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 22
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dense forest of tall grown pines along the river banks ) is found.
On one occasion, the daughter became terror-stricken with evil presentiments, while she and her mother plucked the weeds from their homestead garden. It was the custom with the Indians to lie in wait near the white man's haunts for days together to secure a victim. Like wolves they prowled about his door, or laid in his path. Urged by what then seemed the unreasonable fears of her child, the mother consented to depart, and they had hardly put off beyond bullet distance when a savage rose under the river's bank and fired. Mrs. Delano and her daughter escaped.
DEATH OF BOYNTON.
But Hilton, his son, son-in-law, and a Mr. Boynton, resi- dents of the Monseag plantation, were less fortunate. Leav- ing the garrison for the scene of their labor, they crossed to the opposite bank of the narrow river, where they were clearing land. A party of Indians lurked in a barn, near their place of labor, and as soon as the men had scattered in the prosecution of their toil, they were fired upon. The elder Hilton fell wounded to his knees, in which attitude he fought with the utmost desperation, till overcome by fatigue, loss of blood, and numbers, he was at length slain 1 out- right. His son was killed at the first fire. Boynton, un- harmed, fled and sought concealment under a log covered with brush heaps. While thus hid from view, his dog, at- tracted to the spot by the scent of his master's body, stood over the place of his concealment, whining. The circum- stance discovered his master's retreat to those who sought his blood. Boynton was tomahawked. The whole transac- tion was in view of the garrison, where Mr. Gray, an aged but resolute man, defended the women and children ; and
1 Mrs. Cushman and Boynton.
.
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as the savages re-crossed the river near to the garrison, and passed near to it with one of the Hiltons a prisoner, he recklessly rushed out, leaving the garrison gates open, to get a shot at the murderers. He succeeded in cutting through the belly of the tallest savage by a well-directed musket ball, who, gathering his broken stomach in his hands, ran with savage yells into the forest near, and whose bloody trail indicated that he had received a fatal wound.
WISCASSET PLANTERS MASSACRED AT PEMAQUID.
The abundance of alewives in Pemaquid River was a source of subsistence to the neighboring settlers. It was a custom to visit this point to obtain a supply of these fish in their season. From the Hooper settlement a party 1 of five men went to Pemaquid by way of the Sheepscot on a fishing excursion. The fish-place was above Fort Frederick. On reaching it, while busied in the catch, the party were sud- denly attacked by the Indians, and all slain but one, who managed to escape, and eluding his pursuers, slipped under the roots of a mighty hemlock upturned, where in close con- cealment he lay till the savages departed. As he crouched in his hiding-place with breathless anxiety, he could hear the tread of the savage panting above him, till foiled, he withdrew from the pursuit.
The survivor crawled from his hiding-place, and returned to Wiscasset by way of Damariscotta ; and a body of armed men immediately visited the scene of slaughter, where they found the decaying corpses of their slaughtered neighbors, to which they gave sepulture on the spot where they fell.
Captain Williamson was again captured. The men at Hooper's garrison had left for Vaughan's mills, and William- son remained to guard the women and children. Ventur- ing out a short distance to an alder swamp, not far from the
1 R. Sewall, Esq.'s, Narrative.
20
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site of the Episcopal church in Wiscasset, a scout of Indians seized and led him away. His cry alarmed the garrison, which now occupied alone by resolute women, was by them successfully defended by stratagem. To deceive their cred- ulous enemies, disguised in the attire of their husbands and fathers, the women exhibited themselves to view in military array as men mustering for battle ! Alarmed by these movements, the savages would know of their captive the force of the place, when Williamson 1 held up all his fingers in such countless array as to persuade them that discretion was the better part of valor. The alarm guns recalling the men on their way to Sheepscot, their unexpected appearance added speed to their flight toward Canada.
TOPSHAM.
A garrison was now constructed near the site of 1756. Topsham, one of the Merry Meeting towns which had grown up from the carly clearings at Pleasant and Fulton's Points and the mouth of Muddy River, where some eighteen families now resided ; and the defense of the place was in charge of Capt. Lithgow.
The triangular conflict between France, England, and Spain involved the frontiers of New England by exciting the ancient allies of France to active and violent measures. Burton's garrison was attacked, two men scalped, and one wounded. Coasting vessels were captured and burnt, and fishing vessels on the coast with their crews were destroyed. During these conflicts the warrior Poland was shot at Wind- ham, by the aim of the noted Manchester ; and his body, blackened and pierced, was buried beneath the roots of an upturned pine bent from its place, so that the return should make both his grave, and do the rites of sepulture to the fearless chieftain.
1 Mrs. Cushman.
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DEATH OF RUTHERFORD.
In the midst of these commotions, Rev. Robert Ruther- ford, the religious teacher of Gov. Dunbar, the father of the policy and faith of the Kirk of Scotland, here died at his post, sixty-eight years of age, whose pious sympathy and counsel were now lost to the distressed and war-worn inhab- itants on the river of the St. George, -the pioneer herald of the cross in the East, whose ashes yet repose on its banks, and over whose now peaceful and thrifty homes of a gener- ation then 'unborn, his sanctified spirit, with those of the ancient dead, there may hover.
PREBLE'S MASSACRE.
Arrowsic was again menaced. Its northern extremity had become a central point, on account of the garrison house of Preble, one of the earliest re-settling inhabitants of the Arrowsic towns. A ferocious band of savages landed at Preble's Point, and shot Mr. Preble while at work in his planting grounds. Mrs. Preble, busied in her household duties at a table near the wooden window, the shutter of plank ajar, caught a glimpse of the shadow of a savage on the wall. She turned and sprang for the firelock hanging above the manteltree, and while in the act of grasping it with her arms outstretched toward the piece, a ball from the unerring Indian's aim through the opened shutter pierced her heart, 1 and she fell dead on the hearth-stone.
The children, a son and two daughters, were spared for captivity ; and they were treated with unwonted affection and kindness during their perilous traverse of the pathless wilderness to Canada. But the inhumanity of their savage captors was fully attested, although the children were often carried in savage arms, and made the participants of every savage luxury.
1 Narrative of the widow of Rev. Samuel Sewall.
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ATTACK ON HARNDEN'S GARRISON.
At a point called " The Ferry," on the Kennebec, stood the garrison of Harnden, about which clustered the chief settlement of the Nequaseag purchase by Bateman and Brown, now known as Woolwich.
In the attack of this party of savages, Miss Motherwell, eighteen years of age, happening beyond the gates, was seized. She was related to the children of the Preble fam- ily, now captives of this war party. Annoyed by the cries of the infant child of the murdered Prebles, the Indians put it to the breasts of the captured girl, and bade her give it suck. With a heart full of pity for the famished babe, with tears she replied, "I am not a mother." Snatching the little one from her embrace, her savage master dashed its head against a rock, and at one blow ended its complaints and its life ! The garrison, however, was not taken ; and the savages retired, after having met a like result in an attempt on the garrison on the lower end of Arrowsic, and turned their fury against the herds and cattle of the inhab- itants, doing all the mischief in their way.
But Commander Lithgow, of the Topsham fort, 1757. did not escape unscathed. An ambush surprised his small command. Two were wounded at the first fire ; but in the skirmish which followed the debt was paid by the fall of two of the Indians. Disheartened at length, the savages withdrew, carrying off the dead bodies of their fallen comrades, but meeting an opportunity, retaliated the injury by slaying two white men on their passage up the river.
THE CAPTURE AT LONG REACH.
The homestead of Robert Gutch, "Long Reach," seems to have been peculiarly exempt from the casualties of savage assault. But Philbrook, one of the earliest re-settling occu-
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pants of this ancient plantation, with his Irishman Maloon, were surprised at their plow, and captured by a scout. Hav- ing crossed " Whisgeag" on their way northward, before they were suffered to rest, the Irishman suddenly roused from his apparently lethargic state, with marked indifference to his state, coolly asked of his master, " And who will take care of the oxen to-night ?" "And sure, I'll soon do it myself," he added, in reply to the echoes of his own voice, on perceiving the offense his apparent levity had given his master.
Reaching the St. Lawrence, Maloon was sold to a ship, about setting sail. At the mouth of the river this ship was captured, and taken into Boston, where Maloon was released, and in less than six weeks after his capture, reached his old home at " Long Reach."
" TWENTY COW PARISH."
The plantation, now stirred with the movings of a self- reliant independence, petitioned, and was set off from the metropolis of the Kennebec on Arrowsic, as a separate ecclesiastical existence. The new parish was the nucleus of a new town. The movement was viewed with suspicion and treated with contempt by its metropolitan parent, and in derision called the " Twenty Cow Parish" by the self-com- placent residents of Georgetown on Arrowsic.
We have now sketched the last acts of savage aggression that have tinged the history of settlements on the Sagadahoc, and while horrible visions of barbarism have afflicted our view in the repeated desolation of the Arrowsic towns, adorning the east bank of the Sagadahoc, the ancient mis- sionary home of Robert Gutch-" Long Reach"-then the " Twenty Cow Parish"-now the " City of Bath"-appears to have had a happy exemption from the scenes of blood and devastation which have overwhelmed the adjoining eastern plantations.
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ASPECT OF THE EAST.
In the east the spirit of savage resentment lingered still for vengeance on the encroaching white man. Government was anxious to cultivate amicable relations with the Penobscots, and under its commanders at George's, was accustomed to hold friendly interviews under the protection of a white flag.
KELLOCK'S ACHIEVEMENT.
A body of about forty Indians had concentrated in the neighborhood of Thomaston. A scout of eighteen men per- sisted in following their trail. In an hour the scout return- ed with a single scalp, under the following circumstances.
The Indians had been into the fort, and when they de- parted were warned to beware of the block-house men. Their departure was known to Alexander and David Kellock, who started in pursuit with their men, in close Indian file. The night was dark. A mile distant, a solitary pack lay by the path side. Arrested by this, the pursuing party discovered the Indians a little off the road. Interpreting the pack to be set for a decoy, each man gave his file-leader a grip. Thus the party were brought to a silent halt. A second elapsed, and the loud snore of a sleeping savage betrayed his place of repose, when the flash of a musket, and the passage of its ball, revealed the unconscious sleeper, in a prodigious leap, falling back into the arms of death !
Him they scalped. At once, on both sides of the way, the flash of fire-arms and the rattle of musketry unmasked an ambuscade. The whoops of the Indians, the shouts of the white men, and the flashes of musketry were the only marks of the contending races, till the darkness forced a separa- tion.
The garrison house of Elwell at Meduncook was attacked. The father and two sons held the door. 'The place was lighted with port-holes morticed through the timber, in place of windows. The wife and mother stationed at the port-hole
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with the pistol of her husband, fired at the shadows darken- ing her light, and very soon the yells of a wounded Indian wakened the echoes of the forests, and called his comrades to his succor, when the party withdrew.
PERILS OF FRONTIER LIFE.
The house of a Mr. Piper, at Broad Bay, was, before the morning light had fairly dawned, made the point of an am- buscade. On opening his door, Piper, coming out for wood, was shot dead. His wife, in the greatest consternation, seized her sick infant, and fled to the cellar throughi a trap door, which was closed upon hier. The outside door was securely barricaded. Returning to guard the door, which resisted the efforts of the Indians to break down, her infant left in its place of concealment below, the heroic mother was shot from without through the door. Thus securing entrance, the war party plundered the house, but the infant was left undiscovered and unharmed in its retreat.
While defending the laborers engaged in hauling wood to a coasting sloop,1 Capt. Kent, Remely with his scout at Broad Bay were alarmed by the report of fire-arms a mile north of their position. Rumor shortly after announced that a woman had been slain on the east shore at the narrows. In the sloop's boat a detachment was sent to the scene of the murder, where " the body of a man was found at the edge of a wood, and the woman at the house, shot, scalped and stabbed and mangled. The axe was lying by the man, and the Indian hatchet was left where it had been struck, buried in the woman's skull."
It seems the man and his wife and son had left the garri- son for their plantation. The man went to his field. The wife and son remained at the house. Having killed the husband and father, an Indian came into the house and set
1 Remely's Journal.
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his gun at the heart of the sick child, which missed fire. The mother then sprang on the Indian, pitched him out of doors and fastened them against him. But through a crevice the Indian got sight of his victim, and killed the mother, while the son crept into the cellar and escaped.
We have here an unvarnished picture of the perils of frontier life in the new settlements of the Ancient Dominions in the days which tried men's souls.
FINAL DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH AND INDIANS.
Governor Pownal had succeeded Shirley, and the 1758. long projected 'expedition of a combined French and Indian movement upon St. George's Fort, for the ut- ter destruction of all the eastern settlements, began its dem- onstrations. The activity and energy of Pownal, however, forestalled its movements ; and by throwing into the eastern defenses a large supply of men and subsistence, and going in person to receive the enemy, he thwarted their plans.
Within thirty-six hours after, a force of four. hundred French and Indians appeared. An assault was made, but no impression on the place, the defenders of which no menaces could intimidate. Disheartened and foiled, the besieging force withdrew, and venting their rage upon the inoffensive herds, which were butchered in merciless profusion, the body retired.
WOLFE'S VICTORY.
Such was the issue of the last attempt of the savage 1759. and his allies to expel the English race from their homes, in these ancient hunting grounds. The in- trepid Wolfe, on the Plains of Abraham under the walls of Quebec, had now forever settled the question of the suprem- acy of France on American soil in a pitched battle, the issue of which, with the life of the hero, extinguished the power of France in the western world. The ties of sympathy
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which had hitherto swayed the savage hordes bordering on our north-eastern frontiers, by this great event were effect- ually loosened. It paralyzed forever the hand that had so long trained barbarian men to a cruel and bloody service.
The northern hive still swarmed, but was at once emptied of the evil spirit which had so long and so successfully brooded over dark designs, in which fanaticism, superstition, and bigotry had fostered their purposes of blood.
The effects of the fall of Quebec placed the Canadas in the hands of the government of England. Simultaneously with this mighty military achievement of Wolfe in the north, Gov. Pownal pushed the most formidable frontier defenses up Penobscot Bay in the east. On a crescent-shaped eleva- tion, overlooking the west margins of this magnificent body of water, near its head, in the town of Prospect, a block- house and barracks, environed with strong earth-works, were so constructed as to command the ingress and egress to the river above from the bay below. The newly erected works were called Fort Pownal, and effectually restrained and overawed the eastern Indians, now disheartened and de- serted of their ancient allies. Permanent peace began now to dawn, and the European race was left unmolested to secure a permanent foothold on the soil where it had so long contended for a new home, at a sacrifice of generations of blood and peace. New towns sprang up rapidly, as changes in the civil organizations of the ancient dominions of Maine, and the increase of its population warranted.
The ancient Nequaseag, the home of Mohotiwormet, the purchase of the early Pemaquid planters, Bateman and Brown, the birth-place of Sir William Phips, was incorpo- rated as Woolwich, a name derived and suggested from the relation of its locality to the Reach in Sagadahoc, like to that of a town in England of the same name on the river Thames.
The rapid and mighty changes now sketched had over-
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1760. whelmed the remnants of the aboriginal race with
utter despair, in its efforts to stay or turn back the tide of civilization by force. The spirit of resistance was cowed and crushed ; and the aborigines, worn out and wasted, left to their fate by the power that had so long pampered their prejudices for selfish and sinister ends, now sought the protection and the fruits of peace under the shadow of the people they had so long and so ruthlessly sought to destroy.
Peace was made. General Preble at Fort Pownal 1 was visited by the Penobscots, who said they wished to dwell near the fort, and enjoy the protection, neighborhood, and friendship of the English. 'Sockaiteon, Sockebasin, with two other chiefs went to Boston, and entered into Apr. 29. a treaty with the Governor of Massachusetts, which has remained to this day.
BREAKING UP OF GARRISON LIFE.
The necessity having ceased, garrisoned homes were deserted. The inhabitants returned to their farms and dwelling-places, and the block-houses, grim and unsightly monuments of dangers past, were left to solitude and decay.
Captives returned to homes, no more to be disturbed with the howl of the war-whoop and the gleam of the battle-axe. Yorkshire became bloated with life, struggling to extend its domain for a more independent exercise of its civil functions, and was broken in two.
LINCOLN COUNTY ORGANIZED.
The territory within which the scene of our June 19th. narrative is laid, the eastern fragment of the sundered Yorkshire, was at once organized into a new civil division, and called Lincoln County ; and the
1 Williamson's Hist. vol ii. p. 344.
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precincts of Frankfort setttlement, on the " Mun-doos-co- took," and that of the Hooper plantation at " Wissacas- sick " Point, were incorporated as "Pownalboro'," and made the shire-town or metropolis of the new county. Thus the ancient Sagadahoc, Sheepscot, and Pemaquid plantations of the colonial period-the ducal State of James II. of England-were, in the revolutions of time, merged again into one body, which continues to the present day, an embodiment of what was the ancient dominions of Maine, if we except the recently projected fragment, hardly yet fixed in its own orbit on the west, and still a satellite of Lincoln from which it has been struck off, appropriately named Sagadahoc County.
ASPECT OF SOCIETY.
The circumstances of peril and the protracted scenes of barbarian life, through which the entire generation had struggled, of course had imparted to the population of this region a wild and barbaric character.
Unused to any of the luxuries of civilized life, or indeed the comforts of home, the hope of securing the enjoyment of simple existence undisturbed by rude alarms-safe from savage assault, - was an acquisition in which all other inter- ests merged, and which was the great end and aim of enter- prise and effort.
FRONTIER MISSIONARY.
The details of Mr. Bailey's experience, the missionary at Pownalboro', ought not to excite our surprise so much as our regret.
Few roads had been opened, and along the banks of the rivers and sea-board, the settlements-or plantations as then called -were accessible only by water.
" In summer, the canoe held the place of the wheeled car- riage ; while in winter, the icy surface of the frozen river
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formed the principal highway for the sleigh and even for the ox-sled with its heavy load." 1 Of course, the inhabitants were poor and ignorant, " without the means of religious or secular instruction."
POWNALBORO'.
Pow-nal-boro', a town perpetuating the remembrance of the administration of Governor Pownal, now was peopled by " one hundred and fifteen families ; " and its western in- habitants were in danger of "losing all sense of religion," or of becoming the dupes of " Popish missionaries." They were frontier men. " Barred from the advantageous culture of the soil by their exposure to the incursions of a barbarous race-a terrible foe-their poverty was extreme." 2 The site of the fort at Richmond embraced a chapel, and its clearings, " a farm ; ", and this military depot afforded Mr. Bailey a home, and was the scene of his official duties as a center, at the outset ; and this opening, though a frontier military station, is said to have " peopled very fast."
Mr. Bailey had now congregations at Pownalboro' 1762. and Georgetown, the ancient metropolis of the valley of the Kennebec, numbering more than " fifty com- municants ; " 3 and the Sheepscot and Damariscotta Planta- tions were reckoned among the " new settlements ; " while the valley of the Kennebec, within the range of Mr. Bailey's parochial labors, embraced a population of " seven thousand souls ; " 3 and though a resident of Richmond Fort, and of- ficiating in its chapel, the most of his parishioners were res- idents on the opposite side of the river, and in Pownalboro.
The aborigines of the land still lingered near the places of their ancient and favorite resorts, barbarism lagging in
1 F. Miss. p. 78.
2 F. Miss. p. 256, note E.
3 F. Miss. p. 81.
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its retreat, retarded by the instincts and associations of af- fection.
" A great number of Indians " frequented the neighbor- hood. They were the remains " of the ancient and formid- able Norridgewock tribe," still leading " a rambling life"; very savage in dress and manners ; eking out a precarious subsistence entirely " by hunting," having a language of their own, but universally speaking French ; devoted child- ren of the Romish church, their aversion to the English was implacable, whom they " would extirpate because French missionaries had taught them to believe they were the mur- derers of the Savior of mankind !" Such is a graphic sketch of the fragments of a broken and fast-receding race, who were the neighbors of the early inhabitants of Wiscasset and Dresden.
The picture drawn of the population of this then frontier section is full of interest and instruction. The people were thinly settled along the river banks, " were in general so poor, not to say idle, that their families almost suffered for necessary food and clothing. They lived in miserable huts which scarce afforded them shelter from the inclemency of the weather. Their lodgings were worse than their food, clothing, or habitation. Multitudes of children were obliged to go barefooted the whole winter, with clothes hardly cover- ing their nakedness ; half their houses were without chim- neys ; many had no beds but heaps of straw, and whole families subsisted, for months together, on potatoes roasted in the ashes." 1 This certainly is a sorry picture of the primi- tive squalidness and misery of the inhabitants of the metrop- olis of Lincoln County. They were residents, however, still of a "wilderness country," whose physical condition was deeply tinged with the hues, and darkly shaded with the wildness of a wilderness home in every feature of life and character.
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