USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 13
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With Ferryman "Jote" the picturesque transport at "Moses Thompson's landing" waned to a conclusion. The "bee" v-1- en ten or twelve horses and twenty men were required every foil to take the heavy boat out of the water and every spring to put it back in again ceased as a community event. Embden and Solon were joined with spans of steel into accessibility, even as Anson and Madison had been decades before, and "Solon ferry" as the local folk called it, went the way of the James Burns ferry and the Weston ferry, both of which plied across the river at different points a little above Madison in the half century following the Revolution. The Bingham ferry to the Concord shore in due time was likewise relegated.
The noble river, along which plodded travellers of old to tarry for gossip and refreshment at "Uncle Moses" bar, still flows beautifully on but not as a barrier. The ferry and the landing place have faded into the forgotten past along with jovial gatherings at the hospitable tavern.
CHAPTER X
WHY CALLED QUEENSTOWN
Embden's earliest name of Queenstown - meaning then in particular the middle Kennebec section - held till along after 1800 and up to the town's incorporation. After a fashion in that period of indefinite nomenclature it might be regarded as a northern subdivision of Titcomb town, even as Titcomb town a little earlier was somewhat a northern-eastern subdivision of Seven Mile Brook settlement. In any event the olden neighbor- hood of Queenstown is the present day expanse of wood, field and river, encompassing the Moses Thompson tavern.
The author of this title for a region of natural beauty is unknown. Perhaps it came from an admirer of England's Queen, Charlotta Sophia, who had borne George III, still upon the throne, a family of fifteen children. It may be noteworthy in this connection that when the settlers' petition of 1803 for a town was before the General Court at Boston "Windsor" - name of the royal palace where George and Sophia resided - was in the final draft of the proposed enactment as the name of the new town. Some one, running his pen three times through "Windsor," as shown by parchment copy in the Massachusetts archives of the state Capitol at Boston, wrote "Emden" in its stead.
The maker, or makers of these names, Queenstown, Windsor and Emden, for a wilderness town in Maine may have pro- ceeded with some persistent notion of loyalty, even though it was several years after the surrender at Yorktown. It is note- worthy also that Charlotte Sophia was a daughter of the Duchy of Mecklenberg in Germany, that the Georges came from Hanover, Germany, about 100 miles to the westward and that the ancient city of Emden is in Hanover on Dollart Bay.
The reason for the additional letter "b" in the spelling of the name seems a matter of conjecture. Possibly the town clerks thought the additional letter belonged there. William Jones, justice of the peace, issuing his warrant by authority of the
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General Court for the first town meeting for August 16, 1804, wrote "Emden." Thomas McFadden, the first town clerk, followed his example. The town records for 1805 were written up by Benjamin Colby, Jr., elected town clerk Monday April 1, that year. . He wrote "Emden" in the warrant to Constable John Wilson for the annual town meeting of that date and "Embden" in the warrant for a meeting the same day to vote for governor and lieutenant governor. He likewise wrote "Embden" in publishing the bans of matrimony. His practice
Commonwealth of Mapachaut. In the yearafence for one thou Sujet 29. 9 for . To let to incorporate Sicureship
FAC-SIMILE FROM OFFICIAL TEXT OF ACT INCORPORATING EMBDEN. ORIGINAL DOCUMENT IS IN STATE ARCHIVES AT BOSTON. was followed and Benjamin Colby, Jr., may be regarded as the authority for the present spelling, the General Court in its act of incorporation to the contrary notwithstanding.
Queenstown neighborhood, as this historic part of Embden can properly be called, was the home of interesting pioneers. They were mainly Moses Thompson already mentioned, Abraham Rowe and Jonathan Stevens all of whom stood out as patriarchs with many sons and daughters. It was apparently for ten or fifteen years, at least, in no small part a colony of settlers from Barrington, N. H. The Rowes were from that town, as were Mike Felker and his wife, possible relatives of the
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Rowes. In the absence of definite proof, it is said the Stevens family also was from Barrington, or some near-by New Hampshire town. The records are meagre regarding Moses Green, an immediate neighbor, but his wife is said to have been Mary Thompson, a sister of Moses. They had two sons and two daughters in 1790, one of whom was probably Asa Green and another Aby Green who in 1816 married Jesse Rowe. The Thompson, Rowe and Stevens progeny married and settled in the immediate vicinity and so it was that the Queenstown neighborhood between 1800 and the close of the second war with Britain rapidly grew.
Their community life, even though in a sequestered spot, could hardly have been monotonous. The beginnings of Spaulding Town (South Solon) were within eye shot, across the river. From the hills as trees were cleared away the Queens- town settlers could view the magnificent sweep of the Kennebec. Island H of 88 acres, where dwelt the senior Moses Ayer, was well within the picture. They knew his sons, Moses, Jr., and Stephen. The latter went to live in middle Embden but returned to make his home in Queenstown about 1815 for sev- eral years before going on to Solon again when he had become an old man. Across the river, too, Queenstown people could see smoke curling in the crisp morning air from the brick residence of William Hilton.
They were in intimate contact with notable men of near-by river towns. Among these was William Fletcher. He and his sons shared in the livestock enterprises of Moses Thompson, known far and wide as "the trader." Maj. Ephraim Heald came down the forest trail from Concord now and then or made the trip by canoe on the river. The distance of a few miles, as distances were then regarded, did not disqualify him from being a neighbor. There was also Rev. Obed Wilson, first of Starks but after 1802, of Bingham, a settler of commanding personality. His wife, Christiana (1782-1834), was a daughter of Capt. John Gray, just down the road. Rev. Obed was a preacher of great power and participated in politics. The Thompsons, Rowes, Stevenses, Mike Felkers, Nathaniel Walkers and Asa Greens sat now and then under the spell of his oratory,
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alike in the pulpit and from the partisan platform. He was almost their fellow townsman, who often drew rein at their thresholds as he rode to and fro at his ministrations. Later he served several terms in the state legislature, the first of these while the state capitol was at Portland.
Queenstown neighborhood got a considerable impulse when Moses Thompson decided to cross from the Solon side and bought out Nathaniel Martin and Samuel Fling as the beginning of his well-rounded homestead. South of Fling was a third Kennebec frontage. It had been taken up before 1790 by John Thompson, possibly a brother of Moses, but soon passed to other hands and is now better identified as Lot 21, home in later years of Frank Donley, farmer and river man, and now the home of Allen Hodgdon. Next on the south came Lot 20, where stakes were driven by Moses Green before 1790 to cover 200 acres and more - eighty rods wide north and south and a mile and a quarter straight back into the wilderness. Long afterwards, within present memory, part of this Moses Green holding was the seat of Jonathan Eames and of Phineas.
The Jeremiah Chamberlain farm was the next one south and Asa Green succeeded to ownership there for a season, before the days of the Durrells. On the boundary between the Moses Green and Jeremiah Chamberlain tracts the present cross road by the town house and to New Portland was eventually located. That was considerably later, however, when Embden, after futile efforts to split the town into three parts and annex them to adjacent incorporation, felt sufficiently prosperous to construct it. From the rear of the Chamberlain place northward was a tier of back farms. Some were marked by early surveys between the first and second range lines; others were subdivisions of the Chamberlain, Green and John Thompson river frontage lots ; two more were at the rear of the relatively short Martin and Fling tracts.
This outlines more or less accurately Queenstown neighbor- hood of the 1800-1816 period - except for its northernmost part, where next to the river and north of Moses Thompson, Nathaniel Stevens (Stephens on the old plats) as early as 1790 had made a land selection. This soon came into the ownership
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of Jonathan Stevens, whose descendants have resided long and prosperously in that section. Bordering Stevens northward was the John Gray mill lot, frequently mentioned in Embden land deals of old. But here one is at the threshold of still another distinct community in the town's northeast corner where Jacob Williams, Dr. Edward Savage, Capt. John Walker and ultimately Timothy C. Spaulding had abiding places.
The second generation from Stevens, Thompsons and Rowe not only settled thickly nearby but took up considerable land to the northwest, even to the third and fourth range lines that bestride the middle Embden hills. The founding of a dozen or more homes in middle Embden proceeded from these young men and women and from the McFadden-Gray-Colby group a little farther down the river. The Embden Rowes, however, like the Embden Spauldings, were soon much farther afield making new homesteads in Concord, Bingham and Caratunk.
The Abraham Rowe family of brothers and sons between 1800 and 1810 was numerously in Queenstown with its cabins and bridle paths. When town clerk Thomas McFadden entered on his records June 22, 1804, the names of incorporators there were four Rowe families in the list. These were Abraham Rowe and Kitty, his wife; Isaac Rowe and Abigail, his wife; James Rowe and Betsey, his wife and John Rowe. The first three were pre- sumably brothers. John was probably Abraham's oldest son. At Barrington, fourteen years before that the first census shows that Abraham Rowe then had three sons and three daughters and lived on a farm there adjoining Mike Felker and his Irish wife, Mary Floper.
Abraham and his family were at Embden as early as Sept. 25, 1797, when Rev. Paul Coffin in his diary mentions having called on them there. They first lived on Lot 20 (the Moses Green farm). Abigail Rowe, probably his daughter, was recorded at Norridgewock in 1800 as marrying Alfred Walker, of New Portland. But Abraham soon bought Lot 21 (the Donley farm) northward. Mike Felker, however, lived there, having come to Embden as early as 1810 and in 1816 Abraham sold him that property. Mike seems to have been popular in certain town offices, particularly those of pound keeper and field
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driver. Rowe and his sons, John and Joseph, quite invariably were elected at the annual town meetings for some of the public places. At the annual meeting of April 7, 1806, a vote to divide the town into school classes (districts) carried the following clause :
"In the eastern ward (along the Kennebec River) two classes -the first class from the Anson line to the north line of Abraham Rowe's lot and the second line from said Rowe's to the Million Acre (Concord) line." In other words the line between the first and second school districts ran between the Phin Eames and the Frank Donley farms. It was almost exactly the three mile point from the Anson boundary and alike from the Concord boundary.
Abraham Rowe on March 19, 1806, sold to his son-in-law, Alfred Walker, 100 acres off the west end of the Moses Green farm and this became one of the earliest back farms of the Queenstown neighborhood. It was about the same land that C. Lane owned in the 1880's. The road up to the Lane residence was at one time a thoroughfare from a point near the Embden railroad station. It intersected the cross town highway and extended across the Lane property up to the Bowen's Mills neighborhood and around by the Boothbys over to the Canada Trail. Alfred Walker sold this 100 rear acres of the Moses Green place to his brother, Nathaniel Walker, in 1810, the year before Nathaniel married Hannah Hunnewell of Solon. Nathaniel and his wife resided there till 1828 when he sold the property back to Alfred and four years later Samuel Ellis purchased it and was living there till after 1840. Then John Ellis owned the place for many years. Samuel was a kinsman of Alfred Walker and Abraham Rowe through Ephraim "Elise" of Embden, who in April. 1811, married Lydia Rowe of Concord.
While no list of Abraham Rowe's children seems to have been preserved, his sons probably were John, Paul, Jesse. David. Benjamin and Joseph. Perhaps the last two were youngest. Along in 1816. Benjamin and Joseph held title to the west half of the Moses Green farm but transferred it back to their father just about the time he sold the tract north of it to Mike Felker. Some of these sons became well known men in the locality but
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all of them dwelt for a time on farms that either adjoined or were close by the Abraham acreage.
John and Paul Rowe married respectively Thankful (1789) and Polly (1790), the oldest daughters of neighbor Jonathan Stevens. John and Thankful were married at Anson April 10, 1809. Paul and Polly were married there Nov. 30, 1810. John died in 1832 after an active career as a farmer in the Queens- town neighborhood. Paul, about the time of his marriage, was a resident of Concord on the so-called William Hamblett farm, north of the Berry place in Embden. Both families produced capable men and women.
John Rowe for a few years after his marriage lived on his ยท father's farm and in 1816 bought the south 50 acres of it for $200. He sold to Stephen Ayer in 1818 and the next year bought of the Kanes for $273 a lot of 91 acres, east of the Fling lot which was then owned by Moses Thompson. This was immediately south of the farm of his brother-in-law Jonathan Stevens, Jr., who had an unnumbered lot, east of the Martin farm. When John Rowe died he left his widow with five children. She and James Adams were the administrators of his estate. Some years prior to John's death John Bacheller, his brother-in-law by marriage with Lucinda Stevens (1804), ac- quired a part of this farm, including five rows of apple trees. Thankful Rowe had tribulations in the support of her little family, as her husband had had in his life time. These culminated in a law suit with her brother, Jonathan Stevens, Jr., and in a sheriff sale. Their differences are attested by a deed of Nov. 2, 1836, by which he granted her a right of way two rods wide for a cart team and for other necessary purposes "to the east shed of the barn and around the same so far as to include the north side of the barn." Widow Thankful in 1847 married Joshua Blackwell of Madison and lies in the graveyard on Blackwell Hill.
The oldest of the five children of John and Thankful Rowe wa's Rev. John Rowe (1814-1891), a Presbyterian minister of a creditable career, who died at Springfield, Ohio. A tradition, which does not altogether agree with dates, has it that this John ran away from home when his mother married a second time. He
(Top Left) REV. JOHN ROWE, LYDIA GREENE ROWE, THE JONA- THAN STEVENS, JR., BRICK HOUSE, ELAM STEVENS, POLLY HILTON STEVENS.
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was then 33 years of age and an unmarried man in Ohio. His ministerial career was in the West. He attended Western Theological Seminary 1843-'45 (Washington and Jefferson College) in Pennsylvania ; was licensed to preach in April, 1846, by the Presbytery of Steubenville; ordained by the Presbytery Hocking in October, 1847, preached at Burlington, Olives- burg, Gallipolis and other towns near Springfield from '55 to '67 and then was a teacher for five years.
The Daily News of Springfield on Sept. 1, 1855, carried the following notice : "Classical and Mathematical High School, Springfield, Ohio. The seventeenth session will open on Mon- day. The Rev. John Rowe will hereafter be an associate principal; a gentleman of high literary attainments and for seven years a successful instructor in some of the best academies of the state. Young gentlemen will be thoroughly prepared for entering the best colleges of the country. W. McGookin. John Rowe."
Mrs. Fannie Folger Grant, of Easton, Pa., one of Rev. John Rowe's grandchildren writes that "he gathered together quite a fine library and was much interested in astronomy. He buried his books in the ground to save them from the Rebels during the Civil War at which time he was at Gallipolis. The way in which he included in the names of his children the names of his brothers-in-law has always interested me."
Rev. John Rowe married late - April 18, 1848. His wife was Lydia A. Greene of the Gen. Nathaniel Greene family of Rhode Island. It is not unlikely that he met her while residing at Embden and from an acquaintance with Joseph N. Greene of Embden. They had a big family, now scattered through the middle west as follows: Laura Rowe, Mrs. James Miller of Norwood, Ohio; Mary Greene Rowe, Mrs. Elbert Keith of Delaware, Ohio; Lydia A. Rowe who died at Springfield, Ohio, February 25, 1928; John Rowe of Chicago ; Barton Rowe; David Stevens Rowe of Jackson, Mich .; Jessy Rowe (1854) born at South Point, Ohio, and wife of Charles Folger, of 206 Euclid Ave., Springfield, Ohio; and Jenny Rowe, twin sister of Jessy, living at Indianapolis with her husband, Samuel Denny; and Fanny S. Rowe, Mrs. Herbert Sawyer of Grand Rapids, Mich.
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The four other children of John and Thankful (Stevens) Rowe of Embden were daughters. Mary was the wife of David W. Stevens and Fannie M. the wife of Cyrus Salley, both Embden men, although this David, one of at least three of that name, did not remain long in the town. Caroline W. (1830-1896) married John Webster and died in Massachusetts. They had a son, D. W. Webster, now a resident of Somerville. Amanda, the other daughter, married a Hayden.
Paul Rowe was called Captain Rowe, probably for service in the Concord militia. A prosperous farmer, he was interested considerably in land that his brother John and others occupied over the line in Embden. Their associations were in no small part with Embden people. At a town meeting March 28, 1836, it was voted that Benjamin C. Atwood of Concord and his land be annexed to the third school district in Embden and Paul Rowe and his land in Concord be annexed to the fourth (Berry) district in said town.
Capt. Rowe yielded his farm eventually to his son Paul B. Rowe (1827-1869), who married in 1855 Christiana C. Gray, daughter of Wesley Gray of Embden and later of Concord. They had three children, Olestine, who died in 1858; Addie M. (Mrs. George Baker) and Vesta G. (Mrs. Eugene Clark) both now of Caratunk. Hannah Hodgdon of Embden resided at length in the Rowe family and married Benson Gray, Mrs. Rowe's brother. The intimate friendship between the Rowes and Hodgdons was further attested. Ai Moulton who also lived with the Rowes twelve years married Mary, the sister of Hannah Hodgdon, and gave the names of the three Rowe children, either for their first or middle names, to his own offspring.
Paul B. married as his second wife Henrietta W. Daniels, a popular school teacher. The Concord farm at his death was sold to William Hamblet.
Capt. Rowe had several children other than Paul B., some of whom died young. Among them were Freeman Rowe, who went to California and never married; Seldon; Adaline, who was Mrs. Danville Gray of East Boston; Albina, who was Mrs. Amos Wil- liams of Embden; Mary Ann, who was Mrs. Hartley Dunton of Concord ; and Sybil, Mrs. Jotham Goodrich of Bingham.
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Jesse Rowe, John Rowe and Capt. Paul Rowe were all tax- payers of Embden in 1825, but Capt. Paul was then a non- resident. Jesse in 1816 resided on Lot 22, now bounded on the north by the Embden cross road. About half of the area of Little Fahi or Mud Pond lies within that farm. It was the home place earlier in the century for Capt. William Thompson before he moved down into the John Wilson neighborhood. Jesse bought it of Capt. Benjamin Thompson. His wife was Aby Green, presumably a sister of Asa Green, a near neighbor, whom he married in 1816 and by whom he had seven children. Two of these, John Green Rowe (1823), and James Sullivan Rowe (1837), were the only sons. The five daughters were Lucinda (1816), Sarah (1817), Hannah (1818), Clarissa (1820) and Belinda (1834). Jesse Rowe was a resident of the town for many years.
David Rowe, a brother of Jesse, was a land owner before 1816, between the first and second range lines. His acreage was just north of the present cross-town road, one tract immediately west of John Rowe and another tract immediately west of Nathaniel Walker. Both places (Lots 16 and 17) are now covered with forest. Hiram Salley, son of Isaac, Sr., lived in 1834 on the southernmost of these David Rowe farms, the year that his younger brother, Cyrus, married Fannie M. Rowe of Embden.
Benjamin and Joseph Rowe wrote themselves as of Embden in 1816 with Solomon Rowe of Caratunk when transferring some land in the Queenstown neighborhood to Abraham Rowe. Solomon in 1843 was a member of the Lexington-Embden Church. Perhaps all three were Abraham's sons. There appears to be no further evidence of Benjamin's residence in the town, but Joseph had his homestead south of the present cross-town road and in the triangle bounded by that road, the river road and the present branch highway to the west connecting the two. He sold this in 1815 and some adjacent land to Stephen Ayer and went to the Dunbar place in middle Embden. The two apparently swapped farms. Joseph, like his brother John, was mentioned in the records as having a hand in the building of the neighbor-
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hood roads. Both demonstrated also their interest in the public schools.
Abraham Rowe probably had other children. Elizabeth Rowe of Embden who married Samuel M. Rowe of Caratunk in 1806 may have been his daughter and a sister of Susan Rowe, the wife of Ichabod Foss. David M. Rowe of Embden who married Emily Fling of Gilman Pond, a daughter of that Samuel Fling of Queenstown who moved away early, may have been his son. They went to Wisconsin.
Isaac Rowe, brother of Abraham - possibly a son - was presumably the first settler on Lot 48 in middle Embden where he was one of a little colony of Barrington people. He married "Nabby Allen, both of Queenstown" at Anson Feb. 25, 1802. Isaac in 1810 sold to Paul Cates, also of Barrington, who remained there but a short while before going to Caratunk where he was rated as a founder. Isaac Rowe seems to have gone in the same direction, perhaps to Concord. The Embden town meeting of Nov. 5, 1804, under the fourth article "voted to ex- cept (accept) the road in the Middle Ward from Isaac Rowes' to Anson line." This was the lower portion of the Canada Trail, then little more than a bridle path. It was not made passable for wheeled vehicles till long afterward.
James and Betsey Rowe likewise came from Barrington which following the Revolution stood in population as New Hamp- shire's fifth largest town. They were middle aged people when they arrived and appear to have been in Embden but temporarily. Indeed most of the Embden Rowes eventually moved on so that by 1820 the families of John and Jesse were about the only ones of the name remaining .. Later marriages of the Rowes in Embden include Lyman Rowe and Lucy Ann Delling in 1859; John Lowell and Mary T. Rowe both of Concord in 1873; and Daniel Rowe and Jennie N. Wilson both of Embden in 1874.
Several men of good careers trace their ancestry back to Queenstown Rowes. Daniel F. Rowe, born in Embden, was night editor of the Boston Post in 1889-1891 and resided at Somerville. Harold M. Ellis, professor of English at the University of
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Maine and a native of Belfast, came of the Rowe stock. His grandfather was the late Randall W. Ellis of Embden.
The Stevens family, marrying and neighboring with the Rowes through two or three generations, was, like the Thomp- sons, as much of Solon as of Queenstown. Town boundaries by river or along the surveyor's spotted trail served not to circumscribe the communities of yore. The Ayers, Grays, Stevenses and Thompsons of Embden bespoke Ayers, Grays, Stevenses and Thompsons of Solon for a century. So it was also of Embden and Concord familes. Nathaniel Stevens, as mentioned, was the first of the Stevens kin in Queenstown and after him on his settlers lot came Jonathan Stevens and his wife Sarah Young. Their sons made several brisk land trades there and on the adjacent acres.
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