USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Hallowell > Historic Hallowell > Part 2
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Before the actual incorporation of the company, its work of resettlement had begun on the Kennebec. In 1750, surveyors laid out the township of Frankfort, where Dresden is today, and the company employed John North to map its patent. The next year the com- pany built Fort Shirley adjacent to the future site of the Pownalborough court house. There were more Indian troubles.
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T
Benjamin Hallowell
In February, 1754, a war party threatened Fort Richmond, and a story was circulated that the French were building a fort between the upper Kennebec and the Chaudière river. The General Assembly took this report seriously.
Governor Shirley dispatched Major General John Winslow to the Kennebec with 800 militia men and a mixed company of workmen to build forts at Cushnoc and at what is now Winslow. Governor Shirley and some proprietors came along for part of the expedi- tion, which was to include a reconnaissance for the rumored French fort, and the cutting of a military road from Cushnoc to Ticonic. Fort Western and Fort Hali- fax were built but no enemy installation was found.
At about this time two lots of land on the western bank of the Kennebec river, comprising practically all of what is now Hallowell and part of the present towns of Manchester and Farmingdale, were granted to Dr. Sylvester Gardiner and Benjamin Hallowell. The lots were each of one mile frontage on the river and five miles deep.
The Kennebec Purchasers resorted in 1754 to a newspaper advertisement to make known the extent of their patent, which they asserted began at the sea, run- ning along both sides of the Kennebec to a point about
18 miles above the mouth of the Cobbosseecontee river. In this they were opposed by the Pejepscot proprietors and others claiming under Indian deeds.
In June, 1756, Great Britain declared war against France and an expedition went up the Kennebec to the Chaudière. Louisbourg was taken in 1758 and the next year when Quebec fell to General Wolfe, the govern- ment of Massachusetts was extended to the Penobscot river. The Kennebec was no longer the frontier, and settlement could become more orderly.
On February 13, 1760, the Kennebec proprietors secured the incorporation of the township of Pownal- borough, formerly Frankfort. In June, the county of Lincoln was created, with Pownalborough the shire town. Then came the Nathan Winslow survey of set- tlers' lots - on the east of the Kennebec - from the south line of present Chelsea to the north line of Vassal- boro -- on the west side - from the present south line of Augusta to the north line of what is now Sidney. There were three tiers of lots on each side of the river, each lot one mile deep. The first tier, next to the Ken- nebec, had lots of 50 rods front. In the second tier frontage was 150 rods, and in the third tier 75 rods. The proprietors reserved for themselves every third lot with river frontage and the entire second tier. The remaining lots were available on condition that each settler build a house not less than 18 feet square and of seven foot stud, clear and till five acres within three years and live upon the premises personally or by proxy for seven additional years.
The 1761 concept of the Kennebec proprietors for the settlement of what eventually became Augusta, Chelsea, Sidney and Vassalboro was strikingly different from the assignment of five-mile lots to individual pro- prietors, which had been adopted in the area of the present Hallowell. The Augusta historian Charles E. Nash comments that the plan for what eventually be- came his city was not as favorable to the settlers as to the proprietors. "The terms and conditions," he wrote, "were not only onerous but in most cases beyond the ability of the settlers to perform. x x x Some succumbed to poverty, while others, discouraged, removed to the Sandy River or elsewhere, leaving their improvements for the benefit of the company."
In 1762, a year of drought and scarcity, the first permanent settlers for what is now Hallowell, arriving in May in a government vessel bringing supplies to Fort Western, accepted and satisfactorily completed similar conditions. In the first issue of grants in that part of the Kennebec purchase above the Cobbosseecontee, made on April 28, 1762, Deacon Pease Clark of Attle- borough, Massachusetts, was granted a 50-rod river
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Dea . PEASE CLARK
22762, h
front lot, one mile in depth, in the southeast corner of the five-mile lot granted earlier to Dr. Gardiner. The southerly line of this first settler's lot ran along, approxi- mately, what is now Temple street.
In the same issue of grants, three of the Deacon's sons were granted lots above Fort Western. Isaac and Jonas were grantees of settlers' lots on the east side of the Kennebec near the present north line of Augusta. David was granted lots on the west side, about a mile above the Fort. Asa Fisk, who married a daughter of the Deacon, was granted lots near Isaac.
Eight years earlier, a lieutenant of militia named Peter Clark had served at Fort Western during its con- struction. The legend is that he told his father of the Cushnoc area and the two explored it and decided to seek grants on an unrecorded trip, possibly in 1761.
Deacon Clark and his wife, together with Peter, his wife and child, came in May of 1762, the first family to settle permanently in the present Hallowell. Peter worked with his father to clear land and plant corn and rye. They built a frame house on the south side of what is now Academy street, apparently near the place of the cut made in 1851 for the railroad. Facing the river on the hillside, it was of two stories in front and one in the rear, a common construction type in colonial days in the Kennebec valley.
On November 11, 1763, the proprietor Benjamin Hallowell, holding the five-mile lot south of Dr. Gar- diner's, granted to Peter Clark under the usual condi- tions a lot of identical size and shape to the Deacon's and adjacent to it.
Peter's brother, Uriah had received a settler's grant during October, accepting lots adjacent to those of
Isaac and Jonas. A sixth Clark son, Simeon, came to the Kennebec purchase, but moved to Belgrade. All the others were successful settlers here. David and Isaac moved to what is now Hallowell when the Dea- con's estate was divided in 1782. Isaac built the first two-story house here, at the foot of Central street, and in it is said to have kept a tavern.
The Clark family's place in the settlement of the Kennebec was unique. Only 12 grants were made north of the Cobbosseecontee river in 1762. Four of them were to Clark males. That year, while the Dea- con and Lieutenant Peter were building the first frame house, the only dwellings along five miles of river were reported to be seven log cabins, four of them in the vicinity of Fort Western. Two more Clark grants were made in 1763, and all six grantees succeeded as set- tlers, while many were failing about them. Only one Clark, Peter, came to an unhappy end in the Kennebec patent. In the 1790's his mind began to fail and he disappeared in 1796. Years later, what was believed to be his skeleton was discovered in a thicket about two miles from his home.
The 1760's were a period of slow settlement, with commerce largely limited to trade with the Indians and the fisheries. About 200 men, women and children came to the whole valley of the Kennebec north of Gardinerstown, at the mouth of the Cobbosseecontee river, where Dr. Gardiner had been granted additional lands.
Shipbuilding was begun in 1763 on the east side of the Kennebec below Gardinerstown by Reuben Colburn and Thomas Agry, for the river was the principal high- way. No roads had been cut other than the military road from Fort Western to Fort Halifax, and part of that appears to have become overgrown with brush dur- ing the decade of peace. The only gristmill was at Gardinerstown. There were no schools or places of public worship. Life was far from kind and bountiful along the river.
In December, 1770, 49 settlers on the Kennebec petitioned "His Excelly Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., Captain-General, Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over his Majesty's province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. To the Honble his Majesty's Council and Honble House of Representatives," to in- corporate their town to "greatly incourage the Settle- ment, Peace and good order." Among the signers were the seven Clarks and Briggs Hallowell, son of the Kennebec proprietor, Benjamin.
The town was incorporated on April 26, 1771, and named Hallowell for the proprietor, becoming a part of the ancient county of Lincoln. Its bounds included
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about 90 square miles, or all of the present Hallowell, Augusta and Chelsea, and part of what is now Man- chester and Farmingdale.
In May Benjamin Hallowell deeded his proprietor's lot to his son Briggs.
At a town meeting in 1771, with Deacon Clark pre- siding, the town voted to build a road on each side of the river, from boundary to boundary of the town.
The next year Hallowell had 99 taxable male resi- dents. The average tax was less than three shillings, although the seven Clarks averaged a bit more, paying altogether one pound sterling, two shillings and a few pennies.
Briggs Hallowell, who is believed to have come to the Kennebec from Boston about 1768, was living near the mouth of Vaughan stream, then called Bombahook, the common name for the settlement which was gradu- ally building up in the vicinity of the Deacon Clark house. Briggs' wife Eunice is said to have owned a tavern near the Deacon's dwelling.
In all probability both Briggs and his father were concerned in an unusual enterprise which was under discussion in this period before the American revolu- tion changed the whole complexion of life on the Kennebec. Benjamin Hallowell had two grandsons, Charles and Benjamin Vaughan, whose plans, leader- ship and backing in many enterprises were to mean a great deal to the Kennebec valley and to the half- century distant State of Maine. Charles Vaughan was later to be an enthusiastic promoter, with Reuben Col- burn, Dummer Sewall of Bath, and others, of a plan of grand scope.
The Coos trail became Vaughan's dream. To con- nect the northern regions of Vermont and New Hamp- shire, even Montreal and Quebec, to the Atlantic ocean by a trail from Errol, N. H., to Hallowell, was the project.
The Revolution was to delay more than one great vision by decades, for the Kennebec proprietors were royalists, and there would be hatreds raised to set set- tler against settler and particularly settler against pro- prietor.
In 1775, General Benedict Arnold led his famous expedition up the Kennebec against Quebec, using bateaux built at Pittston. A rough sketch map con- sidered to represent Hallowell at that time shows 30 buildings, not counting Fort Western and a mill at Bond brook. Within the limits of the present city of Hallowell, there were indicated the houses of the Clarks and of Briggs Hallowell, with an unidentified dwelling
Temple Street - dividing line between Pease and Peter Clark property
between the Clarks and Hallowells, and the home of Shubael Hinkley on the flat near the north boundary. It would appear that the unknown sketcher did not indicate log cabins or one-room hovels, because 50 persons paid real estate taxes in the township at the earlier date of 1772.
Dr. Sylvester Gardiner "sided aggressively with the royal cause" and became an exile under the banishment act of 1778. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts be- gan legal action to confiscate his property. After living for a few years in England, he returned to this country after the war to practice medicine and surgery at New- port, R. I., where he died. Most of his Kennebec real estate, saved from confiscation in part because Dr. Gar- diner had not borne arms against the United States, was bequeathed to his grandson Robert Hallowell, on condition that the young man take the surname of Gardiner.
Briggs Hallowell died in 1778 in debt to Dr. Gar- diner, who is said to have transferred certain rights he had acquired in the Briggs Hallowell five-mile lot to Briggs' brother-in-law, Samuel Vaughan of London.
In 1786 Briggs' widow and administratrix, Eunice, conveyed the lot to Samuel Vaughan, Jr., who a few months later deeded it, in consideration of £ 1375, to his father, then living in Philadelphia.
The Revolution brought vessels of war to the Maine coast. Shipping, the fisheries and the lumber trade were disrupted. There was a shortage of food. Then came inflation and heavy taxation; men were drafted to serve against the British. One writer, Samuel Deane, said a single draft took every fourth man. At the end of the war tax troubles brought so much unrest that
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the separation of Maine from Massachusetts began to be discussed.
The rate of settlement of the District of Maine doubled after the Revolution. Massachusetts land policy was straightforward. When returning soldiers found their families nearly destitute, as was likely, they sought cheap land in Maine. Prices, according to the historian Clarence A. Day, "ranged from nothing to $1.50 an acre." One hundred or 160 acres were usual grants to private soldiers. Larger allotments went to officers and to groups of men. Maine's incorporated towns, 34 at the start of the war, numbered 72 by 1790. Moses Greenleaf estimated that the District of Maine gained 14,450 in population by immigration in the 12 years ending in 1784, and in the next six years, 29,519. As to Hallowell, its population was 692 in 1784, 1,194 in 1790.
Prosperity came to the Kennebec a few years after President Washington took office in 1789, with both domestic and foreign actions contributing to 15 bounti- ful years. The tax burden was removed by stabiliza- tion of the currency and Federal assumption of war debts. Wars in Europe thrust world shipping into the hands of neutrals, and the United States was ready with builders, vessels, captains and crews. Before 1795, American tonnage in foreign trade exceeded that of all nations except England. In another 10 years most of the international carrying trade was American and one- half of American tonnage was owned in New England. Between 1790 and 1800, shipbuilding on the Kennebec river increased six-fold and in the first few years of the 19th century Hallowell launched 38 vessels. The build- ers in 1801 included John and Thomas Agry, sons of the Pittston builder.
Kennebec valley owners, builders, lumbermen and farmers prospered. Hallowell raised beef, pork, po- tatoes, beans and even hay for the lumber camps. Hallowell was a market place for the exchange of farm products and English and West Indian goods. Sheep, cattle, and less bulky farm products were shipped coast- wise or to farther ports. Cattle were also driven over- land, and one writer asserts that a few were driven up the Kennebec, then overland to the Chaudière river and to Quebec. Later the Massachusetts General Court was to designate for settlement two townships in Somer- set county "on the great thorough-fare road from Ken- nebec to Quebec."
In 1791 the parents of 32-year old Charles Vaughan gave him the five-mile proprietor's lot formerly owned by his uncle, Briggs Hallowell. On the river frontage of the lot, Charles had built or was building "a pro- digious brewery, a distillery and a flour mill" and the idea of the Coos trail from New Hampshire to Hallo-
well was leading him to make an even greater invest- ment.
The town of Hallowell was developing into two pros- perous settlements, Fort Western, commonly "the Fort," and "the Hook," or Bombahook, which was be- coming the principal market town and shipping port on the upper Kennebec - so why not link the latter, and its Coos trail route, to a large downriver port? John Jones, a Hallowell surveyor, laid out a city for Vaughan at what is now called Jones Eddy, below Bath on the Kennebec. Vaughan constructed docks and store- houses but, says the historian Rowe, "he had been too optimistic in his building operations and with his fi- nancial failure, dreams of a riverborne commerce faded away." At Hallowell, trade continued to thrive.
Movement of traffic to the port at the Hook was im- proved by construction of the Sandy River road, known as the Rockwood road at the Hallowell end, which went to Readfield and Chesterville along part of the route of the Coos trail. In the wintertime travel on that road to Hallowell, and on the New Hampshire-Portland road, was said to be better than on the route to Boston. Massachusetts roads were not as well planned for win- ter traffic.
The Hook and the Fort were rival settlements, each with a meeting house, a post office, a ferry, a weekly mail delivery and a newspaper. The Hook had insti- tuted an academy, the first school of the classics be- tween Exeter, N. H., "and the eastern boundary of the United States." The Fort had a jail, and a proposal to build a bridge across the Kennebec. With separation of Maine from Massachusetts a frequent topic of dis- cussion, it was perhaps not surprising that Hallowell folk mentioned the benefits which might be derived by separating the Hook and the Fort. The bridge project was upsetting to the people of the Hook, even more than the Fort claim that it was the head of tide and navigation. The Hook's answer to the latter had al- ways been to point to bars and shallows a short dis- tance below the Fort, and indicate that the lower vil- lage was the head of navigation for vessels of any size piloted by reasonable men.
At a legislative hearing in 1796, the proposal of resi- dents of the Fort to build a bridge at the upper settle- ment was unsuccessfully opposed by the people of the Hook. Charles Vaughan acted for the lower settlement in an attempt to get a bridge at a crossing of its own selection. An act specifying location at Fort Western was passed.
The controversy over the bridge resulted in some ill feeling between residents of the two settlements but at a special town meeting following action on the bridge,
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Hook citizens defeated a separation proposal put for- ward by residents of the Fort. Daniel Cony, who had led the Fort's successful bridge campaign, then went to Boston to seek separation by legislative act.
On February 20, 1797, the legislature divided Hallo- well, incorporating the upper parishes under the name of Harrington. The new name was shortly changed to Augusta, legend has it, because people of the Hook de- lighted in using the corruption of "Herringtown," in honor, they said, of Dr. Cony and others who had had some connection with the fisheries.
Nearly two-thirds of the territory of ancient Hallo- well, but only one-half of its population and valuation, was lost by separation of the Fort settlement. Both towns were to be prosperous for 10 years, until the Em- bargoes preceding the War of 1812. From the division to about 1807, according to North, Hallowell secured most of the trade of the agricultural towns to the west, and extended its trade to the seaboard towns east of the river. This commerce was to enable Hallowell to with- stand, better than most seaports, the troubles that were ahead. On Augusta, North said, the war was to fall "with crushing weight."
It was natural that Hallowell should gain a rich trade with the agricultural towns, for the Hook had been the agricultural capital of the region for some years. Charles Vaughan had been active in the forma- tion of the Kennebec Agricultural Society, which ante- dated by five years the famous Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture. When the Kennebec group was formed in 1787, there were only two such societies in the United States, both established in 1785. The Maine group is said to have imported Siberian wheat to the United States, and Charles Vaughan personally made the first recorded attempt after the Revolution to improve Maine cattle by importing two Longhorn draft- type bulls and two dairy cows from England. Charles and his brother, Dr. Benjamin Vaughan, established one of Maine's first commercial nurseries on a ridge to the west of the present Vaughan farm. In the 1790's they imported, tested and propagated fruit trees; later they built one of the first insulated apple storages, dis- proved a belief that apples could not be grown success- fully this far north, shipped apples and cider profitably --- the latter commanding high prices as far away as New Orleans - and induced farmers to try cherry trees, which produced an export crop for several years. Dr. Vaughan was a prolific and respected writer on agricultural subjects and in his desire to improve the central Maine economy he disregarded personal profit. Scions and young grafted fruit trees were being sold and given away "all up and down the Kennebec valley" at about the time Kennebec county was created in 1799.
In the first years of the 19th century Hallowell pros- pered in both export and domestic trade. Fine two- story homes built in that time stand now on Second and Middle streets and elsewhere including Loudon Hill, in respected testimony to the good fortune which preceded the vastly different years of the Embargo and the War of 1812.
When Maine shipmasters were denied the use of the seas by national edict, designed to prevent war, a few engaged in illicit trade, but most saw their idle vessels begin to rot at anchor. New England, which possessed one-third of the wealth of the country, seemed helpless when forbidden ocean commerce, but traders became industrialists and throughout the District, small indus- tries of many sorts began to appear.
For example, between 1806 and 1814, 50 companies were begun for the manufacture of textiles in Maine.
In Hallowell, second only to Portland as a market town, there were business failures related to the slump in farm prices, the curtailment of lumbering and the cutting off of imports, but farmers in the surrounding country survived because their agriculture was self- sufficient and because they could do without fancy European goods and West Indian sugar and rum. Some of the latter came back to Maine, however, in return for smuggled potatoes.
While eastern Maine was occupied from Belfast on the Penobscot river to Lubec by the British, and the enemy's control of coastwise water traffic was effective, it is probable that Hallowell teamsters were employed in the "horse and ox marine" that grew up to transport goods from the banks of the Penobscot as far south as Georgia. There was some traffic in the other direction. One large herd of cattle, supposedly being driven to Belfast, was halted by authorities near Hallowell.
While New England industry was growing, some Hallowell men became involved in the "Merino fever," which ultimately developed into a wild speculation on the merits of Europe's leading breed of fine-wooled sheep. Joseph Wingate had samples of the foreign wool in 1810, when the first Merinos were brought to Maine. By 1814 Charles and his nephew, William Oliver Vaughan, were advertising the new breed. Merino wool brought two or three times the price of ordinary wool at the new mills. The price of breeding animals went up and up. Then came peace with Eng- land, and a flood of English textiles. The new woolen mills began to close their doors. Costly fine-wooled sheep could not be sold and, although the local mills were in a few years to make good woolens again, many Merinos were slaughtered for meat.
Charles Vaughan did not give up sheep breeding with the unfortunate end of the Merino episode. In 1823 he
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bought Leicester sheep, a heavy mutton type, to cross with his Merinos. Later he imported Southdown sheep from England and bred a combination mutton and wool producing sheep which has been a goal of breeders in the 20th century. Vaughan died before he could com- plete his project but Southdowns, Leicester and various crosses became well distributed throughout the state.
While many Maine farmers were still gripped by the "Merino fever," the "Ohio fever" made an appearance. Western lands were now available to settlers. Some Kennebec men began to say that central Maine had be- come over-crowded, and then came the year of "1800- and-Froze-to-Death." The winter of 1815-16 was rea- sonable enough, early spring was as usual, but May came on cold and wet. In early June snow fell and growing crops were frozen. In Hallowell, Joshua Whit- man wrote "some snow for three hours. x x x I pre- sume the oldest person now living knows of no such weather the eighth of June." On July 5 the ponds were covered with ice as thick as window glass. Corn was again killed by frost on July 9. At Hallowell flour sold for $16 a barrel. In Maine as a whole it is said that many farmers had little to eat, no seed corn left, and were unable to pay their taxes, but from Hallowell in 1817 were shipped 160 tons of butter, and 1,000 cattle
were shipped or driven to Massachusetts. A shivering writer at the Hallowell American Advocate pointed to hundreds of families in distress because of continuing cold weather "and ready to sell their property for half what it cost, and migrate south."
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