USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 10
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In 1775 Jonathan Bagley, in behalf of himself and the proprie- tors, had notified the inhabitants of Royalsborough to meet and agree upon some place for a house of public worship. In 1789 a committee was chosen "to provide to finish the house." On April 5, 1790, it was voted to pay Reverend Abram Cummings eighteen pounds to preach for the year. The building was almost finished then and was afterward called the Center meeting house. It was located on the Freeport road about one-half a mile from the village. The earliest settled minister was Reverend Jacob Herrick who preached in the old Center meeting house for nearly forty years.
Among the Revolutionary soldiers in the town were Isaac Da- vis, Isaac Turner, Samuel Gerrish, John Vining, Eben Woodbury, John McIntosh and Elisha Lincoln. Among the first Friends were Samuel Jones, Joseph .d Caleb Estes, Andrew Pinkham and Elijah Douglass. Soon after, Samuel Weare, Robert Goddard and Silas God- dard moved from Falmouth. They held their first meeting in the house of Joseph Estes. They built a one-story meeting house which burned about 1828, and a brick church was built soon after. In 1810 a Metho- dist church was built. In about 1840 Durham was very prosperous, saw and grist mills were on every stream. When the first grist mill came into the hands of Henry Plummer, he built the Free Baptist Church near it at his own expense. Previous to this a mill was built on Dyer's Brook near the bend by John Meyall, an Englishman, for the manufacture of woolen cloth. This was afterward converted into a grist, shingle, clapboard and stave mill.
Camden, 1791
The town of Camden, Maine, was originally called by the In- dian name, Megunticook. It lies on the west shore of Penobscot Bay in Knox County, above the northeast section of Thomaston. This town- ship, which was part of the Waldo Patent and then passed into the hands of the Twenty Associates, was surveyed by David Fales of Thomaston in 1768. It was first settled by James Richards, a resident of Dover, New Hampshire, who came with his family to Bristol, Maine, in 1767. The next year he came down to the wilderness of this town-
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ship to cut ship timber at Megunticook Harbor. Charmed with the place, he erected a rude cabin here, with the determination to make the place his home. The following spring he put his family and house- hold goods aboard a vessel and started for his future residence, ar- riving here May 8, 1769. His cabin stood somewhere on the land lying between Elm, Mechanic, Washington and Free streets. His brothers, Joseph and Dodiphar, joined him that same year, built a log house and formed a little neighborhood which soon began to grow and flourish.
The next settler at the Harbor was Major Wm. Minot of Bos- ton, who, in 1771, purchased land and water power of the "Twenty Associates" near the mouth of Megunticook River and erected a grist mill and saw mill near where the mill of the Camden Grist Mill Com- pany now stands. He also built the first frame house in Camden, on Chestnut Street. Prior to the building of Minot's grist mill, the set- tlers carried their grist to Warren, following spotted trees.
In 1785 Minot deeded to Joseph Eaton "a point of land on the northeast side of Megunticook Harbor ... being the same land granted to Wm. Minot by said Company, A. D. 1771."
The next settler is supposed to have been Abraham Ogier, a French Huguenot from Quebec.
Two residents and patriots of the harbor, Leonard Metcalf and Andrew Wells, aroused the inhabitants on the approach of the British in 1779, but the enemy burned Major Minot's house and several others, including that of James Richards. They also burned Minot's saw mill, but the grist mill was saved through the efforts of Metcalf and Wells. These men had served in the Majorbiguyduce Expedition. At the same time, General Ulmer's force was stationed at Camden Harbor.
Nathaniel Hosmer settled in the western part of Camden and his brother Asa soon followed. Immediately afterward came Samuel Russell and John Sartelle who soon settled in the same neighborhood. In middle life Mr. Hosmer moved to the Harbor and engaged in ship- building with Frederick Jacobs, later returning to his hillside farm. The Hodgemans also settled in the western part of the town. At the beginning, within three or four years after the first settler came, set- tlements were begun in three or four sections of the town. Those who came earliest to that part of the town which had been annexed from Lincolnville were probably the Dillinghams and Palmers, from Bristol, Maine. Some of them came as early as 1782: probably Joshua and Lemuel Dillingham, who came as early as 1790 and their brother, Josiah, a few years afterward. They probably took up their claims as Revolutionary War veterans' bounties.
The town was incorporated in 1791. Wm. Gregory was mod- erator, John Harkness, town clerk and first selectman; Wm. Gregory,
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second selectman; Wm. Mcglathery, third, and Paul Thorndike, con- stable. In 1794 a post office was established and Joseph Eaton was postmaster. It was in 1798 that the first church was organized by the Free Will Baptists at West Camden and the first meeting house was built in 1799 on the northerly side of Elm Street.
When the town was incorporated in 1791 it received the name of Charles Pratt, Lord Camden (1714-1794) of Devonshire, England, a parliamentary friend of the colonists in the Revolution, strongly opposed to the taxation of English colonies in America.
Sidney, 1792
This Kennebec County town recalls the name of the English- man, Sir Philip Sidney of the sixteenth century, noted both as an au- thor and a gentleman. It is largely on account of his courage and gal- lantry on the field of battle that he is honored today. In 1586 he was in command of the English troops who had been sent to the Nether- lands to assist in freeing them from the Spanish yoke. At Tutphen the English, with a greatly inferior number of troops, gained the victory, but at the price of the loss of their commander. After one horse was shot from under him, he mounted another and continued the fight. Ac- cording to history, he denied himself a cup of cold water, saying: "His need is greater than mine." Williamson, in commenting on the name of the town, calls it "a name famous in English history."
One of the first settlers of Sidney, Maine, was John Marsh whose grant was dated 1763. The outlines of a blockhouse and stock- ade are still distinct on the bluff, not far from where his house was built. Next south of John Marsh was Esquire Abial Lovejoy, a promi- nent pioneer. Two miles south of the Marsh grant was that of Levi Powers which was sold in 1783 to Jethro Gardner, and then in 1791 to Anthony Faught, who came from Germany to avoid service in the army.
Among the old residents were Ruel and Samuel Howard, Peres Hamlin, Reuben Pinkham, Fred'k and Jacob Faught, Deacon Edmund Hayward, David, Elisha and Luther Reynolds, Barnabas Thayer, Benj. Dyer and his son Jonathan, a surveyor, Colonel Wm. and Dea- con Paul Bailey, Jeremiah Thayer and his son Timothy.
Many of the early saw mills were built on or near the river road. The Thayer Brook was the most southerly stream affording water power. On its banks were two saw mills, one owned and operated by John Sawtelle and his son Nathan; the other was nearer the river and was owned by Willard Bailey and John Sawtelle who had a small shipyard making schooners of 100 tons and under, the only boatbuild- ing done in Sidney. Saw and grist mills were built on Hastings Brook; a tannery was built soon after 1800 on the north side of Hastings
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Brook; carding and cloth dressing mills were also built; saw, grist and shingle mills were built in other parts of the town.
David Smiley kept the first tavern on the river road where the first town meeting gathered in 1792.
Alfred, 1794
This town was at first the north parish of Sanford, and when it was incorporated as a separate town in 1794, its name honored Al- fred the Great, England's Saxon king of the Ninth Century.
In the little town of Wantage, Berkshire, England, where Al- fred, justly called the Great, was born about 848, there is the following inscription on his statue:
Alfred found learning dead and he restored it, Education neglected and he revived it,
The laws powerless and he gave them force, The Church debased and he raised it, The land ravaged by a fearful enemy From which he delivered it.
Alfred's name will live as long, As mankind shall respect the past.
The first permanent settlements at Alfred, Maine, were made about 1770. The territory of the town was included in several quit- claim deeds purchased from the Indian chiefs by Major Wm. Phillips in 1761 and 1764.
The first settler was Simeon Coffin of Newbury, Massachu- setts, who located on the west side of the pond in 1764. Other settlers soon followed. It is said that Coffin dwelt for a time in an Indian wig- wam. There was no white man's dwelling at that time within seven miles of him. He was a shipwright who, having been reduced to penury by the bankruptcy of a purchaser of a vessel, sought a shelter for himself, aged father and two brothers, Stephen and Daniel, in the wilderness. These last three and Daniel Giles arrived in 1767. They were succeeded by Moses and David Stevens. Beyond these settled soon after Daniel McDaniels, succeeded by David Hubbard and Andrew and his son John Noble.
From Somersworth came George D. Moulton. Next to him was James Harvey and still farther south was Jeremiah Eastman, a shoe- maker, whose father, Daniel Eastman, and five brothers of Concord, New Hampshire, settled a few miles south.
Alfred became a half-shire town in 1802 and a shire town after 1803. Its courthouse contains not only the oldest continuous court records in the United States, dating back to 1635, but also the "Gor-
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geana Charter," the original document, bearing the signature of King Charles the Second of England chartering Gorgeana (York) in 1641.
Hampden, 1794
The eighty-seventh town to be incorporated in Maine was Hampden, now in Penobscot County, which was settled in 1767 and named Wheelersburg in honor of its first settler who settled at the mouth of the Sowadabscook Stream and built mills there. Some other early settlers were Elihu Hewes, Richard Cary, Samuel Cary, Joshua Pomroy, John Crosby, Abner Crosby, Goodin, Andrew and Elisha Grant and John Emery. In 1787, came Amos Dole, Simeon Gorton, Freeman Knowles, Nathaniel Hopkins, Reuben Newcomb, Simon Smith, Nathaniel Myrick, James and Jonathan Philbrook, Achelaus, Nathaniel and Joshua Harding, Alisha and Daniel Higgins.
The earliest emigrants were from Cape Cod. Disturbed by the English after their occupation of Biguyduce in 1779, the settlers re- tired with their families through the woods to the Kennebec and thence to Woolwich and Falmouth. Returning to the place in 1783, they resumed the settlement of the area; and in 1796, the township was surveyed and lotted by Ephraim Ballard and every inhabitant received a lot of 100 acres. If one had been a settler before 1784, he paid six dollars; but if afterward and before January 1794, he paid fifty dol- lars. The residue of the town was assigned to General Knox by the government to make up for the deficiency in his patent.
Martin Kingsley of Hampden, (Harvard, 1778) a man whom the people delighted to honor, had settled in Hardwick, Massachusetts, which he represented in the Legislature, become embarrassed by the Georgia land speculations and moved to Hampden about 1799. He was Circuit Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, a member of the Coun- cil, Senate and Congress, and Judge of Probate for Penobscot County; and was Representative to the General Court from Hampden in 1801, 1803, and 1806.
When the town was incorporated in 1794 it was named for John Hampden, the young Buckingham squire of seventeenth cen- tury England who protested against the forced loan of Charles I. This was the beginning of that career of patriotism which has made his name dear to the heart of every Englishman and lover of liberty.
"I could be content to lend," he said, "but fear to draw upon myself that curse in Magna Charta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it."
Addison, 1797
Addison, located in Washington County, was the one hundred and ninth town established in the District of Maine. It was settled
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about 1779 and was organized as a plantation known as "Number Six west of Machias." It was then called Pleasant River and also Eng- lishman's River. It was incorporated as a town on February 14, 1797, and named in honor of the elegant English writer, Joseph Addison.
From his early teens, Addison distinguished himself as a writer, an author of poetry and chronicler of travels, as well as a government official. The Tatler, Spectator and Guardian, periodicals started by Steele, owed their celebrity in a great measure to the contributions of Addison. The harmony of his sentences and the easy flow of his pol- ished language have made him a model to all who wish to acquire a correct and elegant style. Some lover of the works of this graceful English author must have been among the proprietors or early settlers of this small Maine town.
The Bangor Historical Magazine gives the following inhabi- tants - men, women and children - on April 27, 1778, the entire number being 213: David, Wilmot and Wilmot Wass, Jr., (the senior Wilmot Wass is credited with being at the present Addison in 1763), Joseph and Joseph Tibbetts Jr., Joseph, Samuel, Margaret, Isaiah and Joseph Nash, Jr., Widow Knowles, Wm. Ingersoll, Edmund Stevens, Seth Norton, John Hall, Daniel and George Tenney, Gowen and Joseph Wilson, John Bucknam (who is believed to have been here in 1763), Owen Mckenzie, Moses Wooster, Nathan Whitney, Wm. Mc- Causland, Obadiah Allen, Noah and Wm. Mitchell, Nathaniel Cox, Nehemiah Small, Richard Coffin, Joseph Drisko and Joseph Drisko, Jr., Moses Plummer, David Will and Daniel Look. The name of Par- rit Leighton, son of Samuel who came from Falmouth in 1760 and set- tled at Indian River, Addison, is that of one of the earlier settlers from whom the Leightons of this vicinity are descended.
Harrington, 1797
In the early eighteenth century, when David Dunbar was the surveyor of the King's woods and had obtained a royal instruction and proclamation by which the entire Province of Sagadahoc was given into his hands, he set himself to settle, superintend and govern it. He laid out the territory between the Sheepscot and the Muscongus into three townships to which he affixed the names of three Englishmen, noblemen and writers: Townshend (now Boothbay) ; Harrington (the southern and largest part of the present town of Bristol) and Walpole (now Nobleborough and the upper part of Bristol). Sir Robert Wal- pole, for whom this last township was named, was Prime Minister of England from 1676 to 1745.
Later, when the name of Harrington was no longer in use for the present town of Bristol, it was bestowed for a period of four months upon Augusta, Maine's present capital. When the name was discarded
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by the inhabitants of this town, it was selected for Maine's one hun- dred thirteenth town, the present Harrington in Washington County.
Among the early settlers of this Maine town were Benjamin Wallace, Jonathan Small and Joseph Sawyer. Colonel Joseph Wallace Jr., who resided on the old homestead in Harrington was a prominent citizen and one of the petitioners for the incorporation of the town in 1797. Other pioneers are given under Milbridge, which was set off in 1848.
Anson, 1798
Anson, Maine's one hundred and nineteenth town, bears the name of Lord George Anson of a distinguished English family. It was Plantation Number One on the west side of the Kennebec River (and at various times was called Brookfield, Seven Mile Brook Plantation and Titcomb Town, the latter for Surveyor Titcomb, in 1793) and was incorporated in 1798. In 1845, the town was divided and North Anson was established from the northern portion, but a reunion of the parts took place in 1855. It had been settied early, about 1772, by adventurers pushing up the river in order to take possession of the rich alluvial lands on the banks of the Kennebec.
In North Anson, the first settler was Major John Moor who fought at Bunker Hill. He came shortly after the Revolution, estab- lished his home and built saw, grist and fulling mills on the Carrabas- set and died in 1809. He was one of the Londonderry, Scotch-Presby- terians. Other settlers whose names are not known came soon after Moor. In 1795 Dr. Beazer Bryant came as first physician; the second was Dr. George W. Stickney.
Other early settlers were W. R. Flint from Gray, Ira Doolittle, and the Spaulding and Bunker families. Doolittle was the first prom- inent business man. He was soon followed by Henry F. Getchell who became a great lumberman, and Wm. Marshall, a lawyer. In 1800 the first store was opened by Daniel Stewart in North Anson. Major Moor had kept a sort of tavern.
The first members of the North Star Masonic Lodge in 1813 were William Haskell, David H. Raymond, James Collins, Jesse Wil- son, Simeon Cragin, Jonas Heal, D. H. Norton, Wm. Paul, Nathan Hanson, Joel Fletcher, Lemuel Wilson, Jr., Andrew McFadden, Elihu Norton, James Wright, Joseph Haskell, Jerry Hilton, William Drum- mond and William Walker.
The first postmaster was Rodney Collins. One of the early unique factories was a shank factory, the only one of its kind known in the world.
Morris Fling built the first frame house in the town of Anson.
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Hollis, 1798
This town was a part of the tract purchased by Small and Shap- leigh from the Indians in 1664. Their trading house stood about ten miles above Saco River Lower Falls. The town was first known as a part of Little Falls Plantation and settlements probably began along the Saco River within its limits in 1753. The township was incorpor- ated under the name of Phillipsburg in 1798 in honor of Major Wil- liam Phillips. In 1811 it was changed to Hollis since Phillipsburg was "too long to write and too hard for the younger ones to pronounce." Seven men were elected in 1810 to select "a shorter name and a more appropriate one."
As to the reason for the selection of Hollis, authorities are dis- agreed. It may have been named for a New Hampshire town, but many think that the name was derived from the Duke of Newcastle whose family name was Hollis and who was known as a friend to the American Colonies. The town was sometimes called "Rope Walk," be- cause it was so long and narrow.
The first plantation meeting was held in 1781 at the house of Captain John Smith, near the old fort built in 1728 as a trading post south of Union Falls, now Dayton. The moderator was Joseph Chad- bourne; clerk, Zebulon Gordon; assessors, Joseph Chadbourne, George Hooper and Joseph Weller, Jr. Among the arrivals after the organi- zation of the plantation and previous to 1790, were Caleb Cook (who gave his name to the stream which was made the dividing line when the new town of Dayton was formed in 1854), Joshua Warren, Captain Joseph Dyer, Phineas Downs, Benj. and Robert Haley, Wm. Deering, John Poak, Caleb Look, Enoch Parker, Humphrey Dyer, Thomas Rogers, Isaac Robinson, Isaac Drew, Lieut. Benj. Haley, Christie Gil- patrick (who opened a tannery soon after his arrival), Thomas Red- lon, Stephen Bean, Richard Palmer, Joseph Googins, Ichabod Cousins, Lieut. Moses Atkinson, Gideon and Robert Edgcomb and Ichabod Gould. Among the later arrivals were Wm. Wadlin, John Harvey and Elisha Wight.
Albany, 1803
Perhaps the name of a former town, now only a township, might be interesting. The township was settled about 1800 and incor- porated in 1803. It was named in honor of James Stuart, Duke of York, afterward James II, King of England, whose Scottish title was the Duke of Albany. In 1664, when the King of England granted to his brother, the Duke of York and Albany, all the Dutch territories on the river Hudson in New York, he caused all the region in Maine ex- tending between St. Croix and Pemaquid, with the exception of a
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few grants, to be inserted in the charter to James. This was designated as "The Territory of Sagadahoc." It was formerly called the plantation of Oxford in 1792.
The first individual owners of the land, as shown by a deed to a tract of land sold by the Committee for the Sale of Eastern Lands, now constituting the Albany township, were nearly all from Andover, Massachusetts, where the proprietors' meetings were held at Isaac Blunt's tavern.
The proprietors showed much diligence in improving the roads and offering great inducements to settlers. In December of 1792 it was agreed to give Benj. Procter a gore of land lying in Range II if he "would erect a saw mill in the town of Oxford in one year and main- tain it for ten years." In 1799 he was given a piece of land for keeping the mill in good repair, showing that at least one mill was erected in 1793; this was at Lynch's Mills. In 1797 ten dollars were voted and Nathan and Jonathan Abbott, Jr., were chosen to purchase books for a library.
We do not know who was the first white man to settle here; some of the proprietors probably came as early as 1792. To Abner Holt is accorded the felling of the first tree of the settlement. John Foster, Abner Holt, a Mr. Chamberlain and Jacob Chandler came in an early spring (the year is uncertain) from their home in Andover, Massachusetts, and after surveying and improving the township re- turned home, bringing their families the following spring. Deacon Asa Cummings came with a party of settlers in 1798. He reared a family of fourteen sons and daghters.
In 1800 the plantation numbered sixty-nine. It was organized under plantation government in 1802, with Asa Cummings as mod- erator and Uriah Holt, plantation clerk. These two men, with Abner Holt, were chosen assessors and Stephen Holt, treasurer.
In 1802 it was decided to petition the General Court for in- corporation. There seems to have been much difficulty in choosing a name. The first decision was to use the plantation name, Albany, then in 1803 the voters decided on Montgreen. The following May Albany was rechosen. The first town meeting was September 19, 1803.
Well down to the nineteenth century well-known Englishmen were complimented by the bestowal of their names upon Maine towns.
Alexander, 1825
Baring, 1825
Two towns in eastern Maine, one of which has now lost its or- ganization, honor an Englishman, Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburton. He was the son-in-law of Wm. Bingham of Philadelphia, a large land-
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holder in Maine. As British Ambassador, Ashburton, with Daniel Web- ster, the American Secretary of State, settled the question of the North- eastern Boundary of Maine in 1842.
The town of Alexander was settled about 1810. Coolidge and Mansfield, in their History of New England, name the following as among the first to make Alexander their home: Solomon Perkins, Caleb Pike, George Hill, A. Bohanan, Wm. D. Crockett, Paul Morse, Cyrus Young and Samuel Cottel. They came principally from Massa- chusetts and New Hampshire.
The titles to their lands were obtained from Colonel John Black, an Englishman, the agent of the Bingham land. When Mr. Black was quite young, he had entered the great banking house of Hope and Co., in London, as a clerk. Mr. Wm. Bingham, the chief proprietor of the Bingham land in Maine was in London in 1799 and employed Mr. Black to come to this country as clerk for General Da- vid Cobb of Gouldsborough, agent for the estate. On the resignation of General Cobb, Black succeeded him, remaining in this position until 1850.
Both Alexander and Baring were incorporated in 1825, at the time when Alexander Baring was made Lord Ashburton.
Ephraim Abbott, a Congregational minister to this section of Maine, gives us a picture of these towns in 1811. His diary records that on July 24 of that year: "In No. 6 (Baring) & 7 (Alexander) there are 18 families consisting of about a hundred persons old and young . I had promised Esq. Vance a few days before the lecture that I would come and preach and he sent information to all the families in the township." In March of 1812, the preacher again wrote: "Dined at Mr. Day's in township No. 6 (Baring) called on the families of Mess (rs) Scott. In No. 7 (Alexander) called on Mr. Eli Sprague . . . . 30th visited in No. 6 (Baring) Mr. Boyd and Mr. Perkins family."
At Baring Mr. Wm. Vance, a large landowner, had built a large mansion. A mill was erected for him in 1805-06, and many mills, a brickyard and tan yard were also built and were prosperous until about the middle of the century. Since 1941, Baring has been an organized township.
Wellington, 1828
The southernmost township of Bingham's Kennebec Purchase was named, on its incorporation in 1828, in honor of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, who had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Previous to the date of incorporation it had been called Bridge's Town, in honor of an early proprietor. The township was lotted out by J. P. Bradbury. In 1814 James Knowles moved into the western part of the township. He was soon followed by David Staples, and the next year
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