USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay Harbor > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 33
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Southport > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 33
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 33
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1879. February 1, while returning from their lobster traps near Fisherman's Island, Isaac T. Sargent and Albert Murray were capsized by a squall. Sa rent was drowned, aged 31 ; he left three children. Murray i as picked up in an exhausted condition. - April, Frank, son~& William and Naney Giles, lost at Wood's Hola, Mass., from .. schooner Lawrence Haynes. -June, Arthur, son of Jeremian,nd Ellice Blake, lost at sea, aged 55. - August 15, Hattie, w. e of Nathaniel Westman,
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with her brother-in-law, William Field, and his daughter Hat- tie, drowned above the upper gate on the way to Bath in their boat. They were caught between the wake of two steamers which met at the place. - October, Edward Malony was killed by a piece of rigging falling on him from a stranded vessel. - December, Capt. John Loring, master of schooner Rhoda B. Taylor, died at Pensacola from exposure on the wreck of his vessel.
1880. January 15, Eben Bennett was drowned and his body washed ashore on Linekin Neck. He had started a few hours before to go to Bristol in a dory. - March 28, Stanford J., son of Robert and Mary Montgomery, lost at sea, aged 27. - August 11, Eunice L., daughter of Morrill and Martha McIntire, drowned near Sawyer's Island, aged 8 .- August 14, William Lawton, with his two sons and one other man, was run down just off White Islands by the Rockland schooner, D. H. Ingraham, and all drowned. They were residents of Bris- tol, but fishing in the chartered schooner Treaty, owned at East Boothbay. - October 16, Benaiah P. Dolloff was injured by being thrown from a wagon. The accident occurred by jumping into the rear end of a wagon, the horse having started, and the seat not being fastened he fell backward, producing a paralysis by the fall, from the effects of which he died Decem- ber 28. He was 38 years of age and left a widow, two sons and one daughter.
1882. January, at Boston, a son of William P. MeCobb was killed on an elevator; interment at Boothbay. - February 21, Benjamin Cunningham, washed overboard from schooner R. S. Hunt, Carthegena to New York .- Capt. Sanford Green- leaf, son of John and Loama, residing at Cape Elizabeth after 1876, drowned on Jeffries, while away from his schooner, Maggie Willard, setting trawls, aged 39. - March 18, Martin Stover was killed while trying to cross the elevator at the Knickerbocker Ice Works. He was caught in the machinery, dragged through a narrow opening, one of the lugs coming across his neck, severing his head from his body ; aged 17.
1883. March 11, Capt. Llewellyn Baker, lost at sea, aged 47. He left one daughter, Annie, who married R. G. Dewolfe. -Neal McPhea, residing on Barter's Island, killed by being struck with a hawser on schooner Solitaire. They were being towed into Boston, when running upon flats it caused such a shoek to the vessel that the hawser was thrown out of place .- November 9, Almond L., son of Charles H. and Emmeline Lewis, mate of the schooner Annie E. Palmer, was killed at Ward's Island, N. Y., by the explosion of the tug boat James
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N. Thompson. The schooner was lashed to the starboard side of the tug when the explosion occurred.
1884. On May 24 a double drowning accident occurred in Boothbay Harbor by capsizing a boat. Edwin G., son of Daniel H. and Hattie B. Moody, aged 10 years, 9 months, and Harry A., son of J. O. and Lizzie Farnham, aged 12 years, 9 months, were drowned ; Fred, son of Eliphalet Tibbetts, about the same age, being the other occupant, was rescued. - May 30, Emery D. Winchenbaugh was killed in Portland by the falling of a derrick. He had been a merchant in Boothbay and Master of Seaside Lodge. - December 18, George Pierce, Southport, drowned in the cove opposite the Maddocks fish stand. He fell overboard while mooring his vessel.
1885. January 28, Capt. John W. Lewis, lost in the wreck of the schooner Australia. - April 15, Abial, son of Samuel and Clarissa Wylie, drowned in the dock east of Cen- tral Wharf, Portland, aged 33 ; unmarried. - May, Melville Reed, East Boothbay, was struck by the main boom in the wreck of the schooner Cyrus Mckown. He was brought ashore but died soon after. - July 27, Benjamin Odlum was drowned in Adams Pond while in swimming, aged 18 years, 10 months. - October 23, Emerson P. Tibbetts, aged 21, and Joseph M. Tibbetts, aged 16, brothers, living at Christmas Cove, Southport, drowned in Eastern River, Dresden. They with another brother, Artemas, were there with fish on a trad- ing trip. Their boat grounded and in trying to move it they took an anchor into a dory and rowed out into the river to throw it, intending to draw into water that way. In throwing it the dory was capsized. Emerson was a good swimmer, but in trying to save Joseph, who was not, both were drowned. - December 5, Capt. Alonzo, son of David and Sarah Lewis, was lost at sea from the schooner Emma S. Briggs, on a pas- sage from Jacksonville to New York, aged 48 years, 3 months. He left a widow and children. They lived at Back River.
1886. January 18, Edward H., son of William and Nancy Giles, lost at sea, aged 27 .- July 12, Albert, aged 15, and Justin, aged 11, sons of - Matthews, who had died a few years before at Boothbay Harbor, drowned at Highland Lake, Bridgton ; interment at Boothbay .- October 5, Henry, son of Clifford B. Lewis, drowned in Campbell's Cove, aged 9 .- Willard, son of William and Esther McKown, thrown from an express team in Boston that year and killed, aged 35.
1887. September 15, Frank, son of John Knight, drowned in the Damariscotta River, near Pleasant Cove, aged 34.
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HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
1888. May 9, William Kenniston, aged 81 years, 6 months, was murdered in his house at Boothbay Center by Llewellyn Quimby. This was the second known homicide within the original Boothbay limits and the only one in the memory of persons living. The murderer was about 19 years of age. His father, Harvey Quimby, was born in Boothbay and bore a good reputation, as did his father's family. Harvey died under sus- picious circumstances in Swanville, passing for a suicide, but always doubted. The mother continued living in Swanville for a time, but finally married Nelson Harding, of Boothbay, and sett ed here with her children. Llewellyn lived with his grand- parents, but for larceny was sent to the State Reform School at about 14 years of age. Having a typhoid fever in 1886, when he was 17, he was released on probation. That fall he came to William Kenniston's to do chores for his board. In the spring of 1887 he was engaged for the year at wages and Mr. Kenniston purchased him an outfit of clothing in advance. Almost immediately after obtaining the clothing he ran away in the nighttime and when next seen by any one in town it was a year later, when brought here a prisoner for the murder of his benefactor. It seems after running away in May, 1887, he became, practically, a tramp, spending the following winter about the Boston wharves. Early in May, 1888, he took pas- sage to Rockland on the steamer, beating his fare ; from there came across to Boothbay, passing through the northern part of the town the night of the 8th to Barter's Island. There he took a boat and rowed to Bath. During the day he bought a butcher's knife and a quantity of whiskey. He already had a revolver. Late in the afternoon he returned with his boat to where he took it and traveled across to Boothbay Center, reach- ing there when, as he afterward confessed, but two lights werc to be seen. When these had been extinguished for the night he left his hiding place, which had been a grape trellis in the garden south of the house, obtained a piece of timber about twelve feet long and raised one end of it to the sill of the low porch window, opening into a low, unfinished chamber used to store grain. He carried with him besides his knife and revol- ver an iron cart pin about eighteen inches long. After gaining the grain chamber he went about the upper rooms, leaving charred matches in nearly every one. These chambers had been occupied by F. B. Greene and wife (the latter being the daughter of Mrs. Kenniston) all the time Quimby was at the house in '86-87, and had been vacated by them about a month before the murder. From there he descended to the cook room, which adjoined the sleeping room of Mr. and Mrs. Ken- niston. Mrs. Kenniston just then awoke and realizing some
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one was in the next room aroused her husband. Quimby hear- ing this burst open the sleeping room door, which was fastened by a wooden button, and rushed to the front side of the bed, with the location of which he was familiar, and struck Mr. Kenniston over the head with the iron pin. The victim fell forward to the floor. He then reached over and struck Mrs. Kenniston a blow with the same instrument, inflicting a bad scalp wound. He then went back to the kitchen door and lighted a match. While burning, Mrs. Kenniston saw the fig- ure of a man plainly, but stated he had over his face a white cloth with holes cut out at the eyes. The brave old man, who evidently was only stunned by the blow he had received, came to his feet and rushed upon his assailant, grappling him and forcing him into the kitchen. The iron pin was found in the bedroom, where he knocked it from Quimby's grasp. But the butcher's knife, purchased that day in Bath, came next into
use. Several wounds were inflicted with this before breaking it, which he did by wildly striking in the dark against the cooking stove. The blade was broken within two inches of the bolster, and with this ragged stub one more blow was made upon the forehead. In his confession he said that up to this point he felt himself being overpowered and, throwing away his knife, drew his revolver and fired two shots, the second of which he imagined struck his victim, for at that point he fell in the floor. But the deadly knife had done its work earlier in the struggle. A cut from that, before it was broken, from the top of the shoulder through to the armpit, severing the vein, caused death. The two bullets were found lodged in the walls of the room, neither striking Mr. Kenniston, but from loss of blood he fell just as the second was fired. Mrs. Kenniston, from a side door, was escaping from the house just as the two shots were fired. She reached the house of Truman E. Giles and gave the alarm. It was then 11.30 P. M. Mr. Giles aroused the neighborhood, and several together proceed- ing to the house found Mr. Kenniston lying dead in a pool of blood in the kitchen where he fell. Dr. F. H. Crocker was called to attend the injured woman, while George B. Kennis- ton, Albert H. Kenniston, sons, and F. B. Greene, son-in-law, living at the Harbor, were aroused at their respective houses and were at the scene of the tragedy shortly after midnight. There was no clue at first ; a tramp who had been in the neigh- borhood was suspected. Quimby was not thought of until Greene, examining the surroundings of the house with a lan- tern, discovered the timber slanting from the porch window to the ground. Instantly he was impressed with this, for a year before, when he was living there, he remembered that the night
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Quimby ran away he had left the house from that very window on a joist arranged in the same manner, which was placed in its position before retiring for the night. With this impres- sion he went at once into the house, where were congregated the men of the neighborhood, and said : "Gentlemen, if Llew- ellyn Quimby is where he could do this he is the one for us to look for." It did not require long for the suggestion to gain ground to that extent that every one present felt that the whereabouts of Quimby should first be settled. Teams were started in various directions ; every vessel in the harbor was boarded to ascertain if any had left or come on board during the night ; the coroner at Wiscasset was sent for; the select- men were got together at the house and a legal reward on the part of the town was offered ; and the entire coast line of the town was visited as soon as day broke to ascertain if any boat had been taken during the night. About four o'clock in the morning it was discovered that the horse had been taken from his stall and was missing. Nothing else save a bridle belong- ing to the team was gone. It was evident that the murderer had escaped on the horse, riding bareback. It was also found, by tracking, that he had taken the road leading toward Rufus Holton's and thence toward Damariscotta. With this knowl- edge A. H. Kenniston and Truman E. Giles started for that town. Reaching there they changed horses, Samuel D. Wyman continuing with Mr. Kenniston. A clue was at once gained, for about daybreak a man riding a black horse, bareback, had gone through toward Damariscotta Mills. Passing through the latter place a few miles more were traveled when, from the crest of a small hill they saw ahead, reined in a yard by the roadside, a man sitting on n dark horse. Mr. Kenniston told Wyman to drive up rapidly and check the horse quickly when opposite. This was done, but when within a few rods Quimby, recognizing them, slid from his horse and ran for the woods, much to the amazement of the family he was talking with. Kenniston at the same moment sprang from his wagon, in close haul, after him. They ran several rods when Kenniston pulled a revolver from his pocket, firing as they ran. The second shot struck Quimby nearly on top of the head, above the ear, inflicting a scalp wound and dazing him so that he ran into a wire fence a few feet further on and, stumbling, became an easy prey to his pursuer. He was taken between them, bound, the horse he had been riding in tow, back to Damaris- cotta and thence to Boothbay. So rapid was the work of his capture that the reward offer had but been telegraphed from Boothbay and placed on the bulletin boards in the various cen- ters when dispatches from Damariscotta announced the taking
WILLIAM KENNISTON. 1806-1888.
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of the murderer more than twenty miles from the scene of the tragedy. He was bound over and placed in the Wiscasset jail to await the action of the Grand Jury the following October. The next day at the jail he was visited by G. B. Kenniston and F. B. Greene, to whom he made a full confession of his crime, alleging his motive to have been robbery. At his trial he was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to State's Prison for life. There he died some three years later of con- sumption. The funeral of his victim was held at the First Congregational Church at Boothbay Center, attended by friends and neighbors for miles about, for no man in the town enjoyed a wider acquaintance, or was more pleasant to meet, than William Kenniston. The services were conducted by Rev. L. D. Evans, the funeral discourse appearing in full in the next issue of the Boothbay Register, extracts from which appeared in several other State papers. Mrs. Kenniston after the trag- edy made her home with her daughter, Mrs. Greene, where she died January 24, 1890. The shock she received completely shattered her nervous system, unquestionably shortening her life.
August 11, Fred E. Upham, Dorchester, Mass., a summer boarder at Squirrel Island, was drowned near Pumpkin Rock by his sailboat capsizing in a squall .- September, Capt. Wood- bury D. Lewis lost at sea. - November 19, Capt. Gardner G. Tibbetts was drowned at Cambridge, Md., by the anchor cable catching and carrying down the boat he was in. His body was recovered and interment was made at Boothbay with Masonic honors.
1889. January 21, Howard M., son of William and Cath- erine Alley, Southport, lost at Pensacola from schooner Geor- gia Wither, Portland, aged 23. - January 28, Charles P., son of Isaiah and Mary A. Reed, killed by a coasting accident, aged 10 years, 11 months. - Capt. Freeman K., son of Free- man and Martha F. Reed, lost off Jersey City, aged 48. He left a family of two daughters and one son.
1890. December 24, Laura, daughter of Isaiah and Ellen M. Dewolfe, killed instantly in the vicinity of Boston by being thrown from a carriage, aged 25 years, 3 months.
1891. August 15, Hattie E., wife of Convers O. Hodgdon, killed by a runaway accident, being thrown from her carriage near the house of Wesley Pinkham. - December 26, Quincy A. Dunton, killed at sea, aged 52.
1893. March 17, Freeman G. Thompson, Southport, drowned while drawing lobster traps near Isle of Springs ; left widow and one son, Richard ; aged 31. - August 26, William Nickerson, Parker Smith, Eleazar Penney and William Friz-
26
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zell, on schooner Cora Louise, owned by S. Nickerson & Sons, loaded with iron, on passage from New York to Boston.
1895. February 8, Truman H. Odlum, lost at sea, aged 31 .- August 10, Frank, aged 32, and Richard, aged 27, sons of Doctor Robinson, a cottager at Ocean Point, drowned near Mouse Island while returning from the Harbor, by their boat capsizing in a squall. - August 24, Edward C. Heselton, Skowhegan, aged 29, proprietor of the Samoset House, Mouse Island, and Edward F. Sanders, a summer boarder, aged 8, drowned near Mouse Island by their boat capsizing in a squall. Captain Reed, who was sailing the party, by great effort saved Mrs. Sanders, mother of the boy, and Miss Powers, a boarder from Skowhegan. - December 22, G. Jack, drowned.
1896. May 24, Frank, son of Albert Wheeler, killed in Boston by falling from a team, aged 30 years, 8 months. - September 30, William, son of Alexander Adams, drowned near the vessel of which he was one of the crew at Newport, R. I., aged 35. - December 6, John L., son of Frank W. and Emma Woodward, drowned while skating on Adams Pond, aged 12 years, 6 months.
1898. Millard F., Jr., son of Millard F. and Agnes I. Harris, killed in the destruction of the Maine in Havana Har- bor .- February 15, Capt. Herbert D., son of Morrill B. Lewis, lost at sea. - November 28, George B., Jr., son of George B. and Antoinette E. Kenniston, a student in Bowdoin College, lost on the steamer Portland in the great gale of that date. - Capt. Bert Dunbar, a native of Castine, who had recently set- tled at Boothbay Harbor, also lost on steamer Portland.
1899. Richard M., son of J. Edward and Jennie Knight, disappeared in the woods of Bemis, easterly from the railroad and southerly from the lake, on a hunting trip one afternoon in October. He entered the forest to the east of the railroad, and a friend who accompanied him to the west of it, arranging to meet at their hotel at the close of the day. He did not return and no trace was ever found of him, though hundreds of men familiar with the country joined in the search until the snows fell later in the season. It has remained an unsolved mystery. He was 20 years of age.
1904. May 4, Mrs. Mary E. Blatchford, burned to death by clothing catching fire, aged 62. - July 11, Howard B., son of George and Betsey Reed, died of injuries inflicted the pre- ceding 4th by explosives, aged 8. - September 5, Mrs. Clem Barter, Barter's Island, burned to death by clothing catching fire.
CHAPTER XXIII.
SCHOOLS.
T HAS been noted in our chapter on municipal affairs (see pages 141-42) that the school system in Boothbay had its birth in 1767. Faithful Singer was the first teacher, and he not only "boarded 'round," as the custom was and continued to be for many years, but he taught 'round also. The records are not clear in the case of his immediate successors, whether or not they also taught upon a circuit, but it is thought that the plan was continued until 1777, when the first mention is made of employing "school dames." In 1774 Joseph Beath was mentioned as the only teacher in town employ, and there can be little doubt that a single male teacher did the work in town until the above action was taken in employing a plurality of female teachers.
At that period the interior of Boothbay was, for the most part, a dense forest. A straggling settlement existed in some parts of it and roads of the most primitive nature were being cut through from one part to another. The principal habita- tions, however, were along the shore, on the coves and harbors, and communication was mostly by boat. There were, at the date of incorporation, four widely separated neighborhoods within the town limits, which might be termed centers of pop- ulation, and it is evident that nearly as many families were situated in one as another of these. The scattering outskirts of one neighborhood reached those of another, and it is likely that some families were so isolated that it was impossible to take advantage of any school opportunity.
The Fullerton house at the Harbor would accommodate the children of such families as lived between Wall's Point and Campbell's Cove. David Reed's house, though not central, was commodious, and made the most suitable place for the western part of the town and those living just across Townsend Gut, on Cape Newagen Island, where most of the population
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on that island was then located. Somewhere about Oven's Mouth, in the Dover settlement, was central for the Back River families as well as those living in North Boothbay. Pleasant Cove was the nucleus of a settlement that extended from north of the present Edgecomb line to where East Boothbay Village stands. These were the four points where schools were kept until 1794, when six districts were established (see page 150).
Illiteracy was common, in fact preponderated for many years and shows forth plainly in the early records of the town. Some of these records, however, were well kept. The spelling was ordinarily correct, some attention was given to punctua- tion, a fairly accurate use was made of capital letters, and a remarkably uniform, almost elegant, display of penmanship often appeared. Those town officers who had been born and bred on Boothbay (or Townsend) soil averaged as well as those who were bred elsewhere and came here in mature years. How or where such men as William McCobb, Joseph Beath and a few others obtained the degree of education that their work evinced is not known. They may have had privileges, for a time, to the westward and they may have pursued diligently a course of self-instruction.
All through the early history of Boothbay, down to com- paratively recent years, boys were sent on fishing trips to the cod banks as regularly as men and only attended school in winter. Interviews with old fishermen disclose the facts that many of them commenced going to the banks at ages ranging from nine to twelve years. One captain in Southport informs the author that at twelve years he commenced to cook for a vessel's crew on bank trips and followed it continuously for some years. This was in 1846, and his first three years' cook- ing was before a fireplace ; after that he had a cooking stove. Another party told of commencing at the age of nine years to stand, a line in each hand, and fish over the vessel's rail, day by day, throughout a long trip. These were not rare cases. They are samples of the child life at the period when it occurred. Our casualty chapter is filled with losses at sea of those who should have been schoolboys, but they were playing the parts of men and were swept away at tender ages.
There is little to indicate that much real advancement was
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made in the school system for many years. The population increased and new districts were added until there were twenty school districts when Cape Newagen Island was incorporated as the town of Townsend in 1842. This increase to accommo- date numbers was all the improvement visible. Each individ- ual school ran along in the same old channel, which might well be called a rut. Two terms each year were taught of about ten weeks each. The first Mondays of June and December were the usual dates of commencing. No grade existed. Teachers were changed in a majority of cases each term, so that each new teacher was a stranger to the qualifications of the pupils. Examinations and record books of rank were, practically, unheard of. Having no record from their prede- cessors to guide them, each new teacher arranged the pupils into classes according to age and size. If a pupil became tired he quit school, as it was not thought to be a very essential thing to attend. If a male teacher was not popular, and the aggregate muscle of the boys was deemed equal to its accom- plishment, he was carried out and deposited in a snowdrift. The last two or three weeks of a term almost invariably saw a falling off in attendance.
The agency system was in vogue and nearly every school agent had a daughter, niece, cousin, maiden aunt or particular friend who would like a school, so the favored one was em- ployed. If there was a shortage in attainments so that a fear existed that the applicant might fail of certification before the superintendent, that official was generally "seen" by the agent and an " understanding" had. The superintendent was gener- ally the village lawyer, doctor, minister or merchant and the agent was likely to be a client, patient, parishioner or cus- tomer. He did not want to offend patronage and rarely did so, much to the disadvantage of many schools.
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