USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 5
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PAYING THE PROPRIETORS
Ella Bryant (Mrs. J. A. Chandlee, of California and Law- rence, Mass.), another daughter of Jonas; her cousins, Alice and Emma F., (Mrs. Allen Wilson) and Adelia Bryant, Mrs. Greene's half sister, were all teachers at some time in No. 10 and shared the happy family life of their kinsman's house. These are but a few of Dr. Bezar's many descendants. They are still numerously represented in Anson and the neighboring towns. Lucy, daughter of Jonas, married Benjamin Dinsmore. Her daughter Alice married Rev. William Sewell and her daughter Elizabeth married Frank Holley, of North Anson, who has had long and distinguished service in both branches of the Maine legislature. He was Speaker of the House and in 1926 President of the State Senate. 1127442
Joseph Greene lived to a serene old age. He championed local improvements and had disagreements with Deacon Benjamin Moulton, his neighbor northward. He urged the town to better roads, particularly along the west side of Embden Pond to his homestead. This highway, passing the present group of sum- mer cottages along the shore, was long known as Greene road. The town in 1840 voted $800 for repairs, much of which was spent on that thoroughfare leading up through Embden and into Concord's "Lost Nation." Some years later, in 1845, he was elected a selectman. As justice of the peace he performed mar- riages for sons and daughters of settlers he had established in the northwest neighborhood. His farm buildings were burned on June 12, 1872. His farm then consisted of 290 acres. After his death his widow moved to Hackensack, New Jersey, where she lived the remainder of her life with a niece, Mrs. Ad- die Smith Trowbridge and to whom she left most of the ma- hogany furniture from Embden. This is now owned by a daughter, Josephine, who married Henry Durham, an engineer in Central America. Joseph Greene and his wife are buried in Sunset Cemetery at North Anson.
CHAPTER III
LET'S GET THAT WOLF, ASAMUEL!
Voyaging in a bark canoe with a friendly Indian as pilot one of Embden's first settler groups - possibly the first permanent pioneer family - was breasting the current of the beautiful Kennebec in the late spring of 1782. A little woman, with four small children, was in charge. She and her oldest son of six, aided by the redskin were greatly occupied with the double task of maneuvering the craft and leading a precious cow along the bank. Important as transportation may have been, subsistence must likewise be considered.
They had travelled in this wise from well down toward the mouth of the river. It hardly need be said they had had a long and tedious journey. Progress had been attended with adventures. When they reached about where the town of Sidney now is, the Indian disappeared with the baby, then little more than a year old. The agony of the young mother, alone in the wilderness with three other children, having no weapon except an axe and knowing that bears and wolves as well as Indians were plentiful thereabouts, can be imagined. But she was a courageous soul, not easily daunted and she camped right where the Indian had left her. After a day or two he returned saying :
"Squaw no want white baby. She got papoose enough now." With that he resumed the interrupted journey. Presumably he had taken the child to show to his squaw, because she had never seen a white one.
On and on far up the river they voyaged and finally reached the mouth of Seven Mile Brook. There they turned the canoe - and likewise the cow - westward. The Indian carried the craft and the few household goods around the half mile of rapids at the present village of North Anson. Paddling about three miles further against a placid current, with occasional stretches of rough water to the point where the stream turns northward, Olive Robbins Hutchins (1745-1836) and her four offspring found a quiet shore. There she rested. The way had been
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through a dense forest on either bank but here was a large level expanse, attractive for a homestead.
Her husband, Capt. Samuel Hutchins (1749-1788) was at this time away in the army. He came from the town of Temple across the New Hampshire line from Chelmsford, Mass., where his bride had resided. A few days after the alarm at Lexington and Concord he marched with a squad of patriots from the Chelmsford-Temple community and had command of a company at Bunker Hill. After three months' service he returned to Chelmsford, then a thriving colonial town, occupied with
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THE HUTCHINS HOMESTEAD
manufactures. But Tories and Indians harassed him and his little family there and before long he moved away to the mouth of the Kennebec.
Probably during his residence there he made one or more trips up the river and had camped on the intervale, which he was able to describe to his wife. It has long been recorded that Samuel Hutchins and a Mr. Young - likely enough David Young of Madison but before that of the Woolwich-Wiscasset neighborhood - were first to locate in southwest Embden. This Mr. Young, however, did not stay there long. There were continued annoyances from the Indians at Damariscotta, where Samuel had domiciled his family for about two years. Further- more, while their fourth child, Asahel, was still little more than
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EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
an infant, and while Samuel was absent on another tour of military duty there was an alarm of a British invasion of the lower Kennebec Valley. This impelled Mrs. Hutchins to flee. When her husband returned from his service he followed her and their little ones northward to where they had pitched their camp. He approved of her choice of an abiding place. They settled there and began the foundations for Embden's finest farm and for one of the town's most creditable families.
As one rides these days toward New Portland, passing what used to be known as the George L. Eames place, now the Hun- newell place, along a row of maples that flank the highway, the eye rests at the left upon a broad and beautiful intervale, of many alluvial acres, with New Portland Hill rising gently away from the near-by stream. The exact site of the Hutchins dom- icile of that day is lost but the traveller is within close range. One can guess the location with but a few rods of error. In divers particulars as to Embden, New Portland and Anson, the country hereabouts is of historic importance.
There is confusion of dates in the meager chronicles as to whether Capt. Samuel Hutchins was actually the first settler. It is recorded that the first settlements were made along the Kennebec by Amos Partridge, George Michael and William Hamilton in 1779. Partridge does not appear in any documents thus far observed, but George Michael on Nov. 14, 1789, ex- changed his Lot No. 18 in Embden for a farm at Georgetown, owned by Thomas McFadden. Neither Hamilton, Michael nor Partridge was a permanent settler. Jacob Williams and wife, Joanna, and their son Caleb arrived at Augusta on a boat bring- ing supplies to Fort Western and, as one authority phrases it, "started for the Kennebec in 1781." Perhaps Jacob Williams was the first permanent settler in Embden and the earliest hon- ors in that regard may belong to Caratunk settlement.
Tradition on Seven Mile Brook and in the contiguous neigh- borhood of New Portland Hill seems boastful on two points ; that Samuel Hutchins was the first settler in Embden and that Sally Hutchins, born June 4, 1782, was the first native white child there. Some accounts run that Capt. Samuel came in 1781. But be that as it may Sally and her descendants are well
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LET'S GET THAT WOLF, ASAMUEL!
established with their pennant. It is of record that Daniel was born July 22, 1782, the second son and child of Jacob and Joan- na Williams.
Capt. Samuel seems to have been first in the Embden portion of the Seven Mile Brook Settlement. But there were Anson settlers before him farther down the stream. His older brother, David Williams Hutchins, born in 1746, was the first settler in 1783 at New Portland. It was in the portion of that town which belonged also to the Seven Mile Brook Settlement. David's farm was divided from Capt. Samuel's by the Brook and this elder brother founded, too, a family famous for its teachers, preachers and business men.
Capt. Samuel had five toilsome years on his intervale lot, be- fore he yielded his frontier struggle and was laid to rest on the abrupt hillside north of the big barn and brick house of the pres- ent day. There was too much hard work for him and his wife, Olive Robbins, of Chelmsford, whom he married May 20, 1773, for them to dwell unduly on their privations. His brother, David, and wife, Mary Munroe Emery, with six or seven chil- dren were within call and there was lively interest in other set- tlers, now and then arriving. The New Portland pioneers, Sam- uel Gould, Solomon Walker and Capt. Josiah Parker, were near neighbors but did not bring their families thither till after Capt. Samuel was passing on. There were a few neighbors down the Brook, including the Paines, Albees and McKenneys, near where the combination log fort and first meeting house of 1788 was raised. But Jonathan Albee (1743-1844) and his son Rev. Isaac (1766-1861) did not come up from North Anson to their acres near the old watering trough till about 1788 and it may have been that James McKenney built his cabin and charcoal pit, in the same neighborhood, a year or two afterward and had been there only as a hunter with a camp. Accordingly when Capt. Samuel closed his eyes forever it was upon a very prim- itive Seven Mile Brook. Wild geese in great flocks flew in season to the well watered country of the blue mountains west- ward, and back again. Fish there were in plenty. The great migration into Maine from Massachusetts and New Hampshire through Woolwich, Wiscasset, Georgetown and Dresden, al-
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though then in progress for a few years, had not penetrated at all strongly that far northward.
Prior to this date of 1781 or 1782 Embden had been traversed considerably by white men journeying between the Chaudiere River and the Maine coast via Canada Trail. Settlers in Anson and Madison had prospected the region. They, as well as hunters and trappers from down the river, had brought out word as to where good intervales were. About this time Wil- liam Hilton, from Wiscasset, and his wife Katherine McKenney were getting their lines down as the first settlers in Solon. But old Moses Ayer, the Englishman, was still living at Winthrop and Island H of 88 acres, and a small island of five acres to the west, both a little below the site of the old Solon ferry, were not set off to him till 1791. Old Moses Thompson, of George- town, had not yet gone to Solon for brief residence before em- barking on his career in Embden. Maj. Ephraim Heald had not yet arrived in Concord from Temple, N. H. All the upper Ken- nebec above Seven Mile Brook was decidedly a virgin country. The handful of pioneers there, almost to a man, were veterans of the Revolution.
Capt. Samuel was born at Concord, Mass., and learned the trade of carpenter. His great-grandfather, John Hutchins, was a ship's carpenter on board the "Friendship" in 1636 when she sailed for the new world and landed him at Newbury, Mass. The family lived for three generations in that section of Massa- chusetts, some at Haverhill and along the Merrimac River. The Embden Samuel had located at Temple, N. H., by the time he was 25 years old. Some three years before that he was paying court to Olive Robbins. Whether Samuel was residing at Chelmsford temporarily or not he enlisted from there May 6, 1775, in Capt. Ezra Town's Company, and Col. James Read's Regiment. He was mustered in July 11, serving three months and three days. His name was spelled "Hutchens" by the Massachusetts Militia authorities. They described him as a young man five feet, eight inches tall, with blue eyes and brown complexion. At the battle of Bunker Hill, heading this company of volunteers, Capt. Samuel was twice hit by flying bullets but not seriously wounded.
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LET'S GET THAT WOLF, ASAMUEL !
His son, Asamuel, (1776-1840) grew to manhood, married Anna Rines and became a physician in New Portland. They had eight children - Asenath, Samuel, John, Fannie, Thomas, Lorilla, Betsey and Ira Hutchins. Capt. Samuel's other chil- dren were : Olive and Asenath, both of whom died young; Asa- hel (1780-1859), who married Polly Savage born in 1786, a daughter of Charles and Margaret Rose Savage, and became a prominent man in Embden; and Sally, already mentioned. Her husband was Reuben Hill, of Candia, N. H., who lived in New Portland. Their large family born between 1802 and 1825, included Washington, Hiram, Reuben J., Warren, Julia, Fidelia, Filinda, Filene, Sally, Olive, Nancy F. and James M. Hill. Their mother, Sally Hutchins Hill died Sept. 15, 1856. Hiram Hill, (1803) was taxed at Embden in 1825 and for a few years lived on Lot 189, a little below North Village. Nancy F. Hill was a school teacher and settled in Chicago where she lived to an ad- vanced age and became wealthy through fortunate real estate speculations.
The Embden headstone says that Capt. Samuel was 42 years old at his death on Christmas Day of 1791. In any event his widow maintained herself and children on their settler's lot for more than 15 years till Asamuel, Asahel and Sally were grown up and married. It is of official record on Samuel Tit- comb's survey map of 1790 that the Hutchins lot then belonged to "widow Olive Hutchins, Asam and Asahel Hutchins." This seems to prove that Capt. Samuel's death was prior to 1790.
The cow, brought up the Kennebec, was housed in a shack near the cabin. A fireside tale long told runs that, one night a wolf climbed upon the roof and to the consternation of the widow and her children, got into the cow shed. They grasped whatever implements of warfare were at hand. Young Asamuel accom- panied his mother who with an ax, smashed the marauder a death blow.
Widow Olive Hutchins a very small but intrepid woman ap- pears here and there in the chronicles of the time. She was an active member of the Brook Meeting House, where her name was on many subscription lists. On one occasion she gave $20 to- ward a stove. Probably it was there she became acquainted with
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Rev. Edward Locke (1744-1826), an unlettered preacher, iden- tified alike with the founding of the organization and with vig- orous schisms that ensued. They married Aug. 16, 1814, when both were nearly seventy years of age. She outlived him by ten years and lies in the old Hutchins yard between her two hus- bands. Her headstone bears this memorial :
Here lies a mother who was good Whoever did whate'er she could To ease the suffering of the poor Then fell asleep at Mercy's door.
Capt. Samuel Hutchins' headstone has a like memorial in- scription, as has Rev. Edward Locke who is credited with having written all three of them. The verses to those two respectively read as follows :
Here lies a father true and kind Who fought on Bunker Hill to find That liberty which we maintain And died at last in hope of gain.
Here lies a man who long had tried To hold up truth, to teach and guide But now has gone to his reward To dwell forever with the Lord.
Capt. Asahel Hutchins (1780-1859), the second son, carried on after the death of his father and eventually came into pos- session of the homestead. He is still remembered as a very kindly man. In old age he became blind. At mathematics he was very adept. He and Polly Savage had eleven children, several of whom attained notable stations in life. The first was Warren Hutchins (1806-1866) who married Lucinda Wil- liams and lived in New Portland, the second was Amos (1807- 1874) who succeeded his father on the big farm. He was not only a forceful character but a town leader. His first wife was Abihail Cleveland (1810-1866), daughter of Luther, the pioneer. They had six children. His second wife was Naomi S. Hilton (1830-1912), a granddaughter of Pioneer John Hilton.
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LET'S GET THAT WOLF, ASAMUEL!
During their married life Amos was a resident of North Anson, living in a pretentious residence, next the Congregationalist church, known in later years as the Bodfish house. He also built a store and was a merchant. Although sometimes regarded as eccentric he was a public spirited citizen. In Embden he served many years as first selectman and had a lively interest in educa- tion. He became a famous schoolmaster and numerous an- ecdotes are told in that connection. He was blind in one eye. When an unruly lad in his school called him " A seven sided old fool" the story goes that Master Amos replied :
"Prove it and I will not lick you."
And the boy proceeded : "Top side, bottom side, back side, front side, inside, outside and your darned old blind side."
The children of Amos and Abigail Hutchins included Emma Frances (1837-1856) who married. Henry Bartlett and died at Phillips, Me .; Owen Alonzo (1831-1901) who married Ann Quint and had a son and daughter born at Stratton; and Georgiana Olivia (1841-1880) a school teacher who died in Ohio. Capt. Asahel Hutchins' oldest daughter was Olive L. (1810- 1878) who became Mrs. Rodney Collins of the well known North Anson family and mother of Edwin Collins, the merchant. Their other children were: James, Nancy, Annette, Harris and Olive (Mrs. John Frost, of Providence, R. I.). The next daugh- ter, Sally (1812-1841) married John Cragin, a neighbor of the Hutchinses. Hannah Hutchins, one year younger than her sis- ter, married Charles Chauncey Burr, a handsome and brilliant man. She, beautiful and talented, wrote excellent poetry but . returned to her father's house and was said to have died of a broken heart. A still younger daughter, Zilpha R., (1817) was the wife of Abraham Spooner of New Portland.
But genius flowered especially in the family through the daughter, Lydia Ring Hutchins (1819-1891), and her marriage in 1840 with Paulinus Mayhew Foster (1811-1861) a lawyer at North Anson, who handled several cases of importance for the town of Embden. He was a Whig senator from Somerset county in 1849 and '50 the latter year also president of the Senate. Their seventh child Ben Foster (1852-1926) born at North An- son was the landscape artist of international reputation. A
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EMBDEN TOWN OF YORE
BEN FOSTER
CHARLES FOSTER
younger son, Charles Foster, now of the Artists' Colony at Farmington, Conn., is quite as talented as his brother but has not produced as much work and shuns publicity.
After living at Richmond, Me., Ben Foster joined his older brothers in New York City. One of these was Carlos Foster who was a business man there. Ben loved art and efforts in that line became to him an ever increasing purpose, until finally, af- ter years of endeavor, he was able to abandon all other work and devote himself exclusively to painting. He studied at Paris for a year and, returning to America, grew rapidly in favor. He was awarded a medal at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, painted under the greatest masters in this country and abroad including Abbott H. Thayer, of Boston and Merson and Morot of Paris. He was also honored in literary circles. He belonged to notable New York clubs and in the quality of his wit and kindly humor was a very popular after-dinner speaker.
He liked to sketch along Seven Mile Brook, by the banks of which he and his mother before him were born and every sum- mer found him there. His picture "Lulled by the Murmuring Stream," reproduced as a frontispiece of this volume, was paint-
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LET'S GET THAT WOLF, ASAMUEL !
ed from the steps of the Congregational Church at North Anson and by one of the gateway roads leading to Embden. It is a photo-like reproduction of the Brook in the days of the old wooden railroad bridge, just east of where he was born, but has a softness and charm beyond the camera's power. It was pur- chased for $6,000 and hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery, the second picture ever sold by an American to the French Govern- ment.
John Allen, a great throat specialist of Portland, formerly resident at North Anson, was in Paris years ago, searching for the portrait of Whistler's mother. Homesick, he was on the point of taking the steamer to New York. All at once he noticed "Lulled by the Murmuring Stream."
"That looks like a moonlight view on 'Nip Street' (the col- loquial name of yore for Elm Street by Seven Mile Brook)," he exclaimed. Closer examination showed him it really was. The view cheered him to proceed on a long tour of the continent.
Ben Foster's pictures are in all the notable American galleries east and west, in art museums and libraries. The Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington has several of his finest numbers. Widely loved for his personal charm and his kindliness of disposi- tion, the paintings he left will ever be a living memory of the beautiful spirit that has gone before.
Only two are left of the family of ten - a sister Mrs. Olive C. Howard, of Newport, R. I., and the artist's brother, Charles, who was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux arts several years and painted the portrait of his father, Paulinus, in the State Capitol at Augusta. Ben and Charles never married. Flora (1845- 1915) was Mrs. Samuel Gould of North Anson and left a son Harry Gould of Portland; Ada (1842-1916) was Mrs. William Swett and died at Providence. William (1854-1903) married Helen Kirby and had seven children. Arthur W. Foster, the youngest, (1860-1924) married Kate B. Spaulding, of Anson. Their son, Lieut. A. H. Foster, is an aviator in the United States Army.
The mother of these Fosters, Lydia Ring Hutchins was a belle in early Embden and Anson circles. It was once rumored she would marry Hannibal Hamlin. When she chose Paulinus
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Foster the following year wiseacres wagged their heads in ap- proval, saying the young lady had decided well for that man would be heard from some day. He progressed rapidly in politics till the disruption of the Whig party in Maine and with that his political sun set. Paulinus first owned and lived in the house adjoining Anson Academy on the east. Later he lived in the Gahan house, towards New Portland, just beyond the cov- ered bridge shown in the frontispiece. The sound of water
DR. GEORGE W. HUTCHINS CARRIE E. (McFADDEN) HUTCHINS
tumbling over ragged ledges was always audible there. To Ben, the artist, the murmuring of Seven Mile Brook was a cherished boyhood memory.
Lydia had one younger sister, Mary E. (1825-1893), who mar- ried Benjamin F. Jones, of Anson (1819-1887) and two younger brothers - Asahel S. (1823-1844) whose wife was Priscilla Pur- ington and Seth Tozier Hutchins (1827-1894). The latter's first wife was Martha Collins (1827-1849) after whom he married Paulina Heald Titcomb. Asahel has no descendants. Seth Hutchins was the father of six, the eldest Dr. George W. Hutchins (1851-1910). He started as a watch maker and was an expert on watch jewels. Then he studied at Tufts College near Boston and became a skillful dentist of extensive practice at Waterville where he died. His wife was Carrie E. McFadden,
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LET'S GET THAT WOLF, ASAMUEL!
of Embden. Two of Seth's daughters were Lizzie (1855-1893) and Helen C. (1857-1899). Lizzie was the first wife and Helen C. the second wife of Wilbur C. Simmons, merchant of North Anson and Bingham. Seth's other children were Hannah, Arthur and Benjamin.
Seth Hutchins, like his brother, Amos, became a resident of North Anson and an influential citizen. He was captain of Com- pany A, 28th. Maine Volunteers, composed in considerable part of Embden soldiers. He always made a comfortable living but cared too little for money to amass a fortune. As an inventor he had keen pleasure trying to invent a perpetual motion ma- chine. He told with evident delight how he passed many sleep- less nights while working on it in conjunction with his brother- in-law, Ben Jones. They finally started it one evening, feeling certain of success. The wheels turned nicely at the beginning but after a long time began to slow up and finally stopped.
"Ben and I watched it stop," said he, "then laughed and laughed as the reason flashed across our minds. After that we went home and had a good sleep. We had not considered certain basic principals, such as atmospheric pressure and gravitation If we had we would never have begun the machine.".
But Seth Hutchins did invent the first time lock and consulted Boston bankers about it. They studied the invention and said it would do the work but in their opinion banks did not want to be closed so there was no getting into them. Therefore he did not patent his invention. Years afterward his son, Dr. George Hutchins, took him to see time locks being made by the Howard Watch Company. Seth looked them over with interest and said : "Well, I had the vision."
Polly Hutchins, the mother of this famous family, spent her declining years with her son, Amos. He gave a bond of $500 on Nov. 11, 1859, before Elisha Purington, justice of the peace "to support and maintain the said Polly Hutchins and provide her with suitable clothing, food and drink, medicine and nursing and all other things necessary in the house of said Amos (or such suitable home as said Amos may provide) and also to furnish her with two good fleeces of wool annually while she may be able to manufacture the same."
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