USA > Maine > Penobscot County > Orono > Centennial celebration, and dedication of town hall, Orono, Maine, March 3, 1874 > Part 4
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Col. Webster was born in Bangor, October 3, 1780, and he died in Orono, August 16, 1855. In an obit- uary notice of him published in the Bangor Whig, it was said, " He will long be remembered by the com- munity in which he lived, for his enterprise and perseverance as a business man, and for his active interest in all that concerned their welfare, but longer and better for the rare and generous qualities devel- oped in his social and family relations, and which formed so prominent a part of his character, and stamped him one of nature's noblemen."
He married, Sept. 5, 1805, Lucy Dudley, daughter of Paul Dudley, Esq., of Milford. She was born April 15, 1783, and died in Orono, May 7, 1859. Of nine children born to them, six are now living in Orono.
Elijah Webster was born in Bangor in 1790, and
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settled in Orono on the farm now owned by Col. Eben Webster, his nephew, in 1821. He was some- times interested in lumbering, but his attention was given principally to his farm. He was a public-spir- ited citizen, an accommodating neighbor, and a faith- ful friend. He died at Orono, June 28, 1863. His wife, Lucinda Tyler, who was born in Bangor in 1800, followed him July 20, 1871. Mr. Webster was a member of the Board of County Commissioners in 1838 and 1841. He built the large house on the island, in which he lived for many years, in 1834.
CAPT. FRANCIS WYMAN, a native of Phippsburg, Me., came to Orono in 1792 or 1793. He married Mar- tha, daughter of Andrew Webster, and settled on the Upper Stillwater road, on the farm now occupied by his son Elijah, and where he died February, 1857.
ARCHIBALD McPHETRES was of Scotch descent. He moved from Arrowsic, in the present County of Sag- adahoc, to Bangor, in 1771, and in 1795 settled in Orono, on the Bangor road. His sons were Archibald, Charles, William, James, and John. Charles lived in
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Bangor, but the other sons were residents of this town. The name is sometimes spelled "McPheadris." There was a prominent merchant of this name in Portsmouth, N. H., in the last century, and I am in- clined to think that the Orono family were, not re- motely, connected with his .*
WM. DUGGANS was a very early settler in town, and had a house a little off from the Bangor road, below the farm of John Read. He moved from town a quarter of a century ago. He was here before 1800, and first lived on the place owned by David McPhe- tres, this side of the " Mac Brook."
There were SPENCERS in town at a very early day,
* Mr. Aldrich, in his paper in Harper's Magazine, entitled "An Old Town by the Sea," has the following notice of the Portsmouth merchant : " On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick build - ing in Portsmouth-the Warner house. It was built in 1718 by Capt. Archibald Macpheadris, a Scoteluman, as his name indicates, a wealthy merchant, and a member of the King's Council. He was the chief projector of the first iron works'established in America." Capt. Maepheadris mar- ried Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children of Gov. John Went- worth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary, whose portrait, withi that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous Copley, still hangs in one of the parlors of this house, which, oddly enough, is not known by the. name of Macpheadris, but by that of his son-in-law, Hon. Jonathan Warner, a member of the King's Council until the revolt of the colonies."
* James and Henry Leonard built iron works at Raynham, Mass., in 1632.
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of whom, however, I have been able to obtain but little authentic information ; but among them was one of the name of Nathaniel, and to distinguish him, as he was a very short, small man, from another Na- thaniel who lived on the east side of the main river, who was a very tall man, he was called " Little Thaniel." It is related that he was a teamster belonging to a logging crew up the river, one season, and that, un- fortunately, it happened that the crew got out of rum during the winter and went dry for several weeks ; but when they could stand it no longer, little Than iel was despatched to Bangor for a supply. Return- ing with a keg of the indispensable, he arrived at the camp at night. Thirsty as the men were, they set to and pulled at its contents till almost morning, when they fell asleep and slept the sleep that knew no waking until late in the afternoon. Little Than- iel woke first and went out to the hovel to look after his team. He thought it morning, but the sun was in the west and not half an hour high. Alarmed, and hurrying into the camp, he cried out, " Wake up, my high fellows, shake your blankets, clatter your hoofs, daylight is cracking round your heels, the sun
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is rising in the west, and the day of judgment is come !"
There were Spencers of still another family, some of whose descendants are in the town or vicin- ity, but I am not aware that there are any of the family of little Thaniel now living in your neighbor- hood.
ARD GODFREY came from Taunton, Mass., in 1798, and settled on the farm on the Stillwater road near- est to the Oldtown line. He was a millwright, whose labor was in great demand, and who, when he desired to retire from his trade, handed it down to his sons, John and Ard, jr., and his son-in-law, Temple Emery. For many years he was Town Treasurer. He was respected for his pure and honest life, and thoroughly liked for his quiet and genial humor. He once shocked a good woman by making her believe that Col. Webster had stolen somebody's farm and hidden it in Capt. Wyman's cellar. Of his numerous family not one is living in this town. Rev. Alfred C. God .. frey, an esteemed minister of the Methodist church, is his son. He died in 1843. His wife, whose maiden
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name was Catherine Gaubert, and who was a niece of Capt. David Read, died in 1854. They had thir- teen children. Mr. Godfrey was elected constable and collector at the first town meeting in 1806; and the April meeting in 1807 was held at his house.
The first mill at St. Anthony's Falls, Minn., was built by his son, Ard Godfrey, jr., who is now a resi- dent of Minneapolis.
GEORGE RING, senior, moved to Orono in 1800, and occupied the house built by Joshua Eayres, upon the removal of the latter to Passadumkeag. His son, George, who is now living in this town, says that when his father came here there were twelve houses in town which he remembers-two were on the hill where Abram Colburn lives ; one, called the Griffin house, where Elijah Wyman's house is; one on the Freese farm; one, occupied by Mr. Read, near Mrs. Wm. Rollins'; one, occupied by Wmn. Duggans, this side of the " Mac Brook;" one, by James McPhetres, on the other side of the brook; one, by Joseph In- man ; one, by Capt. David Read, on Marsh Point; one on Marsh hill ; one, by Antoine Lachance.
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But there must have been other houses at that time in town, among them those of Andrew Webster, Archibald McPhetres, Samuel White, Capt. Tourtel- lotte, and others. Mr. Ring, the elder, was born in Georgetown, Me., in 1759, married Margaret Foster, who was born in Bath, 1763, and died in 1813, having survived her husband one year. George, the younger, born March 2, 1795, married Polly Lancaster, June 29, 1820.
For some twenty years previous to 1806, the peo- ple lived under an organization called Stillwater Plantation.
It is said in Williamson's Annals of Bangor, of which a manuscript copy is among the collections of the Maine Historical Society, and which seems to have been examined by Judge Godfrey, that this " place was first called 'Deadwater;' but one Owen Madden, a discharged soldier from Burgoyne's army, who had been stationed at Stillwater, N. Y., changed the name from dead to still, as a better sound. He was a school-master in Bangor and Orono. He was at times accustomed to drink intoxicating liquors to
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excess, but he was well educated, and possessed a good disposition."
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The name was certainly an appropriate one, more particularly when applied to this village, as it soon came to be, to distinguish it from the village of Old- town. Since the division of the town in 1840, the name of the town has been sufficiently descriptive of the village -- but the latter is sometimes called Lower Stillwater to distinguish it from the village, two miles up the river, known as Upper Stillwater.
1806-1820.
On the 12th of March, 1806, the plantation was made a town by an act of the Legislature of Massa- chusetts, entitled " An Act to incorporate the Planta- tion heretofore called Stillwater, in the County of Hancock, into a Town by the name of Orono."
Williamson, referring, about 1830, in his History of Maine, to the event, says: "It is the 162d town in the State of Maine ; taking its name from a dis- tinguished chief of the Tarratine tribe, whose friend- ship to the cause of American liberties gave him an elevated place in the public estimation. It is an
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excellent township of land-embracing Marsh Island, also Indian " Oldtown," the village of the Tarratine natives. . . . It is peculiar for its mill-sites and water privileges, which are extensively improved."
No census of the town had been taken previous to its incorporation, but it is supposed that its popu- lation at that time was not far from three hundred. The first meeting for choice of officers after the town was incorporated was called by Richard Winslow, Justice of the Peace, by a warrant dated March 27, 1806, directed to Andrew Webster, as constable. It was held at the dwelling-house of Capt. David Read, April 7, 1806. At this meeting Aaron Bliss was elected Town Clerk ; Richard Winslow, Moses Averill, and John Read, Selectmen; Andrew Webster, Treas- urer ; and Ard Godfrey, Constable and Collector. Mr. Winslow resided at Oldtown, Mr. Averill at Upper Stillwater, Messrs. Read, Webster, and Godfrey in the part of the town that is now Orono.
Allen Bliss, John Read, William Colburn, and Ebenezer Webster were chosen hog-reeves, fence- viewers, and field-drivers. Seventy-five dollars were raised by the inhabitants to pay town charges ; one
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thousand dollars for highways, but nothing for schools. However, they voted to build three pounds, and fence the cemetery. Having made these provisions to prevent the straying of cattle and the dead, they seem to have thought it reasonable to let the children run at large.
State officers were voted for on this day, and James Sullivan, the Republican candidate for Gov- ernor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, received forty votes, to five for Caleb Strong, the candidate of the Federalists.
At the third meeting held in the town-Nov. 3, 1806, at the dwelling-house of Andrew Webster-it was voted to petition the Court of Common Pleas to send a committee to lay out a road from Bangor to Mr. John Marsh's house-also, to pay Mr. Bennoch's bill of $5.62 for powder consumed at the general muster.
At the fourth meeting-April 6, 1807, at the house of Mr. Ard Godfrey-on the question whether the District of Maine should be separated from Massa- chusetts, there were thirty-seven votes for, and one against, separation.
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This year of new departure was signalized by an accession to the material and social forces of the town, the influence of which upon its development, and on the habits and manners of the people, is felt to the present time. It was in August, 1806, that the late JOHN BENNOCH came, with his family, to this town, with the purpose of making it his permanent residence.
Mr. Bennoch was born in the parish of Durrisdeer, in the shire of Dumfries, in Scotland, on the 24th of November, 1769. His father, Archibald Bennoch, occupied at the time when John was born, a farm called Wierhead, on the estate of Lord Ellioch. Not long afterwards he kept a small shop in company with David Kennedy, where they bought woolen yarn, at that time spun in the country, and sent it to Kilmarnock, where they sold it to the carpet man- ufacturers. His father, when John was eight years old, took a farm of Lord Ellioch, called Nether Glen- gary, in the parish of Sanquhar, but in two years thereafter he died, leaving a widow, five children, and a considerable estate. The trade in yarn was continued by the widow, with the assistance of her
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son, John ; but soon misfortunes came upon the fam- ily. The war with America had done much to injure their trade, and the failure of the firm with which they did business, reduced Mrs. Bennoch from com- petency to comparative poverty. After this, young Bennoch engaged in the manufacture of carpets, but not succeeding as well as he expected in this business, he came to America, arriving in Boston July 14, 1793. Having become acquainted, through the old house of Saxon & Wainwright, with the crockery ware trade, he established himself in that line, and for several years transacted a large and profitable busi- ness, which from 1798 to 1804 was conducted by the firm of Bennoch & Bedford, during which time Mr. Bennoch resided in Liverpool, where he had the charge of the purchases of the firm.
From an autobiographical sketch written in 1838, I have made an extract which I think you will be glad to hear read, on account of the facts which it contains, and from your interest in the writer.
Says Mr. Bennoch, " When I came to Orono I went into a very small house on the southerly end of Marsh Island, where Mr. Harrison (James Harrison, 6
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of Charlestown, Mass.) and I had bought eighty-four acres of land with a double saw-mill, on the point of the island on the Stillwater branch of the Penobscot river ; there were then but a very few houses in Orono, and, indeed, not more than ten on both sides of the Kenduskeag stream, where the dense part of the city of Bangor is now built, and the roads were such that it was difficult to go from Bangor to Old- town (in Orono), even on horse-back. In about eleven months after I came to Orono I lost a fine boy of between three and four years of age, and in about four months more lost my dear wife by con- sumption, and was left with three children. . . .
"The object in coming to the eastward was to keep a store and have a saw-mill to saw the logs we might get " (Mr. Harrison was a partner) " in pay- ment for goods, and ship to Boston, the West Indies, &c. But, soon after, the war between England and France drew the United States gradually into the vortex, bringing about non-intercourse, embargo, and, at last, war with England. This made the price of lumber very low, and, although I sold a good many goods, they were all sold on credit, and those who
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bought them depending on the lumber they cut and brought down the Penobscot to pay for them, could not pay, so that before the peace I lost a good many thousand dollars by bad debts.
" On the 26th of March, 1809, I married Miss Lu- cretia Holland. She was about twenty years younger than I; but she made me a most kind and affection- ate wife, and as good a step-mother to my first wife's children as it was possible they could have, and they loved her as well as they could have loved their own mother. My second wife was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, and was a daughter of Park Holland, Esquire, an officer in the Revolutionary war, and for a number of years employed by the Commonwealth in the care of Eastern lands before the separation of Maine from Massachusetts.
" In September, 1827, I was chosen a member of the State Legislature for the class composed of Ban- gor, Orono, Dutton (now Glenburn), and Sunkhaze (now Milford). And here I cannot omit a circum- stance which had a great influence on my future life, and which will also show how much good a wife can do when her influence is properly directed.
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" Drinking ardent spirits had been, prior to this time, very common, or even fashionable, with all classes of society.
" My wife, I knew, was much opposed to all spirit- drinking, although she scarcely ever said any- thing to me about it, and what little she said was in very gentle hints. And, although not a drunkard, I was still convinced that I took more than I ought, and felt the habit creeping on gradually, and that its force had gained such ascendency that the leaving it was a more difficult matter than I thought for.
" About the time I started for Portland I found myself very short of money, and told Mrs. B. that I did not know that I could get enough to go there, to which she made some common-place reply. There being no stage at this time that run from Orono to Bangor, I had to go down the night before, so as to take the stage in the morning. In the evening I had occasion to open my pocket book, and was sur- prised to find in it twenty dollars, with a billet from my wife, saying that she had been saving this a little at a time, and as I had been complaining that I was short of money she thought that it might be of as
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much service to me now as at any other time. So she had enclosed it and taken this opportunity to say that if I would reform in one thing, and what that was my own good sense would tell me, she should be the happiest woman in the world.
" I still kept taking a little where the stage stopped, and at Brunswick I took a glass of brandy and water, when I said to myself, 'I will not take another glass of spirits till I return home.' This was in December, 1827, and was the last that has gone into my mouth to this time-1st July, 1838. . .
" After my return home the Rev. Mr. Edwards (I think it was him) delivered a lecture upon Temper- ance, when I signed the pledge, and was President of the Society in Orono for several years.
"I' lived happily with my wife till the 28th of August, 1832, when she was removed to a better world, after upwards of a year of the greatest suffer- ing."
Here the sketch ends. When I came to Orono at the close of the year 1834, Mr. Bennoch was a prom- inent and leading citizen, active in every good work,
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whether it looked to the outward growth and progress of the village, to its educational facilities, or to its moral improvement. He was, and for many years had been, and for several years continued to be, a magistrate, and the postmaster of the town. He was an uncle of Francis Bennoch, of London, merchant, alderman, and poet, an intimate and esteemed friend of our great American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom Mr. Hawthorne's Memoirs were dedicated. Francis Bennoch visited his relatives in Orono some twenty-five years ago.
By his second wife Mr. Bennoch had a large family of children, all of whom, excepting Agnes, the youngest daughter, widow of the late E. Thomas Lobdell, Esq., of Hartford, Conn., as all but one by his first wife,-Josiah S., a resident of this town, and for several years a County Commissioner, and a Trial Justice, have passed away.
From what was told me by everybody, when I came to Orono, about Mrs. Bennoch, she must have been a most intelligent and cultivated lady, whose kindly nature, affable manners, and lively interest in
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the happiness of others, assisted in making their home attractive to all of kindred tastes, and the seat of a generous and graceful hospitality.
Not long after Mr. Bennoch established his residence in Orono, he built the large house on the island which is still standing, and is known to the present day as the "old Bennoch house," where he laid out and maintained for many years what was probably the finest garden at the time in the county. Subsequently he sold this place, and, in 1823, moved to the house on this side of the river, now standing opposite the engine house, and where he died January 7, 1842. .
After the death of his second wife he was twice married ; his last wife, widow of the Hon. Reuben Bartlett, of Garland, survived him. A daughter, Lucretia Holland, who, it was said, greatly resembled her mother in person and character, married the Hon. Joseph Cutting. .
Mr. Bennoch's residence here attracted quite a number of his countrymen to this town, among whom I remember Dr. Daniel McRuer, the distinguished physician, recently deceased at Bangor-the brother- in-law of the latter, Peter McIntyre, who had a store
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near the foot of Mill street-William Irving and James McNerrin, farmers in the north part of the town-Charles Thompson Haley, who projected and built the aqueduct by which a part of the village was supplied with water from Colburn's ridge-Thomas McMillan, the capable stone and brick mason and genial man-John Dean, who for many years had charge of the Stillwater canal-John McDonald, the surveyor -- and Daniel Fox, the millwright. Although he was not himself a native of Scotland, his father having come to this country before his birth, and although I have no reason for supposing that he was attracted to Orono by Mr. Bennoch, I am not willing to pass from this notice of Scotchmen without some allusion to a long-time resident, whose slight and agile form will rise before many of you as I mention the name of Moses Crombie.
Major Crombie, who was born in Londonderry, N. H., October 9, 1764, moved from Bath, Me., to Orono, in 1829. His wife was Julia F. Morse, of Phippsburg, Maj. Crombie died July 17, 1854. He was a well-
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read and intelligent man, of decided opinions. The older members of the Penobscot bar have not forgot- ten his rape of the Revised Statutes while serving as foreman of the Grand Jury in the old Court of Com- mon Pleas at Bangor-an audacious act, that quite dumfoundered the presiding Judge, who, in response to the indignant protest of the State's Attorney, could only find breath and words to say, in a tone of mingled amazement and despair, as the Major, bow- ing his head and cocking his eye, passed from the court-room-"He's gone !" The dismay of the attor- ney, the despair of the Judge, and the archness of the Major, as described by an eminent member of the bar, afterwards, on different occasions, an hon- ored and beloved Chief Magistrate of the State, and, still later, for many years, an eminent Judge of its highest Court, who, as Thomas Hood said of Allan Cunningham, would "rise to a joke like a trout to a fly"-for his commanding talents and his unfeigned love of whatsoever was pure, and good, and true, were accompanied by a genial and most excellent humor-formed a picture which his brethren of the
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bar were wont to enjoy with a glee that was in no sense " counterfeited." *
* HON. EDWARD KENT .- This reference to Judge Kent revives old and pleasant memories, and I am tempted to record some of them in this note. What a Bar the county of Penobscot conkl boast thirty or forty years ago! Some of its members are still in practice in the county; there are upon the bench of our highest court those referred to in the address, and the learned and accomplished Chief Justice Appleton, who, happier than Lord Brongh- am, knows everything, including law. Of the older lawyers, who were about ready to retire from the courts when I came to this county, and who have since passed away, I may venture to recall some impressions. I re- member the manly form and pleasant features of Jacob MeGaw, the early friend and correspondent of Daniel Webster, by whom he was visited in his Bangor home seventy years ago, a lawyer of the old school, patient, faith- ful, persevering, strong: Allen Gilman, the first Mayor of Bangor, a man of smaller frame than MeGaw, but of not less intellectual power; keen, clear, incisive, and indomitable-if sharp of tongue on occasion, warm and generons in heart: William D. Williamson, lawyer, historian, and politi- cian-like the triune bear he has immortalized, three varieties in one char- acter: William Abbot, tall and angular in body, but of well-proportioned and symmetrical mind, and of incorrigible honesty : John Godfrey, sensible, diligent, and of unspotted integrity: Peleg Chandler, in immense top-boots and with cane in hand, the most noticeable form that walked the Bangor streets for many a year; his Horid eloquence was especially dangerous to defendeuts in actions for breach of promise to marry, and against towns for damages by reason of defective highways: while among those who were then in the bloom and strength of their years, but have since followed their seniors to the silent land, were Jonathan P. Rogers, whose mental endowments were perhaps never surpassed by those of any son of Maine; the master of principles and the consummate advocate, he was a born law- yer; with but slight aid from early edneation, no man that I ever heard speak possessed a style so close, so strong, and so pure; his addresses. whether to court or jury, might be set in type without the change of a single word: George B. Moody, who was a careful and well-educated lawyer, and no "prentice hand" at writing political-convention resolutions, and a true gentleman withal, did not possess the sense of humor that shone so brightly in his brother in the profession-Thornton MeGaw, a gentleman whose memory is a benediction, in whom strong and saving common sense, enlt- ure, and exquisite humor were so admirably mixed that one could only see that while all these qualities were present in force, no one was crowded by the others: and there was another whom I cannot forget, whom it was al- ways good to see, and is now pleasant and profitable to remember, for his
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