USA > Maine > Ancient dominions of Maine : embracing the earliest facts, the recent discoveries, of the remains of aboriginal towns, the voyages, settlements, battle scenes, and incidents of Indian warfare, and other incidents of history, together with the religious developments of society within the ancient Sagadahoc, Sheepscot, and Pemaquid precincts and dependencies > Part 20
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On the water's brink remains the half-filled, earth-built cellar, along the water way, where stood the log home of the first settler. But as the forest was opened before his axe, and the clearing extended back, we find the stone- walled cellar of a more permanent and luxurious abode on a higher elevation, by the ancient bridle path of spotted trees, leading to his remote next neighbor's door ; and finally, along the rounded, leveled, and well-beaten carriage road, still further back and more elevated to the crest of the river's valley, we meet the fine brick and wood cottage structure, adorned with architectural art, and well-to-do aspect of a higher developed civilization in a more refined and luxurious age, the exponent of more refined and culti- vated taste. Such is the gradation of the domestic devel- opment of some two centuries and a half.
GEORGETOWN.
In the Sagadahoc precinct, by act of incorporation, George- town had become the metropolis of the valley of the Ken- nebec, as it had been the scene of the ancient plantation sites, from Popham and Gilbert to Lake and Clark. Sam- uel Denney, an English emigrant, distinguished for his „ remarkable decision of character, industry, and the superi- ority of his attainments, took up his residence at Butler's Cove, where he built a block-house, in accordance with the
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custom of the age. He became a magistrate ; and the stocks in which were executed many of his own sentences -perhaps by his own hands-till lately were remembered as a terror to evil doers. Here, also, the early manhood of Governor Sullivan was spent in the study and practice of law ; and Butler's Cove on Arrowsic Island must have exhibited all the legal and executive importance of a shire- town village.
On the banks of the Sagadahoc, opposite the site of Phipsburg Center, resided James, the ancestor of the Mc- Cobbs ; and the Donnels had succeeded to the possessions of Robert Gutch, at " Long Reach " above. Indeed, the final re-peopling of the Ancient Dominions had become established ; and Governor Belcher made a tour through the eastern country, visiting Pemaquid, Damariscotta, and Sheepscot ; and at Pemaquid he met the Indians of the East in conference.
Yorkshire, heretofore embracing but one, now was broken into two regiments, and Samuel Waldo, the eastern Patroon, was assigned to the command.
CLOSING EVENTS OF THE PERIOD.
On the re-settlement of the country, the denizens of the forest had become numerous and bold, particularly the black bear of New England ; and under provocation, it became a dangerous foe. The eastern shores of the Sheep- scot are curved into a basin called the " Eddy," occasioned by a considerable reflex action of the tides, pressing through a gorge between the points of Squam and Folley Islands, at the Narrows entering Wiscasset Bay. The margins of this eddy were the site of the plantation clearings of the pioneers of the ancient precinct of New Dartmouth, then called Free-town, now Edgecomb by act of incorporation. Here was the Trask settlement, and not far back lived the Albees. The young men of these families, in early spring, were
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accustomed to go down to the sea and eke out a subsistence by fishing and duck-hunting. The hollowed trunk of a hoary pine moulded into graceful water-lines, called a canoe, was the great vehicle of locomotion.
John, 1 the son of Samuel Trask, an original settler of the place, and two young Albees, in April embarked in a canoe, on the usual fowling and fishing excursion to the lower waters of the Sheepscot. A bear was descried making its way from shore to shore, as they swept with the tide toward the sea, midway between Barter's and Squam Island.
In defiance of remonstrances, the two Albees persisted in seeking a conflict with Bruin while he could be assailed to advantage in the water. The canoe was headed for the bear, whose head and face, water-borne, offered a tempting chance for sport to the inexperienced huntsmen. On a near approach, the attitude and the aspect of Bruin suddenly changed. Bristling with rage, he faced his pursuers, when a charge of small shot was fired into it. This act neither disabled the animal nor stayed his progress, but maddened him. With augmented ferocity he turned upon the canoe. As the bear raised his shaggy form over the prow to enter the canoe, Albee, clubbing his musket, aimed a blow at his head to beat him back. The next moment the gun was seen flying in one direction and the lacerated body of Albee in another, by a stroke of the beast's paw, when both dis- appeared under the water. Having cleared his way at the bow of the boat, Bruin made another attempt to board her. Then the brother Albee seized an axe, and making a stroke at the animal's head, the blow was warded off, and the axe sent after the gun. Albee sprang for an oar, which was broken like a pipe-stem, and himself knocked bleeding into the water after his brother. The bear then mounted, and sat shaking himself on the cuddy deck, wiping his shot
1 Narrative of Trask, R. Sewall, Esq.
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broken face, and in complacent attitude, surveying the scene of his strife.
When Trask saw that the bear would enter the boat at the bows, he leaped out at the stern, and swam for his life. Turning to look for his companion, who, although an expert swimmer, was seen struggling in the water, all bloody and torn, he perceived that the bear, having cleared the canoe and rested from the fight, had left his seat in the boat, and taken again to the water. Securing a fragment of the oar, Trask turned back to the boat, but Albee had disappeared.
Gaining the canoe, he soon paddled to the shore, and seeking the camp of some wood-men, all started in search of the enemy, and found Bruin stretched out dead upon the beach.
OCCASIONAL OUTRAGES.
Lawless savages, in small parties, continued to hover about the white man's path, lurking for prey. They were usually isolated and irresponsible, acting independently of their chiefs, from motives of revenge, or habits of cruelty and thirst for blood, as occasion offered and in defiance of the peace.
MCNEAR'S ADVENTURE.
McNear was an early settler near the " ancient Sheepscot farms." 1 Three times he had been dragged into captivity by savage hands. On one occasion, as he threshed out his wheat alone in the barn, a grim savage sprang in and stood before him. Advancing upon him with upraised tomahawk, he cried, " Quick me walk you to Canada." McNear, start- ing forward, his flail still flying over his head, answered, " I'll bet you half a ton of thatch of that ; " and at a blow, laid the Indian dead at his feet !
1 Joseph Cargill, Esq.
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CARGILL'S ESCAPE.
Cargill, whose sawmill stood on the stream near the resi- dence of his descendant, Joseph Cargill, Esq., while sawing one day in early spring, improving a freshet, as he stooped to adjust a log on its car, was surprised by the visit of a sav- age, who, raising his tomahawk, and looking to see where he could best inflict a fatal stroke, did not observe the relax- ing form of the sturdy lumberman as he suddenly rose from his inclined position, and by a back-handed stroke of his bar, made to revolve about his head, took the savage under the chin and across the throat, by which, in the twinkling of an eye, he was hurled out of the tail of the mill into the race below, and disappeared forever.
LONG EDMUND'S PERFIDY.
About this time, " Long Edmund," an Indian loafer about the settlement at Wiscasset Point, who frequented the log house of a Mr. Albee, treacherously betrayed the whole family to death.
Albee had gone with a grist, 1 probably over to Vaughn's mill at the Damariscotta Falls. Long Edmund also departed. Soon after his reappearance in the evening, a rush was heard at the door, while the lone wife and mother, gather- ing her infant in her arms, crouched in the corner, full of fear. In vain did Long Edmund strive to induce her to unbar their cabin door. The savage then rose to open it himself. It was summer. No light discovered her move- ments, and as the Indians were let into the room, hugging her infant close to her bosom, from behind the opening door the mother slipped out into the darkness ; and by an unfre- quented way, hastened to warn her husband, who, returning by another patlı, unfortunately missed her.
1 Mrs. Holbrook's tradition.
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The wife took refuge with a neighbor ; but the husband arrived at his home, deposited his meal-bags at the door, and led his horse to pasture. As he stooped to lock the fetters to his horse's feet, he was shot by an unseen foe and wounded. After a stout resistance, the disabled man was killed ; and in the account of the death-struggle, given to his friends, Long Edmund, who was present, said, " He fight all like one devil."
Albee's house and sleeping children were burned together, except the infant son who escaped in his mother's arms, and who in maturer years vowed terrible vengeance on the treacherous Long Edmund and his race, who suddenly dis- appeared in his old haunts at the Point, from among the living, never more to be seen.
THE RESOLUTE PLANTER. n
Defeated in their purposes to destroy Wiscas- set, the Indians broke up into parties, with a view
1750. to ravage Georgetown. The garrisoned village Sept. 25. of "Parker's Island " 1 was an object of peculiar offense. On their way to the attack of this strong-hold, within call of the garrison, they passed the dwelling-place of a planter. The house was fiercely assailed ; but the mas- ter maintained his ground till the savages had actually cut their way in through the door, which they had hewn down with their battle-axes.
In this extremity the defender of his home leaped from a back window and took to the water as the most feasible
1 John Parker, whose original settlement on the southern extreme of this island gave to it this name, and " who was the first of the English nation that began to subdue the Land and undertook in the fishing Trade," was, with his son James, driven from his home at Kennebec to Casco Bay, and both killed at the fort which was then taken. See Wharton's Deed to Par- ker. Deposition of John Phillips, 1748. MSS. Papers, Hon. Mark L. Hill.
4
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method of escape, swimming over toward Arrowsic. Deter- mined to cut him off, his pursuers seized a canoe ; and as they swiftly came up with him in their shuttle-bark, leaping under the influence of their well-plied paddles, their victim turned upon them, and seizing the birchen vessel, in a moment turned her upside down, precipitating the Indians headlong into the water ! In the ensuing life-struggle, the blood-thirsty sons of the forest were forced to let their vic- tim escape, who gained the shore, and cluded their pursuit. The war-party, foiled and chagrined at their ill-success, returned by another route to the north, and from the western sections of the State led into captivity some twenty or thirty persons.
Charles Cushing was the commandant of the military defenses of this section of Maine. Capt. Jonathan William- son, who was also a sheriff of Yorkshire, 1 resident at Wis- casset, and Capt. Nichols at Sheepscot were subordinates in command, with whom were deposited the public arms and ammunition.
The territory embracing the site of the " Sheep- 1753. scot Farms," the ancient capital of the ducal June 19. county of Cornwall, was now incorporated by the name of Newcastle, which it still bears. Its cor- porate existence was honored by a gratuity of the laws of Massachusetts Bay, from the treasury of the State.
PLANTATION OF DRESDEN.
The savages continued to annoy the newly-opened 1754. settlements, whose clearings emigration and enter- prise continually pushed into their ancient hunting grounds, being particularly irritated by the fires of the backwoodmen, which often spread from their clearings, and burned with ravaging fury the forests far and near.
1 Original writ of service, MSS. papers, Hon. M. L. Hill.
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Their restlessness roused the fears of Government, which hasted to put the frontier posts in a state of preparation for war.
An influx of Germans to the shores of Massachusetts Bay had suggested the project to the Plymouth proprietors of planting that race upon their eastern lands. Won by the advances of that company to its interests, a settlement was made on the waters of the Kennebec, opposite Fort Rich- mond, near and upon Swan Island, called "Frankfort." Such was the origin of Dresden. The hamlet received accessions from French Huguenots, who, on the revocation of the edict of Nantz, came with the Protestant Germans to the newly-colonized Frankfort on the Kennebec, from the banks of the Rhine. Swan Island, the homestead of the Sachem Kennebis, delightful for situation, at the confluence of the Mun-doos-cotook and Kennebec, opened its rural prospect, a mile distant from the defenses of Frankfort below.
FORT SHIRLEY.
Two hundred feet square 1 were enclosed with pickets of timber, called a stockade. This work lay on the river mar- gins. Two block-houses of squared hemlock and pine tim- ber interlocked, were raised within, bearing aloft projecting stories of twenty-four feet square, and walls ten inches thick, surmounted with watch towers.
Barracks were also built, and the work named Fort Shir- ley. This was the first settlement of the town of Dresden ; and Samuel Goodwin held the military command of the place.
Transported to a region whose winters were long and rig- orous, and obliged to fell the enormous timber trees ere the earth could bring forth her fruit, or they could gather of her increase, this colony became muchi straitened. Fifty
1 Williamson, vol. ii. p. 302.
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German families 1 had been led to the valley of the Kenne- bec by Maj. Goodwin to plant this hamlet. The habitations were reared along the bank of the river. No roads were opened till long after, the interior being a dense forest, a howling wilderness, between settlement and settlement, with nothing to guide the uncertain traveler from clearing to clearing save a line of spotted trees.
CITY OF STIRLING LAID OUT IN BRISTOL.
While these new establishments were going up in the west, Waldo had induced a considerable emigration from near Stirling in Scotland to re-people the east. A city was laid out on Broad Bay in Bristol ; and half-acre lots set off in close contiguity, on a street half a mile long, on which each settler reared his log hut ; and the name of Stirling was given to the embryo city. Patrician as well as plebeian blood mingled in the flow of this re-peopling tide from Scot- land. Mrs. Dickie was the daughter of " a laird." 2 But discouragement and disappointment overwhelmed the newly- settled town. "Strange sights and sounds assailed" the residents of Stirling. "Fire-flies glowed in the dark woods. Frogs croaked in every swale, and loons screamed in the evening twilight." Contending long with hunger and cold, " witches and warlocks"-every superstition of their father- land quickened ten-fold amid their wild New England homes-the settlement at length yielded to the fears of sav- age irruption, and was broken up.
THE THOMASTON HAMLET.
At this date Thomaston, the site of St. George's fort, was a quadrangular structure of one hundred feet on each face, sixteen feet high, built of hewn timber twenty inches square, and barracks of timber, built against each wall, were con-
1 Frontier Miss. p. 248.
2 Annals of Warren, p. 85.
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structed for family use. In the center of all was a good well of water ; and a covered way of stout timber led to the block-house at the river's brink ; and twelve to fifteen can- non were mounted. The settlers, at their own cost, in par- allel lines had reared block-houses above the fort, and sur- rounded all with a palisado ten feet high. At Pleasant Point was Henderson's garrison ; and in the site of the pres- ent town of Cushing, a stone block-house, enclosed with pickets, was Burton's fortification. On the St. George's river, further down, were four others, each of which accom- modated sixteen families, who had their several plantations, occupied with huts, probably of logs, and covered with bark.
CONDITION OF THE EARLY SETTLERS IN THE EAST.
The circumstances of the inhabitants, made up so largely of foreign emigration, unused to the perils and privations of a sparsely settled frontier, were often distressing in the extreme. One family in the Broad Bay precinct of Bristol subsisted a whole winter on frost-fish and four quarts of meal. Many 1 a German woman was glad to plant and hoe all day long for a quart of meal, or eight pence in money, or a quart of buttermilk ; and buttermilk and roasted pota- toes was a common as well as healthful repast. A patch of ground for potatoes was manured with rockweed carried on hand-barrows by men and their wives from the beach, aided by all the children who could labor ; and all who labored in the field still went well armed ; and when the alarm guns from the fort were heard, all fled to the neighboring garrison.
SUFFERINGS OF WALDO'S EMIGRATION AT BROAD BAY.
Some twenty or more families, under the representations and influence of Waldo, landed at "Pleasant Point" on St. George's, from various parts of Germany. Here, packed in a sloop, they were transferred to Broad Bay, and distrib-
1 Eaton's Annals, p. 89.
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uted among the planters there, or crowded together in a shed erected for their shelter. It was in the month of Sep- tember. The bleak winds of autumn already had begun to sigh through the surrounding forest tops, anticipating the rigors of approaching winter. This shed, sixty fect long, had no chimneys. Here the destitute emigrants in utter neglect were left, either to perish or to drag out a winter of unutterable suffering. Many froze to death. Many per- ished of hunger and privation, and their graves were not long since seen near the bridge. 1
WIDOW BLACKLEDGE.
The story of this woman is full of interest and instruc- tion. The extreme northern point of Westport was carly settled and fortified with the garrison of a Captain Decker, the ancient site of the Delano plantation, which had descend- ed to Decker by heirship. It stood on the point overlooking the gorge through which the deep waters of the Sheepscot expand into Wiscasset Bay, between the island of the ancient Jeremy Squam and Folley Island, which passage, from the flux and reflux of the tides, has ever since been called " Decker's Narrows." Decker was a man of wealth and eminence in his day, having a store there, where the ruins of his wharf and warchouses were till recently seen on the waters of the Sheepscot shore ; and where ships from Eng- land were wont to lade their spars and masts for export.
The Widow Blackledge, 2 during these perilous and pinching times, lived on the neighboring main. During a somewhat severe and protracted winter, she and her little ones were reduced to the greatest extremity of want ; and on a particular occasion, driven from her usual resort to the clam banks by a fierce and freezing fall of snow, on a cold wintry night, having cleaned the bones of her last herring,
1 Eaton's Annals, p. 82.
2 MSS. papers, Rev. S. Sewall.
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and divided all among her children, with neither bread nor meal in her store, while they were locked in sleep, the for- lorn widow betook herself to the widow's God in prayer.
In utter despair of any human help, she cast herself on . her knees before Him " who hears the young ravens' cry," and in defiance of the mockery of the bleak winds and snows, which went with a rush and howl by her door, she made known her want.
That night Capt. Decker retired to his pillow for repose in the midst of comfort and plenty. The moaning of the storm only lulled to a deeper sleep. But at midnight a vis- ion of want stood by his pillow and passed into his dreams. The anguish of a widow disturbed his repose, which this phantom of a night vision vividly sketched. He rose from his bed-looked out on the storm, whose fierce and biting blasts still swept the troubled waters of the bay. He re- turned to his pillow again, solaced with the purpose of pay- ing an early morning visit to the lone Widow Blackledge. But the banished vision, gaunt and horrible, returned and drove him once more from his bed to the window-nor would it leave him till he filled a bag with meal and meat, and paddled his canoe over the storm-tossed tide, and bore relief to the praying mother and her famished babes ; and his raps at her door raised her from her knees to receive the bounty thus furnished by Him who delights to be known as the " widow's God and the Father of the fatherless " !
SAGACIOUS CAT.
On the island of Jeremy Squam, a Mr. Rines had made his plantation. The husband and father had been drafted and sent to the wars, and was thus forced to leave his little ones to the mercies of a lone wintry abode in the savage wilds of Westport. It was a season of great scarcity and distress in this war-wasted region, as we have seen. Soon the deep snows of winter shut out all resources from the
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store of roots and herbs in the forest, and the hoar frosts had fast locked up the hitherto open clam banks, and wrap- ped in ice-bound depths " the treasures there hid in the sand for the poor." Gaunt famine now pressed at the door of the absent warrior's home till his wife and little ones began to feel the pinchings of hunger.
At this juncture, 1 a favorite cat, bounding over the frozen waters of the bay to Monseag River, watched the crevices and openings in the icy floor of the bay, and thence plucked and dragged the little frost-fish playing up in search of air from their watery home, and day by day, brought them in for food till the ice was broken up ! Then the mother, seek- ing food by the shore-side one Sabbath morning, descried a dark body making for the land, which proved to be a large fat bear. Her neighbors were called ; and when Bruin had reached the land, and emerging from the waters, began to shake his shaggy and dripping form, with well directed blows the hungry mother felled him to the earth. Thus was eked out a scanty subsistence, till the warmth of the returning sun again opened the resources of nature for the support of life.
Such was the physical condition of the early planters in our frontiers, when repeated acts of savage aggression called for the vigorous interposition of the arm of Gov- 1755. ernment, and war was declared against all the June 10. Indians except the tribe of the Penobscots.
French priests, notwithstanding the fearful ex- ample that had been made of Ralle, persisted in pressing their way into their ancient haunts, and savage ears were found ready still to listen to their treacherous counsel.®
Peter An-dr-o-u, from the ancient seat of Norridgewock, visited the new settlement of Frankfort, to seduce there the French residents to the interests of the Romish Church ;
1 Hon. S. Parsons' Narrative.
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and M. Bunyon accompanied the Jesuit to his home above Cushnoc. At the distance of half a mile from the eastern shore, he found a house environed with wigwams. 1
The exemption of the Penobscots from the calamities of war by proclamation, gave offense to the undiscriminating populace, who, remembering the wrongs suffered by their fathers and themselves at savage hands, thought only of violence and revenge ; and the acts of irresponsible parties, or isolated individuals, were charged on the entire race of red-men.
The inhabitants would not remain at peace with the In- dians. Every rumor, every alarm, went to the account of the perfidy of the natives ; and every occasion was improved with avidity which afforded a pretext for revenge of the white man's wrongs. Especially were these occasions sought by the volunteer chieftains and citizen soldiery, whose acts were often marked with great recklessness and irresponsi- bility, characteristic more of a band of lawless freebooters than freemen.
CARGILL'S INHUMANITY.
James Cargill of Newcastle held a commission to raise a. scouting company as its chief. A party was organ- ized among his neighbors and led to the east, either 1755. to suppress a presumed trade between the Penob- July I. scots and white men, or with a view to enrich him- self with booty and scalps. 2 He bivouacked on the shores of Broad Bay. In the morning he marched through the forest around St. George's Fort. Some rangers of Capt. Nichols' company, with three men of St. George's, joined' his scout.
With thirty-one men he marched to Burton's garrison
1 Frontier Miss. p. 76.
2 Eaton's Annals, p. 94.
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below. Pressing still to the eastward, he crossed the river here, where a lone savage with his squaw and her infant papoose of sixty days lay by their camp fires.
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