USA > Maine > Oxford County > Rumford > History of Rumford, Oxford County, Maine, from its first settlement in 1779, to the present time > Part 5
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We the subscribers humbly Pray your Honours to Incorporate said Plantation by the name of China otherwise relieve your Peti- tioners as you in your wisdom shall think fit-and your humble Petitioners in Duty bound shall ever Pray
(Signed) FRANCIS KEYES Committee appointed JOSHUA GRAHAM to Petition for PHILIP ABBOT Incorporation
New Penny cook Jan 22nd 1799
ACT OF INCORPORATION.
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the year of our Lord one thou- sand eight hundred.
An Act to incorporate the Plantation heretofore called New Penny- cook, in the County of Cumberland. into a town by the name of Rumford.
Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Represen- tatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the Plantation heretofore known by the name of New Pennycook, in the County of Cumberland, and as described in the following bounds, together with the inhabitants thereon, be and hereby are incorporated into a town by the name of Rumford :
"Beginning at a hemlock tree standing on the line of the town of Bethel, thenee running north eighteen degrees and one-half west, crossing the river Ameriscoggin, seven miles and forty rods to a spruce tree ; thence turning and running north seventy-one and one-half degrees east, seven miles and forty rods to a beech tree ; then turning and running south eighteen and one-half degrees east, crossing Ameriseoggin river again, seven miles and forty rods to another beech tree ; then turning and running south seventy and one-half degrees west, seven miles and forty rods, to the bound first mentioned."
And the said town is hereby vested with all the powers, privileges and immunities which other towns do or may enjoy by the Constitu- tion of this Commonwealth.
Section 2. And be it further enacted that Job Eastman, Esquire, be and hereby is authorized to issue his warrant directed to some suitable inhabitant of said town, requiring him to notify and warn the inhabitants thereof to meet at such time and place as he shall
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
appoint, to choose all such officers as towns are by law required to choose, in the month of March or April, annually.
In the House of Representatives, Feb. 18, 1800. This bill having had three several readings, passed to be enacted.
ED. H. ROBBINS, Speaker.
In Senate, Feb. 21, 1800. This bill having had two several readings, passed to be enacted. SAMUEL PHILLIPS, President.
Feb. 21, 1800. By the Lieut .- Governor approved.
MOSES GILL.
A true copy. Attest : JOHN AVERY, Secretary of State.
CHAPTER VII.
BENJAMIN THOMPSON .- COUNT RUMFORD.
T has been said that this town was named in honor of Count Rumford, and this may or may not be the fact. Concord, N. H., the parent town of Rumford, Maine, was originally called Pennacook. When incorporated, it was called Rumford, supposed to be from Rumford in England, from which some of the early set- tlers or their ancestors came. Finally, when the difficulties with the adjoining town of Bow had been settled, the name was changed to Concord. When the eastern land grant was made to citizens of Concord, the territory was called New Pennacook, doubtless in com- memoration of the early name of Concord. When the inhabitants of New Pennacook asked to be incorporated as a town, they asked to have their town called China ; but for some reason not explained and not easy now to ascertain, the word China was left out and the word Rumford inserted in its place. In one thousand eight hun- dred, when this town was incorporated, Count Rumford was still living and had been famous for many years, and it may be that the committee of the legislature to whom the petition for the incorpor- ation of New Pennacook was referred, adopted the name in his honor ; but it is more than probable that it was so named to com- memorate the second name of the parent town. It may be remarked in this connection, that when Benjamin Thompson received his Order from the Elector of Bavaria, he chose for it the name of Rumford, in honor of the New Hampsire town where he had lived, and where his family still continued to reside. But whether this town was named for the parent town, or the man, makes no mate- rial difference. Count Rumford was allied by marriage to several of the grantees of New Pennacook and to some of the early settlers here, and a brief sketch of his public career is not out of place in this connection.
Benjamin Thompson was the son of Benj. and Ruth (Simonds) Thompson, and was born in the village of New Bridge, now North
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
Woburn, Mass., March twenty-six, seventeen hundred and fifty- three. He was descended from James Thompson, who came to this country in sixteen hundred and thirty, and became one of the early settlers in ancient Woburn. The unpretentious house is still stand- ing, where Count Rumford first saw the light, and in a fairly good state of preservation. When Benjamin was only a year and a half old, his father died, and two years later his mother became the wife of Josiah Pierce, Jr. Mr. Pierce was a farmer, but young Thomp- son, as he grew up, did not take to farming, and his step-father is reported to have said that Benjamin preferred anything to work. At the age of eleven he was sent to school at Medford, and at thir- teen he was apprenticed to a merchant at Salem. He failed as a clerk as he had at farming, and busied himself most of the time with tools and implements. He was fond of music, played the violin, was clever at drawing, and was especially enthusiastic in ex- perimental philosophy. At the age of sixteen he returned to his home in Woburn. A second time he was sent to a store, this time in Boston, but he did not long remain. He then commenced the study of medicine and attended scientific lectures at Harvard, walking to and from the college with a young man named Baldwin. who was afterwards a Colonel in the patriot army, and who origin- ated and named the famous Baldwin apple.
Young Thompson early engaged in teaching school, and in this capacity he was employed in Bradford, Wilmington, and in Con- cord, then a Massachusetts town in Essex county and called Run- ford. He is described at this time as possessing a fine manly figure, nearly six feet in height, handsome features, auburn hair and bright blue eyes. At Rumford he had the influence, friendship and pas- toral aid of Rev. Timothy Walker, the first settled minister there, and a native of Woburn. It was here, also, that he formed the acquaintance of Mrs. Sarah, widow of Colonel Benjamin Rolfe, and daughter of Rev. Timothy Walker, who became his wife in 1772. Thompson was still a minor, and his wife was fourteen years his senior.
This marriage seenred to him quite a large property, relieved him of the necessity of teaching, and brought him into new and impor- tant social relations. He became acquainted with Governor Win- throp of New Hampshire, who discovering the young man's ability, took him into close friendship, and introduced him to Governor Gage at Boston, which, in the excitement of popular discontent in
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
the Colonies, caused him to be an object of patriotic suspicion. and in the near future caused him no little embarassment. Public opinion was at this time quite intolerant of coquetry with royal governors, and to the "Sons of Liberty" in Concord, it was enough to concentrate suspicion of disloyalty upon him, that he was in favor with the Governor. For this and other reasons, he was accused of being unfriendly to the cause of liberty, and was sum- moned before a committee to answer to the charge. He was ac- quitted, but public opinion was not satisfied, and his house having been mobbed, he fled to Woburn, fifty miles away. But suspicion still followed him, and here he was again arrested, tried by a com- mittee and again acquitted. From Woburn he went to Charles- town, where he is known to have applied to Washington for a com- mission in the patriot army, which was refused him on account of the interference of officers of the New Hampshire militia. Finding that his countrymen were bound to consider him disloyal, he became disgusted, and in the bitterness of his spirit he cried out : "My enemies are indefatigable in their efforts to distress me, and I find to my sorrow that they are but too successful."
Two months later he left Woburn, where he had been in hiding, never to return. Taken by his step-brother to the shore of Narra- ganset Bay, he was taken on board a British frigate and taken to Boston. On the evacuation of Boston in 1776, Thompson, still only twenty-three years of age, was sent to England with the news. In England he was received with great favor. He was taken into the office of the Secretary of State and made Secretary for the Province of Georgia. He also resumed his favorite studies, and at intervals of leisure he wrote and published the results of his inves- tigations and experiments in the Transactions of the Royal Society, of which he was elected a fellow in 1778. This was a high honor for one of his age. He was afterwards appointed to a Colonelcy in the dragoons, a regiment of refugees raised in New York. He sailed for New York, but adverse winds drove the ship southward to the Carolinas, and before he assumed command Cornwallis had surrendered and the war was virtually over. He was in command, however, for a short time, of a detached company of cavalry in South Carolina, and is said to have had a brush with the celebrated Marion and to have routed him. Thompson had been proscribed in New Hampshire by the Alienation Act of 1778, and by an act of 1781, his property was confiscated. At the close of the war, there-
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
fore, it was impossible for such as he to live in this country, and he resolved to go to the Continent and offer his services to the Austrian Government in their threatened war against the Turks. He went to Strasburg, where the Prince Maximilian, afterwards Elector of Bavaria was in camp, and his fine appearance made a favorable im- pression. Ile became the gnest of the Prince, and so favorably impressed him that he gave him a letter to his uncle, the Elector, and advised him to visit him, which he did. This incident deter- mined his destiny. Ile was cordially welcomed at Munich, and was there introduced into the Austrian Court. The Turkish war cloud had dissipated, but he was invited by the Elector to enter his ser- vice in a joint military and civil capacity, which place he accepted. He was still a Colonel in the British army, and he immediately vis- ited England with the view of asking permission to enter the service of the Elector. This was readily granted, and on taking leave of England he received the order of Knighthood at the hands of the King.
When Thompson returned to Munich he was thirty-one years of age. Ilis reception was little less than royal. A palatial residence was set apart for him, a military staff was provided, and a corps of servants. Thompson at once set about informing himself concern- ing the social conditions of the Electorate. He mastered its resour- ces and learned its weaknesses. He received from the Elector a commission to introduce a new system of order and discipline into the army, in which he was eminently successful. Under the new order of things, the soldier was converted into a citizen, was better fed, better clothed and better paid. Military gardens were estab- lished, and the soldiers became proficient in horticulture. Army workshops were also founded, in which all supplies needed by the army were manufactured. Munich at this time abounded in mendi- cants, and in no place had begging been more successfully reduced to a science. Thompson resolved to abate the nuisance, and on New Year's day, which had become the beggar's great day, he caused every mendicant to be arrested ; all who could work were consigned to comfortable quarters and supplied with work. The grateful citizens contributed money and hospitals were built for those who could not work, and the thing was accomplished. This was in the year seventeen hundred and ninety.
Sir Benjamin also established a military academy for the educa- tion of promising youth of all classes. He took measures to im-
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
prove the breeds of horses and cattle in Bavaria, by the establish- ment of a large stock farm under able jurisdiction. He redeemed a tract of waste land near the city, nearly six miles in circumfer- ence, and upon a portion of it was his stock farm established. This is still known as "The English Garden." Honors were now heaped upon him. His fame had spread over Europe. King George the Third had already Knighted him. The King of Poland conferred on him the Knighthood of the order of St. Stanislaus. He was commissioned by the Elector, Major General of Cavalry, and ap- pointed Counsellor of State and Head of the War Department. In seventeen hundred ninety-one, he was invested with the rank of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and he chose as the title of this new dignity the name of the little New Hampshire town where he had left his wife and infant daughter fifteen years before, and where they still lived, though his wife died there the following year.
The active mind of Count Rumford was not content with carrying out the details of the reforms above described, but engaged in other important investigations which covered a wide range. He engaged in meterological experiments, and studied carefully the properties of gunpowder. Among other pursuits, he devoted much time to the subject of furnishing nutritive and economical food to the poorer classes. He is said to have first utilized the use of the potato as a food. He published rules for the construction of public kitchens, investigated the nutritive properties of various kinds of food, and tabulated and published the results with scientific precision: Pre- eminent among his investigations is a series of experiments into the properties of heat, which annihilated all antecedent theories, and makes him the undisputed discoverer of that grand law of the cor- relation and equivalence of physical forces.
A dangerous illness at this time obliged him to suspend work, and he obtained permission to travel, visiting most of the countries on the continent. In seventeen hundred ninety-five, he revisited England. While there he called attention to the measures he had so successfully carried out in Germany, and many of them were adopted. At this time he contributed five thousand dollars to the American Academy of Science and Art, for the purpose of supply- ing a "Rumford Medal." He likewise gave a fund to the Royal Society of London, "for the purpose of encouraging such practical experiments in the generation and management of heat and light, as tend directly and powerfully to increase the enjoyments and com-
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
forts of life, especially in the lower and more numerous classes of society." The first award of the "Rumford Medal" made by the Royal Society, was to Count Rumford himself,-a fitting and grace- ful tribute for his own important discoveries in that direction.
Count Rumford never saw his wife after he first left America, and she died sixteen years after the separation. In seventeen hundred ninety-two, his only child, Sarah, whom he had left a child, after- wards known as Countess of Rumford, visited him in Munich, where she was received at the Court and pensioned. She was born in the Rolfe Mansion at Concord, October 18, 1774. She remained abroad a large portion of the time after her mother's death, until 1845, when she returned to Concord and soon after died, bequeath- ing her large property to relatives and various charitable and benev- olent institutions.
Count Rumford's health again failing, and desiring to again visit England, the Elector kindly made him Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Saint James. Soon after this his thoughts were turned toward his native land, and he wrote to the friend of his youth, Col. Baldwin, asking him to procure for him some "little quiet retreat, not far from his old home." He had correspondence with the American minister with regard to the removal of his disabilities, which elicited from the President of the United States a cordial acknowledgement of the Count's illustrious labors for the good of mankind, and an offer of patronage should he return. But nothing came of it. The Count was soon engaged in other enterprises such as the founding of the Royal Institution ; he also became entangled in matrimonial affairs, which postponed the desired return and pre- vented it. In eighteen hundred and three he left England for the last time. He went to Paris, where he was introduced to Bonaparte, then Consul, and then proceeded to Munich, where he received a magnificent reception. He returned to Paris, where he became fas- cinated with a French lady, the widow of Lavoisier, the celebrated chemist, whom he married. The marriage was not a happy one, and in eighteen hundred fourteen, at Auteuil, which is included within the walls of Paris, he died, and was buried in the local cem- etery, where a simple monument marks his last resting place.
The fame of Count Rumford is lasting, and his career was most remarkable. What might have been had he remained in America and been loyal to the popular cause, it is difficult to tell. That he was inclined to loyalty, there is not the least doubt, but he was
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
proud spirited, and the suspicion that was cast upon him and the treatment he received, drove him to desperation. It is not strange that he sought the British camp, nor that he went to England, but that he should return with a commission to fight his countrymen, is a dark stain upon his otherwise glorious record. He was a philan- thropist in the highest sense of the word, his efforts being directed to the amelioration of the condition of the masses of the people. It is a matter of regret that he did not return to this country after having firmly established the monument of his genius, and spent a useful and honored old age among his kindred, instead of being ensnared by the charms and embittered by the disappointments of his second marriage. The poor of the world will ever love and bless his memory, and his life, after he left this country, is an eloquent tribute to the power of enthusiastic fidelity to a noble purpose.
A
CHAPTER VIII.
TIIE FIRST SETTLERS.
6. T is agreed on all hands that Jonathan Keyes was the first per- son to settle within the limits of this town. He was born in Shrewsbury, Mass., Jan. 21, 1728, and was the son of Dea. Jona- than and Patience (Morse) Keyes. He married Sarah, daughter of Ebenezer Taylor, January 23, 1752. He purchased land in Sudbury Canada, now Bethel, in 1772, and again in 1774. He spent some years in Bethel before he came to Rumford, but just how many the records do not show. A deed recorded with the Cumberland records, recites that March 14, 1777, Jonathan Keyes of Sudbury Canada, sold to Samuel Ingalls of Fryeburg, four hun- dred acres, or four lots of land, situated and being on the south side of Androscoggin river, in a place called Sudbury Canada. The deed further states that upon one of the lots Mr. Keyes had made considerable improvement, had built a house, a barn for grain and another for English hay. January third preceding, Mr. Keyes had purchased of Dr. Ebenezer Harnden Goss, two full rights in the township of New Pennacook. That Mr. Keyes moved his family to Bethel, is not probable. Two of his sons, Ebenezer and Francis, were there with him, and it is stated on good authority that Mr. Keyes returned to Shrewsbury one fall, and left his two sons in care of his camp, and that for some reason not mentioned, he did not return until spring. Ebenezer was about fourteen years of age and Francis nine, and they remained in this then remote region all through the long and inelement winter with no compan- ionship save that of the Indians. Ebenezer Keyes afterward settled in Jay, and has descendants in Franklin county. Jonathan Keyes died November 7, 1786 ; his wife died November 14, 1799.
In the absence of record evidence, it is often difficult after the lapse of a century, to know who was the first settler in any given town, and precisely when a settlement was made. Tradition can- not be relied upon. That Jonathan Keyes was the first white man
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
to make his home in Rumford, and move his family here, has never been disputed. Hunters may have previously camped here, but they came not to make them a home. Among papers left by the late Francis Keyes of Rumford, is one which gives some account of the early settlement of the town. This paper is in the handwriting of Mr. Keyes, and as he was an actor and eye-witness of what he describes, it is entitled to the utmost confidence. Mr. Keyes wrote as follows :
"This town was granted February 3d, 1774, to Timothy Walker, Jr., and associates ; the condition of the grant was to put on thirty families within six years. The records having been lost, the grant was renewed April 13, 1979, and the time lengthened for complet- ing the settlement five years from that time. The first proprietors' meeting was held at the house of Capt. Daniel Bradley in Haverhill, Mass., with leave to adjourn and hold future meetings in any town in this State, and if more convenient, in any town in New Hamp- shire. Said meeting was adjourned to Concord, N. H., and with one adjonrnment all subsequent meetings were held there until Ang. 31, 1807, when they were held in Rumford. In the Fall of 1776, the proprietors sent a committee to this town, consisting of Colonel Thomas Stickney, Ensign Jonathan Eastman, Dr. Ebenezer Harn- den Goss and Ephraim Colby, to make a division of one hundred acres to each right. In 1777, my father, Jonathan Keyes of Shrewsbury, purchased four rights of land in this town, and on the tenth of March, 1777, set out with myself and my mother and came to New Gloucester. From there my father and I come to this town in the August following, and began a settlement where I now live, the first settlement made in this town. After bringing the farm forward so far as to support a small family, my father moved my mother in on the 29th day of October, 1779. In 1781, three other persons began making settlements in this town, and on the third of August of that year, a small scouting party of Indians from Canada, with one who before that time lived in these parts, commenced plundering in Sunday River Plantation and Sudbury Canada, and took some prisoners and killed two men in Peabody's Patent. Not considering it safe to continne here, we moved off on the sixth of the same month, and did not return until the Spring of 1783, and began our settlement anew. July 28, 1783, it was voted to lay out one hundred and thirty-four one hundred acre lots, and give thirty of the first settlers their pick out of the whole of them. In the Spring
4
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HISTORY OF RUMFORD.
of 1784, Philip Abbot, Jacob Eastman and Daniel Stickney had begun actual settlement. May 6, 1784, John Stevens of Concord, was chosen to petition for a longer time for settling said town, and obtained an extension of two years. Jan'y 2, 1786, John Stevens, Jonathan Eastman and Timothy Walker were appointed a commit- tee to induce settlers to come into town, and were instructed to offer a bounty of six pounds to each actual settler within one year."
The early route to Sudbury Canada and New Pennacook, was by way of the Saco river to Fryeburg, and then by the Indian trail across through Lovell and Waterford. Standish was then the rally- ing point to settlers going to Fryeburg and beyond. Before 1781, when the family fled for safety to New Gloucester, a road had been opened between that town and Paris, rendering this route to the older settlements more feasible and expeditious. While the family was left in the border settlement, Mr. Keyes was preparing a home for them in this wilderness, and in 1783, after the Indian troubles in Maine had forever passed away, he returned to his clearing, and his was doubtless the only family that up to this time had ever lived within the limits of the town .* In June, 1788, Samuel Titcomb of Wells, the old surveyor, wrote to Leonard Jarvis that "a road had lately been cleared ont from Butterfield to New Pennacook, Sudbury Canada, &c., which leads through a part of numbers I and II, and another road through parts of numbers III and IV, to Sudbury Canada, &c. In the settlements of Sudbury Canada and New Pen- nacook, supplies from navigation would be received by this route. The Amoscoggin river abonnds in salmon and shad, and has good mill sites."
In just what order subsequent settlers came, there are no means of knowing, nor does it matter much. We know that Aaron Moor and Benjamin Lufkin were soon here, and that after 1784, settlers came in quite rapidly. In 1792, nine years after Mr. Keyes re- turned, a committee of the proprietors of the township appointed for the purpose, reported the following as the actual settlers in the town : On the north side of the Great River-Philip Abbot, Jacob Abbot, Jacob Eastman, Osgood Eaton, Jacob Farnum, Samuel Goodwin, Robert Hinkson, James Harper, Sarah Keyes, Francis Keyes, Nathaniel Knight, Moses Kimball, Stephen Putnam, Henry
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