USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Bristol > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 36
USA > Maine > York County > York > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 36
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This political skirmish was the most significant event in the long list of clashes which led up to the final arbitra- ment of arms. It forced a definite alignment of those who supported the royal " prerogative" and those who believed it was an outworn device to keep the colonists in a condi- tion of subserviency to a foreign potentate, alien to their blood and ignorant of their tongue. The issue was vital and fundamental and as such became the occasion for a violent outburst of condemnation of the renegade "17," who were bombarded with every epithet from scoundrel to traitor in capital letters in the newspapers, broadsides and caricatures of the time. Sayward, being the only one from Maine who voted with the "Rescinders," was the target not only for local critics, but the object of bitter attack in common with his fellow members throughout the Province of Massachusetts. The "Sons of Liberty" dredged deep in the Thesaurus of Scurrility to hold up these seventeen Representatives to the contempt of the people. Sayward suffered with his associates in this paper warfare. He was caricatured in a drawing by Paul Revere of the group being driven into "Hell" by the devil, and in a broadside of 1768 entitled "The Rescinders," which in prose and verse stigmatizes them as puppets of Governor Bernard in vari- ous servile positions waiting upon him. Sayward is called "His E-y's Chief Soothsayer and Grand Oracle of Infallibility." This was one of the mildest characteriza- tions of the whole number, but probably expressed an
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opinion generally held by the public, as evidenced in like terms by John Adams a few years later when relating the incidents of a dinner with the Judge.
This was the turning point in the political career of the Judge. He had aligned himself with the losing side and the unpopular party. After this events went from bad to worse in the political philosophy of Judge Sayward, as he was now a partisan of the Royalists against the colonial patriots. When in July 1773 the Council and House of Representatives sent a petition to the king asking the dis- mission of Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, Judge Sayward expressed his opinion of this in his diary in these sincere words: "I think the Governor has been most injuriously treated by the Court and I think the Province will Repentt of this Conduct." Acts hostile to the Crown succeeded with rapidity and the disorder, in the opinion of the Judge, reached its climax in December of that year when the patriots, disguised as Indians, per- formed their historic defiance of the Taxation Law regard- ing a cargo of the well-known domestic beverage. In his diary December 17, he gives vent to his distress in this entry: "The men of Belial arose in boston and took Pos- session of the 2 ships of tea and hoised all out and turned it into the Dock." The Judge's cup of woe (but not tea) was now full. The spirit of revolt against taxation was reflected in the town itself among his neighbors, and this open defiance of authority aroused a great patriotic response here. A town meeting lasting two days (de- scribed elsewhere) resulted in resolutions approving the famous "Boston Tea Party" but not until, as Judge Say- ward records in his diary, "after a most severe opposition made by Mr. Samuel Clark and my self got our resolves so far moderated as to thank them for what they had con- stitutionally done"! This concession to the feelings of Judge Sayward was a small reward for two days' debate, as the spilling of tea by a mob was neither constitutional nor legal. Judge Sayward adds: "The opposition to par- liament will undoe us." The town meeting this year elected a new board of Selectmen in sympathy with the patriotic cause and social amenities were wrecked thence- forth. Judge Sayward records in his diary April 9, 1774: "After meeting the former select men and all the justices and most that are called tories did not join the company as
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usual but went to Woodbridges by themselves." The political line of demarcation was now developing into social cleavage.
We get a glimpse of the embarrassing position in which the Judge was now placed. John Adams, then a leading lawyer on the Provincial Circuit, came to York in June 1774, and thus records his meeting and conversation with Judge Sayward at a court dinner:
At York, at dinner with the Court, happening to sit at table next to Mr. Justice Sayward, a representative of York, but of the unpopular side, we entered very sociably and pleasantly into con- versation, and among other things he said to me, "Mr. Adams, you are going to Congress, and great things are in agitation. I recommend to you the doctrine of my former minister, Mr. Moody. Upon an occasion of some gloomy prospects for the country, he preached a sermon from this text -- 'They know not what they do.' After a customary introduction he raised this doctrine from his text, that in times of great difficulty and danger, when men know not what to do, it is the duty of a person or a people to be very careful that they do not do they know not what.'"
This oracular jingle of words which seemed, however, to contain some good sense, made us all very gay. But I thought the venerable preacher, when he had beat the drum ecclesiastic to animate the country to undertake the expedition to Louisburg in 1745 and had gone with it himself as a chaplain, had ventured to do he knew not what, as much as I was likely to do in the Expedition to Congress. I told the Deacon that I must trust Providence as Mr. Moody had done when he did his duty, though he could not foresee the conse- quences.
(Diary of John Adams ii, 339-40)
In this relation we have a picture of the leader of the Revolution and later the second President of the United States politically fencing across the table with our full- fledged Tory.
The incident of the importation of contraband tea into York in September by a master of a vessel in the employ of Sayward, as elsewhere related, served to inflame the Sons of Liberty against him, more than ever, and angry voices were raised against him in the town of Berwick. He relates this under date of October 25:
I am informed I am to be mob'd this day I have sent a letter to Benjamin Chadbourne Esq of Berwick to prevent it as the mob is to come from Berwick.
As far as known no personal violence was inflicted on him as a result of this warning, but he was beginning to taste
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of the fruit of unpopularity, and it was more than bitter. Such was the political excitement of the citizens that Judge Sayward declared he "would not sit in any case so as to give judgment," but adds that the Bench "broke up peaceably." In March he records that he was "threatened the whole of last week by the mob and in danger but not yet destroyed." The news of the beginning of armed con- flict reached him on April 20. "I hear," he wrote in his diary, "an engagement Hath Happened between the King's troops and the inhabitants (at Lexington). Par- ticulars not arrived yet," and the next day he saw "60 good men" march off from York to assist the "embattled farmers." Everything was now headed for disaster, in the opinion of the Judge.
It was now the opportunity of the townspeople to consider the attitude of the Judge in the past, as well as to obtain some hostage for the future. He had consistently aligned himself with those in authority who had been, in the opinion of the people, inimical to the liberties and rights of the colonists, a close friend and correspondent of Governor Hutchinson, even after he had abandoned his office and gone to England, and they resented his asso- ciation with their enemies. They wished to clear their decks for action, and did not intend to harbor a potential enemy at home, while engaged in a death struggle with open enemies. So they appointed a committee to require him to disclose the nature of his correspondence with the late Governor and others of his party. This was made a matter of public record in the Town Books, and appears in the following language:
(The) Town having been somewhat uneasy and disaffected with conduct of Jonathan Sayward Esqr, supposing to be not hearty & free for the Support & Defence of our Rights, Liberties & Privileges in this Dark & Difficult Day, but rather the contrary:
He came into the Meeting & made a Speach: whereupon the Town Voted it was Satisfactory
At a Meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of York assembled on Tuesday the 16th of May, 1775, by adjourn- ment from the 21 of April preceding:
The question being put whether the report of the Committee who were appointed at the beginning of this Meeting to view such Letter or Letters as Jonathan Sayward Esqr has received from the late Gov'r Hutchinson or others, and make such Remarks upon the same as they think proper who reporting that the Acct's he gave were
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Satisfactory to them, and Advise the Town to accept the same: Voted the said Report be accepted.
Danl Moulton Town Cler.
In despair at the doings of the "madmen and hot- heads" he wrote that summer: "The common people may do as they please"! On September 12 his political trials were further weighted by the death of his wife, Sarah Mitchell, with whom he had lived for thirty-nine years. On December 31 of that year he enumerates the various afflictions that have befallen him domestically and politically :
I am now arrived to the close of the year through the forbearance of god it hath been a year of Extraordinary trials: beside the Death of my wife (the greatest of all) which is mentioned and remarked on the 12th Sept I have Lost a new Sloop Cast away this month and Suffered the Loss of one or more Cargoes in West indias and Lonely by the death of one and another but this is but small Compared with the Hazzards I have and am Still in on account of my political senti- ments and Conduct. I have been Confined upon honor not to absent my Self from the town and a Bonds man Jotham Moulton Esq for my comptence often threatened afraid to go abroad, have not been out of town these nine months through fear though my business Greatly Required it the Loss of trade the Scorn of the abject Slight of friends Continually on my Guard all my offices as Judge of Probate Judge of Court of Common Pleas Justice of Quorum Justice of Peace taken from me Constant Danger of being Driven from my Habbita- tion so much that I have constantly kept £200 Lawfull in Gold and. paper curency in my Pocket for fear of sudainly being Removed from my Abode. I have been examined before Committees and obliged to Lay open my Letters from Governor Hutchinson to Swear to my private Conversation all the above I have Sufered from Principle I was one of the seventeen in the year 1767 or 8 that Rescinded as a member of the Generall Court I were originally against sending out the Circular Letter Inviting the other Governments into a Combina- tion as it would bring Displeasure on this Government and I now apprehend it Laid the foundation for our Present Troubles/
One cannot but sympathize with him in his fallen estate. It appears from his diary that he endeavored to lighten the burden by filling the vacancy in his home circle with a second wife, but death intervened to prevent its accomplishment: "June 14 - Widow Mary Foster daugh- ter of Mr Samuel Clark of York died. A woman of a superior mind; great Knowledge and esteemed Pious. I have had some thought of her if she had continued and I had changed my condition."
On May 14, 1776 humiliation added its sting to the 396
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injuries which he considered he had suffered in the cause of loyalty to his king: "I signed the Test act in the presence of David Sewall, Esq. and Job Lyman, Esq. and they are witness now."
It was now wartime and these exceptional measures were necessary to the success of the Revolution which was in full swing, but even in days like those the social amen- ities were not entirely withdrawn by those with whom he cared to associate. Those whom he called the "common people" and the "Scorn of the abject" did not extend to those who recognized in him the qualities of a gentleman though opposed to his Tory attitude. On June 26, 1776 he records that he was "invited to dine with the Judges of the Superior Court in this town. I went and Dined with them on my own accomp had a free Conversation of Dif- ferent Sentiments in Polliticks The Conversation was agreeable to me and I apprehend so to them."
On July 17 he read the Declaration of Independence voted two weeks previously, at Philadelphia. Nothing could now surprise him. He was almost speechless. "Its all beyond my Debth," he wrote. "I am lost in Wonder." At the close of that year he was still incredulous and in his annual resumé wrote, "I firmly believe we shall be obliged to submit," but his mental distress was still unre- lieved. He closes with this expression of his continued grief over what he considered the madness of the people and on the following day, the beginning of the new year, he continues: "If we succeed it will be many years after I and this Generation are gone before we shall feel any of the Comfortable fruits of Independence."
On July 21, 1777 he was brought before the Committee of Safety on suspicion of carrying on a correspondence in England. Some personal compensation, however, came to him on October 19 when he ended his widower's estate by marrying Mrs. Elizabeth Plummer of Gloucester, Mass .. on which event his diary contains this aspiration: "The Lord make us Blessings to one and the other." The mental processes of the Judge are somewhat cryptic regarding his matrimonial connections if we consider an entry made in his diary some years later on an anniversary of his first wife's death. This was his comment: "I believe she hath been Happy ever since."
The remaining years of the Revolution found him
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simply waiting the turn of events and on December 28, 1780 he had not yet lost confidence in his judgment of the result. He writes in his diary "Our independence is yet a great uncertainty whether we shall support it. My op- pinion hath been that we shall not and I am of that senti- ment still."
At the close of the next year he generalizes his senti- ments in these words: "Distraction is become common. New kinds of sickness, various opinions. ... I had almost forgot to add we have new Polletitians & new Polliticks almost as strange as the other Disorders." On March 2 he records a "peaceable town meeting" and on August 8 following, he writes "the Enemy" when he corrects him- self by continuing "or rather King's vessels are taking sundry privateers." The sturdy old Tory had uncon- sciously come to use the word enemy as descriptive of his king's defenders.
On April 29, 1783 he records: "A Day of Publick Rejoicing on accompt of Peace," the last act in the tragedy of his life which contradicted his diagnosis of the times in which he lived. His social evolution from a laborer to an aristocrat had distorted his judgment of the strength of the Democratic ideal and while he suffered indignities and deprivation of his official position and prestige as well as great financial loss through his loyalty, which proved to be a mistaken policy, he did not suffer the extreme penalty inflicted on others and he was spared banishment from his native country. While he never recovered his former high public standing in the Province, his fellow townsmen did not cease to look up to him as a natural leader in town affairs. He became Elder of the church. In the social life of the town his house was always a centre of gayety and luxurious entertainment. His diary gives us information of dinners at his house to the judges of the Court whenever they met in York. At these affairs wine flowed freely. At various times he records the purchase of "one Quarter casks of wine" for which he paid six pounds each. Bridal dinners with a "large company" were part of his social generosities. His large house was elegantly furnished for the period and a part of its furnishings consisted of chinaware, candlesticks and andirons, as well as other parlor decora- tions captured when Louisburg fell. He patronized the
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CORNER CLOSET IN SAYWARD MANSION Showing Chinaware Brought from Louisburg
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arts and a fine portrait painted by Blackburn of his only daughter graced the walls of his reception room. Another one of himself and one of his wife, which was unfinished and somewhat crude, displayed his intent to preserve his features for posterity. Public men visiting York were received at his house as a matter of course, and he notes the visit of an Italian nobleman on July 30, 1785 who was "making a tower of the States." He noted that "his waitting men appear better Dressed than himself." He mentions a visit from Dr. Elisha Perkins of Connecticut, the inventor of the famous Perkins' tractors, a panacea "which almost Instant cures any pulmenary Pluritick and Rheumatik Disorder."
A visit to Boston in 1783 resulted in the purchase of a new chaise for which he paid one hundred fifty dollars and we can picture him taking an airing with his family in this new vehicle and on occasional pleasant summer Sabbaths riding to Portsmouth to occupy the pew which he had bought in the church there at a cost of five hundred pounds "Hamshire money." His patronage of literature was also a part of his generosity and desire to acquire a liberal education. He was one of the subscribers to Prince's "Chronology of New England," and to Rev. Jeremy Bel- knap's "History of New Hampshire" and other like purchases are mentioned in his diary. He also patronized the "Publick Prints," as newspapers were then called, and read them carefully, as his diary testifies. One last political reference in his diary in 1789 relates the "Tumul- tous Rejoicing" which accompanied the visits of President Washington to Boston, Salem, Newbury and Portsmouth. The old Judge was still unreconciled. He notes that "vast crowds" came to see him "whome they called the Saviour of America," but the tone of his description of these events does not indicate that he regarded him in that light. His public and private charities were large and he supported all public improvements in the town with liberal subscriptions. His political contumacy can be overlooked in the finer qualities of his character as a man and a Christian. How far he accepted the changed politi- cal character of his native country is not known. Sixteen years after the defeat of the British Army at Yorktown the bitterness of disappointment had lessened, and under the social influences of good company and good wine at a
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dinner given to Judge Sewall and some visitors he heard "a long letter of 5 sheets Dated 30 of this month (Jan. 1797) from Mr (George) Thatcher (of Biddeford) from Congress as sensible and Prudent as any I have seen on Pollitiks," he wrote, and added: "We drank his health." This postprandial courtesy may be accepted as evidence that he had determined to bow to the inevitable.
The last entry in his diary April 21, 1797 records a severe northeastern storm lasting two days. The end of all earthly honors came to him on May 8, 1797. A grave- stone in the Old Burying Ground gives this just con- temporary estimate of his life:
In memory of Jonathan Sayward, Esq., Amiable and Social in address: instructive and entertaining in conversation; benevolent, charitable and pious, uniting the Gentleman and Christian. Various offices, civil, judicial and ecclesiastical with honor and reputation sustained. He died May 8, 1797 ae. 84.
The Columbian Sentinel of June 3, 1797 recites at length the prevailing sentiment elsewhere regarding the loss sustained by the town and Province and Country at his death:
He was descended from ancestors distinguished for piety. His mental powers were strong and brilliant; for although destitute of a liberal education he acquired an extensive knowledge of men and things. He was several years a representative in the General Court; and in various judicial departments in the county.
The office of a ruling elder in the church he sustained at his death. His hospitality to strangers and his liberal distribution of the good things of life (which a kind Providence had bestowed on his laudable exertions), among the needy and necessitous, many, very many, with gratitude and pleasure recollect. The social and useful manner of receiving and entertaining his numerous and extensive acquaintances and connections, which he uniformly exhibited through life, was peculiar to himself, and in which few, if any, exceeded and rendered him uncommonly agreeable to all classes of people. His exemplary behavior in the possession of those duties which adorn the Christian character, was apparent in every place and station in which he was called to officiate. A very large and respectable collection of citizens on the IIth ultimo, with undissembled marks of esteem, respect and affection, attended the interment of this amiable, good man.
By his will he bequeathed the largest part of his prop- erty to his grandson, Jonathan Sayward Barrell, eldest son of his daughter Sarah, wife of Nathaniel Barrell, a few bequests to personal friends of his earlier days, being the only legacies outside his immediate family. His
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"Mansion House," after the decease of his wife, who was given the use of one half, was bequeathed to his grandson, above-named, and it is now the property of Dr. Leonard Wheeler of Worcester, Mass., who occupies it as a summer home.
THE SAYWARD MANSION Now owned and occupied by Dr. Leonard T. Wheeler
This closes the story of a career blighted by the Revo lutionary maelstrom which carried him by Fate to the wrong shore, and left him a political derelict, stranded on the rocks. Had he chosen the other current in the begin- ning of the controversy, it is not improbable that with his natural talents, his wealth and his engaging personality, he would have risen to even greater heights in the new order of things, and attained higher political preferment in national affairs.
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CHAPTER XXXV YORK IN THE REVOLUTION 1775-1783
The record of the participation of this town in the great struggle for Independence has been told in frag- ments by various writers in the past, and the purpose of this chapter is to bring these scattered references into proper relationship to each other and to the larger story of the war itself. There need be no exaggeration of the importance of the attitude of the citizens of York regard- ing this epochal revolt, either in respect to priority of action, extent of commitment, or value of contribution to the general result. This town, as one of the hundreds in the colonies, did its duty fully as we should expect to find from the records which substantiate it. Its citizens were long of the opinion that the ultimate destiny of this continent did not rest in the conception of a dependent colony of a distant State, with no voice in its relations with the world at large. The people of England, if truly represented by the ministries of the kingdom, had little or no knowledge of the sentiments which actuated these colonists as freeborn Englishmen, and to a certain extent they were alien in thought as well as philosophy, to their kinsfolk on this side of the Atlantic. Five generations of the people of York had painfully hewn out of a "howling wilderness," as they expressed it, a country where English- men could live in civilized safety and it was natural that they should wish to become masters of their own political destinies, rather than the vassals of a distant monarchy. It was an inheritance of the breed that "Britons never shall be slaves," and York men of British blood grew up in the idea that it was incongruous for them to be the pawns of a European king. Every town in the thirteen colonies had this same sense of proportion - York as well as, but no more than, the rest. It is permissible on the Fourth of July to indulge in oratorical fireworks and exaggerate the part which any community had in begin- ning, continuing or ending the Revolution, but it is historically unsound to suggest that the Declaration of
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Independence was drafted here or that the idea of "taxa- tion without representation" was born in York. Claims of this sort have been made by nearly every local historian from Maine to Georgia. It is well to be conservative in presenting the facts in the case. To have done its obvious duty always in these trying years is sufficient glory, and the plain historical record will give more than ample satisfaction when contemplating the patriotism and suffer- ings of these "embattled farmers" campaigning for national freedom. It is also to be said, as will be related elsewhere, that there were some persons of social impor- tance and high character who did not approve of discarding the protection of the English government and undertaking the responsibilities of complete independence. Every community had its share of these people, usually of the wealthy, aristocratic class, who honestly entertained sentiments of loyalty to the king, but it was in its ultimate analysis a political revolution and unanimity could not be expected in such a rupture of traditional sentiments and ties. Early in April 1775 York was preparing for the inevitable conflict, which she refused to approve four months previously. The stupidly conceived acts of the British Ministers to coerce the colonists, together with the tactlessness of their officials here, slowly but surely invited the disaster. At Lexington Common and at Con- cord Bridge on April 19, the rustic militia received the baptism of blood in this sacred service. The die had been cast, at last, and the townsmen of York realized that the time for speech-making was over. Henceforth men of action took the front of the stage.
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