USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Gorham > Celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Gorham, Maine : May 26, 1886 > Part 7
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To recover from adversity and set to work cheerfully to repair broken fortunes is a greater proof of real stamina of character, than patiently to endure. But our ancestors manifested a fertility of resource, a dexterous suiting of means to ends, and ability to accomplish great results with means, to common view, totally inadequate, that must ever entitle them to our respect. Their first resource was the cultivation of the soil, and to this they applied themselves with the greatest energy. The next was lum- bering, and this also in the winter season they prosecuted with indomitable resolution and corresponding judgment. In this latter respect they were met at the outset by great obstacles. To lumber they must have oxen, and many oxen, a strong team. The most profitable business was cutting and hauling masts for the British Navy; but these masts were a hundred feet in length and three in diameter after they were rough hewn, and the bowsprits were larger still, though not so long. As they had no money to buy cattle they must raise them and must have a large number of young cattle growing up all the time to supply the place of those worn out or disabled. While they could pasture large numbers of cattle, they could not raise hay on their small clearings to winter them. They were not, however, to be turned
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from their purpose. Fryeburg was then a wilderness, and the intervales along the river produced an abundance of good grass. They cut this grass, made it into hay, and stacked it. They next built a log camp to shelter cattle and men. The McLellans had among them six negroes, others of their neighbors had one or more. They all united, and in the fall of the year fitted their negroes out with pork, beans, and molasses and potatoes, who took the young steers and heifers and drove them to Fryeburg The blacks obtained a good part of their living by hunting and trapping, -for deer, moose, and raccoons were plenty, -and in the spring came home with the cattle. They manufactured their own clothing, and flax and wool were of great import- ance. They from the marshes at Scarborough obtained salt hay, which, though it is poor fodder for working cattle, sheep thrive well on, with a little grain or English hay.
Probably, some one who reads this will be disposed to inquire, How did they obtain those negroes if they had no money ? I reply, By knowing how.
Before they could obtain teams able to haul masts, they could with light teams haul boards and shooks into Portland on the snow. They had a number of small mills. William McLellan had three that they built themselves on small streams, in which they could saw logs spring and fall, and they could cut the logs on the banks of the streams and roll them in. They could send this lumber to the West Indies and obtain all the blacks they wanted, and negroes were not as valuable as they have been since. As they did all this within themselves, owned the lumber, cut it, owned the mills, and sawed it themselves and hauled it with their own teams, though lumber was not high in price, it paid them well. There is another consideration. None had much money then, and people had to accommodate each other. Merchants were very willing to carry lumber on shares; even sailors were hired in this manner. A man had so much a month and a privilege-that is, he was allowed so much room in the vessel to carry what he liked. The owners, by this arrangement, escaped paying so much cash. People would often send adven- tures of butter, fowl, and vegetables, onions especially, to barter them for West India produce. They called them ventures, for short.
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PATRIOTISM OF THE INHABITANTS.
They had scarcely begun to live comfortably, and to look for- ward to better days, after all their hardship, when the difficulties with England began to threaten. The patriotism of the men of Gorham in this new exigency, is sufficiently set forth in the fol- lowing preamble and resolves passed by them in town meeting, assembled on January 7th, 1773. "Not only may we say that we enjoy an inheritance purchased by the blood of our fore- fathers ; but this town was settled at the expense of our own blood. We have still amongst us those whose blood, streaming from their own wounds, watered the soil from which we raise our bread. Our ears have heard the infernal yells of the savage, native murderers. Our eyes have seen our young children wel- tering in their gore in our own homes. Many of us have been accustomed to earn our daily bread, and listen to the gospel, with our weapons in our hands. We cannot be supposed to be fully acquainted with the mysteries of court policy ; but we look upon ourselves as able to judge so far concerning our rights as men, as christians, as subjects of the British Government, as to declare that we apprehend those rights, as settled by the good people of Boston, belong to us, and that we look with shame and indigna- tion on their violation. We only add that our old captain who for many years has been our chief officer to rally the inhabitants of this town from the plow or the sickle, to defend their wives, their children, and all that was dear to them, from the savages, - is still living. Many of our watchboxes are still in being, - the timber of our fort is still to be seen. Some of our women have been used to handle the cartridge and load the musket, and the swords we sharpened and brightened for our enemies have not yet grown rusty. Therefore
" Resolved : That the people of the town of Gorham are as loyal as any of his Majesty's subjects, in Great Britain, or the plantations, and hold themselves in readiness to assist his Majesty's subjects with their lives and fortunes, in defence of the rights and privileges of his subjects. But it is clearly the opin- ion of this town, that the Parliament of Great Britain have no more right to take money from us without our consent, than they have to take money without consent from the inhabitants of France or Spain.
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" Resolved : That it is clearly the opinion of this town, that it is better to risk our lives and fortunes in the defence of our rights, civil and religious, than to die by piecemeals in slavery."
This was not cheap rhetoric, but all was meant that was uttered. At one time every third man in Gorham was in the army, and when a committee of vigilance, appointed by the town, made search, they found but two Tories in it. They raised money to supply men for the army, sent wood and provisions to aid the poor people in Boston, who were suffering for their devo- tion to their country, and during the entire war, strained every nerve to aid the cause of liberty.
THE OLD ACADEMY.
The inhabitants of Gorham have ever been peculiarly alive to the importance of education. When poor, and pressed for bread, provision was made for schools, and in the trying times of the Revolution it was the same. Prominent among the educational forces that have contributed to molding and developing the characters of youth, was the Academy. Great numbers have gone from it to all parts of the country, who have been a power for good in every department, both of thought and of labor. I was a scholar at that Academy in its palmy days, with Sergeant S. Prentiss, George L. Prentiss, Cyrus Woodman, John A. Andrew, Edwin Coburn, and all the Smiths and Stephensons. As years pass on, I have been surprised to find how many are still living and occupying important positions, who there received their early training, and whose fondest associations cling to that old spot. Incorporated in 1803, the building as it now stands was finished and dedicated to the interests of sound learning and religion in 1806, with the Rev. Reuben Nason as principal. As the school increased in numbers, and the abilities of Mr. Nason as an instructor became known and appreciated, he was allowed an assistant. William Smyth and Alpheus S. Packard, afterward professors at Bowdoin College, were his assistants. A very dif- ferent pedagogue from any of the present day was Reuben Nason, and upon very different principles from those in vogue at this period, was his school discipline based. He was a ripe scholar, not only in the classics, but also in the higher mathe- matics, and he loved knowledge for its own sake. He was
GORHAM ACADEMY. - Erected in 1806.
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addicted to free and easy habits in school, that would not be tolerated in a teacher at present. He was not a very handsome man, but of dark complexion, and bilious temperament, with a stoop in his shoulders. He would read his newspaper in school, and sometimes forget to take off his hat. He had a singular hab- it, when very deeply interested in reading his newspaper, or in study, of punching his cheek with his finger. When that unmis- takable evidence of abstraction appeared was the time to whis- per, swap jack-knives, or talk with your fingers; and it was generally both anticipated and improved. He would come into school of a winter's morning, pull off his boots, put his feet to the fire, and set the class to reading Virgil, without any book to look over; but woe betide the luckless wight, who, not having got his lesson, imagined because as Mr. Nason had no book, a mistake would pass unnoticed. The least error in translating, pronuncia- tion, or even scanning, which was then much practiced, would be detected. He had but one mode of discipline, - flogging, - and the instrument was a cowhide, which long and frequent practice enabled him to use most effectively. Incapable of partiality, he always whipped his own children more severely than any others, and often when they did not deserve it. One of the kindest hearted of men in his family, and out of school, and even in the school-house so long as the scholars were studious. Any infrac- tion of discipline irritated him to such an extent that he lost all command of both hand and tongue, and plied the cowhide (cow- skin he called it), with merciless and even frantic severity. Let a boy be detected throwing a spit-ball, or reading The Devil on Two Sticks, or Rob Roy, or The Mysteries of Udol- phus, or more especially writing a billet to a girl, then, my friends, you would see Jove clad in all his terrors. "Incorrigible rascal!" "stupid dolt!" "unmitigated scoundrel !" emphasized and driven home with blows from the cowskin, that not only left their impress on the delinquent, but on the bench itself (when a blow was dodged), testified the depth of his indignation. The exercises of the school were commenced and closed by the read- ing of the scriptures and offering prayer. Mr. Nason was accus- tomed to open his eyes at intervals during prayer, and the con- sequences of being caught transgressing at such a moment were something terrible. But the virtues of the good old man far
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overbalanced his infirmities. He was a noble scholar, he had the good of his pupils at heart, and they knew and appreciated it. His certificate that a boy was thoroughly fitted, rendered the College examination a mere form. During the twenty-three years he taught in Gorham, he did much to promote the interests of sound learning, and exerted an influence that will long con- tinue to operate.
UNCLE BILLY.
It was customary at that time to warn persons out of town unless they owned land or had other property and were of such a character as rendered them worthy and useful citizens. The McLellans owned land, though in other respects poor enough ; but there was a prejudice against them in the minds of most because they were outlandish. Some said they were Irish, some said they were Roman Catholics, they must be, for they came straight from Ireland. Capt. Phinney resolved to judge for himself and called on them. He was hospitably received and invited to eat with them, which he did, although they had not much to offer but a warm welcome. At his return he said to his neighbors, "Those are the sort of people we want. They are poor, very poor, but unless I am very much mistaken, they will not long remain so. With a hundred of them I would face all the Indians between here and Canada."
Capt. Phinney, a soldier and accustomed to judge of men by their bones and sinews, conceived a great liking for William, who began even then to give token of the strength and cool daring, that in manhood so distinguished him; for beneath an exterior as rough as the coat of the rhinoceros or the alligator, he concealed the noblest traits of character, and was as free of heart as strong of hand. No danger could deter or difficulties prevent him from accomplishing his purposes. He married Rebecca Huston and accumulated a large property. As they were universally beloved and respected and had a great number of relatives, of nieces and nephews, though without children, they were always spoken of as Uncle Billy and Aunt Becca, by the younger part of the community.
In default of juvenile books, the young of that day availed themselves of the information to be gathered from the talk of
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aged people whose lives were in themselves a romance. No char- acter ever stood out in such bold relief before my youthful vision as that of Uncle Billy. It was my privilege to spend a portion of my childhood, boyhood, and early youth in the family of his sister, and in that of his brother at the old homestead, the old brick house, and you may be assured that the characters of William, Hugh, and Elizabeth lost nothing in their hands. Aunt Warren used to say to me as I sat on the block in the chimney- corner, with both hands on her knees, looking up in her face and listening, "Elijah, they never had any town poor in Gorham as long as brother Billy lived;" which indeed was not without some share of truth, for my mother, who was her niece, testified to very much the same amount. At one time, said the old lady, a bear kept getting into brother's corn and plagued him dreadfully. He waked up in the night and said to his wife, “It is such a bright moon I believe I can chalk my gun barrel and shoot that bear." He went out, and in little less than an hour he killed the bear. He then called up the two hired men and they skinned and dressed the carcass. He had heard that afternoon his pigs had broken out of the pasture and the Poundkeeper had locked them up. He told the hired men to take one of the hind quar- ters of the bear, carry it up to the village and lay it on the Poundkeeper's door-step, then break the Pound and drive the pigs home. Brother Billy said he thought he had done a very decent night's work, - killed a bear and got his pigs out of pound.
The enterprise of William McLellan was not confined to his native town. Jane Mclellan, his sister, married Actor Patten of Topsham, and when William had cut all the trees suitable for masts that he could lay hold of in Gorham, he went to Topsham, and together with his brother-in-law, Patten, cut masts on the banks of the Androscoggin, rafted and took them through Merry- meeting Bay to Portland, by no means an easy task, considering the distance and the great size of the sticks.
Uncle Billy owned a part of some vessels with the McLellans of Portland, and he with his wife were accustomed to send adven- tures in them, generally in a vessel of which my grandfather, Joseph McLellan, who likewise was a brother-in-law to Uncle Billy, was master. Capt. Joseph, ready for sea, came to Gorham to take leave of his relatives, and said :-
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" Aunt Becca, what do you want for your venture this time ? " "I don't know what I want; don't know as I want anything."
" Do you want sugar ?"
" No, we 've got a barrel of sugar in the house now."
" Do you want coffee ?"
" No, we 've got a bag of coffee left from the last venture."
" Well, you must take some kind of West India truck, for they won't give you the gold for a venture."
" Why don't you have a nigger ?" said Uncle Billy.
" Well, I don't know but I would as soon have a nigger as any- thing else."
" But," said the Captain, "the venture won't bring the nigger, you will have to pay boot."
" Well, get him, and tell them the next trip you will pay the boot in hogshead shooks."
When the Captain returned, he brought a Guinea negro, a boy of eighteen, from Antigua. They named him Prince McLellan, and Uncle Billy bought a helpmeet for him, Dinah, and after her death, another, Chloe. Prince was not of large size, but in youth he was very muscular and extremely agile. During the Revolu- tionary war, he ran away and shipped on board Capt. Manly's privateer, and being discharged in Boston, came back of his own accord to slavery. Prince always took pride in telling that the first work he did was to drive the team that hauled the shooks to pay the boot necessary to purchase himself. When the slaves were emancipated in Massachusetts, Uncle Billy said to him : " Prince, you are your own master now, you can go or stay."
" Well, Massa, guess I'll hab my liberty."
" If you go, you shall not go empty-handed."
His master gave him a horse and cart and told him to take what he wanted. Prince loaded the cart with provisions and what he considered most needful, put Chloe on top and set forth. They went on to the town of Wells and there took up their abode. In less than a year the town of Gorham received notice from the town of Wells that Prince and Chloe Mclellan were chargeable. When Uncle Billy heard of it, he said that no town should take care of his blacks, and went after them and brought them home. Prince told the neighbors " he was nebber so glad in his life as he was to see old Massa."
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Not long after this, his master gave to him and his wife twelve acres of land and a house, during their lives, and ten acres of pas- ture land to him and his heirs. He had before this given the farm adjoining to his nephew, William McLellan, and he gave to Prince an entailment on that farm, that the occupant of it should provide. everything comfortable for Prince and his wife in their old age. Prince lived to be nearly a hundred, and his wife, Chloe, with whom he had lived two-thirds of a century, died only two years before him.
Thus to provide for his two servants, after they had left him of their own accord, shows in a strong light the noble character of William McLellan.
Uncle Billy was a member of the church, under " the half-way covenant," as it was called, which permitted persons of good moral character, by assenting to the Articles of Faith, to have their children christened, though not to partake of the Sacrament.
My father, the Rev. Elijah Kellogg of Portland, married Uncle Billy's niece, Eunice McLellan, and was a frequent visitor at the homestead. Uncle Billy always requested him to conduct family worship, and used on such occasions to put into his hands an old King James Bible of very fine print and much worn and stained by time and use. In addition to this, Uncle Billy had, in cases of necessity, strapped his razor on it. "Squire Mclellan," said the clergyman, one evening, " you are a man of property and standing in the community, and have a great deal of com- pany here. You ought to have a better family Bible than this." To which Uncle Billy replied that he thought they could get as much out of that as they practiced. "But you will not be able to get anything out of it much longer, as you are growing old and the type is small and very indistinct." His guest then went on to say that some Bibles were then being printed in sheets, of very large type, and persons subscribed for the numbers and then had them bound, at a greater or less expense, as they pleased, and named the price of the sheets and the prices of the different styles of binding. Uncle Billy thought it was too much money to pay out for a book, for that amount of money would buy a yoke of light cattle or two good cows. He then inquired if it would contain the Apocrypha, as he thought a great deal of the Apocrypha. His relative said that it would, and added that
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he need not pay the money, that he would buy the sheets, have them bound, and send the book to Mr. McLellan, and the latter could pay him in wood. Uncle Billy said he did n't care for the wood; "bring on the book."
In due time the Bible came, and Uncle Billy was delighted with it and could read it without glasses. He soon loaded a cord of rock maple wood, and with four oxen started for Portland. He had not proceeded far, when coming to a bad place in the road, the sled turned completely bottom up.
"Damn the Bible, Apocrypha and all," cried Uncle Billy. Struck with horror, he stood for a moment in silent amazement, then fell on his knees in the snow and repeated the Lord's prayer, unhitched his cattle, and, much cast down in spirit, returned home. The next day he had the church called together, told them what he had said, and asked them to turn him out.
"Mr. Mclellan," said the minister, "are you in the habit of using such language?"
" Never used such language before in my life."
" How, then, came you to do it ?"
"I suppose the suddenness of the thing jumped it right out of me."
" Have you confessed your sin to God, and asked forgiveness for the same ?"
" I have. "
" You confess it before this church, and ask forgiveness of them ? "
" I do."
" And you never intend to repeat it ?"
" No, so help me God ! "
" Well, you can do no more than to confess, repent of, and forsake sin. You cannot undo it."
" I think there ought to be something done to me. If there had not been some dreadful bad stuff in me, the sudden start could not have brought it out, and it stands to reason, that a man who has such wickedness in him ought not to be in a church."
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The church accepted his confession, but he could not prevail upon them to inflict any penance.
My friends, the men who laid the foundations of sound learn- ing and religion on this soil and whose bones molder beneath
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it, were not persons of culture and scholarship. Many, most of them, were like William McLellan, rude in speech and rough in manner, but in all the strong points of character, in all that goes to make up a true manhood and contributes to the progress of society and the perpetuity of great principles, they were not lacking. Neighbor stood by neighbor to the death, the needy divided their morsel with the needy, and toil was no drudgery to men who believed that labor performed in a right spirit becomes worship. Poor, they made many rich. Not enjoying the advan- tages of education themselves, they provided them for others. They were content to face hardship, danger, and death, that their children might be better situated than themselves, and reap what they had sown. . We, in common with the inhabitants of these New England States, owe a debt of gratitude to our forefathers, not easy to overestimate.
Men born, reared, and educated in towns and at schools and academies and colleges built upon foundations similar to those here laid, have gone to all parts of this great country, bearing with them their household gods, to create for themselves homes of a similar character and to sow the seeds of good principles around them, and to establish institutions of learning similar to those they left behind them. For more than forty years the people of the New England and the Middle States have been exerting this influence in the far West. We gave them money with no grudging hand to build meeting-houses, academies, and colleges. Our best talent went to fill their pulpits and professor- ships. Along the chain of the great lakes, the tow paths of the canals, on the banks of the Dubuque, Missouri, and the Wiscon- sin, the colporteur, the missionary, and the school teacher followed the sound of the ax and the smoke of the clearing fires. They dropped the seed of the Word into the rut of the emigrant's wheel, and pressed the water of life to his thirsty lips. In log camp, sod-houses, and dug-outs, children were taught to read, write, and cipher, and Jesus and the resurrection were preached.
The result of these quiet, unobtrusive efforts, little known by the world at large, came to the surface when the call to arms rang through the land, and the plow was left in the furrow, the hammer on the anvil, the plane on the bench, and the free States stood up together, shoulder to shoulder, in the proud conscious-
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ness that from San Francisco to Machias they were one. The cohesive power of kindred institutions, advocating gospel princi- ciples, deciphered itself to the world. The grain-grower of the Prairies said to the lumberman of the Penobscot, " My broth- er, give me thy hand. I am as thou art, for whither thou goest I will go ; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."
And the Mausoleum at Gettysburgh, consecrated to a nation's dead, is the fulfilment of a promise written in blood.
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