmington, Me., Press of Knowlton, McLeary & co. Number of Pages: 938

Author: Hatch, William Collins. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Farmington, Me., Press of Knowlton, McLeary & co.
Number of Pages: 938