USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 48
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Tax lists of the 1840's indicate a local industry, heretofore unmentioned - a shovel handle factory. Jacob Butterfield owned it in 1846., Embden assessors valued it at $300, which meant
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a money tax of $16.85 with $11.73 more for highways. The fol- lowing year Jacob Butterfield was taxed on a valuation of $800 for "land, factory privileges, etc.," but the tax was only $4.86, with $11.65 more to be worked out on the roads. After that year this property can not be identified on the assessors' lists. No location is written for either year and the owner was non- resident. Ebenezer Butterfield, probably a brother of Jacob and of Sarah Butterfield who married Elijah Wilson, was the owner at this time of 230 acres in range one, not far from the Kennebec.
The shovel handle factor, apparently a dwindling industry, may have been on some small power by Jackins brook. It could hardly have been on the outlet stream from Fahi Pond. James Collins of North Anson was deceased by 1847 but the John Wilson mill property was still taxed against the Collins' estate. The C. C. Marshall shovel handle factory of 50 years afterward was on Fahi stream a half mile below the Embden line.
There were numerous craftsmen among the settlers of the first half century, particularly workers in wood and iron. Black- smith shops, where horses could be shod, tires set on cart. wheels and other like tasks performed, existed in every neighborhood but eventually gave way to smithies in adjacent villages. Joseph Cleveland (page 69) had such a blacksmith shop on the east side of the highway from the Eli F. Foss hill, before he moved to Dead River. It was a little below the McKenney stone house, probably on the west side of Lot 112: Joseph was not on the Embden tax lists much later than 1850 and when David G. McKenney, after purchasing Lot 130 in 1846, erected this stone house in 1863 to be deeded four years later to his son, William H., the drills had to be taken to a more distant forge for sharp- ening. This neighborhood then comprised several families. It was where Alfred Holbrook lived for a time. Jacob Burns had the house where Jesse Wentworth afterward was. Its roof is now falling in. Benjamin Cleveland, son of Abel and a cousin of Joseph, was a resident in this neighborhood.
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For many years coffins were the handiwork of local carpen- ters. Calvin Getchell in 1855 was required to have the vote of the town before he could get his pay for one. Interment pre- sented graver problems. John McFadden, Edward Savage, Cyrus Boothby, Lemuel Witham, John Hilton, Ephraim Cragin, Joseph Knowlton, and Asahel Hutchins - all leading townsmen - were members of a committee in 1830 "to locate suitable burying places and be no expense to the town."
No further action appears to have been taken till a town meet- ing Sept. 5, 1835, when a line as follows was written: "Chose James Blagdon, James Daws and Christopher Thompson a com- mittee to locate burying grounds." A town meeting the fol- lowing March voted "not to except of the committee on locating burying grounds."
Like items on other topics of quaint interest in these later times appear frequently as one turns the ancient pages.
The annual cost of public charges (paupers) was burdensome although the actual total of money thus expended was not large. Almost the entire population became expert at battling poverty and the sympathy and kindliness of old-time neighbors were ex- pressed in forms that counted much toward keeping the wolf at bay. But here and there over a long span of years one may note in the records the name of an erstwhile prosperous man to whom in his old age the town extended a helping hand.
The pauper list numbered only six in 1838 and 1839 and two of these were children. They were auctioned off, as was cus- tomary then, at annual town meeting. The winning quotations in 1838 were respectively 50 cents, 45 cents, 40 cents, four shill- ings, and $1.45 per week, while the sixth was accepted "free of expense to the town as long as the girl behaves well." The next year three quotations were each 38 cents a week and one as low as 21 cents. Back in 1817 a settler who had been an Embden incorporator was falling upon evil days. The town fathers must have quailed before the cost of maintaining his family as the last bills were paid. They first "bound by inden- tures" two of his children. The annual appropriation "to de- fray town charges" in 1817 was $150, of which probably about
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a third or so was estimated to be for support of persons who were "on the town."
This particular settler, or some of his family, went to Bel- mont in Waldo county. Expenses for him were soon reported from there. Andrew McFadden made a trip thither. Embden paid him $5 and Ephraim Sawyer had to be recompensed for $27 more loaned to finance the journey. Joshua Gray received $19 for money and provision sent to Belmont, within a month ; Benjamin Colby was paid $22, Moses Thompson, $19.85 and Joshua Gray again $8.71 on the same account. There were still other payments till April 24, 1818, when John Rowe received a town order for $4 for "horse hire to Belmont" to bring the old settler home.
Pathetic as such cases unquestionably were, there was often a humorous side. A frequent measure of relief in the earlier years was to provide the impoverished family with a cow. Dan- iel Goodwin in 1839 got $6 for keeping a pauper's cow and for plowing the same pauper's land. The same year $5 was paid for hay for another cow in the same kind of service. When one poor fellow's son came to a final reckoning in the winter of 1834, the burial was at town expense. The grave was dug for $.86 by one of Embden's future preachers and town orders were issued for $1.25 each to a half dozen farmers for " help in bury- ing the boy." The town in those days performed such services as patching the pauper's roof, "holling" his wood and "work- ing it up" for the fire. Doctors from North Anson, Solon and New Portland were frequently called to attend these needy poor. Dr. George W. Stickney of North Anson, had a bill of $14.50 which the town paid in 1829 and Dr. Zachariah Spaulding of Bingham a bill for $5 for professional services in 1832. Dr. Mortimer Bodwell (1805-1887) of Solon had a bill to Embden of $4.75 in 1845; Dr. Stickney one for $5.45 and Dr. George B. Rawson for $2.50. In 1839 Dr. Bodwell's bills against the town amounted to $69.13. Medical costs for unfortunates sometimes ran into larger figures and there were townsmen on the watch towers when dollars were difficult to get. The March meeting of 1830 voted "that the last bidders support the poor the pres-
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ent year and not pay doctor's bills if called on." Parsimony was in the saddle and, as no money was raised to pay for town charges, another meeting assembled the following October to appropriate $75 for that purpose.
That same meeting, however, commenced a suit against one of the Solon Jewetts to recover a bill for an Embden man's "Gaol Board." Such items of expense to the town against persons languishing at Norridgewock were often presented while im- prisonment for debt was permitted by statute.
Many more entries that read quaintly abound in the town treasurer's accounts. A drawback of $.38 was allowed in 1818 "for reasons of poverty" and $19.45 paid in jail charges for another townsman. Another drawback of $1.65 was granted "by reason of infirmity." Reuben Wilson about the same time got $.21 for "property overrated" and $3.48 went as a draw- back to two "sufferers by fire." There were many of these drawbacks, some for errors in the assessment of taxes. Elijah Grover, the millman at Caratunk Falls, had a "discount" of $2.75 in 1837 for "being overtaxed." Along in 1854 numerous town orders were issued "for over work," at "four shillings on the dollar"- several of them for widows. The context, how- ever, indicates payments were to persons or estates that had ex- ceeded the necessary quota of labor in building and mending roads. The farmers "worked out" their highway taxes for quite a hundred years and little or no money passed.
Emoluments of local office were undoubtedly welcome. Town orders for "services" occur in great numbers through all the years. Although these were in modest sums under modern standards, olden records plainly emphasize how such pieces of writing were tucked away in well worn wallets to be handed to the tax collector or passed over to the village trader for house- hold needs. Selectmen made out their bills for surveying roads, for attending court and a great variety of other errands on pub- lic business ; constables for posting warrants - services, services well and truly performed for which these local officials were fully entitled to compensation. For cashing these orders and keeping his books and safeguarding the town's money the
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treasurer, too, eventually received a town order for services. In faded ink on aged pages that are well preserved runs thus the story of Embden costs in local government.
Uncle Sam cut a melon during the second administration of Andrew Jackson. The shower of ducats for all the people meant a sprinkling for Embden folks. The surplus in the Treasury at Washington was distributed to the states. The states in turn distributed to the towns. At an Embden town meeting of April 3, 1837, the following entries were made :
"Voted to receive this town's proportion of its Deposits from the Treasurer of the State of Maine. Chose Cyrus Boothby. agent to go after the money. Voted to divide the money accord- ing to the population of said town." Action was recinded later as to distribution and provision was made for loans of from $20 to $100 with Christopher Thompson, James Y. Cleveland and Cyrus Boothby as a board on loans.
This applied to one or more of the earlier installments. The warrant of Sept. 11, 1837 to Constable Ebenezer F. Stevens car- ried an article "to see if the town (will) vote to appropriate the fourth installment of the Surplus Revenue fund or any part thereof for the purpose of paying the debts that is against the town." The meeting decided to pass this article by. At a meet- ing April 2, 1838, it was voted : "to distribute the surplus money, to pay the expenses attached to the surplus money out of the same ; to make a dividend of the surplus money April the 3rd .; that the old Committee settle with the inhabitants as it relates to the surplus money and hire $200 to discharge the town from what they owe the inhabitants by the first Monday of July next ensuing."
The above record, quoted verbatim, indicates something of a tangle. The outcome is left more or less uncertain, although by April of 1838 the treasurer's book shows that distribution to in- dividuals was under way. The town orders at first indicated the payments were "the revenue money" or "surplus money." Presumably all Embden heads of households received payments but the records furnish no assurance on that point. Orders by the treasurer during 1838 specifically for this account were :
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Jonas Jones, $13.38; Mathew Daggett, $6.05; Jonathan Cate, $3.30; Robert Crosby, $10.40; Joseph Chick, $3.30; John "Strickling," $8.24; James Albee, $9.27; John Cragin, $8.72; Cyrus Cleveland, $5.30; Isaac Burns, $2.27; Daniel D. Strick- land, $4.29; Benjamin Pierce, $14.59; H. Purington, $3.26; Jo- seph Barron, $4.44; James McKenney, $3.48; Cyrus Boothby, treasurer of the surplus revenue $27.21; John Sally, $4.18; Henry Daggett, $7.90; Jacob Young, $3.36; Benjamin Gould, $3.30; John Pierce, $15.62; Jacob Stetson, $8.24; Eli Clark, $2.00; Jonathan Copp, $2.12; Mindwell Young, $3.82; Nathan Thompson, $7.60; Jonathan Stevens, $8.66; Jonathan Cleveland, $8.14.
These were only a part of the Embden residents of the 1830's, and a few of them, like Jonathan Cate, who was first at Embden, soon moved to Caratunk and later seems to have resided in Embden again, may have lived in unorganized territory north- ward. Many property owners presumably turned their revenue money in on their taxes and the tax collector, rather than the town treasurer, made note of the transaction. .
Early Embden was thrilled quite as thoroughly as early Con- cord with the daring exploits of Maj. Ephraim Heald (1734- 1815), the Daniel Boone of the upper Kennebec. His trader's cabin where he bartered in furs with the Indians and had a life and death struggle with Susup, was on the Leadbetter intervale not far north of the Embden line. Some of his sons and daugh- ters married in that region and lived thereabouts long after he had returned to his adopted town of Temple, N. H.
A mighty and a persistent hunter, Maj. Heald "amassed quite a property by chaffer in the hides of foxes, bears, wolves and other animals which he killed in his constant pursuit of game. His favorite hunting grounds were the wildest he could find."
But he was likewise an exemplary citizen. He and his brother, Deacon Peter Heald, and Oliver, probably a cousin, came from Townsend, Mass. They were among the first settlers near a road swamped through the forest for troops en route to Indian wars. He called the first town meeting and was the first chairman of the board of selectmen. Heald Mountain, 1985 feet high, was named for him and by 1774 he had become the largest tax-payer
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in the town. He headed in 1775 the signers of an address that accompanied the town's gift of 40 bushels of rye to the suffering poor of Boston and was one of nineteen who marched to Cam- bridge April 19, 1775, serving eleven days. A census of Temple that year showed he had two sons, six daughters, two guns and no powder. A local chronicler suggested there was no powder because the Major was just back from a bear hunt.
Deacon Peter was known as a Tory and Maj. Ephraim was at times under suspicion but probably unjustly. He had a com- mission from King George's government to incorporate the town of Temple at the outbreak of the Revolution and did not think he should take up arms against the king till he had fulfilled that mission. He was a major before the Revolution began. An "In- quisition Town Meeting" was held at Temple in 1777. After he had declared in answer to a pointed inquiry that he thought the colonies were justified in attacking the Mother country it was "voted to desire Maj. Heald that he would not go a hunting at this present time."
Both before and after the Revolution, Maj. Heald had a suc- cession of exciting encounters. He was in one of the Quebec campaigns when about 22 years old. Not long afterward he and two men, Whitney and Reed, started for the Androscoggin river in search of Indian scalps. These then commanded a bounty of $1,000. During a surprise attack Whitney was killed and Reed was wounded. Maj. Heald ran for his life. He stubbed his toe and fell, so that the Indian tomahawks flew over his head. Finally from behind a big tree he shot an Indian pursuer. This was the second Red Skin he killed during the Androscoggin ad- venture.
Even seven years after Yorktown the Upper Kennebec was a very distant point from New Hampshire but in 1791 Maj. Heald set out for Concord, Me., with a consignment of rum, molasses and calico. He is said to have been there a year or two before that on a hunting trip. A bad Indian, Susup, roamed in Con- cord; also his brother, John Hart and their father, Sabbie.
Susup liked rum and was a suppliant at the Heald cabin. When refused more than the customery dole of a gill Susup grabbed Maj. Heald by the hair, pulled him around roughly
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and threatened to kill him when there came a chance. Before long Susup's squaw arrived to warn the Major. Although deprived of firearms by the other Indians, Susup soon followed in the wake of his squaw. He had a big pebble, the size of his fist, as a weapon and he fought his way through the two-inch plank door of the cabin, where Maj. Heald then shot him in the shoulder and beat him with a gun barrel. Susup crawled away but never entirely recovered. He finally died at Bangor after a drunken brawl.
Perhaps dangers from Indians bent upon revenge moved Maj. Heald ultimately to return to Temple in his declining years. There he was again setting his two big bear traps of steel with "teeth like a fox trap only larger and closing under instead of over." He caught a large bear at Temple in 1808. It weighed 300 pounds when dressed. Maj. Heald was dead, however, by 1815 when the last great bear hunt at Temple was held. Although a man of great prowess, who faced perils in the trackless wilds without fear, he could not swim. Because of this the Indians more than once almost got him.
After his death the farm at Temple was sold to a family by the name of Avery in which were seven sons. In the house was an old fashioned clock with brass works that the Major had brought from Boston in 1770 with an ox team. The Avery boys took the "works" out of this fine old English clock and made a water wheel down at the brook. The clock case remained for years and years in the attic but once when Stickney Gray of North Anson and his daughter, Evie, went to Temple for an Old Home week and reunion of the Healds and Cragins, the family gave the case to her. She has this heirloom of the old Concord hunter at her residence in North Anson.
Unusual length of days fell to many Embden settlers and so it has been with descendants after them. It will be recalled how Thomas McFadden rounded out a full century on his intervale by the Kennebec, that Elder Isaac Albee and his wife and sister-in-law survived four score and ten years. Col. Christopher Thompson died at 98. Longevity has been and is an outstanding feature with these serious minded, earnest people.
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The oldest Embden man of this day is Fairfield Williams of Madison. Ruth Cross town clerk of Embden has so writ- ten him this year. March 2, 1929, marked his 90th mile- stone. Close upon him is Cephas Walker of Madison, who on Feb. 27, 1929, passed his 89th milestone as a native of the same town. Embden Town of Yore, in its youth as a printed volume, is delighted to salute them.
While printers are locking the last form a new captain appears. Embden men and
FAIRFIELD WILLIAMS
women of careers are still carrying on as they have been through every generation since the pioneers. The elec- tion of Grant Pierce (1881) of Providence as president of the National Radiator Corpo- ration is only further evi- dence to that end. Thus the radiator king, John Bartlett Pierce, from Gordon hill has a successor in his nephew from the old millseat by the foot of Embden Pond (pages 339 and 390).
The great industrial enter- GRANT PIERCE prise that the older Pierce captain fostered has progressed to further consolidations and be- come one of the largest concerns of its kind in the world. The
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newer Pierce captain takes charge of headquarters in New York City after service of 20 years with the American Radiator Com- pany.
Grant Pierce, while a boy, went from Embden to Fairfield Center with his parents and from there continued his education till he graduated from Bowdoin College in 1903. He married Ethel S. Durgin in 1913. They have two sons, Lincoln (1916) and Henry C. (1918), the latter named for his grandfather.
As he closes his desk and waits for the roar of the printing press, the writer would add a few more lines. Although his home and interests have long been in Washington, D. C., the preparation of this book with the endless research involved has brought vividly back to him forgotten scenes of his boyhood. If the foregoing pages hold the attention of people who are inter- ested in Embden, some readers in putting the volume down may be moved to ask "Who is the man that wrote it?"
The boy who became that man was born in the house formerly on the adjacent hilltop but now between the fork of highways a half mile or so below Lake Embden. He is descended on his father's side from the Walker, Berry, Moulton, Gould and Grant families and on his mother's from the Wentworth, Burns, Dawes and Spencer lines. Most of these were at some time of Embden. He attended the Holbrook school across the field, the North New Portland high school and Anson Academy, where he graduated in 1886 and is a former member of the board of trustees. He next attended Colby College for two years and before he was 20 was principal of the Skowhegan High School and Bloomfield Academy and had also been elected superintendent of schools in Embden. He then entered Harvard College and graduated in the famous class of 1892.
An opportunity at the Smithsonian Institution brought him to Washington, where he began furnishing special articles to the local newspapers. These soon led to his devoting himself en- tirely to newspaper work. He was successively reporter, city editor, Sunday editor and leading political writer on the Wash- ington Post. He wrote extensively on national politics, was a member of the Senate press gallery and between sessions of
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Congress traveled over almost the entire country writing about party conventions and political campaigns during the admin- istrations of Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson.
He was selected in 1905 as head of the Boston Herald Bureau, then regarded as one of the most desirable assignments at Wash- ington, and was that paper's Washington correspondent for ten years till he took up similar work for the Springfield (Mass.) Republican and the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee. He wrote also for Maine papers - the Lewiston Journal, Portland Express, Kennebec Journal and Bangor Commercial among others - and had his own bureau which served readers half the way around the world from the Birmingham (Eng.) Post to the Syracuse (N. Y.) Post Standard, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser at Honolulu and the Manilla (P. I.) Times. Several of these news- paper connections lasted for twenty years. He is an active member and a former president of the Gridiron Club of Wash- ington correspondents.
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He has seen Washington grow from a leisurely old time city to an impressive world capital and in later years has devoted himself to business enterprises growing out of that interesting development. He married Romaine Mannix, daughter of Capt. D. Pratt Mannix, United States Marine Corps, who died in com- mand of the Marine barracks at Washington. Mrs. Walker's ancestry through her mother (Ella Butler Stevens) is inter- woven with each successive generation of the life of the Capitol City. They have one son, Mannix Walker, who graduated from Harvard in 1926 and is now an officer of career in the govern- ment's foreign service with assignment to Barranquilla, Colom- bia as vice consul.
RESIDENCE OF ERNEST G. WALKER AT 2112 S STREET, N. W., WASHINGTON, D. C., WHERE THIS HISTORY WAS WRITTEN.
DATA FROM EMBDEN TOWN RECORDS AND U. S. CENSUS RETURNS
Chapter XXXVI -LIVED THERE LONG, LONG AGO (A list of taxpayers by decades.)
Chapter XXXVII - WHEN EVERY NOSE WAS COUNTED (The official census of families in 1850.)
Chapter XXXVIII - SET TO RULE OVER US (Names of town officers up to 1900.)
Chapter XXXIX - TILL DEATH US DO PART (Complete marriage records 1904 to 1892.)
CHAPTER XXXVI
LIVED THERE LONG, LONG AGO
Embden clans of long ago pass in interesting procession on the yellow pages of the tax lists. Between the lines thereof is a chronicle of generations that rose and crossed the rural stage and of the movement Westward Ho.
The pioneer faced the town assessors on an average quota of 100 acres, rated from poor and middling land to good land and taxed accordingly. He had oxen, valued in the 1820's at $15 a yoke, rarely more than one horse at $25, three or more cows at $10 each and several head of young stock. His sons also were soon on the lists, often starting only with a poll tax but expand- ing quickly to the ownership of a small tract, upon which was erected first a barn and then a house. Each son acquired a cow or two, as many pigs at $2 a piece and eventually a horse and a yoke of oxen till his estate approached his father's in impor- tance. By 1830 or 1840 the pioneer's earthly possessions were waning, because he had deeded most of these, with a condition for support of himself and wife, to one or more of his children. His later appearances on the tax books were as a poll and he was sometimes exempted from paying even that.
Little wonder that for 30 or 40 years - while there were constant accessions of settlers from without and prior to the tidings about rich lands in the Mississippi valley - Embden grew rapidly. Scan the school census of 1825 in Embden, for example. That year Moses Ayer, Ichabod Foss, John Gray, Abner T. Miles and Isaac Salley had eight scholars each in their families; Abel Cleveland, Benjamin Colby, Jr., Archa Dunlap, Asahel Hutchins, Caleb Williams and Moses Williams had seven each; Edward Savage, Daniel Savage, Daniel Spaulding and Jonathan Stevens had six each and so on. These were not ex- ceptional figures. Joseph Durrell in 1833 had ten scholars under his rooftree. But these were not all, for in most cases there were youngsters under school age in these families.
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