USA > Maine > Somerset County > Embden > Embden town of yore : olden times and families there and in adjacent towns > Part 6
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The Hutchins name, after a hundred years, has almost en- tirely disappeared from Embden but there are yet many people of the Hutchins blood in adjacent towns. Across Seven Mile Brook in New Portland the David W. Hutchins line mul- tiplied through the children Eliakem, Marcy, Emery, Mary, James, David, Wil- liam, Nollis, Samuel, Asaph, and Sarah, born between 1773 and 1795. They had marriage ties with several of the oldest New Portland fam- ilies. Samuel, born at New Portland, Nov. 29, 1790, be- came a Free Will Baptist preacher, widely known in Maine. He was ordained when 20 years of age and in 1815 was called as the first settled minister in New Port- land. His nephew, Elias JAMES HUTCHINS BAKER (1801-1859) was ordained to the Free Will Baptist faith in 1824 and preached with great power in Maine, New Hamp- shire and Ohio. He was a pastor for 13 years of the Washing- ton Street Church of Dover, N. H. and is buried there. But out of David's family have come other successful men and women. James Hutchins Baker (1848-1925) graduate of Bates College, head of the Denver High School and president of the University of Colorado from 1892 to 1914, was a grandson of Capt. James Hutchins, son of David.
David's ancestral farm remained in the Hutchins family till Oct. 31, 1895, when Asaph Hutchins, the last male heir in the line, passed over. Charles Nye, a son-in-law of Asaph, then re- sided there. Mrs. L. B. Savage, now 86 and living at North New Portland is one of David Hutchins' surviving great-grandchil- dren.
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LET'S GET THAT WOLF, ASAMUEL !
Unlike some of their pioneer neighbors the Embden Hutch- inses ventured but little in the acquisition of land. Capt. Asahel was years in perfecting a title to his father's property with the Rhode Island proprietors. He obtained in 1816 for $700 a tract of 100 acres from Dr. Asamuel Hutchins, of New Portland and the same year sold Moses Williams for $10 and 25 cords of wood an island of two acres, probably where the wading place, remembered to the present generation, was. Ira Hutchins, of New Portland, Dr. Asamuel's son, owned Lot 189, where Hiram Hill, his second cousin, had been living, and sold it in 1834 to Isaac Burns. This was on the west side of the Black Hill and the road to North Village ran through it. Ira had bought it the previous year from his brother, Samuel, at that time a resident of Embden. Before that Warren Hill, of New Portland, another son, of Sally Hutchins Hill, had ac- quired a mortgage interest in this same property. Some of these members of the Hutchins clan about the same period owned Lot 191, where Francis K. Wilbur dwelt long afterward. Warren Hutchins, son of Asahel, was the owner there for a while in 1834 but described himself as of New Portland.
It was only a few years till the sons of Capt. Asahel and of his brother, Dr. Asamuel, and of their sister Sally disposed of these two farms northward. Amos in 1832, soon after his marriage, bought of his father for $700 part of the big Seven Mile Brook place and when his father died, was the last of the Hutchins land owners in the town. In 1860, the year after Capt. Asahel's death the entire place was sold to Charles F. Caldwell, who had married Amos' cousin, Paulina Cragin. Amos then moved to Anson. Enos Hutchins, who married in 1839 Emeline E., the daughter of Archa Dunlap, resided for a while near his father- in-law on the middle Embden road. Enos was of the New Port- land Hutchins line.
With these transactions the local annals of an Embden family came to a conclusion. Capt. Samuel Hutchins and his tiny wife with a stout heart and a lion's courage and the preacher hus- band of her declining years are dust on the hillside above the brick house and big barn that Capt. Asahel built. Grand- daughter Hannah Burr is one of their few companions in the
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little enclosure. From the high road, fifty paces away, the head- stones and old iron fence are hardly visible. Travellers pass and repass, unaware of the ancient monuments so near or that a fine old family name is so proudly associated with the fertile acres and the beautiful prospect.
CHAPTER IV
HOUSE LIKE THAT BACK HOME
The name of Cragin towered in Embden through a century. Its seat on Seven Mile Brook was a replica of the ancestral man- sion at Temple, N. H., and was long a show place of the town. Sons and daughters who matured in that happy setting moved far afield decades ago. But the old colonial-like structure, with a great barn and out buildings, known in later times as the Isaac Albee house and now as the Dr. Fred Cleveland house still re- mains, a survivor through the sunshine and storms of many years.
Simeon Cragin (1761-1832) of Acton, Mass., and then of Temple, N. H., was the Embden pioneer. John (1806-1874), younger son by a second marriage, was his successor on the homestead. Ephraim (1791-1868) a nephew, although long of Embden, belonged somewhat to New Portland and North Anson. These three Cragins prospered in their day, even as the Hutch- inses at the brick house next them on the west. Simeon and John each had large families of daughters, through whom and through Simeon's aunt, Dorothy, the Cragins were cousins of all the many Embden Clevelands and of nearly all the many Emb- den Pierces. But there are Paine, Williams, Spooner, Tozier, Heald, Hutchins, Gray and McFadden descendants - not to mention a considerable list of others - with pride of a Cragin strain in their lineage.
Worthy records had Simeon, John and Ephraim. They and their children were people of resolute character, champions of education, exemplars of citizenship. They lived industriously in Embden. Public activities centered much around them and their mansion. It had a commending site on the way to the New Portland villages - one of the oldest and most important of local thoroughfares. The West Embden postoffice was in the Cragin house. What a sight in boyhood days to watch "the New Portland stage" swing smartly up the front yard to the broad, white doorway !
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Traffic along this picturesque portion of the "Brook Road" was a never ending procession. Till modern times the road, with its many vehicles, was the easiest line of communication be- tween villages down the Kennebec and the "North Village," "The Falls" and the "West Village," to say nothing of the newer communities beyond - Kingfield, Lexington, Dead River and off into Mount Bigelow and country thereabouts. What a human story there was daily in the plodding four-horse teams that toted supplies up-country to the lumber camps in the deep forests ; in the doctors' gigs hurrying to the calls of sufferers on frontier farms; in lawyers, jurors and litigants journeying to court at Norridgewock; in rural swains garbed in Sunday best on wooing bent !
Just across the road was the little red schoolhouse. Old Simeon had been the moving spirit in the erection of the build- ing, the first schoolhouse in Embden. He and son John after him had broods of scholars, many of whom became helpful there and at other schools as capable teachers. Town meetings as- sembled there occasionally. Simeon and John often held town offices and had a big say about voting money and assessing taxes for supporting schools and building roads in the new country.
There was a fine colonial background to these Embden Cragins and the Seven Mile Brook farming enterprise. Many a journey during the pioneer period was made between Simeon's place and Temple, N. H. The Granite State members of the family visit- ed now and then in Embden. Capt. John Cragin, of Temple, who commanded a company in the War of 1812, bought the Dr. Edward Savage farm in 1820 for his son Ephraim. This was at least 30 years after Simeon, brother of Capt. John, had come to Embden.
The Cragin family dated back to Cromwellian times in Eng- land. John "Cragon," the first and only emigrant to America, came by order of the British government on the ship "John and Sarah." He was a Scotch prisoner of war, along with 270 others. They probably had been captured at the battle of Dun- bar on September 3, 1650, where "Scots were beaten and Crom- well was victorious." The members of this warrior band were sent to Charlestown, Mass., and "sold for slaves." But they
(TOP LEFT) JOHN CRAGIN. THE WEST WARD SCHOOLHOUSE. THE CRAGIN MANSION. ISAAC ALBEE. DR. FRED L. CLEVELAND.
HOUSE LIKE THAT BACK HOME ยท 55
were treated kindly in the new country and rapidly regained their status as free men. John "Cragon," at 16 had been pressed into the Pretender's army. He endured many tribula- tions, one of which was smallpox. It is said that on the passage over to America, the Captain was about to throw him overboard, when he was saved by a young English woman, Sarah Dawes, who settled in Woburn. Sarah and John were subsequently married.
Something like a century later the Cragins were living at Temple, N. H., one of the prominent families there. John and Benjamin Cragin were among 56 patriots who marched from Temple to Cambridge on the alarm of April 19, 1775 at Lexing- ton. Samuel Hutchins, settler in Embden, was in a company that marched from the same town to Cambridge a few days later. This John Cragin, known as "Deacon" John, and his father John were active at Temple also at Concord and Acton, Mass., where at first they resided, and are much mentioned in Rev- olutionary War records.
"Deacon" John Cragin (1728-1797) was born at Acton, Mass., and died at the home of his son, Capt. John Cragin, in Temple, N. H. "Deacon" John had a sister, Dorothy Cragin, who was born at Acton, Mass., almost exactly ten years his junior. Dorothy on May 5, 1763, married Joseph Cleveland. The Clevelands went also to Maine, resided for a while at Dres- den, not far from Woolwich, and then started "through the Wilderness" to the Upper Kennebec. They were parents to Jonathan, Timothy, John and Luther Cleveland, the four broth- ers who took up a large tract of good Embden land, adjacent to Simeon Cragin, their cousin.
"Deacon" John, of Temple, accordingly enjoyed a patriarchal role in Embden. He was the grandfather of Simeon's children, including John, and of Ephraim, and uncle of the four Cleve- land pioneer brothers, as well as of several other Cleveland brothers at Fairfield, Skowhegan and vicinity. The "Deacon's" son, Capt. John - an uncle of the Embden John - was a not- able man and several frontier families on the Kennebec had a right to pride in his fame. Born March 18, 1769, the youngest brother of Simeon, he married Ruth Heald Dec. 1, 1788. She
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was a daughter of Maj. Ephraim Heald, of Temple. The D. A. R. Chapter at North Anson is named for her.
Simeon Cragin, son of the "Deacon" and brother of Capt. John, was also of the Revolution. He shouldered a musket in October, 1780, and "marched on the alarm at Coos when Royal- ton was threatened." It could not have been many years later when he joined the procession through Woolwich and up the Kennebec. There were neighbors and kinsmen with him on the ascent of the River, probably his Cleveland cousins among them. That had become the favorite trail for adventurous settlers. Word had spread of the fertile intervales and wonderful forests along the banks of Seven Mile Brook, where happy homes could be builded with a realization of newer and better fortunes. The year of Simeon's arrival is not known, but he and the Clevelands staked out their adjoining settlers' lots sometime before 1790.
Simeon's family of two marriages, however, dates from that period. He had undoubtedly cleared some of the farm and erected a cabin by the time he married Sarah McKenney, of Albion, Feb. 1, 1789. She died at Embden Nov. 13, 1794, having three children, all born in Embden. The first of these was Sarah (1790-1821) whose husband was Josiah Parker Paine, son of Rev. William and Permelia (Parker) Paine. Josiah lived on the south side of Seven Mile Brook and not far from the Cragin house. Only one son, Josiah, Jr., survived from this marriage. The second of the three Cragin children was Simeon, Jr. (1792). He married Mary Crosby, of Albion, where his mother had re- sided. There were no children. The third was a daughter, An- na, (1793-1819) who was the wife of John Pierce, a near-by neighbor, but, when they married, of Waterville.
After an interim of little more than a year Widower Simeon had gone a' wooing and Jan. 2, 1796, wedded Molly Lander (1772-1850) a native of Falmouth. Seven of their ten children grew up at the homestead and comprised, with one half-brother and two half-sisters, the first large family group in the colonial mansion. Six of these seven were daughters. They were Han- nah (1798-1838) the wife of Benjamin Pierce, of Gordon Hill, a brother of John Pierce; Polly (1800-1884), the wife of Nathan ITanson, of New Portland ; Edith (1802-1891), the wife of James
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HOUSE LIKE THAT BACK HOME
Young Cleveland, who lived west of the Canada Trail and about a mile north of the Anson line; Nancy (1803-1889), the wife of Daniel B. Jones, of Kingfield; Caroline (1808-1882), the wife of Lemont Spooner, of New Portland; and Mary Lake (1810-1906), the wife of Ward Spooner, Jr., of New Portland. With two exceptions the marriages of these six daughters, dating from 1817 for Hannah to 1843 for Caroline occurred in the order of their ages. They lived their married lives near their parents, except Edith Cleveland who had gone to Wisconsin having travelled west in a "prairie schooner" with her family and Mary Spooner, who passed her last days at Hallowell. Their older half-brother, Simeon, Jr., lived at Machias. While a resident there in 1824, he purchased that part of the modern Granville Lisherness place, known as Lot 182, from Ephraim Sawyer and Josiah Parker but almost immediately transferred it to William Crosby, probably his brother-in-law. William sold it in 1830 to Franklin Barton, of Albion.
Of three sons and one other daughter by Simeon Cragin's second marriage only John survived to mature age. He was the father of the second large family group in the Embden mansion. Simeon looked to him to carry on. In 1828, six years before his death, and before John had married, Simeon conveyed to him for $1,000 a half interest in the 130 acres of the pioneer farm and its buildings. This farm was one mile long, north and south above Seven Mile Brook, which was its southern boundary. Neighboring owners on the east at that date were Jonathan Cleveland, Thomas McFadden, Jr., John Pierce and Benjamin Cleveland, while Benjamin Pierce, of Gordon Hill was on the north for 50 rods. Capt. Asahel Hutchins' land abutted an ir- regular line on the west. While Simeon, in deeds of previous years, had written himself down as a bricklayer, like two or three other pioneers of that region, he was a versatile craftsman and owned a cooper's shop. In those days there was quite an Embden industry in making staves. Simeon's deed to son John reserved his cooper's shop and the land on which it stood.
Under this arrangement the Cragin family entered upon a new chapter. The father was 67 years old and two of his daugh- ters, Caroline and Mary, were still a part of his household. He
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continued his interest in town affairs and in the schools. He had lusty grandchildren under the rooftrees of John and Benjamin Pierce and of his daughters who had settled in New Portland. His nephew, Ephraim, was serving as a selectman of Embden. He attended the Masonic Lodge at North Anson, of which he was a charter member. There was still occasional visiting back and forth with the Cragin kin in the Capt. John mansion at Temple and Simeon was able to view the course of affairs at his sunset time with serenity.
A year before the old patriarch's death, his son John, on Feb. 8, married Sally Hutchins (1813-1841), the daughter of Capt. Asahel and Polly (Savage) Hutchins. She was the first of John's three wives and became the mother of six of his twelve children. With this new generation the exodus of the family westward set in strongly. It is indicated in the record of these six children :
James Thomas (1832-1895) who married Caroline A. Bur- leigh of Berlin, Mich., in 1857, lived at St. Croix Falls, Wis., and then at Wolf Creek, Wis., where he died, having had a family of five sons and three daughters. Clarence, Elmer A., and Allan K. Cragin were the surviving sons.
Simeon (1834-1921) married Margaret E. Kennedy, of Lee, Mass., and resided at Melrose and Charlestown, where three children were born - Edwin L., Florence M., and Simeon B.
Eleanor H. (1835-1914) wife of Eben F. Pillsbury, of King- field, Farmington and Augusta. Their children were Carroll E., Bion B., and Mae Kimball Cragin.
Paulina (1837-1898), whose husband was Charles F. Cald- well, of Anson and Embden. Their children, all natives of Emb- den, were Charles F., Jr., George B., and Ada Pauline. The family. moved to Ada, Minn., where Mrs. Caldwell died.
Hannah (1839-1916), the wife of Fairfield Williams, of Emb- den. Their children were Frank A., whose home is at Auburn; Fred C., John C., Lizzie, Florence and Sherman H. Williams, all natives of Embden.
John Lander (1841-1920) married Martha J. Fisher, of Sand- wich, Mass., and lived at Everett. They had two daughters Grace M. and Ida E. Cragin.
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HOUSE LIKE THAT BACK HOME
John Cragin's second wife, of May, 1842, when his children's ages were from one to ten years, was Achsah J. MacFadden (1818-1859), the daughter of Andrew McFadden. Their two sons and two daughters all of Embden, were:
Mary E. (1843-1902) wife of Edmund McMurdie, of Boston and Augusta. Their children were George E., born at Portland ; and Ozias H. and O. A. McMurdie born at Augusta.
George B., (1844) married in 1872, Abby L. Belcher, of Farm- ington, where he has been a resident for many years. Their children are Abbott B., Donald B., and Jean B. Cragin.
Ebba F., (1847) married Augustus Bradbury, of Fairfield, where she still resides.
William A. D. (1852) married Miss Altena Weeks, of Farm- ington and lived at Phillips but is now at San Diego, Calif. Their children are Carl E., Christina C., and Ralph O. Cragin. All a credit to the family.
John Cragin's two other children were daughters, who died young, one by his second wife Achsah J., and one by his third wife, Mrs. Ann I. Williams (1826-1906), whom he married in 1867.
Ephraim Cragin, the other Embden pioneer died at North Anson with a less numerous progeny. His wife, Phoebe Smith (1791-1879) of West- minster, Mass., survived him eleven years, living at Nor- ridgewock. They were mar- ried in 1818 and had three children. George A. married Ora A. Greaton, of Anson. They died childless. A daugh- ter, Almira, in 1853 married Abijah Coleman, a business man at North Anson. The two daughters and one son of the Colemans were Ella, (Mrs. George W. Kimball) of
EPHRAIM CRAGIN
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Greenwood, Mass .; May (Mrs. Irving Gifford) and Charles A. Coleman who married Lillia Andrews, of Bingham.
Samuel B. Cragin (1828-1909) was the other son of Ephraim. He married Abbie Williams (1834-1899), daughter of Joseph Williams (1807-1881) of New Portland. Oldest of their eight children was Charles E. Cragin (1852-1914), whose first wife was Cora E. Richardson and his second wife Anna Emstead. Charles and his two children, Jamie (1883) and Alvin (1886) resided at Ada, Minn., the home town also of the Caldwells of John Cragin's family.
Dr. Chauncey B. Cragin (1854) a dentist at Kingston, N. Y., was Samuel's second son. His wife was Helen C. Mantor and their only son was Arthur Mantor Cragin (1885). Samuel's daughter, Addie F. (1856-1906) was Mrs. Hartley W. Carson, with a son Walter C. (1881) and a daughter Alice C. (1882). The Carson family, too, lived at Ada, Minn.
George P. Cragin (1858) married Ida L. Taylor, at Norridge- wock. No children survived them. The youngest son of Samuel was Walter A. Cragin (1860-1918) who married Flora Camp- bell at Ada and died at Minneapolis, with three children - Le- land P. (1891) Marie (1898) and Genevieve Cragin, (1899) all of whom are now living.
Thus the Cragins of old Simeon's line dispersed from the par- ent hive. The list has been given in detail, as illustrating the history of many other Embden families of the olden days. The daughters left an enviable record of teaching in the Embden schools, described more fully in a later chapter.
Apart from the pioneer homestead, as already described, Simeon and his son John and his nephew Ephraim acquired, from time to time, desirable land in the immediate neighborhood. After his father, Capt. John, of Temple, had bought the Dr. Savage place in 1820, Ephraim, in 1821, acquired title thereto in his own name but a mortgage of $1350 was given to Dr. Sav- age. Ephraim resided there till 1833, when he sold to Humphrey Purington, of Bowdoinham. He was taxed on 30 acres of a back Lot No. 158 for many years, after he had moved from Embden.
Simeon Cragin in 1817 bought the fertile farm, held by his son- in-law John Pierce and in 1819 deeded it back to him. This was
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not the first interest the Cragins had had in that desirable prop- erty, known as Lot 3. Abel and Benjamin Cleveland had mort- gaged it for $300 in 1811 to Francis "Cragin," of Ipswich, N. H., a kinsman of Simeon of Embden, and in 1813, James Adams, who had become the owner, deeded the property to the Ipswich holder of the notes. James Adams and Dr. Savage had adjoin- ing farms that thus passed to Cragin ownership before those two moved to places in Embden on the Kennebec River. Prior to 1840 quite 20 deeds were recorded in which the various Emb- den Cragins were either purchasers or sellers. They ventured boldly for those times not only in the intervale acres along Seven Mile Brook but in the wild lands northward toward Black Hill. The latter, however, were regarded with interest by other owners of large farms on the Brook, who acquired much of the extensive tract from the New Portland highway eastward to the farms of James and Andrew Wentworth, brothers from Canton, Mass.
There was contention in the settlement of his estate, when the old Scotchman, Simeon, had been gathered to his fathers. It was several years before son John acquired the other half of the homestead. The farm was appraised on March 8, 1833, subject to the widow's right of dower, at $1,555.54, in connection with a suit for $68.76, of which $56.77 was for damage; $11.74 for costs and 25 cents for the writ. Their son John purchased the interests of his several sisters. To Edith, wife of James Y. Cleveland, he paid $65 for her one-twentieth part of the prop- erty. To Polly Hanson, widow, another sister he paid $100 for her one-twentieth; $100 to Hannah Pierce; $75 to Sarah Pierce and somewhat similar sums to Caroline Cragin and to Mrs. Daniel B. Jones, of Kingfield. Three of these deeds were recorded in June, 1834, but the settlement with Sarah Pierce his niece, the only heir of Anna Cragin was not effected till November, 1836.
During the thirty years and more thereafter, the waning con- fidence of residents up and down the Cragin neighborhood in their opportunities for livelihood was obvious. It extended to the prosperous farm of Capt. Asahel Hutchins, where his son, Amos, in 1860, had sold that most valuable agricultural holding in all Embden. At that time John Cragin's 230 acres were assessed as
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the fifth best farm in the town. His next oldest son, Simeon, a school teacher, came to live with him in '61 and the next year - when Simeon departed - his youngest brother, John Lander Cragin, took up residence with his father for two years. Now near 60 years of age, John and his third wife, Ann, were finding the old farm less and less attractive as a residence. They sold it in '65 to Alvah and Robert Nichols and went to Farmington, with their son, George B. Cragin, and there spent the remainder of their days. From 1845 on, his townsmen had honored him with many offices, as they had honored his father Simeon before him. John had been town agent, collector of taxes and treasurer -- holding both the latter offices at the same time for several years - and selectman.
With his removal to Farmington in '66 another pioneer name disappeared from Embden. The farm was owned by Alvah and Robert Nichols till 1870 when it passed to Robert, who sold in 1871 to Isaac Albee, just returned from the Nevada gold mines, where he had made a comfortable fortune. Isaac never married and the old mansion ceased forever to shelter a large family. But Isaac had many relatives. His home was a welcome gather- ing place for nearly 20 years. His mother, Betsey (Walker) Al- bee (1794-1874), widow of Samuel Albee (1792-1839) came as his housekeeper. Although then at an advanced age, her life spanned the period of migration from her native Woolwich. She was respected as a remarkable woman of the Seven Mile Brook country side. During her married life she and her hus- band had resided down the road, below the. Old Brook Meeting House. Samuel had a brick yard across the road from the water- ing trough. Their oldest son, Benjamin Gould Albee (1822- 1889) had married Lois Hinkley, through whom "Aunt" Bet- sey had several bright grandchildren. Her oldest daughter, Olive (1824-1888) married David Pierce, of Embden, son of Benjamin, through whom there were several more grandchil- dren - George A. (1848-1921), Fred B. (1850-1908), Frank A. (1855-1915), Edith McF. (1861-1910) and Emma F. (1863-1915). The Pierces had John Cragin for a grandfather and exception- ally pleasant associations in the Cragin house. Samuel and Betsey Albee had other children, including Mary (1826-1899),
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