USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 39
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He was a devout spiritualist and erected on the corner of Exeter and Newberry streets one of the most substantial build- ings in the city up to that time. It was brownstone and like a theater inside. This was called Ayer's Spiritualist Temple. It was a successful enterprise for a time but with the advent of moving pictures, Marcellus constructed a gallery in the building and opened a picture show. His wife, whom he had married late in life, won recognition as a singer and, after his death, became manager of this property. It eventually became Boston's fashionable moving picture house. A notable memorial service was held there in February, 1921, shortly after he died.
Marcellus Ayer remained a man of simple tastes up to his death. He enjoyed meeting Embden people in Boston and every now and then returned to his native hills to re-visit the scenes of his youth.
George A. Ayer (1841-1923) was Marcellus' younger brother. His wife was Lizzie Denton. He managed a hotel on the site of Bowdoin Square Theatre in Boston. Many distinguished visitors to Boston stopped there. That hotel was finally torn down and George Ayer became manager of the Revere House, then the best hotel in the city. The Prince of Wales - later King Edward - was a guest there during his American tour. George likewise managed the Nantasket House on the South Shore and was owner and manager of Monument Hall in Charlestown.
Fast trotting horses was another of his interests. In his string were some of the most famous trotters of the day - Redwood, Maude S. and Dolly Varden. He was one of the first treasur- ers and also the secretary of the National Trotting Association. At his death he was a resident of Somerville. His widow and a laughter - the wife of Dr. Horace M. Robbins of Malden, who s a native of Augusta - and a grandson, George Robbins, sur- rive him.
Thus the old cellar hole on Ayer hill, where the family mansion stood, the rickety fences and the acres long ago bandoned to pasturage stand out in new significance before the
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business careers of Seth's several sons. Who will say the rugged rural slopes do not have a worth-while story ?
When Moses Ayer, Jr., had concluded wrangling with the town for a road into his hilltop and the town had finally granted it, the pioneer and his family could travel from his dooryard straight westward in a bee line for Solon ferry. This road, now abandoned, is shown clearly on the map of 1860 (pages 266 and 267). In those days settlers in that part of middle Embden probably preferred to trade at Solon village. The Ayer family had kin there and along the Kennebec River road in Embden as had the Archa Dunlaps.
This east and west road from Moses Ayer's to the Kennebec was one of two early Embden cross roads, prior to the present cross road by the town house to Solon, established in the 1840's. The Ayer road, quite a mile north of this present cross town road and hitting the Canada Trail at the old Dunbar school- house, seems to have been indifferently maintained. At a meet- ing April 6, 1818, the town voted "to discontinue the east and west road from the middle road between Isaac Salley and Samuel Clark to the first range line" but on June 16, 1821, the town meeting unanimously accepted a road that had been surveyed "for Jonathan Fowler beginning at the first range line, thence continuing westerly following the old cross road to the main middle road, two rods wide."
Perhaps the cross road farther north near the William Atkinson farm, was of later date although the farms there, east of the Trail, were cleared very early. There was a town vote in 1822 to discontinue the road running between Nathan Thompson (Lot 48) and Reuben Savage (Lot 47) to Jacob Young's which seems to have referred to this northern cross road. However, some part, if not all, of that cross road, was either continued or authorized anew, for the town on Sept. 9, 1833, discontinued the thoroughfare from Christopher Thompson's to Job S. Hodg- don's northeast corner. Elder Job at that date was living on Lot 47, the Reuben Savage place. A portion of this road. re- mained long afterward as the lane from the Canada Trail to John Redmond's.
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The Ayer cross road was the boundary line of several interior farms on the way to the Kennebec, where interesting Embden families had their homes. Well over toward the river it penetrated that neighborhood where dwelt Jonathan Stevens, Jr., in his brick house, John Rowe, his brother-in-law, John Bachelder, the tanner, and others. John Butterfield came later to the Jonathan Stevens, Jr., farm and after him Mrs. Butter- field dwelt there. This was north of the line of the old Ayer road to Solon and immediately west of the Moses Thompson tavern. South of this line at that point in the 1880's dwelt the Robie Bostons. Their son, Royal Boston, studied at Anson Academy, was a teacher for a time and went into the United States Railway Mail service. He holds a responsible position in that service with headquarters at Portland.
The two ancient cross roads that traversed only half of the town and terminated in Queenstown neighborhood by the River could accommodate only local travelers, east and west. The Embden Pond, over four miles north and south, was a barrier to both those thoroughfares. The third and newer cross road, ex- tending past the foot of the pond and on to Seven Mile Brook and the New Portlands, was a convenience to a larger public. Its utility was much greater than the ancient cross road to the south from the Benjamin Colby, Jr., neighborhood to the Barron neighborhood and on to Seven Mile Brook. Parts of this lower cross road are still in use. It was, perhaps, the oldest of Embden cross roads and became a thoroughfare after numerous surveys and delays. It was not far above the Anson boundary, which it paralleled after a fashion.
This southernmost road was contemplated for a distance of six miles and 122 rods between the Kennebec River and Seven Mile Brook as early as 1807 when Selectmen Jacob Williams, Benjamin Thompson and Asahel Hutchins, with George Gray as surveyor, laid out five long highways, some north and south and others east and west. At that date there seems to have been already a road from the river to John Wilson's land, near the foot of the Fahi. The opposite or west end from Seven Mile Brook to Barron's corner, was built not many years later.
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There remained a distance of 545 rods from Barron's corner eastward to the Canada Trail where there was no thoroughfare till late in the 1830's, when the demand for it became urgent. This is evident from a petition of May 7, 1836, which set forth that the road had not been established as laid out in September, the previous year, owing to the "inattention and neglect of town officers." The signers were John Cleveland, 2nd, Jonathan Cleve- land, Benjamin Cleveland, Benjamin Pierce, Asahel Hutchins, John Cragin, Joseph Walker, William W. Gould, Jefferson Cleve- land, William Thompson, George C. Pelton, John Hilton and Daniel Hilton. The selectmen promptly directed Joshua Gray, Benjamin Gould, Jr., and James Y. Cleveland to locate this road which they did 3 rods from a point 11/2 rods south of the school- house near the Barron corner, eastward between the field and pasture of James Y. Cleveland and between his house and barn to a point on the Trail north of Benjamin Colby's orchard.
The complete cross town way was made by proceeding a half mile up the Trail, from the orchard of Benjamin Colby, Jr., to a point opposite the south shore of Fahi Pond, whence a road was eventually built eastward to join with the much older east- ern terminus above referred to. In the earlier days this highway from Barron's corner to the Trail was of much more convenience than in later times.
Not far below the Concord boundary there was still anoth- er, or fifth straggling Embden cross road, which, at one period, extended across the town, or nearly so. Gradually, however, Embden townspeople acquired the habit of traveling chiefly north and south and transacting their business at adjacent villages accordingly. This and the abandonment of numerous farm properties like that on Ayer hill made two old-time cross- town highways in middle Embden useless and reduced the northernmost and southernmost to a status in large part of lanes serving a few families.
Both as to highways and resident families the rise and fall of this community in the very center of Embden extended over nearly a century. Some of the town's most sterling people struggled there during that period for livelihood and happiness.
CHAPTER XXXII SEVEN MILE BROOK TEACHERS
West Ward school, hard by the Simeon Cragin mansion, belongs with the Old Brook meeting house of early Embden beginnings. Although a mile apart they were in one community. The meeting house in a religious way was a popular forum. Its elders, even if illiterate, knew the advantages of learning. Their church had a background of letters. Its influence extended alike to the West Ward school, to the New Portland Hill school up the Brook ; to the schools and neighborhoods adown its banks well across Anson.
The early families, whether from New Portland, Embden or Anson, were a coherent settler group - Adamses, Albees, Cleve- lands, Gamages, Goulds, Hiltons, Hinkleys, Hutchinses, Knowl- tons, McKenneys, Paines, Savages and Walkers. All worshiped at the meeting house.
Daughters of these households through successive generations became in large measure the "marms" of Embden schools. Not a few sons matured to the mastery of largely attended winter terms, where big boys, bursting with rural energy and ready ever to "lug out" a luckless or unpopular man teacher, were a problem. This teaching stock persisted beyond the courting and the marrying of the country side. It produced lifetime teachers in wider fields. Professor George C. Purington (1848- 1909) of an old family that came up the river a generation after the pioneers and for 26 years head of the Farmington Normal school; his half-sister, Mrs. Emma F. Curtis (1854- 1925), preceptress in turn of South Dakota and Oregon Normal schools; George E. Paine, of long experience as a superintend- ent in Somerset towns; and Col. Perley F. Walker (1875-1927) many years dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Kansas, are outstanding modern examples. From this same Seven Mile Brook stock, also, have come a generous share of Embden's sons and daughters who went to college.
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The West Ward of 1804 - when the town was incorporated - meant specifically the Seven Mile Brook region. In general it meant all Embden west of the great pond and its outlet. The remainder of the town's western half at that date was an area of proprietors' unsold forest. The first two town meetings in the autumn of 1804 were concerned with roads and $129 of town debts. But the forty odd settlers, then comprising the town, lost little time in establishing schools. The meeting at Joshua Gray's on April 1, 1805 - really the first annual town meeting - chose Moses Thompson, Joshua Gray, John Wilson and Simeon Cragin a school committee and "voted 120 Dollars for school money." Exactly one month later at another town meeting it was decided that "each ward may use his own school money in his own way." And the next spring - April 7, 1806 -five classes (districts) were arranged for. The recording entry runs -
"In the eastern ward (along the Kennebec River) two classes the first class from Anson line to the north line of Abraham Rowe's lot (a point where the Solon cross road of this day starts westward) and the second from said Rowe's to the Million Acre (Concord) line.
"And the third class from Anson line to the Long Causeway in the Middle Road - a point of swamp land between Big and Little Fahi Ponds-the 4 class from the Long Causeway to include all the inhabitants on the road north (Canada Trail).
"5 class to include all in the Western Ward."
This brief line is the first official record of the West Ward school. It was designated as No. 9 by a town classification in 1823 but was also known for 75 years as the Cragin, or Hutch- ins school.
Undoubtedly the Cragin, Hutchins, Cleveland and Edward Savage offspring had been reading, writing and figuring at their parents' homes for a decade before the West Ward class became a town organization. Hardly more than three years after that date these lusty broods were studying under the roof of the first new schoolhouse in Embden. On warning to Simeon Cragin, one of the freeholders, duly posted in form of town
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warrant, a district meeting was held at Cragin's house May 13, 1809. Capt. Benjamin Thompson, first selectman, came from his farm on the west side of Fahi Pond to preside as moderator. Dr. Edward Savage, residing at a halfway point between Cragin's and the Brook meeting house, served as clerk. And it was agreed to raise $200 to build a schoolhouse. Simeon Cragin, Asahel Hutchins and Jonathan Cleveland - whose three farms lay in a row along the West Ward road - were named a committee to superintend the work. It was also voted to "Sett our schoolhouse on the first rise of land east of Simeon Cragin's house on the north side of the road on Jonathan Cleve- land's land" (the Sylvester Jackson farm of the late 19th century.)
One fifth of the unsettled land in the town, or 32 lots of 3030 acres - indicating that about 160 out of 200 lots still remained wild land in 1809 - were taxed to help pay for this first Emb- den schoolhouse. These were prospective farms of about 100 acres each and assessments ranged from $.62 to $3.00 for each parcel. The total of this tax levy was $45.58. The balance of the $200 appropriation had to be raised by the settlers. There was a subsequent levy in 1810 on 26 parcels of 2478 acres, own- ed by non-resident proprietors, for "finishing the schoolhouse." The smallest item in this second levy on one-fifth of the unsettled land of the town was $.16; the largest $.77 to make an additional contribution of $7.48 toward the structure.
Presumably the schoolhouse was finished during 1810 but town records have no further mention till five years later when the annual town meeting of April 3, 1815, convened at "the schoolhouse in the west ward" with Moses Thompson moderator. Each school district was then collecting its own school taxes. Agents and collectors that year were John Pierce (for the West Ward), Robert Wells, Daniel Williams, John Gray, Jr., John Rowe and Moses Thompson. In addition there were two school committees - Simeon Cragin, Edward Savage, and James Adams "to visit the western school;" Benjamin Colby, Jr., Andrew McFadden, Robert Wells "to visit the other schools in the town."
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Thus by reason of its isolation the West Ward school had an exceptionally democratic administration.
The school grew, of course, with the town. Its house was re- paired in 1821. In levy, therefor, laid December 8 of that year, non-residents paid $8.03 toward the work and 15 residents of the district paid $45.68. These fifteen residents were : Benjamin Cleveland, Jonathan Cleveland, Timothy Cleveland, Thomas Cleveland, Ephraim Cragin, Simeon Cragin, Simeon Cragin, Jr., Matthew Daggett, Benjamin Pierce, also Benjamin Pierce for the estate of his father, John; John Pierce, Asahel Hutchins. Ephraim Sawyer, Robert Smith and Moses Williams. The popu- lation of scholars in 1833 was 59, the second largest in town, but fell to 33 in 1847 and to 38 in 1853. From the Civil War on there was a steady decrease.
Funds for its support, as for all rural schools then, were meager. The fund for No. 9 in 1830 was $42.02, the third largest in town but during the next three years increased rap- idly. During the first twenty years the annual town appropria- tion for schools did not exceed $200. It was only $100 in 1809 and the same amount in 1810; in 1815, $200; in 1818, $175. "School bills" were "Committed" on November 1 and were "returnable" February 1 following. The town voted in 1809 - as well as in other years - that the school tax "be divided equal in each District." The per annum fund for the West Ward ran from $25 to $50, out of which to pay the teacher's board and wages, something for fuel and, occasionally in winter, $1 per term- if the teacher was a woman - for building the fire.
During a half century following completion of the new school- house a picturesque procession of children thronged through its front door. Many of them grew to foremost men and women in their communities and in wider spheres. Most of Dr. Sav- age's brood of 14 were registered there before he moved over by the Kennebec. Asahel Hutchins' sons and daughters also trooped back and forth between their brick home and the red- frame school for instruction. Amos (1807-1874) his second son taught for fifteen years after he married Abihail Cleveland,
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his first wife. His second wife Naomi Hilton, was a teacher. Amos was repeatedly school agent and member of the school committee ; in 1846 and again in 1850 he was master of the winter term in his home district. His youngest brother, Seth T. Hutchins of North Anson, was also a school boy in the West Ward.
Amos' children in turn got their early education in books at this school and became good teachers. Owen A. Hutchins (1831-1901), his son, was teaching in 1849 the Strickland-Tripp school of northwest Embden and in 1854 married Ann Quint. Three years before her marriage Ann had taught the Holbrook and Goodwin children in a household school near the foot of the great pond. Georgianna O. Hutchins (1841-1880), daughter of Amos, taught six terms of Embden schools between 1855 and 1862 and was accounted a very popular teacher.
There were numerous other Hutchins teachers in Embden - Betsey, Lona, Lydia M., Paulina, Milford (1842-1864) son of Enos of Embden and New Portland; Lucy and Elias (1826-1906). Some of these were from New Portland. Elias was a grandson of David Hutchins a first settler in New Portland, and, on his mother's side of Capt. Josiah and Betsey (Walker) Parker. As a young man he learned the ship's carpenter trade at Damariscotta, worked awhile in Massachusetts, returned to Lexington as.a farmer and taught school for twelve winter terms, one of which, in 1856, was at Embden's Holbrook dis- trict, Amos Hilton, agent. In later years he was a merchant at the Falls and served his native town as selectman, treasurer, deputy sheriff and postmaster. Lucy, his sister, taught the Hol- brook school in the 1853 winter term, Alfred Holbrook, agent.
Lois Ann Foster, Sarah J. Foster and Ada and Flora Foster, of North Anson, while not of the West Ward school, were a brilliant group of teachers and belong largely to Embden be- cause of kinship with the Hutchins family. Lois Ann, who taught in 1851, the Embden school close by the ferry to Solon, was a sister of Paulinus M. Foster. She lived at Solon, when she taught in Embden, her father's family then occupying a large white house that faced Caratunk Falls. She was later in the middle west as tutor for boys and girls fitting for college
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and died at Richmond, Maine, a few years ago. Flora, daughter of Paulinus, taught the Cragin school in 1857 and had some of the Hutchins descendants as her pupils. "Little George" Pur- inton was then an incorrigible boy and the despair of his teach- ers. Years later as Mrs. Sam Gould at North Anson, she used to tell with pride how, winning him over, she started him on his career to head the' Farmington Normal. Her younger sister, Ada (Foster) Swett in 1859 taught the Moulton school west of Embden Pond.
Five granddaughters of old Simeon Cragin (daughters of his son John) attended the West Ward school and during young womanhood "marmed" in Embden schools. These were Eleanor (1835-1914), who curtailed her teaching career in 1857 to marry Eben F. Pillsbury of Kingfield and died at Allston, Mass .; Paul- ina (1837-1898) who after her marriage in 1862 to Charles F. Caldwell lived at Ada, Norman County, Minn .; Hannah M. (1839-1916) the most experienced teacher of all the Cragin sisters, who in 1863, married Fairfield Williams; Flora A. and Mary E. Cragin. &The first three were granddaughters also of Asahel Hutchins through their father's marriage with Sally Hutchins. Flora and Mary through their father's second mar- riage with Achsah McFadden, were daughters of a second family and thus were nieces of Ozias and Edith (Pierce), McFadden on the other side of the town.
Most of the numerous Pierce children belonged to the West Ward school, although Benjamin Pierce on Gordon hill some- times had town authority for a household school in his own vicinity. One of Benjamin's daughters Edith by his first wife (Hannah Cragin, daughter of Simeon) taught extensively in Embden and was one of its greatest teachers. She was known as a beautiful woman with remarkable eyes. Between the ages of 20 and 29 she taught 30 schools, averaging three terms a year. Agents often waited for her to finish elsewhere rather than start with another teacher. She governed without corporal punish- ment, exceptional in those days. She married Ozias H. McFad- den in 1847. During her married life she enjoyed keeping in touch with her former pupils, many of whom asserted that her
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teaching had greatly influ- enced their lives. Her daugh- ter, Carrie E. McFadden taught in Embden and was superintendent of schools in 1877.
Mrs. McFadden's sister, Eleanor Pierce (1824-1850) taught some in Embden. She married Llewellyn Crommett of Waterville. Their cousins, the children of John Pierce who built the stone house, were also West Ward schol- ars. Of the Pierce clan of teachers was Olive Albee (1824-1888), daughter of EDITH PIERCE (Mrs. Ozias H. McFadden) Samuel and Betsey (Walk- er) Albee from an adjacent school district of Anson. After one Embden school in 1846 Olive the following year became the wife of David Pierce - Mrs. Edith McFadden's younger brother. At least two of her children - Edith Pierce (Mrs. Foster Elder) and Emma (Mrs. Austin Berry) were Embden school "marms" in their younger days. Olive's younger sister, Adaline Albee (1831-1890) taught in the Holbrook district in 1853 when it was becoming a large school. She married Cyrus Cleveland, 2nd, and died at Lewiston.
Close by the Albee family were the Whiting S. Hinkleys. Until the late 1850's Whiting and his wife, Jane (Collins) Hink- ley, lived in the Black hill region above the Benjamin Pierce homestead and were neighbors of Samuel Norton, John Skillings and Josiah M. Cook. Then the Hinkleys moved down to the Anson line. The house was partly in both towns so that the children of Benjamin and Lois (Hinkley) Albee, from just down the road toward the village, used to joke about visiting their grandparents in Anson and being sent over into Embden to sleep.
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While a young man Whit- ing Hinkley (1817-1878) taught school in Industry, New Portland and Embden -- and Jane Collins, his wife, taught quite as extensively. Their pedagogical labors ex- tended back to the 1830's but Whiting continued in this calling while he lived on Black hill. His daughter, Lois, kept two terms of school in '51 and '52 near Hancock Pond. William W. Hinkley of Chicago is Whiting's son. Older people, now alive, re- member Whiting Hinkley WHITING S. HINKLEY better as proprietor of a tin peddler's wagon, driving far and wide to sell the wares in his wondrous vehicle. Everywhere forty years ago he was a welcome visitor to the housewives.
And in the picture with Hinkley teachers - father, mother and daughter - and with their Albee kin were also their pros- perous Collins kin of Anson. Mrs. Jane Collins Hinkley was one of a large family, with Rodney, Frank, George and Eugene, as her brothers and a sister, Mary. James Collins, their father, a hat maker by trade and native of New Hampshire, was a North Anson business man and the first postmaster there. He and his son, Rodney, held the office for forty consecutive years. James and his sons after him owned considerable land along the Canada Trail in Embden. It included four farms that crowned the Fahi Pond, together with quite an acreage near its outlet, where were also a sawmill and grist mill at one time under the Collins proprietorship. George and Frank Collins became owners of much of this property after the death of their father. Resident near it were their sister, Mary, and her hus- band, Hiram Dunbar. Hiram's son, Dr. Frank Dunbar, was a physician in Boston.
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But several of these Collinses were Embden teachers. A younger James, son of Rodney, taught a small Embden school in 1845, while Susan A. Collins, daughter of Frank, was mis- tress of the Cragin school in '61, kept one term about that time in the Moulton district (No. 10) and a term each in Nos. 5 and 6. She went later to Chicago and lived there till over 90 years of age. James, the Embden teacher, had a son Frank who is a curator in Brown University. Annette Collins, daughter of Rodney, had the Cragin school in '52 while her sister, Nancy A., taught there in '56 and '57 with an additional term the latter year in the John Gray district. Neither of these sisters married.
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