History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 125

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co.
Number of Pages: 1100

USA > Maine > Penobscot County > History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 125

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The Mattakeunk Stream, formed by the union of these branches, is a quite respectable water for breadth, but is only a few miles long, flowing due north and in almost a straight course to its mouth on the Mattawamkeag. This river dips below the Mattawamkeag line into Winn in two small arcs, that near the north corner only one- third of a mile long, and the westward one a mile and a quarter, its furthermost inner edge, opposite the mouth of the Mattakeunk, being only one-fourth of a mile from the north town line.

Across the entire southwest part of Winn flows a trib- utary of some seven miles' length, which rises in Lee, and entering Winn a mile from the southwest corner, and flowing northwest about five miles in this town, it reaches its mouth on the Penobscot about midway between the village and the west corner of the town. A kind of lim-

ited delta, of very singular shape, begins almost half a mile from the mouth, and is crossed by the rail- and wagon-roads. Not far from half-way across the town this brook receives from the southwest a tiny affluent, and a more important one from the same direction, which heads in two branches near the southwest line of the town, and flows altogether in Winn. Above the mouth of the brook, at intervals of about a mile, are three small tributaries of the Penobscot, and another a mile below.

EARLY SETTLEMENT AND HISTORY .*

Winn received its first settler as far back as when Maine left her now sister State, Massachusetts. Joseph Snow came from Arlington down the river in the early spring of 1820, made a clearing, and erected a log hut on the same lot where now his son Joseph lives. He raised some potatoes, corn, etc., in the fall returned home, and in late winter or early spring of 1821 brought his family of four girls and six boys to Snowville, as it was for a long time called, on the ice of the Penobscot. Then not a house had been erected between Piscataquis Falls and Honlton. Indeed, their nearest neighbor was Penuel Shumway, who lived a mile below Piscataquis River, in Howland. The snow came on in the fall of 1820 heavy and deep, so that on the family's arrival in 1821 the present Joseph was told by his father to dig in a plat of ground, now lying opposite the residence of Joseph Snow, between the highway and the European & North American Railroad, for some potatoes. He dug under four feet of snow and found the potatoes unfrozen and sound. His daughter Eliza died September 6, 1825, aged twenty years-the first death in town. She was buried in what was called the old Snow burying ground, on the Snow Lot No. 5, now cut off from the highway by the European & North American Railroad. In 1830 Rebecca Snow was married to Columbus Dunn -the first marriage within the precincts of Winn. Mr. Snow died in 1862, leaving many descendants in this section.

In 1822 Ephraim Kyle came from Bradley and made a clearing and built a log house on what was afterwards Lot No. 8, where now David Bunker resides. One of his daughters, Elsie, married Alfred Gordon, and is the mother of a large family, most of whom reside in Winn. Mr. Kyle died December 8, 1841, aged seventy-six years. Jackson D. Kyle, a grandson, resides across the Penob- scot in Chester.

In the upper part of the town Elijah Brockett made a clearing and erected a log hut on the lot where W. J. Reed now lives, but a short distance below the tannery of H. Poor & Son, quite near the shore. Traces of the stone chimney of his hut are still visible, the house hav- ing been burned down by an adopted son as his step- father was moving to Lincoln. A daughter of Mr. Brockett married a Mr. Perry, of Lincoln, and is still liv- ing. Mr. Kyle's death was caused by a landing of logs rolling onto him as he was getting them into the river.

In 1823 Samuel Briggs came to Winn and took up

* The remainder of this chapter, except the statistical matter and the biographies, is from the pen of B. F. Fernald, Esq., a well-known at- torney and Trial Justice at Winn village.

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HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

lots where now stand the Cottage House, Morley's Winn | some time largely engaged in sawing lumber at Still- water. Alexander's sister married a Mr. Jackins.

Hotel, and also the Michael McCue place. He was a bachelor and so remained for a long time. He built a small building, not over ten feet square, and traded with the Indians, selling them powder, shot, and rum, and buying their furs and skins. That was the only trading station between Oldtown and Houlton, but I do not hear that Briggs became very rich. When steamboat naviga- tion commenced on the Penobscot this landing was down at the shore, close by the Briggs store, but this was not till about 1848. Mr. Briggs afterwards married a Mrs. Miller, whose maiden name was Peabody, and who always claimed relationship with George Peabody, the London banker. Mr. Briggs died since 1870, a town pauper of Mattawamkeag, where he had resided for a long time. Soon after this Penuel Shumway, before spoken of, and his son-in-law, Ira Pitman, came and located on the Webber and Harmon lots, about half-way between the present towns of Lincoln and Mattawam- keag. Shumway and Pitman afterwards removed to Minnesota, where Shumway died, three years since, at quite an advanced age.

In 1830-31 the town was lotted off by Zebulon Bradley. In 1829 the Military Road had been extended through Winn, running towards Houlton. Before the Military Road was built their mail facilities were meagre and postal arrangements primitive. The mail was carried by boat on the Mattawamkeag, and thence by horseback to Houlton. Their post-offices were salt-boxes fastened to some object by the shore, and the mail-carrier was postmaster as well, at the several salt-box offices of the scattered settlements in the wilderness. In the old Snow burying-ground is the grave, though unmarked by any stone, of a Mr. Moor, the first mail-carrier between Ban- gor and Houlton, who was drowned at Slogunda Falls, on the Mattawamkeag. Moor's body and the mail-bag were found the next day caught in a boom of the Penob- scot, near where D. C. Haynes now lives, in Winn. A Mr. Dagget, who was with him, was also drowned, and was buried near Gordon Falls, on the Mattawamkeag, and till lately, if not now, a trace of the grave exists. It took four weeks to make a trip from Bangor to Houlton, which is now made in less than two days.

The mention of Gordon Falls reminds me of a brief location on the confines of Winn and Mattawamkeag, about which but little can be learned, as the memory of man hardly runneth to that period. Indeed, the most information I can obtain is from the wife of S. W. Coombs, of Mattawamkeag, which is that her grand. father, John Gordon, about the commencement of the present century, built a mill on the Mattawamkeag, on what is now termed the Lower Pitch of Gordon Falls, he giving the name to the falls.

The locas in quo appears to have been at the most eastern limit of lot B, in Winn, on the right bank of the Penobscot River, on land now owned by Benjamin F. Fernald, Esq., of Winn, Mr. Gordon having gone to the Province of New Brunswick about 1812. The Indians, not liking the destruction of their noble forests, burned down the mill. His son, Alexander Gordon, was for

After the lotting of the town and making the Mili- tary Road, many who came from distant parts of the State to work upon the road, located in this, the then Planta- tion No. 4, and in adjoining townships.

In 1844 Thomas S. Ranney came from Stetson and became a quite active business man in the Plantation, serving as Clerk, Assessor, Treasurer, etc., keeping hotel in the Cottage House, near the Lincoln line, built by Captain Cyrus Fay but a short time before. Mr. Ran- ney died March 19, 1868, in Winn. His widow resides in Winn, a short distance below Winn village.

Up to 1851 most of the settlements in Winn were on the Military Road, and by farmers where the best farming land in town was situated; all the farmers being, as is usual in new settlements, lumbermen a large part of the year. In 1846, July 30, an act of the Legislature was passed to promote the improvement of the navigation of the Penobscot River, authorizing William and Daniel Moor, Jr., of Waterville, to make improve- ments on the Penobscot above Oldtown. They not deeming it practicable, their brother, General Wyman B. S. Moor, received an assignment of the charter, built the steamer Governor Neptune, and ran her from Oldtown to Piscataquis Falls, commencing May 27, 1847. After making improvements at Piscataquis Falls, removing rocks from the channel, etc., November 27, 1847, the Governor Neptune was run over Piscataquis Falls to a place called Nicketow, now Medway, fourteen miles above Five Island Rips. Afterwards, except at very high water, the boat was run only to Five Island Rips, or rather the landing place of Five Islands, now Winn vil- lage, but a few miles below the Rips. But for quite a while before 1851, when a hotel was built at Winn vil- lage by Paul Stratton, this landing place was opposite the Cottage House, hardly a dozen rods from the line be- tween Winn and Lincoln, where the Cottage House was kept by Thomas S. Ranney, and across the road from the hotel and nearer the shore resided Captain Cyrus Fay, the agents for the boats. Elisha Thurlow now resides there, having three or four years ago rebuilt, the Fay House having been burnt down. The pilot of the boat, and the first pilot on the Penobscot River, was David Bryant, a good pilot, but a hard-drinking man, and to his habitual drunkenness is said to be due the selection of a poor landing place for the boats, and eventually the loca- tion of the village and tannery and houses of H. Poor & Son upon a ledge hill adjacent to the steamboat com- pany's store-house, when but a half mile or less below, near Coombs's Eddy, every circumstance would have been far more favorable for both landing and village. The in- terference of Veazie and others in the navigation of the Penobscot River led, in 1849 and 1850, to a lawsuit be- tween Moor and Veazie, in which Moor was successful, and continued the navigation of the Penobscot till about 1857, when Moor, becoming involved with Dunning, of Bangor, in the building of part of the Maine Central Railroad, his interest was purchased by Joseph L. Smith, of Oldtown, who continued its navigation till bought off

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HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

by the European & North American Railroad Company. Moor employed the steamers Governor Neptune, Sam Houston, and the Mattanawcook ; while Smith built and employed at the time the steamers Aroostook and John A. Peters, and the steam scows Lizzie Smith and Nicatow for use in low water.

This much digression has been given to a partial his- tory of the navigation of the Penobscot as the settlement and growth of the present Winn village from 1847 to 1863, when Shaw, Tilson & Co. established the present tannery of Henry Poor & Son, was due to the steamboat navigation on the Penobscot River.

In 1850, the navigation of the Penobscot having be- come assured on the successful issue of the Moor and Veazie lawsuit, Thomas S. Ranney removed from the Cottage House to the steamboat landing at Five Islands, built the small house on the ledge just east of the Katahdin House, and went into trade, having built in the fall of 1850, holding then, if not previously, the first post- mastership in Winn. In 1851 Paul Stratton, a brother of Frink, who had settled in Chester a quarter of a cen- tury before, built a hotel in Winn village to accommodate the travel by steamboat and stage. And on those very years that started the building of Winn village, operations were commenced five miles southward, at what has since become East Winn, on the falls of the Mattakeunk Stream, or rather the west branch of said stream, where Dexter, Phineas, and Samuel H. Merrill made a clearing, felling six acres of trees, having bought two lots of land containing where now is the upper dam and pond, and also the lower dam and mill stands, and also built a saw- mill and log house that fall. The log house stood very near where the Lee road intersects the Winn and Spring- field road. All this time the Merrills were residing in Lee, five miles distant, but in April, 1851, Isaac J. Mal- lett, a brother-in-law of the Merrills, moved with his family into a logging camp and mill house. Mallett ran the mill for several years, and C. J. Boobar, another rel- ative of the Merrills, shortly after came. Afterwards Levi B. Merrill and Mallett put in a shingle and clap- board-mill, and in 1861 a grist-mill was added. About 1853 Samuel H. Merrill moved to Winn and ran the mill, and in 1875 S. H. Merrill rebuilt the saw-mill, mak- ing almost a model saw-mill, and now runs it.

In 1877 a post-office was established at East Winn, and Samuel Merrill was appointed postmaster.

In 1859 action was taken in the town to build the Winn and Springfield road, and in the course of a year or two that road was built -- the only communication be- fore having been a road reaching the river near Joseph Snow's.

Between 1851 and 1854 the inhabitants of Snowville, or River Township No. 4, were organized as Five Islands Plantation, Thomas H. Ranney being Clerk during its entire plantation existence ; and on April 8, 1857, the town of Winn was incorporated in accordance with a leg- islative act passed the previous March. The warrant was directed by Joseph H. Perkins, of Lee, a Justice of the Peace, to Phineas Merrill, of Winn, and at that meeting Phineas I. Merrill was chosen Moderator; Thomas S.

Ranney, Town Clerk; Cyrus J. Fay, Phineas I. Merrill, and Thomas S. Ranney, Selectmen; Paul Stratton, Treasurer; Phineas I. Merrill, Supervisor of Schools; Jeremiah D. Webber, Collector of Taxes; Thomas S. Ran- ney, Town Agent. No. 1, 2, and 3 school districts were formed, No. 3 then including the present No. 4. The black man had an office as well as the white man, John Barnett being chosen Fence Viewer. Still, they seemed to think the Selectmen would bear watching, as Jonathan Coombs, Samuel Davis, and Thomas J. Boobar were chosen auditors of Selectmen's accounts.

The first town meeting spoken of above was called at the steamboat office, the warrant having been posted at the inn of Lewis F. Stratton, now Sheriff of Penobscot county, son of Paul Stratton.

At a subsequent meeting held April 20, at the school- house in District No. I, near John W. Babcock's, Alfred Gordon being Constable, Lewis F. Stratton was chosen Moderator; $75 were raised for town charges and sup- port of poor; education was encouraged by raising $100 for the support of schools, and $300 for highways.

In 1855 the list of voters in the Plantation numbered 32, and August 20, 1857, the first year of its existence as a town, they numbered but 36 voters. At their fall election of 1857, their vote for Governor was: Lot M. Morrill, 30, Manasseh H. Smith, 6, which proportion was maintained for all the other candidates, when Thomas S. Ranney had 28 votes, and James C. Emerson 7, for Representative to the Legislature.

At the following spring's town meeting the modest bills of the officers contrasted strangely with the bills of the municipal officers of Winn of a later date, they being:

C. J. Fay, Selectman. .$II 29

Phineas I. Merrill, Selectman 5.00

T. S. Ranney, Selectman and Supervisor. 6 00

Thomas S. Ranney, Clerk, 3.00

Paul Stratton, Treasurer 3.00

Alfred Gordon, Constable. 4 00

Total. .$32 29

In 1858 $75 only was raised for town charges and the poor, while $150 was raised for schools, an increase which portended much good.

In 1858 the inhabitants of Winn voted on the liquor law, eight for the prohibitory law and five for license.

In 1859 George H. Haynes was chosen Town Clerk, which position he held every year until 1867.

For quite a long time Thomas Ranney, one of the most active business men in town, was their First Select- man, and he was esteemed a veritable town father. He died in the spring of 1868.

In 1863 the business and population of Winn re- ceived a large impetus by the tannery, store, and dwelling- houses of Shaw, Tilson & Co., composed of the since extensive tanning firm of Shaw Brothers, well known in Eastern Maine and Canada, Charles W. Tilson, at pres- ent manager of a tannery of Shaw Brothers in Canada, and the company being the present firm of H. Poor & Son, of Boston. They commenced operations in the fall of 1863; built a tannery seven hundred feet long, store- houses, and tenement-houses, to the value of $60,000;

n. R Huston.

VIEW FROM RES. LOOKING TOWARD WINN.

RESIDENCE OF NICHOLAS R. HUSTON, WINN, PENOBSCOT CO., ME,

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HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

and bought a large part of the town of Winn and Wood- ville.

Previous to this, in 1857, George R. Davis and Sam- uel Davis, Jr., built the house which is now occupied by Mrs. L. J. Blakemore, milliner, went into trade, and afterwards failed. In 1859 William Willy and George H. Haynes were trading in the Davis store, as Willy & Haynes, and afterwards sold to Joseph L. Smith of Old- town, and Smith and Haynes traded as J. L. Smith & Company from 1861 to 1863, when Shaw, Tilson & Company, tanners, bought out Smith, having built the present company store, where now trades Thaddeus R. Joy, formerly of Sebec, Maine. Shaw, Tilson & Com- pany continued in trade, with George H. Haynes man- ager, till 1867, when they sold to Ingersoll & Coborn, who were succeeded by J. C. Grant & Company, then by Hall, Chase & Lovejoy, and they by T. R. Joy & Company, the company being Wilbur F. Lovejoy, who retired in 1880, leaving T. R. Joy, now in trade. In 1865 Abner B. Chase became agent for the boat com- pany, and in company with James Butterfield, of Spring- field, and Horatio Gates, of Lincoln (deceased in 1881), built the store where William H. Chesley now trades, trading as A. B. Chase & Company. A. B. Chase held also for some time the position of express agent and Postmaster, Trial Justice and Town Treasurer, and his wife, Frank E. Chase, a sister of James Butterfield, kept a millinery shop. They have since moved to Norway, where Mrs. Chase keeps a millinery store.

In 1867 the interest of Shaw & Tilson in the tannery was bought out, and the new firm was Poor & Kingman, composed of Henry Poor and other members of his fam- ·ily, of Boston, Massachusetts, and Romanzo S. Kingman, who had married into the Shaw family. Mr. Kingman was a tall, spare, energetic man, whose peculiar physiog- nomy is well remembered in Penobscot county. In 1869 the Poors bought out Kingman, who removed to what was then called Independence Plantation, a town- ship on the Mattawamkeag River, just east of Matta- wamkeag, where on Jimskitticook Falls, in the almost wilderness, he with the Shaw brothers built up a tannery and town, as if by magic, a city springing up in the night. He afterwards sold out to the Shaw brothers and went to Sparta, Wisconsin, where he has ever since been en- gaged in banking with his brother.

The Poors then did business in Winn under the name of H. Poor & Son, the son then being Eben S. Poor, since deceased, as has also Henry Poor, the principal members now being John O. Poor and Charles C. Poor, sons of Henry Poor, with other members of the Poor family, which may be said to be rather rich than poor.

Henry Poor & Son employed as their agent from 1869 to 1871-72 Grove H. Moor, of Northville, New York, till he was suspended on account of his intemperate habits (though since he has become a reformed man and an able dentist), when Frank Gilman, who was then in trade at Winn, a son of John H. Gilman, of Orono, was em- ployed as agent, who has ever since remained in that capacity. The foreign population brought in by the tannery gave to Winn a considerable rough element, and

in those days, before a firm public opinion gave a strong overcoming force to the liquor law, gambling and drink- ing saloons were very flourishing and popular, and rum held extensive sway.

Silas Buswell, Jr., and his saloon, and the many other opportunities, may be well remembered. After a short, enterprising career that individual, whose opportunities were golden but whose actual life was leaden, left Winn a drunken sot, and went to Medford, Wisconsin, where he now is.

George H. Coynes in 1867 commenced trade in the store now occupied by Ambrose Dennis, which he occu- pied for a while afterwards, trading in the store he now occupies near the European & North American Rail- way depot, where he has traded, with the exception of his absence between 1870 and 1875. The other traders in town have been Henry H. Blackwell, in drugs and watch repairing; Aaron W. Smith, same; Frank Gilman, Lewis F. Stratton, and Fred Edwards, different members of the family of Caleb Estes.

In 1864 Charles J. Carll came from Unity, built a house and went into the harness business, and has ever since remained, adding to it that of hardware in 1879; and has also held the treasuryship of Winn some years.

Ambrose Dennis came from Passadumkeag in 1873-74, and engaged in the hardware business, and has also filled several town offices. In 1867 George H. and Guilford D. Stratton started to build the present Katahdin House, a building of very large dimensions, in anticipation that the European & North American Railway, then in contemplation, would not cross the Mattawamkeag River, but turn eastward, thus making Winn the depot for the upper country, but contrary to expectations Mattawam- keag became that depot. The Strattons failed. H. Poor & Son bought the huge ark and completed it, and Mich- ael L. Ross, of the Vanceboro eating house, and after- wards Simon B. Gates, who bought it in 1881, have ever since been its dispensers of refreshments.

Lewis F. Stratton, Thomas S. Ranney, George H. Haynes, John B. Megquier, Abner B. Chase, Wilbur F. Lovejoy, and Thaddeus R. Joy have been the respective Postmasters of Winn from 1851, with the lapse of two or three years, when Uncle Sam could find no servant in Winn, and the people went to Mattawamkeag for their mail.

For a short time during stage times a post-office was kept at South Winn to accommodate that section and North Lincoln; but since the advent of the European & North American Railroad this has been discontinued.

In 1869 Caleb Estes bought what were then termed the Dwinel lands, in Winn, formerly owned by Rufus Dwinel, of Oldtown, and built a steam shingle-mill above Winn village; but this proved a failure in a short time, as did the purchase, when the lands fell into the hands of T. S. Moor and Abram Moor, of Bangor, who own there some two or three thousand acres.

The people of Winn early attended to their education- al requirements, and though in many instances in the sparsely settled localities the schools were taught in the houses of the inhabitants, yet temples of education were

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HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

soon reared, and school-teachers were teaching the young Five Islanders the ways of science and the world. In Snowville a school-house was built in 1847, and I think earlier a structure had also been dedicated to that pur- pose. In 1852, the first school then being in the boat office, a school-house was built in Winn village, near where the house of the widow Caleb Estes now stands, opposite the Katahdin House, which, if I understand rightly, was afterwards occupied as a dwelling-house, and still is, though removed onto the Lot 27, at the lower end of the village, by Samuel Davis, who died in the summer of 1881. At that time School District No. 3 seemed to embrace widely different sections, namely : the village, now District No. 3, and East Winn, now District No. 4, five miles distant. Presuming the population to average five times the number of voters, Winn, during its early municipal life, seems to have raised at least $1 per in- habitant for the support of schools. In 1870 a new school-house was built in District No. 1, on the Military Road, the Snow District; but the tannery firm, about 1865, built in the village on the hill a large two-story house, the lower story for a school, the upper story for a Town Hall, and rented the same to the town for its sev- eral purposes. About 1874 this was purchased by the town and school district, and somewhat remodeled to ac- commodate, with the use of the hall, the three grades into which the school is divided. About 1860 a school- , house was built in District No. 4, a house having been built in No. 2 a few years previous. On account of the new settlements throughout the town, four sub- districts have since been formed, in which, in two instances, houses have been supplied by small structures, the others still using residences of citizens.

The first one of the learned professions to seek for a livelihood in Winn was Dr. Henry A. Reynolds, who had served in the war of the Rebellion in the First Maine Heavy Artillery, and who came to Winn in 1865. Here, with good abilities, with a good physique and pleasant ways, he got quite a good practice, when, toward the last of his stay in Winn, he lapsed into intemperate habits, from which he was happily rescued by the Red-ribbon movement, and his career since then is well known to all. He is now living in a town named in honor of him -Reynolds, in Dakota Territory, practicing farming, and is postmaster of his town.

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History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 125

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio) Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co. Number of Pages: 1100

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co.
Number of Pages: 1100