Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 44

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790

USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892 > Part 44

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dicated by the tax (7 shillings and 92 pence) on his homestead and other real estate. The second annual town meeting was held at his house, which is shown by an old map to have stood on the east side of the river, nearly opposite the mouth of Kennedy brook (Britt's gully). He was a religious man-a deacon in church rank -- and one of the most respected as well as substantial of the first planters of an- cient Hallowell.

By another year (1773), the western side of the river was over- taking the eastern side in improvements and growth, and began to contest with it for dignity and honors. The town meeting this year was held at Moses French's inn, which had just been built on the site of the present triangular cluster of houses at the inner junction of Grove and Green streets. John Jones, an attaché of the Plymouth Company, and a professional surveyor, now erected a saw mill at the lower fall of the then wild and picturesque little river that has since been metamorphosed into the now shrunken and jaded stream called Bond's brook (from Thomas Bond-died 1815 -- who built the large brick house at the foot of Gas-house hill-the first brick house in Au- gusta). This Jones mill was a boon to the builders on the western side, as the unbridged river flowed between them and the saw mills on Howard's brook.

Eleven years before (1762), Pease Clark and his son, Peter, had come from Attleboro with their families and settled on adjoining lots of land at a place that is now near the center of the densest part of the present city of Hallowell. Presently other settlers, including five of Pease Clark's sons, followed the first comers to the place. They set up a saw mill on the Kedumcook (Vaughan stream, from Benja- min Vaughan, died in 1835), and soon the tiny settlement began to grow like the older one two miles above. The two settlements were too infantile for any rivalry such as afterward grew up, and the new one at the Hook (from Kedumcook) began its career as a loyal suburb of the parent village two miles above.

The contour of the land and especially the fine alluvial terraces and water-powers were favoring conditions for the development of a larger community on the western side of the river than on the east- ern, and ere a decade had passed after the arrival of the Clarks at the Hook, the preponderance of population, if not of wealth, had finally crossed the river. The first child born among the settlers was Elias Taylor (February 21, 1762); he was named for his father, who lived on a lot that is a portion of or near the present farm of Joel Spaulding in Ward Four (Augusta).

Many of the early settlers were godly men, and imbued with the doctrines-more or less relaxed-of their puritan ancestry. Among the privations of their pioneer life, none was less resignedly borne than the absence of stated public worship; their poverty forbade such

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

a' luxury, and meetings for the cultivation of religious grace were necessarily limited to a few persons, and held at private houses. The first public religious service in the hamlet, of which there is record, was held in the fort in the year 1763. It was conducted by Jacob Bailey, who was an Episcopal frontier missionary, stationed at Frank- fort (afterward Pownalborough, now Dresden). Mr. Bailey must have found a welcome and willing hearers in the frontier hamlet, for he repeated his visit two or three times. The dominant creed was Con- gregationalism, and any preacher of that communion was sure of a congregation. John Murray, an eminent preacher in his day, who was then settled at Boothbay, was once prevailed upon (in 1773) to come and minister to the Fort Western people. He made the journey by boat-the only practical mode of traveling at the time-and was escorted both ways by a committee of citizens, whose expenses (£1 13s. 4d.) were paid by the town. The same year the first resident minister-John Allen-was hired in connection with Vassalboro, at the rate of twenty-four shillings a Sunday. He went away in about two years-his stay being terminated because the town could not fulfil its agreement with him.

After this, for more than ten years, no engagement was made that did not prove temporary. Among the candidates and occasional preachers of that era, may be named: Samuel Thurston (afterward set- tled at New Castle, and in 1778 removed to Warren, where he died); Caleb Jewett, 1777 (a Dartmouth student, settled in Gorham in 1783, ceased preaching in 1800, and died soon after); John Prince, 1780; Nathaniel Merrill, 1783-4: William Hazlitt; Ezekiel Emerson (settled at Georgetown, 1765); Seth Noble, 1785 (settled later at Kenduskeag plantation, and when it was incorporated in 1791, he was selected to name the new town and gave it the name of his favorite tune, Ban- gor-one of his great-grandsons, Edwin A. Noble, is now a citizen of Augusta).

Any historical sketch of ancient Hallowell would be very incom- plete without some allusion to these early ministers, and the religious interests which they sought to promote. In those years the main- tenance of public worship fell upon the town in its corporate capacity, and the affairs of the Christian church were often incongruously min- gled with secular and even trivial matters in the proceedings of the town meetings .* The religious services were often held at the fort,

*During the meeting house controversy, in 1782, when the opposing parties became warm, it became necessary to take the sense of the meeting by polling the house, when Deacon Cony (the great-grandfather of Governor Coney) "a remarkably mild man," led the movement in favor of the measure by calling out as he went to one side of the room-"All who are on the Lord's side follow me," while Edward Savage, who was in the opposition, called out-"All who are on the devil's side follow me." The deacon had the best company, and carried the question .- North's History of Augusta, p. 165.

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and sometimes at the Great House of Captain James Howard, and occasionally at Pollard's tavern (where the new opera house stands). For a dozen years or more after the fort had become private property, it continued to be a public resort, and seems to have been freely prof- fered by its owner for all such meetings, religious or secular, as his fellow-citizens wished to hold. The town resumed its meetings there in 1774, and generally thereafter accepted its accommodations until the more spacious meeting house was built eight years later.

Before the arrival of the famous year 1776, the premonitions of the war of the revolution had been felt in every part of the thirteen colonies. The Boston massacre (March 5, 1770) had sent a thrill of horror up the Kennebec; the tea had been thrown overboard (1773); Paul Revere had taken his midnight ride, and blood had flowed at Lexington (April 19, 1775). These ominous events aroused the sturdy yeomen of ancient Hallowell to patriotic action. As early as January 25, 1775, they had assembled at the fort in town meeting, in response to an order of the provincial congress calling for the arming of the colonies. A strong tory influence, reflected from the powerful Plym- outh Company (whose members were nearly all tories), was encoun- tered by the patriots, greatly to their vexation, but it was finally over- come, and a military company for the revolutionary cause successfully formed. Some of the officers were: Captains William Howard (son of James, the pioneer), Daniel Savage, great-grandfather of Daniel Byron Savage, of Augusta) and James Cox; and Lieutenants Samuel Howard (brother of William), David Thomas, John Shaw, sen., and Josiah French. The rolls of those who served under them have uot been preserved. A safety committee, composed of principal citizens, clothed with much power, was given the charge of all matters con- nected with the public disorder, including correspondence with the revolutionary leaders. Among the members of this committee were: James, William and Samuel Howard (father and sons), Pease Clark, Ezekiel Page (son of the deacon), Samuel Bullen, Levi Robinson, Samuel Cony (great-great-grandfather of ex.Mayor Daniel A. Cony, died 1892), Robert Kennedy (Kennedy brook named after him), Jonas Clark, Abisha Cowan.

A town of so few inhabitants, however willing, could not give much aid to the continental cause, and its part in the war was neces- sarily small and inconspicuous. It suffered much during the period of the revolution-its growth was retarded and well-nigh suspended. The tory proprietors abandoned their Kennebec estates, and most of them fled from the country. Their conduct was specially harmful to the little frontier town of their founding. So great was the depres- sion that even the Fourth of July Declaration was not publicly read to the people. The great land proprietor for whom the town had been named suffered the confiscation of his abandoned estate within

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

it for his hostility to the patriot cause. The same treatment befel Sylvester Gardiner and William Vassal, whose names were given re- spectively to the southern and northern adjoining towns.

CHAMBERLAIN

HOWARD'S BRK

GREAT HOUSE

BOLTO

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D.THOMAS,

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BROWN.

ASA EMED BE

J. FRENCHES

RAVERE

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SETH

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KENNEDY

KENNEBEC

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MEZ. PAGE Je.

shafael HINCKLEY

Dea.CLARA

Peter CLARK

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HALLOWE

Sketch map of 00

the vicinity of

Fort Wotime

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Another loyalist of much less social eminence was especially obnoxious to the honest patriots of the town. He was saucy, active and exasper- ating. His name was John Jones-once before referred to as the builder of a mill-the first one on the west side of the river. Jones had at first a considerable following, and used it to disturb town meetings and bother the popular party generally. FORT WESTERN. He was at last denounced by the town as "inim- ical to the country," and put under £100 bonds to answer in the court at Pownalborough, the accu- EZ. PAGE. COUCH. EZ.CHASE. sation. Upon this he ran away to Boston, but was there locked up in jail. He was smart enough to soon escape to Canada. During the latter years of the war he took up arms and served as a British ranger-sallying forth on his raids from Bagaduce WHITE. (now Castine). In one of his forays to the Ken- nebec he cleverly took General Charles Cushing HUSSEY. Capt. Cox. from his bed at Pownalborough, and without DE BULLEN, allowing him to arrange his toilet, relentlessly marched him through the wilderness to Baga- duce. This was to retaliate upon Cushing the oppressions of the patriots upon the clerical Jacob Bailey for his irrepressible toryism. As soon as the war was over Jones returned (at first cautiously)

*The above is a reduced fac simile of a copy of the only known map of ancient Hallowell. The original (nine by fifteen inches) appears to have been made by a person of some skill as a draughtsman-probably a surveyor, and possibly John Jones, the tory. The evident purpose of the maker was to show the relative positions of the settlers' houses on both sides of the river between the line of Howard's (Riggs') brook and the southerly part of the then town in the year 1775. The names of some of the residents are given in full and others only in part, which fact indicates that the sketch may have been drawn or dictated from imperfect memory years after the passing of Arnold's army, by some elderly person who was recalling the size of the village at the time of that famous event. The lines of the various lots are disregarded, and all of the dis- tances are more or less distorted ; but a few of the monuments then existing have never been moved and assist us to identify to-day the places where many of honses represented stood. Scanning southerly from Howard brook we first see indicated James Howard's " Great House," where Arnold lodged ; there was one lot (50 rods) between it and Daniel Savage's; next is David Thomas' house, which was the first inn in the hamlet. Three or four lots below was George Brown, who first appears in the records of 1775, and whose given name, like those of seven others, the artist apparently did not know; Brown must have

Emerson

CowAM

WITAM MASTER.

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to the home from which his loyalty to King George had ostracised him. Under the treaty of peace (1783) he and his once outraged townsmen been a patriot, for he was summoned in 1777 as a witness in court against the tory, John Jones. Two or three lots southerly is Fort Western with its four blockhouses, but the owner's name, as in the case of the Great House, is signifi- cantly omitted, as if the modesty of Captain Howard himself is somehow connected with the sketch. Next below the fort are Seth and Joseph Greeley, relatives, and their first neighbor below is William McMasters, who was here before 1773. On the first or second lot southerly is Deacon Ezekiel Page, called " Old Mr. Page," to distinguish him from his son on the second lot below. It was at the house of this " Old Mr. Page " that the town meeting was held in 1772. Between father and son appears Jonathan Davenport, who may have been living there temporarily in the year 1775, but whose true place on the plan was southerly of Ezekiel, jun., and which is now the northernmost farm in Chelsea. The following houses were all in the present Chelsea : Adam Couch, who first appears as a tax-payer in 1772 ; Ezekiel Chase (nearly opposite the present Hal- lowell ferry) had been a settler since 1762, and in 1777 he was chosen to be a witness against " Black " Jones ; Benjamin White, fence-viewer in 1771, and con- stable in 1773 ; Obed Hussey, first taxed in 1772 ; Captain James Cox, an original settler in 1762 ; Deacon Samuel Bullen, an original settler, and a witness to the toryism of Jones. The five remaining lots between Deacon Bullen's and the present Randolph line seem to have been tenantless. On the west side of the river the upper house represented is that of Samuel Chamberlain, of whom there is no record before 1784; his nearest neighbor was a Bolton, either George or James, who were in the tax list of 1772. The name of the occupant of the next house was unknown to the artist. Bond's brook is called Ellis' brook, probably for John Ellis, who was here in 1773, and who may have succeeded to the John Jones mill which is plainly indicated astride the stream. The house of Asa Emerson stood near the present corner of Court and Water streets. He soon sold out to the father of Chief Justice Weston and went to Waterville (then Winslow), where his name is borne by Emerson stream. Josiah French's house, as stated in the text, was where Grove and Green streets now unite. On the next lot lived Emerson Smith, taxed in 1773, and elected a hog-reeve; next below him lived Ephraim Cowan, an original settler, adjoining whom was Robert Ken- nedy, who owned the brook that took his name. Lieutenant Samuel Howard owned the lot that now adjoins the Hallowell line. Howard hill (495 feet) was named for him. Shubael Hinkley, who lived a quarter of a mile below, gave the name to Hinkley's plains. Deacon Pease Clark, and his son, Peter, lived near the site of the present Hallowell cotton factory. Below Peter is another name- less house, and the last one is that of Briggs Hallowell, just north of Kedum- cook (Vaughan) stream, and on or near the spot now covered by the power sta- tion of the Augusta, Hallowell & Gardiner Street Railway Company. The great elm trees near by are possible relics of the ancient homestead. Briggs lived on his father's (Benjamin) undivided land and sold lots from the same. The sketch shows thirty buildings, exclusive of the fort and mill, and affixes names to twenty-eight of them. There were other dwellings at the time northerly from Howard's brook, on both sides of the river. The author of the map did not consider the stream now called Ballard's brook, opposite Howard's, nor Ken- nedy's and Kedumcook streams worth indicating. The copy of this long-lost map was made by Benjamin F. Chandler, and found among the papers of Mar- cellus A. Chandler (died February 24, 1891), by the Hon. Joseph W. Patterson, who rescued it for perpetual preservation in these pages.

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

seem to have soon become tolerably reconciled,and he thenceforth lived uneventfully, and ended his days (in 1823) among them, at the age of eighty years-without descendants. He built a house near the north bank of the stream, between the river and mill which he had built before the war. His wife-Ruth Lee, sister of Silas Lee-a woman of much force of character, survived him until 1836. The last rest- ing places of the twain are unmarked and forgotten graves in Mt. Vernon Cemetery. Jones was small and unimpressive in stature, lithe of limb, flippant of speech, and of a complexion so swarthy that the word black as an epithet was affixed to him by his countrymen in the days of their bitterness toward him, and it conveniently dis- tinguished him from another John Jones who had lot numbered sev- enteen near the present north line of Chelsea, and who was also iden- tified with the beginning of the town. This history will mention no personage with a career more unique and replete with sensation and romance than that of " Black " Jones, the incorrigible and dauntless tory of Fort Western in primitive Augusta.

The most memorable war incident connected with the early town was the passage through it of Benedict Arnold and his men on their way to Quebec in 1775. Washington had despatched the expedition across the wilderness with the brief journal of Montressor as its only guide book. The army had intrepidly begun the march, which, under the circumstances and from the ignorance concerning the obstacles that lay in its path, was hardly less herculean than Henry M. Stan- ley's of recent years across the Dark Continent.

The troops, numbering 1,100, rendezvoused at Fort Western, land- ing from a fleet of 200 batteaux that had just been built in Reuben Col- burn's yard at Agry point, two miles below the site of the present village of Randolph. General Arnold himself arrived on the 21st (of September) and received with his principal officers the hospitality of Captain James Howard at the Great House, so-called (burned June 12, 1866). Here he kept his headquarters nine days, preparing his army with its mass of stores for final embarkation. Some of his officers later in the war became distinguished, and now occupy firm places in history .* While the army was halting at Fort Western, a tragedy occurred-as if foreshadowing the great tragedy which the expedition itself was to become. On the night of the 23d, as the outcome of a quarrel in a company mess, John McCormick shot Reuben Bishop dead. A court martial was assembled, and it sen- tenced the guilty man to be hung at three o'clock on the 26th; but General Arnold was led by the circumstances to stay the execution

*Among them were then Majors Return J. Meigs and Timothy Bigelow (for whom Mt. Bigelow was named); Captains Daniel Morgan and Henry Dearborn (afterward of Gardiner). Among those present who lived to become distin- guished in civil life were Cadet Aaron Burr and Private John Joseph Henry.

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and refer the case to General Washington, with a recommendation for mercy." The body of poor Bishop was interred near the fort burying ground, and in after years Willow street was laid out over his un- heeded grave.

By the 30th of September the army had embarked and was stem- ming the current of the Kennebec on the toilsome way Quebecward, leaving the hamlet that it had suddenly converted into a military camp, to return to its normal quietness. Of the dismal fortunes of the heroic army before it reached the St. Lawrence in the middle of November, this chapter is not the place to speak. Colonel Roger Enos, shielding himself by his rank-being second only to Arnold- abandoned the march midway, and with three companies (Williams', McCobb's and Scott's) returned ingloriously down the river, undoubt- edly exciting a great sensation as his ragged flotilla sailed past Hallowell and the lower settlements.

The burdens of the war were heavy on the town, which contained only about one hundred polls. It was ordered in 1779 to furnish thir- teen privates and a sergeant and an officer for the ill fated Bagaduce (Castine) expedition, some of the shreds of which (including Paul Revere) fled as fugitives from the Penobscot to the Kennebec, and called at Fort Western for food and temporary rest. The next year the town was assessed for six three years' men, and in 1781 for 2,580 pounds of beef, 11 shirts, 11 pairs of shoes and stockings, and 5 blankets, for the continental army. Being unable to wholly comply promptly with all of these demands, the town was threatened by the general court with a fine for its failure. But, most happily and gloriously the surrender of Cornwallis (October 19, 1781) soon ended the war and liberated the town from the pending exactions.

The town began to recover from the paralyzing shock of the war at the first sure dawn of national independence. In 1778 eleven new and worthy settlers came-one of them Ephraim Ballard, who revived the silent mill of John Jones, and built a dwelling on the site of (the present) Glen Cottage, owned by Webber and Gage. Amos Pollard, who built an inn where the opera house now stands, came the same year. Samuel Cony, the ancestor of the distinguished Augusta Cony family, had come with his son, Samuel, the year before, and both had

*Captain Simeon Thayer, of the expedition, wrote in his journal concerning · this affair: "Sept. 24. After Captain Topham and myself went to bed in a neighbor's [Daniel Savage's] house, some dispute arose in the house [Fort West- ern] between some of our soldiers, on which I got out of bed and ordered them to lie down and be at rest ; and on going to the door I observed the flash of the priming of a gun, and called to Captain Topham, who arose likewise and went to the door, was fired at, but missed, on which he drew back, and I with Top- ham went to bed, but the felon, who had fully determined murder in his heart, came again to the door and lifted the latch, and fired into the room, and killed a man lying by the fireside."

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settled near the river on the east side, the father on the present insane hospital land, and the son on the lot next southerly from the fort .~ Three years later (1779) Daniel-who was to become more prominent in the annals of the town than any other of his generation,-followed his father and brother (from Shutesbury) and settled alongside them on land that was incorporated into the hospital farm a few years ago (under the name of the Tobey farm). The brothers, Asa and Seth Williams, and their kinsman, Church Williams-also founders of an- other distinguished Augusta name-came the same year. Asa settled on the present Sidney road, in Ward Four, Seth on the present arsenal lot, and Church where the main factory building of the Edwards Manufacturing Company now stands. To these arrivals may be traced much of the individuality of the town in its whole subsequent career of development.

The first town road to the Hook was laid out in 1779. It began at Jones' or Ballard's mill (now Webber & Gage's), and was made prin- cipally with axes. The present Water street, then covered with trees and bushes, was laid out in 1784. It began at the mouth of Jones' or Ballard's (now Bond's) brook, and was two rods wide until it reached the land of Nathan Weston (father of Chief Justice Weston, born 1782, died 1872), at the present Kennebec Journal office lot, where there was a gully to be bridged. The first bridge across the mouth of Bond's brook, was built in 1788, and rebuilt more thoroughly in 1794 by Nathaniel Hamlen (great-grandfather of Frederick Hamlen of the firm of Fowler & Hamlen, Augusta). Water street was widened in 1822 between Bridge street and Market Square to three rods, and in 1829 to fifty feet between Bridge street and Piper's tavern (at foot of Laurel street). For the first seven years the mode of calling town meetings was by a personal notice to every voter, but in 1778, a new departure was made by posting the notification at Howard's grist mill (on Riggs' brook), at David Thomas' inn (east side of present Howard street), at Amos Pollard's inn (present opera house's site), and at Nathan Weston's store (foot of Court street). In 1784 the population of the town had increased to 682 white persons, and 10 negroes. There were 187 polls, of which 130 were in the present limits of Augusta.

The need of a meeting house where the people could conveniently assemble had at last become a necessity ; and in the spring of 1777 the voters were notified in the selectmen's warrant to "come to some conclusion on which side of the river the meeting house should be built." The widely scattered people being greatly divided on the question, it was proposed to locate the building near the center of the town. This was acquiesced in until the choice fell by lot to the east side of the river (at a point near Pettengill's Corner), when the people of the other side, including the Hook, rallied in force, and in 1781, by

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Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 44

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York, Blake Number of Pages: 1790

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790