USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 40
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Between 1820 and 1835 Embden's population nearly doubled. There were 99 and 182 names on the tax lists for the respec- tive years. Many new taxpayers, such as Clevelands, were pio- neers' sons, who, grown to manhood, had now their own families. But there were many newcomers, among them Humphrey Pur- ington, Jr., (1785-1868) of Bowdoin. His father, Rev. Hum- phrey, a Freewill Baptist minister died in 1833 and a few months later Humphrey, with his son Elisha (1817-1875) and daughters Priscilla and Harriet Ann (1827-1856) and other children, moved to Embden. They were of an old colonial family, orig- inally from Tiverton, Devonshire, England. Their men in the line of Rev. Humphrey, had resided at Aggamenticus, York County; at Stage Island in present Kennebunkport; and at Georgetown, now West Bath. Rev. Humphrey had four terms of enlistment in the Revolution and was at the battle of Ticon- deroga. Humphrey, Jr., was a lieutenant of Militia in the War of 1812. He commanded a company called out at Bath to defend the Maine coast against British cruisers.
The Puringtons purchased one of the town's best farms - the Dr. Edward Savage place, which Ephraim Cragin of New Portland, had owned for 13 years. Humphrey's new neighbors on Sept. 2, 1833, when the deed thereto was executed, were John Pierce on the west, Francis Burns on the north, and Amaziah Getchell, John Paine and Joshua Hilton on the east. There were really two farms, one south of the other, the lower farm on
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both sides of Seven Mile Brook. Humphrey paid $2,000 for the property and for a back lot, No. 159 in Black hill.
He had been a seafaring man. Among effects he brought up the river was an old English walnut desk. When homeward bound from the West Indies in 1810 at about the latitude of Charleston, S. C., he boarded a derelict from which he salvaged this desk. It long held the payroll of his company, with receipts for services performed at Bath when that city was threatened by the British. Humphrey got on well with his Embden fellow townsmen. By 1838 he had been elected town clerk and first selectman.
Elisha Purington rapidly succeeded to his father's estate and influence. By two marriages he had a family of six children. Elisha and five of these children were school teachers even as Elisha's brother, Collamore, and two sisters Priscilla (Mrs. Asahel S. Hutchins) and Harriet Ann Purington had been. His first marriage was in 1846 with Delia Francis Colby (1829-1853), of Madison, daughter of Dr. Zenas Colby and granddaughter of Benjamin Colby, Jr. Their three children were all sons - George. Charles and Frank. His second wife was Sarah C. Williamson of New Portland, but her father, John L. William- son soon came to Embden, residing on the middle Road or Canada Trail two miles above Anson on the old Benjamin Colby, Jr., farm. By this marriage there were also three children - Emma, Elmore and Mary Ella. John L. Williamson himself married a second time. That wife was Nancy (Bunker) Gray, widow of George Gray of Anson who was a grandson of Capt. John Gray of Embden. She is remembered as "Aunt Nancy," a good step-mother.
· Elisha was identified to an exceptional degree with the com- munity. Before 30 years of age he was one of the selectmen. The same year, 1847, he was school agent in the West Ward district. This office as well as member of the school committee he held repeatedly. He was justice of the peace and by the 1860's was marrying squire for country couples. As a school teacher he rated very high in the big districts and commanded
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LISHA PURINGTON (CENTER) AND FOUR OF HIS CHILDREN. (TOP EFT) PROFESSOR GEORGE C. AND FRANK O. PURINGTON. MRS. MMA (PURINGTON) CURTISS AND ELISHA ELMORE PURINGTON.
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top prices. He taught in District No. 3 of northeast Embden in 1849 and again in 1855 and was paid $75 for the latter term. He likewise kept school two terms - '57 and '58-in the big Dunbar school, No. 5. His sister, Harriet Ann Purington taught there in 1845 but three years later married Samuel B. George of Bowdoinham. She is buried in the Pierce-Purington grave- yard on the Brook road.
Elisha's children attended the Cragin school up the road and came from it relatively well equipped. The oldest, George Colby Purington, worked for two or three years before attending Bowdoin College to graduate with the class of '78. His brother, Frank O. Purington, lawyer of Mechanic Falls, Bowdoin '80, and a native of Embden, tells how George started as a teacher. He says :
"Some young man whose name I do not now recall came to my father, a member of the school committee, for examination and certificate to teach school on the west side of Black hill, toward North New Portland. My father thought he was not up to the requirements. Brother George, having heard a part of the ex- amination, allowed he could pass a better quiz himself. My father told him he had better try which he did successfully. William (Bill) Stevens, the agent of that school, hired him to teach two terms there in succession."
George Purington went from the school near Black hill to attend Dirigo Business College at Augusta under the principal- ship of D. M. Wall, and fitted himself in bookkeeping and pen- manship. He later taught those subjects at Bloomfield Academy, n Skowhegan; and at Yarmouth and Hebron Academies. While loing this he prepared for Bowdoin College. During summer racations he worked in Samuel Bunker's general store at North Inson. After graduating from college he was principal for hree years of the Brunswick High School, leaving for a similar osition two years with the Edward Little High School of Luburn. He was then appointed principal of the Farmington ormal School, remaining till his death. The school had a little ver 30 students when he went there. At the close of his serv- e it had 300.
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At his death he was described by one writer as "a masterful personality, born to organize and direct. He had a wide grasp of facts and principles and resolute persistence. His abounding energy was directed by a strong and sensitive conscience. All that he did was vivified by a zeal for righteousness."
Professor Purington was the idol of a large following of Farm- ington Normal graduates and died widely lamented. He had a range of interests - was one of the board of overseers of Bow- doin and on several occasions represented that body at the annual commencements. A graceful and ready speaker, he de- livered many addresses at teachers' meetings and at church and temperance gatherings. He was a past grand master of the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar of Maine and a mem- ber of the Maine Consistory of the Scottish Rite. He married December 26, 1878, Sarah C. Bailey, daughter of a Hebron preacher. She died in 1927 at Everett, Mass.
Their son, George Colby, Jr., born at Brunswick in 1880, fit- ted at Fryeburg Academy and graduated at Bowdoin in 1904. He taught in the high school at Houlton and in 1928 was princi- pal of the high school at Sanford. He has one son, George C., 3rd, now at Bowdoin.
Frank O. Purington, born at Embden in 1852, lived there till the town voted to issue $40,000 of railroad bonds, which impelled his father to sell the farm. Frank attended the common schools in Madison, then went to Hebron Academy and graduated from Bowdoin in '80. He taught school at Topsham, married Miss Addie P. Smullen of Harpswell and went to Mechanic Falls to teach school. He was admitted to the bar in 1884 and has practiced there since. Although never seeking office, he has been nominated several times for the State Legislature, both in Senate and House, and polled a creditable vote in a hopelessly Democratic constituency.
His oldest son, Frank H. (1889) graduated at Bowdoin in 1911 and his younger son, Ellison S. (1891), graduated at Bow- doin in 1912, studied two years in the Harvard Graduate school and worked five years, during the World War at the Bureau of
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Standards in Washington, D. C. Since then he has been in the employ of the John Hays Hammond Company and for quite a period was at Rome, as a representative of that company which had a contract with the Italian government to install its secret wireless system. The oldest child was a daughter, Builah F., who graduated from Colby College in 1906. She has taught in high schools of Maine, Massachusetts and New Jersey but of recent years has been teaching in the Walnut Hills High School of Cincinnati.
Frank O. Purington and a half-sister, Mrs. Mary Ella Lowell of Pendleton, Oregon, are the only surviving children of Elisha. Emma, oldest of Elisha's second family, graduated at Welles- ley College in 1885. While a girl at Embden she taught school in adjacent towns and later at Hebron Academy, Bridgton Academy and West Auburn High School. After graduation she was preceptress of the Madison, S. Dak., Normal school till her marriage in 1888 with Charles E. Curtiss, member of the faculty there. Subsequently she had a like position with the State Normal School at Weston, Oregon. The last thirty years of her life was at Clinton, Wis., and at Chicago, during which she devoted herself much to work in Sunday Schools and wom- en's clubs.
Elisha Elmore Purington (1857-1924) married in the West, settled near Burns, Harney county, Oregon, and engaged in the lumber business. His widow lives there and a daughter, grad- uate of the University of Oregon, married the county clerk of Harney.
Mary Ella Purington, remaining daughter of the old Embden family, has still a circle of devoted friends in that community. Her home, since her teaching days, has been mostly at Pendle- ton, Oregon, where her husband, Stephen Arthur Lowell for- merly of West Minot, has been a practicing lawyer since 1891. Mrs. Lowell began teaching in Embden when 15 years of age with the school in her grandfather's district (No. 6), continuing in Highland, Kingfield, Madison, Cornville, Bingham, Bridge- ton, Hebron, Wilton, Minot, Buckfield and Rockland. Their son,
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William Elisha Lowell, was educated at the University of Oregon and for over a decade has been doing newspaper work with the Associated Press. He has represented that organization in the State Capitol. at Helena, Montana. Mrs. Lowell's daughter married Holman B. Ferris, superintendent of schools at Helena. "My grandfather, John L. Williamson" Mrs. Lowell wrote from Oregon in 1927 "came to Embden from New Portland. One of the pleasantest memories of my girlhood was the Thanks- giving dinners at his house. We used to drive down the Brook road to North Anson and then two or three miles north past the cemetery. His house set back from the road and there was an apple orchard on the left as one turned into the lane that led up to the house. It was an old-fashioned house of two stories with the front door in the middle. Back of the house were some butternut trees that furnished us children many a happy hour.
" After the railroad to Solon was put through my grandfather moved back to New Portland. He had twelve children and my mother was the oldest. All are gone now except one - Mrs. Marilla Harmon, of Skowhegan, 86 years old. There were only three boys - Granville, John and Eben."
The Puringtons left Embden in the autumn of 1869 for Madi- son, where Elisha had purchased the Thurston place. There were then seven in the Purington family, including five of the six children. George B. Walker acquired the Purington farm. While the West Ward school building long ago disappeared, after serving Sylvester Jackson a while as a storehouse for farm implements, the Purington name has been given to a modern schoolhouse on the Kennebec River road, near the railroad sta- tion.
Teachers of the West Ward school were a capable line. Perhaps this was due to capable district agents there, such as [ Amos Hutchins, Elisha Purington, John Pierce, John Cragin, Owen A. Hutchins, William R. Jackson, Henry Williams, Alva Nichols, Charles F. Caldwell and Joseph W. Gordon. These ten were the only encumbents from 1845 to 1870, most of which time : the first four held the place somewhat in rotation. North Anson
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young women supplied excellent teaching talent for summer terms. Augusta Gale of that place taught the summer term in 1846 for $8, Amos Hutchins agent; Amelia Steward, also from North Anson, the summer term in 1847 for $7, Elisha Purington agent. Amelia Steward was a sister of Theodore M. Steward and died young while she was the wife of Mahlon Spaulding of Bos- ton. He then married Emily, the daughter of Franklin Smith of North Anson. During the winter of 1849 Amos Hutchins had been teaching at the village, where Harriet Palmer, (1835-1913) daughter of Dr. Isaac Palm- er was a pupil. She proved to be a mischievous girl at school and Hutchins had to reprove her considerably. The next year, when again in his home district, Amos rode up to Dr. Palmer's house one spring day and tendered her the Cragin term.
"I shouldn't think you would want me. I am such a bad girl," she retorted.
"Well it takes a rogue to catch a rogue," he replied. So she, then 15, began her teaching career in . 1850, At wages of $8. Amos was HARRIET (PALMER) WARE paid $23.34 as master of this Embden school the following vinter. Among Harriet Palmer's pupils were Fairfield Wil- iams and Hannah Cragin, his future wife, both eventually popular country teachers. Harriet Palmer - remembered well s the wife of Albert H. Ware (1827-1893), who was a graduate f Bowdoin in 1849, principal of Topsham Academy, attorney or many years at North Anson, and a highly educated man - aught sixteen terms of school before her marriage in 1856. One f these was in New Portland. Three others than her first term vere in Embden. Like many girls at that time, she attended
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Anson Academy between these district terms. Her brother, Albert Palmer, afterward a Baptist minister, one of whose four sons is now a professor in Brown University and another a Philadelphia physician, taught the Cragin school in 1854. Her daughter, Winifred Ware - now Mrs. David L. Bodfish, of Palmer, Mass. - graduated at the Academy in 1880, then at Kent's Hill Seminary and became a much beloved teacher in many schools, beginning at the Barron district No. 7 in 1877. She held important teaching positions in Maine and Massachu- setts, one of them as assistant to the principal of Anson Acad- emy. While teaching the Barron school, she had scholars, whose parents 25 years before had gone to school to her mother in the West Ward.
Eleanor Cragin, daughter of John, had the '51 summer term in her home district, followed that winter by Mary Marshall of Lawyer Marshall's family at North Anson. When Eleanor mar- ried Eben Pillsbury the next year they were much discussed as a very handsome couple. There was a succession of interesting teachers also the next few years with a quota of 30 odd scholars. F. B. Greaton taught two winter terms and the winter term of 1857 was taken by Georgianna Hutchins. John Cragin in 1860 hired his daughter, Hannah, for the summer and winter schools; when William Stevens became agent in '62, he engaged Mary E. Cragin for the summer at $12 and her older and more experienced sister, Hannah, for the winter at $47.80. Charles Purington built the school fires for $1 that winter.
Others down through the decade were Flora E. True (Mrs. Henry Caswell) for at least two winters; Flora A. Dyer (Mrs. Charles B. Clark) ; Olive Jackson, daughter of William and a granddaughter of the Wentworth family and Jennie Nichols who continued teaching till her marriage to Robert Wasson of North Anson. Robert and Alvah Nichols were then owners of the Cragin farm (in 18,68). Alvah Nichols in 1867 had married Sarah J. Marshall, herself a teacher of No. 9 school in '65. Hat- tie E. Pierce and Emma F. Sawyer (Mrs. James Perkins) taught there in the same period. Olive Jackson after a long teaching
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career in Embden married J. Frank Barron and has a splendid family of children and grandchildren.
In its product of excellent teachers no Seven Mile Brook family outdid the Paines. The Cragin school in '49 was taught by Parmelia Paine (1832-1851) for $8 and the winter term that year by Sybil Paine (1831-1921) her cousin. Parmelia was a daughter of Capt. Asa Paine of Anson. Later she had a schoc! by Fahi Pond. Sybil, daughter of Josiah Parker Paine, whose house was on the south side of the Brook, had nine terms of Emb- den schools before 1858 and was one of the famous teachers of all that region. Three of her schools in 1854, '55 and '57 were in the district by Bowens Mills and Caratunk Falls. Sybil in 1860 married Osborne Pierce of Caratunk, who had wooed her while she was in northeast Embden. Some of their grandchildren became residents of Skowhegan. Sybil's sister - Sarah Cragin Paine - born in 1823 taught the Cragin term in 1845 for $16.67, later marrying Dr. Percival Barton of St. Paul, a Civil War surgeon.
There were also notable teachers out of the family of Simeon Paine - even more closely allied with the Old Brook meeting house community than Asa and Josiah P., his brothers. Simeon's oldest son, Austin H. (1829-1874) was one of these. Austin was master of the Moulton school, west of Embden Pond, in 1854 when the district of 28 scholars received instruction at the house of Daniel Mullen. He afterwards associated with his brother, Frost Paine, in the North Anson firm of A. H. & T. F. Paine. Their sister, Ellen Francis Paine (1842-1884) was another old- time Embden teacher. She married in 1863 Amendicus B. Campbell, who, in 1857, taught where Austin was three years earlier. Amendicus, described as a capable and likely young man, was killed by lightning in 1868 while raking oats north of the house of his father, Given Campbell. His widow in 1871 married Edwin W. Bailey of Anson. Ellen's brother, Parker J. Paine, married Celestia N. Campbell, sister of Amendicus and in 1928 a resident of North Anson. Celestia's son, George E. Paine, graduate of Anson Academy in '82 and of Bates College
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in '86, has been a successful teacher but is also an ordained Free- will Baptist minister.
Almeda W. Paine, sister of Austin, Ellen and Parker J. Paine, was the wife of William Cutts, who lived near the old Methodist campground in Anson. The Cutts sons and daughters were all teachers. Dr. William B. Cutts, Academy '87, and Bates '91, taught at Haverford College grammar school, Haverford, Pa., for several years and is now a leading surgeon at Providence, R. I. His son, Frank B. Cutts, graduate of Harvard, was a vic- torious pitcher on the University nine. Oliver F. Cutts, brother of the surgeon, graduated at Bates in '96 and in 1903 at the Harvard Law School, where he was a star player on the University football team. Oliver is now Professor of Hygiene and Physical Education at Bates College. Ellie (Cutts) Knowlton of North Anson, their sister, was likewise a success- ful teacher for several years.
All the olden teachers of this Paine family, as mentioned, were grandchildren of Rev. William Paine (1760-1846), a veteran of the Revolution and an influential preacher in the Seven Mile Brook community. Three sons of his fifteen children settled at Mobile, Ala. James Paine (1806-1837) resided there but lost his life at sea off the coast of North Carolina, soon after his marriage to Mary Currier Dinsmore of Anson. William Sumner Paine, born in 1810, was a resident of the same state. The third brother, Samuel S. Paine (1798-1855) changed his name to William Moore when he moved to Mobile to become first an architect and then a clergyman. His later years were passed at North Anson but his family moved to Michigan after his death. Edward Bruce Moore (1851-1915) son of William, after holding several important positions in the Patent Office at Washington, was made Commissioner of Patents in 1907 as a recognition of efficient and faithful service.
The West Ward school of 1806 - with its first Embden school- house in 1809 and its first town meeting of 1815 in a public structure, town meetings were also on April 22, 1843, and March 4, 1844 - by no means monopolized for long the
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facilities for learning in that half of the town. The circle of settlers on the Brook rapidly extended eastward and northward. Quite as soon as the two schools in the east Ward were becoming three and as soon, likewise, as two in the middle Ward were increasing to the same number, Joseph Barron and Elisha Walker - almost within trumpet range of the meeting house - petitioned for a school of their own and at the annual town meet- ing of April 1, 1816, it was unanimously voted "to permit Elisha Walker, Joseph Barron and others to make a school district by themselves on their agreement not to ask for any more money than what they paid for support of schooling." Obviously this was not a large sum. Elisha at that date had but one scholar - his son Solomon, born in 1813; Joseph also, had but one scholar, Levi, born the same year.
However this school flourished for 80 years with a goodly population of Barron and Walker children. Samuel Thomas was master there in 1841 for $30.45. Several of the town's notable teachers, including Col. Perley F. Walker and Eldora and Ruth Barron, Joseph's granddaughters, learned their ABC's within its jurisdiction and under the roof of the little box house just north of Barron brook. This district, known as No. 7 by the town classification of 1823, was consolidated in recent times with other districts and the aged house was razed. The district com- prised a group of farms on the southern end of the Soule purchase. In 1830 it rated as the sixth largest Embden school.
Frank Williams, of Auburn, son of Fairfield, attended the large school there fifty years ago. "Mark Walker, (now of New Portland) and I were school boys there together," he wrote, "and fought many battles. We used to separate at the Barron corner till the next morning and we would wind up the day with a good one unless Old Lady Barron, seeing us, came out to send us on our respective ways."
Immediately north of it-as settlements in the Soule purchase and the territory above it continued - there soon arose demand for still another school. Moses Williams, town constable, living over by the New Portland line, posted a warrant for a
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town meeting Saturday October 13,1821, at the Wilson school- house in the middle Ward. Old Simeon Cragin was among those present, for the west Ward was interested in the proceedings. The Wentworth, Burns, Benjamin Pierce and Timothy, Ben- jamin and Abel Cleveland scholars were tributary to that school. Their quota of money made toward sufficient funds for two suc- cessful terms each year. The meeting chose Simeon as mod- erator but he declined to serve. James Wentworth - with his brother, Andrew, representing sufficient scholars to make a good sized school - was chosen in Simeon's stead.
The meeting "voted that the following tract of land from Lot No. 140 (measured at its southwest corner) to Lot No. 145 (James Wentworth farm) thence (east) to the great pond. thence south to Lot No. 110 (the Henry Copp farm of about 1900) east corner, thence west to the first mentioned bounds be a school district by themselves together with the inhabitants thereof. "'
Within a year or two this became known as District No. 8, with the Barron school as No. 7 and the Cragin school as No. 9. School population in No. 8 waxed rapidly, making it one of the town's largest schools. Its first house was a log cabin a few rods above the William H. McKenney stone house. This was well toward the north line of the district, which did not include the Eli Foss family high up the hill but did include the Alfred Holbrook and Daniel Goodwin families eastward on the mill stream. The two large Wentworth families, by the first wives of James and Andrew Wentworth, came easily to the log school, cutting across lots over Meadow Brook by a path traveled long years afterward. Up to recent times a few rotting logs could be seen upon this site - long after the cabin had been abandoned for a frame schoolhouse on the northwest corner of the cross road at its junction with the Wentworth lane. But the cabin and the later frame schoolhouse did not supply all the educa- tional shelter for pupils of the No. 8 district between 1823 and the late 1850's, for in that period town meetings repeatedly "set off" families and their real estate from No. 8 district, either to
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No. 9 district or other districts or to form separate districts by themselves. The later day farms of Amos Hilton and of George and William McKenney were taken out of No. 8 as early as 1838, only to be put back again in 1844 when the lines of the original district were revised so as to be bounded on the east by the mill stream.
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