USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 31
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There were Embden youth, too, who maintained their farms but pursued the seasonal occupation of lumbering on the upper Kennebec and its branches. Phineas Eames (1827-1905), a broth- er of George, was an outstanding example of this activity. Like him in that were his brother Austin, and his son-in-law Frank Donley (1845-1923). All were veterans in river driving opera- tions before magnates of the industry organized with newer methods. Those were the days when the "drive" included white pine logs, as well as spruce, and before four foot cuts of wood pulp sealed the doom of saw mills at Gardiner. Glorious spring seasons were those for the river driver with his cantdog and calked shoes !
Top left) JONATHAN D. EAMES GEORGE L. EAMES
MARY (WILLIAMS) EAMES PHINEAS EAMES
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Alike as farmers, lumbermen and as townsmen the Eameses were an exceptional family in Embden. They came from Jeffer- son and Damariscotta. Nahum Eames, on Foss Hill in 1820 was the earliest comer to the town. Young Edward Eames was there for a while in 1835. But the real background of these Eames descendants was Jonathan D. Eames of Madison, with Mary (1805-1889) his wife, daughter of Caleb and Elizabeth (Whit- man) Williams, near Caratunk Falls, as the mother of his fine brood of children. This distinctly Embden marriage supplied the young Eames with influential aunts and uncles. For Mary's brothers and sisters included Abigail (Mrs. William H. Stev- ens), whose husband was of the household of Jonathan Stevens, Sr., and lived on farm No. 21, immediately north of Jona- than Eames; Serena (Mrs. Jotham G. Witham) ; Foster Wil- liams, whose wife, Elsie, was a daughter of Stephen Ayer of Embden and Solon; and Albert Williams, who married Ellen, sister of William and Joseph Atkinson on the Canada Trail.
Jonathan D. Eames moved from Madison - where he had a brother Phineas and other relatives - to Concord. After a brief residence there he returned down the river to Embden, occupy- ing the red house on farm No. 20 - long a familiar landmark - in the corner where the road from Solon plunges into the forest on the way to New Portland. Stirley Hooper is now the owner there. Jonathan's family of seven sons and two daughters was in keeping with the times. Phineas and Caleb were twins with brothers J. Whitman (1829), Austin (1831), Almond (1835), Martin (1843) and Owen (1848). Serena (1838) and Adeline (1845) were the girls. Phineas and George married respectively Philena N. (1831-1917) and Alureda (1840), daughters of Fletcher Thompson, who at one time had the mill at the foot of Hancock, or Johnson Pond, on the opposite side of the town.
Phineas, son of Jonathan, and eight years senior to his brother George, reared his family on the old John Hilton farm (Lot 31) at the southeast corner of Fahi Pond. He purchased this after his marriage in 1849, when John Hilton and family were going away to Wisconsin. The buildings there having burned in 1877, Phineas moved to where his father used to reside. He spent his
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winters lumbering near Flagstaff. During the 70's and 80's he was associated with Mark Steward of North Anson and after that with B. P. J. Weston of Madison till his age prevented fur- ther activities. His last years were passed quietly at home. He was one of Embden's selectmen in 1862 and '63 and ran as a Democrat in 1864 for the legislature. He was a member of Northern Star Masonic Lodge at North Anson and of the Odd Fellows and the Grange. He took great interest in public affairs.
Of the children of Phineas Eames, Abbie married Frank Donley, who lived for many years near by him and close by the Solon ferry till about 1889, when he took up residence at North Anson. Phineas had four sons. Of these Owen has been in Bos- ton with the firm of John H. Pray many years. Charles Eames married Restella Durrell, daughter of Randall F., and settled in Anson valley. George C. Eames is at Bangor, where he has been prominently identified with the Christian Science Church. He has held several positions in that connection, including the office of Committee on Publication for Maine. He began life as a boy in Embden driving team for his father, but this did not deter him from a liberal education. He attended Anson Academy, reciting his Latin verbs to himself as he coasted around the mountain sides on a load of spruce logs and waged his battles with the Sequence of Tenses in a lumber camp. He later served for two years as general clerk in the office of the superintendent of the Somerset Railway and then attended Tufts College for two years, returned to the railroad, went to Bangor in 1902 to take charge of the Postal Telegraph Com- pany's business there and resigned in 1910 to go into Christian Science work. His wife is Mary Lamb of Oakland.
Their family includes two sons, who are Bowdoin graduates. Paul H. Eames, class of '21, was a member of the varsity foot- ball team in '19 and '20. He served in the Navy during the War, rising to the rank of Ensign. Donald J., his brother, class of '23, was manager of track, president of student council and was voted a "popular man" during his college course.
Owen A. Eames, son of Phineas, also attended Anson Acad- emy. Owen's brother, Frank Eames, married Clarabel Thomp-
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son of Embden and then Jennie Wells of Fredericton, N. B., and settled at Los Angeles.
Austin Eames, son of Jonathan, was a well known man in Embden. He owned and operated for many years the old John Gray farm at the junction of the Kennebec River road and the highway that passed the foot of Fahi Pond. He, too, engaged extensively in lumbering. He was long a master driver of Dead River and held important positions with the Kennebec Log Driving Company. Along in the 90's he was a popular moder- ator at town meetings. His wife was Ann Hollis, of Embden whom he married in 1853. One of their sons was Melzer A. Eames, now of Skowhegan, who used to have the Embden farm immediately south of his father and was also connected with the Log Driving Company. Two other sons were Perley Eames of Worcester, Mass., and Roscoe Eames who carried on the John Gray place after his father's death till he himself died in 1924. Daughters of Austin were Ida Eames (1859-1928) who was Mrs. Albert Hoyt and Mrs. B. J. Libby of Oakland and Mrs. L. E. Mitchell of Dorchester, Mass.
Martin Eames, a son of Jonathan, enlisted in the 10th Maine Volunteers early in the Civil War and died of disease in 1863 while serving a second enlistment. J. Whitman Eames married Angelina Thompson of Embden in 1854 and lived near the ferry till he went west. Almond Eames was on the list of taxpayers in 1850.
George L. Eames started for California in 1857 but returned to Maine in 1860 and in December of that year married Alureda Thompson. Within a few days the newlyweds started for California by way of the Isthmus. Their destination was New- ark, in Alameda county, a mining town where Whitman Eames, his brother, and family were. From San Francisco they voyaged up the Sacramento on a river boat. Then they traveled by stage but the last twelve miles into the mountains were made on Nor- vegian snowshoes. They were there for over three years and the text two years moved from place to place in the mining district.
The year Nevada became a state George and wife went to Vashoe City and were there when the Central Pacific was com-
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pleted as a link in the transcontinental line. Both were present at the historic ceremony as locomotives from either side were driven up so closely that the cowcatchers touched and wine was passed from one locomotive to the other. While at Washoe City George Eames' business was hauling freight back into the mining towns, but he soon moved to a ranch in Humboldt county on the Humboldt River. Although in an adjacent county the ranch was 200 miles distant, forty miles of which were through a desert. They covered the journey with horse teams, taking cows and other stock as he planned to raise cattle and horses in his new location. This was in the heart of the Indian country belonging to two different tribes - the Piutes and Shoshones. There was much alarm among the ranchers after the Custer raid, which occurred at this time, lest these Indians, hearing of it, should decide to go upon the warpath. Such fears proved groundless.
After eleven years on this ranch Mr. Eames sold out and in 1881 returned to his native Embden. He bought for $11,000 the Charles F. Caldwell farm, as it was then called - the Asahel Hutchins farm of earlier days. There it was that Asahel's father made the first settlement in Embden's Seven Mile Brook region. It was the largest farm in town, well equipped with farming implements of that period and stocked with thirty head of cattle and five hundred sheep. There were two large sugar orchards. The big barn with two elevators for lifting carts with hay and grain into the roof to be unloaded was a local marvel. That was before the horse fork for unloading hay came into use. In his new environment George Eames was soon recog- nized as one of Embden's most prosperous and also, most useful citizens. He died there after nearly twenty years but left no children.
Isaac Albee, who during about the same period was owner of the Cragin homestead east of George Eames, was a native of Anson but his birthplace was barely over the Embden line. He and a brother, David (1828-1905), went to California in 1853. Along in 1860 - shortly before George Eames and his bride were starting thither on his second trip to the Pacific Coast -
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David and Isaac Albee were mining in Sonora, Calif. Two years later David returned to North Anson and remained there sev- eral years, later going to the Black Hills in the days of the gold rush thither. In the meantime, Isaac Albee had gone to the gold mines near Helena, Mont. David Albee remained in the Black Hills but a short time. While he was in Montana, or thereabouts (and not during residence in Nevada as has been stated), David was taking gold dust and ore from a little mining camp to a settlement 25 miles away. As he did not return Isaac and another man started out to look for him. They located him ten miles away in an abandoned shack with an ugly blow on his head. He had been stunned and robbed. From the effects of this blow he never recovered. His mind became affected and a year later he was returned to North Anson in care of a Lew- iston man who had been with them in California. At intervals he was at the asylum in Augusta. Then he would be fairly ra- tional for months. After Isaac returned from the West, David lived with him the greater part of the time, but died at Augusta.
Isaac Albee was a pleasant, genial sort of man, whose western experiences, when he would consent to recount them, entertained the countryside.' He was highly thought of. As he was a bach- lor, the Albee women kept his big, white mansion which old Simeon Cragin had erected as a duplicate of the ancestral home of Revolutionary sires.
When an old man, well towards 70, Isaac lost interest in farm- ng and went away to Woonsocket, R. I., to be with his nephew, Or. Fred L. Cleveland, and died there. He left the farm to this ephew.
Isaac's oldest brother, Benjamin Gould Albee, is remembered s residing at North Anson next to the Academy grounds, where 'letcher Thompson of Embden, once made his home. In 1886, enjamin (named for his great uncle, Rev. Benjamin Gould, r.) swapped his stand at the village with Robie Boston of Emb- en, and took his family to the Boston farm, one-half mile west the Solon ferry. He returned after three years to North nson and died there.
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Hamden T. Williams, an Embden resident in the Soule tract on the road to Lake Embden, went west in 1873. His father, Timothy, belonging to the Williams family of Woolwich, had not only erected a house on the hill with bricks made from clay on his farm and planted an apple orchard but owned a mill on Hancock stream in the northern part of the town. Jane Wil- liams, his mother, was a native of New Brunswick. Upon the death of Timothy, Hamden bought out the heirs and took pos- session of the farm, improving it in many ways. In the mean- time he became interested in gold mines from letters of his brother Adaniram. Purchasing an outfit he started for Cali- fornia by way of Black Hills but met a band of Indians. They destroyed his outfit and compelled him to turn back. This dis- couraged him from getting to Montana where Adaniram was at work mining and he decided to try his hand at lumber operations near the Mississippi River. Experience with his father's saw mill probably suggested this undertaking. When he had loaded several flatboats to take down the river there came a big flood because of which he lost all his lumber and barely escaped with his life. Landing at the mouth of the Mississippi, Hamden concluded to go to California. He mined gold there till 1879 when he returned to Embden.
Hamden Williams was an unusual character to the people of his community. He was well educated and became an outstand- ing teacher in the district schools. He taught the Moulton school west of Embden Pond in 1848 and twenty years later was teaching the Barron school in his home district. He taught the John Gray school in 1850 and the big Holbrook school in 1866. He had a bright mind and was ready in conversation. His wife was Caroline B. Peabody of New Vineyard. They had two children - a son Charles E. Williams, now a resident of Strong where he was postmaster for many years, and a daughter Louise (1853) who married Henry Hoyt of West New Portland. Like her father whom she resembled in some ways Louise Williams, too, was a notable teacher. Among her many terms were four in No. 12 (the Holbrook district) in '71, '72, '74, and '75. The fine brick house and farm buildings which with the
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19
CHARLES E. WILLIAMS LOUISE (WILLIAMS) HOYT
splendid orchard distinguished the Hamden Williams farm were burned to the ground some forty years ago and the property passed to other hands.
The lumbering industry, near and far, attracted Embden young men from early times. Opportunities "in the woods" on the Penobscot were responsible in no small part for the con- siderable Embden migration thither. When the Civil War began more than one Embden man had employment on the Penobscot. William C. Walker (1825-1894) at that time boss of a lumber gang near Levant and son of Elisha of Embden, went o the front with the 2nd. Maine regiment of giants. On his eenlistment with the 31st. Maine he was made a sergeant. He s buried at Lowell, Mass., where he spent his later years. Contemporary with him was his brother, Joseph Walker, 2nd., vho enlisted from Pennsylvania where he had been engaged in umbering.
Tidings of new gold fields traveled fast and far in 1850. Who n the remotest corners of New England had not been thrilled y lurid stories of sudden wealth in California that caused a
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shifting of population overnight to the westward. Perhaps steamship agents saw to it that word from Victoria in Australia was speeded to the same quarter. Gold at Clunes ! Gold in the Yarra Ranges! Gold in other fields near Melbourne!
Two young men from Embden, restless for travel and ad- venture, yielded to the call. These were Simeon C. Cleveland (1817-1894) and Cephas Raymond Walker, whose parents gave him his middle name for Dr. David H. Raymond at North Anson. In the spring of 1852 they started on their long journey with three or four men from North Anson. One of these, Theodore M. Steward, had started once before and been repulsed at the Isthmus became of a deficient steamship ticket. Simeon, just then married, left his bride behind.
Landing at Melbourne after a tedious sea voyage, they found a motley population in a mad scramble. Simeon engaged a drayman to take his kit from the wharf. The charge for this service astonished the newcomer accustomed to modest Embden prices. Being a cobbler by trade he opened a place for mending shoes. Soon the drayman came for a pair of soles and Simeon had an opportunity to get even. He recited the incident proudly long years afterward among his home people.
Cephas Walker mined in Australia for about three years. He returned to his native town with approximately $20,000 in gold. That was a lot of money for a countryman in Embden, just rounding 40. Many things considered he was, perhaps, richer than any of his fellow townsmen. He put out his money care- fully, some of it near the Maine coast whither he journeyed once or twice a year for purposes of inspection and some in farm securities at home. However, in the troublous economic periods for thirty years afterward, he encountered serious losses. In late life he became a recluse on indifferent terms with his many nephews and nieces. He owned various Embden farms includ- ing the old Purington place but made his bachelor home in a little house down the road toward North Anson.
As his health became feeble during his last illness he cherished a big roll of bills and would not allow this out of reach. Judge C. O. Small, now of Madison, who had charge of his affairs and
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CEPHAS R. WALKER
WILLIAM C. WALKER
later was administrator of his estate, got this by a ruse and transferred it to a bank for safe keeping. A small piece of wood, wrapped with a few bills, was placed in its stead in the old man's pocket.
The story of his wealth had been exaggerated, but it developed after his death, when losses from depreciated mortgages were accounted for, that he retained a comfortable competence. He died intestate and his remaining fortune of a few thousand dollars, won from mining venture in far away Australia, was distributed through probate channels to his relatives.
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CHAPTER XXVI
HEAR CARRIONTONKA ROAR!
Away yonder through deep woods, over rugged hills, up from Moses Thompson's village that might have been, and past the old brick residence of Jonathan Stevens is Embden's northeast corner. It fringes Caratunk Falls of mighty power. With a railroad such as Waterville and Skowhegan had in earlier days these falls should have turned the wheels of a manufacturing city. The roadway thither - branching by two routes over the Concord boundary - winds by ancient mill sites now hardly distinguishable along Martin stream. Much of the upper way traverses the thousand-acre holdings once tilled by Jacob Williams and by sons Caleb, John, Daniel, Ebenezer and others of his patriarchal family after him.
The gentle hills with rippling streams and placid river feature a landscape fair to behold. It is part of the beautiful valley long known as the Garden of Maine. The rough and broken portion here was known to the Indians as Carriontonka, whence has come with divers variations in spelling the modern Caratunk. At this point the Kennebec flows between enchanting banks even as when the Norridgewoks hunted and fished along its upper reaches and bold sachem Bombazeen from his seat at Old Point ruled the Kennebis of this region. The picture is heightened by historic associations. Arnold's eleven hundred men - swamping roads Quebecward -toted their batteaux with equipment, artillery and supplies around the roaring Caratunk cataract.
Two miles below the falls - and in fact a little below the old ferry site - is a very old human record. It consists of Indian inscriptions on a table rock about 12 feet long and three feet six inches wide sloping at an angle of 40 degrees toward the water and known as Indian ledge. This is on the west bank, east of the highway and the present Hodgdon farmhouse where in the 1860's Harrison Stevens resided. Several figures are chiseled
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in the ledge, one depicting a house of English make which fixes the date as after settlers had come to Maine and probably after they had penetrated some distance up the Kennebec.
Other drawings are of two warriors and two squaws, a dog and a deer, bows and arrows, a canoe with Indians, two crosses and a small wigwam. The older Penobscot Indians are said to have known what the inscriptions signified but, if so, the meaning seems never to have been preserved. The two crosses might have referred to the Indian settlement at Narantasouak (Old Point), where Gabriel Dreuellettes, the first Roman Catholic missionary in the Kennebec wilderness, built a rude chapel as early as 1646. When Father Rasle came there in 1722 the place had two chapels 300 paces from the Indian village - one dedicated to the Holy Virgin and the other to the Guardian Angel.
A ledge in the river channel, just below the bridge to Solon, that was blasted away long ago because it was an obstruction to floating logs, is said also to have had Indian inscriptions. This, however, is denied. Some distance above, well at the threshold of northeast Embden and below the falls, the river broadens considerably. The quiet and spacious area known by local resi- dents then generally as "the bay," might well have been a ren- dezvous for the canoes of Indians gathering fish and game for food. The inscriptions were probably chiseled in the course of these hunting expeditions.
The little mill sites on Martin stream were a big factor in the rural development. Meanwhile the tremendous energy of Caratunk Falls, less then a mile away, was hardly regarded as of any value. Martin stream flows across the northwest corner of the town. It rises in Black bog and Felker bog of Concord and is joined from the south by a brook out of Embden center and a mile or so further on from the north by a more pretentious mill- stream, out of Jackson Pond The oldest mill in this region was on Martin stream, well down towards the Kennebec into which it flows. This was the Jeremiah Chamberlain mill, as noted in a previous chapter, where long afterward Isaac Temple also had a wheel. But north of this by over a mile at the junction of Martin stream and the mill stream were two mills, close
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together - one for sawing lumber and another for grinding grain.
Capt. Cyrus Boothby had a saw mill in that vicinity about 1812, the year after he arrived from Leeds. It was on the mill stream but not far from the mill that Jacob Williams had in 1810. Benjamin C. Atwood (1787) -an orphan son of Benjamin Atwood (1766) and Polly Colby of Haverhill, Mass. - then Dr. Edward Savage were owners of the saw mill and grist mills there. Embdenites of the present day remember the locality as Bowen's mill. Martin stream is sometimes called Concord brook and the mill stream, Atwood brook. There also was a day when one or the other of these watercourses was known as Savage stream. Early in the 1880's Ezra Bowen of Concord after operating a mill on Concord brook very near Fletcher mountain, purchased the Atwood-Savage mill site - then idle for many years - and moved over into Embden. A little before Bowen came the schoolhouse for the third district that had become a landmark across a road by the mills was torn down. During the same period this old east and west road down a precipitous hill in the direction of the Kennebec was dis- continued for the present parallel roadway farther south. Ezra Bowen spent the remainder of his life at the reconstructed mill. Only a few rust eaten wheels now remain to mark the spot.
A deed of June 12, 1820, a year before Benjamin Atwood sold the saw mill and its 55 acre farm to Dr. Savage for $215 shows who resided in the neighborhood at that time for the instrument recites that on the north was land of Ebenezer Williams, on the east land of Daniel Williams, on the south land of John Williams (all sons of Jacob who had died in 1814) and on the west land of Daniel Savage (son of Edward).
In a farming community before the era when the country began to turn to manufacturing it is easily understood how these little water powers received so much attention while a mile eastward a twenty-foot fall of the entire Kennebec River was disregarded. The harnessing of those waters was far too big a project for that day. The importance of the power site began gradually to be realized. Joseph Spaulding of Caratunk, son of
AMAMA
BEFORE CARATUNK FALLS WERE HARNESSED
A LOG UPENDED BY THE WHIRLPOOL
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the Joseph who had once resided on Lot 14 in Embden, in April 1835 bought the land and mill of his brother-in-law Elbridge Savage. He was also by this time the owner of the Caratunk Falls land on the Embden side in succession from Caleb Williams. Spaulding sold this land at the falls by deed of Oct. 10, 1835, to Elijah Grover for $10,000.
The first effort to develop the power at Caratunk Falls thus belongs to Grover. He owned both banks of the river, having purchased the Solon property of Jesse Pierce. He soon erected a toll bridge across the river with a saw mill on the Embden side and a grist mill on the Solon side. George C. Smith and Eben Baker, both of Solon, were interested in the venture but sold out to Grover in 1836. A freshet about 1846 carried the bridge and most of the grist mill away and Grover narrowly escaped with his life. Then he sold the saw mill to Stillman Stone (1803), a native of New Hampshire who came to Embden in the 1840's. Stone lost his life by a fall from the frame of this saw mill when it was being torn down. His widow, Sarah (1805) also of New Hampshire, and their children owned the property into the 1860's. These children were Adaline M. (1837) ; Sarah E. (1839) ; Lyman M. (1841); Stillman, Jr., (1845) and Cyrus A. (1847). The barn on this farm was standing many years after Stillman Stone had died. Children of the neighborhood amused themselves on Sunday long ago by rolling an old wagon wheel down the hill past the barn and into the cataract. One of them was Mabel Davis, a descendant of Capt. Davis the first man who fell at Concord bridge April 19, 1775. She is now Mrs. Fred Magoon of Solon.
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