USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 5
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Hawthorne is said to have written his Recollections of a Busy Life. Back of the mill in the field is the old burying ground, where rest the early pioneers of the town.
Meddybemps, 1841
This town, located in Washington County, takes its name from one of the near-by natural features, a lake in Alexander. The word may be translated as "plenty of alewives." The town of Meddybemps was formed from portions of Cooper, Charlotte and Baring, in the records of which its early history may be found.
About one-third of Meddybemps Lake lies in the town, extend- ing to the center. It has its outlet at this point, constituting Denny's River. On this stream and at about the southern extremity of the lake, Meddybemps Village is situated and here are the mills.
Damariscotta, 1847
The word Damariscotta is usually translated as "the place of abundance of fishes." A long tidal inlet, a river, a salt pond and a fresh pond bear the name Damariscotta. As early as 1798 Sabatis, an intelli- gent Indian, gave the missionary, the Reverend Paul Coffin, the mean- ing of the word as "many little alewives."
The town lies on the eastern side of the Damariscotta River which separates it from Newcastle. It was a part of Nobleboro, from the incorporation of that town until 1847.
We find residents as early about Damariscotta as at the lower falls of Pemaquid. The people who settled the place in 1640 were some who left Pemaquid for new and easy fields for their enterprises. Among the early settlers was John Brown, Jr., who was the son of John Brown, Sr., of New Harbor. Farther up the river, but on the same side with Brown and directly across from the Oyster Banks, stood the residence of Robert Scott. The settlement was attacked by the Indians in 1745, and the exact date of the coming of permanent settlers is not known.
One of the first permanent settlers, however, was Mr. Anthony Chapman, who built a log house .. Later he went to Back Meadow where he took up a large tract of land which he divided among his sons. His four nephews came later, one of whom, Nathaniel, bought a tract of land from a Mr. Moulton who had purchased it from John Brown. His land comprised the principal site of the village. He built the Tilden Hall House in 1754. Many other houses here were built in the years following.
Mr. Benjamin Day and Stephen Hodgdon soon settled and with Nathaniel Chapman owned all the territory in, above and below the present village of Damariscotta.
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Soon afterward the names Huston, Hussey, Jones, Miller, Church, Woodward, Cox, Hiscock and Knowlton appear in town records.
Among the citizens residing on the east side of the river about the time of the troubles which culminated in the Revolutionary War were the Littles, Tobias Glidden, Benjamin Barstow, Solomon Dunbar, Nathaniel Bryant, Robert Robinson, Major John Farley, Christopher Hopkins, Joseph Glidden, the Taylors, Husseys, Winslows, Jones, Teagues and many others. These families contributed much in the making of the village.
Nathaniel Bryant, a ship carpenter, erected buildings and built wharfs; Benjamin Barstow built many vessels for Salem merchants in what became later Bryant's brick yard. Joseph Glidden, the ancestor of the family, was an early shipbuilder while his son, Colonel John Glid- den, had a long career of shipbuilding when that occupation was re- vived in 1824. Captain Ephraim Taylor enlisted as a Revolutionary soldier at the age of seventeen. Major John Farley, a tanner by trade, was town treasurer for thirty of forty years, county treasurer and four- teen times elected to the General Court. He was also the first post- master of Newcastle. In the Revolutionary War Knowlton, Chamber- lain, Day, several Chapmans, Huston, Hiscock, Church, Woodward, Cripps, Hodgdon, Miller and others served with honor and courage.
Colonel William Jones and his son Robert should also be listed among the number. In addition to his military service, the former represented his town several times at the General Court.
In 1812 Colonel Robert Day and Captain Richard Hiscock were active, as were many others.
Damariscotta became a town in 1847. At its first town meeting in 1848 D. R. Clapp was elected clerk; David Dennis, Daniel T. Weeks and Joseph T. Huston, selectmen; Joshua Hilton, treasurer.
Kenduskeag, 1852
The word Kenduskeag, meaning "the eel place," is descriptive of the stream which bears it and which flows into the Penobscot River at Bangor. It was here that the Indians were trapping eels when Champlain made his trip up the Penobscot in 1604.
The name Kenduskeag, or Conduskeag as it was earlier spelled, was applied at first to a large area of land first designated as Con- duskeag Plantation, then the town, now the city of Bangor.
The name Kenduskeag at present remains in the stream and in the small town twelve miles northwest of Bangor to which the name has been transferred.
The early history of the town is found in those of Levant and Glenburn, from each of which a portion of its territory was taken. It
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was incorporated in 1852 when the eastern part of Levant and the western part of Glenburn were joined together, making the new town.
Among the first settlers in the Kenduskeag territory was Major (afterward General) Moses Hodgdon, in 1801, a celebrated pioneer from South Berwick. He located upon the tract now occupied in part by Kenduskeag Village, but which was for many years in Levant. The next year this able and energetic man put up a saw and grist mill, three dwelling houses, a store and a blacksmith shop and thus early made a beginning of what has become a prosperous settlement. These were the first frame buildings erected in the region and were the only ones of the kind then standing on this line between the vicinity of Bangor and the Kennebec River.
Other early settlers were Recallis Clark, in 1803, Daniel Ladd and Samuel E. Dutton (afterward the first Judge of Probate in Ban- gor). He was entrusted with the agency of lands in this county for many years by the proprietors. Dr. Isaac Case, Thomas Griffin and Mark Little were also early settlers.
Mattawamkeag, 1860
This is the site of an ancient Indian village which borrowed its name from the river at whose mouth it is located. Mattawamkeag River is the largest eastern branch of the Penobscot. Its entrance is clearly distinguishable in low water by a large white gravel bar. Hence the word is most often translated as "a river with many rocks at its mouth." The name was later transferred to the town which grew up on the Indian location.
Accounts are available of the early use of the river as a highway to Canada. It is recorded that "M. DeVillieu in May 1624 left Me- ductic (on the St. John) and arrived on the 9th at the Fort of Meta- wamkeag where he found Taxous one of the great chiefs of these In- dians . . . . "
When John Gyles was carried captive up this river in 1689, he suffered indignities at the hands of the Indian women living there, and when Joseph Chadwick and his man passed up the Penobscot in 1764 looking for a possible route to Quebec he wrote: "Mederwom- keag is an Indine Town & a place of resedence in time of War, but now mostly vacated. In the Mass hous are Sundry large Books & other things. On the hous hangs a smal Bell al which the Indians take care to presarve -- large tracts of old fields & as they say - have rased good Indian Corn. The Easterly branch is the River Medortrester in which they pass to Pasemequode & St. Johns."
At a very early date efforts were made to improve the water power of the river, and John Gordon built a mill at Gordon Falls two
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miles above the village of Mattawamkeag on the confines of Winn and Mattawamkeag. It was burned by the Indians in 1812.
The Indians continued to live at the Point for some time and in 1824 when Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the father of Hannibal Hamlin, Enoch Lincoln and Dr. Ezekiel Holmes were all at Lincoln, exploring, they visited Colonel John Attean at Mattawamkeag Point.
Mattawamkeag was formerly known as Township No. 1, East Indian Purchase. The advent of the white man was in 1829 when Colonel Stanley erected a log cabin or shanty for the accommodation of man and beast engaged in hauling supplies for the lumbermen over the frozen roads of Penobscot ice. It was closed up during the summer season and Stanley soon left for Houlton after selling his place to Milli- ken and John Rollins. In 1829 the United States Government started the military road to Houlton and completed it as far as Mattawam- keag that year. In 1830 Captain George Waite, who had been hauling supplies to lumbermen, bought out Milliken and Rollins, the latter go- ing to Haynesville. Waite continued to keep a house of entertainment and soon purchased some land and built a frame house a little farther north above the creek.
In 1830 James Penley and George Wallace of Old Town erected a hotel on the site of the early Mattawamkeag stagehouse, then sold it to Thos. Pratt of Old Town; perhaps Ira Wadleigh owned an interest in it. Pratt finished the buildings and shortly sold them to Joseph L. Kelsey of Williamsburg.
In 1835 only two families remained, George Waite, farmer, hotel owner and owner of teams, and James Thompson, carrier of the Bangor and Houlton mail, probably the first to carry mail on the Ban- gor and Houlton road, who built the house known as the McDonald House, just north of Libby and Stratton store.
Previous to this time the mail had been carried to Houlton once a week by David Haynes and his son Alvin of Edinburg. The former had been the second settler in that town. Alvin drove the mail in a wagon to Howland where his father took it by boat to Skow's Landing, two miles up the Mattawamkeag River from the Point, where a camp was and the Houlton crew met them. The crew carried the mail seven miles through the woods to Jimscittacook Falls, now Kingman, where they boated to Haynesville, then on horseback to Houlton.
When the trouble about our northwest boundary caused soldiers to line the frontier and a fort and barracks to be constructed at Houl- ton, that place and Mattawamkeag became memorable and names were given to locations on the river which have ever since borne them. Supplies as well as soldiers had to be boated up the Mattawamkeag River to the landing below Gordon Falls. A road was cut through the
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woods then to soldiers field, where they encamped near Molunkus Stream above the falls, where they embarked again. When the troops reached the Forks (Haynesville) they went by the "spotted line" to Houlton some twenty miles away.
Thoreau, passing through Mattawamkeag in 1847, was im- pressed with the cakes and pies served "at a frequented house . . . where the Houlton stage stops." Here he also found "a substantial covered bridge over the Mattawamkeag, built . . . some 17 years be- fore." He "strolled down to the Point formed by the junction of the two rivers," which is said to be the scene of an ancient battle between the Eastern Indians and the Mohawks. He searched there carefully for relics, but found only some flakes of arrowhead stone, some points of arrowheads, one small leaden bullet and some colored beads, the last being, perhaps, from early fur trader days. "The Mattawamkeag though wide was a mere river's bed, full of rocks and shallows at this time ... and I could hardly believe my companion when he told me that he had been fifty or sixty miles up it in a batteau through distant and uncut forests."
The growth of the town was slow, but by 1860 it was able to be incorporated.
Madawaska, 1869
This town, situated in Aroostook County and first settled by the Acadian French in the latter part of the eighteenth century, bears the Indian name of the river opposite the mouth of which one of their earliest settlements was located. Its meaning has most often been given as "having its outlet among the reeds."
Just after the middle of the eighteenth century, a small group of Acadians escaped deportation at the hands of the English, who, on their refusal to take the oath of allegiance in 1755, finally determined that they all be removed and dispersed among the British colonies. This small group made a temporary settlement on the St. John River, a short distance above Frederickton. In the following year they pushed up the river and settled along the banks of the upper St. John, where they were joined by other Acadians from New Brunswick, Maine, and Massachusetts.
The first settlement was made opposite the mouth of the Mada- waska River and because of this, the whole region became known as the Madawaska Territory.
Some important personages came to Madawaska. Louis Me- cure, born at Charlottetown, Prince Edwards Island, in 1753, was one. His name occurs on most of the documents which concern the primitive history of Madawaska. Joseph Daigle, one of the most interesting of the early figures of Madawaska, was a gentleman farmer and a great
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supporter of the church. The name of Jean-Baptiste Cyr may also be mentioned.
It was in June, 1785, that the first group which had just left St. Ann went up the St. John River and founded the settlement of Madawaska. The first comers settled not far from the present site of St. David's Church. This can be called the origin of the colony. These are the names of the first settlers on the south shore of St. John River as they appear on the official list sent by the Honorable J. Odell to the commissary of the colony: Pierre Duperre, Paul Potier, Joseph Daigle, Baptiste Fournier, Joseph Daigle, Jr., Jacques and Francois Cyr, Fir- min and Antoine Cyr, Alexander Ayotte, Baptiste Thibodeau and Louis Sampson. Here the Acadians lived a hard and crude life. They had no money for trade and were forced to live by their own industry and ingenuity, as their ancestors had done. They were their own black- smiths and outfitters.
The earliest American settlers came about 1817. They were Captain Nathan Baker, the brothers John and James Harford and Captain Fletcher, all American citizens. They came as far as the St. John River and settled at the confluent stream of Méruimticook River (now Baker River) twenty miles west of St. Basil.
A short time later others came from the Kennebec region. These new settlers were John Baker, brother of Nathan, Jesse Wheelock, James Bacon, Charles Studson, Barnabas Hunnawell, Walter Powers, Daniel Savage, Randall Harford, Nathaniel Bartlette, Augustus Web- ster and Amos Maddocks. Some settled on Baker River and others established themselves farther up the river in the St. Francis region.
John Baker came from Moscow. Owing to his talents and ac- tivity he soon became the acknowledged leader of the Madawaska region. He received a grant of land from the state.
Since British justice had been established at Madawaska in 1797, a conflict arose, when Maine incorporated this region in 1831, as to which of the two countries had jurisdiction of this area. The question was finally settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842.
The town of Madawaska was incorporated in 1869.
Millinocket, 1901
Millinocket is the name of a lake and a stream whose waters empty into the West Branch of the Penobscot River. The word means "dotted with many islands" and is a description of the lake which bears the name. When the town was set off from Indian Township No. 3 in 1901, the name of the near-by body of water was transferred with it.
The first white man to live in the region of what is now Mill- inocket, which was then Township No. 3, was Thomas Fowler, who
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built a log cabin on the west side of the West Branch of the Penobscot at the head of Shad Pond, about 1830. Thomas Fowler and his wife Betsey had eight children who also settled in the area round about and little by little cleared and inhabited patches of land. The woods in those days were full of moose, caribou, deer, bears and other fur- bearing animals. The streams were the haunts of water fowl, and were full of trout and salmon which came up the streams so thickly that they could be scooped into batteaux, the flat-bottomed boats of the lumbermen.
Thoreau, who was here in 1846 on his way to Katahdin, de- votes some time and space in his diary to a description of the country:
We reached Shad Pond or Nolisumack an expansion of the river .... We took here a poor and leaky batteau and began to pole up the Millinocket two miles to the Elder Fowl- ers in order to avoid the Grand Falls of the Penobscot intend- ing to exchange our batteau for a better. The Millinocket is a small, sandy and shallow stream . . .. Old Fowler's on the Millinocket ... Twenty-four miles from the Point is the last house ... Fowler is the oldest inhabitant of these woods. He formerly lived a few miles from here on the South side of the West Branch where he built his house sixteen years ago (1830) the first house built above Five Islands. Here our new batteau was to be carried over the first portage of two miles, round the Grand Falls of the Penobscot on a horse sled made of saplings to jump the numerous rocks in the way . . . This portage probably followed the trail of an ancient Indian carry round these falls. By two o'clock we who had walked on before reached the river above the falls, not far from Quakish Lake and waited for the batteau to come up . ... The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with grey lichens looked at a dis- tance like the ghosts of trees ..... The country is an archi- pelago of lakes - the Lake Country of New England.
In 1860 Charles and Daniel Watson joined the Fowlers, ap- parently lived in a friendly fashion with them and found the country to their liking.
Honorable Charles Mullen, civil engineer, railroad contractor and lumberman, cruised the township in 1899 and found a plentiful supply of pulpwood, and ample possibilities for electrical development on the Penobscot River. Mr. Mullen contacted Mr. Garret Schenck, at that time general manager of the Rumford Falls Paper Company, one of the ablest men in the pulpwood industry, who immediately recognized the possibilities of the place. In 1899 contractors started to build the mill and power development of the Great Northern Paper Company. At that time there was only a section house here and an old hunter's camp. By 1901 many nationalities had made their homes in Millinocket, and the town was incorporated.
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The first white child born in what is now Millinocket was un- doubtedly Adeline Fowler, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Fowler. She was born prior to 1840 in the old farmhouse where the Great Northern Mill now stands.
Among the early settlers of the present town were Frank Rush, who came in 1899, and Dr. George W. Mackay, who came to Mill- inocket in 1900. Jerry Michaud came the same year and became a long-time employee for the News Print Company; Mr. Emery Ward was foreman in the Millinocket yard in 1900, where he continued until 1907, when he became a game warden.
The earliest police chief was Fred M. Gates, who served from 1902 to 1935.
From the time he came to Millinocket with the Great Northern Paper Company until his death in 1931, the town heaped every pos- sible honor on George W. Stearns. He was the first land agent for the company, the first superintendent of schools, chairman of the school board, and of the selectmen, the town's first judge and its representa- tive to both branches of the Legislature, as well as a member of the Governor's Council. The local high school is named in his honor.
East Millinocket, 1907
From its location in respect to Millinocket this new town as- sumed the name of East Millinocket when incorporated. Its location is in an entirely separate and smaller township than that from which Millinocket was carved, the East Half of Township A Range 7 in Penobscot County, Maine. The place was formerly known as Burnt Sand Rips, comprising ten thousand acres, more or less.
Its development was brought about by the Great Northern Paper Company, whose surveys and construction work for the mills, newsprint at East Millinocket and ground wood mill at Dolby began in the spring of 1906.
Prior to that time the area above Dolby was the only portion of the township where people had settled. Two brothers, John W. and Charles T. Powers, had farms in the vicinity of Schoodic Stream. These farms were purchased by the Great Northern and were inun- dated by the flowage when Dolby Dam was built.
I am indebted to one of my former pupils, Mr. Everett Mc- Cann, for much of the following material.
The officers elected at the first town meeting in 1907 may be listed among the early citizens of the town: moderator, Frank O. Pray; town clerk, Charles J. Gosnell; selectmen and overseers of the poor: James H. Mack, Chairman, Guy S. Baker and Wm. S. Johnson. Other officers elected were treasurer and tax collector, Harry L. Wey- mouth; school committee, Harry H. Haines, Chairman, David O. Nes-
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bitt and Charles J. Gosnell; road commissioner, Beecher Colbath; fire wardens: H. W. Severance, Elmer W. Prouty, W. S. Ham; constables, Wilbur T. Ray, V. J. Belanger and Charles Boynton; surveyors of wood, bark and lumber, Guy S. Baker and Emery Getchell; sealer of weights and measures, Wm. A. Johnson.
The citizens voted to raise $3,000 toward the erection of a pub- lic school and $5,000 for other departments.
A two-room elementary school was opened in the abandoned boarding house on Main Street on January 1, 1908, and in the fall of that year, a two-year high school began its work. In 1918 a four-year course was instituted.
The first services of the Catholic church were held in 1907, the building being officially dedicated in 1911. The Congregational church began its services in 1908, and its official dedication was held in 1908.
The first permanent dwelling house was erected during the winter of 1906-07 by Guy S. Baker.
The first temporary store built on the south side of Main Street, was owned and operated by the J. F. Kimball trading company.
The Great Northern Paper Company has many times and in many ways contributed to the development of the town and its wel- fare. Among these gifts might be mentioned the financing of the muni- cipal building by a gift of $10,000, in 1914-15, and a cash donation of $25,000 for the new high school building in 1926-27. Mr. Garrett Schenck personally gave $1,000 toward the cost of the library as well as a flag and flagpole.
Among the business and professional men and women con- nected with the early life of the community were: Guy S. Baker, Post- master; William A. Johnson, Trial Justice; Harry H. Haines, Pharma- cist; James H. Mack, Assistant Land Agent; Thomas Van Hunter, M. D .; Sidney Stevens, Attorney at Law; Miss Ada Ham, Town Nurse; Ora Gilpatrick, Dentist.
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CHAPTER III
Maine Towns and Cities Whose Names Derive from English Towns, 1647 - 1760
"The seventeenth century shows us an English world in America." - Charles M. Andrews
Following the Indians came the English to write the second chapter of Maine history in her place names. Mention has already been made of the granting of the Province of Maine in 1622 to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason and the division of the land in 1629. The Royal Charter of 1639 conveyed to Gorges great powers and privileges, under feudal tenure which Royalty alone could bestow. Gorges himself never reached this country, but under his pa- tronage and that of other good royalists and Episcopalians, the Eng- lish settled in the Province of Maine, now the southwestern portion of our state. Their vision of an Old England in New England, where loyal subjects of the King would rule over a faithful and contented tenantry, soon faded, but the record of these seventeenth century Eng- lishmen may still be found in the old English names of our towns lo- cated chiefly in that section of our state.
Such names as Kittery, York, Wells, Scarborough, Falmouth, North Yarmouth, Biddeford, Bristol, Bath, Berwick and Woolwich are among those borrowed from the stately old English towns from which the colonists had come and which were known and loved by Sir Ferdinando Gorges. They not only attest the nationality and po- litical affiliations of our earliest English settlers, but also evince the love and loyalty of our English forebears for their faraway British homes and relatives in Gorges' own West County.
As Andrews says:
Both founders and permanent colonists were from the Devon county of seaman and adventurers who cared nothing about the logical dogmas and church reform. The founders were as a rule of the landed gentry, loyalist in sympathy and adherents of the Anglican church with nothing in common with Puritanism. The body of the people were like their fore- bears sturdy, coarse, hard-drinking, profane, none too fond
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of church going and impatient of too strict an enforcement of law and order .*
Owing to political conditions which were reflected in this coun- try, Gorges' Province of Maine, which in 1639 had extended from the Sagadahoc (Kennebec) River on the east to the Piscataquis on the west, was reduced in 1646 to a miserable remnant with the Kenne- bunk as its eastern boundary. To revive and reorganize, a new admin- istration, courts were convened.
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