USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 7
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The Pemaquid Patent : (Drowne Claim) 1631 :-
Medomac Falls
Waldo Claim nullified by Court Decision X
×
×
Damariscotta Falls
×
x
Broad Cove
×
*********
Greenland
x
apunod
·Muscongus Is.
New Harbor
2 MILES
Land Claims in the Waldobino Area
Based on Early Deeds,
Grants and Claims
Pemaquid Point
The looseness of this delimiting method is characteristic of the many sales made under the Brown claim. Certain sections of this same tract were later sold by members of the Gould family
12The Medomak River.
Broad Bay
xxx x
Pemaquid Falls
45
The Staking of Claims
without regard to the rights of the other heirs. Such a sale was that made by James Stilson, Jr., on March 27, 1733, to Samuel Waldo, when he conveyed for £200 an undivided half of this "eight miles square tract," and in addition seven hundred acres on Broad Bay adjoining it. This purchase to a degree strengthened Waldo's questionable claim to the west bank of the Medomak. In case his rights under the Patent should fail to embrace this area, he felt he would be in a position to support his claim by falling back on the Stilson deed. In the absence of any counterclaims at this time, he somewhat extravagantly insisted that the lands on the western side of the river and bay as far as and including Round Pond were within the limits of his grant. In fact, he actually sold a lot at Muscongus Harbor to William Burns and another at Round Pond to James Yeates. By the same token he did not hesi- tate a decade later to settle his German immigrants on the western bank of the Medomak.
This brief outline has sketched the development of the Mus- congus Patent from 1630 until the time the stage was fully set for the appearance of the colonists. It has also told how Samuel Waldo came to be the "Hereditary Lord of Broad Bay," and it has pre- pared the background for an understanding of the issue of con- flicting claims which inevitably arose as the lands in question became settled, cleared, and hence valuable. At one time no one in particular wanted them much. Later, after their development by the frugal, hard-working Germans, everyone with a claim wanted them.
Following the Muscongus Patent by a brief span of time came the last grant of land made in our area by The Council for New England. As will be seen it was a grant which embraced much of the Brown claim and enveloped in part that of General Waldo. Unfortunately for the future settlers of Waldoborough, it was a grant set forth in terms considerably more definite and explicit than any preceding it. This grant was known as the Pema- quid Patent. It was "made the nine and twentieth day of February, Anno D'm 1631, And in the seventh yeere of the Raigne of our Sovraigne Lord Charles by the Grace of God King ..
Under its terms
the said President and Councell doe further graunte assigne allott and confirm unto the said Robert Aldworth and Gyles Elbridge, of the City of Bristoll merchants, theire heires and assignes Twelve Thousand acres of land more over and above the aforesaid proporcon of One hundred acres the person for every person Transported or to be Transported as aforesaid as his or their proper inheritance forever, The same land to be bounded, Chosen, taken and laid out neere the River Commonly called or known by the name of PEMAQUID or by what other name or names the same is or have been or hereafter shall be called or knowne by and next adjoining by both along the Sea Coast Lyeth, and Soe upp the
46
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
River as farr as may containe the said Twelve Thousand acres within the said bredth and length Together with the said hundred acres for every person by them the said Robert Aldworth and Gyles Elbridge to be transported as aforesaid Together alsoe with all the Iselands and Islettes within the lymitts aforesaid Three leagues into the Main Ocean.13
This is but a brief excerpt from a lengthy document. Its date is probably erroneous, since February 29th comes only in a leap year and 1631 was not such a year. According to our method of time calculation, the Charter, for such it was, was issued in the year 1632, certainly after the Beauchamp Leverett Patent. Under its provision each person was to receive one hundred acres of land provided he settled within a period of seven years from the date of the Charter. According to the deposition of Abraham Shurte, when delivery of possession was given him under the Charter as agent for Aldworth and Elbridge, it was agreed to bound the twelve thousand acres by a line drawn from the head of the Damariscotta River to the head of the Muscongus (Medomak) and between them to the sea, a tract containing nearer one hundred thousand acres than the twelve thousand acres stipulated in the Charter.14 As a hundred years later the heirs laid claim to ninety thousand acres, it could only be on the grounds that a larger number of settlers was established in the colony under the provi- sions of the grant, a point on which the evidence is very scant indeed. It becomes immediately patent that under the terms of this document a conflict existed between it and the claims later to be made by General Waldo. It is this point that should be clearly kept in mind as a basis for an understanding of the later land troubles in the Broad Bay district.
On the death of Robert Aldworth in 1634, Elbridge became the sole possessor of the grant. On his decease it passed through various hands until in September 1657 Nicholas Davison of Charles- town, Massachusetts, became the sole proprietor. In pressing their claims his heirs were the proprietors so hated a century later by the settlers throughout the county. The activities of these owners were led and directed by Shem Drowne. In 1712 he had married Catherine Clark, one of the legatees of the Davison estate, and in this way had acquired a direct interest in the lands at stake. He believed in their value. Consequently in 1735 he assumed the role of agent and attorney in the interest of all the heirs. He early visited the area, introduced settlers, and probably had a preliminary survey made. In 1747 he had a final survey made of the whole tract. It was then divided into numbered lots which were subsequently distributed by lot among the several claimants.
18 Archives, Amer. Antiq. Soc .; also Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., 2nd Ser., VII, 165. 14Lincoln Report (1811), p. 40.
47
The Staking of Claims
There were in all twenty-two of these Davison heirs. They remained organized and active in the prosecution of their claims until 1774, when, on November 24th, they held their last meeting. To the early settlers, harassed by the demands of this agent, this grant was known as the Drowne claim. Thus in the brief period of its existence, The Council for New England by reason of its haste, its vagueness, and its ignorance of geographical details, laid the foundation of the two major warring claims which rendered the status of the settlers on the west bank of the Medomak a pre- carious and uncertain one for well over half a century.
From the middle of the seventeenth century a growing unrest among the Indians held in check any inland penetration from the coastal region in the Waldoborough land area. Beginning with King Philip's War in 1675, even the coastal districts were abandoned and the country lay waste until into the next century. In this interim successive forms of control were imposed over this area from without. New masters appeared; and the present Waldo- boro land area became in turn a part of the counties of Corn- wall, Devon, and Sagadahoc. These changes were but temporary in nature and largely a matter of the whim of the monarch reigning beyond the seas. They were simply brief interludes in the steady extension on the part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay of its power eastward.
The acquisition of sovereignty by Massachusetts over the territory of Maine was the outcome of successive thrusts north- ward made by the Bay Colony at times when the auspices in England were favorable to such a policy. Their charter had set the northern bound of the colony as "three miles to the northward of the Merrimac River and any and every branch thereof." Since this embraced the Maine settlements on the Piscataqua River, the inclusion of these settlements in the Bay Colony was formally rati- fied by the General Court in 1641.
The second thrust occurred in 1652, when, during the rise of the Puritan, Cromwell, in England, such a move faced no chal- lenge. This time the General Court arbitrarily extended its northern boundary to three miles beyond the head of the Merrimac where it issues out of the lake.15 From this point a line extending east and west brought the Casco Bay area in Maine under the juris- diction of Massachusetts. This second move was checkmated in 1660 when Charles II was restored to the British Throne. The Monarch on complaint decided to investigate these developments beyond the seas, and dispatched a commission to the scene of the
15The Merrimac River is formed near Franklin by the union of the Winnepesaukee and Pemigewasset, the former being the short outlet of the lake of the same name and the latter the outlet of Profile Lake in Franconia, N. H.
48
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
dispute. After a thorough survey in the populated areas of western Maine the government of Massachusetts in the newly claimed areas in Maine was annulled, and a new civil control set up. In 1666 the commission was recalled and England went to war with France and Holland. Civil control in Maine faltered and the Bay Colony was importuned by the native population to intervene, which it did and again took over jurisdiction in the area. At the same time it strengthened its position legally by having its agent in London purchase for £1250 the old Gorges Charter of 1639, even while Charles II himself was trying to secure this right. This move ex- tended Massachusetts jurisdiction to the Kennebec, and it was on this river that the Bay folk came face to face with the French.
This impasse was brought on in the following way. The war between France and England was terminated by the Treaty of Breda, July 31, 1667. In this arrangement all of Acadia was ceded to France. This was a vaguely defined area at best, and the treaty yielding it stipulated no boundaries, a fact which left the Bay Colony in an awkward position. French agents immediately took possession of all the land east of the Penobscot and erected forts at strategic points. In addition to this they claimed all the territory westward as far as the Kennebec. This claim definitely placed the Waldoborough land area within the limits of the French claim - a claim which, if not resisted, would have placed Massachusetts Bay unpleasantly close to the sphere of French influence and power. This condition gave rise to deep concern in Boston. The problem was discussed in the General Court in May 1671; and a decision was reached to extend the line of the northern boundary, so that it would include territory farther east, as it was claimed the charter authorized. The services of one of the most competent surveyors of the time were secured. In 1672 he reported to the General Court to the effect that "if the honorable Court were pleased to goe twenty minutes more northerly in Merrimack River it would take in all the inhabitants and places east along, and they seem to desire it."16 And so the northernmost sources of the Merrimac were located at about two leagues farther north than in the pre- vious survey, namely at latitude 43º 49' 12".
A line run due east and west from this point supposedly brought the Muscongus district within the limits of the Massa- chusetts Bay Patent and made Pemaquid the eastern outpost of the Bay Colony. In the same year a petition signed by eighty-six of the inhabitants of "Kennebeck, Cape Bonawagen, Pemaquid, Sheepscoate, Damaris Cove, and Monhegan, requested the General Court in Boston to 'take them under its government and protec-
16Mass. Recs. IV, Part V, 519.
49
The Staking of Claims
tion.'" In the May session of 1674 the Court appointed four com- missioners who were to
repair to Pemaquid, Capenawaggen, Kennebec, etc., or some one of them to the eastward, and there, or in some one of these places, to keep a Court, as a County Court, to give power to the constables thus ap- pointed, and also appoint and approve such meet persons, inhabitants there, to such offices and places, according to God and the wholesome lawes of this Jurisdiction, so that the wayes of godliness may be en- couraged and vice corrected.17
Thus did it come to pass that all places east of the Kennebec, present and future settlements within the limits of Massachusetts, were organized into a county to which was given the name of Devon or Devonshire, and the Court there was to become an annual event set for the third Tuesday in July. In this manner Massachusetts pushed her bounds farther eastward to include the Muscongus area and to face the French on the Penobscot - and, it should be added, for the first time in history, the forms of a civil government were established in the Waldoborough area.
Hardly had this third push to the eastward on the part of Massachusetts been completed when King Philip's War broke out. On September 6, 1675, the General Court took action in sup- port of "the distressed inhabitants of Devonshire." Massachusetts, however, was powerless to extend protection over the full extent of the territory it claimed; and the more easterly part of its claim passed for a time under the control of the Duke of York and was administered by his appointees, the governors of New York. This Sagadahoc territory, as his province in "eastern parts" came to be known, included the whole of the Waldoborough area. This liaison was an intolerable one. The region was so distant from New York and consequently so difficult to administer that such an arrangement just could not endure. The relationship was terminated in 1685 when James, Duke of York, by the death of his brother, Charles II, ascended the throne of Great Britain as James II. By reason of this change both New York and Sagadahoc became royal provinces. Due to the distance separating the two provinces, Sagadahoc was detached from New York in 1686 and placed under Sir Edmond Andros, "Captaine Generall and governor in chiefe of the territory and Dominion of New England."
In 1689 the abdication of James II and the accession of Wil- liam and Mary to the throne again changed the picture. Under the new regime Massachusetts Bay obtained a new charter in place of the old one annulled in 1684. In this brief interim of years the Bay Colony had been a royal province. Sir William
17 Mass. Recs. V, 5, 17.
50
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
Phips, a Maine man, became the first governor under the new charter (1692), which again placed the eastern section of the Province of Maine under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. The county of Yorkshire was organized as embracing the old Province of Maine extending to the Penobscot.18 In 1716 this area was extended to the St. Croix River, and York was established as the only shire town in the province. This status, achieved in 1692, left the sovereignty of Massachusetts unquestioned in eastern parts down to 1820, when the Province of Maine became the State of Maine.
This chapter has outlined the shifts of scene which took place in the Waldoborough land area between 1630 and 1716. It has revealed a quickly changing map with the lines of Cornwall, Devon, and Sagadahoc drawn and obliterated; and it has shown the very earliest settlers on the shores of Muscongus Bay as living under the overlordship of many masters. The background of these swiftly switching scenes was furnished by the unchanging policy of Massachusetts to extend her claims deeper and deeper into "eastern parts." With the advent of the county of Yorkshire in 1692, the scene became more fixed and the background assumed permanence. When the period of active colonization in the Waldoborough area got under way in the first half of the eighteenth century, the Bay Colony was permanently a part of the picture, and the rapid development of the settlements was made possible because in their time of weakness the settlers were able to draw needed strength from the strength of Massachusetts.
18William D. Williamson, History of Maine, I, 88, 91.
V
COLONEL SAMUEL WALDO AND THE FIRST SETTLERS ON THE BAY AND RIVER
The Countrey all along as I sailed, being no other than a meer Wilderness, here and there by the Seaside a few scattered plantations, with a few houses. JOHN JOCELYN (1638)
O NE OF THE FIRST DISTRICTS of New England to be visited regu- larly by white men was the general Waldoborough area as de- fined in the first chapter of this book. For a goodly number of years before there was any settlement at Plymouth, Monhegan and Pemaquid had been sites of white occupation. Here, however, the sojourning was only seasonal, whereas the settlement at Plymouth in 1620 was a permanent one. For a number of years, nevertheless, before the coming of the Pilgrims and for some decades thereafter, the outer reaches of Muscongus Bay remained the most frequented area on the North Atlantic coast. It was at the turn of the century that this activity seems especially to have been focused on this section of the coast. In the summer of 1612 English fishermen are known to have quartered at Monhegan, and two years later Cap- tain John Smith with forty-five men and boys in two ships made his headquarters at the island. At this time "right against us in the main [at New Harbor] was a ship of Sir Francis Popham," which was reported as having been a regular visitor to the coast for several years previous, engaging in fish and fur trade.1 In 1616 Sir Richard Hawkins, president of the Plymouth Company, with the Garland and one other vessel, arrived at Monhegan where he found the following fishing vessels: the Nachen of Dartmouth with twenty-one men, the Trial of London, the Blessing of Ply- mouth, the Judith of London, and the David of Plymouth.2 In fact, this point seems to have been generally known as a center frequented by Europeans, for three men whom Captain Edward Rocroft had set ashore at Saco in 1618 for mutinous activity made their way to Monhegan and passed the winter on the island in one
1Capt. John Smith, Description of New England.
2Wilbur D. Spencer, Pioneers on Maine Rivers (Portland, 1930).
52
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
of the storehouses. This would indicate that Monhegan at this time was a well-established center for trade in stores with the fish- ing fleet. Possibly these men wintered with custodians of these stores, although no mention was made of this fact when they were taken off the island in the spring of 1619 by Captain Dermer. The fact, also, that the Indians of the district were familiar with the English language presupposes a contact of considerable duration. Samoset, from his home at Muscongus Island (Loud's), had had so much intercourse with white men and over so long a period as to be able to talk in English with the Pilgrims at Plymouth on that Friday morning, the fifteenth of March, 1621. William Bradford, writing somewhat later, states: "He came boldly amongst them and spoke to them in broken English which they could well under- stand."3 In 1622 and again in 1623 there was enough in the way of surplus stores at Monhegan and in the fishing fleet to succor the Pilgrims and the people of Weston's settlement at Weymouth from starvation when the planters, Miles Standish and Edward Winslow, made their way to the island in quest of supplies.4 All in all, it may be said of the outposts of this area that whenever they emerge from the mists of their early and unrecorded history, they appear as busy places. Dr. Henry Burrage summarized this early state of affairs when he observed that "for nearly a score of years [before 1620] . . . the little harbor [at Pemaquid] and that at Damariscove, as well as the waters about these islands, presented busy scenes as the vessels from English ports came hither with each opening spring.175
Among the very earliest residents of this area, the leading spirit was Abraham Shurte. He was sent to these parts in 1626 by the Pemaquid Proprietors, Aldsworth and Elbridge, to act as their agent and was authorized by them to purchase the Island of Mon- hegan from Abraham Jennings. This sale was effected for a consideration of £50, Jennings' entire stock of stores being sold at the same time to Governor Bradford and Mr. Winslow of the Ply- mouth Colony for £400 sterling.6 Shortly after this sale Shurte transferred his activities to the mainland and passed the major part of his remaining days at Pemaquid. In a brief time, under his direc- tion, this place became the center of the fishing business formerly transacted at Monhegan and as such was the most active point on the New England Coast. The first fort, a stockade, was built in 1630 or 1631. The place developed rapidly, occupants began staying the year round, and farming was started. With the com- pletion of the stockade a refuge had been established as a center
3 History of Plymouth Plantation (1856), p. 182.
4Young: Chronicles of Plymouth, p. 293.
"The Beginnings of Colonial Maine (Portland, 1914).
"Colls. Mass. Hist. Soc., III, 208.
53
The First Settlers
of safety, and with the greater sense of security which it offered, the people began taking up land in more distant areas where the soil was of a better quality for agricultural purposes. This began the push up the sound toward the more fertile valley lands and the falls of the Medomak.
The first pioneers in this movement up the sound were John Brown and his wife Margaret (Hayward), who were at New Harbor probably as early as 1623. A deed from one of John Brown's descendants describes "the Homestead that was formerly John Brown's of New Harbor Dec'd," as being "at the Head of sd. Har- bor where said Brown House and Garden formerly was."7 This tract contained twelve acres and was located at the extremity of the inlet on both sides of a creek known as "Western Brook." This homestead was commonly regarded by the French as the boundary line between New England and the French province of Acadia. La maison de Jean Bron qui fait la limite des terres de la Majesté d'avec de la Nouvelle Angleterre.8 John Brown and his wife had several children who in turn married and settled on lands farther up the sound; a daughter, Margaret, married Alexander (Sander) Gould who lived on Muscongus Island. The first farm above New Harbor was purchased from Samoset by Richard Pearce, carpenter, January 9, 1642, who married Elizabeth, another daughter of John Brown; their homestead was located at Round Pond. At Passage Point (Keene's Narrows) about two miles farther up was another grant from Samoset to Richard Fulford, planter, who married Elizabeth, the daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Pearce.9
An insight into the growth of this settlement by 1640 and its settled agricultural character at the time is furnished by a refer- ence in Governor Winthrop's History of Maine. It runs as follows:
Joseph Grafton set sail from Salem, the 2d. day (May) in the morn- ing, in a ketch of about 40 tons (three men and a boy in her) and ar- rived at Pemaquid (the wind easterly) upon the third (Tuesday) in the morning, and then took in some twenty cows, oxen, etc., with hay and oats for them, and came to an anchor in the bay the 6th day about three afternoon.
This clearly points to a well-established society in the en- virons of Pemaquid able to succor its neighbors through the export of its surpluses. Of its actual numbers we cannot be certain. Sulli- van uses Captain Sylvanus Davis as an authority for stating that as early as 1630 there were "eighty-four families, besides fishermen about the Pemaquid, St. Georges and Sheepscot rivers."1º Johns- ton in his History of Bristol observes that "the statement of Davis
7York Co. Reg. of Deeds (Alfred, Me.), Bk. 16, p. 216.
8Documentary History of the State of Maine, VI, 428.
"York Co. Deeds, Bk. 12, p. 323.
10 History of Maine.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
still on file in the Secretary's office in Boston, scarcely justifies the assertion." Burrage notes in 1910 that "there are no such files in the Secretary's office now, and search there and elsewhere has yielded no information upon which such a statement could be based, but," he adds, "the gain in residents at that time was un- doubtedly large."11 Though we may be uncertain as to the size of this settlement, there is no doubt as to its make-up; for the sea- sonal occupants and the first settlers in our area were of a different type from those in Massachusetts Bay. They were not nonconform- ists, but conservative Englishmen, in some cases adventurers, and were warmly attached to the established church in their forms of worship. This difference was the reason for a decided lack of sympathy for them on the part of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. Indeed, this feeling was even strong enough to be character- ized as an antipathy which continued until Puritanism had run its course.
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