USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 2
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Embden
BY STELLA TRIPP BICKFORD
Where sounding echoes rock from hill to purple hill Lake Embden's waters lie, brooding and still. From rocky shores, black fringed with pines that murmur, sigh; Her wooded slopes creep up to meet the sky.
Dark wooded slopes, that press like an advancing foe Upon the fertile fields of long ago. Out from the grey old homes, deserted, crumbling, damp, Across the darkness gleams no ev'ning lamp.
Gone, like receding tides that leave upon the sands The imprints of strange things from other lands; Those stalwart men, who sought to wrest from virgin soil A home and competence. Stern men of toil!
They toiled and kept the faith. They rest, their work is o'er; But tender thoughts keep tryst on Embden's shore. And far away are hearts who their traditions keep, As pines a requiem sing for them that sleep.
Among the rocks and reeds the heron seeks her nest, As lengthening shadows creep from Black Hill's crest. Here croons the wild duck's brood upon the waves, and there The loon's wierd laughter rends the trembling air.
Sweetly the vesper song floats from the brush wood near. The grouse on mossy log drums loud and clear. By deep toned orchestras the drowsy air is rent. The whip-poor-will insists on punishment.
Stretching from shore to shore a band of silver light A fairy pathway seems of moonbeams bright. Backed by the darkened hills, mist hung; it holds for me A grander beauty than the restless sea.
A land of dreams, that sleeps; perhaps to wak) egain To know once more the herds and waving grain, Her waves, her whispering pines are calling one by one, To turn me homeward when the day is done.
"LULLED BY THE MURMURING STREAM"
Ben Foster's famous painting which the French Government purchased for $6,000 and hung in the Luxemburg Gallery at Paris. The scene is on Seven Mile Brook in North Anson Village. Just beyond the bridge the road forks. One branch is to Lake Embden. The other is up the Brook to West Embden, past the birthplace of Lydia Ring Hutchins, the paint- er's mother. (See page 43.)
Embden Town of Yore
CHAPTER I
THE FRONTIERSMEN COME
Let us walk and talk together in Embden of long ago - of 140 years ago when man's chronicle of the town began. In retrospect, let us tramp up through a century and a half of farms and families that have continued. Also we must thread the second growth and the brambles to scan the earth scars of lanes, long unused, up to cellar holes on the hillsides, where shade trees sentinel wells that yet supply living water. Out of forgotten records let us piece together an olden saga.
A surprising company comes out to greet us. Teachers, preachers, painters, captains of no mean ability emerge from this countryside - men and women of character, builders of em- pire. Their careers belong to new communities that comprehend the continent. Outward and onward into every New England state -into almost every New England city; into the forests of Pennsylvania; southward into Dixie; away by ox-sled to . Ohio; along with the far stretching exodus to virgin prairies; to the lumber enterprises of Wisconsin and Minnesota; even to the Pacific and Australia. We of Embden are a far flung people !
With all that, what an added picture there is of the rural town placed superbly in the hills! How it glorifies a ride along the best high roads. that ever were even in the town's palmiest days! From every elevation the outlook brightens over each ex- panse of pond and stream and river. The charm of landscape deepens before the history of adventurous pioneers in such an atmosphere, with such associations.
Embden has an exceptional scenic setting. Eastward skirts the Kennebec, after flowing past "the million acres sold to Wil- liam Bingham." Hardly anywhere in all its progress to the sea is this channel of the geologic ages more entrancing. Here on the river's western side was planted one of the two distinct early
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EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
Embden neighborhoods; each the terminal of migrations out of New Hampshire and Massachusetts and mostly through the gateway towns of Woodwich and Wiscasset (Pownalboro).
Westward is Seven Mile Brook - Maine's most charming lit- tle river - probably so named because its meeting with the Kennebec, around a large island, was seven miles from the Old Point settlement at Norridgewock. It has been named later the Carrabassett. Adjacent towns may claim the major measure- ments of its ramblings over granite ledges and through reaches of rugged country, fair as paradise; but it touches Embden's southwest boundary for some distance. Along both its banks - in Anson and New Portland as well as in Embden - veterans of the Revolution founded the Seven Mile Brook Settlement.
Who were they that came to Embden in the vanguard before 1790? Samuel Titcomb's survey map of that date, on file in the land office at Augusta, gives authoritative answer. South and west of the Brook in a triangle of several farms, transferred in 1828 to Anson, were Nimrod Hinds, Daniel Salley and Ruth- erford Drummond; north of the Brook were Amos Taylor, (with him also was John Taylor) widow Olive Hutchins with her sons, Asamuel and Asahel; Simeon Cragin; the four Cleveland brothers - John, Jonathan, Timothy and Luther - and John Getchell, Jr., who returned to Wiscassett, about 1793 and sold his farm to "Dr." Edward Savage. This property was 50 rods wide and one mile long, north and south, from the Brook. The Savage, Hutchins, Cragin, Salley and Cleveland families were the only permanent settlers of that little group and, with their descendants, became important town's people. The Hinds Drummond, Taylor and Gatchell (Getchell) families, however figured conspicuously in annals of adjacent settlements.
Surveyor Titcomb entered on his map 15 farms along the Kennebec. First North of the Anson line in 1790 was a vacant lot and next was Benjamin Colby, Jr., with 200 acres crossed by Jackins Brook. Benjamin Colby, Sr., his father, accompanied him thither in 1790 and himself pre-empted a large adjacent island in the river. There was then another vacant frontage. after which was a lot staked out by William Thompson or Wil- liam Hamilton. This last name was more likely Hamlin or
3
THE FRONTIERSMEN COME
WEST SIX MILES AND BO RDS.
POND
NO. 12° DIVISION CONTAINS 24231 ACRES INCLUDING THE SETTLERS LAND 19531 ACRES EXCLUDING THE SETTLERS LAND
JACOB WILLIAMS
JOSEPH
COOK 25
MILL LOT LAID OUT FOR JNO. GRAY E OTHERS - 400 ACRES SAW MILL. 00 23
NATHANIEL STEVENS
22
POND
NATHL MARTIN
SARL FLING
JOHN THOMPSON 21
MOSES GREEN
20
JNO. And JER. CHAMBERLAIN
o
STEPHEN CHAMBERLAIN
AMUS TAYLOR
NIMROD HINDS
HUTCHINS O
ASAN HUTCHINS O
ASAHEL HUTCHINSON
SIMEON CRAGIN O
JOHANATHAN CLEVELAND O TIMOTHY CLEVELAND
LUTHER CLEVELAND +
JOHN BATCHEL O
WILLIAM THOMPSON
OP
BENJAMIN COLBY JUR 200 ACRES 17
DANIEL SALLYE
RUTHE FORD DRUMMOND
EAST SIX MILES &' 60 RDS
from
Plan.
State of Maine and Office
FIRST MAP OF EMBDEN BY SAMUEL TITCOMB IN 1790
"Hambly." Thence solidly northward in order were Joshua Gray, Capt. John Gray, his father; Thomas McFaden (later spelled McFadden) ; Stephen Chamberlain, the son, on a short lot; Jeremiah, another son, and John Chamberlain, their father, on a long lot, the northern line of which was in the present cross town road to New Portland; Moses Green, on the farm that Jonathan Eames and then his son, Phineas, used to occupy ; John Thompson on the Frank Donley farm, now occupied by Allen Hodgdon and fronted by the river ledges with Indian pictures ; Samuel Fling and Nathaniel Martin, on two small lots which Moses Thompson purchased and on which he built the
POND
JOHN GRAY
18
JOSHUA GRAY
OM
JOHN CLEVELAND
THOMAS MCFADDEN
19
WOOLIVE
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EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
Tavern house now the home of Ansel Stevens; Jonathan Stevens, (Nathaniel Stevens on this plat) and next north of him a 400 acre tract "laid out for Capt. John Gray and others." There was a saw mill on this site in 1790.
From that point - about four miles from the Anson line - to the Concord line there were in 1790 but two settlers. The first of these, with a long lot, a mile or more above the Mill Lot, was Joseph Cook (on the place that included the Caratunk Falls power) and immediately north of Cook was Jacob Williams with a small acreage, subsequently enlarged by him and his sons into a domain. But in northeast Embden, along the Kennebec, there was an extent of unoccupied frontage.
This section -- several years before towns were incorporated - was Carratunk Settlement. It included a region northward through Moscow and Bingham and a part of Solon. In the cen- sus of 1790 Jacob Williams was put down as a resident of "Car- ratunk Town." Others then in the Settlement, most of whom became known in Embden affairs, were "Ephrom" Hale - Maj. Ephraim Heald, a notable man and hunter from Temple, N. H., who had been in Concord in 1790 but did not settle there till 1791 with his two sons, Tillson and Ephraim, Jr. - Joseph and Solomon Russell, Abel "Wear," Rogers and Ezekiel Chace, Jonathan Bosworth, Joseph Cleveland and his son, Timothy who had settler's land on Seven Mile Brook; Capt. Joseph Churchill, father-in-law of Moses Thompson, and his son, John Churchill, later resident in Embden; Silas Parlin, Thomas "Pattin," Joseph Baker, Elezer Whipple, and William Fletcher and son, Amos. Both Fletchers had been at Norridgewock. William was the first settler in Somerset county. Joseph Cook was not listed in "Carratunk Town" by the census takers and seems to have had at that time only a brief residence in Embden.
Titcomb Town, or settlement, embraced the other Kenne- bec settlers of Embden and all, except Joshua Gray, William Thompson and Samuel Fling, were thus enumerated. The cen- sus, however, has William "Hambly." Samuel Fling, not yet married to Abigail McFadden, had gone to New Portland and was down in the Seven Mile Brook census. Moses Thompson, just coming from Solon, was included in Titcomb Town. "James
5
THE FRONTIERSMEN COME
Mackfaying" was plainly an error for Thomas McFadden. Pos- sibly the snow was too deep for the assistant marshall, filling out the blanks, to wallow through to the McFadden cabin, or old Thomas or his wife may have slammed the door on him as an in- truder. In any event James, the father of Thomas McFadden, died in 1754, and James, the son of Thomas, was too young to have four sons and six daughters, which was exactly the Thomas McFadden family in the first census year.
Titcomb Town extended to settlers in Anson and Solon who were near to those of Embden, just mentioned, for on the census rolls were John and Ebenezer Hilton, Aaron Thompson, Ruel Dor (Dawes) and Rachel Pain, of Anson, and William Hilton, William Hunnewell, Moses "Air" and David, Calvin and Luther Pierce, of Solon, as well as Benjamin Thompson, across the Ken- nebec in Madison, whose son, Capt. Benjamin, became an Embden townsman. The settlement was named after Samuel Titcomb, the . surveyor, born in 1756 at Kennebunk of a colonial family that dealt extensively in lands. In deeds Samuel called himself a "geographer." He became owner of large tracts in the western part of Anson. His residence in 1783 was at Hallowell, where he was appointed surveyor to the American joint commission charged with defining the boundary between Maine and the British Provinces. He returned to Augusta in 1787 and his name was placed on the "monument" at the head of the St. Croix River. He was at one time storekeeper at the Fort Village in Hallowell, this being "at the eddy" on the east side of the Ken- nebec. He was the second postmaster of Augusta, serving from 1806 to 1810. Later on he was the builder of Titcomb Academy at Belgrade.
Rev. Paul Coffin in his diary Sept. 25, 1797, wrote the day's heading "Titcombtown, alias Seven Mile Brook." It was not altogether easy to tell where Titcomb Settlement ended on the south and where Seven Mile Brook Settlement began on the east. The assistant marshal of the 1790 census had more definite ideas about that. His lists make Seven Mile Brook a considerably larger settlement than Titcomb Town or Carratunk. In the Embden group, already mentioned, he had Nimrod Hines, Ruth- erford Drummond, Olive Hutchins, "Simin Cragging," Jonathan
6
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
Cleveland, and Joseph, the father, but not the other sons; John "Gitchel" and John and Amos Taylor. There are other inter- esting pioneer names in that settlement census - Josiah Parker, David "Hutchings," and John "Churchwell" of New Portland ; and "Isabillah Pain," Jonathan, Samuel, and Isaac "Alby," George Gray, Morris Fling, David "Yongue," John "More," John "Midcalf," James "Mackinney," David and Joseph Pain, David Danforth and Jacob Savage, of Anson. While nearly all had farms close to the north or south bank of the Brook, some were distant from it, even across the Kennebec in Madison.
By this sort of reckoning comes the earliest roster of Embden people, with their abiding places and names of neighbors. Titcomb's map recites that the unnamed township comprised 24-, 231 acres in its six square miles, or 19,531 acres excluding the settlers' land, which means that on the river fronts 4,700 acres had been pre-empted. This was the best and most accessible land in the township. The survey of 1790 hardly exceeded a re- connoitering trip up the two river fronts and back, with ac- ceptance of settlers' statements about interior topography. The acreage statement shows that Titcomb's total of 24,231 acres was the entire township of six square miles (23,040 acres) with a computation of 1,191 acres for the irregular line of the Kenne- bec on the east and for the various islands. Nothing was de- ducted for the surface of the town's five pounds, or lakes, of 2,161 acres. As the survey map indicates, he had but a crude idea of the shape or extent of those beautiful sheets of water. He had Hancock stream entering Embden Pond at the extreme north, rather than well down its west shore, and Embden Pond draining through the Sand Pond, in spite of the fact that Sand Pond has its outlet into the Fahi, while Fahi Pond is indicated with an outlet through Jackins Brook instead of through a stream into Seven Mile Brook.
Not long after Titcomb's survey and the establishment of def- inite boundary lines, two other names came into use to designate the present town of Embden. One was "Queenstown," which seems to have been applied more to the neighborhood around Moses Thompson and the Kennebec ferry but, in the same period it was also called "Greenstown." This name was more pop- ular, certainly, with marrying couples for several certificates
.
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THE FRONTIERSMEN COME
issued at Norridgewock around 1800 give Greenstown as the resi- dence of contracting parties. Samuel Fling, by his mark April 1, 1801, signing a deed to Moses Thompson for the farm by the ferry - consideration $350 - declared himself "of a plantation called Greenstown," where nine years earlier Nathaniel Martin, selling his tract of one hundred "achers," adjacent to the Fling Tract, to the same Moses Thompson for six pounds, recited that he was "of the plantation called Seven Mile Brook in the county of Lincoln and province of Massachusetts, yeoman." Incidental- ly, it is to be noted that Martin is mentioned in a letter recorded at Augusta Aug. 17, 1809, as having "taken up" this farm pre- vious to 1784 and that "it was among the five dollar lots as ex- cepted in the deed from Bristol Academy to the present proprie- tors." The same letter indicates that Moses Thompson had paid $5 to the proprietors, which cleared his title to that holding, and Dr. Bezar Bryant, Justice of the Peace, so certified.
While Embden settlers were thus floundering for a name, ad- jacent townships were not without similar experiences. An- son, incorporated March 1, 1798, was known not only as Tit- combtown but as Brookfield; Madison as Barnardstown; the south part of Solon as Spauldingtown.
A. more careful survey of Embden was made by Samuel Weston in the same year of 1790, for which he was paid ten pounds. His father, Joseph Weston, was one of the very first set- tlers in Somerset County, coming from Concord, Mass., in 1771, and building a cabin on the Kennebec near Skowhegan. It may be interesting to know that Joseph's wife, -Eunice Farnsworth Weston, - according to local tradition, was "the handsomest girl that stepped into Concord meeting house." Twin sons, Samuel and Joseph, headed the nine children who grew and flourished in the wilderness so that when Eunice Weston died in 1822 she had 222 descendants. Samuel made surveys of Somerset towns, in- cluding Embden, in picturesque handwriting still preserved in the Massachusetts archives. He became an important man and had built the old Weston mansion by 1802, the year he died.
Samuel Weston's survey of Embden is mentioned officially in subsequent important proceedings. The legislature of the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts on June 27, 1792, passed an act
8
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
establishing Bristol Academy (also sometimes called Taunton Academy ) at Taunton, Bristol county, Mass. This act provided that the Academy be "endowed with a township containing six miles square of the unappropriated lands in the counties of Lincoln or Hancock to be laid out by the committee for the sale of Eastern Lands and to be located in such places as will best subserve the interest of the Commonwealth." It was provided that the annual income of the same should not exceed 600 pounds.
The committee for the sale of Eastern Lands then consisted of Nathaniel Wells, Leonard Jarvis, John Read and Daniel Cony. This committee in March 1795 accordingly selected the future town of Embden for the endowment of Bristol Academy, des- ignating it in their deed as "a township of land marked number one in the second division west of the Kennebec River of the sur- vey and plan made by Samuel Weston in the year 1790 and bounded as follows, viz. :
"Easterly by the Kennebec River, south by township number one in the first range north of the Plymouth Claim, west by township number two in the second range and north by the mil- lion acres sold to William Bingham, Esq., containing twenty- four thousand, two hundred and thirty-one acres on condition that the said trustees (of Bristol Academy) shall convey to each settler in said township who settled on settlers lots so- called, laid out by the Plymouth Company, 200 acres conform- ably. to said company's surveys and also to each other settler who settled in said township before the first day of January, 1791, one hundred acres, to be laid out so as best to include their respective improvements and be least injurious to the adjoining lands, the settlers last mentioned who settled before 1784 sev- erally paying five dollars and those who settled since that period severally paying twenty dollars to the grantees for the same, within one year from the time they shall respectively have notice thereof from the grantees and on condition that in all cases aforesaid the said trustees shall convey by deed to the settlers the several quantities specified as aforesaid to hold in fee simple ;
"Reserving, however, three lots of three hundred and twenty acres each for public uses, viz .; one lot for the use of the first settled minister, his heirs and assigns, one lot for the use of the
9
THE FRONTIERSMEN COME
ministry and one lot for the use of schools in said township, said lots to average in goodness and situation with the other lots in said township."
A plat by Benjamin Poor, of Hallowell, June 18, 1796, al- though not entirely free from errors showed range lines and lot numbers. It became the permanent plat and was used from 1796 on for the designation of property in conveyancing. A copy of the plat, on file in the county commissioners' office at Skowhegan, carries the names of early settlers along the Ken- nebec, almost the same as Titcomb's survey, with an exception that William Hamlin has the farm south of Joshua Gray, instead of William Thompson. This may have been written for Wil- liam Hamilton, one of three first settlers. The William Thomp- son of the Titcomb survey, however, could not have been that Capt. William Thompson (1784-1848) who became a prominent man in Embden and lived on Lot 38, west of the Fahi. But "W. Thompson" is written on the county commissioners' copy of the Poor Survey, proving that this name, as well as a few others, was written in long after the plat was first drawn.
This copy of the plat with its amendments, was made not earlier than 1831. Apart from the location and numbering of farms it has interesting points. It names and gives the areas of the several ponds, together with accurate outlines, as follows :
Great Pond, which is Embden Pond, later called Lake Embden, 1,538 acres.
Great Western Pond, which is Hancock Pond, 325 acres.
Fahi Pond, 183 acres, and Little Fahi or Mud Pond, 15 acres, but unamed.
Sand Pond, 60 acres.
The little pond south of Black Hill, called Black Hill Pond or Lake Spiteful, but unnamed on Poor's plat, 40 acres.
It gives dead water half way down Hancock Stream an area of 40 acres.
The plat also outlines and labels the three reserved lots of 320 acres, provided for in the deed to Bristol Academy. The tract for the first settled minister was No. 101 in the 5th. Range. Bounded in terms of 50 years ago, its lower line was the Robert Quint farm, now owned by Charles S. Walker, whence it ex-
10
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
tended north the full width of the range, with the highway from Anson to the foot of Lake Embden the west boundary up to an east and west line a little above the mill. Thus it covered land that used to belong to Alfred Holbrook, "Aunt" Betsey Copp and Daniel Goodwin. Its northeast corner was the southwest corner of the 320 acre tract reserved for "the use of the minis- try," which was Lot 81 and extended northward over most of Mullen Cove -which almost bisected it - embraced much of the Joel Mullen farm of old, and was well up on to Ayer Hill. In- deed Moses Ayer in 1814 bought Lot 82, just north of the res- ervation to establish his homestead there. Surveyor Poor in- scribed Lot 178 - in the 10th Range over near New Portland and west of Black Hill - as "320 acres for the further appro- priation of the General Court," by which he presumably meant a tract for the benefit of schools.
In due course all three tracts were sold to settlers. Embden never had a first settled minister but there were disbursements of "ministrial money" a few of which were recorded in the town treasurer's book. It was set down in 1829 that James Adams, "clerk of the universal society," received a town order of ministerial money for $3.37; while Reuben Wilson, "clerk of the Methodist," got an order for $3.23; and Oliver P. Moulton, "clerk of the Baptist," was given an order for $2.87. Perhaps there were no further disbursements till 1831, which is the next entry. On March 5, that year town orders were given to these same clerks of societies for the sums of $11.86, $10.60 and $11.61 respectively.
The sales of land eventually made a meager school fund, the interest from which was annually apportioned among the dis- tricts. Along in the 1850's the fund was yielding $55.96 to that end. The town had been duly empowered to select trustees for the Ministerial and School fund. The town treasurer was often the chief official of this fund and conveyed lots to purchas- ers. John Pierce, Jr., while town clerk in 1824 and treasurer for the board of trustees, sold to John McFadden for $200 a tract of 99 acres out of Lot 101, reserved for the first settled minister. This was the middle section of the lot. opposite the point where the road forks up to the foot of the pond on the right and up
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THE FRONTIERSMEN COME
past the summer camps on the left. Along in 1840-44 the town had troubles with John McFadden - son of Thomas and town constable in 1812 - over a note given by him for purchase of "public land." There was a law suit, long drawn out, but the records do not make clear whether the suit was over this 99 acres or some other parcel. First and last John McFadden dealt in several Embden farms.
A valuable feature of the town's "public lands" was two mill sites, both within this Lot 101 for the first settled minister. One was on the outlet stream of Embden Pond, where the saw mill and shingle mill now stand. John Pierce, Jr., then town treas- urer and also treasurer of the board of trustees for the Minis- terial and School Fund, deeded this mill site Dec. 16, 1831 to Daniel Goodwin, son of a prominent Berwick family. The next year Goodwin leased the property to Elisha Walker who built the first mill and was the owner thereof for a long period. Goodwin became owner of the north part of this Lot 101 and on his farm also, a short distance below, the Mill Stream provided another power. It was developed by Henry Hanson and his uncle Atwood Morse in the 1870's.
But details of description, given for easier identification of places, run far ahead of the main narrative. The picture of un- named Embden of 1790 and 1796 is of 20 odd pioneer families, whose routes out from their roadless, schoolless communities were by spotted trails or in boats along the water courses. Travel- ling was easier in the dead of winter, over the Kennebec's frozen surface. Each of the three settlements was a neighborhood of sympathetic, helpful people, sharing common privations. All were old colonial stock, hardy, persevering, uncomplaining. The town stage of their new Eden with accessions of other set- tlers and further neighborhoods, was still several years into the future.
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