USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 21
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Ever thereafter during nearly 90 years the unity of Embden as a town organization has been firmly established. It has faced its problems unflinchingly ; met its obligations squarely. It is well able to maintain itself. At the time of settlement in Feb- ruary, 1928, the town had $3,013.97 on hand. It has a reputa- tion of being one of the most prosperous small towns along the Kennebec.
CHAPTER XVII
VOTED TO SET DOWN A STAKE
Passing its front door in a wilderness area and over an outcrop of ledge in the roadway - where wagon wheels of old sounded a staccato - who of this Embden day knows his ancient town house ? Through 80 years and more of rural exigencies it has been the seat of local authority. As a town rooftree and likewise as a forum the plain, old-fashioned place has interesting associations. It has, too, a background of local history. Factions, in high temper, maneuvered over the project, long, long ago. Articles in the constable's warrant to provide for the building were several times ignored. When a vote to build finally passed, it was reconsidered. A group of leading towns- men, by steps of strategy, appear to have made the erection of the house a reality and brought the bitter wrangling to an end.
There were fifteen years of local agitation before its dimen- sions of 36 feet long, 30 feet wide and squatty height took actual form; before the town fathers drew upon their treasury for $250.15 in favor of fiery old Elisha Walker, who built it. That was the structure cost, to which one must add $4.27 - the amount of Daniel Goodwin's taxes for 1847. These Goodwin taxes represented the price of 40 square rods of his farm land, as agreed upon after several visits of town committees and a tight-fisted dicker. The site, thus acquired, was to be protected by the town with a fence as long as the property was occupied.
Know also that for more than a year prior to the completion of the town house, Embden assembled "in the highway on Ford Hill (so-called)" a few feet from the present building. Under the same blue canopy now covering the wooded scene, the people chose moderators, voted school money, writhed under complaints regarding bad roads and grumbled about their taxes.
Dwell upon the annual March picture, if you will, with turning out places in three feet of snow that had been smashed down to accommodate the horse-drawn pungs and sleighs loaded with warmly clad passengers. Look for the larger space. well
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VOTED TO SET DOWN A STAKE
0
EMBDEN TOWN HOUSE
trampled for the meeting. Note the tall stake the selectmen had driven down under specific instructions from a former meeting to fill all legal requirements. Here then with groups of bearded, stern-visaged men, hardened by prolonged contests with the soil one glimpses wintry days before Embden had a rooftree.
From the incorporation time of 1804 to the completed town house of July 17, 1848, the free-holders had roamed east and west for a meeting place. Something has already been written of dwelling places and schoolhouses, where the people gathered. There were always two, sometimes three or four, meetings a year. The annual election of town officers, was in March or April, when money was voted for schools and highways and considerable other business transacted. But there were also annual fall elections in the early days for state and county officials, to say nothing of special calls for meetings now and then to dispose of particular items. During the first decade the town meetings were most often held at some farmer's residence along the Kennebec River road. Occasionally the meeting place was on the Seven Mile Brook road. There were at least three such assemblies at the house of Dr. Edward Savage - the first
260
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
in 1805, the second in 1812 to "give in votes" for presidential electors and the third a special meeting in May, 1814. There was a session also in 1814 at Isaac Salley's on the Canada Trail to decide about a pauper. At intervals, as soon as schoolhouses had been built, these were utilized by the town. The first town meet- ing thus entertained was in the new West Ward or Cragin school- house and eventually several meetings were held there. Then when the Gray schoolhouse had been completed in 1819, it, too, sheltered a town meeting, likely enough as a matter of southeast pride over the educational center a few miles westward. But when the John Wilson district (No. 6) in the Fahi section got that new schoolhouse with two chimneys, it became a more favorite meeting place for the town. This new seat of learning served quite continuously as a town house from 1821 till late in 1838, when, as has been related, one town meeting was convened in the Dunbar or No. 5, district, "by reason of the house being burnt where we formerly held meetings."
Schoolhouse dimensions, arranged to educate 50 or 60 scholars in those days, sufficed likewise for as many of the approximately hundred taxpayers as came to deliberate over town affairs. The maximum number of heads of families did not exceed that figure in the late 1830's. But after the con- flagration in the Wilson schoolhouse and the one meeting in No. 5, town meetings during the ensuing nine years were again held in private residences. Most of them were at the two-story house of Benjamin Colby, Jr.
Inadequate facilities. there, after one or more gatherings in Widow Rebecca Colby's barn, spurred the townsmen finally to make a change and at the meeting of March 2, 1846, with Jonathan Stevens, Jr., as moderator, when Amos Hutchins, John Gray, Jr., and Enos Hutchins had been chosen as select- men and other business had been disposed of, this decision was made with respect to article 23:
"Voted the town meetings for the ensuing year be holden on the Ford Hill (so-called) in said Embden and that the Selectmen designate the particular Spot on said hill for that purpose by setting down a stake etc."
261
VOTED TO SET DOWN A STAKE
One may quite safely ascribe this novel idea about a meeting place to town clerk Amos Hutchins. He was altogether the kind of man from whom to expect such a proposal. It would hardly have gained much headway without his approval. For several years he had had part in efforts to build a town house. In any event the first of seven open-air town meetings in the highway on Ford Hill assembled Sept. 14, 1846, to vote for governor, a representative in Congress and other officials and to transact further town business. The vote recorded for representative shows 165 voters present, of whom 89 were for Ephraim K. Smart; 38 for Levi Johnson and 18 for Drummond Farnsworth. The other six meetings in Ford Hill highway were on October 5 and December 7, 1846 ; February 15; March 1 and September 13, 1847; and March 6, 1848.
But talk in favor of a town house began taking shape by March 5, 1832. There were articles in the warrant that year, for the first time, to see if the town would build a house, what sum of money would be voted to build it and "to see whare said town house shall set." It was promptly voted to build and John Pierce, Jr., Amos Hutchins, Benjamin Colby, Jr., Ephraim Cragin, Lemuel Witham, Caleb Williams and James Adams were designated a committee "to draw a Draft for said house and report it to the town." The raising of money and selection of a site were "passed by" till the committee of seven could report.
But for reasons not altogether plain, the project was post- poned for seven years and was not mentioned in the town records again till Sept. 9, 1839, when the warrant of constable Joshua Gray, Jr., under article 3, read: "To see if the town will accept the report of the town house committee and to see what further measures they will take to build said house." The meeting, which was at Capt. William Thompson's, "voted to pass this article by."
The project slept for six more years till Capt. John Cragin, constable, posted his warrant for a town meeting at Rebecca Colby's, on Sept. 8, 1845. Article 2 that year proposed to "see f the town will vote to build a town house on Ford Hill (so- called) " and Article 3 proposed to "see what measures the town
262
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
will take for building the same." Presumably in the interven- ing years the committee of seven had agreed upon the Ford Hill site. Probably, also, the selectmen - then Amos Hutchins, Col. Christopher Thompson and Joseph N. Greene - favored action. But the verdict in opposition was decisive. The town voted to pass the articles by.
Thus outvoted on a direct proposition to build, the advocates of a town house appear to have resorted to the strategy of getting town meetings, house or no house, to Ford Hill, which with the completion of better cross roads, was more central. With the numerous annual elections a central meeting place was a matter of much convenience. And when the warrant for the first town meeting on Ford Hill, Sept. 14, 1846, was issued, there appeared again an article "to see if the town will vote to build a town house and, if so when and how." The outcome was favorable. Town clerk Amos Hutchins, in his record of this meeting wrote :
"5th. Voted to build a town house within 25 rods of the place of meeting.
"6- Voted that said house be thirty by thirty-six feet square.
"7th. - Voted Jonathan Stevens, Jr., John Caswell and Elisha Walker be a committee to estimate the probable expense of building said house and how furnished & report at the ad- journed meeting."
Jonathan Stevens, Jr., the chairman, was familiar with construction work. He had assisted his father, Jonathan Stevens, Sr., in building a schoolhouse over by the Kennebec in their district during 1819 and was a successful farmer. John Caswell, living on the Middle Road, was also quite a man of affairs for the time. Elisha Walker had owned the mill privilege at the foot of the Great Pond-less than a mile from Ford Hill - since 1832. He operated a mill there with his son, Eli C. Walker, and Eli and brother, Eben J., owned a shingle machine. Frame- work, boards and shingles, in the nature of things, would come from their plant.
It looked like a business committee but in the intervening three weeks the opposition rallied its forces and at the town
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VOTED TO SET DOWN A STAKE
meeting on Ford Hill Oct. 5, 1846, it was "voted to reconsider the vote of the former meeting by which the Town voted to build a town house and voted to pass by the article of build- ing said house."
The proposal for a town house was renewed at the annual town meeting of March 1, 1847, in the high- way on Ford Hill and the freeholders drove straight and hard toward the point. They "voted to locate a town house on the north side of the road near where the town meeting was held last September on Daniel Good- win's land.
"Voted to build a town house on said location.
ELISHA WALKER
"Voted to raise $300 to build said house.
"Voted to raise a committee of three to draft, superintend and direct the building of said house, and that James Y. Cleveland, Joseph Walker, and Cyrus Boothby be that commit- tee.
"Voted that said Committee cause said house to be so far finished by contract or otherwise by the second Monday of September next that the annual meeting may be held in it."
By contract or other arrangement the building of the town house was given to Elisha Walker, between whom and the Goodwins there had been ill feeling. This was due to conflicting interests over ownership of land on which the mill at the foot of the Great Pond was located. Probably the Goodwins were in league with the townsmen, who opposed the town house on general grounds of expense. Be that as it may, and in spite of the location of the house on Daniel Goodwin's land, the merry warfare did not cease. Deacon Joseph Walker, of the
264
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
superintending committee, was Elisha's brother, which critics probably emphasized as vigorously as they could.
When this committee on June 4, 1847, reduced to writing an agreement for acquiring the town house site, it was signed only by James Y. Cleveland and Deacon Joseph. It provided that Daniel Goodwin and Daniel Goodwin, Jr., execute a deed con- veying to the town land bounded as follows: "Commencing at the north line of the new cross road (so-called) and on the fifth range line in said town. Thence north four rods, thence westerly parallel with said road ten rods, thence south four rods to the line of said road. Thence easterly on the north line of said road to the first mentioned bound.
In consideration of the deed the two members of the commit- tee agreed "that the money tax of said Daniel Goodwin, Jr., for the year 1847 shall be remitted 'or the amount of the same paid to said Daniel, Jr. And that the said inhabitants shall cause to be built a good and sufficient fence on the north and west lines of said lot to keep the same in good repair so long as said inhabitants (of Embden) may occupy said lot."
Erection of the house proceeded in the meantime and warrant for the annual meeting of Sept. 13, 1847, had articles to see if the town would accept the report of the town house committee and if it would accept the "house as far as the same is completed." There is no entry in the records of the Sept. 13 meeting to show that any action was taken, but similar articles appear in the warrant for the town meeting of March 6, 1848 including "to see what further action the town will take respecting the building of a town house."
At the March meeting, in the highway on Ford Hill it was voted to accept the report of the committee on the town house and "to raise a committee of three to buy or build a town house," with James Y. Cleveland, Lemuel Witham and Amos Hutchins as that committee. Thereupon the further vote was passed "to instruct the committee to buy the House built by Elisha Walker on Ford Hill (so called) on the lot owned by the town if said house can be obtained at the just value thereof in its present state. If so to cause the said house to be finished up and completed in a proper manner and if it can not be obtained
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on such terms to cause its removal forthwith and another house to be built without unreasonable delay."
The controversy raged fiercely but its pros and cons, as well as most details of the subsequent proceedings have passed into oblivion. The records, however, show that on March 18, 1848, Elisha Walker received three orders on the town treasurer "for building Town House," the respective sums being $180, $30.15, and $40, or a total of $250.15, and that constable Moses Ayer summoned "the inhabitants to assemble in the town house in the said town on Monday the seventeenth day of July at two o'clock in the afternoon" to transact certain town business. At a town meeting on Sept. 10, 1849, Elisha asked a payment of $10 for levelling the ground where the town house stands but it was voted to pass the article by. John Caswell put in a bill of $3.88 for a town house "stove funnel, etc." and was paid. He, or some one for him, took care to have the payment authorized by vote of the March town meeting in 1851.
Judged by recorded costs of Embden schoolhouses in previous years, the new town house of 1848, twice or thrice the size of any of them, was built for a modest sum. The Cragin school in 1809 cost $250 with an additional sum for finishing. The appropria- tion for the John Wilson schoolhouse in 1819, twenty feet square, was $250. It had 400 square feet of floor space, where the town house had 1,080 square feet. The comparisons seem enlightening along with general knowledge that Elisha Walker died with the reputation of having been a patriotic and public- spirited man, although quick tempered and contentious. He had support and co-operation in many of his Embden enter- prises from Solomon Walker, his first cousin and father-in-law and one of New Portland's most prosperous men.
The bitter controversy, whatever its real merits may have been, has long been forgotten. Personal animosities that at- tended it were interred generations ago in graves on the Embden hillsides. Schoolhouses, erected with public money, have crumbled and disappeared. The old town house, with shuttered windows and squatty facade, as barn-like in aspect as in 1848, stands as the town's enduring structure. The first investment of less than $300 has been augmented from time to time by
270
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
economical repairs. Architecture and modern facilities may not weigh particularly in a balance of such modest costs of overhead. The old house has served - and probably is still serving - adequately the purpose for which it was intended.
The warring factions seem to have acquiesced and probably were soon viewing the place with an air of satisfaction. The cross road had then been completed, or nearly so. The town now had its own front door. There the constable could nail his notices to shiver and shimmer in the wind blasts that shook the forest and swept the Ford Hill top. Rusty tack heads and clinging shreds of paper on the town's main portal stand out in memory.
While fewer and fewer people travelled along the cross road as the years rolled on, the town house of shingled walls, painted red, remained central. In an almost purely agricultural town, whose churches and meeting houses were largely over the boundaries of adjacent towns, it long continued to be a very convenient meeting place. In no slight degree it served Embden people also as a sort of community center half a century before that term came into general use.
An example were the temperance meetings of a character that was interesting Maine people forty years and more ago. To the town house the Embden people came on certain Sunday after- noons from east and west and north and south. Among them was Phineas Eames. One of his sons, George C. Eames, now of Bangor, recently recalled these meetings in correspondence with this writer.
"I distinctly remember the time," wrote Mr. Eames, "when you and your brother Charles and I used to attend the temperance meetings at the old town house and when we had that red and white badge pinned on our coats. John T. Berry presided at those meetings and two Walker girls, Eli's daughters, I think, sang. Those were great days."
"How pleasantly you jog my memory about the temperance meetings in the old town house," ran the reply to Mr. Eames. "I had not thought of them for years. I do not remember the red and white badges but I do remember John T. Berry, who then lived four miles away to the east and north of Embden
271
VOTED TO SET DOWN A STAKE
Pond, where he raised a large family. His house and the school- house across the road, both but a short distance from the Concord line, long ago were abandoned and have tumbled in. John T. had reformed and was a great power for temperance, the term then used for what is now meant by total abstinence. I remember Ellen and Cora Walker, daughters of Eli, who used to entertain the meetings with temperance songs. Eli and his daughters have long ago passed over. Cora's daughter, Mrs. Paradice, now resides at Casper, Wyoming.
"In the hallway of my father's house at Embden, there is still the little melodeon that belonged to my mother - the late Martha Wentworth Walker - from her young days. It had supports that folded under so that the melodeon could be reduced to very compact form. We used to fold the legs under, wrap it nicely in shawls and pack it into the tail end of a wagon for transport to the temperance meetings.
"As I recall it, these meetings were usually held well over in the northwest corner of the big room - the only room in the town house. Did not the youngsters - as you and I were then - rove about some during John T.'s temperance speeches - lounging sometimes on the long wooden seat that skirted the east side and the south side, east of the front door? It seems to me we sometimes slipped up into the great box of a platform, and hid ourselves from public view.
"No movies, no telephones, no automobiles in those days. I remember that when John T. discoursed on the demon, rum, I used to think about hogs-heads of hard cider I had heard my elders mention as reposing in Mike Berry's cellar up at the head of Big Pond. Mike, my Grandmother Walker's brother, was a friendly sort of man, who, long years ago, could beat a snare drum with the best of them, at militia musters."
"Your recollections of the temperance meetings and the old town house coincide with mine," Mr. Eames responded in an- other letter. "I believe the members called themselves 'Iron- clads.' Your mention of your mother's melodeon brings back still another chapter of the temperance movement. There was the Ladies' Aid which met around at the homes alternately with the meetings at the town house. The ladies carried on these
272
EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
meetings, that is, presided over them and did all the speech- making while the men held forth entirely in the town house.
"In 1877 several families were burned out, ours being among them. The Ladies' Aid made each family a bed quilt, each member making a square and autographing it in the center. I have the quilt that was given to my mother and the following are the autographs which I copied from it today :
"Mrs. Nancy Williamson, Georgia M. Atwood, Mrs. Ella Newton, Mrs. David Pierce, Mrs. Flora E. Berry, Mrs. G. W. Copp, Ellen M. Daggett, Mrs. Leonard Walker, Emma F. Pierce, Mrs. Susan N. Boothby, Mrs. John Churchill, Restella Durrell, Mrs. Martha M. Salley, Mrs. Warren Getchell, Mrs. Isaac Daggett, Mrs. George Walker, Mrs. Charles Thompson, Mrs. Mary Ann Burns, Cora M. Walker, Mrs. Samuel Walker, E. A. Caswell, Miss Ellen Walker, Mrs. Lizzie Bowen, Mrs. Sarah J. Atwood, Mrs. Cephas Walker, Florence L. Berry, Mrs. J. L. Wilson, Mrs. Rose E. Goodwin, Mrs. Amos Hilton, Mrs. Han- nah Keefe, Mrs. Hannah Bosworth, Mrs. S. L. Tozier, Mrs. O. A. Salley, Addie A. Berry, Mrs. John T. Berry, Mrs. Calvin Walk- er; Emma J. Berry, Helen Atkinson, Ada Ford, Mrs. E. C. Walker, Carrie M. Hilton, Mrs. Abbie Donley, Mrs. Nancy Hodg- don, Hannah Churchill.
"My mother was president of the Ladies' Aid in '78," concludes Mr. Eames, "when it met at our house on the river road at one time. Your people came in the two seated beach wagon and brought the melodeon."
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