USA > Maine > Knox County > Rockport > Camden Hills; an informal history of the Camden-Rockport region > Part 3
USA > Maine > Knox County > Camden > Camden Hills; an informal history of the Camden-Rockport region > Part 3
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Excitement ran high those next several days. There was little sleep for the remaining inhabitants of the village. Then, abruptly, the British frigate set her sails and departed taking with them two hostages, Benjamin Cushing and Robert Chase. Whether this retreat was prompted by kindness or prudence isn't clear but the freeholders accepted their salvation prayer-
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fully. The hostages after spending some days at Castine were released and returned to their homes.
Two months later the news of peace was carried to the village at midnight by a driver of a stage coach. The town was aroused this cold February night by the wild clatter of hooves on the icy road and the hooting of the stage horn. At dawn the next morning a roaring crowd scaled Mount Battie, led by Simeon Tyler, and the guardian cannon on the summit signalled victory to the countryside.
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11.
THE WILSON FARM
This isolated farm in the shadow of Ragged Mountain at Oyster River Pond (Mirror Lake) was probably built during, or shortly after, the American Revolution. According to an old resident whose maternal grandmother was a Wilson this house was standing in 1783 for it was here his grandmother, who died seventy-two years ago at the age of ninety-two, was born. A local legend has it that there is a cave on the hill just to the westward that was kept provisioned in the early days as a retreat in the event of Indian attack. Many of the early Wilsons lie buried in the West Rockport cemetery.
The Smiling Cow Camden, Maine
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IT was quite a day in the village when the 125 ton steamboat Maine prowed into the Harbor to inaugurate Camden's first regular boat service. The Maine was to connect at Bath for the steamboat Patent that plied between Bath and Boston. The fare was $2.00.
A crowd from all the surrounding villages assembled and a cannon was touched off to celebrate this momentous event. This was the fall of 1823. Some who gathered at the wharf were eager to congratulate the proud skipper, Captain Daniel Lunt of Lincolnville. There were others who stood back and shook their heads. Such progress was a mixed blessing. The noisy, dirty, wood-burning machine was most certain to frighten every self-respecting fish out of the Bay.
But the steamboat had come to stay and it was a mile- stone in the progress of Camden town. The coast's recovery from its prostration after the close of the Sailor's War was slow. To add to the misery of post-war years, the region suf- fered a series of bad crops. In the wake of the war had come
a moral depression as well. An uneasiness concerning this low moral level was expressed in an article in the Town War- rant in 1817. " ..... to see what measures the town will adopt for the purpose of preventing retailers within the town of Camden selling spiritous liqours to be drunk, or entertain- ing or suffering a person or persons to drink same within their shops."
We learn from our early historian that there were seven- teen stores in Camden village and of these seventeen, sixteen of them sold ardent spirits over the counters as freely as a bag of salt. This rugged abstainer might well have been Mr. Oakes Perry whose store sat on the site of the present Carle- ton, French establishment. (Oakes Perry's house, 1821, on Union Place, is now owned by Dr. Herbert Miller.) Mr. Perry was at this time one of the prime movers in the new temper- ance movement. He was one of the group who, a few years later, formed the Camden Temperance Society, the members of which resolved : ". . not to drink spiritous liquors unless they deemed it necessary."
It was just a few years before the coming of the first steamboat that Camden suffered its first major ordeal by fire. A night blaze destroyed four business establishments at the foot of Megunticook stream; the saw mill and grist mill owned by Joseph Eaton and John Pendleton, the bark mill owned by Moses Parker and the blacksmith shop of Robert Chase.
Now the dark days were behind Camden for a spell. In- dustry was reaching a new peak of prosperity. The town meetings were held during this period at the newly construc- ted Mason's Hall which stood, until the great fire of 1892 on the site of the present Hall. In 1824, the town found it neces- sary to raise a total of $5450; $3,000 for roads, $800 for schools, $150 for a bridge and $1500 for all additional expenses.
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Shipbuilding was already becoming a large factor in Camden's prosperity. Joseph Stetson, known as the Deacon, had taken over the Noah Brooks Yard and he was to build, in the course of the ensuing thirty years, more than seventy vessels on Camden's shore (the Deacon, the story goes, switch- ed the men's ration from rum to coffee). Benjamin Cushing was also building ships and it was one of his schooners, the Camden, that was, in 1821, captured by pirates off the Isle of Pines.
Over Goose River way things were quiet. This western section of the township was a region of farms, its concerns and pleasures, rural. Goose River's only industry in the 1820's was the salt works of General Estabrook at Hog Cove on Beauchamp Point. Large vats were set out on the shore and water pumped into them at high water. This was boiled down between tides taking about 400 gallons of water to make a bushel of salt. The going price of salt was one dollar a bushel which apparently wasn't profitable for the General's venture was soon abandoned.
In and about the Village of Goose River stood about eighteen dwellings in 1825. The elder Thorndike had replaced his first rude house with a more substantial one. Two of his sons, William and Eben, had built homes of their own on the Post Road (Camden Street). Just north of William Thorn- dike's home stood William Carleton's fine residence. Samuel Mclaughlin, who owned land on both sides of Goose River (he had bought 110 acres from Ebenezer Thorndike in 1785 for 120 pounds) lived in a small snug house on Maine Street.
The estimable Daniel Barrett was bringing up a large family on his farm back of the Lily Pond. A David Rollins farmhouse stood on the site of the present Megunticook Golf Club. Also, hard by the Lily Pond, were the small close-eaved houses of Abram Richards and John Reed.
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John Harkness had died in 1806, his children inheriting considerable tracts of land on the west side of Goose River bridge. There is a cellar hole marking the site of the John Harkness farmhouse on Camden Street near Beech. And just below the West Street intersection of Camden Street is an- other over-grown cellar, the site of the home of his son, Robert.
To the north at Simonton's Corner, the Simontons were producing Simontons and the Annis' were bringing up Annis'. Job Ingraham had come recently to the corners (soon to be known as Ingraham Corners - now called West Rockport). On Beech Hill were the Nutts and the Shibles. On out along the County Road at Clam Cove were Youngs, Jamesons, Buck- lins and Gregorys. Out around Oyster River Pond (Mirror Lake) was a small tribe of Wilsons leading a lonely isolated existence in the long shadows of Ragged Mountain.
This was the Township of Camden in the third decade of the new century a few years after Maine had broken away from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to become the twenty-third state of the Union. The talk at Goose River was concerned with crops, of weather, and the cost of feed. There were husking bees and house raisings. And some fine evenings the young and the old would gather, they say, at the Nutt farmhouse. The old to set and beat time and the young to dance to a song that went like this:
Hello Nancy Nutt Hello Ben Paul If you don't come now You needn't come at all.
At bustling Camden village, the center of trade, there were intellectual stirrings. A small group at the Harbor formed a literary society and one of the first propositions
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debated was the question: "Is it probable that the American Republic will still be in existence at the end of the nineteenth century."
A Mr. Codman assumed the affirmative. A Mr. Storer and a Mr. Talbot took the dim view on the issue.
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THE WILLIAM CARLETON HOUSE
This fine old hip-roof house on Camden Street was built just after the turn of the eighteenth century by Coburn Tyler. It figured in an incident just before the war of 1812 when a suit of sails stripped from a vessel that had violated the Em- bargo Act was secreted in its cellar by Simeon Tyler, Coburn's son. The house, never completed by Tyler, came into the hands of William Carleton in 1815 when Simeon sold the farm he was unable to maintain to this prospering Camden merchant for $2700. It remained in the Carleton Family until recent years when Willis Carleton, just before his death, sold his an- cestral home to Eric Sexton.
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IN 1838, William Carleton removed his business from the "Harbor" to the "River." He had long been a leading mer- chant at Camden Village as well as President of the first bank (established in 1836 on the second floor of what is now the Spear plumbing shop on Bay View Street.) Perhaps Cam- den village was becoming too crowded for his tastes or more likely he saw greater opportunity in this virgin territory. Whatever his motives, his move had a far reaching influence on Rockport's future. His coming marked the beginning of a new era for Goose River.
The only business building of any consequence at this time was the Granite Block built three years before, in 1835, from stone cut out of the side of the hill halfway up Franklin Street. Originally there were three entrances to the Granite Block, all facing west to the river. It was the center store that housed Goose River's first Post Office, established in 1840 with Mr. Silas Piper officiating. This cubicle was so dark that it was known, in those years, as the "hole in the wall."
Another business building constructed around this time (1836) was the boot shop and home of Ezra Merriam. It stood (and still stands) abutting the Granite Block. Jotham Shepherd was another up and coming young merchant. He had settled a few years before at Ingraham's Corner and had married Job Ingraham's deaf-mute daughter, Margaret. With his father-in-law, Jotham had built a store (on the site of the present parking area) and established a general store that was destined to become one of the most thriving in the whole region.
In 1839, Job Ingraham moved from the Corners to the village. He lived in a small house lugged over from Oyster River Pond with 35 yoke of oxen while his new home on Me- chanic Street (the James Miller house) was completed.
In 1840, a Mr. Sherman erected a store on the river bank across from the Granite Block. Two years later it was pur- chased by William Fenderson who, with his new bride Abigail Mclaughlin, continued in trade there.
Another man with a future was David Talbot. David Talbot and his progeny were soon to exert considerable in- fluence in the business growth of Goose River.
And there was Jacob Graffam, whose snug white house, probably built in the early 1800's, still stands on the hillside across from the Town Hall. Jacob had married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Chase of Camden village (Jacob's brother Joseph later married another Chase daughter, Lucy).
There was Oliver Morrill, a French shipwright, who, bringing a new bride to the village, had built himself a fine home (1840) on the east shore of the harbor.
The whole village had been expanding in those years between 1825 and 1840. All the Barrett boys, with the ex- ception of Daniel's son, William, who moved out to Lake Me- gunticook, had built homes of their own and settled down.
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The best preserved of the Barrett homes is the stone house Charles Barrett built on Mechanic Street in 1837 and is now owned by Mrs. Morris Wolf.
One of the oldest homes in Goose River now stands just up Franklin Street hill. It was the old Barrows place and was moved to its present location from the site of the firehouse when this building was constructed.
But we've arrived at the year 1840 and this was a memor- able year. It was in this year that Captain Jabez Amsbury came to Goose River. He had come to retire from the sea to the hill that bears his name. His sons and grandsons, sailing men all, were to keep that illustrious name bright in the homeric age of sail upon which the curtain was about to rise.
Maine was at the threshold of its greatest glory. Rockport was destined to have its share of the glory. Albert, son of John Eels, built Rockport's first vessel up-creek in 1835. She was the 104 ton schooner, Lucy Blake. Patrick Simonton (his home, built in 1835, stands on the corner of Mechanic and Rus- sell Avenue) began laying down keels at the foot of the cove below his home in 1840. His ship, Tennessee, was the first full rigged ship built at Goose River.
Hobbs and Pitts had begun cutting ice on the Lily Pond for export, a company that became Carleton & Gould and later, Carleton, Rust & Company. This new industry was to be one of the mainstays of Rockport's dawning prosperity.
And this ancient business of lime burning was beginning to shape up into a major industry. For years, every other land-owner in the region had been burning lime on the side. There were kilns indicated on the earliest maps of Cambden Plantation. It was probably Captain Hiram Hartford - he came to Goose River in the 1820's - who first went into the lime business on a large scale. He built the first kiln on the harbor shore. Soon there were kilns sprouting all around the
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eastern side of the cove. Just south of the bridge are remains of Comfort Barrow's kiln. Moving eastward around the foot of the harbor were the kilns of William Carleton, David Tal- bot, Thomas Spear, Amos Dailey. Lastly (some residual evi- dence remains) were the kilns of the Barrett boys, John, Samuel and Charles.
Although water power was never known to be utilizied to the extent it was developed at "Harbor" village, there was considerable industrial activity along Goose River at the time. There was one grist mill and two stave mills as well as a brick and pottery yard. At West Camden (West Rockport), Ed- wards & Leach had a furniture factory on Oyster River. Nearby, was Randall Tolman's stave and shingle mill and on the same river was situated, Otis Wade's tannery.
All in all, Goose River was beginning to look up when William Carleton came to town. He didn't have long to live in his new home, however. He died in 1840 leaving his son to take over his enterprises. With Joshua Norwood, Samuel Dexter Carleton continued carrying on at his father's store. But Samuel Dexter had some big ideas churning around in his head. Ships were the thing! There was money and a future in wooden ships. Trade was booming and there weren't enough Maine bottoms to carry the trade. And what was even more important there was a man on hand who knew how to build ships.
The 94 ton Del Norte was to be the first of sixty-two vessels built by the master builder, John Pascals, under the Carleton, Norwood banner; an illustrious brood that included the famous Frederick Billings.
In 1846, Philander Carleton joined the firm and it became Carleton, Norwood & Company. Still over the door of the brick block they built in 1857, hangs the sign as a kind of
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memorial to this heyday of Rockport's history and to these men who helped to shape it.
And here it becomes Rockport history for, in the spring of 1852, Goose River disappeared. The citizens, at the great mass meeting, gathered to settle on a name that would carry more dignity, for even then the goose was a much maligned bird. Despite the vociferous objections from Rockland, who considered it a bald-faced infringement, Goose River became Rockport.
Once again, rumblings of war were heard over the Cam- den Hills. One bright fall day towards the end of the decade, a steamboat, bearing the Little Giant, Stephen Douglas, touched off at Camden Harbor. The crowd came down to the steamship pier to have a look at this mighty little man. The Little Giant doffed his hat. The crowd gave him a cheer. A few weeks later, Camden went to the polls and voted over- whelmingly for the western rail-splitter, Abe Lincoln.
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THE JACOB GRAFFAM HOUSE
Altho the exact age is undetermined, this old house in Rockport Village is considered by some authorities as one of the oldest in the region. The first Jacob Graffam was born on Matinic and in the year 1766, old records show, he owned land in Friendship jointly with his son, Jacob, Jr. It was probably this son, Captain Jacob, who came to Rockport around 1800 with his wife, born Martha Andrews, and sons, Jacob and Joseph, and built the house in question. It was Jacob III who inherited the house upon his father's death and who married Robert Chase's daughter, Elizabeth. For some years in the past century this was the livery stable of William Corthell. The house is now owned by Jesse Wentworth.
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Eight
C AMDEN'S immortal hero of this War of the Rebellion was one, William Conway, son of Richard. Conway was an old Camden salt who had spent forty-five of his sixty years in the American Navy. Stationed at Pensacola Navy Yard just after the outbreak of hostilities, he was ordered by his superiors to strike the flag and surrender when a rebel force appeared.
"I won't do it, sir," the old sailor replied. "That's the flag of my country."
(Forty-five years later, Camden belatedly commemorated this native sailor's patriotism. August 30, 1906 was Conway Memorial Day. Over ten thousand turned out. Seven battle- ships of the American Navy dropped anchor off the Ledges. A parade headed by Chief Marshal Aldus and aides, J. A. Brewster and Frank Pullen, marched through the bedecked town and a tablet mounted on a 30 ton boulder, previously hauled from Ogier Hill to the school grounds by six horses, was unveiled and dedicated).
Although the battlegrounds of the Civil War were far to the south, this bitter struggle for preservation of the Union
was real and close to the Township of Camden. The town offered hundreds of her young men and there were some sixty who didn't come home. Among the honored dead were three Thorndikes, a Lewis Upham, a Manassa Spear, a Frederick Veazie, a Franklin Achorn, a Horatio Collamore, an Isaac Keller, a William Simonton, two Tolmans, Isaah and Albert, and Oliver Metcalf, descendant of the fabulous Leonard Met- calf who had carried on his private war with the British during the American Revolution.
At the battle of Gettysburg; men from Maine were in the thick of it. At Chambersburg Pike, on little Round Top, at Cemetery Hill, Camden men helped turn the tide. On the final day when Pickett made his futile charge across a mile and a half of open meadow, the Nineteenth Maine was directly in his path. The thin blue line held, the battle of decision was won. Among the men who fell that day were Joseph Wilson and John Carey of Camden.
At home these were grim years of working and waiting. The township harbored a few Copperheads who, openly or secretly, sympathized with the Southern cause. And there were more than a few, as there are in all wars, who grew fat on the profits of war. Running the blockade of the Southern Coast, established many Maine fortunes and Camden was not guiltless of profiting by trading with the enemy.
And, in common with a good part of the country, there was in Camden an honest and bitter opposition to the Draft Law. This sentiment was, in fact, so strong that the Federal Government thought it expedient to send a U. S. Cutter into Goose River Harbor, her guns stripped and readied for the first sign of insurrection. No overt act occurred but the few who had sparked the resistance hastily departed for Canada.
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It was during the war years that a tragedy gave Maiden's Cliff its name. A Maying party was picnicking near the brink of the cliff one spring day. Zadock French, a young girl from Lincolnville, wandered too close to the edge and a sudden gust of wind took her parasol and carried her over the cliff to her death. Until quite recently, a cross marked the spot of this tragedy.
The bloody war of attrition was coming to a close when Captain James Magune, a Rockporter (his first home stood in the Pascal Shipyard) entered Mobile Bay in command of one of the vessels in Farragut's fleet and took part in the bombardment of the city.
At Appomattox Court House, April, 1865, General Lee offered his sword to Grant as a symbol of surrender. The war was over. Soon Camden men began trickling home to their families, once again to resume their broken lives.
It was the proud boast of Camden Village in these war years that she not only built the finest vessels on the Coast but she outfitted them as well, from canvas down to seabread. This was no idle boast. Strung along Megunticook River from the lake to salt water were a phalanx of small industries pro- ducing a diversity of marine goods.
In the years just before the Civil War, Gould's Plug Mill was turning out 15,000 bungs a day. Horatio Alden & Com- pany was producing deadeyes. David Knowlton's Machine Shop, world famous, was engaged in the manufacture of ship machinery. Bisbee & Marble Powder Works were producing, in addition to explosions that rocked the town regularly, 5,000 kegs of powder annually. There was an Oakum Factory.
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There was the Bradbury Bakery making ship bread as well as covering a good portion of the state with a bread route.
Among other industries, not directly dependent on ship- building were Cyrus Alden's woolen mill; the tannery Moses Parker had established and was at that time carried on by Samuel Emerson; a sash and blind mill, using the Richard's river rights; a wheelwright shop and an iron foundry.
Camden was a salty village in that decade before the Civil War. There were few indeed who didn't have concern, directly or indirectly, with ships or shipping. Those who weren't fashioning ships were sailing them. More than a hundred vessels carried Camden on the stern as a port of hail.
It was a Camden vessel that carried Captain Rufus Benton and mate Joseph Graffam into a little international trouble in the Gulf. The Georgiana out of Camden discharged her cargo of lime at New Orleans and was promptly chartered for South America. The contracting parties were taciturn about the motley crew and came aboard in the dead of night. They referred to the villainous appearing crew as "miners" and let it go at that. Once out to sea, the "miners" turned out to be filibusters shanghaied for an insurrection in Cuba. The lead- ers took over Captain Benton's vessel. The following day, the Georgiana made a rendezvous with a mysterious steamer load- ed with arms and she was relieved of her miscellaneous live cargo. However, trouble for Captain Benton and Mate Graf- fam had just begun. Their ship was overhauled by a Spanish Man of War. The Camden seamen were taken to Havana and clapped into prison. And there they might have rotted had it not been for the intercession of Sarah Graffam of Camden, mother of Joseph.
Sarah took herself to Washington and went directly to the Secretary of State and from him to the President. The Camden men were released, but it wasn't, Sarah made clear
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in her letter of thanks printed in the Camden Advertiser, any credit to the Secretary. "As for Mr. Daniel Webster ... I can say nothing, either of his kindness or sympathy for me. Suffice it to say, if he remains in office, may God give him a new heart . To Millard Fillmore, President of the United States, however, she tendered her respects for his kindness and benevolence.
Before the Civil War, most of the ship ways lay about the inner harbor. It was the firm of Hodgman & Glover that first built ships at Eaton's Point or what later was known as the Bean Yard. But it wasn't until Holly Bean took over the yard in 1875 that Camden achieved its greatest prominence as a shipbuilding town. He was to build, before his day was pass- ed, some of the finest vessels on the coast, a brave list, over seventy in all, that included seventeen three masters, twenty four masters, twelve five masters, as well as the first six master ever launched, the George W. Wells .
It was in 1885 that Rockport had its most memorable launch. That was the year the Frederick Billings hit the water before a cheering crowd from all over the State of Maine. She was a ship of 2,628 ton burthen - the largest square rigger ever built on the shores of the Penobscot and the second four master launched in America. She had fidded royal masts and carried three skysail yards, her main truck hung 180 feet above her decks.
The Billings was lost in 1893 off Chile. She was fired by her crew, the story goes. She sank in twenty minutes.
The last vessel to be built in Rockport was in 1904. She was Frank Carleton's 1,485 ton schooner Addison E. Bullard. But before the stirring era closed and the sound of the ham- mer and caulking iron was silent in her coves, the Township of Camden (Camden, Rockport, Glen Cove) was to send down to the sea and into world trade more vessels than any other town (Rockland excepted) on the Penobscot.
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