USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 37
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The dutiful son obeyed and located in Embden. In due time he wooed and won Lavonia Boyington, a cousin of Joshua G. Boyington. Elder Job S. Hodgdon from an adjacent farm per- formed the ceremony in 1842. Their children included George K. (1844-1924), Celesta (Mrs. J. Williams Morin) ; and John F. (1847). George K. Redmond was in the Union army. Henrietta Savage from North Anson taught the school in the Redmond's
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home district in 1864 and then married him. They went to Neillsville, Wis., and George K. Redmond died there. Several descendants, including Walter and Marcellus Redmond and Anna Redmond Robinson, reside at Neillsville and Racine.
The Dunbars of later days in middle Embden lived on Lot 61. It is one of the oldest farms in that section. William Atkinson was the owner in 1864 when Frederic H. Dunbar (1825-1903) purchased it, after several years of residence east of Fahi Pond. He was a son of Martin and Malinda (Moore) Dunbar, having lived at Anson, where he was born, and at Winthrop before coming to Embden. Hiram Dunbar of Anson, near the Emb- den town line was a brother.
Frederic Dunbar and family were people of character. They were interested in education and other matters of local welfare. He had considerable service as a town official and at one time was town clerk and first selectman. His youngest son, Sydney P. Dunbar, who occupies the home farm has also served as select- man. The other children of Frederic and Augusta (Snell) Dun- bar made their homes elsewhere. Gilbert W. Dunbar, the oldest, lives at Bingham. Charles, now deceased, married Olive Dur- rell of Embden and their son, Harry, is a lawyer in Boston. Henry Dunbar died at Ashland, Oregon; Edward Dunbar at Lewiston. Alice (Mrs. Henry Jackson) lives in California ; Linda M. (Mrs. Wilfred H. Strickland) at Hingham, Mass., Mahlon at Auburn. These Dunbar sons and daughters included three or four good school teachers. Most of them attended An- son Academy. They were an attractive family of young people. Mrs. Dunbar died in 1908.
Quite as much held true of the Caswell family on the next farm (Lot 62) just south. This, too, was one of the oldest farms along the Trail in Embden and had passed through a succession of owners. The Caswells came from New Vineyard, where Salmon Caswell (1781-1862) had been a settler with Christopher Atkinson and some of the Daggetts. His five sons John (1809- 1876), Henry (1819-1912), Bowdoin (1820-1896), Richard (1822-1903) and Lemuel Caswell (1829-1883) were born in that town. John Caswell and his second wife, Caroline K. Fuller,
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were living at Embden in 1850 with their children, John F. (1839), Ellen S. (Mrs. Stickney Gray) and William A. Caswell. They moved afterward to North Anson. Henry Caswell married Elizabeth A. Fuller, a sister of John's wife and was carrying on a Lexington farm in 1856 when he came over to Embden, resid- ing at first with his brother John's family. Bowdoin Caswell married his brother John's widow. He occupied the Gould Hill farm (No. 107) before moving to New Portland. Mrs. Florie Chamberlain of Kingfield is his daughter. Richard Caswell was at North Anson and then lived at West Mills and Lemuel Cas- well was a resident of North Anson.
Henry Caswell's Embden family included Frank F. (1852), former deputy sheriff of Somerset county. Frank married in 1876 Charlotte Gray of Embden, was a farmer in New Portland, resided one year in Oregon and then went to Norridgewock. Carroll L. (1860-1924) whose wife was Georgie Berry (1867- 1901) of the same Embden neighborhood was the other son. There were two daughters, Flora E. (1857) and Carrie L. (1866). Few places in the town have been occupied by a more striking variety of farmers. Preceding chapters have referred to John G. Savage as a pioneer there from Anson with his first wife Mary Hilton, and to Reuben Savage who was there after Joseph Felker veteran of the campaign with Gen. Gates at Ticonderoga. While living on this farm Joseph lost his pension, as did many other veterans about 1820, because his total income disqualified him under the law. The pension was subsequently restored to him but the farm was transferred back and forth in the 1820's between Joseph and his sons David, Elisha and William W. Felker. In one of the quitclaim deeds that David Felker gave his father it was specified David must take the house in which he was living off the land. within a year on pain of forfeiture. There were various structures on the land from time to time. Hiram, Cyrus and Elias Salley, sons of Isaac, Sr., owned an acreage in the tract at one period and Elder Benjamin Gould and his large family were there in the 1860's as also has been told.
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Still further down the Trail on Lot 43 lived Albert Williams at the time of the Civil War. Following him there was Gorham Parks Gould, son of the Elder and then came Charles E. Thomp- son, (1828-1891) son of Moses Thompson (1796-1843) of New Portland. Moses in 1833 married Lucinda Hutchins as his second wife. Charles E. Thompson and his wife, Eliza (1833- 1889) had a pleasant homestead. Their family comprised one son, Rossville (1855), who lives on the Kennebec River road near Vassalboro, and Lenora (Mrs. Charles L. Williams) of Colorado.
These Thompsons, like all other families mentioned in this chapter except the Dunbars, have long departed. Up the hills and down the hills between the guide post at the Salley corner and the Concord line was half the distance across the town. But the teeming population of ancient days vanished westward through a series of years. Where these farms of Thompsons, Salleys, Clarks, Redmonds, Morins and Wells used to be is now or before long will be wood land and overhanging branches will shade the way along the Canada Trail. An abandoned old frame east of the Trail and well up the hills would hardly be suspected as a link between now and then. It is what remains of the Dunbar schoolhouse in District No. 5. Old Robert Wells, be it recalled, was clerk of the meeting in 1825 that authorized this structure on a corner of Samuel Clark's land. A nice looking white schoolhouse, a mile up the road, has taken its place. Not all the farms of the region have been abandoned. There are as yet children to educate in middle Embden and parents in meet- ing this task are keeping step with progress.
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CHAPTER XXX
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An exceptional story of an Embden Scotchman's unusual career rises to mind before an obscure tombstone in a roadside graveyard by the Canada Trail. The mystery of it deepens because details in confirmation of family traditions from the far west are absent. It may be doubted whether after the lapse of a century they can ever be fully supplied. The tale as told by a Montana grand-daughter runs that this vigorous farmer who had come from Alna. formerly a north part of Wiscasset, to an Embden hilltop. over-looking the Big Pond, went to England to recover title to one of Maine's clipper ships that had got into serious trouble while carrying a cargo of slaves between ports in the southern states.
This clipper ship belonged to Nancy (Beekman) Dunlap. who was Archa Dunlap's second wife. Nancy's father, a "sailing merchant." owned several vessels in his day that were large enough to cross the Atlantic. One of these came to his daughter at the father's death. Maine's clipper ships in those days accept- ed cargoes of slaves from Virginia and adjacent states for trans- portation down the coast. often to Charleston or New Orleans.
While on such voyage. the Dunlap children and grandchildren have been told. the ship was "stolen." The meaning of this is assumed to be that through stress of weather. or mutiny of the cargo, she was forced to seek a British harbor in the West Indies. There the slaves became free men on landing. Probably the ship fell into custody of the port authorities.
Samuel Dunlap - probably Archa's brother and the Samuel who had lived in Embden - recaptured the ship. although mem- bers of his family had declared he could never perform such a feat alive. But physical possession of the property seems not to have solved the problem altogether. It remained for Archa Dunlap to proceed across the Atlantic from his Embden hilltop and set matters right on the records in England.
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This mission he accomplished successfully at a time when there was no American minister at London, which, probably, fixes the date as between 1832 and '36. Upon his return, as the story was told by his sons when they had traveled to distant states and established their homes anew, Archa Dunlap was asked to accept appointment as minister to England. This he refused as others had done, chiefly because British sentiment was still very unfriendly to Americans. Our ministers, one after another, had found themselves beset with official difficulties be- cause of this hostility.
Thus the family chronicle proceeds. There is no supporting evidence in the Hodgdon graveyard of middle Embden, where the headstone has this simple inscription : "Archa Dunlap, Died April 20, 1846, aged sixty-nine years and eight months." The interment is just across the Trail from farm No. 59 and the William Atkinson farmhouse, where Melvin Berry and his son- in-law Wallace Hodgdon are now owners. Archa Dunlap first dwelt there, probably after a brother, Samuel, had made the first clearing. The town clerk, apparently for some personal reason, entered in his book that "some time in the month of December, 1812 Archa Dunlap moved into town with his family." With him came a sister, Mary - who had been his housekeeper after the death of his first wife - the children of his first marriage including sons Ephraim and Ichabod who grew to be permanent residents of Embden, his second wife and their two very young daughters.
On his Embden farm Archa Dunlap during thirty odd years raised up an interesting second family. It comprised well educated sons and daughters, several of whom became conspicuous as successful teachers in the district schools of that early day. One son became a college professor in Kentucky. Another son was a Universalist minister but died in early man- hood.
Near his father's last resting place in the Hodgdon yard is this headstone: Francis B. Dunlap, died Oct. 15, 1841, aged 27 vears, six months and nine days." It has been told on page 193
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how Thomas McFadden (1740-1840), a stern Calvinist until fifty-five years old, then became a Universalist. His son, John McFadden (1783-1864); married in 1807 Lucy Dunlap of New Milford (Alna) a sister of Archa Dunlap. The McFadden and Dunlap families in Embden were on an intimate basis and one may speculate whether the contentious old convert by the Ken- nebec may not have encouraged his son's nephew toward the ministry. The young man's temperament is indicated by the following verses of his own composition inscribed on his tomb- stone :
Like the deep lowing ox that upturns the dark furrow We pass one by one to the dust whence we came A few fleeting summers we pass here in sorrow Then sink into rest from all troubles and woes.
The jay's gilded pinion, the lark's merry singing May cause us to pause as we pass the woodside The same spark of life from their bosom is springing That animates man in his glory and pride.
No more shall wake from this deep silent slumber Where now I repose in forgetfulness lost Not the sweet breathing zephyrs nor deep rolling thunder Can wake the deep tomb or restore what is lost.
This poem and other items bespeak intellectual gifts among members of Archa Dunlap's family in a locality where in that day the stress of pioneering was upon more material things. Almost nothing is said as to where his many children received their education. The district schools of that time could not have supplied it altogether. Archa Dunlap or his two wives or all of them must have appreciated in high degree the value of education for their children. It is known that he had a lively interest in affairs and liked to discuss public questions. Beyond educating his large family, he often gave a home and instruction to other children.
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Mrs. Laura L. (Dunlap) Sweet of Eureka, Montana, a grand- daughter, writes the account of his service across the Atlantic as she heard it in Iowa when a girl. "In telling of the Dunlaps" she stated, "it is necessary to draw on memory of what my father, John McFadden Dunlap, and an uncle said. The Dun- laps left the Scottish highlands and came to New England in such numbers that they called themselves a clan. Some of them were very old in my father's time and spoke a language he could not understand. I remember hearing my father and uncle laughing about those old men thus regarding themselves as a. clan, for they were a mixture of Scotch and Irish, but had lived a long time in Scotland before they came to America. Some of the family had been educated in Edinburg. My first definite knowledge of the Dunlaps was of Archibald, or Archa as the family called him. He was born in Maine in the year 1776. I do not know at just what place but his people resided somewhere near Portland and Archa lived at Alna which up to 1811 was known as New Milford. It is a few miles from Wiscasset.
"There was a time along from 1820 to 1840 when this country had a lot of trouble with England and our minister came home. No one wanted to be minister to England. More than one man refused the office. Some question came up that had to be settled and Archa Dunlap went over there to England and attended to it. He was then asked to be minister to England but declined. When he came back he brought a jaunting car with him. I can not remember just what my father told me in this connection. I was more interested in hearing about the jaunting car. I am not certain, but believe it was something growing out of the slave trade and during a period when a McLane had been our minister. It may have been trouble growing out of the brig, Creole that carried a cargo of slaves from Hampton Roads. There were 135 slaves on board. They rose up, killed a man, took charge of the vessel and sailed her to Nassau, a British island.
"I do not know what other business Archa Dunlap had besides his farm but my father said it took him away from home
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much of the time. The farm was sold to William Atkinson soon after my grandfather died. Although this place passed from the Dunlaps 85 years ago, the old sugar bush, the stone walls and hugh rock piles, also the cellar walls are still there. The well which is now at least 115 years old is still sweet and pure. My grandfather kept one or two hired men at work clearing the farm of rocks and building them into walls. The first frame house erected there burned but the woodshed was saved and joins the present residence. Some of the apple trees from my grandfather's orchard are still standing. One of these, recently measured for me, is 16 feet four inches in circumference at base and has a spread of 57 feet."'
The State Department at Washington seems to have no writ- ten records that directly confirm this interesting family tradi- tion. But there are historical facts that accord with Mrs. Sweet's statements. Louis McLane, a Senator from Deleware was our minister to England from 1829 to 1831 and came home to be Secretary of the Treasury and later Secretary of State under President Andrew Jackson. Martin Van Buren was appointed minister to succeed McLane in 1831 but came home in March, 1832, when his nominaton failed of confirmation by the Senate. For four years from that time there was no minister from the United States to the court of St. James. During that four years Aaron Vail, of Pennsylvania, was the secretary of our legation and had charge of American affairs. His reports at the State Department have no mention of Archa Dunlap but Vail and others after him mention the Briggs Encomium, Comet, Enterprise, Hermosa and Creole. All those were cases of ships sailing under stress of weather or of mutiny to British territory in the West Indies. where the slaves these ships carried became free forthwith under British law.
The Embden Schotchman's mission to England may have end- ed in consular offices at London or Liverpool, rather than at the American legation. The records of his services, whatever these may have been, may rest in some musty consular archives. One may fairly assume that to be the case in the absence of better
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confirmation. The fate of the jaunting car that Archa brought back may not be as satisfactorily envisaged. As it bumped over the rocks and ruts of the Canada Trail the car must have been as much of a sight for Embden families as were Elias Cleveland, the hunchback, and his mule (page 78) long years afterward.
The old Scotchman probably held himself aloof from town affairs. If he became an active man at town meetings, it was not recognized by election to office during the 34 years he was an Embden resident. He paid Thomas McFadden $50 for the Dun- bar farm (Lot 61) in 1827 and thus became for a time one of the numerous owners of that property. First and last Archa and his older sons had a large acreage between the Trail and Emb- den Pond and worked persistently in the face of much dis- couragement to build up there a big family neighborhood, as several members of the Savage family had been trying to do eastward and southerly. Between his family and that of Christopher Atkinson, neighbor, as well as between his career and that of Christopher's sons, William and Joseph, there were striking points of resemblance and similar characteristics.
His last long sleep is strangely removed from most of his family. The name of his first wife is unknown but she was probably buried at Alna. His Universalist son and also a daughter Lucy, both of whom preceded him to the Beyond, lie near him. Most others of his household ended their lives at distant points across the continent. Quite as unusual as his own life story is that of his sixteen children.
Ichabod Dunlap, son of Archa's first wife, married Betsey Savage in 1822. They eventually went to reside on Lot 83, which a later generation knew as the Louis Nollett farm. She was one of the Anson Savages, perhaps a daughter of Joseph ind a granddaughter of James and Annah Young Savage. In ny event many of Betsey Dunlap's kindred were among her neighbors. Reuben Savage, a brother of Joseph, had resided irst on Lot 47 and along in 1819 on Lot 62, as the reader of previous chapters will recall. Lovinia (Savage) McFadden, ister of Joseph and Reuben and wife of Thomas McFadden, Jr., ad been on Lot 61 prior to her death in 1825. Col. Lemuel
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Witham and his wife, Abigail Savage, sister of Lovinia, Joseph and Reuben, had been on Lot 81, near by. John McFadden, brother of Thomas, Jr., after marrying Lucy Dunlap, a sister of Archa Dunlap, bought a number of Embden farms, including in 1826 Lots 95 and 96 on the east shore of Embden Pond. These lots, which he acquired of the Kanes, John McFadden trans- ferred within a year to his brother Thomas, Jr. A few years later Joseph Savage obtained Lot 96 and in 1832 deeded it to Ichabod Dunlap, presumably his son-in-law.
Ichabod's ownership in No. 96 seems not to have been as permanent as his ownership of the Nollett farm. Originally this Nollett farm had belonged to old Archa Dunlap. There is an interesting deed, dated in 1819, whereby the Scotchman quit- claimed his interest in his home place (No. 59) to Daniel Steward for $300 and with it went title to improvements on a lot bounded south by Moses Ayer and east by Eli Clark, son of Samuel, where Archa "had fallen 12 acres of trees and a part of which was under cultivation." This lot with 12 acres of fallen trees was No. 83, the Louis Nollett place. Ichabod owned considerable other farm land in that neighborhood. He is on record as having sold Willard C. McFadden, son of John, Lot No. 87 a mile north in 1832, where his brother, Ephraim Dun- lap, became a resident.
As Ichabod and Betsey (Savage) Dunlap died childless the records regarding them center chiefly on their land transactions. Ichabod, however, in 1841 undertook the care of Embden's town charges for $294 a year "with the privilege of all their services which they are able to render him." All new cases that occurred out-of-town were to be placed in town if Ichabod so requested. There was a provision that these persons were to be "as well clothed when the year is ended as they now are." This was the nearest Embden apparently ever came to having a town farm.
When his father had been in Embden for 12 years Ephraim Dunlap married Mary Ann Lord of Belfast. They and their son, Ephraim, Jr., lived long on Lot 87. When Willard McFad- den disposed of the place in 1833 Ichabod, rather than Ephraim,
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took the title and the same year purchased from the Kanes Lots 84 and 85 southward on the pond shore. Before long Daniel Steward took over half of one of these farms and Ephraim Dun- lap half of another one and Zenas Bryant of North Anson the other half of each. For a few years there was brisk dealing in this cluster of farms east of the Trail and hard by Embden Pond. The outcropping ledges, swept now by northern blasts, and the barren soil even down to the water's edge attest the mistaken judgment of those earnest frontiersmen who toiled to clear the hilltop for tillage. The transactions with North Anson traders tell of the unequal struggle. While ownership of the land passed, the settlers generally continued on the property.
The Dunlap taxpayers in 1820 were only one, Archa; by 1835 they were Archa, Ephraim, Ichabod and Francis B., the latter being the Universalist preacher; ten years later they were the first three with Samuel E. another son who had returned from attending school abroad, presumably at Edinburg; by 1855 Ichabod and Ephraim remained and by 1860 there was only Ephraim and he was on No. 87 near the head of the pond.
Ephraim and Mary Lord Dunlap had a considerable family. The first of their children was Albert (1827) who was on the town lists in 1850 but shortly went to California. Their second son, Aurelius (1829) was on the tax-lists, too, in 1850 and was twice married. Ella Dunlap, a daughter by his second wife, became Mrs. William Abbott. The Abbotts had a daughter, Dorothy, who became Mrs. Cecil S. Thompson. Ephraim Dun- lap, Jr., (1831) had two sons, John and Forrest Dunlap. This John, son of Ephraim, Jr., now resides in New Portland. John's children are Frank and Harold and a daughter, Doris. Philena (1833) was the first daughter of Ephraim and Mary Ann and died unmarried. She taught school in the Berry district in 1853. Aurenia (1841-1922) the other daughter, mar- ried a Williamson. Joel Dunlap (1835-1901) the youngest son wedded in 1870 Matilda L. Deane. Their three children were Ella (1871) and Ephraim (1873) both unmarried, and Dr. Clarence J. Dunlap of Kingfield. Dr. Dunlap married Dena L.
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Bearce. They have a son Everett W. (1919) and a daughter. Margaret L. (1921).
The marriage of Mary Dunlap to Elias Salley, son of Isaac, Jr., December 23, 1827, is recorded in the Embden books as is the marriage of Hannah Dunlap to Henry Morgan of Embden in March 8, 1833. Christo- pher Thompson, justice of the peace, performed the cer- emony for the Morgans who had departed the town by 1840. These two women were daughters of Archa Dunlap's first marriage and there was another daughter, Rebecca.
Archa's second marriage was prior to his arrival in Embden. This wife was Nan- cy Beekman (1788-1882) by whom he had eleven children. All these except the daugh- ters, Emeline E. (1811) and Christiana (1812), were na- tives of their parents' adopt- NANCY (BEEKMAN) DUNLAP ed town. Nancy Dunlap, twelve years her husband's junior, survived him 36 years. As a widow she went to the Missis- sippi Valley with her children and died at Ionia, Iowa. She is buried in Richland near there.
Upon the death of their father, the members of this second family scattered far and wide, most of them going west. The oldest daughter Emeline, however, married in 1839 Enos Hutchins (1809) of the New Portland Hutchinses. Enos Hutchins resided in the middle Embden neighborhood till after 1850 and the year his father-in-law died was a member of the board of selectmen. Emeline Hutchins, his wife, had acquired a good education and, like others of her family, was one of the early school teachers in the town.
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The Enos Hutchinses had six children. These were : Thurston (1840) of Boise City, Idaho; Milford (1842-1864) unmarried who taught the Holbrook school (district No. 12) of 42 scholars in 1861, Amos Hilton agent; Malone Hutchins (1844) who married Hannah Howe and lived at Marlboro, Mass .; Laura (1846-1859) ; Omar (1848-1923) also a resident of Boise City, Idaho, and Otis Hutchins (1850) who married Abbie M. Page (1849-1909) and now lives at Kingfield. Mrs. L. L. Mitchell, wife of the apothecary and merchant of that town, is Otis Hutchins' daughter. Miss Lucy Hutchins of East New Portland is a granddaughter of Enos.
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