USA > Maine > Penobscot County > Orono > Centennial celebration, and dedication of town hall, Orono, Maine, March 3, 1874 > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
.
1
.
91
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
From the incorporation of the town to 1820, its growth was slow and feeble. The population in the latter year was but four hundred and fifteen-only sixty-four more than it had been ten years before. While the population of the towns on the Kennebec and Androscoggin, and even of some in the western portion of this county, had largely increased, and while the best kind of farmers and mechanics were rapidly filling them, emigration came slowly down this way. There was little to attract it. There was some cutting, hauling, and sawing of logs, considera- ble shingle-weaving, and for the rest hunting and fishing, during these slow and unprofitable years.
delightful companionship and his genuine manliness-Elijah Livermore Hamlin. But these brief reminiscences must not be left without some mention of the Judge in whose court these gentlemen of the green bag were wont to fight their battles and crack their jokes, the Hou. David Perham, an industrious man of considerable reading and general information, slow of speech and impervious to humor; not free, perhaps, from the influence of prejudice, but thoroughly honest. The anecdotes and stories connected with the Court of Connnon Pleas during the quarter of a century or more that JJudge Perhamn was upon its bench, are innumerable. One in which the legal wag of Oldtown figured, is remembered as these lines are written. The "general issne" having been pleaded in an action pending in the Court. the plaintiff's counsel, who was no other than our Oldtown friend, demurred to the plea. "On what ground"" inquired the Judge. "Du- plicity, your Honor," answered the counsel-a response which provoked an ejaculation from the lawyer on the other side, and an andible smile from the gentlemen within the bar. "And may it please the Court," continued the counsel, " I beg to say that in this thing I am entirely serious;" to which the Judge-" R. r. Mr. Sewcall, that will not do in this Court."
-
92
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
One thing that affected this section of the State un- favorably, and from which, owing to the size and ex- cellent navigation of its noble river, it suffered more than any other, was the war of 1812. The occupa- tion of Castine by the British, the consequent block- ade of business on the river above, and the constant danger of irruptions by the enemy, had a most dis- astrous effect upon the fortunes of this and neighbor- ing towns.
The British at one time, it will be remembered, were at Hampden and Bangor. At the former place there was a battle, in which Orono was represented by a company of militia, under the command of Capt. (afterwards Col.) Ebenezer Webster. It is said to have been the last company to leave the field, and that it received the order to do so with intense disgust.
During all this period the Stillwater river was crossed by a ferry, and it was not till several years later that a bridge was built over it. The roads were few and rough. The schools were of the most prim- itive kind, and religious meetings were held in school- rooms and dwelling-houses-chiefly by the Metho-
93
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
dists. There was neither lawyer nor doctor living in the town in all this time. The first school-house was built in 1815, and was near where the late Mr. Sam- uel White lived on Pleasant street. It was after- wards burnt. In 1810 the number of polls in town was one hundred-the valuation of estates was $24,- 690.30. In Bangor, the same year, the polls were 267, and the estates $132,998.50.
The first tavern in town was kept by Perez Graves, and was opened in 1812, in the house afterwards owned by Mr. Bennoch. The stone mill-now owned by Col. Eben Webster, jr., was rebuilt in 1817. A mill known as the Greeley mill, was built by John Gordon as early as 1804 or 5. It was not far from the site of the Union mills.
Jackson Davis was a delegate from this town to the Convention, held at Portland in 1819, to form a Constitution for the new State of Maine. He lived at Oldtown.
1820-1830.
During this time better progress was made than had been at any earlier period. The census of the
.
94
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
latter year gave a population of 1473-an encourag- ing increase. The town had certainly taken a new start. Good farms, here and there, were beginning to appear; new roads were opened, and old ones made better. The immediate neighborhood was rap- idly recovering from the effects of the war. Mr. White and others extended their lumbering opera- tions. New stores were opened. Cony Foster, from Augusta, strengthened by the capital of his father- in-law, Benjamin Brown, of Vassalboro', built a large store on Main street, and a handsome residence, in which, after a lapse of nearly half a century, he is now, at a ripe old age, living-I wish I could say in the enjoyment of good health.
Asa W. Babcock, also from Augusta, a brother- in-law of Mr. Foster, settled here in the same year; and the results of his enterprise, and of the capital which he controlled, were soon felt in the business of the town. Large saw-mills were erected on the Babcock and Bennoch dams. For a term of ten years, and until he was disabled by physical in- firmity, Mr. Babcock was more extensively engaged in the lumbering trade, and especially in its manu-
1
95
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
facture, than any other man in the town, and was scarcely rivalled in the county or State. He died in Bangor, 1872. He built, and occupied for many years, the house on Main street, now owned and oc- cupied by James Webster, Esq.
Col. Ebenezer Webster built, in 1827, the large house on the island (lately remodeled and improved), in which he resided so long, where his son, Paul D. Webster, now lives. In the same year William and Jeremiah Colburn erected the commodious residence which was for so long a period their home.
In 1824 John Read built the tavern house on Main street, afterwards called the Stillwater Exchange. He was the first landlord in the house, and was succeed- ed, in 1830, by John R. Greenough, who was followed, in 1833, by the late Thomas Whitney, a native of Lisbon, Me. Mr. Whitney owned the property, and was the keeper of the hotel for many years. He died in Orono, June 5, 185S.
On the 13th of February, 1826, John Bennoch, of Orono, and Thomas A. Hill and Mark Trafton, of Bangor, were authorized by the Legislature to erect a bridge over the Stillwater branch of the Penobscot
96
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
river. The bridge was built in that year. It was an uncovered structure, and was carried away by the ice April 1, 1831, but was replaced the same year by the bridge that is now standing. Your fellow-citizen, Edward R. Southard, the well-known millwright, had the charge of the construction of the last-named bridge.
The Stillwater Canal Co. was chartered July 6, 1828. It was intended for the passage of rafts from Upper Stillwater, and above, to the Penobscot river below Ayres' Falls. It was not opened for the whole distance until 1835, though a part of it had been previously used. Ludo Thayer, of Portland, was one of the contractors, and moved to this town about 1832, and built the brick house now owned by John W. Mayo, Esq.
In 1826 Jonas Cutting, attorney at law, opened an office in the village. He was a native of Croydon, New Hampshire, and a graduate of Dartmouth Col- lege, where he had Rufus Choate for a tutor. Mr. Cutting was a careful and thorough lawyer, who, to the patience of detail, added a firm and intelligent grasp of principles. Ile remained here five or six
97
ORONO CENTENNIAL ..
years, and then removed to Bangor, where he took high rank in his profession, and became, in 1854, a Judge of the Supreme Judicial Court, a position which he now occupies.
Jeremiah Perley, author of the "Maine Justice," and other legal manuals, practiced law in this town for several years. He was a well-read attorney and a good citizen, but was destitute of some of those ele- ments of the successful lawyer which were destined to make his neighbor, Mr. Cutting, one of the fore- most counsellors in the State.
The first physician in town of whom I have re- ceived any information was Dr. Daniel J. Perley, who afterwards practiced in Oldtown. The next was Dr. Stevens, who came from China, Kennebec Co. He was here before 1826, but in a year or two died of consumption. There was in town, for a year or more, Dr. Varney Farnham, who came from Alfred, in the county of York.
New school-houses arose in different parts of the town. Religious interests were more attended to than they had been at any earlier date. Meetings were regularly held by the Methodists, who had be-
98
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
come a pretty strong and well-compacted society, and by whom a Quarterly meeting was held in 1829, at the house of Mrs. Daniel Jameson. The Congre- gationalists were moving towards organization and consolidation, and had occasional preaching in school- houses and dwelling-houses by Rev. John Sawyer (who lived to the great age of 104 years), and others.
For this term Orono was classed with Bangor, Dutton (now Glenburn), and Sunkhaze (now Milford), for a Representative to the Legislature, and furnished the member for 1824 in the person of Col. Ebenezer Webster, and for 1828 in that of John Bennoch, Esq.
The most interesting and perhaps most important decade in the history of the town, was that to which I am now approaching, and which extended from
1830 TO 1840.
It was during this period that the great Land Speculation occurred. It commenced in 1832-3, de- clined in 1834, rose again and culminated in 1835, and burst in 1836. The growth of Orono at this time was fabulous, the population, which, in 1830, was less than fifteen hundred, rose, according to a
1
-
.
ORONO CENTENNIAL. 99
census taken by the Selectmen in the spring of 1836, to about six thousand, of whom nearly nineteen hun- dred were in this village. Bonds, conditioned for the conveyance of timber lands, of lots in Bangor, and in the villages in Orono, were in great demand, for which liberal, and sometimes very large, bonuses were paid. Retired capitalists, merchants, manufac- turers, old sea captains, and others, from abroad, had heard of the vast wealth of the Penobscot forests, of the countless millions of timber they contained, and of its marvellous quality. To own the bond of a township was to have an independent fortune, but to possess the title was " wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." This village, of course, had its speculators and bond-brokers, but they flourished better in Oldtown. The fortunes secured daily by trans- actions of this kind in that enterprising village passed any marvels that we read of in the Arabian Nights Entertainments. About that time wolf skins for sleigh robes came in fashion in this vicinity, and a man's fortune, or the number of bonds he held. was ordinarily gauged by the number and length of the wolves' tails that hung over the back of his sleigh.
-
100
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
Stillwater, as this village was then called, did well in this line, Bangor better, but Oldtown beat the world. When the fever was at its highest, one of her promi- nent citizens and speculators visited New York, put- ting up, of course, at the Astor House, then the great hotel of the country. On presentation to him, when he was about to leave, of his hotel bill, which was $80, he passed to the cashier a hundred dollar note, and when the latter tendered back the excess, he was promptly informed that they did not " take change down east."
Of course, when the woods above contained such vast and exhaustless wealth, the points below, where the lumber would be manufactured and shipped, as- sumed great importance. Lots in this village rose to city prices, and the man who did not own or had not given a bond of village property was of very little account. Robert M. N. Smyth, otherwise called " The Roarer," a noted speculator, had formed a joint stock company, with Massachusetts capitalists as trustees and stock-holders, and purchased Eayres' Island and several hundred acres of land, embracing, with the exception of a few lots, all the territory east
101
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
of Main street, from Pine street to the farm of Stephen Page, as well as the Union Mills and the power at Eayres' Falls. The company, which was styled The Bangor Lower Stillwater Mill Company, sur- veyed this large tract and laid it out in city plots -house lots, store lots, factory lots, water lots, etc. ; and having reserved the best of them to itself, offered the rest at a public auction, held under an immense tent on Broadway, in June, 1836 The sale was advertised in New York, Boston, Prov- idence, Portland, and Bangor, and many people from far and near came to attend it. It was a beautiful day, and while the auctioneer was knocking down lots (50 feet by 100) in Mr. Colburn's field, at from $500 to $1000 each, the caterer, imported from New York, was still more busy in passing out crack- ers, cheese, and other appetizing edibles, to the at- tendant multitude, and pouring champagne from the original bottles into huge wash tubs, from which each man helped himself at his own sweet will. These were the flush days of Orono. There were twenty- five retail shops in the village in 1836. Thomas Whitney was proprietor of the old tavern ; James
102
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
Lord, successor of Aaron Holbrook, was landlord of the Stillwater Hotel, kept in the present Bank build- ing. . He was, as one of his guests told him on a convivial occasion, a " very good landlord, but a con- founded homely man." He furnished the dinner on the occasion of the memorable celebration of the Fourth of July, 1836. Advardis Shaw was, about that time, keeping tavern in an old,. two-story, low, long, raking house on the south side of Mill street, near the foot. If those old walls could be restored and find a tongue, what "unco" tales they could tell ! They might, perhaps, if in garrulous mood, rehearse the story of that midnight session, at which was taken down in clerkly hand the fatal testimony that led to the removal from office of a high official, whose too special attention to one of the witnesses sum- moned in the great conspiracy case of Rines, Bur- lingham, and others, brought to him grief and shame, and loss of office.
The Stillwater Canal Bank was incorporated March 21, 1835. The corporation was organized and com- menced business in the summer or early fall of that year. Albert G. Brown was President, and E. P.
1
-
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
103
Butler, Cashier. It did but little business after 1837. Nathaniel Treat succeeded Mr. Brown as President. The Bank was wound up in 1841 or 1842; all its original issues were, if I remember correctly, re- deemed. The Stillwater Canal, incorporated in 1828, was opened for business in 1835.
The Bangor and Oldtown Railroad, for which a charter had been obtained March S, 1832, was organ- ganized in 1835; and before a blow was struck, its stock was sold at a premium of ten per cent. Rufus Dwinel, Ira Wadleigh, and Asa W. Babcock, were its chief promoters. Work was commenced in June, and prosecuted for a few months, when, owing to a defect in the act of incorporation, through which land-owners were able to bring suits against every man who worked on the track, the road was aban- doned. Meanwhile, the charter of the Bangor and Piscataquis Canal and Railroad Company, incorporat- ed February 8, 1833, under which the corporators originally intended to build a line of canal and rail- road from Bangor to the slate quarries of Piscataquis county, was bought up by Edward and Samuel Smith
.
1
104
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
and, under it, the old railroad from Bangor via Upper Stillwater to Oldtown was built in the years 1835 and 1836, and opened in the latter year.
A charter for a Railroad from Bucksport to Milford, with a branch to Orono, was obtained in 1836. It was called the " Penobscot River Railroad." Several meetings were held here and at Oldtown village in the autumn of 1836, to promote its construction. Books for stock subscriptions were opened, and sub- scriptions to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars were made in this town; but, owing to the monetary stringency that commenced about that time, and perhaps other causes not now remembered, the scheme fell through. Col. Webster and Mr. Ben- noch were subscribers for stock to the amount of $5,000 each.
A village corporation, for school and police pur- poses, and protection against fire, authorized by Leg- islative act February 16, 1837, was organized and kept in operation till the division of the town, when, being no longer necessary, as this part of the town, after the separation, was represented and controlled
1
.
105
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
by the village, it was allowed to go down. The vil- lage has at all times since the separation contained more than four-fifths of the population of the town.
A joint stock organization, called the Stillwater Iron Foundry, was formed in 1835 or 1836, and built a foundry below the old Sleeper tavern, and not far from the Hammatt Mills. A Mr. Haley was the first manager, and was succeeded by Wm. G. Bent. A charter was obtained for the company March 21, 183S. In consequence of losses incurred by the failure of parties for whom it had done work, the company was compelled to wind up its affairs, after going on for two or three years.
In the fall of 1837 there were changes in the Bangor Lower Stillwater Mill Co., and its property passed into the hands of a new company formed in New York, called the North American Lumber Co., of which the eminent Judge, Thomas J. Oakley, and the Hon. Stephen A. Halsey, were trustees. The Hon. Francis Baylies, of Taunton, Mass., was here for several weeks as legal adviser while the' settlement and transfer were being effected; and when once they were accomplished, Moses Isaacs, an Englishman
106
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
from New York, perhaps the most accomplished ac- countant in America, was brought here and placed in charge as general agent.
But the fates were against the company, the times were hard, money scarce, and lumber dull of sale- and no trustees, however honorable, or agents, how- ever able, could avert the inevitable doom.
After the revolution and collapse of 1836-7, the population began to shrink, stores were wound up, goods attached and sold at auction, and a general prostration of business supervened. The lumber trade left those who were bold enough to engage in it to estimate their losses, rather than count their gains. In 1837 a " drive" of as fine logs as ever float- ed from the Baskahegan brought to the operators less than enough to pay the bills for manufacturing and running from the mills to Bangor. Money, during a part of the time between 1837 and 1840, was scarcer than it had ever been before or has been since ; and to add to the inconvenience, and even suffering, ex- perienced by the people, provisions, and especially bread-stuffs, were scarce, and ruled at prices dear be- yond precedent. Indignation meetings, to protest
-
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
107
against the high price of flour, were held in Bangor. I cannot, even at this distance, look back upon these cruel years without extreme pain.
But, one good thing to Orono came out of this severe and protracted depression. While the people had little to do, Asa W. Babcock, Esq., and Capt. Samuel Moore, worked up a movement for a free bridge, and pushed it with such earnestness and en- thusiasm that the bridge was erected and made ready for travel in a few months. It extended from near the old foundry site on this side of the river to a point on the island not far from the terminus of the present railroad bridge. It was a great accommoda- tion to the people while it stood. It must be some twenty years since it fell.
The causes of education and religion were cared for more than they had ever been before. Previous to 1834 a brick school-house was built on the island, and a large wooden one was erected near Josiah S. Bennoch's, the same now standing on Main street, near the Universalist church.
The Methodist church, raised August 22, 1833, was built by David Balkam, and was dedicated in June,
.
108
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
1834. The Methodists had regular and constant preaching during this decade. Revs. Greenleaf Greely and Caleb Fuller were among the preachers stationed here.
The Congregationalist church-IIugh Read and Israel Brown, builders-was erected in 1S33, and dedicated in the spring of 1834. The Rev. Josiah Fisher was the first settled minister of this church and society. He was here as early as 1833, and con- tinued till 1835. After him the Rev. Wooster Park- er, now of Belfast, was the pastor. IIe came in 1836, and remained about two years. Bancroft , Williams and John Perry, Esq., were the first deacons of the church. Dea. Williams moved here from Au- gusta, and Dea. Perry from Brunswick. The Univer- salists had preaching but occasionally during this period, and had no organization. ·
Prior to 1834 the lawyers in this village besides Messrs. Cutting and Perley, before mentioned, were John HI. Hilliard, who came from Oldtown when Mr. Cutting left, and remained till December, 1833, Fred- erick A. Fuller, of Augusta, who resided in the town until about 1844, and then returned to Augusta after
ORONO CENTENNIAL. 109
a brief residence in Bradford, and Thomas J. Good- win, of Saco, who in a few months went to Passa- dumkeag.
Nathaniel Wilson, of New Hampshire, a graduate of Dartmouth College, and who had read law with Hon. George Evans, of Gardiner, commenced practice in this town January 12, 1834, and has remain- ed here in the practice of his profession to the present time. On the 12th of December of the · same year, Israel Washburn, jr., a native of Liver- more, in this State, opened an office in this village for the practice of law. Henry E. Prentiss followed in the autumn of 1836, becoming a partner with Mr. Washburn-an association which continued two and a half years, when Mr. Prentiss moved to Bangor, where he accumulated a large fortune, and enjoyed in liberal measure the confidence and respect of the people, by whom he was elected Mayor of the city, and on several occasions one of its Representatives to the Legislature. He died in Bangor, very sud- denly, in June, 1873. Aaron Woodman and Samuel Belcher were here and in partnership as attorneys and counsellors at law in 1836-7. Nathan Weston,
·
-
: 1
110
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
jr., of Augusta, eldest son of the late Chief Justice Weston, came to Orono in 1837, and was for a season a partner of Mr. Wilson's. Maj. Weston was a pay- master in the army during the Mexican war, and was with Gen. Taylor at the battle of Buena Vista. Some time after his return to Orono he was elected Clerk of the Courts, and in a year or two moved to Bangor. HIis present residence is Newton, Mass. Thomas J. Copeland, from Dexter, was for two or three years, towards the end of this decade, a partner with Fred- erick A. Fuller.
Dr. Daniel McRuer, a native of Scotland, who re- ceived his professional education in Edinburgh, estab- lished himself as a physician in this town in 1830 ; but in a few years he sought the broader field opened to him in the near and flourishing city of Bangor, where he remained in the possession of a large and successful practice until his death, a year or two ago. He was succeeded, during this decade, by Dr. Elihu Baxter, who had practiced in Gorham ; Dr. John Ricker, a native of Buckfield, but who had been in practice in Durham ; Dr. R. W. Wood, of Augusta. Dr. W. H. Allen, of Farmington, and Dr. Sumner
.
-
--
ORONO CENTENNIAL. 111
Laughton. All of the foregoing, except Dr. McRuer. were in practice here in 1835. Drs. Baxter, Ricker, and Allen have been dead for several years. Dr. Wood resides in Honolulu, S. I., and Dr. Laughton in Bangor.
In 1835 the good people of Orono were shocked by the first murder that had ever been committed within its limits-that of Reuben McPhetres by Isaac Spencer. The crime was perpetrated at the house of James McPhetres, on the Bangor road, next below the "Mack brook." Spencer was tried and convicted within a few months.
From 1832 to 1841, inclusive, no other town was classed with Orono for Representative to the Legis- lature. Her Representatives were-1832, Noah Na- son ; 1833, Thomas Bartlett (Oldtown) ; 1834, Nathan- iel Treat; 1835, Samuel Cony (Oldtown); 1836 and 1837, John Shaw; 1838, Ebenezer Webster ; 1839, Retire W. Freese; 1840, Abiel W. Kennedy (Old- town); 1841, William Ramsdell.
The mills on the island end of the Babcock dam were built in 1832, and were destroyed by fire in 1833, but were immediately rebuilt and extended.
-
-
112
ORONO CENTENNIAL.
The Hammatt mills, Union block, Six-Saw block, adjoining the last named, the Perkins block, and Island block, and the first mills at the basin, were built between 1832 and 1838, and most of them in 1834, 1835, and 1836.
The closing year of this decade will be remem- bered as that in which occurred the border troubles, known as the Aroostook war. From your proximity to the city of Bangor, where the expeditions were fitted out, and from which they moved, as well as from the fact that all the men and munitions passed through your village, and that it was on the line of the company of videttes (extending from Bangor to Masardis),-whose members, if they did not "witch " our eastern " world with noble horsemanship," afford- ed an exhibition at which it gazed, and wondered, and smiled,-the excitement in town during the con- tinuance of the "war " was, as will naturally be sup- posed, high-strung and unflagging.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.