USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 45
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The first sales of land in the township were to Jonathan Green- leaf of Newbury, Jeremiah Green of Boston, and Daniel Bucknam, Jr., of Sutton. One of the provisions in Adam Turner's deed was that the grantee should "pay to the treasurer ... one shilling sterling silver money annually until there shall have been raised one thousand pounds ... for the sole purpose of purchasing a Library for the use of the inhabitants of the town."
In July, 1785, Joseph Barrows, Job Cushman and William Barrows received land for the purpose of building a good saw mill. Asa Bearce purchased his lots under conditions whereby he should clear land whose income should be used for "a learned public teacher of piety, religion and morals." John Greenwood, stepson of Shepherd, is accredited with being the first settler.
Originally called Phillip's Gore, Bog Brook Plantation and Shepherdsfield Plantation, Columbia was the name petitioned for by the settlers. No reason was given for the action of the General Court, but it did not comply with this request, for when the town was in- corporated in 1792, it was as Hebron, "the city of refuge." Liberty of conscience was allowed to all the people of Shepherdsfield, while the Bible was known in all the homes and regarded as the Word of God. The comforting passages of the Old Testament strengthened and sustained them.
Poland, 1795
"The Lord is my Shepherd, nor want shall I know, I feed in green pastures . . . . "
Our present-day town of Poland was originally a part of the tract of land called Bakerstown which was afterward incorporated into the towns of Poland, Minot and Auburn. According to the His- tory of Androscoggin County, the name Bakerstown was given in honor of Captain Thomas Baker who killed an Indian sachem on the bank of the rapid stream entering the Pemigewasset near Plymouth, still called Baker's River.
Bakerstown had its beginnings in 1735, when John Tyler, Joseph Pike and others, "officers and soldiers in the expedition to
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Canada, Anno 1690 under the command of Capt. John March, Capt. Stephen Greenleaf and Capt. Philip Nelson" petitioned the General Court for two townships of land in payment for their military ser- vice. The petition was granted in 1736 and one of these townships, Bakerstown, "on the Merrimac and adjoining Contoocook" was al- lotted to certain proprietors. This was finally abandoned, but in 1765 the General Court granted to the Bakerstown proprietors a town- ship of land in the Province of Maine to be laid out on the east side of the Saco River, adjoining some former grants.
The earliest settlers were Nathaniel Bailey who came to east Poland in 1768, John Newman, in 1769, and Moses Emery who with his wife and child came during the same year. In the summer Emery built a log house a few rods east of the bridge at Hackett's Falls, where he lived for some years, then moved to the place which is now the village of Minot Center. Daniel Lane was also an early settler. All of these came to what has long been known as "the Empire," in 1768 and 1769. After these came the Chandlers, Pulsifers, Nevins, Dunns, Rollins, Farringtons, Brays and Woodwards; and the various settle- ments came into being from those dates.
The town was incorporated as Poland in 1795, from Bakers- town and the Bridgham and Glover purchases. According to the his- torians of Poland, much speculation has arisen over the origin of the name; some suggest that it came from the Indian chief, Poland; others adopt the idca that it was borrowed from the ancient European kingdom or given in honor of one of the Polish patriots, Kosciusko or Count Pulaski, who so valiantly aided the cause of American liberty in the Revolutionary War.
The consensus of opinion, however, scems to be that Moses Emery, the Representative to the General Court who secured the in- corporation of the town, was, at his own request, given the privilege of naming the newly incorporated municipality. This he did, and chose the name of an ancient melody for which he had conceived a peculiar liking, called "Poland," found in most of the collections of ancient psalmody. Moses Emery was one of the earliest settlers. He came from New Gloucester and settled in what is now called Minot. He wrote the first records of the town in 1830, when he was eighty- six years of age.
The Shakers came to this town early in 1874 and 1875 and prospered for many years, although only a small number remain to- day, still ready to display and sell their handiwork to visitors either at their own buildings, one large structure of which still reminds one of their earlier numbers, or at the Poland Springs House.
In 1793 Jabez Ricker, then living in Alfred, exchanged lands with the Poland Shakers and with his sons, Samuel, Wentworth and
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Joseph, moved to the Range. Joseph was the first blacksmith in town, and Wentworth opened the first public house in town, now the Man- sion House at South Poland. On entering the Mansion House hall today, one will notice on a tiny door at the left the following: "This tiny bar was placed here in 1797, when the Mansion House was known as the Wentworth Ricker Inn."
Bethel, 1796
And Jacob said ... let us arise and go up to Bethel and I will make there an altar unto God who answered me in the day of my dis- tress and was with me in the way that I went .... And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him Bethel, and God blessed Jacob at Bethel.
The name Bethel is often translated, "the House of God."
The township of Bethel in Maine was originally granted to Josiah Richardson of Sudbury, Massachusetts, and others, for services rendered in the French and Indian Wars. As it was well on the way toward Canada, it gained the name among the settlers and others of "Sudbury, Canada." The first attempt to clear the land was in 1774, when Nathaniel Segar of Newton, Massachusetts, in the spring of that year, started to fell trees, but few settlers became permanent until after the Revolution. In 1779 Segar returned accompanied by Jonathan Bartlett.
The last hostile incursion of the Indians into Maine was in 1781, when a party from St. Francis made an attack upon the outer settlements, taking all the plunder they could and carrying away cap- tive Benjamin Clark and Nathaniel Segar, whom they detained until the close of the war sixteen months later.
Settlers came in rapidly after the close of the Revolution. Among the first were the six stalwart Bartlett brothers from Newton, Massachusetts. In 1789, Reverend Eliphas Chapman came in with a large family of sons. Samuel Ingalls moved from Andover to this town in 1796; his wife arrived with him and was the first white woman in the place. The first religious society was organized the same year as that of the incorporation of the town, 1796, and the first pastor, the Reverend Daniel Gould, was settled in 1799. Dr. John Brickett, the first physician, came from Haverhill, arriving in 1796, but he returned home in a short time and was succeeded in 1799 by Dr. Timothy Carter who practiced in this town for forty-six years. William Frye was the first lawyer. Gould's Academy was incorporated in 1836 with Isaac Randall as the first preceptor, and under Dr. N. T. True, who presided over the school from 1848 to 1861, it attained high rank.
The settlers who chose Bethel as the name for their town must have been familiar with their Bible, and must have felt that the beau-
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tiful place which they had selected as their home was an altar unto God who had been with them in the ways in which they had gone. It is said that the name was suggested by the Reverend Chapman.
China, 1796
"Then let the last loud trumpet sound, And bid our kindred rise."
No less a personage than the late Rufus M. Jones, Quaker preacher, philosopher and teacher, has left us an explanation for the naming of the town of China. In his little book, A Small Town Boy, he says:
One may study the geography of the world from a list of Maine towns. The specific town under consideration here is named China. Albion bounds China on the north, Palermo on the east and Windsor on the south, but the odd fact is that our China was not named for a country, but for an old and very doleful hymn which the pioneer settlers loved to sing. I cannot believe that many souls were saved by that tune.
He also adds that it is the only town in the United States by that name and that the short-lived bank established there was called the "Canton Bank."
When the Kennebec Purchasers, in the fall of 1773, sent John Jones and Abraham Burrell to survey a plantation east of Vassal- borough and plot it into lots for settlement, they laid the foundation for the present thrifty town of China. When they called this area Jones Plantation, the proprietors and their purchasers alluded to the old sur- veyor. At Gardiner, Jones was known as "Black Jones." Ephraim Clark of Nantucket Island spent the winter of 1773-74 here, and the follow- ing March selected two lots where the east shore of the lake curves, and that summer built his house near the water. Probably the same season his three brothers, Jonathan, Edmund and Andrew, and a brother-in-law, George Fish, secured lots in the plantation. The last mentioned and Ephraim Clark built on Clark Brook, sometimes called Fish Brook, the first saw mill in the town. Abraham Burrell, who had assisted in the survey, also built his log cabin near the shore of the lake. Michael Norton was an early settler and Josiah Ward soon fol- lowed and built the first frame house in town. The Nortons were en- terprising settlers and the vicinity where they lived is still known as Norton's Corner. In 1796 the place was incorporated as Harlem, for the Dutch city by that name.
China Village is pleasantly situated at the north end of the lake. Among its early settlers were John Brackett, Japheth C. Wash- burn, Deacon Wing and William Hunniwell. Benjamin Dow's grist
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mill was of logs, with a hollow log for a penstock; the gearing was of wood and the spindle, an old musket barrel. The first tannery here was built by Deacon Griffin on Wiggin Brook. Later, Samuel Hans- com built and ran a modern tannery; there were other tanneries also. The first store here was kept by Japheth Washburn, who also opened the first tavern some time later, in 1812. In 1818 portions of Harlem and of Albion and Winslow were incorporated as the town of China, and the remainder of Harlem was annexed in 1822.
The first post office was in Japheth C. Washburn's store, and he was appointed postmaster in 1818. Before 1810 and even after the post office was established, the bringing of mail from Getchell's Cor- ner was a weekly service by Mr. Washburn who sent two of his chil- dren for it on horseback.
On the east bank of the south end of China Lake is the busy village of South China. Among the first settlers here after Andrew Clark were Thomas Jones and Levi Jackson. A saw mill was first erected by the Jones family on the stream known as Jones' Brook and Joseph Hoxie put up a small tannery which was subsequently pur- chased and run by Nelson Russell.
South China post office was established in 1828, with Silas Piper as the first postmaster, in his grocery store. Being on the mail route from Augusta to Belfast, South China supported, in stagecoach days, a tavern kept by Elijah Crowell, who had built it as a residence. Near Three Mile Pond, west of South China, Samuel Taylor had a public house on the mail route.
Other villages were Weeks' Mills and Branch Mills. The for- mer was in the valley of the Sheepscot, where, on account of superior water power, Major Abner Weeks and his father had erected saw and grist mills and tanneries. At the latter, where the western branch of the Sheepscot enters the town from Palermo, similar mills and tan- neries had also been built.
St. George, 1803
"Since the crusades, Saint George has been the patron saint of England, and the English banner, a red cross on a silver ground, is called the banner of St. George."
The name came early to the coast of Maine. Captain George Weymouth, whose own name-saint was Saint George, bestowed it in 1605 upon the Island of Monhegan, in honor of England's patron saint, and placed a cross on Allen's Island, near the mouth of the Georges' River, to establish England's claim to the territory.
The blockhouse or trading post established in 1630 was near the present village of St. George. By this time many families had set-
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tled at Pemaquid and along the Georges' River. In 1630 eighty- four families were residing about this region; in 1635 mention is made of two families living at St. George, but their names are not given.
The fort of 1717 or 1720, strong and capacious, was built on the eastern bank of the Georges. A short distance from that a block- house was erected, and the large area between was enclosed by pali- sades. This afforded ample accommodation for a garrison of 250 men. In 1720 there were twenty houses, a few stores, and two or three wharves near the stronghold.
The plantation including the present towns of Warren, Thomas- ton, St. George and Cushing was St. George. Lower St. George in- cluded the towns of Thomaston, St. George and Cushing.
The town of Cushing, when incorporated in 1798, included St. George. The present town of St. George was incorporated in 1803.
When the first town meeting was called at that date it was held in the house of Samuel Watts. John McKeller was moderator; John Robinson, town clerk; and Joseph Robinson, John M. Kellar and Hezekiah Prince were selectmen and assessors. Among other inhabi- tants at this time were John Andrews, John Jameson, Wm. Wheeler, Thos. Kelloch, Elijah Hall, Barnabas Fountain, Adam Teel, Thos. Martin, Robert Wall, John Watts, John Madden, Dennis Fogerty, Enoch Ripley, James Matthews, Thos. Rivers and Benj. Clark.
A later fort built in 1809 and garrisoned during the War of 1812 was located in the village behind the present white church.
Some early comers to the present town of St. George might be mentioned: Captain Samuel Watts engaged in lumber and West In- dian trade during the Revolutionary War and was taken prisoner for a period of three or four weeks; Joshua Thorndike came early and Joshua Smalley, who had come from England and settled on Cape Cod, came into the eastern part of the town before 1792. The names of many fine sea captains, both past and present, such as that of Cap- tain Robert Long might be added to that of Captain Samuel Watts.
At the western part of Cutler's Cove, there was formerly a saw and grist mill. It was near the mill that vessels were built in St. George.
The first Baptist Church was organized at Wiley's Corner in 1784.
Martinsville in St. George has a special interest for lovers of Sarah Orne Jewett's stories. It was here in the schoolhouse where she taught, now replaced by a later model, that The Country of the Point- ed Firs was written.
Whitefield, 1809
Nil desperandum, Christo duce. "Never despair, where Christ is leader," was the motto selected by the gifted preacher, George
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Whitefield, for the encouragement of Lieutenant General William Pepperrell, the leader of the troops against Louisburg. This gave the expedition the air of a modern crusade.
When the town of Whitefield was incorporated in 1809, it was named for this celebrated itinerant minister from England, who visited New England in 1740, and again in 1744, and came to the Province of Maine in 1745. He visited York, Wells and Biddeford, where he preached to crowded assemblies that were both captivated and aroused by the life and copiousness of his sermons.
Whitefield, Maine, is the most northern town in Lincoln County. The northern section of the present town was settled about 1770 by Irish Roman Catholics. At this time the town formed the western part of Ballstown, now Jefferson, to which it remained at- tached until 1809. The name of the plantation was derived from John Ball who was a settler as early as 1770. He and other early comers were attracted by the forests and streams convenient for floating the logs to the sea. The Sheepscot River afforded many valuable sites for mills and machinery.
Very early in the history of the plantation, mills were built by John Woodman. Among early settlers were Joshua Little, Abram Choate, Benjamin King, Thomas Turner, Young, Fales, Dr. Samuel Heath, Ebeneezer Sterns and Coopers.
In 1818 the Reverend Dennis Ryan, first Catholic priest to be ordained in New England, was named the pastor of St. Denis Church in Whitefield. A log church was erected in 1822, and in 1833 a brick building with a Gothic tower was erected on the same site. The bricks used in this building and others near by were made by hand on the church grounds.
In the southern part of the town was a Baptist meeting house, where Elder Joseph Baily was settled. In 1818 he was Representative to the General Court from the town.
Carmel, 1811
And Elijah, the prophet said: Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty . . . Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice ... and they fell on their faces and said "The Lord, he is God."
It was at Mount Carmel in Palestine that Elijah's dramatic challenge took place which resulted in the vindication of Jehovah and the destruction of the prophets of Baal.
The township which is now Carmel, Maine, was purchased of Massachusetts in 1795 by Martin Kingsley of Hampden, a prominent man of that town and its first Representative to the General Court in
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1802. Its first settlers were Paul and Abel Ruggles. When the town was incorporated in 1811, the name of Carmel was doubtless sug- gested by the Reverend Paul Ruggles who delighted in preaching from prophecy and in using figurative and quaint passages such as are found in the prophetic books. The dramatic experience of Elijah at Mount Carmel doubtless gave him the reason for the suggestion of the name of the town.
Courageous and full of pioneering spirit, Paul Ruggles and his wife had pushed their way alone into the Maine wilderness in 1798. They sent their little stock of furniture and household goods on an ox sled and followed in a sleigh on the long cold journey into the deep woods, over primitive roads. Arriving at Hermon, they spent some weeks with a family named Garland who had built an early cabin in that township. Then they continued their journey by boat, a "dug out" made from a log. They paddled up the Sowadabscook into the central portion of the township, now Carmel, to the mouth of a beautiful clear stream which they called Ruggles' Brook. Here they built, first a log house and later a plank dwelling, directly in the midst of the wilderness. Later in the history of the town, Ruggles' son, Hiram, was an important citizen.
Another early settler was Alexander Small who also came by ox sled in 1800 or 1802. He found that Ruggles possessed the only horse in the community. Eben C. Hinckley came from Barnstable, Massachusetts, in 1806 or 1807.
Hermon, 1814
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethern to dwell together in unity ... as the dew of Hermon and as the dew that des- cended upon the mountains of Zion for the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
Hermon, Maine, located in Penobscot County, was settled be- fore 1784 and incorporated in 1814. It was one of the four towns as- signed to General Knox by the General Court in 1800, to complete his complement of the Waldo Patent. Here, as in other townships, the lots actually occupied by settlers were not distributed, and their titles, derived only from occupancy, were purchased for nominal sums.
At the incorporation of the town, its present biblical name was bestowed upon it. It was largely through the enthusiastic preach- ing of the Reverend Paul Ruggles in this area that this name, sym- bolizing the desire of the inhabitants to live in unity and harmony, was adopted. Mt. Hermon, the sacred mountain, the most conspicu- ous feature of the scenery in ancient Palestine because of its height, may have been the Mount of Transfiguration.
The pioneers in 1784 were Daniel Neal, Ebineezer Garlin,
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Benjamin Page, Gustaveus Swan, Charles Blagdon, Joseph Pumroy, Joseph Pumroy, Jr., James Pumroy, John Blagdon, Jaramiah Swan, Paoli Hewes, Charles Blagdon, Jr., William Hewes, Julius Hewes, John Swan and John Smith.
In the spring of 1798 when the energetic Baptist, Paul Rug- gles, was pushing his way into the wilderness of Carmel with his young wife they were guests for several weeks of a Hermon settler, a Mr. Garland, the date of whose arrival appears to be unknown. The growth of the plantation was slow, but there were about twenty families in the township when it was erected into a town in 1814.
Hiram, 1814
so Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and fir trees according to all his desires.
The name Hiram, that of a town in Oxford County, honors Hiram, King of Tyre, who furnished King Solomon with cedars from Lebanon for the building of the House of the Lord. The name was selected by General Peleg Wadsworth and Timothy Cutler who were among the early settlers who came, according to some authorities, about 1774; Williamson, however, uses the date 1780.
The town of Hiram is composed of various grants and lots of land, made to settlers who were generally veterans of the French and Indian Wars or the Revolution. In 1774 Lieutenant Benjamin In- galls of Andover, Massachusetts, Daniel Foster (a brother-in-law), Abiel Messer, John Curtis and Eben Herrick came to the Great Falls and laid out lots for each on the west side of the Saco River. Lieu- tenant Ingalls' lot included the plot where the Hiram Bridge Village now stands. Lieutenant Ingalls, to whom is accorded the honor of be- ing the first settler in the town in 1774, entered the British Army when a boy and was captured at Louisburg in 1745 at the age of seventeen. In 1761 he was commissioned a lieutenant. In October, 1785, a great freshet swept away his house, barn and blacksmith shop and he soon removed to Flintstown (Baldwin) where he settled near "Ingalls Pond."
Daniel Foster was the second settler in Hiram; he located not far from the bend in the Saco. He died in 1780, the first death in town.
Two grants of land in this section were made to Timothy Cut- ler. The "Upper Grant" is included mostly within the present bounds of Brownfield; the "Lower Grant," made in 1788, consisted in part of a portion of Mount Cutler which is named in his honor. He was the first postmaster in Hiram in 1801. The title to the northeastern part of the town seems to have been derived from a deed given in 1666 to Major Wm. Phillips of Saco, whereby Captain Sunday, the Indian
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sagamore, conveyed to him "three rocks of hills," supposed to be rich in silver ore.
James Eastman was one of the earliest to locate in Hiram; he was a soldier in the French and Indian Wars and in the Revolution. John Watson, said to have come from England, a Revolutionary soldier, came in 1778; Daniel Boston came early to Denmark, and in 1783 moved to Hiram Hills on the west side of the Saco. Four of his sons settled in town. John Burbank, also a Revolutionary soldier, came from Kennebunk in 1788; an early schoolmaster in Hiram, his three sons settled here.
John Clemons arrived from Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1779, first settling in Brownfield and coming to Hiram in 1780. While hunting, he discovered the large pond which bears his name, and moved his family thither. John Bucknell came from Fryeburg with his son, Simeon, in 1785; Lemuel Howard came from Brownfield the same year; John Ayer was living in Hiram as early as 1787. He built the first grist mill in the town on the brook just above the old "red mill." General Peleg Wadsworth, the grandfather of the poet, Long- fellow, a native of Duxbury, Massachusetts, and a Revolutionary pa- triot, bought of that Commonwealth, in 1790, a tract of land of 15,000 acres at thirteen cents per acre in the present town of Hiram, known as the Hiram or Wadsworth grant. The titles of the settlers' lots were partly from Massachusetts and partly from the General.
There is much forest and a great variety of trees, which would account for the borrowing of the name of King Hiram, whose land in Tyre abounded in "timber of cedar and timber of fir."
The place called Wadsworth Hall was built by the General in 1800 and there he moved in 1807. It is still standing, stately and elegant. One famous King's pine is said to be still located on the Wadsworth estate. Spared the King's axe, this tree is one of the few thus designated still standing in Maine.
Wesley, 1833
"My God, I am Thine, what a comfort divine, What a bless- ing to know that my Jesus is mine." So run the lines of one of John Wesley's hymns.
Wesley, Maine, lies in the interior of Washington County, on a high hill among the blueberry barrens. On a clear day a fine view is visible from the center of the village. The "Air Line," as the route is called which passes through this town, was projected in 1838-39 as a means of carrying soldiers to the border in the time of the Aroostook War. After the dispute of the boundary line was settled, the road re- mained unfinished until it was opened as a mail route in 1857. A few years later it was improved and stages were put in use, although stories
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