USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 17
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Neighbor Joshua Gray, justice of the peace, tied the marital knot for Ambrose Colby and Almira Holden. The children by this marriage were Jane H. (1823), Philander M. (1825), Almira A. (1831), Jonas H. (1833), Spencer (1835) and Helon H. (1837). When his father died Jonas, born on the Elam Stevens place, was sent to live with his grandfather Holden, made his home permanently in Moose River and married there. George, Elmer and Calvin Colby of Moose River are his sons. Ambrose Colby, Sr., lies in the burying ground on the Henry Treat farm.
Capt. Hartley Colby (1793-1864), married Feb. 1, 1816, Sally Dennis probably a sister of Mrs. William Colby. Their children were Fanny (1817-1845), who became the wife of Franklin B. Stevens of Moscow; Calvin D. (1820), whose wives were (1) Hannah Snell and (2) Julia Baker; Joel (1821) who married Elizabeth Parlin; Warren (1826), whose wife was Julia Young, mother of Mrs. Lepha Colby Preble of Bingham, and whose second wife was Mary Dinsmore; Charlott (1828), married (1) Hiram Dennis and (2) Willard Goodrich of Bingham; Dennis (1830), who migrated to Washington Territory prior to state- hood there; and Adeline (1832), Mrs. George Littlefield. Warren Colby in former days dwelt on the Tilson Spaulding farm in Anson, a little below the Embden boundary.
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CAPT. HARTLEY COLBY
A conspicuous townsman along the Kennebec was Capt. Hartley Colby, - in local annals quite as prominent as his oldest brother. He has sometimes been erroneously placed as a son of Benjamin Colby, Jr., probably because as a boy he resided in his brother's household. He seems to have been the only native of Embden among old Benjamin's children. He was one of the few residents of the town to enlist in the War of 1812, one year from May 26, 1813, as a member of Capt. Benjamin Adams' Company of the 33rd. Regiment, U. S. Infantry. He was a Captain of the east Embden militia company years later and in that capacity had jurisdiction over half the town's training population.
Capt. Hartley was both farmer and lumberman and till 1832, the year of the great freshet that carried out the dam on Moose- head Lake, resided in the old Colby manor house on the island.
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This flood proved a thrilling experience to Capt. Hartley's family. He was away from home at that time. The water from the Kennebec had already risen over the first floor and covered the fireplace when Waterman Hilton and his brother reached the scene in a boat and rowed the family to safety. Capt. Hartley was successful in lumbering operations and widely known for skill as a "timber cruiser" in estimating the cut of lumber on a given tract of land. He was also a "white water boatman," capable of handling a craft in dangerous rapids. After the freshet he first housed his family on the 35 1-2 acre tract by Jackins brook, where his brother Ebenezer had moved. By this time Ebenezer was leaving Embden and Benjamin, Jr., had become owner of the farm. Capt. Hartley's wife, Sally, then had title there for a while but the family soon moved to Pleasant Ridge where one night wolves followed the children home from school and tried to get in through the window. Soon the Cap- tain moved to Bingham and then Moscow, in which latter town he died. His descendants include several well known men. Forrest H. Colby, of Bingham, a public-spirited citizen and former Forest Commissioner of Maine, is a son of Warren and a grandson of Capt. Hartley Colby. From Charlotte (Colby) Goodrich is descended Merton T. Goodrich of Monson, engaged in educational work and actively interested in historical research.
Benjamin Colby, Sr., outlived his oldest son by three years. Their intimate associations over a long period are indicated by the town record. While the son was the more influential of the two, they co-operated continually in business and in town mat- ters. When Benjamin, Sr., was 73 years old, he transferred on March 1, 1823, the title to Colby Island and Long Island, together with other land to make a total of 68 acres, to Benjamin, Jr., for $500 but probably continued to reside in the manor house.
The elder Colby headed one column of signatures Dec. 12, 1803, on a petition to the General Court at Boston for the incorporation of Embden as a town and his son headed the parallel column on the same page. At the first Embden town meeting in 1804 Benjamin, Sr., was elected first of the fish rives - an important office in those days when the Kennebec
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swarmed with salmon and Seven Mile Brook with alewives. Vassalboro seems to have had jurisdiction over fisheries before upper Kennebec towns were organized, for the Vassalboro town meeting of March 2, 1780, voted "that no alewives shall be taken in Seven Mile Brook in Vassalboro above the Shrimp's Birth so called in said brook nor more than 30 feet below the lower pitch or falls, called Moore's Falls in said brook, said alewives to be taken at the first described place on no other days than Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays in each week and at the said falls, called Moore's Falls, on no other days than Mon- days and Wednesdays in each week." Capt. Abial Lovejoy and six others were made a committee on the lower falls and Eben Farrell and six others a committee on Moore's Falls.
At Embden's second town meeting, held also in 1804, Ben- jamin Colby, Sr., was moderator, a post he frequently filled thereafter. He was moderator likewise at the annual town meeting in 1805 when Benjamin, Jr., was chosen as town clerk and first selectman. The latter was repeatedly re-elected to these two offices and in 1804 was deputy sheriff. But for 30 years both father and son held one Embden office after another and were the guiding spirits during the constructive period when the building of schoolhouses and roads involved consider- able expenditures.
Benjamin Colby, Jr., started buying a string of farms half way across Embden, in the southeast section, in 1821. He was then 49 years old and dominated the town as, possibly, its most influential farmer. On February 16 of that year he paid Jonathan Cleveland $500 for a quitclaim of interest in Lot 72, where Jonathan's brother, Luther, and Jonathan himself, for a time, had resided. It was immediately south of Benjamin Young. Thus Benjamin, Jr., was in the midst of the early neighborhood out of which came two marriages between the Young and Cleveland families and many descendants. Soon thereafter he acquired farm No. 35 immediately east of his 1821 purchase, it being on either side of the Canada Trail and bounded on the south by Anson line. The present cross road westward out of the Trail to Barron's corner traverses all of the first purchase and the west half of the second one. Meanwhile in 1823, as
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already told, the Colby, or Moore Island and the Long Island adjacent, had come to him from his father. It was during this period that he erected his two-story house on Lot 35 and west of the trail. Finally in March, 1833, Benjamin, Jr., obtained a 28 acre strip from Joseph N. Greene, proprietor, for $28 in the northeast corner of Lot 34. This gave him an almost continuous holding through three ranges and tied up with his property on the River road. It was then one of the longest farms in Embden. He must have been prosperous for a season. Through a sheriff sale he got a part of Lot 47 from Joseph Felker in middle Embden.
But Colby holdings half way across the town,- which must have been a topic of wide comment and a matter of admiration to a large community, - soon began to disintegrate. While Benjamin, Jr., was buying land in those boom days of the 1830's, old John Wilson had finally paid Joseph N. Greene $200 for the 100 acres west of his millseat and John's son, Elijah, began to reach out for more land. He obtained from John Hamblet of Solon, in October, 1833, all of the 100 acre tract that lay south of Benjamin Colby's 28 acres in Lot 34. Eli W. Thompson was an owner of this property with Elijah for a while but soon deeded over his share. Then on May 5, 1835 there passed to Elijah by deed from Benjamin, Jr., for $500, two more ancestral Colby parcels. One of these covered Colby and Long Islands; another was the 35 1-2 acres of mainland opposite the islands. On one or the other of these tracts had dwelt not only Benjamin, Sr., but also Benjamin, Jr., Ebenezer, Ambrose and Hartley Colby, his sons. This transaction reduced the pro- prietorship of Benjamin, Jr., to land in middle Embden where he was then residing, and Elijah Wilson, with still further purchases, became an Embden land magnate close by the Anson line. He owned almost continuously from the middle of the Kennebec to a point a half mile west of the Fahi outlet. Within this tract of Elijah's was the little farm on which his younger brother, Rev. Jesse Lee Wilson, when retiring from the ministry long afterward, passed his declining years. It adjoined a place in Anson, where Rev. Jesse Lee erected a set of buildings. Just north of Elijah his father and spinster sisters, Sally and Susan,
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of whom Sally in 1842 became the second wife of John Mullen, owned 200 acres, so that southeast Embden for a period by 1840 had become quite as much of a Wilson neighborhood through the activities of Elijah as it had been a Colby neighborhood through the activities of Benjamin, Jr.
No small part of the Colby chronicle in Embden, however, has to do with the sons and daughters of Benjamin, Jr., and his wife, Rebecca Colby. These were all apparently born before he had moved westward from the Island farm to his new two-story house by the trail. With their father as town clerk for much of the period, their names and dates of birth were carefully written into the Embden records as follows :
Fanny (1793-1839) whom Capt. Benjamin Thompson, justice of the peace, on April 7, 1813, married, to John Gray Savage as his second wife. He had been in previous years on a middle Embden farm, but later lived by the Kennebec near the Colbys where Joe Norton now resides. Ward Spencer Savage of Charlestown, Mass., was their son.
Harry (1795-1816).
Dr. Zenas (1797) who married Sophia, a daughter of Stephen Chamberlain, of Embden and Solon. A daughter of Dr. Zenas, Delia Frances Colby, became Elisha Purington's wife. Hon. Frank O. Purington of Mechanic Falls and his brother, the late George C. Purington, long principal of the Farmington Normal School, were among the many grandsons of this line.
Warren (1800-1881) who wedded Sally Dutton (1805-1883), of Vassalboro, and went to that town to reside. Their daughter, Helena, married a Felker. Miss Grace Felker of California who has employment in the Department of Labor at Washington is their daughter. Another grand-daughter of Warren Colby is Mrs. Ethel Colby Conant of Augusta, a talented woman known to a wide circle in Maine.
Melinda (1802) who was the first wife of Wesley Gray. They resided on part of her father's settler lot.
Helena (1803) who married Daniel Dutton March 26, 1829, a brother of Mrs. Warren Colby. He owned the Colby farm and two-story house, known as Lot 35 of 166 acres in 1854, when it was valued at $1,100.
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Spencer (1805), Benjamin 3rd. (1807-1824) and Josephine (1809).
Isabella (1811), who married at Anson Oct. 23, 1832, Jesse Dutton of Vassalboro.
Mason S. (1812) who married Sally Howard in 1835, when both were residents of Concord. Mason returned to Embden by 1846. That year and several years thereafter he was the only
SALLEY (HOWARD) COLBY MASON S. COLBY ANALOSTINE COLBY
taxpayer of the Colby name on the Embden lists, but eventually moved to Wisconsin.
Analostine (1814-1883) who married in 1835 Thomas Patter- son of Anson; Harriet (1816) and Ariet M. (1821).
Benjamin Colby, Jr., died when 69 years of age. The Embden clerk began to record that the annual town meetings, which had been assembling at his residence, were held at the dwelling of "Widow Rebecca Colby." While his father, blacksmith and sergeant of the Revolution, lived after him, the fact that Benjamin, Jr., in 1839 was the only Colby name on the tax list, gives color to a statement that Benjamin, Sr., resided for a while in his old age at Anson. Elizabeth Foye, the latter's wife had passed on several years before but in 1834 he was published for marriage with Mrs. Elizabeth Hunnewell as his second wife. This second Elizabeth probably died in 1842 for during that year the probate court appointed Andrew McFadden as the
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elder Benjamin's guardian. Kith and kin had scattered far when Benjamin, Jr., was laid to rest in Sunset Cemetery at North Anson. It was seventeen years later when Widow Rebecca was placed there beside him. She died at Vassalboro while residing with her daughter, Helena Dutton.
The farm No. 35 and the mansion passed through many hands in the course of years. After Daniel Dutton's ownership of 1854 there appeared an item in the records that "Daniel Bunker at Fairfield, April 11, 1855, paid $51.27 for taxes and costs arising on the Colby farm for non-payment of taxes for three years from June 20, 1852. Costs for trouble of Bunker $1.73." The older people still point to the northeast corner of the upper story of the house as locating the room where the district school used to assemble. Probably that was during the period that followed the destruction of the Wilson schoolhouse by fire. John L. Williamson of New Portland was the owner there many years afterward and it was the scene of many happy family gatherings. Benjamin Young, whose pioneer grandfather, Benjamin, had lived in the previous generations on farm No. 71 purchased the Colby place after he came home from the Civil War.
The Youngs, who in earlier times had several pioneer farms in Embden, were of substantial stock. They were sons and daughters, as stated heretofore of David Young of Madison, but he had a sister Mary (1747-1832), who married David Danforth of Solon, in 1770. Their daughter, Thankful Danforth, was the wife of Jedidiah Thompson of Embden. Annah Young of Pownalboro, who married James Savage, the Anson settler, in 1774, was presumably another sister. David Young with his second wife, Jane McKenney, was on Seven Mile Brook in 1785 with a group of seven children. Benjamin Young on Lot 71 in the first years of the last century, the husband of Lucy McFadden, was a son by David's first wife and may have been the first of David's children to come to Embden. David Young probably had four other sons in Embden as follows:
David, Jr., who seems to have resided on the eastern half of the settler's lot taken up by Benjamin Colby, Jr. His father of Madison owned this land in 1815 but David Spaulding had it in
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1822. He was on the town's first assessment list and held local office in 1806.
Elisha, probably a younger son, bought farm No. 68 in 1823 from John Hunnewell of Embden and Caratunk and was a resident of the town till after 1831. This is the farm of which Joseph Gage from Augusta and also Herbert and Ruel Savage were once owners. The name of Elisha Young hill there con- tinued long after Elisha was gone.
Joseph, who married Sally Savage in 1816, and lived on a corner of the John Gray mill lot. A town meeting was held at his home on Nov. 2, 1818, and he was collector and constable in 1819. He had two sons Warrenton and Franklin Young.
Jacob, who lived in the 1830's between Ford Hill and Embden Pond. He married in 1834 Sarah Town of Concord. Absence of definite records present any statement about his kinship.
David Young of Madison undoubtedly had other children, among them, probably, Rev. Daniel Young, who was ordained in 1808 and preached in Anson.
Benjamin and Lucy (McFadden) Young came to Embden and to Lot 71 shortly after their marriage in 1805 and were entered last on the list of families among the town's incorporators. Town Clerk Benjamin Colby, Jr., seems to have written them there as an after-thought or, more likely, upon request. Perhaps they were the first arrivals after the act of incorporation had been passed. They had ten children during their pioneer residence as follows :
Andrew (1805), who in 1830 married his cousin, Fanny Danforth of Solon, and resided for a brief time thereafter in Embden.
David (1807) who was known as David 2nd, married Hannah, a daughter of Elder Job Hodgdon in 1831. They succeeded to the homestead of his father. Their children included four sons - David, Alonzo, Daniel and Benjamin. All moved away from town, some of them to Pittston. This son, Benjamin, was one of the last Youngs to reside in Embden and is the above mentioned owner of the Colby farm No. 35. He married in 1868 Hannah M. Hodgdon, then the widow of Benson Gray. This Hannah
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father, James Hodgdon, was a half-brother of David Young's wife. Fred Young, of Woodfords, who married Lottie Walker of Embden ; Ethel, an older sister (Mrs. Joe Norton) ; Ella, who is Mrs. George Walker of Woodfords and Daisy, a younger sister (Mrs. Wallace Barron) are this Benjamin's children.
Almedia (1810) married in 1832 to Edward E. Marsh of Anson ; Mary (1815) married in 1840 to Richard Hollis of Starks; and Lucinda (1818).
Cephas (1822), the husband of Celia Thompson (1821) daughter of Capt. William nearby ; Marcellus (1826) ; Lafayette (1828) who went to San Francisco, lost his eyesight but was the last survivor of his father's family as well as of the grand- children of pioneer Thomas McFadden; and Cordelia (1830).
Some of these Young families went west. The migration out of this neighborhood of the town was large, led by the Luther Clevelands. By 1860 there was no property holder of the name left in Embden. Manley and Lovina Young, distant connections, only, moved in 1878 from Lexington and resided at Embden for ten years. During their residence there was born to them Sarah B. Young, who graduated from Colby College in 1909 and is now the registrar of Wheaton College at Norton, Mass.
Like the Youngs and the Colbys the Spauldings are fast passing from memory as Embden people. One branch of the family, however, was cradled in this southeast neighborhood. Among them are names of local importance. They were akin to the Colbys and also to the Youngs. This kinship came through Daniel Spaulding (1798) son of Jonathan and Taomis (Young) Spaulding, and his wife Betsey Colby. This couple left Embden about 1840 for Madison, shortly after the death of Daniel's merchant brother, Benjamin. But Jonathan and Taomis remained at Embden till the end of their days.
Daniel's children were : John N. Spaulding, Lorenzo D., who resided at Madison; and Frank S., Cyrus McK., and Ambrose Colby Spaulding, all of whom became residents of Skowhegan. Daniel had three Embden brothers - Jesse (1799), Christopher C. (1800), and Thomas Blake Spaulding (1801) - and a sister Lavinia, who was Mrs. Cyrus McKenney of Madison. Christopher married Lydia Mapes of Starks and tilled an
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Embden farm till about 1836 when he and his brother Thomas went to Milo. The latter was a Methodist minister with a flare for politics and served two terms in the Maine legislature.
These Embden Spauldings were one of three distinct family branches in the town. While all traced their lineage back to the same Edward Spaulding who was first to land in America they were but distantly related. Tilson Spaulding of Anson, a short distance down the Kennebec River road, a grandson of Maj. Ephraim Heald - and his attractive daughters of recent days, - Mrs. Fanny Bray, of El Paso and Mrs. Kate B. Foster - belonged to the family branch that resided in northeast Embden and included some of the Embden Pierces.
After three or more generations, the numerous individuals of the Colbys, Youngs, Spauldings and also the Wilsons passed out of local history. The neighborhood in reality included adjacent corners of Anson, Madison and Solon. Families established there by veterans of the Revolution married back and forth across the Kennebec. The river was no particular barrier in those days of local isolation. It was easily crossed by boat. In winter the way over the ice was more direct. Well trodden paths led from farmhouse to farmhouse at various points.
That was the season of leisure for visiting between Thompsons, Colbys, Wilsons, Youngs, Pattersons, Hiltons, Williamses, Savages, Spauldings and Danforths. Memories of enchanting days and hazardous adventures survived out of the toil and hardships of the frontier. Old home journeys down the river brought back tidings from kin and friends of earlier years and news from the outside world, always of course a welcome feature. A glorious picture here of homespun American life ! Above all things else are the men and women who stand forth so creditably in it.
CHAPTER XIV
FROM WILD LANDS TO WILD LANDS
Settlements rose and settlements fell in portions of Embden. Nowhere was this more strikingly so than in the Fahi section. The north boundary was well up to the cross-town road from Solon to New Portland; the south boundary a good two miles below, not far from the Anson town line. The region included, to be sure, the large morass, where the "long causeway" was over the outlet stream of Sand Pond (yet good as of yore for pickerel and perch) ; but the tillable land was poor. Although adventurous settlers entered there by way of the Canada Trail, they halted sooner to make their locations than did families of the group, mentioned in previous chapters, who pushed on into the woods and rested on the high hills of middle Embden.
Time was, about a century ago, when a horseman down through that early woodland avenue beheld on either side the rude households of interesting pioneers. Right in the southeast corner of the present cross road and the trail, across from where a weather-beaten guide post used to be, William Colby had a farm. He was a son of old Benjamin Colby, whose populous clan from Wiscasset got an excellent foothold in southeastern- most Embden. An occasional one among older residents is able to recall that on a part of this farm at one period dwelt Cyrus Salley, son of pioneer Isaac farther up the road and grandson of a Virginian. Immediately eastward of this Colby-Salley place, now deep in the woods, was Lot No. 22 where at that time prob- ably Capt. William Thompson was residing. After Thompson, came John Rowe and others but when the house had been aban- doned this homestead had become known as the John Farday place and Phineas Eames, when a resident on Lot 31 at the southeast of the Fahi owned it as a pasture. North of No. 31 were the Frederic Dunbar farm of early days before he moved up the middle road and at least two other farms all of which from cross road to cross road came eventually under Phineas Eames' ownership. Perhaps the horseman of a century ago
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glimpsed the smoke from cabin chimneys here, if he was able to gaze through the trees to the Fahi's east shore.
Southward over the trail, with a firm hand on the bridle rein, for the going is rough, our rider skirted on the right the farm where Joseph Gage, Herbert and Rufus Savage and Elisha Young at divers periods resided and just below on either road- side, the farm to which Capt. William Thompson moved and where Capt. Benjamin Thompson, both of them men of note in the town, made their homes and considerable families of Thompson sons and daughters grew up. There, too, on the Thompson farm several early town meetings assembled. Not far below, still on the left, he passed the point where eventually there was a cross road east and west past the foot of the Fahi Pond. There the horseman was in the vicinity of Veteran John Wilson's. He was one of the earliest Embden townsmen of the locality and had many well educated and successful descendants. Probably on the site of the cross road was a forest-lined way into the farm of Joseph Hilton, veteran of the French war and of his sons, John and Parker. At almost that point on the trail, farmer craftsmen might then have been rearing the schoolhouse with two chimneys, another place where were held several town meetings.
Very soon the staid old country horse had borne his man into the midst of better farming land. Off to the right was the home of Pioneer Benjamin Young and even, before that, was the place where James Young Cleveland flourished for a season. And below Benjamin Young, perhaps Benjamin Colby, Jr., had already begun his two-story mansion. The travellers along the trail must have had laconic gossip about those farmers who were eagerly buying wild lands in every direction - "Lige" Wilson or "Ben" Colby, or "Jim" Cleveland, according to the particular period before or after 1830 when our rider was on his way to the "village."
In any event the view is now out of a part of the Fahi section, close to Anson, with village roofs probably visible in the distance. Eastward and westward were notable neighbors through the early decades of Embden history. The younger Joseph Hilton, brother of William, John and Ebenezer, had his
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