USA > Maine > Hancock County > Blue Hill > Historical sketches of Bluehill, Maine > Part 4
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The boys jumped upon the crown of the rock just large enough to stand on, took hold of the boat, righted and bailed her out with their shoes, and then proceeded homeward. The water was like ice and chilled them to the bone and they would have been drowned but for their fore- thought and activity. That experience they kept secret for a long time, that it might not worry their parents and stop their use of the boat.
The island upon which Joseph Wood and John Roundy first built their homes was, in the boyhood of the writer, owned by Marble Parker, and after him by his son Augustus. The latter sold it to David Friend and a portion went to a Mr. Syl- vester. Mr. Friend sold his part to Brooks Gray, and Sylvester his to Mrs. Ethelbert Nevin, of New York, who built a fine cottage upon it, and at this writing is building another. These have been and are the owners in the past and at the present time.
Passing on from the tide mill road back to the old stage road to and from Sedg- wick, there stands just where the former diverges a house built by Robert Clay, brother of Benjamin already spoken of, on land purchased of the writer's father in about 1834. Mr. Clay was a joiner and house carpenter like his brother, a cousin of Samuel R. Candage and a descendant of John Roundy, the first settler, through his father's marriage with Molly Roundy.
He was born May 27, 1786; married Patty Nickerson, of Castine, May 17, 1807; she died March 21, 1854, aged sixty-seven; he May 1852, aged sixty-six. Their children were:
1 Caroline, born Jan. 12, 1809.
2 Roxanna, born August 9, 1811.
3 Elmira, born Sept. 29, 1813.
4 William, born March 5, 1816.
5 Martha, born Nov. 15, 1818.
William H., born March 25, 1821; was
6 a sea captain.
7 Mary E., born April 8, 1823; married Marshall Hardin; died July 26, 1859.
8 Barzilla, born Nov. 18, 1825; died Feb. 3, 1832.
9 Eunice, born May 8, 1828; married Rufus Hardin.
Mr. Clay sold his house and lot in the '40s to Samuel R. Candage and removed with his family to the village where he died.
The next occupant of this house was Joshua Parker Candage, son of Azor and Chloe Candage, born July 8, 1819; married Melinda B. Stover, Oct. 3, 1844, and here began housekeeping at that time. They were married by Rev. Jotham Sewall at his house, the pastor of the Congregational church, and the writer witnessed the cere- mony, the first he ever attended.
Joshua Parker Candage, a cousin and close friend of the writer, had been brought up in the neighborhood, and be- ing the only son in his father's family, naturally sought the companionship of his cousins nearby. He had chosen the life of a sailor, and the seasons of 1845-6 the writer was his trusted first hand of the schooner Edward, of which he was master. The crew of that vessel in 1846, yet living, are Freeman R. McIntyre and the writer.
Capt. Candage gave up the sea a few years later, learned the trade of a ship carpenter, he having from boyhood been fond of mechanical labor, and later be- came a master builder, constructing sev- eral vessels, among which was the bark Oak Ridge in 1859, owned by the late Joseph Wesccott, esq.
He removed from the Falls about 1848 to the Shorey place north of the old meeting- house site on the Penobscot road, which he purchased and where he continued to reside until his death. He had three sons and several daughters. The family record is not at hand, nor in possession of the writer. His son now living, the other two being deceased, resides in the city of Somerville, Mass.
The next occupant of the Clay house was James Roundy Candage, brother of the writer, who married Mary Perkins Parker, his cousin June 23, 1843, by whom he had children as follows:
1 Wildes Parker, born in Portland, Me.,
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HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BLUEHILL, MAINE.
July 6, 1844; married and resided in San Francisco, Cal., where he had children and he died.
2 Georgianna Augusta, born August 16, 1846; married L. D. Perkins; died on Deer Island, Boston Harbor, where she was a matron, Nov. 2, 1902, and buried in the writer's lot at Brookline, Mass.
3 Sarah Norton, born Sept. 15, 1848; married, has children and resides in Los Angeles, Cal.
4 Sarah Stanley, born March 31, 1851; died in Bushwick, N. Y.
5 Annie Lizzie, born Jan. 2, 1857, mar- ried George W. Mason and resides in Boston, Mass., at this writing. James, head of this family, died Dec. 14, 1856, at Fortune Island, Bahamas, and his widow Oct., 1859, at Bushwick, N. Y.
James R. Candage was a sea captain, then a shipping master at New York, and went from that city to Fortune island to purchase wrecked and other material to be shipped to the United States, and there died suddenly He removed from Bluehill to New York in 1851 or 1852.
The next occupant of the Clay house was Robert Parker Candage, a brother of James, son of Samuel R. and Phebe W. Candage, born Oct 26, 1822; married Feb. 13, 1850, Sarah Elizabeth Parker, his cousin and a sister to Mary, his brother James' wife. Their children were:
1. Burt Henderson, born Nov. 25, 1850; married Emma Madura Conary.
2. Mabel Allen, born Oct. 24, 1852; mar- ried William Preston Wood; home in Florida.
3. Joanna Stanley, born July 24, 1855; married Albert R. Conary.
4. Caroline Walker, born Jan. 20, 1859; married Brooks Gray.
5. Mary Augusta Cory, born April 20, 1861; unmarried.
6. Phebe Ware, born Jan. 3, 1869; mar- ried Irving S. Candage.
Upon the death of his father, this house and a part of the farm came into Robert F. Candage's possession, and in it and those of his heirs it has remained until the present time. Robert, like the rest of his brothers, was a sailor and master of a vessel nearly all his manhood. He died Jan. 31, 1878, aged fifty-five years and three months. He was a strong, powerful man, stood six feet and an inch in height, and
until within a year or two of his death, when exposure and overwork had en- feebled his strength, he knew not the sig- nificance of the word fear. Since his death the place has been occupied by his widow, now in poor health, but for many years postmistress at Bluehill Falls.
On the lot practically, and less than 150 feet from the house, stands the school- house of the district, built in 1834-5 by Simeon P. Wood, by contract, in which the writer attended winter school under the teachings of C. C. Long, Fred A. Darling and others.
Across the road from the schoolhouse is the cellar over which it is said the house of Joseph Wood stood which he built, when he removed from the island at the Fore Falls. In that house it is supposed that Col. Rufus Putnam, the founder of Ohio, later was entertained in the year 1785, when he came to this place from sur- veying Black and White islands in Egge- moggin Reach, ceeded to the Penobscot Indians by the Massachusetts general court.
He brought with him unburnt coffee ber- ries, which he asked Mrs. Wood, as tradi- tion relates, to make into coffee. She had never before seen coffee, and he gave her no instructions. She put the berries into a kettle with water and hung it over the fire to cook, every little while looking to see if they grew soft. In dispair she served them at meal time, saying to Col. Putnam, "I have cooked that coffee a long time, but cannot make it grow soft, and I am afraid you won't like it." What reply the Colonel made, "Tradition sayeth not," or whether he "liked it" as a joke, the record is silent.
The people of the place drew up a peti- tion to the general court and entrusted it to Col. Putnam to present, praying to be relieved of heavy taxes occasioned by the Revolutionary war which they were not able to pay, and the petition proved suc- cessful. Col. Putnam effected the first white settlement in what is now the great state of Ohio, at Marietta, on April 7, 1788, by people mostly led by him from Essex county, Mass., twenty-two years after the settlement was made at the island here at the Fore Falls.
Capt. Joseph Wood's lot probably in- cluded what was afterwards the Sinclair lot, as there are found in the town records
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HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BLUEHILL, MAINE.
certain allusions to Capt. Wood's point, distinctly from the point at the Tide Mills. And in the boyhood of the writer a cellar was to be seen opposite the Sinclair house where once had stood a house.
The place opposite the schoolhouse, after Capt. Wood had removed from it, must have been occupied by his son Israel, as on the land were apple trees bearing the names of "Joe Tree", "Hannah Tree," "Lois Tree," etc., named for the children of Israel; they still bore those names within the memory of the writer, whose father later owned the property.
Israel Wood was born in Beverly, Oct. 27, 1744, and came with his father's family to the town in 1763. He married Phebe Holt, daughter of Nicholas Holt, Sept. 24, 1768; she was born Feb. 9, 1752; died Feb. 12, 1831; he died Nov. 13, 1800. Their chil- dren were:
1. Phebe, born April 22, 1770; married Phineas Pillsbury, Oct. 21, 1788.
2. Anne, born April 8, 1772; died Dec. 19, 1776.
3. Lois, born Feb. 6, 1775; married Ezra Parker Dec. 27, 1791.
4. Anne, born Dec. 24, 1776.
5. Ruth, born Nov. 5, 1779; married James Savage March 7, 1811.
6. Israel, born July 20, 1782; married 1st Joanna Parker; 2nd Betsey Briggs Hatch.
7. Joseph, born April 1, 1785; married 1st Hannah Johnson; 2nd Joanna Hinckley.
8. Hannah, born Jan. 27, 1788; married Capt. Isaac Perry, of Orland, Nov. 25, 1815. 9. Samuel Holt, born July 19, 1791; died May 2, 1826.
When the old house opposite the school- house was taken down, there is no evi- dence at hand to determine.
The Edward Sinclair place with the house now standing thereon was next to the place just described. Edward Sinclair was born June 20, 1760, supposed at Beverly, where he died while on a visit May 19, 1827, aged sixty-seven years. He married Dec. 17, 1789, Mary Carleton, from Andover, a sister of David, Dudley, Edward and Moses Carleton. She was born Sept. 17, 1760, and died Jan. 1, 1841, aged 80 years and 41/2 months. The writer remembers her well, and sat up with her body after her death, in company with John Chatteau, as was the custom of those days.
The Sinclair farm on the lower side of the road lay between the Cove and that of Marble Parker, and was bounded on the other side by land of Samuel R. Candage, the curve of the road, and land of Capt. Samuel Wood running over Oak hill to a woud lot and sheep pasture, containing & hundred acres or more.
The house, a large square mansion of two stories, painted yellow, and with a square roof, was fitted for two families, Mrs. Sinclair, Maria and Dudley, her chil- dren, occupying one-half, and Capt. Edward, another son, and his family, the opposite half, each having a side and back door, while in front was the door leading into the front hall and from that through doors either way to the separate apart- ments, with broad stairs to the upper chambers. It was the ideal house, in the mind of the writer in boyhood.
The family of Edward Sinclair, sr., beside himself and wife already described, consisted of the following children, viz .: I. Maria, born April 24, 1791; never married, died.
II. Edward, born Dec. 13, 1792; married Elizabeth Haskell July 5, 1825.
III. Nabby, burn Oct. 22, 1794; married Asa Clough, jr., Aug. 1, 1827; she died Dec. 3, 1827.
IV. Dudley, born August 17, 1796; never married; died at Rockland, Me.
V. Ebenezer, born March 1, 1798; never married; was a sailor, and died in Cuba of yellow fever.
VI. William, born June 18, 1801; a ship captain; married in New York city; had children; died, no date.
As the family record of Edward Sinclair is not found at Blue Hill, it would suggest that his children were born elsewhere. Mr. Sinclair's name is not found until 1815, although he may have been in town before that date. The mansion house was probably built a few years prior to his death in 1827.
Edward Sinclair, his second child, born Dec. 13, 1792, married July 5, 1825, Eliza- beth Haskell, born in Beverly, Mass., April 20, 1800. Edward Sinclair, jr., was & sea captain in his younger days, and later removed to Aroostook county with his family, where he died.
In the youth of the writer he resided in half of his mother's house (his father being dead) where his children were born.
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HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BLUEHILL, MAINE.
The other half Was occupied by his mother, his sister Maria and brother Dudley, who carried on the farm. In that half the carpenters and workmen upon vessels built by the Sinclair's were boarded and lodged.
When the bark "Virginia" was being built, a Col. Haskell, from Gloucester, Mass., was the blacksmith that fitted her ironwork. He was a good workman, a bachelor, but fond of a glass of grog. The vessel was launched on the Fourth of July, so the Colonel, being patriotic, celebrated in the manner of those days, and took as much grog as he could carry to the house conveniently, and seated himself at the dinner table.
The grog he had taken began its work and he imagined he was watching the ship start from the ways. "There she goes," said he, leaning to one side. "There she goes", and leaning further over lost his balance and went sprawling under the table, from which position he was unable to rise without the help of the others about the table and then to be helped to his bed.
Dudley Sinclair was a good-natured bachelor who liked boys, always had a kind word for them and they in turn were fond of him. He told them stories, fished with them, knew where berries were to be found and was as companionable as though of their age and size. The writer looks back upon the time when he shared his friendship and enjoyed his companion- ship, as bright periods in his early life.
Capt. Edward Sinclair's children were as follows, viz:
1. Edward Dudley, born Aug. 1, 1826; died June 6, 1834.
2. Frederick ยท Augustus, born March 9, 1828; drowned in California.
3. Elizabeth H., born Oct. 1, 1829; mar- ried Carter, of Sedgwick.
4. Mary Carleton, born Sept. 10, 1830; married Burnham, lives at Sherman Mills, Me
5. Robert Haskell, born Aug. 6, 1833; a soldier of the War of the Rebellion.
6. Edward, born June 14, 1835; died un- married.
7. Frances, born April 3, 1838; died un- married.
8. Andrew, born Nov. 1, 1840; married, resides at Sedgwick.
At this writing none of the blood or name of Sinclair resides at Blue Hill. Dudley Sinclair sold the farm to Otis Rob- erts, after his brother Edward and family removed to Aroostook, and went to Rockland, Me., where he died at a good age. Mr. Roberts sold the place to Harvey Conary, who, with his wife, lived some years upon it, and there died, leaving a son and daughter. The son has half the farm and lives in a house built by him near by. The old house and part of the land went to his sister, the wife of Burt H. Candage, son of Robert Parker and Sarah E. Candage, who still owns it. The old house has been kept in repair and is the finest residence in the Tide Mill dis- trict.
THE MARBLE PARKER PLACE
is the next, the house, barn and farm all lying on the right or eastern side of the old stage road, with a back pasture and wood lot beyond the Candage and Sinclair pastures and mill island already spoken of. This description fits a time seventy years ago when a gambrel-roofed house stood upon the site of the one now stand- ing, with well curb and old style sweep located a short distance from it.
What year the old house was built can- not now be determined, but 'twas some years before 1800. The lot of land that went with it was probably taken up by Peter Parker, sr., who came from Ando- ver, Mass., to Blue Hill in 1765. He was a brother of Col. Nathan and Robert Parker, and was born at Andover Jan. 8, 1741; married Phebe Marble June 5, 1766. She was born July 29, 1744; died Oct. 1, 1805. He died October 24, 1822, aged eighty-one years, ten months and twenty-three days. Their children were as follows:
I. Phebe, born April 24, 1767; died May 3,1795.
II. Serena, born August 29, 1768; died October 12, 1784.
III. Peter, born October 17, 1769; married Sally, daughter of Jonathan Darling, Sept. 13, 1794; she was born April 24, 1769; died October 16, 1836; he died April 30, 1855, aged eighty-five years and five months.
IV. Hannah, born February 19, 1771; died October 27, 1855, aged eighty-four years, ten months.
V. Susannah, born July 27, 1772; mar- ried Jonathan Ellis September 11, 1795;
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HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BLUEHILL, MAINE.
had four children, Jonathan, Charles, Almira and Amos Hill; she died August 17, 1803.
VI. Marble, born July 1, 1775; married Hannah Lovejoy.
VII. Mary, born April 1, 1777; died July 8, 1793.
VIII. Isaac, born May 23, 1792; married Hannah Carter.
IX. Joanna, born May 6, 1794; married Israel Wood, jr.
Marble Parker was the sixth child of his parents, born July 1, 1775; married Han- nah Lovejoy, September 17, 1798. She was born October 16, 1778; died July 13, 1847. He died December 17, 1866, of cancer, aged ninety-one years. He was tall, of large frame and coarse features, with a promi- nent Roman nose. His wife, on the con- trary, was short of stature, diminutive in size and of delicate figure. The writer's father said of her: "She is very short when standing, but tall as the average woman when sitting." Another way of express- ing the fact, that her body was of the usual length, but her limbs were very short. Mr. Parker's voice and presence were not magnetic, but repelled children of the neighborhood, while Mrs. Parker had a mild, persuasive voice and a winning smile that were attractive.
Mr. Parker had in his orchard by the road, with branches hanging over the fence, an apple tree that bore very early, toothsome fruit. One day a boy passing along picked up an apple from the road- side that had fallen from that tree. Mr. Parker saw him, called out to put it back, and then berated the boy for stealing, which wounded to the quick and left its sting in the wound. The boy had been taught that apples lying on the roadside were free to passers, and he had no thought that he was committing a crime by taking one or more from the ground.
He told his companions of the occur- rence. They took his side of the question, and it was arranged between them that they would go and gather the fruit of that tree the next night. With bags to con- tain the apples, they assembled in the darkness when all was quiet, stripped the tree, took the apples to a not distant hay loft, secreted them, and at their leisure feasted upon them. Shortly after that event the boys met Adoniram Day, then living at the Parkers, who related to
them that the Indians, then camping upon Clough's shore, had come at night and stolen all the apples of that favorite tree.
The boys said it was too bad, but said nothing more, though they had apples to eat for weeks after. It was wrong for the boys thus to have acted, but whether right or wrong, they did what they considered they were justified in doing-sugar catches more flies (and more boys) than all the vinegar ever made from cider, or any other acid.
The children of Marble and Hannah Parker were:
1. William, born September 18, 1798; died September 30, 1798.
2. Serena, born August 10, 1799; mar- ried Charles Colburn.
3. Harriet, born November 18, 1801.
4. Leander, born January 22, 1804; died October 3, 1804.
5. Isaac, born July 30, 1805; married Abigail Marshall Powers.
6. Sophia, born December 10, 1807; mar- ried George Robertson.
7. Augustus Granville, born August 7, 1812; married Dorothy H. Powers.
8. Phebe, born June 8, 1816; died May 26, 1817.
9. Phebe, born January 4, 1818; never married, died in Massachusetts.
10. Edith, born July 25, 1820; never married, died in Massachusetts.
In the latter years of Mr. Parker's life, his farm was carried on by his son, Au- gustus G., who tore down the old house and built the one now standing. After his father's death, Augustus G. Parker sold the homestead to David Friend and removed to Flye's Point, Brooklin, where he and his wife died at a later date, leav- ing a son and daughter.
The Parkers were Baptists, and Marble Parker and his wife were members of the Baptist church of Bluehill, he joining in 1816 and his father, Peter, in 1806, at its organization.
The present owner, David Friend, has sold the greater part of the Parker farm, retaining a few acres near the house, the balance having gone to those interested in building summer cottages upon it near the bay shore.
THE EDWARD SINCLAIR PLACE
upon the other side of the road is the next house to be described, which is said to
26
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BLUEHILL, MAINE.
have been built about 1825 by Captain Ed- ward Sinclair, jr., who occupied it a few years when first married. The occupant first remembered by the writer was Edwin Wood and family, son of Israel Wood, jr. He was born January 29, 1810, and married Susan Higgins July 29, 1839. He lived there for a few years and then moved elsewhere.
The next occupant of the place was Phineas Dodge and family, then Israel Wood, a brother of Edwin, whose wife was Mary Walker Gray, of Sedgwick. Israel Wood was a great-grandson of Jos- eph Wood, and his wife a great-grand- daughter of John Roundy, the first set- tlers of Blue Hill. Israel Wood and family removed to Ellsworth, where he and his wife died some years after. Others have occupied the place, and at this writing it is owned by a Capt. Duffy and family.
THE OLD SCHOOL HOUSE,
the next building upon the road, stood upon a ledge at the left corner of what is now the shore road to Parker's Point. It was an old-style square struc- ture with square roof, unpainted and ancient-looking, that had been moved from beyond Bragdon's brook, its first location, about 1830 or 1831.
It was the first school building, on its original site, where the writer attended school and afterwards upon this site. In winter it was attempted to be heated by a wood fire in an open fire-place, but a few feet from the fire it was as cold as a barn with the cold wind passing under the building and up through cracks in 'the floor which set the scholars shivering with the cold, which, even the thought of now, causes an unpleasant sensation to the writer.
Moses Pillsbury was the teacher for years in that house, and the school was a mixed one, containing scholars from four to twenty years of age. The writer cannot think of one beside himself now living who attended that school with him -- yes, there is one, Almira Wood, now Mrs. J. Q. A. Butler, of New York. She probably would remember the incident of a dead crow being thrown down the chimney by boys outside, and the stir and smell it made in the schoolroom, when the feathers and flesh of the bird began burning, and
the anger of Master Pillsbury at the trick played upon him and the school.
The old schoolhouse took fire on a Sat- urday afternoon in 1833, and was entirely consumed, with no scholar to mourn its loss. The writer was on the spot to see the last of its frame all afire, fall and be consumed. A boy of the neighborhood, but not a native, was an at'endant at that school and related to the writer under a promise of secrecy how the building took fire. As he has been dead many years and his name is not to be revealed, there is now no harm in stating how the fire origi- nated.
He said that passing in the afternoon he went into the schoolhouse. The fire of the forenoon was still smouldering in the fire-place. He thought of how he and others had suffered with the cold therein, and the desire came to him to have it warmed up for once, and then a better and warmer house would be built.
He took a live coal from the embers, placed it in a crack in the floor, fanned it until the fire had good headway, then slipped out, fastened the door and made his escape down through the pastures in in rear and back to the highway and shouted fire with all his might.
The result was the total destruction of the old house and the erection of a better and warmer one upon another site nearer the tide mills. Great was the wonder how the old house took fire-two boys only knew the secret as above. No one ever mentioned that boy's name in con- nection with its destruction, and until now, for more than seventy years, the writer has kept the secret committed to him.
THE SAWYER HOUSE
and place next to the old schoolhouse site the writer well remembers. The house was built by Mr. Sawyer, the shoemaker from Biddeford, who first worked in the neighborhood for John Cheever. Mr. Sawyer married a Miss Curtis for his first wife; she died and he married her sister for a second wife. He built this house previous to 1840, the exact date the writer does not know, and lived in it a number of years, then removed to the village and later from the town.
The next occupant was Capt. John Robertson, son of Robert Robertson, who
27
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF BLUEHILL, MAINE.
married Miss Nancy E. Brown in 1843-4. Children were:
1. Robert H., born August 28, 1845; died September 28, 1846.
2. John Albert, born November 9, 1846.
3. Andrew Parker, born December 19, 1850.
John Robertson was a sea captain, and died at Newport, R. I., in 1854. His widow sold the place after his death and removed from the town to her native place in Washington county. After Capt. Robert- son, Andrew Gay and family resided at that house and place.
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