USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 38
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Wilson, 1836
Originally No. 9, Range 9, the town of Wilson lies between Monson and Greenville. Wilson Stream, coming from Wilson Pond, passes through the township. Wm. C. Whitney purchased 3,000 acres in the southwest corner of this township, known as the Whitney tract. The rest of it was granted to the Massachusetts Medical Society, and 3,000 acres in No. 8, Range 9 were included in this state grant. H. W. Fuller of Augusta purchased this whole Medical Society Grant for $3000, and the township took the name of Fullerston.
In 1824 Eben and David Marble began clearing on the Whit- ney tract and in 1825 moved there. The same year Nelson Savage cleared an opening near the center of the township and built a saw mill on the Little Wilson Stream. The year following Messrs. True and Atwood also cleared openings in the vicinity and in 1826 moved in their families. Other settlers entered north of the Whitney tract, and others began in the east part of the township. F .. F. Gates be- came owner of one-half of Savage's mill, but he soon disposed of it. The road cut out to Moosehead Lake passed by this mill, and for several years all the travel and teaming to the lake went this way.
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In 1836 Fullerston was incorporated as the town of Wilson, but settlements did not increase and the public burdens bore heavily on the inhabitants. In 1848, on petition of the inhabitants, a strip containing five ranges of lots on the north side was annexed to Green- ville, about one-half of the remainder to Shirley and the residue to Elliotsville. Savage's Mills were abandoned in 1858 and have gone to decay; all in the neighborhood left their farms and removed to other places. After that the road to the lake was abandoned. H. W. Fuller sold half of his purchase to E. T. Bridge, Esq., and afterward it was sold to several different parties. Mr. Savage went to Monson in 1858. Thus the settlement was depopulated and disintegrated.
The little village in the town of Shirley, known as Shirley Corner, was the west half of the town of Wilson; it had a mill privi- lege, a hotel and a post office.
Bowerbank, 1839
Originally No. 7, Range 8, Bowerbank is a well-timbered township from which lumber was easily run down Sebec Lake. Ac- cording to Moses Greenleaf, Esq., Thomas Moncton was the first purchaser; it then passed to a London merchant, Mr. Bowerbank, who employed Charles Vaughan, Esq., as his agent, and R. C. Barth of New York as his attorney, to make legal conveyances. During his ownership through his agents, the settlements were begun. The un- sold portions passed to Messrs. Parker, Lord and Smith of Bangor, then to Samuel Mclellan, Esq., of Dexter, and from him to Edward C. Homans of Englewood, New Jersey.
Mr. Bowerbank at an early date explored the township in person, and had it lotted into 200-acre lots by S. Hoyt, Jr .; afterward these lots were divided into equal parts by Captain Eben Greenleaf. Charles Vaughan, Esq., in 1821 had an opening of fifty acres felled, and the next spring a part of it was put into crops.
In 1822 Mr. Edward Robinson, recently from England, was directed hither by Mr. Vaughan. He crossed the lake alone on a frail raft of his own construction; selected a lot of 200 acres, and hired a Mr. Crommet of Sebec to clear up and put into grass forty acres by the close of 1824. Mr. Wm. Heskith, another Englishman, also had twelve acres of trees felled at the same time. A Mr. Page had been lumbering there in the winter under Mr. Vaughan's direction, and Mr. Hodges was employed in Mr. Vaughan's opening, camping there and living alone.
The first settlers paid one dollar per acre for their land. In 1825 Mr. Robinson put up a frame house and barn, cut hay and grain and prepared to make a permanent settlement. In March, 1826, he married and his wife came. He was the first settler. Wm. Newell,
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a blacksmith from Hallowell, was the next; Wm. Hasketh, the third; and Deacon J. Brown, the fourth. Mr. Vaughan had secured the building of a saw mill on Mill Brook previous to this time, and a saw mill and grist mill were run there by R. Newell when these settlers arrived. A schoolhouse was built, a private school opened, and re- ligious meetings were held. In 1836 a Baptist church was organized. The settlers tried to vote in adjacent towns without giving their names to assessors and paying a poll tax. Finding they could not, they se- cured the incorporation of the town as Bowerbank in 1839, honoring the English proprietor.
Soon afterward, Mr. Robinson became interested in the woolen mill in Sebec and moved there. The population began to decrease, and the municipal burdens became heavy. In 1869 a petition for the repeal of the incorporation was granted. It was organized as a plan- tation in 1888 and re-incorporated as a town in 1907.
Patten, 1841
This town lies on the castern border of Penobscot County. It was incorporated in 1841 from No. 4 of Range 6. The first settlers had come about 1828 or 1830. At about this time, Amos Patten, a wealthy Bangor lumberman, bought the township and his name was bestowed upon the town at the time of its incorporation. A little be- fore the incorporation of the town, on the first of March, 1841, the Congregational Church of Patten was organized.
The Pattens, Moses and Amos, came from Amesbury, Massa- chusetts, to Bangor about 1799. For about thirty years they were among the first citizens of that town; their old firm of M. and A. Patten was known far and wide. When they came to Bangor they brought little or no capital, but of industry and intelligence they had more than an average stock.
Some of the early settlers and prominent men of Patten were Mr. E. G. Stetson who came in 1841 from Sumner, Maine; Jacob Frye from Wilton, Maine, in 1840; Mr. S. Waters from Palermo, Waldo County, as early as 1839; and Amasa Parker who settled on a farm here in 1840. He was one of the pioneer settlers and cleared up the farm from standing trees. James S. Mitchell, farmer and mechanic, came to Patten from Monroe in 1841. John H. Twitchell settled on a farm about two miles out of Patten Village in the same year. Wm. B. Mitchell of Cambridge, Maine, came about 1845.
Hon. Ira D. Fish from Milton, New Hampshire, came to Lincoln in 1826 or 1827 and built the first saw mill there; he came to Patten in 1847, where he again built the first mill before bringing his family. He manufactured lumber for a number of years before selling his mills, then engaged in farming and lumbering.
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Before Mr. Patten bought the township, he had hired Ira Fish and Eli Kellogg to investigate and report upon the wild land. They made the trip from Lincoln to Patten by water, following the Penobscot to the present town of Mattawamkeag, up the Mattawam- keag River to the present Haynesville and then through the Fish River to the township. The early part of this water route had long been used by the French and Indians of the early days, and later was a part of the mail route to Houlton.
Other pioneers in the town were the Rogers and Gardiner families, both of which furnished outstanding soldiers in the Civil War and honorable citizens in the development of the town.
Searsport, 1845
Searsport, situated at the head of Penobscot Bay, was set off from Prospect and incorporated on February 13, 1845. With Pros- pect it had originally been a part of Belfast. The name, like that of Searsmont, was given in honor of David Sears of Boston, the princi- pal proprietor.
Sears Island also received its present name from the Honor- able David Sears, one of the Ten Associates who bought out the heirs of General Samuel Waldo, in whose honor it was first called Briga- dier's Island. Before that it had been called Hazel Nut Island.
The plantation of Bonaparte formed a part of what is now Searsport.
Deblois, 1852
This town was a part of Bingham's eastern "Million Acre Pur- chase" and was sold by Bingham's agent, Colonel John Black, to Wm. W. Woodbury and Daniel Emery, the deed to be delivered on pay- ment of the purchase money. While it was held under these con- ditions, the purchasers conveyed their interest to the City Bank of Portland which paid the balance of the purchase money. It was sub- sequently disposed of by them to Wm. Freeman of Cherryfield. When the town was incorporated in 1850, it received its name in honor of Thomas Amory Deblois who was president of the City Bank of Port- land. Previously it had been called Annsburg, doubtless for Bingham's daughter Anne, who married Alexander Baring.
The principal streams are the east branch of the Narraguagus River and the tributaries of this stream. Great Falls of the east branch are near the middle of the western side of the town. The falls extend about half a mile with an aggregate descent of about 50 feet. The township was often known as Great Falls. Within a short distance of these falls are thousands of acres of forests. Robert Foster moved here from Cherryfield and lived in the house built by Otis Pineo who
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had been sent to Great Falls by General Cobb to build a mill and to begin a settlement. James Foster lived here a while, then moved to Steuben and built a house later occupied by General S. Moore.
Wm. Freeman of Cherryfield, to whom the bank sold the town- ship, appears to have been the founder or developer of the place.
Mr. Deblois was a well-known lawyer of that day who served as Representative to the Legislature, and was United States Attorney during the administrations of Taylor and Fillmore.
Veazie, 1853
Formerly the seventh ward of the city of Bangor in Penobscot County, Veazie was set off and incorporated as a town in 1853. At that time the two "blocks" of saw mills located there were manufacturing all sorts of lumber. It was in honor of General Samuel Veazie, who was the owner of the mills, the privileges and the chief portion of the property, that the town was named. General Veazie, son of John Veazie of Portland, was born there in 1787. He settled in Topsham, where he engaged in lumbering, and shipbuilding, built many vessels and traded with the West Indies. He was a soldier in the War of 1812, and became a general at that time. In 1826 he bought from Jackson Davis mills in Old Town and afterward all the water power on the west side of Old Town Falls. In 1832 he moved to Bangor, the sole owner of the Penobscot boom which he carried on for many years. At one time he was the sole owner of Veazie Bank; he was an ex- ecutive councilor in 1837 and an alderman of Bangor. In 1837 he moved to Veazie, where he died March 12, 1868.
When Governor Pownall, with General Waldo and his atten- dants, was visiting the country above the falls on the other side of the river in 1759, he noted in his journal the "clear land on the left for near four miles." He was doubtless looking at the time across the territory of Veazie and beyond. This was long known as "the Plains." It is believed to have been occupied and rudely cultivated by the In- dians for their corn lands from time immemorial. Here very likely was their "Negas," an Indian town known to have existed near the close of the seventeenth century.
Negas was the English fur trading house built during Oliver Cromwell's time, soon after 1657, by Wm. Crowne "far up ye river of Penobscot, at a place called Negue to which he gave his own name Crowne's Point." Ganong says it was on the west side between Ban- gor and Old Town and is on more than one early map. Mrs. Eck- strom concludes that the only place where such a trading house could be established was in the present Veazie at Eddington Bend, upon the high point known as Fort Hill, the flat top of which stands eighty feet above the water, a place more defensible than any other
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on the river above Bangor. It was a location unexcelled for a trading house and also the head of navigation. We know the point was an Indian camping ground. The Indians once had a stockaded village there and occupied sites for ten miles above. All about was wonderful hunting country. It is safe to say that in all of Maine there could have been no better place for the beaver trade.
Littleton, 1856
Littleton lies directly north of Houlton in Aroostook County. Like many other Aroostook towns, it was formed from land granted to educational institutions in Massachusetts. The northern half of this township, granted to Framingham Academy by the Legislature of that Commonwealth in 1801, was surveyed the following year. The southern half is the northern part of the township granted to Williams College in 1800. Its southern half, in turn, now forms the northern part of Houlton.
It was probably settled by Mr. Thomas Osborne of Belfast, Maine, and Mr. Lewis DeLaitre from Piscataquis County, in 1835. Previous to 1840 Mr. Josiah Little of Portland had acquired pos- session of the Williams College Grant and of him the carly settlers purchased their land. The two half-townships were incorporated on March 18, 1856, and the new town was called Littleton in compli- ment to Josiah Little.
Mr. Osborne, the first settler, was one of the conductors of the four- and six-horse freight teams which in the carly days ran from Aroostook towns to Bangor. Their down freight was usually shingles and the return cargo, a general assortment of supplies. Mr. DeLaitre also drove teams on the Bangor route for a number of years and was engaged in trade in Littleton. Among the other early settlers was a Mr. Hamilton who was a blacksmith and worked part of the time in Houlton. Mr. Staples, Philip Keene and Mr. Tozier arrived; each remained for only a brief period of time. Martin Johnson came from Readfield in 1843; his son later took over the farm, where he made many improvements. Johnson also was engaged in trading and lum- bering and built the first mill in town. Later, after moving to Houl- ton, he was county treasurer and sheriff of the county.
Other early settlers were Noah Furbish and Major Abner True, the latter coming from Lincoln in 1845. He opened a hotel which he kept for many years. Mr. Wm. Wiley was one of the carli- est settlers in the portion of the town west of the county road and on the south ridge. Mr. Peter McGlynn, who emigrated from Ireland in 1848 and came to Littleton in 1850, was also one of the carliest settlers. It was the wilderness portion of the town which he reclaimed.
Another Irishman, Mr. Joseph Henderson, settled next to the
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New Brunswick line in 1843. There were already three settlers: Sam- uel Adams, Francis Watson and John Little in this eastern section . of the town, when Henderson arrived in 1840; and their only outlet was an old lumber road which led to the highway from Woodstock to Houlton. Over this they took their grists to Cary's Mill in Houlton. This section contains some of the finest farms in town. Mr. Hender- son wrote to his friends in Ireland of the opportunity for making a home in this country and in 1845 his four brothers, Wm., Nathaniel, John and Thos., came and settled ncar him and prospered well.
Winn, 1857
The town of Winn was incorporated in 1857 and named for John M. Winn of Salem, Massachusetts. He bought the township, only to be cheated out of it by sharpers. He died on charity in Salem, Massachusetts. The present town of Winn received its first settler the year that Maine became a state. Joseph Snow came from Arlington, Massachusetts, up the river in the early spring of 1820, made a clear- ing and erected a log hut in the southern part of the present town. He raised some potatoes and corn and in the fall returned home. In the late winter or early spring of 1821, he brought his family of four girls and six boys to Snowville, as it was called for a long time, across the ice of the Penobscot. At that time no house had been erected be- tween Piscataquis Falls and Houlton. Indeed, their nearest neighbor was Pennel Shumway who lived a mile below Piscataquis River in Howland. The snow had been heavy and deep in the fall of 1820, so that when, on the family's arrival in 1821 the father told his son to dig in a plot of ground for some potatoes, he had to dig four feet of snow before he found the potatoes unfrozen and sound.
In 1822 Ephraim Kyle came from Bradley and built a log house not far above the Snows. In the upper part of the town Elijah Brackett made a clearing and erected a log hut, a short distance below where the tannery of H. Poor & Son was located quite near the shore. Traces of the stone chimney of his hut were still visible in the latter part of the century, although the house had burned. In 1823 Samuel Briggs came to Winn and took up lots below the Snows near the Lincoln line, where he built a small building, not over ten feet square, and traded with the Indians. He sold them powder, shot and rum and bought their furs and skins. That was the only station between Old Town and Houlton. There were only four families in No. 4, or Winn, in 1824.
In 1830-31 the town was lotted off by Zebulon Bradley. In 1829 the Military Road had been extended through Winn, running toward Houlton. Before this road was built the mail was carried by boat on the Mattawamkeag and then by horseback to Houlton. It
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took four weeks to make the trip from Bangor to Houlton. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, John Gordon had built a mill on the Mattawamkeag, on the confines of Winn and Mattawamkeag, on the most eastern limit of Lot B in Winn on what is now termed the Lower Pitch of Gordon Falls. The Indians, not liking the de- struction of their noble forests, burned down the mill.
In 1843 and some time thereafter, John Fiske of Boston and Bridge of Milford owned all of Winn except, perhaps, lands owned by Rufus Dwinal of Old Town. The site of the village had been ob- tained by Wyman B. F. Moore, but his title failed. It was afterward called Bridgetown. John M. Winn, a young man, poor but enter- prising and employed in an insurance office in Salem, Massachusetts, got into the good graces of that town and afterward was employed by Pingree, as bookkeeper. Neither Fiske nor Bridge had sons who aspired to business or who were interested in the property; their only interest was in the money obtained from it for spending. John Winn bought the township of land from Fiske and Bridge, backed by Pin- gree. It was at about the time of the incorporation that Winn be- came involved in financial troubles, where sharpers overcame him and he was reduced from the possession of many thousands to ex- treme poverty.
The charter was given by the Legislature in 1846 for the im- provement of the Penobscot River above Old Town, and General Wyman B. F. Moore built the steamer "Governor Neptune" and ran it from Old Town to Piscataquis Falls in 1847. After removing rocks from the channel at the latter place, he ran to Nicatou, now Medway, but except in high water ran only to Five Islands (Winn). He con- tinued until about 1869, when bought out by the European and North American Railway.
Between 1851 and 1854 Snowville, or River Township No. 4, was organized as Five Islands Plantation, and on April 8, 1857, was incorporated as the town of Winn. In 1863 Shaw & Tilson, later H. Poor & Son, established a tannery from which the business and popu- lation received a large impetus.
Prentiss, 1858
Prentiss lies north of the Bingham-Penobscot Purchase in Pen- obscot County. It was named for the Honorable Henry E. Prentiss of Bangor, owner of much of the township. It was incorporated in 1858, but was returned to plantation status in 1940. It was first named Deerfield.
The Honorable Henry E. Prentiss was the son of Henry Pren- tiss of Paris, Maine, born in 1809. He was in the Military Academy at West Point as a cadet for four years and afterward as a teacher. He
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came to Bangor in 1834-35 and studied law with Messrs. Kent and Cutting. He was admitted to the bar in 1836, went to Orono and entered into partnership with Israel Washburn, where he remained for three years, then returned to Bangor.
Prentiss had a large practice, but was unsatisfied. He became convinced that there was more money in the timberlands of Maine than in the law profession, and after a time, he devoted himself to the development of that idea with an assiduity that rewarded him with an abundant fortune. He was in reality a farmer's boy. He loved the open air and took pleasure in long journeys on foot, especially in the forest where he saw beauties that the devotee of Coke, an English jurist, never dreamed of. He was a good citizen and much appreciated.
The first trees felled on the tract, now Prentiss, by permanent settlers were cut in 1836 by Ira and Eben Averill from Bangor, whose father had come from Pittston. They came through to this area from Lincoln on foot, following a spotted trail and bringing their supplies on their backs. They brushed out a road to Lincoln during the subse- quent fall, so that during the winter they could bring in some pro- visions with a horse. On the farms they cleared, their descendants still reside. The family is a prominent one in town.
By 1837 Joshua T. Baldwin from Fayette, Maine, Andrew Phil- brook from Oxford County, Benjamin Osgood and John Austin were residents. Many of the descendants of these pioneers still reside in the town. The family of John Judkins claim for him the honor of the first settlement in 1838. He came from Fayette, Maine. By 1840 Messrs. Abraham Cleaves, Samuel Dennis, John Prescott and Harvey Shep- herd had arrived.
When the town was incorporated in 1858, Prentiss was a prin- cipal owner of the tract and in his honor the new town received its present name. Among his benefactions to the town in recognition of the honor conferred upon him was a present of a public library of three hundred volumes, which has been a permanent means of dis- seminating and maintaining general intelligence in this region. In 1861 George E. Baldwin built a saw mill here.
Danforth, 1860
The half-township granted to Thomas Danforth in Range 4, north of the Bingham Purchase and south of the Hampden Academy Grant, which is now the town of Weston, is the nucleus of our pres- ent town of Danforth, named for its principal proprietor. The main stream in the town is the outlet of Baskehegan Lake, lying in the adjoining township at the south, which runs through the town from south to north, and empties into the Mattawamkeag River. The township lies in the extreme north of Washington County. On the
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dam at Danforth Village on Baskehegan Stream, are located a grist mill and a saw mill. Despite the magnitude of these mills there is still a large amount of unused power here.
The first settlement was made in 1829 by Parker Tewksbury of Cornville. It was more than thirty years before a settlement of 300 was attained; the census of 1860 gave a population of 280. The next decade witnessed a remarkable growth of more than one hun- dred per cent. A part of Weston was annexed in 1885 and a part of Eaton in 1887.
It is doubtless true that the present Danforth had been visited by lumbermen before Tewksbury settled here in 1829. He made a clearing on the present Morse farm and built a log cabin, the exact site of which is not known today. Two or three years after his arrival, he erected a barn which stood near the site now occupied by the barn at the Snow farm. This was the first frame building in Danforth. Whip-sawed lumber was used in its construction and it was framed and raised by Daniel Moores and his brother, William Moores. In the summer of 1836 Daniel and William Moores built a frame dwell- ing house, for Tewksbury on the site of the present Snow farm.
Eliphalet Morse was a native of Nova Scotia. He came first to New Brunswick and then to Weston, Maine, in 1828 and to Danforth in 1831, where either he or Seth Cleaves settled at Cleaves Landing, a mile below the bridge. Cleaves afterward lived on the Gould farm, where he built a frame house and barn. The Tewksbury place was later owned by John Decker and still later by Major Reuben Snow, a prominent citizen of the town. Bunker Foss then bought the house and occupied it for about a year. Later, he sawed the house into two parts which were moved, one part, known today as the Hiram Brackett house between the Morse and Gould farm, the other part in the front part of the so-called Ellis house.
Eliphalet Morse lumbered for two years with Parker Tewks- bury in the vicinity of Sandy Brook and built a log house which stood south of the present Morse farm. Later he built a frame house on the Morse farm to the left of the present building. He played an active part for many years in town affairs.
William Moores settled in the vicinity of the Robert Russell farm which was at that time a part of Township No. 9, Range 4. William Hines came in 1833 and afterward settled on the present Bonner farm. Edward Bonner came later from Frederickton, New Brunswick. He built and lived in the house now occupied by Fred Mccluskey. John Decker came in 1833 from LaGrange, having come there earlier from Kennebec County. He was first engaged in lum- bering for Colonel Ramsdell at Hot Brook Lake. He lived then on the Butterfield farm.
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