USA > Maine > Oxford County > Sumner > Centennial history of the town of Sumner, Me. 1798-1898 > Part 2
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. The next year another government surveyor, Samuel Titcomb, continued the survey -northward, and ran out the lines of another township, "No. 7," lying just north of "No. 6," and containing 24,000 acres.
On June 22, of that same year (1786) a Deed of Agreement was made between the State's committee and Joel Parkhurst of Dunstable and his associates, by which the Commonwealth agreed to deed the townships Nos. 6 and 7 on payment of the price agreed upon.
On November 22, in the following year, 1787, this deed was given to Ebenezer Bancroft of Dunstable, and his associates, who are all men- tioned. The shares were made one sixtieth, and the names of the Proprietors with the number of shares each owned is as follows:
Samuel Butterfield, 5. John Merrill, 6. Ebenezer
See Appendix, B
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Bancroft, 3. Joel Parkhurst, 3. Benjamin French, 3. Joseph Danforth, 2. Oliver Cummings, 2. Ebenezer Allen, 2. The following had one share each:
James Abbott, Loammi Baldwin, Oliver Bailey, William Blodgett, Asa Butterfield, Leonard Butter- field, Peter Colburn, James Cummings, Jeremiah Cummings,Josiah Cummings, Oliver Cummings, Jr., Mary Emerson (widow), Frederick French, Thomas French, Apollos Hall, Benjamin Heald, Peter Haz- elton, Benjamin Hosmer, Cyrus Hosmer, William Hunt,' Israel Hutchinson, Nathaniel Jones, James Lawrence, Samuel Marsh, Samuel Pollard, Increase Robinson, Thomas Russell, Benjamin Smith, Benja- min Smith, Jr., Oliver Taylor, Asa Thompson, Ben- jamin Woodward, Joseph Winn, Jr., Richard Whitney.
: These were the original owners of the soil of the two plantations, containing nearly fifty thousand acres, and their holdings ranged from five hundred to five thousand acres each. Among them were men of note, leaders in the events of their own time, and to them are to be traced nearly all titles to the farms in our town.
Six names represent the ownership of one half of the two townships; these are, Bancroft, Butterfield, Cummings, French, Merrill and Parkhurst.
Col. Ebenezer Bancroft was for many years the clerk of the Proprietors, and the meetings of the Proprietary government were held at his house in Dunstable, Mass. All the land about North Pond and the Pond itself was granted to him in recogni-
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- tion of his valuable services as Secretary. He was one of the committee in 1791, to lay off the one hundred acres to each of the original settlers.
-Col. Bancroft was in command of a company at Bunker Hill where he was wounded.
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He served through the war and at its close return- ed to Dunstable, where he died in 1828, in his nine- tieth year.
John Merrill was a public surveyor of lands for Gov. Bowdoin in the District of Maine. He thus be- came interested in the purchase of lands from the Commonwealth and was a shareholder in a number of such plantations. He was early at Topsham, and later removed to Farmington, Maine.
The Cummings family were among the oldest and most influential families of Dunstable. They were a large family, and five of them were among the-Pro- prietors, and one of them an original settler of the Plantation; his grandson long lived at West Sum- ner, and was for nearly twenty years Postmaster in this village.
The Butterfields were also a very numerous fami- ly in Dunstable, and the names of three appear in the list of Proprietors. They were large owners, and the new township was named for them, East and West Butterfield.
The name of another of the Proprietors is a house- hold word in England and America. Col. Loammi Baldwin, a Proprietor of this plantation, was the first propagator of the famous Baldwin apple.
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As soon as the Proprietors received their deed, they made arrangements for lotting out the two plantations. Instead of taking the division line made by the public surveyor running through the center of the plantations east and west for ten and one half miles from Paris to Livermore, they made a new division line running north and south, leaving some eight thousand acres more in the east part than in the west.
This line dividing the two plantations ran due north and south, just east of the old Hezekiah Stet- son and John Briggs farms, thus throwing the new settlement and mills at East Sumner into the East Plantation.
From this division line the committee ran out the lots, first running range lines north and south paral- let to the division line. The lots in the two planta- tions were originally intended to be of the same size. containing one hundred and twenty five acres each. but later the lots in West Butterfield (Sumner) were made one hundred and thirty six acres, while those in East Butterfield (Hartford) remained one hundred and twenty five acres each.
There were one hundred thirty five lots in the West Plantation, and one hundred and seventy in the East besides numerous gores.
These lots were laid out in the fall of 1786, and then were drawn by the Proprietors in proportion to
A map of the original lottings has been constructed and was on exhibition at the church.
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their shares; a single share entitling its owner to about six hundred acres of land.
The "Propriety" held its meetings in Dunstable as late as 1804, but the original book of records has been lost. They employed Oliver Cummings, Jr. and others of the early settlers to build roads through the new plantation in order to open up their lots for sale, and they usually paid for such labor by grants of land.
Before 1804, it would seem that all the land had either been sold or assigned to the various Proprie- tors in severalty, as in that year the Proprietors ordered their clerk to have all sales and allotments of land in the two towns recorded in the Cumberland Registry of Deeds .* And thus ended the acts of the Proprietary governments.
Let us now return to the story of the earliest in- habitants, the founders and settlers. t
The first immigrants were all from the Old Colony of Massachusetts, from Plymouth County, and especially from Pembroke and the surrounding towns of Halifax, Plympton and Middleboro.
* See Appendix. A.
t A full account of these families will be found in the Lewis- ton Evening Journal of June 11, 1898. written by Sharon Rob- inson, who has given much time to the preparation of the arti- cle which appears there, and for this reason the portion of the address devoted to a particular description of the earliest settl- ers was omited.
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/
Fourteen of the founders came from this section, and later- the families of Cobb, Cushman, Soule, Thompson, Sampson, Barrows, Bartlett, Tillson, Palmer, Doten, Churchill, Harden and others joined their neighbors in the new plantation. A few of them had found a half-way stopping place at New Gloucester, Yarmouth or Turner, but eventually made their homes in this town.
Meanwhile another stream of immigrants started from the home of the Proprietary in Dunstable and the surrounding towns.
A few years earlier, the Bucks, Allen's and Spauld- ings had come from this region to make their homes in Buckstown, now Buckfield.
These were soon followed by a band from the same neighborhood who took up land in the new planta- tion north of Buckstown. Among these immigrants from Dunstable and vicinity were the Healds, Cum- mings, Bucks, Parlins, Fletchers, Barretts, Chand- lers, Coburns, Abbotts, and others.
These latter chose their lands at the center or western part of.this town, while those who came from the Old Colony settled in the eastern part along both sides of the division line.
Thus it will be seen that the lands in the central and eastern parts of the township were first taken up. It was not until ten or fifteen years later that settlers came into the western part, and improved the lands about the present Jackson Village.
The Proprietors sold many lots between 1786 and
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1796. A road was laid out from Buckfield through the whole length of the township north and south, and so .to New Pennacook (Rumford) before 1788.
By the opening of the year 1784, twenty one set- tlers had taken up land and made permanent improve- ments within the limits of the old plantation. Many of them had brought their families with them, and all of them spent the remainder of their lives here. We honor these as the true founders of this town, and here record their names:
Simeon Barrett, Charles Bisbee, Elisha Bisbee, Isaac Bonney, Noah Bosworth, John Briggs, Moses Buck, John Crockett, Oliver Cummings, Jr., Charles Ford, Joshua Ford, Benjamin Heald, John Keen, Meshac Keen, Daniel Oldham, Simeon Parlin, Increase Robinson, Joseph Robinson, Hezekiah Stetson, Isaac Sturtevant, William Tucker.
Of these founders three, viz: Benjamin Heald, Oliver Cummings and Increase Robinson, were also - Proprietors. Each of these twenty one founders re- ceived a deed from the Commonwealth of Massachu- setts of one hundred acres of land laid out so as to best include his improvements.
A plantation government was soon formed, assess- ors and collectors were elected, and plantation meet- ings were usually held at the dwelling house of Dea. Increase Robinson, or the barn of Hezekiah Stetson, or later in the school houses; here the early inhabi- tants discussed matters of common interest, cast their votes for State and plantation officers, taxed
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themselves to build school houses and establish - schools.
In 1794 the plantation chose Dea. Increase Robin- son to superintend a survey of the township and make a plan of the same to be sent to the office of the Secretary of State in Boston; with the help of Noah Bosworth, Jr. such a survey was made, a map drawn, which is still preserved at the State House in Boston. *
Among the first officers of the old plantation we find the names of John Briggs, Benjamin Heald, Enoch Hall, Timothy Cobb, Freeman Ellis, William Hayford, John Elwell, Seth Sturtevant and others.
Settlers fast poured in and bought the most avail- able lots, and before the date of incorporation the number of inhabitants in the two plantations was about four hundred, of which nearly one half were within the present limits of the town of Sumner. '
And what of the character of these early inhab- itants?
Tis said "the first settlers of a town are not only the physical parents of the future generations of that town, but give to their moral qualities a shape and character as distinctly marked as the complex- ion or personal habits which distinguish families from each other."
These early settlers of our town came of the hardy Puritan, Pilgrim Stock which has made the name of
* A copy of it was on exhibition at the Centennial.
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New England famous throughout the world.
A variety of circumstances tended to cultivate in them habits of thought and self-restraint. Social equality and individual freedom prevailed every- where among them; they had imbibed strong relig- ious principles in their old Massachusetts homes, they possessed a sturdy independence, owning and tilling their own farms, and were servants to no man. *
"The sterile soil became productive under their sa- gacious culture, and the barren rock, astonished, found itself covered with luxurient and unaccustom- ed verdure.". .
These owners and founders and early settlers were filled with the spirit of patriotism.
On the nineteenth of April 1775, when Paul Revere set out on that famous ride to spread the alarm through every "Middlesex village and farm," there started from one single Parish in Pembroke, ten Bonneys and a lesser number of Bisbees, Briggses, Coles, Hollises, Hayfords, Robinsons, Stetsons and Tillsons; while at the same time in this.north-east corner of the old Commonwealth about the town of Dunstable, the Cummingses, Chandlers, Abbotts, Butterfields, Fletchers, Barretts, Healds and others, were getting out flint-locks and buckling on their swords.
No wonder, when less than a hundred years later there came another call to arms to defend the Union, that the decendants of these sturdy old Continental
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heroes were among the first to respond and give their lives in defence of that freedom which their ancestors had established. Sumner found no diffi- culty in filling her quota from her own sons,
"Whose faith and truth
On war's red touch-stone rang true metal, 1
Who ventured life and love and youth, For the great prize of death in battle."
Such were the men that gave the stamp of their strong character to this town a hundred years ago.
"We could not, if we would, forget Their matchless service or their worth ;
No sun of hope shall ever set While such remain to bless the earth." *
Just ten years after the first comers, there were enough people in the plantation to warrant them in applying for a corporation. It then became a question, whether the two plantations should be in- corporated separately or into two distinct towns. The original intention when the land was sold to the Proprietors, was that it should be eventually incor- porated as two towns, as there was sufficient land to make two of the usual size of six miles square; but as a plantation, the two parts had acted together, and a few thought they ought to be united in one town.
- The majority, however, were decidedly in favor of two, and voted to act independently of each other. . In May 1793, a petition was signed by the inhab- itants of West Butterfield, setting forth the great difficulties and disadvantages under which they were
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laboring, for lack of proper roads, schools and relig- ious instruction, and asking for incorporation. This petition had seventeen signatures, representing the names Hall, Bisbee, Allen, Crockett, Bosworth, Ford, * Fletcher, Parlin, Robinson, Keen, Buck and Tucker.
In the following August, a similar action was taken in East Butterfield by a committee appointed by the town, headed by Dea. Increase Robinson. t These petitions were refered to the proper committee by the General Court, and were there killed; probably through the influence of the majority of the Proprie- tors, who naturally opposed the incorporation as in- creasing their taxes.
In December 1793, the - West plantation chose a committee headed by John Briggs to prepare another petition, which they did, and asked to be incorporated under the name of New Hancock. # (Hancock was then Governer of Massachusetts.) This petition received the same treatment as the preceding one.
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It was not till December 1795, that the inhabitants of the East plantation drew up their second petition, which set forth in detail the facts concerning the purchase of the plantations and their division, and asked for incorporation by bounds as fixed by the Proprietors. #| With this petition was sent a map showing the boundary line.
In the same month a third petition from the dwell- ers in the western part was sent to the General
* See Appendix, C. t Appendix, D. ¿ Appendix, E.
{j See Appendix, F. '
hi wi the love when the.
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Court, showing the want of civil regulations to im- prove the preached gospel and the seminaries of learning, and the lack of convenient roads "through our barren and uncultivated lands. And as your humble petitioners are willing to support a civil gor- ernment, we pray your honors would not deny us the privilege of the same, and would incorporate us into a town by the name of Gilman." *
This petition was signed by twenty nine men, more than three-fourths of the voters at that time in the plantation; but action in the General Court was once more postponed.
Then a petition from the voters of both plantations was drawn up in December 1797, and this is the first petition which asks for incorporation with east branch of the twenty-mile river as the division line between the proposed new towns. The reasons for desiring a change in the division line are given in the petition, and were briefly these, that there were eight thousand acres more in the East plantation, and twenty more voters. This petition was drawn by Dea. Increase Robinson, who had built the mills at East Sumner about 1784, and desired that these mills, the only ones in the new settlement, should become a part of the West town. 1
This petition obtained forty eight signatures, some thirty five of them being those of inhabitants of West Butterfield, and the others those living just cast of the old plantation division line. t
But the other inhabitants of the East plantation
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did not silently submit to the loss of such a valuable part of their territory, and some of them thought the best solution was an incorporation of both plantations into one town. And a petition to this effect was immediately drawn up, explaining at length the ob- jections to the river as a division line, and asking for incorporation as one town. This petition re- ceived thirteen signatures. * However, before the following spring the most of the objectors in the East town seem to have become reconciled to the proposed new line and sent in a petition declaring their approval of it. t
Meanwhile, the two plantations had each appoint- ed a committee of six to make one final attempt for incorporation. The committee for the eastern part was composed of Dea. Increase Robinson, John El- well, Dr. Micah Allen, Isaac Bonney, William Hay- ford and James Irish; that from the western part of Isaac Sturtevant, Elisha Bisbee, Benjamin Heald, Joseph Robinson, John Briggs and Hezekiah Stetson.
This joint committee drew up a very strong peti- tion explaining the difficulties which seemed to en- counter them in their attempts to gain incorporation, and implying that the only opposition arose from the Proprietors who wished to avoid the payment of taxes. #
The plantation had met with so little success in - sending petitions to the General Court in Boston, that they concluded to send an agent with this one to smooth the way for its acceptance, and the grant-
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ing of their wishes in the matter. They chose Dea. Increase Robinson, and he went at the beginning of June 1798, carrying this petition signed by the joint committee.
By his efforts it avoided the fate of the half dozen · preceding ones, and at last after five years' attempts, " the two plantations were incorporated on Wednes- day, June 13, 1798, by the names of Hartford and Sumner. * This town was the ninth town incorpo- rated in the present limits of Oxford County, and had it been incorporated when the first petition was presented it would have been the fourth, only Frye- burg, Hebron and Paris preceding, but during the five years that the settlers were petitioning, Buck- field, Bethel, Waterford and Norway had been incorporated. Sumner was the one hundred and twenty-first -town incorporated in the district of Maine.
The new town received its name from Increase Sumner, the Governor of Massachusetts at the time of incorporation. A copy of his picture graces our program today. He was born in Dorchester Mass. in 1746, and was graduated at Harvard College at the age of sixteen, was a member of the Massachu- setts legislature at thirty, elected a congressman at thirty-five, appointed supreme judge at thirty-six, elected governor of the Commonwealth in 1797, and re-elected in 1798, again in 1799, when his election was almost unanimous. He died in office in June 1799, in the fifty third year of his age. His funeral 1
* See Appendix M.
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was attended by the President of the United States, and was the most- solemn and imposing that had ever been witnessed in Boston.
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Such was the man whose name this town bears, and she may well be proud of his record, as he certainly would be of his name-sake if he could be with us today:
The act of incorporation was the first act of the General Court at their June session 1798, and this day completes the full hundred years since that act went into effect and a new town was added to the great Commonwealth.
"A hundred years have passed away Since first the forests' solitude, Welcoming our fathers to its shade, Offered an habitation rude. A hundred years have passed away ; And now upon their well earned ground, With loyal hearts of joy and pride, We hail the birthday of our town.
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Strong hearts and willing hands were theirs To wield the ax or till the soil, And from the depths of forest shades Grew fields of plenty for their toil ;
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. T Brave souls and true have followed them, i
- Ready to serve their country's need, A sterling stock throughout the years Renowned by many a kindly decd.
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One hundred years ! a glance around ; We see the rugged wooded hills,
The village with its tapering spires, The meadow by the limpid rills ; All things seem beautiful and grand Throughout the bright and joyous earth ;
Where can we find a lovelier spot Than this blest land which gave us birth?"
, What would we not give now for a sketch of the life in the new town of Sumner at the opening of the present century, drawn by one who was a part of that life! But we must be content with glimpses found in old letters, and handed down by tradition.
We find no great achievement as the world counts greatness, but a persistent holding up through pov- erty, trial, self-denial and opposition, that banner of rightousness, integrity and truth. It is such lives as these that build the great framework of a nation's honor.
But sometimes toil and labor put on the garb of pleasure and social enjoyment, when neighbors came together to raise each others buildings, or by the light of smoky lantern husked one another's corn, always on the lookout for red ears, or crowned the achievements of a new co-operative bed quilt by an evening of cheerful hilarity. Spelling matches and singing schools gave the young people an opportu- nity for forming acquaintances which often resulted in the formation of new households.
We catch a slight glimpse of the town in ISoo, from the journal of Paul Coffin, who made a mission-
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ary tour through this section in that year. We quote the following:
"Sat., Sept. 6. Rode to Sumner through a good road and put up with Joseph Robinson, son of the Deacon, a pleasant family it was.
"Sept. 7, Sabbath. In Sumner. Preached to a large and serious assembly from Luke 16 : 29, 30 and Ro- mans 8: 16. Preached in the barn of Hezekiah Stet- son. The audience was large and not very much divided, consisting of people not turned with the traveling doctrines of the day. Mr. Isaiah Cush- man, lately from North Yarmouth, was greatly taught and relieved by the sermon on Romans 8 : 16.
"This town is settled on a road running north and south six miles.
"Rode on my way to Hartford after supper and put up with Dea. Robinson. He has two houses, two barns, a saw and a grist mill, and a potash. He lives well and treated me with water mellons having white seeds."
The next day the Missionary went on to Hartford, but records no more "treating."
The ecclesiastical history was told yesterday, by the Rev. P. E. Miller, in his historical sermon, and need not be dwelt on farther.
One of the first things the settlers did long before incorporation was to provide for schools, voluntarily taxing themselves for their support, and we find in the early plantation warrants, articles for this purpose.
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In 1795, the two plantations were divided into six . school districts.
The first district included the north part of the town from the old Parlin place to the Benjamin Heald place on Sumner Hill.
The second district began at the Cobb place, just east of Sumner Hill, and took in the settlement about the mills at the east side of the plantation, and down toward Buckfield as far as Wm. Tucker's. The school house stood near the John Briggs place above Potash Hill.
The third district included the south part of the . town from the Bonney place to the Buckfield line.
Sumner has a military history of which she may well be proud. Of the twenty-one founders, sixteen were Revolutionary heroes whose services in the Continental army are recorded in the Archives of . Massachusetts.
At the begining of this century a majority of the voters in this town were veterans of that great struggle. Not less than forty men who fought to establish independence have found a home in Sumner, and nearly the same number took part in the war of 1812, while more than a hundred of her sons went to the front in the struggle to maintain the Union, a record scarce paralleled any where. They proved themselves worthy sons of patriot sires. t
In the early days the mails were like angels' visits, few and far between. There was no post-office in town until 1812, when one was established on Sum-
See * Appendix, N. t See Appendix, O.
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ner Hill at Simeon Barrett's, and he was Postmaster until 1840.
The early settlers got their mail from New Glou- chester. The first post-rider in this part of the country was Jacob Howe, the ancestor of all the Howes yet living in town. He rode on horse back with his mail from Portland to Waterford once each week. Post-offices were established in Paris and Buckfield in 1801.
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