USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 26
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Cephas Walker now of Madison village and 88 years old is the senior survivor of this family. He lived on a farm in Embden till a few years ago and was town clerk and first selectman from 1897 to 1906. Mark C. Walker of New Portland, Lottie (Mrs. Fred Young) of Woodfords, Perley F. Walker (1875-1927) and George B. Walker of Portland are children by his marriage with Martha A. Washburn (1840-1907).
Perley Walker was a graduate of the University of Maine and held the degree of master of mechanical engineering from there and from Cornell University. He was long dean of the school of engineering at the University of Kansas and Colonel of the 219th Engineer Regiment in the World War. He had a distinguished record in Kansas and his death, while in middle life, brought many testimonials of esteem from prominent residents of that section. He had performed exceptional service as head of the school of engineering and architecture and as an engineer had become a recognized expert in petroleum and power questions. As a research worker he made extensive re- ports on industrial development possibilities in Kansas and adjacent states.
Stillman A. Walker (1846-1926), who owned the ancestral Walker homestead (Lots Nos. 112 and 113) near the foot of Embden Pond, was collector of taxes for eight years beginning in 1882. This included a troublous financial period, now nearly forgotten, when foreclosure upon property in the town by holders of the old Somerset Railway bonds seemed imminent. Determined to maintain its credit, the town voted extraordinary assessments to meet its just obligations. This was done in the face of extensive abandonment of farms. Under these difficult conditions the collector was entrusted with total commitments of $51,948.74 during his eight years in office. Through persistent
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and tactful methods this unprecedented amount of Embden taxes was turned into the town treasury. His services con- tributed materially toward the establishment of the town's excellent financial status of the present day.
Martha R. Wentworth (1844-1913), daughter of James Lewis Hawks Wentworth, the pioneer, became his wife in 1868. They had two sons and a daughter, Addie L. Walker (1871-1894). The oldest son, this writer, and the oldest grandson, Mannix Walker, are graduates of Harvard. The other son, Charles S. Walker, resides on a near-by farm in Embden and is one of the board of selectmen. His two oldest children are Marjorie (Mrs. Coney Haskell) and Esther (Mrs. Willard Cross) both graduates of Anson Academy.
The daughters of Embden Solomon were four, of whom Mrs. Ella S. Jeffries of Uxbridge, Mass., and Mrs. Emma M. Pierce of Los Angeles are living. Mrs. Jeffries, by her first husband, Charles W. Thompson, has four children - Mrs. Eva M. Thorn- ton and Waldo E. Thompson, both of Somerville, Mass., and Herbert C. and Irving W. Thompson of Uxbridge. Irving served in the World War from the Newport Naval Station.
Mrs. Emma Hanson Bartmess of New York City, an accomplished pianist of the concert stage and a musical composer, is a daughter of Lydia (Walker) Hanson (1848-1915). Her father Henry Hanson of an old New Portland family lived in later years at Skowhegan and was an able man. He had long service as collector of customs at Moose River. Mrs. Bartmess was born at Embden in her father's house of many gables near the Mill stream and close by her grandfather Solomon Walker's homestead. Her husband, Edward A. Bartmess, was a successful business man in Yonkers.
Solomon Walker's other daughter, Cyrena (1843), married George Greenwood. They settled at Norridgewock and are survived by one daughter, Jennie (Greenwood) Thompson of Los Angeles. Jennie's son, George E. Thompson of Pomona, Calif., was two years in France as a World War soldier.
Capt. John Walker, Jr., (1793-1868), long years on his mill and homestead acres close to the Kennebec was a first cousin of
WALKER COUSINS IN THE WORLD WAR. (TOP) COL. PERLEY F. WALKER OF KANSAS. (BOTTOM LEFT) GEORGE E. THOMPSON OF CALIFORNIA. IRVING WALKER THOMPSON OF MASSACHUSETTS.
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Elisha and Deacon Joseph of West Embden. The Walkers of that section and of Solon through nearly a century are largely of his line.
His wife was Cynthia Phillips. Of their four sons Eli S. Walker (1824) married Eunice Dawes, his cousin. He kept the Elm House at North Anson in 1860 and built its second story. Asa Walker (1815-1854) married Emeline Hunnewell (1817-1880) of Moscow in 1838. Both are buried in Solon Village cemetery, with two daughters Minda and Emeline who died young. Asa, Jr. (1842), was Emeline's twin brother. Southard Walker, another of Capt. John's sons lived in Embden as late as 1857 when he had three scholars - Charles, Nellie and Ellen - a farm valued at $1,000 and $530 of personalty. He sold to Truman Fletcher about that time and moved to Concord. Nellie married Elwin Robinson. Ellen was Mrs. Stephen Atwood and lived on the Warren Williams place near Caratunk Falls. Erastus Walker (1821-1891), the other of the four sons, came into his father's farm and was a prosperous man. His first wife was Sarah Parkhurst (1824-1874) of Unity. Their children were Mary T., who married Manson Felker of a neigh- boring Embden family; and John E. Walker (1853-1921), father of Guy of Embden and Roy of Solon. Erastus Walker's second wife was Caroline Chaney, widow of John Gray, Jr. Capt. John Walker's daughter, Cynthia, was the wife of Abel W. Spaulding, son of her father's nearest neighbor.
Down the River in the Queenstown neighborhood lived Nathaniel Walker, son of Stephen of Madison. He was perhaps the first of all the Walker brothers and cousins to settle in the town, but his residence there did not extend much beyond 1828. Across the river in Solon was another cousin, Miriam (1770), wife of James Jewett, whom she married in 1800 at Norridge- wock when both described themselves as of Seven Mile Brook. She was a younger sister of the New Portland Solomon.
Through Goulds, of Embden and New Portland, and also through New Portland Walkers, the descendants of Elisha and Sophia are doubly akin to old-time merchant families at North Anson - the Mark Emerys, the Samuel Goulds, the Gould
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Porters, the Samuel Bunkers, the John Spooners, the Benjamin Manters and the Asa Merry Manters. The connection was through the first Samuel Gould in New Portland and his wife, Lydia Walker. Embden Walkers along the Kennebec had the same relationship in a less degree.
The great pioneer neighborhood of a century ago, which embraced these families and several more, was a beautiful feature in the annals of early settlers. The memory of it has been cherished through the years and should not be allowed to fade. As a noble community of kinsmen and clansmen, its members shared a common heritage of hardy, persistent triumph over the wearying trials of a new country. Nothing daunted them. To their sons and daughters, they transmitted qualities of self respect and well doing. Out of ancient Wool- wich, up the Kennebec and to Seven Mile Brook through quite six generations, these people have proceeded. Are not the numerous careers of these neighbors of long ago and of those who have come after them a monument and an inspiration ?
CHAPTER XXI
EMBDEN'S SWEET AUBURN
There is an Embden neighborhood not yet pictured, which is over a century old. Its many families of not so long ago liked to regard it as the heart of the town, which in location at least it was. Summer and winter and in all moods of weather it is a region fair to look upon. Hills of enduring beauty outline the horizon. Interesting groups of men and women grew up there generation after generation. Ties of kinship and neighborli- ness prevailed.
The North Anson highroad to Lake Embden and its thirty odd cottages by the shore traverses this distinctive area. The town boundary is almost exactly at the half-way point. Between it and the foot of the lake a distance of two miles, one farm deep on the east and two farms deep on the west lie the 19 parcels of 2,060 acres that Mariner Cornelius Soule of North Providence purchased July 10, 1809, of the Rhode Island proprietors. At the northeast corner of this Soule purchase and at the head of the easternmost tier of lots was the 320-acre tract for the first settled minister. Access to northwest Embden, where Moultons, Tripps, Copps and Stricklands were beginning to settle about 1815 or '20, was rather more convenient from the south. Con- sequently that section west of the big pond became closely as- sociated with this lower neighborhood.
Settlers on the 19 parcels were chiefly related families from Woolwich and Wiscasset. Purchasers of land from Soule or his widow were Benjamin Gould, Sr., and later three of the Gould sons; three sons of Joseph Walker, Elisha, Joseph, Jr., and Samuel; Nathaniel Getchell, who with his son, Amaziah, was akin by marriage to the Gould, Walker and Dawes frontiers- men ; the MeKenneys who intermarried with the junior Solomon Walkers down the Kennebec ; some of the Clevelands; the Dag- getts from Martha's Vineyard and a few Hiltons from the Solon branch. There were likewise Chicks, Quints, Barrons, Goodwins
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and Holbrooks, all pioneer families, but most of them from old- time rooftrees at Berwick.
Cornelius Soule paid $2 an acre or $4,120 for his 19 parcels. The proprietors paid 50 cents an acre, it will be recalled, for the entire township in 1795. The mariner's land was much above the average in value and the investment at 50 cents had stood for 14 years. But the John Innis Clark executors probably rated this as a fairly profitable transaction.
Roads through the Soule purchase were established slowly. The north and south thoroughfare that used to extend from Anson line to Concord line was constructed piecemeal. It was well toward 1850, probably, before it had been completed. Mills erected at the foot of the pond and on the outlet stream, beginning in 1832, caused abandonment of this road to Con- cord that had been blazed a half mile westward over Foss hill. The Greene road, so-called, was built close to the shore of the pond in its stead.
The easiest way into this part of the new town was presum- ably by cross road from Seven Mile Brook. The first, appar- ently, was near the present Barron crossroad, perhaps somewhat north or south of the present right-of-way but leading to Elisha Walker's on Lot No. 108. He seems to have been the earliest settler in that vicinity. He probably built a cabin there soon after his marriage in 1812, but it was March 8, 1817, before his father-in-law, Solomon Walker of New Portland, bought the farm for him from Cornelius Soule. A mile northward was an- other east and west road that eventually became part of that cross-town highway. It led eastward from the Cleveland neigh- borhood near Gordon hill past Abel Cleveland's (now Elwin Cleveland's) and before many years had penetrated the wilder- ness to a point by the present Emerson school and on toward the mill stream. The lower cross road was open as early as 1814, perhaps only as a bridle path; the second cross road had been established by 1820. At that time the town had just been through contention over dividing its territory. Extension of an upper cross road through to the Canada Trail was part of the program for saving the situation. It was in 1820 accordingly that a com-
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mittee of nine, headed by Simeon Cragin, was appointed "to examine the situation of the land between the Western district and Middle district and lay out a road where they should think necessary and to Do it free from expense to the town and to Report as Quick as possible into the town clerk's office."
Northward of the Soule purchase but on its western side was Lot 129, well up Foss hill. Nahum Eames and his wife Mary were first settlers in that section. They were probably there not many years after Elisha Walker was on Lot 108 and had an entrance to their place by the northern cross road. Nahum sold Lot 129 on March 29, 1822, to James Holbrook of Starks for $600. Holbrook resided there till June 30, 1830, when he sold for $600 to Given and Samuel Campbell of Strong but by 1841 Col. Lemuel Williams had come there to dwell and after him was a succession of owners including Levi Barron and Deacon Isaac Daggett.
Nahum Eames and Elisha Walker were asking for a road down to the Anson line as early as 1818. The town refused that year to lay out a road from Eames' gate down to the Abel Cleveland cross road but by March 19, 1822, a road had been surveyed and accepted from Eames' north line not only down to the cross road but past Elisha Walker's and on to the Anson line - a distance of nearly three miles. This road joined the present line of highway at the mill farm No. 103, just as at the present day. While the Nahum Eames farm is now largely in second growth forest, the road from there down past the Will McKenney stone house is still passable for an automobile. The forest road from Nahum Eames was soon extended northward over Foss hill and toward Concord. In 1823, the year after James Holbrook bought Lot 129, the town directed its selectmen to lay out a road from Holbrook's to Jonathan F. Moulton's - almost up to Concord. The road must have been established, for in 1840 the town voted to discontinue it from the south line of No. 129 to the north line of No. 120 which was up over the hill and on to the Abraham Mullen farm of long ago. The fol- lowing year Lemuel Williams with Eli and James Foss on the top of the hill, Jonathan Copp on the west side of the road,
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Warren Rogers on the east side as well as Joseph Chick peti- tioned for a bridle road which was granted for a distance of 202 rods. The northern end of this highway reaching from Amos Copp's south line to Concord was discontinued in 1844.
The mill site at the foot of Embden pond - the best water power in town, saving only that at Caratunk Falls - was part of the lot for the first settled minister. John Pierce, Jr., as trustee for the ministerial and school fund, deeded it and enough of the adjacent land for a good farm to Daniel Goodwin. The land also appears to have included a power site on the Mill stream by the cross road a short distance south. Goodwin, on June 30, 1832, deeded the power site at the foot of the pond and a small acreage to Elisha Walker. The latter erected a saw mill and eventually a shingle mill. As the years passed he shared this enterprise with his sons, Eli C., Eben J. and John Walker,
HENRY C. PIERCE, HIS WIFE (RIGHT) AND THEIR DAUGHTER ROSIE (PIERCE) EGERTON
2nd. While Elisha had a residence at a point west of the mill road, the cellar hole of which is still visible, he continued to carry on with his farm No. 108 a mile down the road.
These Elisha Walker mills with different owners in ensuing years have been the town's oldest and - with the exception of
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the pulp mill by the Kennebec now idle - largest manufactur- ing enterprise. They have been operated continuously and successfully, using large quantities of logs from around Embden pond and the adjacent country. Much of the lumber product has been hauled winter and summer to the railroad at North Anson. The mills have long provided extra employment for farmers and their teams. Elisha Walker in 1851 was taxed on an assessment of $1,500 for one-half share of the mills and 230 acres of land, while Eli C. and Eben J. Walker were taxed for a part owner- ship. By 1858 Eli C. and John Walker, 2nd., had become the owners and their father had retired. Ten years later the own- ership passed for a short period to Warren Getchell but about 1869 Henry C. Pierce (1834-1884), a son of Benjamin, acquired the property. Under his management the mills became of great service to that part of the town. He and his attractive family continued there for fifteen years. His wife, whom he married in 1865, was Sarah Lancaster (1844-1917). Their two children were Rosie (Mrs. James O. Egerton) now of Brooklyn, and Grant Pierce of Providence, manager of the New England branch of the American Radiator Company.
Henry Pierce sold the mills in the early 1880's and moved to Fairfield Center, where he resided at his death. Control of the water at the foot of the pond passed to interests at North An- son where it has long remained. Stephen Rolfe took charge of the saw mill and shingle mill for awhile. The late Dr. E. C. Andrews of North Anson was one of a succession of owners there.
The neighborhood saw mill enterprise on the mill stream, a quarter of a mile south, was in operation by Daniel Goodwin as early as 1850 but a few years later George W. Goodwin and Keziah Goodwin were part owners. A deed dated Nov. 30, 1858, conveyed from Keziah Goodwin to Daniel Goodwin this mill and mill privilege with two and one-half acres of ground. It was 18 rods long east and west along what at that date was known as "the new cross road" past the town house. extended to both sides of the stream and was bounded on the south by the
HENRY HANSON LYDIA (WALKER) HANSON EMMA (HANSON) BARTMESS
old Ford road, authorized by the town Sept. 14, 1833, for a distance of 145 rods but by 1858 apparently abandoned. At- wood Morse and William Henry Hanson, his nephew, obtained this mill privilege in 1868 - about the time Henry Pierce was buying at the foot of the pond - and made expensive improve- ments. They called the mill stream "Embden Pond River." Their new machinery cost over $1,500. The town on March 2,
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1868, voted to exempt Morse and Hanson from taxation on all mills and machinery for ten years.
Adjacent to the mills Henry Hanson erected a quaint house of many gables that became the talk of the town. He had married Lydia M. Walker (1848-1915) Nov. 26, 1868, just when his new enterprise was being established. There his two daughters were born, one of them, the only surviving child, being Emma Hanson Bartmess, the talented musician of New York. The Morse family had come from Livermore to New Portland. Atwood's father, Col. Elias Morse, commanded Fort Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec in the War of 1812. The Morse family was quite musical. Col. Elias played the violin and made violins for all his children. Henry Hanson's father, William, was also a resident of New Portland and this William was proficient on the flute. There was a rather pretentious Hanson family residence near West Village. Henry, his father and grandfather were all local magistrates in their day.
The Morse and Hanson mill after some years yielded to the competition from Henry Pierce's project. This was even as the Cleveland mill on Lot 103, quite a mile further down the stream, had yielded to similar competition twenty-five years earlier from Elisha Walker. Thus "Embden Pond River" ceased to be of manufacturing importance further than as a channel for the conveyance of Embden pond water to the shank factory wheel at North Anson. For a while the immediate neighborhood of these mills had approached the dimensions of a village. Not far from the Morse and Hanson mill Horace Holbrook had a black- smith shop. Near there but some years afterward, Benjamin Collins and, after him, Walter Wells now of Wilton, conducted an apple canning factory. Only the big mill and the cannery now remain. But on the west side of the pond a half-mile or so up, the summer cottage business has prospered. The quiet resort, with good boating and fishing, has proved popular with visitors from the near-by villages as well as with many vacation- ists from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York.
These summer vacation places are established at several points around Embden Pond, although most of them are within a dis-
ยท
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tance of a mile or more along the southwest shore. The first purchase of a shore location is covered by a deed dated June 3, 1892, when a lot was conveyed on Rocky Point, which juts out from the west shore and provides a splendid view up and down this picturesque water surface. A cottage there was burned a few years later and then another was erected in its place. The so- called Heath cottage was constructed in the spring of 1892 by a syndicate of eight or ten owners. Henry Fletcher built the third cottage, now owned by Allen Young. Another early cot- tage was built by Fred S. Parsons and James H. Stevens of North Anson. It became very well known later as property of the late Edwin Hodgdon (1852-1924) and was conducted as a lakeside hotel by him and his daughter, Ina (Mrs. Otis Razee) of Ashton, R. I. This place is now the property of Mrs. Emory Sulloway. Bert Witham has a log cabin near the above cottages which is called "the syndicate camp."
Pine Point Camps, operated by Roy L. Lisherness, and the Embden Club appeal to those who enjoy fishing, swimming and boating. The late Stillman Walker and his son, Charles S., built and owned what is now known as Hall's camp, which they event- ually sold. It was the summer home of a blind man from Anson, who enjoyed residence there several summers. It was then owned by Carl Andrews who disposed of it to a Massachusetts man but now belongs to Richard Hall. Most of the cottages have com- plete water service from the main to the north out of Hancock Pond. This main is down the line of the old Green road to North Anson village. There are also electric lights. Willis Emery of North Anson, an original purchaser of a lot there, continues as an owner of one of the attractive cottages on Rocky Point. In more recent times two or three cottages have been erected on the Berry farm at the northeast corner of the pond and across from the Kinsley Foss shore where Dr. Hertzberg has a pretentious summer place.
Recurring to the near-by mill center of a century earlier by the foot of the pond, the need for road facilities there did not appear till after the way from Nahum Eames to the Anson line and on to the village had been travelled for a decade. Perhaps
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AT LAKE EMEDEN, (TOP) ED HODGDON AND DAUGHTER, INA, WITH THE POND AT LEFT, (CENTER) FIRST COTTAGE ERECTED AT THE RESORT, (BOTTOM) A SITE ON ROCKY POINT.
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the lower part of this early Embden highway was somewhat east of the present site. The town in 1823 voted permission to Timothy Williams - then a settler on Lot 104 although he later purchased Lot 109 - to erect bars or gates on the east side of his land. Alfred Holbrook, brother of James, by 1833 had moved to a farm at the end of the Seven Mile Brook cross road, where it now turns north and then east toward the town house. The north end of the road from North Anson village was chen at the southwest corner of Holbrook's land. In September of that year the town had surveyed an extension of this highway northward to Elisha Walker's mill yard and from there over to Joseph Chick's southeast corner. Although the road to the mill had thus been surveyed and authorized, the town was still refusing in 1835 to appropriate a sum of money to "make" it.
While the road westward, that forked left by Lot 103 (the Cleveland mill farm) up to Foss hill and into Concord was being abandoned at its upper end, the town was surveying and authorizing a parallel road nearer the west side of the pond. The matter was before the town meeting of March 28, 1835, but it was four years later when $500 was voted to be spent on "the new county road from Alfred Holbrook's to the north line of the town." The constable's warrant that year described it as the "road layed out by the county commissioners from Samuel Walker's to Joseph N. Greene's." But Samuel :Walker- Elisha's youngest brother -had by that time settled on Lot 112, adjacent to but on the opposite side of the road from Alfred Holbrook's.
The cross road from Seven Mile Brook by Abel Cleveland's had its terminus for some years at Alfred Holbrook's. It was completed by 1847 through to the Canada Trail, from which point there had been something of a road to the Kennebec side of the town. There were several alterations of route on both sides of the mill stream before the present permanent line was established. In earlier days the way was considerably north of the town house, where some of the Goodwins, Jacob Young and Samuel Brown had farms. All that region was abandoned for farming long, long ago. There was a neighborhood tradition
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which boys and girls used to recite glibly how "Sam Brown went out west, where he went up in a tornado."
The Soule purchase was contiguous on the south to places thus far described. The 19 parcels of 2,060 acres were: Lots 100 (about where the cannery is), 102, 103, 104, 105 - all east of the highway and in the fifth range, but not including the Barron farm which is No. 106 - and, in the sixth range west of the highway, Lots 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112 and 113, and then, in the seventh range or second tier west of the highway, Lots 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135 and 136. The north-west corner of the tract was the Will McKenney farm (No. 130), just south of the Nahum Eames place; the southwest corner was the Deacon Joseph Walker place, (No. 136), where the brick house is.
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