USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55
A few years later than those settlers already mentioned came Dr. Cornelius and Joseph and Samuel Holland. Gustavus Hayford was the first settler where Canton Village now is, in 1815. With him came his brother Zeri; and these energetic settlers began to build up the place. From this time on stores, mills and houses grew rapidly. Gusta- vus Hayford built the first mill and and the first frame house.
When Canton was set off in 1821, the first town meeting of the new town was held in the schoolhouse near Mr. Joseph Holland's home at Canton Point. John Hersey presided as moderator. Dr. Cornelius Holland was chosen town clerk, a position which he held for ten years. Joel Howard became Treasurer and Joseph Holland, Abiathar Austin and Joseph Coolidge, Jr., were elected selectmen of the new town.
Concord, 1821
Concord in Somerset County is situated on the west side of the Kennebec River. It was settled soon after the Revolution by Major Ephriam Heald from Temple, New Hampshire. It was incorporated in 1821, taking the name of Concord from the town of Concord, Massachusetts. It was disorganized in 1939.
Monson, 1822
One half of Township No. 9 in the Eighth Range of Townships, North of the Waldo Patent, was granted by the General Court of Massachusetts on January 31, 1807, to Monson, Massachusetts, Acade- my. On the following February 24, the remaining half was given to Hebron Academy in the District of Maine. The grants were surveyed by Alexander Greenwood in 1810; the outside lines of the entire town were laid out by Samuel Weston in 1794. The deeds to both academies were given in 1811. The trustees of Hebron Academy offered to give lots of fifty acres to settlers who would clear a certain amount of land,
158
build houses and occupy the same within a specified time. Joseph Bearce, who came from Hebron, was the first settler in 1816. Later in the year, George Doughty from Gray, Maine, and Simeon Irish, from Hebron, moved here; the latter built the first frame house in 1817 and brought the first family to settle here. In 1818 came Samuel Rowe and wife, also from Hebron, and James Stinchfield from Albion, Maine. Jacksons, Weymouths, Atkinsons, and Packards moved into town. It is to Mr. Bearce that we are indebted for the "Moosehorns" notor- iety. Finding a pair of broad antlers, he put them on a stout pole and reared them against a tree to mark the point where a path turned off northward toward the center of the township. Thence the roads have diverged to this date and the name "Moosehorns" has become a fix- ture. These first settlers came in by the Blanchard road, where there were settlers; the earlier ones located in the west part of the town- ship. Other settlers came, and James Stinchfield was on the east half previous to 1820.
In 1818 the Trustees of Monson Academy (Massachusetts) sent Deacon Abel Goodell to explore their portion of the land and bring back a report. This was favorable. The trustees offered to give 100 acres of land to each of a certain number who would go and settle upon it. Captain Amasa Chapin exchanged his farm in Monson, Massachusetts, for a square mile in the "academy town"; and moved his family into a house on No. 7 in the fall of 1819, stopping there un- til he could clear an opening and build a house upon his own soil. In April 1820 Captain Samuel Whitney and Wm. A. Hyde came with their wives. Justin Colton, with his whole family, Calvin Colton, Deacon Lucius Hyde, and Abel Goodell, without their families; Royal Day, Austin Newell and Horatio Sherman, single men all, started from Monson, Massachusetts, to begin a settlement under the required regu- lations.
Those having families took passage to Bangor from Boston by packet; the others loaded a single-horse wagon with necessities, each riding in turn. The journey lasted three weeks, the two groups meet- ing at Chapin's house where they spent Sunday; then the men began clearing their lots. The trustees had offered the mill privilege and 200 acres of land to anyone who would put a saw and grist mill in opera- tion within two years. Whitney, Hyde and Faye took the contract, the first two coming, and Faye sending Wm. H. Hyde in his place, and these three began clearing the place, now Monson Village. The mill company built a house to live in and their wives and families came; it was also a stopping place for newcomers. In the fall of 1821, the saw and grist mill was raised; eight men from Sangerville came to as- sist in the building. Early settlers had had to go to Sangerville for grist.
159
The first religious meeting was held in the home of Samuel Bearce in 1820. The organization of the Congregational Church took place in 1821 and the first settled minister, the Reverend Lot Rider, came in 1825; the church building was completed in 1831. The Rev- erend Father Sawyer helped in the organization of the church.
The town was incorporated in 1822 and named Monson, for the Massachusetts town which had been the home of many of these people. Salem, 1823
Situated in the eastern part of Franklin County, Salem, Maine, was formed from parts of Freeman, Phillips and Number 4 in the Fourth Range. The first clearing was made by Benj. Heath, 2nd, of Farmington, about 1815, to which place he and John Church, 1st, and Samuel Church moved in 1817, being soon followed by Messrs. Double and Hayford. The northern part of Salem is occupied by the southern base of the Mount Abraham group of peaks. Curvo Stream, a branch of the Carrabasset River, takes its rise in this group of mountains. Pass- ing through the center of the town, it furnished power for early saw and grist mills. Beech, birch, cedar, maple and spruce are found in the forests.
The town was incorporated in 1823 under the name of North Salem, for Salem, Massachusetts. The prefix North, was omitted when it was no longer necessary to distinguish the Maine from the Massa- chusetts town. The word Salem is from the Hebrew word, Sholem, meaning peace. The naming of the Massachusetts town memorialized the settlement of the difficulties between the followers of Roger Conant and John Endicott.
Daniel Collamore Heath, American publisher, was born in Salem, Maine, October, 1843, and died on the 29th of January, 1908. He was a graduate of Amherst College in 1868, became a junior mem- ber of the firm of Ginn and Heath, publishers in Boston, and in 1886 established in that city the house of D. C. Heath and Company, pub- lishers of textbooks, with branch offices in New York, Chicago and London.
The early mills in Salem, Maine, were put in operation by the Messrs. Heath in 1818-19, when Benj. Heath, 1st, and Simeon Heath moved into the place. On the valuable mill privilege on Seven Mile Brook have been saw and grist mills, a starch factory, potash and various mechanics.
Hudson, 1825
A town in Penobscot County, Hudson was originally purchased of Massachusetts by William Sullivan of Boston. The settlement was started in 1800 by Luke Wilder, David Pierce, Wareham Briggs and
160
Tristram Warren, who were soon followed by others. In 1824 it was organized as Jackson Plantation, in honor of Andrew Jackson. In 1825 it was incorporated as Kirkland; but the name was changed in 1854 to Hudson, in honor of a Massachusetts town.
The Maine town is rather sparsely inhabited. The principal road is the old stage line from Bangor across Glenburn and through Hudson in a northerly course to and into Bradford. Hudson Village is located on the Pushaw Stream a short distance from the mouth of Beaver Brook on the west, and has its eastern edge at the mouth of Mohawk Brook. The place is very happily situated at the exact geo- graphical center of the town. Here is the only post office and here were formerly mills, saw, shingle and cooper, and other shops and stores. The valuable timber on the lands prompted most of the in- habitants to engage in lumbering; more recently the tendency has been toward agriculture. In 1810 the township contained 54 persons; in 1820, 72. In 1840 the Hon. Charles Beale came to Hudson from Bangor and settled on a farm. He followed the business of lumbering and trading and held town office for many years. He was also Repre- sentative to the Legislature of Maine and State Senator. His son, Henry M., was also a prominent citizen of the town.
Plymouth, 1826
Plymouth lies at the southwestern angle of Penobscot County. It was incorporated in 1826, taking its name from Plymouth, Massa- chusetts, which had received its name from Plymouth, England. The early history of Plymouth, Maine, belongs in part to Etna and in part to Chandlerville (Detroit), since a part of it was taken from each of these towns. The Etna division was settled about 1807; the Chandler- ville section must have been organized several years later.
By 1812 the following pioneers had made their settlements: Joseph and Amos Chandler (from whom the name Chandlerville was doubtless derived), Simeon and Edmund Hartford, Wm. and Ichabod Allen, Daniel Holbrook, Wm. Phips, John P. Palmer and Jacob Brooks. Population flowed in slowly to this comparatively inland region, and the number of inhabitants in the western strip of Etna and the eastern part of the Chandlerville territory was not enough for nearly twenty years after the first settlement to demand the formation of a town for better governmental facilities than were enjoyed. When the town of Plymouth was incorporated the inhabitants numbered 503. This was in 1826; three miles of Plymouth's breadth was taken from Etna in Pen- obscot County, and two miles from that part of Somerset County which two years afterward became Chanderville and in 1844, Detroit.
The first regular church organization to include the people of this region was the Congregational Society, formed on November 16,
161
1807, in union with the Congregationalists of the older town of Dix- mont. It grew and flourished with the years, and finally the Plymouth members were numerous and strong enough to draw off and form a church by themselves. This was done December 14, 1834, but after seventeen years of separation, they were united again on the old foundation, in 1861. Other denominations came, the Methodists and Free Baptists.
Plymouth has carried on lumbering, a tannery and a number of small factories. The principal falls which furnish water power are at Plymouth Village, near the center of the town, and at the outlet of Plymouth Pond.
Bradford, 1831
The first clearing of this Penobscot County town was made in the summer of 1803 by James White and Robert Marshall of Thomas- ton. This settlement was organized as a plantation in 1820, under the name of Blakesborough, and was incorporated as a town under its present name in 1831. The name was given in honor of Bradford, Massachusetts, which in turn had been named for Bradford in York- shire, England. Bradford, Maine, is one of a dozen townships in the westerly projection of Penobscot County; it lies in beautiful shape, a regular township of six miles on each side, or thirty-six square miles in all, and is one of the finest and best settled tracts in the county. Brad- ford has no large waters like the Penobscot, or any lakes within its borders, but it is nevertheless exceedingly well watered.
The town has admirable highway service. It is a peculiarity of the roads of Bradford that many of them run upon straight lines and nearly with the cardinal points of the compass. Bradford may be con- sidered well settled, and four of its settlements are large enough to be called villages. The country was originally covered with a dense forest consisting of hard and resinous woods still commonly known in the Maine woods.
The first inroads upon the forests here were made by a single pioneer in the summer of 1804 - James White, probably from Thomaston, who came here with his family and began his clearing preparatory to settlement. Sometime during the year two settlers named Jameson and Knox, from Union in Knox County, came and made their location in what is now the south part of the town. In 1805 arrived Robert Marshall, also of Thomaston, who is generally credited with having been a joint pioneer with White the year before. The settlers of 1806 were two men or families from Thomaston named Wilson and Hildreth. After that there was a moderate or steady growth of the settlement year by year.
162
It took seventeen years, however, before a sufficient colony had collected to justify organization. In 1820 a plantation was erected under the name of Blakesborough. For about eleven years this an- swered the needs of a rather sparse population, and then the town of Bradford was incorporated in 1831 when the population was 403; ten years later it was 1000.
Emmons Kingsbury came to Bradford in 1820. He had gone to Brewer from Foxboro, Massachusetts, in 1800. His son, Thos. R., was a farmer and storekeeper and held many town offices. He was in the State Legislature one year and served as State Senator, as well as postmaster and Justice of the Peace. In 1847 Benj. O. Foster built the first tannery in town ; it burned but was rebuilt by Church and Plaisted. Alvah Strout, born in Limington in 1810, came to Penobscot County in 1833, settled on a farm and was often a selectman; John Libbey, a farmer and a miller, came from Berwick to Bradford in 1836. The Humphreys, Daniel and Caleb, were outstanding citizens. John W. Bailey, a farmer, came to Bradford from Palermo in 1841. The South- ards and Sanfords were also fine citizens.
Burlington, 1832
A Penobscot County town, Burlington was incorporated in 1832 and took the name of an old Massachusetts town.
It is large but rather sparsely settled, a regular parallelogram in shape: all its boundaries are straight lines. On the south line of the town lies Saponic Pond; on the west, Eskutarsis; and on the northern part of the east line near the northeast corner, the Madagascal Pond, most of which is within the limits of Burlington. Through the southern part of Saponic comes the Passadumkeag Stream, here quite a respect- able body of water which flows for a little more than a mile through the southwest angle of Burlington and thence through the towns of Lowell and Passadumkeag by an exceedingly winding course to the Penobscot. Much of the lumber in the early days of the town was floated down this stream for manufacture.
The southwestern quarter of Burlington is remarkably well set- tled. The village and post office are in this section. The first settlers came to the Burlington tract in 1824. Tristam Hurd is said to have been the pioneer and from him the region received its first name, "Hurd Ridge."
Among the earliest settlers in the present town of Burlington were three Pages: two brothers, Caleb and Edmund, and a cousin of theirs, Thomas Page. It is asserted by some that Edmund Page came from Fryeburg, Maine, in 1821 and settled on that part of the Bing- ham Purchase which is now Lowell.
163
Deacon Philip Page, the son of Caleb, came from Conway, New Hampshire, in 1825, when he was sixteen years of age. With a few others he built the first mill on the Passadumkeag River at Lowell. He was a valued member of the Congregational Church in that town.
Jeremiah Page, the son of Thomas, came to the present town of Burlington in 1825 at the age of thirteen. He engaged in lumbering and farming when he attained his majority, was long one of the prominent men in the town and was chairman of the town board for many years, as well as a Justice of the Peace. His brother, Norman Page, who was six years of age on the coming of his family, later de- veloped one of the finest farms in town. Moses Peasley came about 1825 and among the settlers of 1827 was Theodore Taylor.
Within less than eight years after the first settler invaded the forest here, the population had become sufficient to warrant the de- mand for the incorporation of the town in 1832. In 1840 the new town had 350 inhabitants. The people were chiefly engaged in lumber- ing and farming. Among the newcomers of the thirties and forties were David Moore, who came in 1838 from Windham, and Benjamin F. Bowers and his son, Edwin, from the present Lowell, who settled in 1843 on the farm in Burlington which was cleared by the elder Bowers. In 1841 Wm. McCorison had located in the town. His father had lived in Belmont, Maine.
John W. Hayden, whose father was Alpheus Hayden, the first settler in 1819 of our present town of Lowell, then called Long Ridge, established himself in Burlington in 1848 and became an important citizen and an officer in town affairs in the fifties.
Princeton, 1832
On September 19, 1811, Ephraim Abbott, "a Frontier Mis- sionary," wrote:
There are lying east of Machias in a body four incor- porated and fourteen unincorporated townships covering a country about 47 miles long 20 broad containing between 3 and 4000 people ... to whom there is at present no person who preaches except myself ... Yet in the incorporated town- ships there is as large a proportion of people of taste and fash- ion as in any seaport in N. E.
Mar. 26, 1812 In No. 17 (Princeton) or Poke Moon Shine called at Mr. Brown's. Preached a lecture at Mr. Elisha Grant's and lodged with him. There are but four families in No. 17 and 29 people. 19 are children and only three of them know the alphabet. [Later he writes: ] There is now a bible in every family in Townships 6, 7 and 17 and the children are well supplied with text books.
Evidently the four families living in No. 17 in 1812 were not
164
permanent residents, for the historians of this section of our state list Moses Bonney as the first settler of our present town of Princeton in 1815.
When the town was incorporated in 1832, it was named in honor of Princeton, Massachusetts, through the desires of Ebeneezer Rolfe, the third settler, who had come from that town. Princeton, Massachusetts, had received its name from the Reverend Thomas Prince (1687-1758) colleague pastor of the Old South Church of Boston and owner of a large share of the town's land. Many felt that the new corporate town in Maine might properly have been called Bonneyville.
Moses Bonney, the first settler, was born on a little island near Machias, Maine, in 1777. From Sprague's Falls (Woodland) where his home was in 1815, Moses moved to a beautiful hardwood ridge, later the main street of South Princeton, where he built a cabin of unpeeled logs. The new locality soon came to be called Poke Moonshine. The second settler was an old friend and neighbor of the Bonneys, Samuel Brown of Sprague's Falls. Bonney offered him half of his cleared land. The third settler was Ebenezer Rolfe who located on the road now leading to Woodland near the hill now bearing his name. He came from Princeton, Massachusetts. Isaac B. Edgerly, Abial Sprague, Peter Carle, Theophilus Libbey, Moses T. Sprague, John Sprague, Eli T. Sprague, Moses Brown, Moses Smith, William Colwell, John Hunter, Chas. Kincaide, Wm. Calligan and Samuel Seamans soon arrived. These early settlers worked in the lumber camps in the winter and on the farms in the summer. At the first town meeting Abial Sprague was moderator, Putnam Rolfe, clerk; Putnam Rolfe, Abial Sprague and John Sprague, selectmen and assessors; Ebeneezer Rolfe, treasurer; Chas. Kinkaide, constable and collector; Abial Sprague, town agent; Ebeneezer Rolfe, Moses Y. Sprague and Moses Bonney, school com- mittee. Putnam Rolfe was twenty-one the year he was elected select- man, assessor, clerk and surveyor of highways.
The first settlement of what is now Princeton proper was made in 1832, when Wm. Lawrence, Solomon Greenlaw and his son, Chas. Greenlaw, came; in 1833 Adna Bates and Adonijah Munson also came. In 1834 Putnam Rolfe built a house where the Princeton Stage House now stands, which he later sold. He also erected what in 1858 was called the Railroad Hotel, probably because the first railroad was built in 1854. In 1858 the Congregational Chapel was dedicated. For many years before the railroad was built, Princeton was reached by stage through Lincoln. It seems clear that Solomon Greenlaw was the first white man to settle upon the hill, and Putnam Rolfe, the first down by the river.
165
Waltham, 1833
Situated near the center of Hancock County, Waltham is on the eastern side of Union River. The town was carved out of Maria- ville in 1822 and incorporated in 1833, taking as its corporate name, Waltham, from Waltham, Massachusetts. This township was part of No. 14, Middle Division of Bingham's Penobscot Purchase, now in Hancock County. It was first settled in 1804, when all travel to the present town was by canoe or boat on the Union River. The first set- tlers were George Haslam, Lebbens and Eben Kingman, Caleb King- man, Samuel Ingalls, Joseph Jellerson, Wm. Jellerson, Richard Cook, Ebenezer Jordan and Joshua Moore. These pioneers left their families at Ellsworth, went up the river and located their lots. They felled trees, built log houses and the next spring, 1805, moved their families in.
Webb's Brook, the outlet of Webb's, Scammon's, Abram's and Molasses ponds, affords a valuable water power; a mill was built there for the manufacture of staves and shingles. The settlement was in- creased every year by other families moving there: John Fox, Chas. Jones and Hugh Twynham, who came later from England, were among them. The principal business in the winter was making shingles and clapboards. They floated their lumber on rafts to Ellsworth, from which it was shipped to Boston. The first saw mill was built in 1832 by Captain Stephen G. Woodward, Hugh Twynham and Increase Jor- dan.
Stowe, 1833
Stowe, in Oxford County, lies on the New Hampshire border. It is in the region which the Pequaket tribe of Indians formerly pos- sessed. The settlement by the whites was begun in 1770. The original settlers were from Andover, Massachusetts, Keene, New Hampshire, and Fryeburg, Maine. Stowe was incorporated as a town in 1833 and named in honor of a Massachusetts town.
The original settlers of Stowe, Maine, were Isaac James, Micah and Simeon Abbott from Andover, Massachusetts; Wm. Howard from Keene, New Hampshire, and Samuel Farrington from Fryeburg, Maine. The Abbotts obtained their titles in part from the proprietors at Fryeburg, in part from Wm. Steele of Concord, New Hampshire, and in part from Judge Phillips of Concord, Massachusetts. Mr. Howard obtained his from Jonathan Robinson of Fryeburg. Stowe was a part of the Pequaket tract, so called from a tribe of Indians who resided within the town limits. Speckled Mountain is situated in the northern part of the town and to it the Great and Little Cold rivers supply an abundance of water.
166
Milford, 1833
Old Sunkhaze Plantation was incorporated as the town of Mil- ford on February 28, 1833. The headquarters of Sunkhaze Stream are found in as many as eighteen brooks and rivulets. The population of Milford is almost entirely clustered at Milford Village and on the river road a mile below.
The beginning of Milford was at the opening of the nineteenth century. In the year 1800 a squatter by the name of Smith lived with his family in a log house within the present limits of Milford Village. In the following year the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sent out a surveying party from Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, to run out lots in Old Indian Purchase, No. 3 (Milford). Charmed with the hunting and fishing, twelve men selected lots on which they fully intended to make their homes, but only one of the group, Joseph Butterfield, returned in December 1802, and with his family dwelt in the cabin formerly oc- cupied by Smith. Butterfield busied himself with cutting timber to build his home. This he had sawed at the Winslow mill in Old Town, which had been erected in 1798. His was the first frame house in Milford, and was separated from Indian Old Town by a narrow chan- nel of the Penobscot. The whole country was covered with pine, spruce and hemlock trees of the largest size and finest quality. Other settlers began to come in and at the beginning of the War of 1812, several families had settled in town.
In the first decade of the century, Sunkhaze, the northwestern part of Milford, also had its beginning. Samuel Dudley and perhaps others were settled on the south side of Sunkhaze Stream; Samuel Bailey was on the north side and an Irishman by the name of Larry Costi- gan was near the brook which now bears his name. Wm. Bridge, of Massachusetts, and a Mr. Fiske bought the township at 121/2 cents per acre. The former bought fish from the Indians. He cured, salted and exported the fish, and also traded for furs. When Fiske came, he and Bridge erected a small store on the point where the ferry then was. This was about 1820, just before No. 3 was made a plantation, and was thenceforth known as Sunkhaze Plantation. The hotel was built at Sunkhaze by Amos Bailey before 1820.
In 1826 the first saw mill was built in the southern part of the town; and the road was extended to Lincoln. The second, double mill, was built, the original construction by Godfrey, Fiske and Bridge, who continued to build mills until 1833. These mills made a great change in the town. These were the palmy days of Milford. The building of mills and prosperous business conditions caused Sunkhaze Plantation to grow ambitious and in 1833 the act of incorporation passed. The town was named for Milford, Massachusetts, from which
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.