History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 20

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 20

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But it is claimed that this bond policy is demanded in the interest of idle capital; that it is necessary to furnish "an opportunity for the safe investment of idle capital." These safe investments for idle capital are destructive, not only of the industries, but of the morals of the people. As they render the trade of the money lender the most profit- able business, they tend to create a race of idlers, misers, and cowards. who will never take any chances with labor in the productive industries while this opportunity for safe investment and exemption from tax- ation is open to them. They take no risks. The Vanderbilts, with tens of millions of United States bonds, spending the interest in Eu- rope, and the tens of thousands of lesser bondholders, who produce nothing and do nothing except clip coupons, what are they to this country and its industries but a class of gilded paupers supported by the labor of the country?

We have in this country five thousand persons who own and possess five millions of property, mostly accumulated within the last fifteen years, and that, too, through unequal laws. Twenty years ago a mil- lionaire in this country was as rare as a prince, and so was a tramp.

According to Poor's Manual on Railroads, the number of miles of railroads in operation in this country increased from 9,000 in 1851 to 86,500 miles in 1879; and the gross earnings from $36,000,000 in 1851 to $529,000,000 in 1879. These facts serve to illustrate the most start- ling development of the age-the development of corporate power.

The presidents of the great trunk lines in this country control prop- erty, three of them, valued at $1,818,000,000; and three others prop- erty valued at $943,000,000.

These great trunk lines have been in the habit of combining, and raising and lowering rates, not according to business principles, but ac- cording to their selfish interests. It is notorious that the change of these rates in a single week recently added $5,000,000 per week to the burdens of the people, and put many times that amount into the hands of Eastern holders of grain, some of whom were railroad directors.

How, then, can any reflecting mind, any patriot, contemplate with- out anxious concern, the tendency of the legislation of this country to create such rapid accumulation of property in the hands of the few at the expense of the many ?

"The freest government," says Webster, "cannot long endure, where the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumulation of property in a few hands, and to render the masses of the people poor and dependent."

Universal suffrage and great landed estates cannot long exist together, for either the owners of the estates must restrict the right of suffrage, or that right of suffrage will in the end divide their estates.

Is it not time we paused in our career, and reviewed our principles ?

Our institutions were founded upon equality, or rather, grew out of equality-that condition of comparative equality as to property that characterized the early settlers of New England. They brought with them no great capital, and, fortunately for humanity, there was noth- ing here productive, to tempt investments. If one millionaire had come over in the Mayflower, he would have blasted the prospects of a continent; for ours, then, would have been a government not to pro- tect labor but capital. Capital would have shaped it. Our ancestors came here all upon an equality as to property, or rather as to poverty. But the lands were all open and free to them. They entered into possession and established the town system, the hundred acre lot sys- tem, the district school system, and upon this foundation they builded their free and Christian Republic. All were tillers of the soil, farmers -not tenant farmers, but freeholders, having absolute dominion over their acres, recognizing no man as lord or master, no power between them and the God they worshipped. They were lords and sovereigns themselves, and if we are a nation of sovereigns to-day it is only so far as we are a nation of freeholders. When these sovereigns got to- gether to form a government what kind of a government could they form ? Only that under which all were equals, all were sovereigns. They could not have formed any other if they had tried. It was this necessary act of parceling out the land into small freeholds, " that fixed the future frame and form of their government."

Our New England ancestors not only began their system of govern- ment under a condition of comparative equality as to property, but all their laws were of a nature to favor and perpetuate that equality. This is undoubtedly the true principle of legislation. Any system of legisla- tion, therefore, that tends to destroy this happy equality, wipe out the small free-holds and centralize the ownership of land in the hands of the few, not only destroys the prosperity and independence of the people, but strikes at the very foundation of our republic. There is nothing in this country so sacred as the free-hold. It was the immediate parent of our free-school system and constitutes the essential condition of its exis- tence, for in a country of great landed estates the district school system is as impossible as it is unknown.

At the foundation of our free system, therefore, lies the principle of equality, and it is only upon that principle it can be preserved ; for it can rest in the love of all only as it rests in the interests of all. Move it from this basis of equality and our temple of liberty falls, and then who shall raise up its shapely columns again? It is only by a happy concur- rence of the most fortunate circumstances our Constitution was framed and adopted. No other people, no other country, no other age was equal to the work. How far above the powers of the American people to-day is such an achievement? We should know, since we are not able to supply its one little defect, in relation to counting the electoral votes. The wisdom and patriotism of Congress is unequal to the task, though urged to it by every consideration of public safety. 'No, if our experiment of free government shall fail from the earth, it will be the knell of popular liberty the world over and for all time.

Cicero, in one of his orations, is led off into a panegyric upon the Roman Constitution. How apt are his words, when applied to our im- maculate charter, the crowning glory of the Revolution,-that master- piece of human invention, at once the wonder and hope of the world,- the Constitution under which we live! for, says the great orator, "O wonderful system and discipline of government which we have received from our fathers !- LET US PRESERVE IT."

· General Plaisted married, September 21, 1858, Sarah J., daughter of Chase P. and Mary J. (Clough) Mason, of Waterville. They had three sons-Harold Mason, a recent graduate of the State College, and now messenger to the Governor and Council; Frederick William, a pupil in the Bangor high school, and Ralph Parker, also in the public schools of this city. . Mrs. Plaisted died October 25, 1875, and on the 27th of September, 1881, the Gov- ernor was again married, this time to Mabel True, daughter of Hon. Francis W. and Sarah A. (True) Hill, of Exeter, in this county, and grand-daughter of Colonel Francis Hill.

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

CHAPTER V. COLONIZATION AND SETTLEMENT.

The Seventeenth Century - First White Settlements in Maine - A Possible French Fort on the Penobscot in the Sixteenth Century- The Plymouth Pilgrims at Castine-The Earthquake of 1638-Re- ports and Statistics of Growth-Castine Village-The Old Fort- Baron de St. Castine-Other Inhabitants of Pentagoet-Castine the Younger-First English Settlers on the Penobscot.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

The first permanent settlements upon the present soil of Maine were made upon Arrowsick Island and the mainland about the Sagadahoc river, and at Sheepscot, Damariscotta, Pemaquid, and the St. George's river, as early as 1613. A permanent settlement was begun about this time at the mouth of the Saco. Monhegan, says Williamson, "was permanently peopled about the year 1622." But Bryant & Gay's History holds Bidde- ford and Saco, planted by Richard Vines and John Old- ham in 1630, to be the most decided beginnings of set- tlements in Maine. Four years previously, the New Plymouth colonists had followed their trading ventures up and at the mouth of the Kennebec with the erection of a "truck-house" at Penobscot, where they began trade with the Tarratine Indians. It was the first English trading-house in the Penobscot waters.

Governor Sullivan, in his History of the District of Maine, says there were at this time eighty-four families, besides fishermen, about Sheepscot, Pemaquid, and St. George's. Reasoning from this datum, Mr. Williamson thinks that in 1636 the whole number of whites between Piscataqua and Penobscot must have exceeded 1,400, and might possibly have reached 100 more.

In 1653, from the data supplied by the submission made by the five towns of Maine to Massachusetts, the same writer estimates : "If there were 250 families in the five towns, and fifty farms on the Isles of Shoals, at seven in a family, the whole number of persons would be 2, 100."

Eleven years after this, or in the year 1664, when the Geographical and Historical Description of North America was published by Monsieur Denys, he said: "The French have a fort on the east side of the Penob- scot Bay; and on the other hand the English are set- tled in great numbers, and have a large country cleared and under improvement." The next year, when the Royal Commissioners are said to have erected the Duke of York's Sagadahoc Territory into the County of Corn- wall, the settlements along the coast are believed by Wil- liamson to have comprised "probably 300 families ;" though Sullivan finds but 145 in 1673. In the later year a census of "Acadia" was taken by the French authori- ties ; but we get from it no statistics as to the territory now occupied by Maine, except of the Baron de Cas- tine's settlement on Penobscot Bay, which had thirty-one white persons, including the soldiers of the garrison.

The next year the outbreak of King Philip's War led to an enrollment of the militia, which appears rather to have been estimated than exactly aseertained, if one may judge by the "round numbers" in which returns were made. From these, however, it may be ascer-

tained, with reasonable certainty, that the white popu- lation between the Piscataqua and the Penobscot numbered 5,000 to 6,000. Leaving out, however, “Dev- onshire" and the settlements west of the Sagadahoc, the "residue of the Duke's patent" was returned as con- taining but fifty men capable of bearing arms. The statement of Captain Sylvanus Davis, however, then a resident agent on the Sagadahoc and extensively ac- quainted with the settlers, is that there were this year (1675) 158 families east of that river. But there was not yet, nor until eighty-five years thereafter, a single permanent white settler on the bank of the Penobscot. The next year the total population of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the Maine and Sagadahoc Provinces, was but 150,000 souls. This is the statement of Mr. Wil- liamson, who cites some older authorities. Mr. Palfrey (History of New England) scouts this estimate as alto- gether too large, and thinks there were probably in New England at this time, leaving Maine altogether out of the account, 40,000 to 45,000 people of English stock.

Hubbard, in his Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England, published in 1677, gives the following account of the beginnings of settlement in Maine :

The first place that was ever possessed by the English, in the hope of making a plantation in those parts, was a tract of land on the west side of the river of Kennebeck, then called Sagatohocke, since Saga-de- hocke; other places adjoining were soon after seized, and improved for trading and fishing. The more remote and furthest northward at the time belonging to the English (Penobscot forty years since being sur- prised by the French and by them held at this day) is called Pemma- quid, distant seven or eight leagues from Kennebeck, and is the utmost boundary of New England, being about forty leagues distant from the mouth of Pascataqua river. That Pemmaquid is a very commodious haven for ships, and hath been found very advantageous to such as use to come upon these coasts to make fishing voyages; southwest, or southeast, from whence, about six or seven leagues, lies an island called Monhiggon, of much use on the same account for fishing, it lying three or four leagues into the sea from Damaril's Cove (a place of likc advantage for the stages of fishermen in former times). There have been for a long time seven or eight considerable dwellings about Pemmaquid, wnich is well accommodated with pasture-land about the haven for feeding cattle, and some fields also for tillage; all the land improvable for such uses being already taken up by such a number of inhabitants as is already mentioned.

A POSSIBLE FRENCH FORT.

The old French navigator and writer, Andre Thevet, who wrote of the Penobscot waters, or the "river of Norumbegue," in 1556, makes the first mention of any- thing like civilized settlement upon its banks or the shores of the bay. He speaks of a small fort erected by the French some ten or twelve leagues up the river, which was called "the Fort of Norumbeque." He sup- plies, however, no further facts concerning it; and, as nothing more is known of it and no vestiges of it have ever been discovered, it seems probable that no such fort existed in fact, and that Thevet transmogrified in his relation the older story of an aborignal capital on the Penobscot, which was itself named "Norumbega."

THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.

Early in 1626, or perhaps the next year,-at all events, but a very few years after the landing at Plymouth,- the Pilgrims, without charter or other warrant of author- ity, made a lodgment upon the shore of Penobscot Bay,

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

on the Castine peninsula. Already sundry enterprises had been undertaken by the Plymouth colonists, by which they had become heavily involved. A number of their principal men-twenty-seven, it is said-gave relief by making a contract with the colony that they should have a monopoly of its trade for six years from Septem- ber, 1627, with the use of its vessels, implements, and goods, for the consideration of payment of its debts and an annual supply of £50 worth of hose and shoes, in exchange for corn at six shillings a bushel, and either six pounds of tobacco or three bushels of corn, as the col- ony might elect. The company, with the addition of four persons in England, was called by the rather gloomy and forbidding title of the "Undertakers." Judge Godfrey, in his paper on The Pilgrims at Penob- scot, says of their operations :

They were carrying on a profitable traffic with the Indians at Penob- scot, exchanging with them coats, shirts, rugs, blankets, biscuit, corn, peas, and wampum (of which latter they had the monopoly in the East, and which came to be much coveted by the natives), for beaver, otter, and other furs, when, by the agreement of Allerton and the English partners, a young man by the name of Edward Ashley, in whose integ- rity the Pilgrims had little confidence, was rather forced upon them. They knew that he had wit and ability; they also knew that he was "a very profane young man, who had lived amonge ye Indians as a savage, and wente naked amongste them and used their maners.' But he had learned their language, which was a useful and valuable accomplishment.

Ashley came into the business in 1629 and took charge of the estab- lishment at Penobscot. Fearing to trust him alone, the Plymouth partners caused to be joined with him Thomas Willet, a young man from Leyden, honest, discreet, and trustworthy, whom they instructed to keep him "in some good measure within bounds."

Ashley was well supplied with goods by the Undertakers from both England and Plymouth, and carried on so brisk a trade with the In- dians that it was not long before he had accumulated a large quantity of beaver. The Plymouth Undertakers, however, did not realize directly from it as they expected. He paid no attention to the liabili- ties of the house to them for supplies, but sent all his beaver direct to England, though he still continued to obtain goods from them as well as from England. Consequently he did not rise in their favor. Never- theless they were compelled, through their connection with the English partners, who had confidence in him, to buy and man a vessel for his use and render him other assistance. But after he had been there a year or more, he "was taken in a trap," Governor Bradford says, "for trading powder and shote with ye Indians," in violation of the proc- lamation of King James, which forbade it. For this the authorities seized a half a ton of beaver, which he had on hand belonging to the house, and would have confiscated it, had not the Plymouth Under- takers proved by his bonds to them in 500 pounds, that he was " not to trade any munition with ye Indians, or otherwise to abuse himselfe." It appearing that he alone was responsible for the offense, and had violated his bond in every respect, he was sent to England and impris- oned in the Fleet. They were thus rid of him, to their greet relief.

On the 31st of December, 1631, the English Attor- ney-General was directed to take proceedings against Ashley for furnishing arms and ammunition to the sav- ages. He was seized and confined in the Fleet Prison, in London, from which he was discharged on the 17th of February following, because his offense was found to be committed before the issuance of the King's procla- mation; but he was placed under bond "not to offend in the like kind hereafter."

Isaac Allerton, one of the original adventurers in the Mayflower, who had been a partner in and the agent of the company, was also dismissed, partly because he tried to divert trade from the Penobscot, by engaging in business with a Mr. Vines of Saco and sending goods

eastward. The Undertakers then managed solely the business at Penobscot, which, says Judge Godfrey, "prospered and made large yearly returns." They con- tinued to thrive here until 1631, when a French party, led by a renegade Scotchman, came with a small ship into the harbor, in the absence of all the Plymouth men except three or four servants, whom they compelled to carry about £500 worth of goods, including three hun- dred pounds of beaver fur, on board their vessel, and sailed away with their plunder. The traders remained, however, even after the treaty of St. Germains, between England and France, March 19, 1632, had transferred the country, as "Acadia," to the latter power, and until 1635, when the Seigneur D'Aulnay de Charnisey, com- monly called D'Aulnay, the French Lieutenant-General commanding west of the St. Croix, dispossessed them in the name of the French crown. He politely took an inventory of the goods with their prices, and promised compensation for them ; but would allow nothing for the house and fortification, as "those who build on another man's ground do forfeit the same."

He allowed the Pil- grims to take their shallop and food enough for the return voyage, and then packed them off to Plymouth, while he' occupied their premises at Penobscot as his own residence. The colonists were greatly enraged, as they had been by the robbery of 1631; and procuring from Massachusetts Bay an armed vessel called the Great Hope, commanded by a rascally captain named Girling, they agreed with him for the recapture of the truck-house, for the reward of seven hundred pounds of beaver. He set sail for Penobscot in company with the redoubtable Miles Standish, who had a small vessel with twenty men and the beaver fur on board. Girling wasted his ammunition in distant and futile fire upon the fort, and Standish, going to Pemaquid for more, sent it to him, but sailed away to Plymouth with his own precious cargo, lest his faithless comrade should "ceiase [sieze] on ye barke, and surprise ye beaver," as old Hubbard puts it. He left Captain Girling to follow at his ease, which he did with- out renewing the attack. Some further effort was made by the Plymouth people to organize an expedition with similar intent; but to no purpose. The French remained in undisturbed possession at Penobscot for many years. The fort was burned, however, by La Tour's men, and the cattle of the settlement killed, in May, 1644. D'Anl- ney, just six years afterwards, ended his adventurous and troubled life by freezing to death in an open fishing-boat off the coast, May 24, 1850.

One amusing incident of D'Aulnay's residence at Penobscot is the presentation to him by the Boston authorities, by way of placating his revenge after the attack under Girling, of an elegant sedan chair, which had been sent by the Mexican Viceroy to his sister in the West Indies. It had fallen into the hands of a sea cap- tain, who presented it to the Governor at Boston, from whom it was obtained for the gift to D'Aulnay. As another writer says: "Can one fancy the wife and daughter of D'Aulnay parading in it from the fort to the farm-house, and from the farm-house to the mill?"

For many years after their expulsion from Penobscot,

HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

the English had no settlement east of the Kennebec, except that at Pemaquid.

AN EARTHQUAKE.

June 1, 1638, the people of the Penobscot country, then numbering very few not aboriginal, shared in the remarkable disturbance of the elements made memorable as the "Great Earthquake." It occurred about the mid- dle of the afternoon. Mr. Williamson says:

At the time the weather was clear and warm, and the wind westward. It commenced with a noise like continued thunder or the rattling of stage-coaches upon pavements, and with a motion so violent that the people in some places found difficulty iu standing on their feet, and somė chimneys, and many light moveables in dwelling houses, were thrown down. The sound and motion continued four minutes, and the earth was unquiet at times for twenty days afterwards. It was generally felt throughout the northeast, and the course of it was from west to east.

A tolerably severe earthquake was experienced by the Maine settlers on the twenty-ninth of October, 1727; and a much harder one, lasting some moments, in the early morning of November 18, 1775. From time to time ever since, slight shocks have been experienced. The last one observed at Bangor and vicinity occurred in the late evening of Sunday, July 24, 1881.

SOME REPORTS OF GROWTH.

In July, 1665, when the Royal Commissioners repre- senting the Duke of York's interests were in Maine, they professed to have gathered the following facts for the slighting account which they gave of nearly all the colonies and settlements visited in their tour. Not much reliance is to be placed upon it. They asserted that beyond the Kennebec, in the Duke's Province, there were "three small plantations, the biggest of which had not above thirty houses in it, and those very near ones too, and spread over eight miles at least. Those people, for the most part, were fishermen, and never had any govern- ment among them; most of them were such as had fled thither from other places to avoid justice."

Six years later Mr. Cartwright, of this commission, reported to the council for foreign plantations, in the Home Government, that there were one thousand men able to bear arms in the province of Maine, of whom one hundred were in "Kennebec." But Dr. Palfrey characterizes his statement, which includes statistics from other colonies, as wrong in all particulars. It was probably a mere rough estimate, if not knowingly false.

During the spring of 1688, an account was taken by Governor Andros, of the white inhabitants between the Penobscot and the St. Croix, which exhibits at Penobscot only the Baron de Castine, his family, and his servant Ranne; at Edgemoragan Reach, Charles St. Robin, his son and daughter, and M. La Tour and family; at Petit Pleasants, on Mt. Desert, a French family, consisting of M. Lowry, his wife and child, and an English family named Hinds, being man, wife, and four children; on the east side of Mt. Desert, at "Frenchman's Bay," Cad- mac and wife; and a few more settlers at Machias, Pas- samaquoddy, and St. Croix, the total enumeration reach- ing about forty-five souls. There is reason to believe that this was a fairly accurate census. The names in- dicate that, with the single exception noted and perhaps

one other family, all the white inhabitants on this part of the coast were French.

The next year President Danforth, in view of the fact that the forts east of Falimouth, and most of the settle- ments, had been abandoned in consequence of the Indian troubles during King William's War, ordered an account to be taken of all the inhabitants still resident within his province of Maine, and of those who had left it. We are not aware that this census has been preserved. If so, we have not been able to see a copy of it, or even to obtain its conclusions.

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History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 20

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