Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume IV, Part 119

Author: Little, George Thomas, 1857-1915, ed; Burrage, Henry Sweetser, 1837-1926; Stubbs, Albert Roscoe
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: New York, Lewis historical publishing company
Number of Pages: 896

USA > Maine > Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume IV > Part 119

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(IV) Joshua (2), youngest child and fifth son of Joshua (1) Fabyan, born in Scarboro, Maine, and baptized June 17, 1782. He mar- ried Mary, daughter of John Downing, of

Kennebunk, November 26, 1803, and they lived in a house on the old road, the cellar of which is still discernible in the back field of the Fogg place. He built a house afterwards on part of his father's farm in Scarboro, where his daughter, Martha A. Fabyan, now lives. The children of Joshua (2) and Mary (Downing) Fabyan were: I. Martha A., who lives in the house built by her father. 2. Samuel, married Olive Eaton, was a minister of the Methodist church, and lived in Hollis, York county, Maine. 3. George (q. v.). 4. Charles Wesley, born March 11, 1813, a physician, graduating from the Medical School of Maine, class of 1837. He married (first) Lucy Burnham, (second) Pemelia Murray, and (third) Mary Chase, and died in Providence, Rhode Island, July 23, 1886. 5. Mary Clark, born February 17, 1817, mar- ried Rev. Albert F. Barnard, and had no chil- dren.

(V) George, second son and third child of Joshua (2) and Mary (Downing) Fabyan, born in Scarboro, Maine, June 9, 1810, grad- uated from Medical School of Maine, class of 1833. About 1840 he moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he practiced as a physi- cian. In 1849 he moved to Portland, where he continued to practice. While in Portland he was appointed surgeon in the United States Marine Hospital in Portland. About 1854 he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he continued his practice until the time of his death, May 25, 1874. He was an overseer of the poor of the city of Boston, a member of the school committee of the city of Boston, an overseer of Harvard College, and a mem- ber and steward of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston. He was a man of ster- ling and unblemished character, upright and of the highest integrity, dignified in manner and bearing, yet with a kindliness and gentle- ness which endeared him to all who knew him. His broad sympathy and philanthropy made him a valued member of the Boston Overseers of the Poor, and resolutions on his death passed by them May 28, 1874, read (in part) : "Resolved : That as we are called by this event to deplore his absence from our meetings, and are deprived of that social in- tercourse from which (sic) we have enjoyed so much, we desire to bear in respectful re- membrance and to place upon the records of the Board our testimony to his faithful and conscientious discharge of the duties of this position as well as of every other committed to him by his fellow citizens. We shall ever cherish with affectionate recollections that

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amiability of character and that kindness of manner which were his marked characteris- tics; we make a grateful acknowledgment of that tender solicitude and personal interest in the poor which he ever evinced in the conduct of our affairs, and our belief that his member- ship in the Board added to the confidence which is reposed in it by the community which it serves."

He was always interested in young men, ever ready with a helping hand or an en- couraging word to assist them in making their lives successful. As a member of the Boston school board he found an exceptional oppor- tunity of aiding young people. On June 9, 1874, the school board passed the following resolutions on his death: "Resolved : That, while we reverently recognize the hand of God in bereavement, and submissively bow to His Will, even in affliction-this Board would express the loss it has sustained in the death of a true and earnest friend of Education,- ever prompt in his official duties, an associate highly esteemed for his dignified, courteous, and genial bearing, and a man sincerely hon- ored for his firmly conscientious integrity, and faithfully Christian character."

In 1834 he married Mrs. Abigail (Jun- kins) Cutts, a widow with one child, Julia Cutts. Three children were born of the mar- riage: I. George Francis (q. v.). 2. Abbie M. 3. Sarah A. Julia, Abbie and Sarah have for many years lived together in Boston.

(VI) George Francis, eldest child and only son of Dr. George and Abigail (Junkins) Fabyan, was born in Great Falls, New Hamp- shire, June 26, 1837. He was educated in Phillip's Academy in Andover, Massachu- setts, and early engaged in the dry goods bus- iness until about 1865, when he became em- ployed by the wholesale commission firm of John S. and Eben Wright, then one of the leading business houses of Boston. Cornelius N. Bliss (subsequently a member of Presi- dent Mckinley's cabinet as Secretary of the Interior) was then also employed by John S. and Eben Wright. After the death of John S. Wright, Mr. Bliss and Mr. Fabyan formed a copartnership with Mr. Eben Wright under the name of Wright, Bliss & Fabyan. Later the firm name was changed to Bliss, Fabyan & Co. He continued in this business until his death, January 17, 1907. At the time of his death the firm of Bliss, Fabyan & Co. was one of the largest dry goods commission houses in the country. He was a man of great keen- ness in financial and business matters, of strict

integrity and high standing. For many years previous to his death he was one of the lead- ing merchants of Boston. From the profits of his business he accumulated a fortune which he increased by wise and careful in- vestments and at the time of his death was one of the largest real estate owners in Bos- ton and one of the wealthiest men in the com- munity. In disposition he was modest and retiring and never sought or held any public offices. He was devoted to his wife and fam- ily and spared no pains or expense in their comfort and welfare and in the education of his children. Closely attentive to his business, he nevertheless found time to enjoy his fine horses, his yacht and his shrubs and rare flow- ers which he raised on his beautiful estate in Brookline. His flowers were frequently seen at the exhibitions of the Massachusetts Horti- cultural Society and were awarded many prizes.

Some seven or eight years previous to his death he made a gift of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Harvard Medical School to establish the George Fabyan chair of comparative pathology, in memory of his father. The chair is now filled by Dr. Theo- bald Smith. At the time of his death he was treasurer of the Androscoggin Mills at Lew- iston, Maine, and treasurer and director of the Otis Company, the Columbian Manufac- turing Company and the Boston Duck Com- pany. He had also been a director of the Pepperell Manufacturing Company, the Lew- iston Bleachery, the Cordis Mills, the Thorn- dike Company and the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse Company. At the time of his death he was a director of the Old Colony Trust Company of Boston and the Merchants' National Bank; and a trustee of the Massa- chusetts Horticultural Society. He was also a member of the Union Club of Boston, the Country Club of Brookline, the Eastern Yacht Club of Marblehead, the Metropolitan Club of New York City and one of the few New England members of the well-known Jekyl Island Club, off the coast of Georgia.

He was married, September 22, 1864, to Isabella F. Littlefield, daughter of Samuel S. and Elizabeth (Eagles) Littlefield, of Rox- bury (Boston), and they had five children : I. Gertrude, born October 3, 1865, married Isaac R. Thomas (had two children, Mal- comb and Elizabeth Thomas). 2. George, born March 15, 1867, married Nellie Wright, and resides in Chicago, Illinois. 3. Francis W. (q. v.). 4. Isabel, born November 17,

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1874, married Percival H. Lombard. 5. Mar- shall, born February 18, 1879, married Eleanor McCormick.

(VII) Francis W., second son and third child of George and Isabella F. (Littlefield) Fabyan, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, May 15, 1871. He was educated at the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and then entered the dry goods commission business. In 1897 he became a member of the firm of Bliss, Fabyan & Co., and is now an active member of that firm. His connections with various banks and large manufacturing and business concerns indicate his standing as a financier and business man. He is treas- urer of the Otis Company, of the Cordis Mills .and of the Columbian Manufacturing Com- pany. He is a director of the New England Trust Company, the Merchants' National Bank, the Otis Company, the Columbian Man- ufacturing Company, the Cordis Mills, the Boston Duck Company, the Thorndike Com- pany, the Androscoggin Mills, the Lewiston Bleachery, the Bates Manufacturing Com- pany, and the Edwards Manufacturing Com- pany. He is also president and director of the Union Water Power Company of Maine, and a trustee of the Free Hospital for Women in Boston. He is a member of the Eastern Yacht Club of Marblehead and the Country Club of Brookline. He has never occupied any public office. On June 1, 1893, he was married to Edith, daughter of Stephen E. and Abbie (Fuller) Westcott; children : I.

Eleanor, born March 16, 1894. 2. George F., August 25, 1895. 3. Everett W., August 10, 1896. 4. Edith, September 28, 1897. 5. Francis W., Jr., April 19, 1901.

Harris Merrill Plaisted was

PLAISTED a native of New Hamp- shire, born in Jefferson, No- vember 2, 1828, and died at his home in Ban- gor, Maine, January 31, 1898. He was the son of Deacon William and Nancy (Merrill) Plaisted.

The father was born in Jefferson, April, 1792, and died there in 1854. He was a farm- er. The mother was born in Conway, New Hampshire, 1795, the daughter of Thomas Merrill Esq., one of the first settlers of the town, whose first ancestor in this country was Daniel Merrill, of Newburyport, Massachu- setts. The father and mother were founders and pillars of the Baptist church in Jefferson. They had nine children: William, an exten- sive tanner in Eastern Maine, at Stetson, Lin- coln and Princeton, a member of the state

senate from Penobscot county, who died in June, 1894, at the age of seventy-nine ; Charles, a farmer in Lancaster, New Hamp- shire, who represented his town in the legis- lature, dying in 1885; Hannah, wife of Cyrus C. Church Esq., of Bradford, Maine, who died in 1858; Thomas M., who died in Gardi- ner, Maine, at the age of twenty-two; Cath- erine, wife of Rev. Charles Bailey, of New York, who died in 1851; Elijah Freeman, of Phillips, Maine, graduate of the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, surgeon of Twenty-eighth Maine in the war, who died in 1872; Harris Merrill, the subject of this sketch; Mary Ann, wife of James Spaulding Esq., of Lancaster, New Hampshire, who died in 1854, and John H., a farmer in Jefferson, on the old homestead, where he died in 1863.

The father of Deacon William was Judge Samuel, born in Berwick, Maine, in 1766. He went to Jefferson in 1787, the agent of Colonel Joseph Whipple, of Portsmouth, the proprie- tor of the town, then called Dartmouth or Whipple's Dale. He was the first postmaster of the town, the office remaining in the fam- ily for one hundred years. He was judge of the court of common pleas; a member of the legislature in 1820 from Lancaster and Jef- ferson; he was among the most prominent supporters of the resolution opposing the ad- mission of Missouri as a slave state. He died in 1841, highly respected. A Jeffersonian Democrat life-long, he cast his last vote for Van Buren in 1840 when upon his death bed, the town meeting adjourning to his house. The judge married Elizabeth Hart, of Ports- mouth, and had six sons and one daughter, who married and had families-all farmers in Jefferson. His youngest, Hon. Benjamin H., was most prominent in public affairs, ten years a member of the legislature, member of the constitutional convention and for three years railroad commissioner for the state, elected by the people. He built the Waumbek house, the first summer hotel on Jefferson hill at the instigation of Starr King, his fa- miliar friend in whose honor he changed the name of Mt. Pliny to "Starr King."

Judge Plaisted was the fifth in descent from Captain Roger Plaisted, the first of the name in this country, at Berwick, Maine, in 1650, who was slain by the Indians in King Philip's war, October 17, 1675, while in command of the two upper garrisons in Berwick, then the outpost of civilization. The settlement was attacked on the 16th by Indian Chief Hope- Good, with 150 warriors, and Captain Plaisted sent an "importunate message" to Major

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Waldron at Dover for help, saying "We are all in great danger of being slain unless our God shall wonderfully appear for our deliv- erance !" closing-"they that cannot fight, let them pray." No succor came, and next day, attacked by 150 Indians, Plaisted and his little "Train Band" of twenty odd men were over- powered; but, says the Historian Hubbard, "The intrepid man, disdaining to yield or to fly, fought it out desperately until he was slain together with two of his sons."

"Such was the fate of this Spartan family," says Historian Williamson, "whose intrepidity deserves a monument more durable than mar- ble. He was buried on his own land, full in view from the highway leading through Ber- wick to Great Falls, where his lettered tomb- stone remains to this day. The father had represented Kittery four years in the general court of Massachusetts and was highly re- spected for his uncommon worth and piety."

Captain Roger was at Berwick, then part of Kittery, about 1650. In 1652 he was com- missioner of the province to meet the authori- ties of Massachusetts when they assumed ju- risdiction over Maine. He was a lumberman and land surveyor, owning the mills at Great Works, the present site of the Burleigh Mills. At the time of his death, at the age of forty- eight years, and ten years prior, he was one of the seven "associates" or magistrates who constituted the tribunal with legislative and judicial powers for the government of the province.

The children of Captain Roger and Olive Plaisted, who left descendants were :

I. Captain James, of York, who married Mary, daughter of Hon. Edward Rishworth, "the distinguished magistrate and time-hon- ored recorder," who came over with Rev. John Wheelwright and married his daughter.

2. Colonel John, of Portsmouth, who mar- ried Mary, daughter of Hon. John Pickering, attorney general of New Hampshire. Colonel John was in public life more than thirty years, associate and chief justice of New Hampshire from 1699 to 1720; member of the royal coun- cil and many times speaker of the New Hamp- shire assembly, first in 1699 and last in 1727, at the age of sixty-eight.

3. Colonel and Judge Ichabod of Berwick, whose son Samuel married Hannah, sister of Governor Benning Wentworth; whose son, Ichabod Jr., of Salem, Massachusetts, was sheriff of Essex county and colonel of the Es- sex regiment in Abercrombie's expedition to Crown Point; and whose daughter Olive, married Ellis Huske of the Royal council and

their daughter, who married Edmund Quincy, was the mother of Dorothy Quincy, whom Oliver Wendell Holmes terms one of his "manifold grandmothers," the "beautiful Dor- othy Q.," who married Governor John Han- cock.

4. Mehitable, daughter of Captain Roger, married Thomas Goodwin, the ancestor of the Goodwins of Maine, and of Governor Good- win, of New Hampshire.

Many descendants of the sturdy old Indian fighter, Captain Roger, have been prominent in public life as well as in every profession. They include Governor Ichabod Goodwin, of New Hampshire; Governor and Senator John Fairfield, Chief Justice John A. Peters, the Morrills and Bradburys of Maine.

General Plaisted is descended from Colonel John and Mary (Pickering) Plaisted, of Portsmouth, through their son, Captain Elisha, who married Hannah, daughter of Colonel and Judge John Wheelwright, of Wells, Maine, the grandson of Rev. John Wheelwright, "friend of Cromwell."

The wedding of Captain Elisha and Han- nah, at her father's house, October 19, 1712, was an event in the history of Maine, as it was the occasion of the last Indian foray in the province during Queen Anne's war. It was a notable gathering, with "many guests from Portsmouth." The festivities were in- terrupted by the startling cry of "Indians !" and there was mounting in hot haste. The fighting men sallied out well armed for the fray, under Captain Plaisted and Captain Hatch. The savages were beaten off after a sharp fight and some loss. Captain Hatch was killed, and Captain Plaisted captured. The bridegroom proved a rich prize to the red- skins, his father, Colonel John, having paid £300 for his ransom.

For forty years frontier Maine had been the dark and bloody ground in the Indian wars of New England, more than six hundred of the inhabitants of the province having perished. "During this period," says Will- iamson, "no name was more distinguished for military intrepidity than that of Plaisted."

Captain Elisha resided at Berwick, half owner with his father of the lumber and mill business at Great Works and prominent in public affairs. He reared a large family. His youngest son, Captain William, born in 1729, married Jane Hight in 1752. He suc- ceeded his father in the business at Great Works, and was killed in the mills in 1768. Their children were John, George and Will- iam, of Portsmouth; Ichabod, of Gardiner,

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and Judge Samuel, of Jefferson, grandfather of the subject of this sketch.

General Plaisted is the seventh in descent from Captain Roger, through Colonel John, of Portsmouth, Captains Elisha and William, of Berwick, and Judge Samuel and Deacon William, of Jefferson.

Until he was seventeen years old he was at home on the farm, attending the district school during the brief winter terms. He had to struggle for his education. He left home, where he could ill be spared, and during the winter of 1846 managed to get eighteen weeks in school, paying his own way, at Lancaster, New Hampshire. During the next two years he attended the Lancaster Academy the first half of the spring and the last half of the fall term, teaching school in the winter term and working on farms in the summer. In the fall of 1848, having the privilege of the full term of twelve weeks, he wished to go to the St. Johnsbury Academy, and applied to David Burnsides, the rich man of the county, for a loan for that purpose. "How much do you want?" asked Mr. Burnsides, after a silence that could be felt. "Five dollars," was the an- swer. He went to St. Johnsbury, walking the thirty miles over the hills of Lunenburg and Concord, and paid his way by sawing wood at a dollar a cord, winning the first honor and graduating valedictorian of his class. He taught school the following winter at Pas- sumpsic village, returning home on foot in the spring with fifty-two dollars saved, pay- ing Mr. Burnsides his principal and interest -- five dollars and twenty-two cents. He at- tended New Hampton Academy in the spring, worked at farming in the summer, and in Sep- tember, 1849, entered Waterville College. He paid his way through college, as he had through the preparatory schools, and gradu- ated in 1853. During his college course he taught school in Waterville, being principal of the Waterville Liberal Institute three terms, and superintendent of schools, elected by the town, three years. He was successful as a teacher and had tempting offers of positions, but he preferred the law as his profession, and in the fall of 1853 entered the law school of the University of Albany, graduating in the class of 1855, winning the first prize, a gold medal, for the best essay on Equity Juris- prudence. The eminent judges in this contest were Judge Barnard, of New York, Judge Collamore, of Vermont, and Judge Thomas, of Massachusetts. He was admitted to the bar at Albany on his diploma, but returning to Maine, entered the law office of Hon. A.

W. Paine, in Bangor, where he remained one year. In August, 1856, he was admitted to the Maine bar and entered upon the practice of law at Bangor on his own account.

When the civil war broke out, he laid aside his profession, after five years of practice. He had been a member of the staff of Governor Lot M. Morrill, and in 1860 had taken an ac- tive part in the campaign in support of Lin- coln, and on election day, November 6, 1860, made a resolution that, if war followed the election, he would sustain his vote as a sol- dier for the Union. He felt the solemnity of the crisis as few public men of that time, and said afterward that he deemed his vote that year as the most solemn act of his life. He saw that the election of Lincoln meant a re- versal of the policy of the federal government on the slave question, and foresaw the end of slavery and slavery agitation that had almost disrupted the nation for more than a genera- tion already. During the darkest hours of the life of the nation in the four months be- tween the election and inauguration of Lin- coln, in January, 1861, when Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, and others of his mind, were advocating peace at any price, even at the cost of the Union itself, General Plaisted boldly proclaimed the duty and ne- cessity of fighting, even to total exhaustion, if necessary, to preserve the nation intact. He said: "If we let them go in peace we justify their mean opinion of us, earn their contempt, as well as the contempt of the whole world, and how can we expect to live in peace there- after? Craven we shall be, and confess their boast true that 'one Southerner is equal to five Yankees.' If allowed to dictate the terms upon which they go out, will they not dictate the conditions upon which we may live in peace side by side as neighbors? Will they not demand the surrender of fugitive slaves and compel us to stand guard over their pe- culiar property whenever they choose to take it with them across the line into free states ? If they break up the Union at the risk of war and at all hazards, to protect their peculiar property, and we are imbecile enough to ac- quiesce, will they not make war upon such a craven people, if necessary, to protect that property from wholesale confiscation as it teems across Mason and Dixon's line? There will be no living in peace by them, any more than with them. They will respect us after they have fought with us and like us. Then if we cannot live together in peace, we may side by side as alien friends. Fight for the Union we must and shall. We shall not look

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beyond the Union to see what lies beyond. We, the northern race, are slow, not craven or cowardly-slow to anger ; slow to act because slow to realize danger. Threats of disunion have never alarmed us. Fight we shall-not there the danger lies; we cannot yet quite be- lieve the South in earnest-really bent on de- stroying the Union, and the real danger is that they will secure some great advantage be- fore the North is aroused like the seizure of the National capital. That would be a stag- gering blow, if not fatal to us. There is the danger. Washington is defenceless !"

He wrote a stirring letter published in the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, January 21, 1861, advocating measures for the defense of Washington. He said: "What then should be done? Manifestly there should be no boys' play-no standing upon ceremony. Mar- tial law should be declared and the District of Columbia converted into a camp. The Cate- lines in the Senate and their bands of con- spirators who infest the city should be driven out and the city surrounded with a wall of bristling bayonets and frowning batteries. Troops of undoubted loyalty should be posted in sufficient force to sweep those streets 'of magnificent distances' with every missile of destruction known to modern warfare and to bid defiance to a hundred thousand rebels."

General Plaisted enlisted for the war in 1861, raising a company in thirty days- Company K. Eleventh Regiment-of which he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, and left for the front November 12, 1861. He was stationed in Washington during the winter, which he spent in study and drill, having spe- cial charge of the officers' school of instruc- tion in tactics. A part of the First Brigade, including his regiment (Casey's Division, Keyes's Corps), left Washington, March 28, 1862, and took part in the Peninsular cam- paign. Promoted to colonel of the Eleventh, May II, 1862, he commanded the regiment through that campaign, taking part in the siege of Yorktown, battles of Williamsburg. Fair Oaks, Seven Pines and in the Seven Days' battle before Richmond. In July of that year, after reaching Harrison's Landing, he received a thirty days' leave of absence, which he spent in Maine, recruiting the de- pleted ranks of his regiment, returning in Au- gust with three hundred and twenty recruits. At the close of the campaign General Nagle, promoted to the command of a division, urged the promotion of Colonel Plaisted to his for- mer command. Transferred to the Depart- ment of the South, in December, 1862, Colonel

Plaisted commanded a brigade in 1863 under General Gilmore in the operations at Morris Island, the siege of Fort Sumter and Charles- ton, until April, 1864. His regiment, thor- oughly instructed in the handling of heavy artillery and in the art of field fortifications, was regarded by General Gilmore as equal to his best artillery regiment and engineer troops, and it was placed at the front, in charge of the big guns and mortars. From the Eleventh he selected the detachment who manned the famous "Swamp Angel" battery and fired the first shots into Charleston, the first instance in history of bombardment at a distance of five miles.

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Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume IV, Part 119

Author: Little, George Thomas, 1857-1915, ed; Burrage, Henry Sweetser, 1837-1926; Stubbs, Albert Roscoe Publication date: 1909 Publisher: New York, Lewis historical publishing company Number of Pages: 896

Author: Little, George Thomas, 1857-1915, ed; Burrage, Henry Sweetser, 1837-1926; Stubbs, Albert Roscoe
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: New York, Lewis historical publishing company
Number of Pages: 896