USA > Maine > Waldo County > Unity > History of Unity, Maine > Part 6
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Joseph Woods came from Standish and settled on the farm now owned by Wesley Woods. Mark Libby, Robert Carll, Henry Farwell and John Perley arrived here at about this time. They came on horseback, sometimes guided only by the blazed trees, bringing with them their tools, a few household implements and indomitable courage.
We find in the records that it was during this early period that the first barn was built on the F. A. Whit- ten place, and the second, which still stands, on the C. C. Fowler farm. A grist mill also was built at the Farwell Mills.
Rufus Burnham, M. D., for whom the town of Burnham was named, moved to town and afterward purchased the first stove ever brought into Unity. This was set up in the house now occupied by the speaker. Other settlers were Cornforth, Kelley, Park- hurst and Hunt.
The first settlements had been made on the "horse- back"; here and there a house arose in different parts of the town, but the real trend of civilization tended
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now toward the central part of the town, or what is now the J. H. Cook district, and it is there that we find houses were going up and schools and churches built. This was called "The Settlement," and it was at this time the business center.
A man by the name of Brackett lived on the place now owned by C. S. Cook, and manufactured clocks and oilcloth carpeting. The first store was kept by a man by the name of Hopkins, in the house now belong- ing to George Murch. In this same settlement, Jo- seph Ames made hand rakes, and beyond to the east- ward was the dwelling of Dr. Knowles, who served thirty years in succession as town clerk. Houses were erected on the sites of the present Varney, Hussey and Larrabee homesteads, and the settlement bcame large and prosperous for the period.
Meantime, municipal government was to be thought of. The first plantation meeting was held at the home of John Chase, on June 30, 1803, and the second at the residence of Lemuel Bartlett. The first town meeting was held at the home of Benjamin Rack- liff, an innholder.
Like the Massachusetts brethren who founded churches almost before they founded their homes, these settlers early looked to the religious welfare of the community. Before a church building could be thought of, two societies had been formed, the Friends , and the Baptists, the former under the leadership of Stephen Chase, the latter under John Whitney. The first church, however, of which I find any record was built by the Methodists, not far from the home of Peter Ayer, in 1826. One year later, the Friends' church was built, on the site of the present church of this denomination. A Congregationalist church, erect-
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ed on the main road, near the B. B. Stevens place, was afterward moved to the village, and, the society having disbanded, was sold and taken down. The present Union church was finished in 1841 ..
But even earlier than this, the little settlement on the hill, in spite of the work incident to settlement in a new and uncleared land, had, remembered the need of education, had felt the stimulus that leads fathers to wish for their sons a better education than they themselves had, and had built schoolhouses for their youth.
A little after the nineteenth century came in, clear- ings were made and business was transferred to Unity Village, or Antioch, as it was then called. The first schoolhouse built at the village was on the Pond road, beyond Bartlett's barn, and was moved to the C. E. Stevens place, afterward to the present site of Harri- son Damon's house, and is now occupied as a dwelling by A. W. Harding. The old brick school building followed, which stood on the site of the old White schoolhouse, both of which have been superseded by our present modern building, which ranks among the finest in the villages of the state.
These are a few of the facts which may be of interest to you. Of the life of the period, interesting though it is, I have no time to speak. Our ancestors were honest, hardworking, God-fearing men, who. struggled for existence at home in the early life of our state; and when the call came, four went out bravely to help conquer the British. These men were John Melvin, Thomas Fowler, James Packard and Nathan Parkhurst.
In the war of 1812, eleven responded to the call: : Robert Blanchard, Nathaniel Stevens, Josiah Murch, Elisha Bither, George I. Fowler, Archelaus Hunt, Eben
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Reynolds, Robert Carll, Nathaniel Carll, Dean and Mark Libby. Two went to the Mexican war: Otis Whitmore and Joseph Bither. I find on the roll the names of eighty who fought loyally for the Stars and Stripes in the Rebellion of 1861. Those who remained at home, worked with a will, we read in the records of the industries that now sprang up. A grist mill was built, now called "Conners' Mill," which is nearly a hundred years old; plows and stoves were manufac- tured by T. B. Hussey ; a grist and cloth mill was put up at the Farwell Mills; other mills followed in differ- ent parts of the town, and factories were built.
Among the early California pioneers who went around Cape Horn in the ship, Hampden, in 1849, were Hon. Crosby Fowler and his brother, Dutton, Stephen and Joseph Rackliffe. In 1852, Charles Taber and Gorham Hamilton went by way of the Isthmus, and in 1854, J. F. Parkhurst, Crosby Fowler and Wil- bur Mitchell went to Missouri, bought two hundred head of cattle, and drove them over the mountains to California.
It should be noted as an item of interest that one of the masts of the ship, Constitution, was cut on the C. E. Fowler place and hauled to the Sebasticook river by sixteen yoke of oxen, one pair being necessary to haul the rum.
But the glory of a town, like that of a nation, is in the men and women that it sends forth. Unity has sons who have won high place in the business, the political and the educational world. Go to Florida and you will find there as manager of the Ponce De Leon, one of the largest hotels in the country, a son of our former hotel keeper, John L. Seavey. One of the worthy citizens of Jackson, Mich., is John T. Main, M. D., formerly of Unity; Nelson Dingley, Jr., who
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was afterward governor, member of Congress, chair- man of the Ways and Means Committee, spent his boyhood days here.
Hon. John Crosby, whose eloquence has electrified vast audiences, first practiced upon the school boys of Unity; George C. Chase, now the honored president of Bates College, is a native of our town; the noted paint- er, Walter M. Brackett of Boston, was also born in Unity.
Friends and Fellow Citizens:
We are proud of our ancestors and their work, we are proud of our town as you see it today, and if this anniversary shall strengthen our pride, shall increase the loyalty of our citizens, and cause our hearts to beat with a stronger love and patriotism for our native town, those who have labored for this day will feel that the recompense has indeed been sufficient. 1
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION AT THE UNITY CENTENNIAL
Mr. President, Sons and Daughters of Unity, Friends and Fellow Citizens:
We celebrate today the birth of a nation and the beginning of a town. One hundred and twenty-eight years ago today was born the United States of Amer- ica. One hundred years ago was held the first town meeting of Unity. To the hasty thinker, the connec- tion between the events that we commemorate may seem remote and obscure. But every student of his- tory knows that the impulse of the men who planned this double commemoration was sane and true to fact.
The nation and the town! Both are representa- tives of popular government. Both are products of a movement whose origin is lost in the mists of antiq-
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uity, but a movement whose genuineness and signifi- cance arrested the attention of Tacitus 2000 years ago as he gazed with wonder upon the independent com- munal life of our ancestors ere yet they had left the forests of Germany.
Of the progress of this movement toward repre- sentative government until it issued in the destruction of feudalism and the dominance of the people, through their House of Commons, over vested rights and hereditary privileges, over the long endured self-asser- tion of lords temporal and lords spiritual, we are told in the pages of Macaulay, Hallam and Greene.
But we all know that it has had its splendid and complete culmination upon this continent. And it began upon these shores with local self-government. We know, also, that of the two variations of the old English stock, the country in the south and the town in New England, the town has proved itself the true exponent and embodiment of the democratic ideal. Barring some perversions and inequalities due to the narrowness and bigotry of the times, town government as set up in Plymouth, Salem, Lynn, Dorchester, New- ton and Boston, was the beginning of that government of the people, by the people and for the people, "which shall not perish from the earth."
First the town, then the state, and finally the na- tion. And the nation existed in the town as the oak exists in the acorn. As settlement after settlement was formed and sent off its hardy children to make new beginnings in the wilderness, it was simply inev- itable that the towns when developed and organized should combine to form the state; and in spite of local pride and short-sighted views of public policy, it was equally inevitable that the states should in due' time combine to form the nation.
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In the town was the genesis both of state and of nation. It was the town that first inured men to the atmosphere of self-government, that produced a body of genuine free men, disciplined them to healthy self- control, and taught them to subordinate individual aims to the public welfare. It was the town, that awakened and developed public spirit, patriotic pride, and generous self-denial. It was in the rude legisla- tion of the town that the talent for leadership was evoked and developed. The men who had faced and had solved the problems of building roads, of caring for the poor, of maintaining order, and of promoting health, intelligence and morality under the conditions presented in the administration of the town became the men capable of dealing with the larger and more complicated problems of the state and the nation. John and Samuel Adams, Hancock, Warren and Otis did not suddenly present themselves as leaders of the people in the struggle against British tyranny and in the still sharper struggle that followed in the building of the nation. They were already picked men, tried and approved as wise counsellors and able executives in the life and management of the town.
!... So in each of the original New England States. So in Maine when the district of Massachusetts had at- tained to the dignity of statehood. The men who came to the front and who proved themselves equal to the discussion and decision of different questions were the men who had been trained amid the humbler exigencies of the town. Nine-tenths of the men whose names appear upon our lengthening list of governors, con- gressmen and United States senators were born and bred and prepared for leadership amid the life and activities of the country town. This is no less true of the educators, journalists, speakers, writers, jurists,
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and thinkers that have moulded public opinion and shaped the destinies of our country. Most of the early champions of the anti-slavery cause had breathed the pure air and felt the quickening life of the country - town.
We cannot forget that the first martyr to that cause was born and reared but a few miles hence in a town adjoining our own. The poets whose genius has brought lustre to our literature were first aroused and inspired while living the simple life of the town. Whittier and Longfellow were country boys; and Low- ell tells us that in his youth and young manhood, Cam- bridge was only a village. Horace Greeley was born in a humble town of New Hampshire, prepared for his great career as journalist in the woods of Vermont, and disciplined for his great editorial responsibilities of after, years by hard apprenticeship in the service of rural, printing offices and country newspapers. So with Seward. So before Seward with Webster. So with the political giants of our own State of Maine, with Fessenden, the Hamlins and the Morrills.
These and others like them were the men who formed'public opinion, and by their courage, convic- tion, earnestness and persistence brought on the irre- pressible conflict that issued in the war for the Union, the downfall of slavery, and the nationalization of freedom. The men who by their valor on the battle- field and their wise and courageous leadership in Con- gress såved our Union were not during their childhood and youth clothed in soft raiment or brought up in the enervating atmosphere of the city. It is not too much to say that we owe to the town and the moulding, edu- cating, and inspiring influences of its healthy and straightforward methods of government, the preser-
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vation of our nation and its position as the leader in the civilization of the world.
But if the town conditioned the nation, no less did the nation condition the town. No less is it essential to the very existence of the town today. The towns found themselves obliged to unite to form the state; the states to form the United States. The towns had early learned their inter-dependence; the states more slowly learned theirs. Today no one of our forty-five states would dream of a separate independence. Im- aginė if you can the condition of forty-five or fifty sovereign and separate nationalities within the terri- tory of the United States-forty-five to fifty distinct monetary, tariff, postal and commercial systems, with custom houses and customs officers all along the boun- daries of each, with conflicting charters for our great industrial organizations, with different currency for each sovereignty, with endless jealousies, bickerings, strifes, reprisals, contentions, and conflicts. Compare these nameless and indefinable aggregations of people with the nation that now presents its solid front to the world. How long would one of these petty nation- alities be proof against the cupidity of the great pow- ers of Europe ?
And what would citizenship mean under such con- ditions? Today the humblest American finds safety at home and protection abroad. Whether within his own, municipality, state or nation, whether upon the high seas, or upon foreign soil, whether among civil- ized men or barbarians, his life, his property and his rights find shelter beneath a flag known and honored throughout the entire world. There is no thinking man in all our territory today who does not know that all he possesses, all he enjoys, and all he hopes for depend upon the maintenance of our national govern-
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ment. Indeed, it is difficult to comprehend how only forty years ago the dream of a southern confederacy was possible. It was possibly only to men who for sixty years had been perverting their moral sense and warping their judgment in the endeavor to find argu- ments for an institution that seemed to them so essen- tial to their material welfare.
We all know that without the protection and sup- port of our noble government the vast material re- sources of our country would still be undeveloped- its quarries comparatively untouched, its mines unex- plored or reserved to the cupidity of foreigners, its great prairies uncultivated, its commerce undeveloped, its railroads unbuilt, and the entire structure of our civilization material, intellectual and moral, still lack- ing a foundation. We might indeed have in part our territory, our sea coast, our mountains, forests and rivers. But in the words of Wooster, "What are lands and seas and skies without society, without govern- ment, without laws? And how can these be preserved and enjoyed in all their extent and all their excellence but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government ?"
All these advantages of our great Republic are obvious. But there is one advantage less likely to be appreciated, and that is the effect of a great and grow- ing free government like ours upon the ideas and aspirations of its people. It was nearly 2000 years ago that the Great Teacher uttered the words, "Life is more than meat." But we have not yet fully grasped their significance. The breadth and value of any life, whether that of beast, bird or man, are determined by that life's relations. Mere animal life through its whole wide range from polyp to man is a helpless rou- tine of obedience to blind instincts. In the true mean-
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ing of the word, education is possible only for human beings. Guided by instinct, the bird can affect certain adjustments to its environment. But these adjust- ments are' few, sharply limited, and can scarcely be said to be the product of thought.' The sparrow of today flies, feeds, 'builds its nest, rears its young; and makes a periodical migration precisely as the sparrow did these things in the time of our Saviour. We speak of training the dog, of educating him. But at best he learns a few tricks, forms a few blind habits, exhibits a wealth of unreasoning affection, and lives and dies within the definite boundaries prescribed for a dog. The best educated dog of today has never advanced in intelligence and attainments beyond the dog that ,wel- comed Ulysses to his island home and died from excess of sudden delight.
Man is man and not a mere brute because of the infinite number and variety of relations that he can sustain and appreciate. In all this universe of matter and mind with their myriad manifestations, there is nothing alien to the thought of man. He alone 'can find "sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything."
But to the savage, only a few of these relations are actual. To prepare men to enter into the endless, the illimitable relations for which they were created, is the work of civilization, of education, and there is nothing that so civilizes, so educates, as the union of human beings with their fellows in the pursuit of com- mon interests, the attainment of common' purposes. Would you know how meagre even human life may be, visit the solitary hermit, the lonely dweller in the for- est, or the prisoner confined in his cell, shut out from communion with his fellow beings. The grandest ser- vice rendered by our country to its citizens is the broad-
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ening of their horizon, the multiplying of their inter- ests, the exalting of their ambitions, the summoning into exercise of the dormant powers of heart and mind.
Imagine if you can how "cribb'd, cabin'd and con- fined" were the first settlers of Unity. Twenty miles remote at the beginning from the nearest settlement, most of them a hundred miles away from their earlier homes; in the heart of a great forest, with no roads, with scarcely a pathway leading out into a life of larger activities ; without schools, without churches, without books or newspapers, almost without neighbors; cen- tering of necessity their entire thought upon their humble homes, with their wives and their children; passing whole days, nay months, with no companions save their families and their own thoughts; dependent upon some new immigrant or chance comer for, even an echo from the outside world-how dreary, how dis- tressingly limited must have been the lives of their souls.
And they were only more isolated than their fel- lows. All Maine was largely a wilderness 100 years ago, and even in the most favored portions of New England the only means of communication was on the seaboard by slow-moving sloops and schooners, and in the interior by horseback riding, or at best' by the lumbering stage coach. It was exactly 100 years ago that Lewis and Clark began their famous expedition across the continent, first making an exploration of the Missouri. They were 171 days in making 1600 miles, a little more than nine miles a day. A journey that required nearly six months can now be made by railroad in less than two days. They were, indeed, in a country remote from the habitation of men; and yet it was a country not so very different in its main
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features and its means of communication from what was then, for the greater part, the wilderness of Maine.
Now, our fathers and mothers who settled this town were men and women of vigorous minds, of warm human sympathies, and of the largest potential inter- ests and activities. They exercised their minds upon the problems immediately confronting them, and thus attained an intellectual vigor that made them masters of the situation. As their number increased, as set- tlements multiplied, roads were built, schools estab- lished, trade and occupations developed at their doors, their horizon grew and they attained through these instrumentalities to some good degree of mental free- dom.
When the State was organized in 1820, they found a new field for political activities and were brought into new and important civic and social relations. But it is safe to say that the great, enlarging, fructifying and inspiring influence that quickened their minds, created their ideals, sharpened their mental and moral vision and put them in good degree into possession of their inheritance as human beings, was the developing life of our common country. When in 1782 our ances- tors first set foot upon the shores of yonder pond, they probably brought with them the knowledge of the sur- render of Cornwallis at Yorktown in the fall of the preceding year. But it could not long have reached them before they began that toilsome journey by boats and rafts up the Kennebec and Sebasticook into the waters of the lake on whose borders they settled. Little they knew of the issues of the long conflict. But doubtless their hearts were lighter and their feet trod more firmly as they talked with one another of victory and of peace.
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How much they knew of the treaty of peace with England in 1782, of the heated discussion and threat- ened divisions between that time and 1789, when the Constitution was adopted, whether they clearly under- stood the distinction between the Federalist and the Republican conception of what the new government should be, whether they awaited with eager interest the ratification of the new form of government by one state after another until its adoption was secured, about all this we know absolutely nothing. But we may reasonably believe that news of these exciting . matters occasionally reached them and drew their at- tention from their own toilsome lives to the broader interests of their country. We may be sure that they rejoiced in the election of Washington to the Presi- dency, and that in some way when he declined to be a candidate for a third time in 1796 they became ac- quainted with the spirit and tenor of his immortal farewell letter, with its forecast of the greatness and glory of the nation at length safely launched, and with his fatherly warnings against the dangers which his prophetic eyes saw only too keenly.
However meagre the news that reached them, how- ever little of the spirit and life of the growing country was communicated directly to them, yet even that little was broadening the scope of their thoughts, relieving the drudgery of their toil, and developing in them an appreciation of their privileges as American citizens. In 1804, when Unity was incorporated, the country seemed on the verge of war with Great Britain; and the exciting stories passing from lip to lip, of the im- pressment of American seamen, of the destruction of our navigation by the decrees of France and the block- ades of Great Britain, finally of our own Embargo Act, resulting in the loss of all our commerce and the
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paralysis of all our infant industries, must have reached the citizens of the new town, and have aroused their anxiety and kindled their indignation. That the War of 1812 was of absorbing interest to them, is clear from their own contribution of nearly a half dozen men to the ranks of our soldiery. It is clear, also, from the fact that Andrew Jackson, the hero of that brilliant after-battle at New Orleans, was henceforth the popular idol of the State of Maine. From 1815 onward, the name of Jackson rivalled that of Washington in the place that it held in the affections of our people. A study of family records with the first names of children clearly establishes this.
When in 1820 the question of Maine's admission to the Union as an independent state was before Con- gress, the coupling of the fate of our membership in the Union with that of Missouri and the heated dis- cussion that followed whether the admission of a free state must be balanced by that of a slave state, the people first began to follow with an interest that stead- ily increased the multiplying problems presented by the institution of slavery. Probably the long conflict which then began was the most potent factor in devel- oping a consciousness of the dignity and meaning of American citizenship. The discussion kept up for the forty years between the admission of Maine to the Union and the beginning of the Civil War, considered simply as a means of mental development and especial- ly of training men to analyze the functions and aims of our government, probably effected more than any other agency in awakening true patriotism, in devel- oping the spirit of humanity, and in giving to legisla- tion a distinctly moral scope and purpose. In 1830 followed the great speech of Webster in reply to Hayne. And soon its most brilliant passages were upon the lips of every schoolboy in declamation and debate.
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