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 23
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1 F. Miss. p. 88.
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The religious aspect of the people was equally dark in its lights and shadows. "Eight different religious persuasions" filled up the outlines of the religious view. "Multitudes could neither read nor write-some had very gross and imperfect notions of a future state, and fancied that they should enjoy their wives and children in another world ; and those born and educated in these remote parts were so little acquainted with any religious worship, and had so long enjoyed their native ignorance, that they discovered hardly any inclination for rational and moral improvement." 1
The licathen, at that day, could not have commanded the yearnings of humanity, or roused the sympathiy of Christian organizations as now, or the woods of Pownalboro' would have rung with echoings from the cliff-tops of Old England and the sand hills of Plymouth-" Ye Christian heroes, go proclaim ! "
A church missionary did at length penetrate this wild, and such was the result of his observation. The French and Dutch residents of Frankfort, the history of whose col- onization we have given, he tells us " he found in general a sober, honest, and industrious set of people."
Mr. Bailey's experience here, in the varied and fatiguing incidents of missionary service, will give us a view of the nature of that service, and of the trials, fatigues, perils, and accompaniments of frontier life in the primitive state of this and the adjoining towns. He writes, - " I officiate at Georgetown every third Sunday ; " to do which "he had to travel by water eighteen miles," sometimes without any- thing to eat or drink, lost in the woods, where he was all night exposed in the open air to a most severe storm of wind, rain, thunder, and lightning.
In the cast, especially in the towns re-peopled by the Scotch-Irish of the Dunbar emigration, greater thrift, more
1 F. Miss. p. 89.
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intelligence, and a better religious state seemed to obtain, the result of greater intelligence, more religious principle, decision of character, and habits of industry.
BOGG'S ADVENTURE.
Sheep, from the older settled agricultural regions of the Pemaquid, were now first introduced to the banks of St. George and Penobscot rivers. A Mr. Boggs, an amateur in this branch of husbandry, had gathered a flock from the pastures of Pemaquid on the deck of his sloop ; and while leisurely wafted over the waters of the intervening bay, bound for St. George's, as he sat on the windlass, became drowsy, and began to nod, when the father of the flock-a pugnacious ram-mistaking the captain's nods for a chal- lenge, drew up, and with a well-directed blow, butted the sleeping owner headlong from his seat. Boggs, thoroughly roused by the concussion, sprung to his feet in a rage, and seizing the ram, precipitated him into the sea ; and in an instant, the flock, following their leader, were floating in the ocean around him ! 1
LONG REACH.
" Long Reach," the newly incorporated second parish of Georgetown, had begun 2 the erection of a house of relig- ious worship, on the spot where, a century before, Robert Gutch made his plantation, and preached Christ. The banks of the Sagadahoc, at " Long Reach," were still embow- ered with the primeval forests of white oak, hoary pines and spruce, tall and large, sufficient to mast and spar " ships of four hundred ton," which made the landscape so strongly to resemble the "pastures of England" in the eyes of the ship's company of the Archangel a century and a half before.
1 Eaton's Annals, p. 112.
2 M. H. Coll. vol. ii. p. 208.
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SOURCES OF THE NAVAL EMINENCE OF BATH.
The great abundance of material adapted to the structure of ships laid the foundation there for the present eminence of Bath, as a place for naval architecture. 1 Shipwrights, from Digby of London, the builder of the " Virginia," to William Phips, son of the gunsmith of Pemaquid, down to William Swanton, the Louisburg soldier, all appreciated in " Long Reach" the peculiar facilities for the building of ships, in the material of its forest oaks and pines. The place at once became a center of interest to artisan ship- wrights. Swanton " was a shipbuilder by trade, industrious and skillful," though Jonathan Philbrook had preceded him in the structure of smaller vessels. 4
The " Earl of Bute," for a merchant of Scotland, was the first ship built within the limits of the city of Bath- the keel stretched-the frame set up-the structure com- pleted, whose mammoth hull was launched by Swanton the first year of his residence at Long Reach. The " Rising Sun," the " Moon," the " Black Prince," followed in nearly annual succession the " Earl of Bute," into the waters of Sagadalioc, from the yard of this gentleman, and out of the forests on the margin of Long Reach.
It was undoubtedly the abounding primeval bordering forests of white oak- the remains of whose forests lie scat- tered along the ancient Nequaseag and Sagadalioc rivers to this day-that laid the foundations of the pre-eminence of Bath, as a center of interest and success, and a conspicuous mart for naval architecture in the United States, if not in the world, which lately has distinguished it as the " Queen City of Ship-yards." Some dozen dwelling-houses now clustered on the margins of " Long Reach," in the midst of which the rudimentary structure of a village church began to lift its spire ; and Joseph Berry, Samuel Brown, Joshua
1 M. H. Coll. vol. ii. p. 208.
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Philbrook, Benjamin Thompson, and Joseph White were the official parish personages ; 1 while Lieut. James Springer, the innholder, Isaiah Crooker, Lieut. John Lemont, Capt. Nathaniel Donnells, Moses Hodgkins, David Trufant, and Brient Robinson, at Winnegance, were the principal citizens.
ABANDONMENT OF MILITARY DEFENSES.
The garrison at George's was now dismissed, and the pub- lic property sold off at auction, except the fort, the guns, and the ammunition, which were left in charge of the late commander, Justice North ; and the Scottish settlers, who had till now remained in the pay of garrison service 2 -" a pious and exemplary people"-were dispersed through the region.
The metropolitan character of Pownalboro' as a sliire town had infused among the crude elements of society there, an official aristocracy, by the residence of county officers and gentlemen in the legal profession, whichi exercised a controlling influence over the poor native population of the town. The center of this aristocracy had its seat on the eastern bank of the Kennebec, opposite Richmond, within the western precincts of the town.
A feature growing out of this circumstance, Mr. Bailey has disclosed, which finally became a terrible source of annoyance to this gentleman. The isolation of the place, and its great remoteness from the influence of communities of higher elevation in the social grade favored " great abuses of power." "Amid the poverty which so generally pre- vailed, few would dare to oppose in any way the wishes of men of wealth and influence, to whom, perhaps, many were indebted for supplies for their families, and who, having a part in the administration of the law, might harass and even ruin an obnoxious individual."
1 M. H. Coll. vol. ii. pp. 211, 212.
2 Eaton's Annals, pp. 120, 122.
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" It was Mr. Bailey's misfortune to incur the ill will of some of these officials," says his narrator. Two in partic- ular gave to the self-denying, laborious missionary their spe- cial official displeasure, and " sought to ruin him and break up the church in that region ; " and it is a great pity the blot of their names on their official position has not been left on the page of history to public execration, that the children of such unworthy sires, though founders of the county, might make some atonement to civilized society and Christian profession, by pointing the finger of scorn to the plague spot of their fame, as a warning to the dastardly spirit of a self-complacent but too often mean and cowardly official egotism. Under the mask of a " Dissenter," one of these official dignitaries would visit the place of prayer, " where he would behave with great indecency," contriving, " by a multitude of boyish tricks, to make the women smile," in contempt of the presence and worship of God ; and when sacred offerings were solicited, this official clown in the sanctuary " used often to put into the contribution box, soap, and, on one occasion, a pack of cards." 1
It is with just pride and commendation to the historian, that the character and conduct of the " common people "- the early yeomanry of the shire-town of Lincoln County - thoughi poor, yet honest and true to the instincts of human- ity, can be sketched in perfect contrast, " as never disposed to follow the example of the gentlemen of Pownalboro'." On the contrary, the citizens at large " were more kind and generous" to the persecuted man of God, and more constant on his sacred ministrations, as it became more apparent it was the purpose of the official gentlemen " to drive away the mission from Pownalboro'."
In the east, a precinct of the same town, a hamlet had grown up, washed by the waters of the bay formed by a
1 F. Miss. p. 94.
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point of land designated by the aboriginal name of " Wis- sa-casset," whose rock-bound margins shear the tides of the upper Sheepscot through narrows seaward.
This precinct, embracing the point in the south-east ex- treme of Pownalboro', gave sixty-four names to the peti- tion for an act of incorporation ; and by the interest of its wealthy Boston proprietors, it became the depot of the com- merce and export trade of the valley, and "the sea-port of the Kennebeck ; " and at this date, Wiscasset was the only place of commercial importance 1 east of Portland, from which all foreign export, after passing down the Ken- nebec as far as Bath, went into the " Cross river " to Sheep- scot, and thence to Wiscasset for shipment. Thomas Rice, Esq., was the first representative of Pownalboro' to the Gen- eral Court ; and Rowland Cushing-" a very personable man "-practiced law as a resident at the Wiscasset village.
NOBLEBORO'.
Vaughn, the original occupant of the site, and the founder of the Damariscotta Mills village, had now deceased ; and Jonas Fitch, an officer under Gov. Winslow in the erection of Forts Halifax and Western, a Lieut. under Maj. Good- win, and a commandant of the rangers between Brunswick and St. George, had now taken up his abode there on Vaughn's interest, beginning at Winslow's garrison, and extending to a place called "Indian Hill," on the west side, a place not embraced within any township, having seven cot- tages, two double saw-mills, and one grist-mill. James Noble had succeeded to the rights of Vaughn, now deceased, and was the master spirit of the Vaughn settlement. He laid the foundations of a town which bears to this day the name of Nobleboro'. The site of Nobleboro', covering an eight miles square tract of land, was originally the property
1 M. H. Coll. vol. iv.p. 45. R. H. Gardiner, Esq.
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of John Brown of New Harbor. But Vaughn had entered and acquired possession under the Dunbar titles, and his right thereto lie maintained at law, against the rights by purchase of the aborigines, as decided by the Common Pleas and Superior Court at York, in an action of ejectment brought1 by Tappan. The titles by Dunbar grants were thus sustained.
ABANDONMENT OF MILITARY DEFENSES.
The process of dismantling the public works at 1764. St. George's and Pemaquid, as public confidence in the prospects of continued peace became confirmed, was now completed. But the military organization of the arms-bearing public was continued under a body called the militia, of which the Regimental Muster was a chief feature. The first military display of citizen soldiery in a muster field was on " Limestone Hill," Thomaston, under command of Col. Cargill of Newcastle, who headed the regimental display in the simple costume of a " pea-jacket and com- marny cap." 2
Thomas Goldthwait succeeded General Preble in the com- mand of Fort Pownal in the east, and Wm. Lithgow, Fort Halifax in the west.
INCORPORATION OF TOPSHAM.
The west shores of Merry Meeting Bay on its south-west- ern margin had become adorned with a hamlet, which had grown up from the site of the ancient Gyle's Plantations. Distinguished by a church, a development of the faith and zeal of the early Scotch-Irish immigration under the patron- age of Robert Temple, which centered here as 1764. one of its principal points, this hamlet became the
1 Lincoln Commiss. Reports, p. 106. York Records, Judgment of Vaughn vs. Tappan, A i.
2 Eaton's Annals, p. 130.
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nucleus of a new town, and was incorporated as Tops- ham.
The scene of Levett's visit, the ancient Cape Ne-wagen, the Townsend of Gov. Dunbar's administration, was also incorporated as Boothbay ; and the ancient Jamestown of the Ducal State, New Harbor of Pemaquid, Walpole, and Harrington, of the Dunbar Settlements, were consolidated and incorporated into one town, by the name of Bristol, in commemoration of the English home of its earliest settlers, the ship-wrecked voyagers of the Angel Gabriel, which was stranded in the waters of Pemaquid Bay, a century and more than a generation before.
CHAPTER VII.
AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD.
WE have noticed the disturbances growing out of the question of property in the white pines of Maine, 1764. and the initial differences which had consequently arisen, as to the rights of royal prerogative and the privi- leges of the lumbermen of Maine. m
A question as to the salary of the Royal Governor had also now begun to agitate the popular branch of the Legis- lature of the Colonial Government of Massachusetts Bay.
To discover, punish, and crush out the rising spirit of dis- loyalty, and enforce the dependence of colonial existence on royal authority, Parliament resolved to force these differ- ences to an open issue. Acts of various taxation were im- mediately passed. These coercive measures only augmented the resistance, and opened more deeply the sources of irrec- oncilable alienation. We cannot discuss the moral aspects of the causes, or sketch the phases of the great controversy. Suffice it to say it was a struggle between power and privi- lege. We shall, therefore, simply trace out the incidents which developed themselves in natural order, and followed in the train of that struggle which finally sundered the nation, and moulded the trans-atlantic fragment into a new State, which has become distinguished as a great political fraternity in unity.
The most insignificant causes led to these results. The
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great issue began in the forests of Maine, in the contests of her Lumbermen with the King's Surveyor, as to the right to cut, and the property in white pine trees.
Bridger declared the prerogative of the royal sovereignty over these forest monarchs to be paramount to all other rights. Into these views he would coerce the reluctant lum- bermen. Power, precedent, and law were with him, but the necessities and instincts of humanity - the dictates of com- mon sense - the principles of equity, were against him ; and under the " application of swamp-law" in the wilds of Maine, the lumbermen were too hard for the King's officers.
Here initiated, the controversy was transferred to the court circles of Massachusetts. The prestige of Royalty would have more efficiency within the metropolis and at the bar of the General Court, than in the lumber swamps of Maine. But Boston had already given unequivocal intimations that royal prerogative had no place in her sympathies when pop- ular rights were jeoparded.
ADVENTURES OF COMMODORE KNOWLES. .
Commodore Knowles, with his men-of-war, rode at anchor in Nantasket Roads. His sailors deserted to the shore. The Commodore thought it very reasonable that Boston should make good the loss of men. Early in the morning of the 17th of November, he sent his boats to town, and surprised and seized, not only as many seamen as could be found on board the vessels outward bound, but swept the wharves, taking ship carpenters, apprentices, and laboring landsmen.
The whole city was moved with excitement. The lower classes " were beyond measure enraged," and rushed togeth- er, armed with sticks, clubs, and pitch-mops. An unfortu- nate and innocent lieutenant on shore, on other business, was seized. The intercessions of the Speaker of the House at length saved him. But the mob increased, and on learn- ing that several naval officers were guests of the Governor,
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it gathered about the Governor's house, demanding satisfac- tion. The house was surrounded. The court in front was filled with the excited and exasperated populace. The naval officers, with loaded carbines, took station at the head of the stairway, resolved to secure their liberty or lose their lives in the attempt. A deputy sheriff was sent into the midst of the crowd to secure the peace. This officer was seized, carried away in triumph, and set in the stocks. The pre- dicament of this officer of the law excited the mirth of the rabble, diverted their rage, and resulted in their quiet dis- persion at the dinner hour. But at night-fall many thousands re-assembled in King's street " below the town-house," where the General Court was in session. The council chamber was assailed with brick-bats and stones, and the glass broken in at the windows. The Governor and several gentlemen of the council harangued the multitude from the balcony, to no purpose, the seizure and restraint of the officers of the Royal Navy in town, being persistently determined upon.
A boat reached the shore from a ship at anchor, which, being mistaken for a barge from a man-of-war, was seized, and dragged through the streets as if she were floating in her native element, to the Governor's house, where prepara- tion was made to burn her before his door. But the peril of setting fire to the town diverted the mob, and the boat was burned in a more private place, when it was ascertained that she belonged to a Scotch ship in the harbor. The militia was ordered out. But the drummers were interrupt- ed, and the citizen soldiery refused to appear. The Gover- nor repaired to the castle, and deserted the town. Com- modore Knowles was unyielding ; refused all accommodation till the naval officers on shore were released from restraint, which, if not done, bombardment was menaced. The 1 as- sembled representatives of the colony at length took the:
1 Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., vol. ii. pp. 386-9.
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matter in hand, and resolved to sustain public authority at all hazards, and exert themselves by every means to secure for the people a redress of grievances, ordering Capt. Erskine, of his Majesty's ship Canterbury, and all other naval officers, to be forthwith enlarged. This action cooled the public re- sentment. A town-meeting was called, but the influence of legislative action prevailed there.
LUMBERMEN'S CONTROVERSY.
The contest between the Royal Surveyor and the lum- bermen of Maine, now transferred to the General Court, roused Elisha Cooke, who with zeal and fortitude espoused the cause of the lumbermen, and resisted the assumptions of the Crown. The popular view of the question was sus- tained in the popular branch of the General Court ; and in this dispute were laid the foundations of a partisan strife between popular rights and royal prerogative, which ever aft- er developed a factious opposition to the royal measures on all questions of popular rights and expediency, perpetually drawing in new points of difference from time to time, and widening the breach. Thus the struggle was changed to meet every new phase of royal requirement in the exaction of money, whether in the salaries of the royal governors, or in a revenue from the taxation of paper and tea ; and in each struggle the popular view made new acquisitions, and the popular will gained new advantages. Foremost in the conflict with royal prerogative, stood Elisha Cooke of Bos- ton, the guiding spirit of the popular cause in all its issues with monarchical power. But the right 1 of the lumbermen of Maine to property in their white pine trees was the enter- ing wedge to a struggle between power and privilege, which finally sundered all national ties, and ended in the grand and glorious issues of the American Revolution.
1 Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., vol. ii. p. 201.
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The struggles of the people with power in the mainte- nance of their rights had diffused wide-spread disaffection in the minds of the masses of Maine and Massachusetts ; and the popular sympathy was turned against the rights and prerogatives of the Crown and its supports ; and in this pop- ular dislike, the Episcopal Church, as a creature of the State and a support of the Crown, was involved, and became obnoxious to the popular prejudices. Out of such differen- ces grew the popular commotion which for several years disturbed the entire social and civil structure, till the prin- ciple of self-government became fully developed and organ- ized in a new civil constitution.
EARLY RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS.
The colonization and settlement of Maine was rather a. commercial and patriotic movement, than the result of a religious exodus. The first settlers within the " Ancient. Dominions " were not refugees from religious intolerance, and of course were neither enthusiasts nor bigots, to one of which extremes, unbridled religious excitement ever leads.
No traces of the blood-red hand of persecution have ever been found on the early colonial records of our State.
The fact that the colonial enterprises for the settlement of Maine were the developments of a commercial, rather than a religious element, may account for this pleasing fea- ture in the earlier character of our plantations, contrasted with those sterner, darker, and more doubtful shades in the colonial history of Massachusetts.
FREEDOM IN RELIGIOUS VIEWS.
The Baptists were left free to live and die on our soil, fol- lowing the bent of their own inclinations, in seeking their salvation under the water or on the land, as best suited their tastes. No Quaker, writhing under the scourge of our magistracy, at the tail of the carts of Maine, either in or out
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of the Dukedom, was ever there forced to honor the dictates of his mind and the emotions of his heart as to the way they called him to worship God ; and no one burdened with any moral mania, no dupe of a religious hallucination, no witches were hung within the precincts of the ancient Sheep- scot, Sagadahoc, or Pemaquid. To these early and favorite points of human aggregation in the eastern wilds, the Devil, so busy in Plymouth among the Puritans, granted a happy exemption from the perils of witchcraft, priestcraft, and the ferocity of bigots.
And yet these original plantations were not destitute of religious ordinances, nor did the early settlers depreciate the importance and value of religious institutions.
MAINE AN EPISCOPAL ESTABLISHMENT.
The great patron of all colonial adventures to the wilds of Maine, the founder of our name and state, Sir Ferdi- nando Gorges, was a member of the Episcopal Church.
Moreover, it had been promulged from the Throne, that it was the " will and pleasure of his Sovereign," " that the Religion professed in the Church of England, and the eccle- siastical government used in the same, shall ever hereafter be professed, and with as much convenient speed as may be, settled and established in and throughout the said Prov- ince." 1 Such were the purposes of Government, as ex- pressed in the royal state paper authorizing the colonial acts of Gorges in founding the State of Maine.
Under such instructions intimating the purposes of the royal mind, Sir Ferdinando shaped the basis of his new western State. In this respect, the colonial history of our State opens in contrast with that of the Massachusetts, whose jealous eye watched for, and whose all-grasping hand was ready to seize every opportunity, both by a liberal con-
1 Ecclesiastical Sketches.
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struction of her charter powers, and in stretching to the utmost bound her charter limits. The plea of self-preserva- tion may have been the solace to the conscience of the authorities of the Bay Province, in grasping and grasping beyond her right, with a view to strangle the embryo " Church and State " with a strong Puritanical hand.
Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that the hallowed rites of the Christian Church were first celebrated amidst the wilds of Maine before Massachusetts had an English existence, on the island of Monhegan, under the St. George's cross there set up by George Weymouth, or at the mouth of the River Kennebec, on almost an island in the aborig- inal province of Sabino, of the territory of Sebanoa, the lord of Sagadahoc, and according to the services of the English Episcopal Church ; and that the Rev. Richard Sey- mour of the Church of England was the earliest regularly inducted minister of the Gospel whose voice broke upon the solitary wilds of New England, in echoes of holy prayer and praise ; and that his church at the mouth of the Sagadahoc, on the margins of Atkins Bay, was the earliest temple of worship whose heaven-lit shrine glowed with the light of a life to come amid the Pagan gloom of our 1607. wild New England shores. Two centuries and a half have passed since an English town, with its fortress and church, stood at the mouth of the Sagadahoc, where Rich- ard Seymour, for a twelve-month, led the voice of prayer and praise in celebrating the worship of the living and true God.
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