USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 24
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Phippsburg, 1814
This town in Sagadahoc County was named in honor of Sir Wm. Phipps, the shepherd lad, born at Woolwich, who later became the royal governor of Massachusetts, then including Maine, in 1692. He was one of twenty-six children, of which twenty-one were sons;
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his father died when he was young, but he stayed with his mother until he was eighteen, then learned the trade of a ship carpenter, built a ship and became a seafaring adventurer. He raised a Spanish wreck in the Bahamas and for his enterprise, success and honesty, King James conferred upon him the order of knighthood. In 1690 he attempted a conquest of Nova Scotia, but the expedition failed.
The town constitutes the southern point of Sagadahoc County. The peninsula on the eastern side at the southern part, which bears on its northeastern point the lofty granite walls of Fort Popham, still shows the marks of its occupancy by Popham's Colony in 1607, where the earliest English colony to be attempted in the present State of Maine was located. Near the site of the old Popham fort is the United States fortification which includes the site of the Popham Colony. West of the fort rises a long hill running southward and marking on the shore the western extremity of Hunniwell's Beach. At Small Point Harbor on the southwest side of the town is the site of a fishing settle- ment established by the Pejepscot proprietary in 1716 with the name of Augusta. Dr. Oliver Noyes was one of the proprietors, the principal director and patron. Captain Penhallow, son of the author of The History of the Indian Wars resided here in 1717. Dr. Noyes in 1716 erected a rude fort 100 feet square for the purpose of protecting the set- tlers who were coming in rapidly. A sloop named "Pejepscot" was employed as a packet betwen this, Augusta and Boston; it carried out lumber and fish and brought back merchandise to settlers. The settlement continued until Lovewell's War, when the houses were burnt and the fort destroyed by the Indians. In 1737 an attempt to make a resettlement was made. Among those who came in at this time were Clark, Wallace, Wyman, James Doughty, David Gustin, Jeremiah Springer, Nicholas Rideout, John Owens and three families of Halls.
Phippsburg was included in the Pejepscot Purchase grant to Purchase and Way, and after Wharton's purchase their lands were confirmed anew to some of the buyers. The south part of the town was bought of the Indians by Thomas Atkins, the remainder by John Parker, Jr., in 1659, and the northern part was assigned to his brother- in-law, Thomas Webber, who also obtained an Indian title. Silvanus Davis, widely known in his day, owned and improved a farm south of Webber's.
In 1734 Arthur Noble built a strong garrison on the north side of the peninsula near Fiddler's Reach. The first house of worship known in this settlement was erected near this garrison in 1736. Some thirty-five years later an Episcopal church was erected on the site of this first house. The extension of the North Yarmouth line direct to the ocean brought the southern part of Phippsburg into that town;
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but the whole, for convenience to the inhabitants, was annexed to Georgetown in 1741. In 1814 Phippsburg was separated from that town and incorporated under its present name.
At Phippsburg Center is the James McCobb house, built in 1774 with a beautifully paneled interior. The town's first post office was established in this house, the home of James McCobb, shipbuilder and trader.
In front of the little white church which was built in 1802 at Phippsburg Center is the burial place of Mark Langdon Hill, Maine's first Congressman after the separation from Massachusetts.
Ripley, 1816
The two hundred and twenty-first town to be incorporated in Maine, Ripley was settled in 1814. Its corporate name is in honor of Eleazer W. Ripley, a distinguished officer of the War of 1812. The original grant of the town was in 1803 to John S. Frazy who conveyed it to Charles Vaughn and John Merrick, Esq. The town was surveyed in 1809 and 1818. It lies in the southern section of Somerset County.
Eleazer Wheelock Ripley, 1782-1839, soldier and legislator, born at Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1782, was the son of Sylvanus Ripley, Professor of Divinity at Dartmouth, 1782-87, and nephew of its president Eleazer Wheelock. He graduated at Dartmouth in 1800 and was a lawyer at Portland, Maine, in 1811, a member of the Legis- lature in 1810-11, Speaker of the House in the latter year, and State Senator in 1812. In this latter year, he entered the army as Lieutenant Colonel of the 21st Infantry, became its Colonel in 1813 and Brigadier- General in 1814. He served with conspicuous gallantry on the Cana- dian border and was wounded in the Battle of Niagara, received the brevet of Major and a medal from Congress. After leaving the army in 1820, he settled in Louisiana, where he was a lawyer, a state senator and a United States Representative. He died in 1839.
Among the earliest settlers at Ripley, Maine, was David Randall from Tuffenborough, New Hampshire, who came on foot about 1801. Mr. Randall was one of the most famous bear hunters of the early days of the town; he hunted and trapped throughout the region along Main Stream, cleared a farm and raised produce which he sold in Bangor. Jonathan Seavy and Hiram Sampson, the latter from New Hampshire, came to the eastern section of the town. Jesse Stone from Marlborough, New Hampshire, was an early settler. Elder Tripp, one of the first Methodist preachers to ride the circuit in this county, came from Hanover, Maine, about 1811. He was a member of the Legislature and the father of Bartlett Tripp who was sent as minister to Austria. Joseph Butler came from Farmington about 1811 and first built a small shanty to house his grain when it should be ready. He
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lived there himself until he could get a better house. One of the early settlers was Samuel Emery. John Goodale Woodcock (he later dropped this last name) came from Winthrop about 1830, and is said to have brought in the first threshing machine east of the Kennebec. John Page came from Wakefield, New Hampshire, with an ox team about 1806. Among the first permanent settlers were Wm. Bowdoin and Silas Grant, who came from Lyman in an emigrant wagon hauled by oxen. Edw. Leavitt from Wakefield, New Hampshire, settled on the old county road about 1818.
Jacob Hale, known as "Squire" Hale, came from Hopkinton, New Hampshire, and bought a large tract of land from the incorpora- tors and acted as their land agent. His original tract was so large that his nearest neighbors were four miles away. His cider mill was still there in 1911. David Syphers settled in the western part of the town; his family camped in the woods while the log cabin was being built. He later built a frame house. At Todd's Corner lived Dr. Samuel Todd who practiced medicine for many years. Wm. Hoyt came from Brad- ford, New Hampshire, about 1816 and took up land in the eastern part of the town; the land had been previously taken by a man named Fish who had built a log house. Nehemiah McDaniels came from Pembroke, New Hampshire; Aaron Lord came from Lyman about the time that Bowdoin and Grant came to Fish Hill. He settled be- tween them on a farm partly cleared by a Mr. Knowles. Samuel Jew- ett settled in Ripley about 1833. He came from Hanover, Maine, and occupied a small frame house built by Stephen Hoyt. David Maloon from Epping, New Hampshire, moved into a log house in 1814; in 1825 he put up a frame house.
The first town meeting was held at the home of Samuel Emery in 1817. In 1834 the town was divided, Main Stream being used as the separating line, and the northern part was incorporated into a town by the name of Cambridge.
Jackson, 1818
This town which was included in the Waldo Patent and lies in Waldo County was the Plantation of Jackson. It was so named by General Henry Knox, in honor of General Henry Jackson of Revolu- tionary fame. The beginning of the town was made around 1798 by Mr. Benjamin Cates of Gorham from whom Cates Hill takes its name. Joel Rich arrived the next year and also settled on a hill which has since borne his name. Other early settlers were Nicholas Hamlin, Ben- jamin Skillings, John Cates, George, Elisha and Ebenezer Morton and Nathaniel Knight, most of whom were from Gorham. The first min- ister was S. Warren. The titles of the settlers came from the proprietors, Israel Thorndike of Boston, David Sears and Wm. Prescott, to whom
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General Knox had sold the patent. The town was incorporated in 1818 as the two hundred and twenty-ninth town in Maine.
In the Diary of General David Cobb begun in December, 1795, Cobb speaks of his meeting with General Henry Jackson at Wm. Bing- ham's in Philadelphia, where the conversation concerned Maine lands. After his return home in September of the following year, he tells of corresponding with Generals Knox and Jackson on the same subject. General Jackson commanded a regiment of Massachusetts soldiers in the Revolutionary War. Jackson's connection with Bingham's Pur- chase came about in this way: Samuel Phillips, Jr., Leonard Jarvis and John Read on July 1, 1791, contracted in writing for the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts to sell to General Henry Jackson of Bos- ton and Royal Flint of New York, 2,000,000 acres of land in the Dis- trict of Maine for 10 cents per acre. Jackson and Flint assigned their contract to Wm. Duer of New York and Henry Knox, Secretary of War.
Israel Thorndike, one of the subsequent proprietors, had a taste for agriculture. He cleared and for some time cultivated a tract of land of 1000 acres in the town of Jackson, which he furnished with expensive buildings and choice breeds of stock. It is still known as the "Great Farm." His memory is also preserved by the town which bears his name. Settlers in the Plantation of Jackson in 1804 as reported by Robert Houston of Belfast to General Henry Knox with comments on their ability to pay were Joel Rich, Ebenezer Walker, Nicholas Ham- lin, Bryant Morton, Wm. Hastey, John Hartshorn, Prince Davis, Jon- athan Green, Solomon Young, John Swan, David Moores, Thomas McKinley, Wm. Hurd, Benjamin, James and John Cates, Andrew Cates, George Morton, Stephen Whitney, Jacob Clark, Samuel Brown, Ebenezer Morton, Jabez Whitney, Wm. Taggert, Robert Jackson, Joseph Barnes, Robert Cochrane, and Shadreck Hastey.
Perry, 1818
Perry, in Washington County, was formerly Township No. 1 East of Machias, bounded easterly and westerly by the waters of Passamaquoddy Bay. The township was purchased of Massachusetts in 1783-84 by General Benjamin Lincoln and others, on condition that the proprietors should place here twenty settlers within a given period of time and give to each 100 acres of land. The township was full of noble woods and during the European Wars when Buonaparte stopped the import of timber by the English from the Baltic, this area profited greatly by the sale of lumber to England. Fed by the trade this business brought, St. Andrews grew up very rapidly and surrounding places ob- tained some share of the inflowing wealth. This was then the El Dorado of the state. One man alone got out timber in ten days that
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brought him $300; and it was no uncommon event for a man to come home with $500 or $1000 in his pocket, the proceeds from the sale of lumber. Money could be obtained so much more easily by lumbering than by the slow returns of agricultural toil that when the timber was gone, general poverty followed the settlers' wasteful methods.
Dr. Harold Davis in An International Community states that Perry had one resident, Captain John Frost, an Indian trader from Wells, Maine, in 1763, but more than twenty years elapsed before many others arrived.
The inhabitants of Perry, Plantation No. 1 East of Machias as given in the census of 1790, were Samuel Frost, Alex Patterson, and Alex Hodges, probably the first settlers on Saint Croix Bay, Moses and Jacob Lincoln, Peter Loring, John Frost, Wm. Morrison, Daniel Sweat, Samuel Tuttle, James Wood, Nathaniel Stoddard, Wm. Kilbey, Abiah Damons and James Chubbuck.
When the town was incorporated in 1818, it was named for Commodore Oliver H. Perry who, as commander of a squadron in 1813, had defeated the British under Commodore Barclay on Lake Erie. For this victory he was made Captain and received from Con- gress a gold medal. It was a great naval victory, because it was highly important that Lake Erie should be under American control in order to facilitate land operations against Canada. The tale was briefly told in the following dispatch which Perry sent to General Harrison: "We have met the enemy and they are ours: two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop."
When the town of Perry, Maine, was incorporated in 1818, Perry's victories were fresh in the minds of the American people and the inhabitants of Plantation No. 1 honored the naval hero by bestow- ing his name upon the newly incorporated town. In accordance with their act of incorporation, Solomon Potter, a freeholder of Perry, was required to warn and notify the inhabitants to assemble for their first town meeting. Moses Lincoln was chosen moderator; John Dudley, Solomon Potter and Moses Lincoln, selectmen; and Eliphalet Olm- stead, constable. At a later meeting, other officers were chosen: John Marshall, town clerk; Otis Lincoln, Nathan Pattangall and Moses Lincoln, assessors of taxes; John Dudley, treasurer; Timothy Stickney, Nathaniel Stoddard, surveyors of highways; and John Frost, surveyor of lumber. For many years the principal occupation of the people was getting out timber, spars, shingles, and other articles. They transport- ed these to St. Andrews and Robbinston and later Eastport and brought back provisions and rum.
At Pleasant Point, forming the southeastern extremity of the town, is a settlement of the Passamaquoddy Indians. When Governor Williamson visited this section in 1832 he wrote, "From Eastport to
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Perry point the Indian village is five miles, here are 20 or more wooden huts for the Indians."
Knox, 1819
This town in Waldo County was settled about 1800 and incor- porated in 1819. It was named in honor of General Henry Knox, com- mander of the artillery in the Continental Army during the Revolu- tion, Secretary of War from 1785 to 1794, and a personal friend of Washington. He became a distinguished citizen of Thomaston, Maine. His father, Wm. Knox, was among the Scotch Presbyterians who came from Derry, Ireland, to Boston in 1728. He was a master mar- iner; he died in 1762. Henry Knox, the seventh son of Wm. and Mary Campbell Knox, was born in Boston in 1750, learned the trade of bookbinder, and in 1771 went into that trade for himself. He was an ardent patriot, and made a special study of military engineering. A member of the famous artillery company of Major Paddock and also an officer in Major Dawes' corps of grenadiers, Knox offered his ser- vices to General Ward at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and then went to Roxbury where he and Colonel Joseph Waters laid out the first regu- lar forts constructed in Massachusetts by the rebels. Washington was much pleased with the forts and here began the friendship between Washington and Knox "which was never shaded nor broken."
Washington Irving says: "Knox was one of those providential characters which spring up in emergencies as if they were formed by and for the occasion." Knox went to Lake Champlain for a much- needed supply of artillery and ordnance stores. This, with his pre- vious service, gave Washington great confidence in him. He was at- tached to Washington's headquarters throughout the war. In 1776 he was given a commission, placed in command of a regiment of artillery and appointed brigadier-general of artillery; and in 1801 was appointed major-general. When the American troops entered New York in 1783, Knox and Washington rode side by side. Appointed to command at West Point where his services were invaluable in disband- ing the army, he helped to establish the military school. He was one of the founders of the Society of the Cincinnati, an association of of- ficers of the Continental Army whose descendants are still extant.
Knox was a very personable man in appearance. He was social and extravagant in his mode of living and in his hospitality. David Cobb wrote in his Diary in 1796-97: "At Thomaston, the fascinations of General Knox prevented my return to my boat at Camden today."
The following is a list of settlers in the Plantation of Knox in 1804, with comments on their ability to pay, as reported by Robert Houston of Belfast to General Knox: - Glidden, - ry Hutchings, Wm. Patterson, Prince Hatch, Daniel Walker, Jeremiah Clement, Job
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Clement, John Sears, Jona. Bangs, Elias Wilkins, David and Daniel Patch, Pelham Sturtevant, Jesse Hardy, Thomas Sinclair, Joshua Brown, Nathan Smith, John Sawyer, Israel Kinney, Jona. Taylor, Joseph Prescott, Jesse Sturtevant, Samuel Patterson, Simeon Taylor, Peter Smith, Francis Reed, Amory Bryant, Cudworth Bryant, Peter Sanborn, Seth Ellot and Scoly Baker.
Howland, 1826
John Howland (1592-1673), the "lustie yonge man" who was washed overboard during the Mayflower crossing, was the first agent at the Cushnoc (Augusta) post. In 1634 he shared this office with John Alden. He was the thirteenth signer of the Mayflower Compact and took part in the first encounter with the Indians at Plymouth in 1620. When the thirty-seven inhabitants and proprietors of Township Num- ber 1 in the seventh range of townships west of the Penobscot River and north of the Waldo Patent solicited incorporation in 1825, they asked that they might become "a town by the name of Howland in memory of John Howland, one of the Pilgrim Fathers of New Eng- land . . . "
Howland, Maine, is at the junction of the Piscataquis and the Penobscot rivers. Here is the village, nearly one and one-half miles above the southeast corner of the town and a mile below Pine Island. Settlements are scattered somewhat thinly for a short distance north and south of Howland, but the denser population is on the Piscataquis road in the west part of the town between the Seboois and Little Se- boois streams. The town is situated upon both banks of the Piscata- quis River and upon the west bank of the Penobscot River into which the Piscataquis flows. Lumbering was formerly its major industry.
Some time before the year 1820, Major Wm. Hammett of Massachusetts and one Wm. Emerson purchased this tract of the state in which the former had his home. Hammett was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, came to Bangor from Scituate and moved to Howland. One of his sons, John Howland, died early, but his son, Wm. Cushing, settled in the present town of Howland.
By 1820 a number of settlers were already on the land. In 1818 came John Bryer, John Hook, Jeremiah Douglass and Jacob Doe, and in 1819 Jeremiah Fifield, Jonathan Chase, Charles Davis and Wm. Douglass; in 1820, Joseph Emery, Levi Lancaster, Dennis Carpenter, Thos. Tourtillot and Bart Moulton. In 1822, John Babcock; in 1823, John Smart, Duty Inman, Daniel Inman and Stephen Tourtillot; in 1824, John Shaw, Wm. Hammett, Wm. C. Hammett, Rufus Atkin- son, Moses Emerson, John Haley, Wm. R. Miller, Tristram Scammon and James Merrill; and in 1828, Wm. S. Lee swelled the ranks.
Major Hammett was a strong man and a valued citizen re-
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puted to be of Puritan blood and closely allied by descent to the Pil- grim Fathers. The Honorable Wm. C. Hammett, son of the major, became conspicuous as a politician and an officeholder. He served as Representative in the State Legislature, as Collector of Customs at Bangor during General Taylor's administration and in various other prominent public positions, until his death in 1876. The Honorable Wm. Miller, also of the immigration of 1824, became a large property holder in this region. He invested largely in timber lands and mill property. He was for a time a member of the State Legislature. Colonel Wm. S. Lee, the only colonist of 1828 whose name has been preserved, obtained his military title in the state militia and was otherwise a prominent citizen. Moses Emerson came over from England with two brothers and his father. Moses settled first in Haverhill, Massachu- setts, and afterward in Durham, Maine. Two of his sons, John and Wm., came to Bangor. Moses was a Revolutionary soldier. He was a commissary, and died soon after the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. The Moses who came to Howland was a descendant.
The first minister to preach regularly in Howland was Elder Elias McGregor, a Baptist, who was settled about 1839.
Joseph Chadwick on his trip up the Penobscot in 1764 for the purpose of surveying a route to Quebec, wrote: "Perscatiequess River is mostly a rapid stream and rocky rough land but in some parts are good tracts of land on which grow pine and other lumber."
Trescott, 1827
Major Lemuel Trescott, for whom this town was named, was born in Bristol County, Massachusetts, in 1751 and seems to have gone into the army at the age of twenty-four, immediately at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He was a captain in Whitcomb's Regiment at the siege of Boston. He was afterward appointed Major of Colonel Henry Jackson's Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, of which David Cobb was lieutenant-colonel and which was at one time commanded by Lafayette. Thatcher's Journal, which is a standard work on the Revolution, was written by Dr. James Thatcher, surgeon to the same regiment. In this he makes frequent references to his friend, Trescott, telling in one place how he was sent in command of a detachment to escort the commander in chief, and in another how in the last month of the war, October 3, 1781, at the head of a detachment of 100 men, he made an attack on Fort George, Long Island, and captured its garrison of two captains, one lieutenant and eighteen soldiers with three cannon and a number of small arms, ammunition, clothing and other goods. Only one of his men was wounded, while the enemy had two killed and two wounded. He was an original member of the So- ciety of the Cincinnati.
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In 1784 Major Trescott went with Colonel John Crane to Passamaquoddy, settled on an island near Quoddy Head (Lubec) and erected a small building for a store with the intention of trading in fish and lumber; they were probably the first merchants at Quoddy. Major Park Holland and General Rufus Putnam, surveyors, found Crane and Trescott on their island in Passamaquoddy. In 1790 both Crane and Trescott were living in Township No. 12, now Whiting. Trescott moved to Eastport prior to 1798, where he was chosen the first treasurer of the town; in 1807 he was appointed Collector of Cus- toms at Machias and probably moved there. In 1808 he returned to Eastport and superintended the erection of Fort Sullivan and its necessary buildings. He asked for advice about the construction from Major Joseph G. Swift of the United States Army. He was Justice of the Peace. In 1811 he was appointed Collector of Customs of the dis- trict of Passamaquoddy and probably resided in what is now Lubec.
When the surrender of Fort Sullivan was made in 1814, Ma- jor Trescott, then in Eastport, tried to escape with the bonds, notes and valuable papers which were in his charge. This he was unable to do, although he secreted the papers; but information given by one of his enemies placed the bonds and notes in the hands of the English. In 1812 he was appointed Colonel of North Regiment, United States Infantry, but he declined the appointment. He continued to live in Lubec after the war and was a valuable and public-spirited citizen, contributing generously to the churches. In 1824, when LaFayette visited this country, Major Trescott went to Boston expressly to meet his old companion in arms. In the same year he was one of the electors for president and vice-president, but ill health. prevented his attend- ance. In August, 1826, he died in Lubec and was given a most im- posing funeral. He left legacies for the public schools of his town, and for the Washington County Bible Society.
When, in 1831, the citizens of Eastport built a public hall, con- sidered at the time to be spacious and elegant, it was called Trescott Hall, an evidence of the general respect entertained for him by the townspeople. The hall was burnt in 1881. Fort Sullivan has been dis- mantled, but his name is kept in remembrance in the county and state, for Plantation No. 9 was incorporated in 1829 as the town of Trescott. Lumbering, lead mining and fishing were its enterprises.
According to the census of 1790 there were a total of twenty- nine people in Plantation No. 9, now Trescott, at that time: Dr. Ed- wards, Samuel Layton, Samuel Reynolds, John Cook, John Carew, Wm. Holland and Richard Jordan were the heads of the families.
Some of the family names of those who came later were Kelley, Hamilton, Derry, Owen, M'Curdy, O'Neal, Daniels, Black, Mckinley, Moran, M'Carty, Murray, Wilcox, Calkins, Donahue, McFadden,
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