USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 50
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The Narraguagus River flows the entire length of the town, which is long and narrow. The early settlers gained their living by hunting and fishing. The vast timberlands furnished lumber for ship- building, in which business Major Wallace was a pioneer. There were many noted shipbuilders here, and the Milbridge ships sailed around the world.
Medway, 1875
This Penobscot County town formerly bore the Indian name, Nicatow, meaning "The Forks," for it is here that the Penobscot River forks or divides into its east and west branches. Organized un- der that name as a plantation in 1852, it retained it for nearly a quarter of a century. In 1875, when it was incorporated as a town, the name Med (mid) way was bestowed upon it, since it was located midway between Bangor and the north line of Penobscot County.
In early lumbering days the village was an important place; logs were sorted here and sent to Bangor in a sorted drive, since it is in the locality in which those two streams so important to loggers and lumbermen, the East and West branches of the Penobscot, unite their waters and deposit their precious freight from the far north and northwest forests. It had a growth during the decade 1870-1880 unapproached in actual numbers or ratio by any other town in the county except Kingman. Rising in those ten years from 321 inhabi- tants to 628, it very nearly doubled its citizenship.
There is an old mill site at the lower end of the island where the branches join their waters. From its favorable situation, settle-
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ment naturally got quite early into this tract, around 1820, it is said, although the pursuits of the river and of lumbering must have caused much transient occupation by the whites before that time. By 1852 the number of inhabitants here was enough to demand the simple local government which the plantation system provides.
Charles E. Powers came to Medway from Kennebec County, Maine, and first settled in Marion, Maine, but moved to Medway in 1847, where he lived and engaged in farming and lumbering. Walter Fiske came to Medway from Pepperell, Massachusetts, in 1846, from which place he moved to Mattawamkeag. Benjamin N., of Medway, his son, was born March 1, 1815, in Pepperell, Massachusetts. He began business as a hotelkeeper in Medway in 1844, was the first clerk in the plantation of Nicatow, was postmaster and town treasurer for several years and selectman at various times.
When Thoreau made his trip to Maine in 1846 on his way to Katahdin, he was obliged "to follow an obscure trail up the north bank of the Penobscot" from Mattawamkeag.
There was now no road further, the river being the only highway and but half a dozen log huts, confined to its banks to be met with for 30 miles. On either hand and beyond was a wholly uninhabited wilderness stretching to Canada . . . Occasionally there was a small opening on the bank for the purpose of log rolling where we got a sight of the river, always a rocky and rippling stream.
Wading Salmon Stream in the present town of Medway, he records a few miles farther on "Marm Howards at the end of an ex- tensive clearing where there were two or three log huts in sight at once . ." His description of our present Medway continues:
The next house was Fisk's at ten miles from the Point at the East Branch opposite to the island Nickatow or the Forks, the last of the Indian Ids. .. One of the party who en- tered the house in search of some one to set us over reported a very neat dwelling with plenty of books . ... We found the East Branch a large and rapid stream at its mouth and much deeper than it appeared.
The words for town: ville in French, borough in English, now often shortened to boro, and burgh in Scotch appear in the names of some of our Maine towns, as a means of identifying or distinguishing them.
Islesborough, 1788
Islesborough, "a town located upon an island" was incorpor- ated in 1788, when it embraced Long, Seven Hundred Acre, Lime, Marshal (Wm. Pendleton) and Lassell Islands. It was first settled in
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1760 by Wm. Pendleton and Benj. Thomas. The inhabitants derived the titles to their lands in 1801 from General Henry Knox.
In 1692, when Benjamin Church came, he landed on Seven Hundred Acre Island and found a few French and Indians there, who fled to Long Island. From 1750 to 1760 whale fishermen visited the island, and enterprising merchants from Rhode Island and Connecti- cut had successful whale fisheries on the coast. Fishermen from Block Island went to this island for wood and water, and this was what had induced the Pendleton immigration.
The names of the settlers in 1767-68 were Benjamin Thomas, Shubael Williams, Wm., Saml., Thos. and Joseph Pendleton; from the latter date, 1768, to 1800 came Simon Dodge, John Gilkey, Wm. Grinnell, Valentine Sherman; Anthony, Hosea, Peter and Fields Coombs, the last four from Brunswick; Joseph Boardman, Boston, Thos. Ames and Jeremiah Hatch, Jr., from Marshfield, Massachusetts ; Warren Veazie, Tasell, Parker, Farrow, Sprague, Cottrell, Hewes, Marshall, Holbrook, Jones, Thomas, Turner, Nash and others. Dur- ing the Revolution, they were as loyal patriots as they could be on an island surrounded by British men of war. Some settlers were shamefully abused by the British, some, tradition says, ys, "turned an honest penny" by supplying the enemy with cattle.
Job's Island was settled by Job Pendleton, son of William. Captain John Gilkey was probably born on Cape Cod in 1744 and went to Islesborough in 1775-76. He settled near the point where the lighthouse is now, overlooking Gilkey's Harbor, which is said by people who have seen both to be quite as beautiful as the Bay of Naples. Gilkey was a selectman and a prominent citizen for many years. He bought in 1799 of General Henry Knox, agent for the Waldo heirs, land on Long Island Harbor and was a staunch patriot when some were neutral or otherwise, although treated badly by the British. The Gilkey family has furnished a large number of master mariners.
Elihu Hewes was the first settler on the southerly side of Bounty Cove, now Hewes Point. The island is from three miles to three rods in width and thirteen miles long. One of the earliest maps including it is that of "Eman Bowin, Geographer to the King, 1774." It is there called Longue Island, claimed by Henry Knox as part of the Waldo Patent. He and the General Court were too much for the eighteen fishermen and marines who had gone there before the Revo- lution, supposing it belonged to Massachusetts. The first settlers al- ready mentioned came in 1760. Benjamin Thomas was the first to bring his family to the island; Shubael Williams was the second set- tler. He had been here previously on fishing voyages.
In 1770 a total eclipse of the sun occurred, visible only in Penobscot Bay. The authorities of Harvard applied to the British
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general at Castine for permission to send a party to observe the eclipse, said to be the first attempt in this country to accomplish any- thing of the kind. Limited permission was given and the party, under the charge of the Reverend Samuel Williams Hollis, Professor of Math- ematics at Harvard, landed at Bounty Cove and proceeded to the home of Mr. Williams, where the total eclipse was seen on October 27.
Captain Wm. Pendleton, already mentioned, came in 1760, had five notable sons. Thomas, a cousin or nephew of the above, was a master mariner, well known among ship owners. No history of Isles- borough would be complete without mention of his sons, the enter- prising and successful ship owners, Pendleton Brothers of Islesborough and New York. The Reverend Thos. Ames came from Marshfield in 1770. His house is said to be the oldest framed house on the island. He was moderator at the first town meeting in 1789, preached as an itinerant Baptist minister from 1804 to 1809, and was a most worthy and acceptable preacher.
Waterville, 1802 (City, 1883)
The settlement on the west bank of the Kennebec at Ticonic Falls, including the larger part of what is now the city of Waterville, was long known by the pioneers as Ticonic Village, even after it was incorporated as a part of the present town of Winslow in 1771. As for the Indian word Ticonic, Hanson says that it means "a place to cross." The name, Waterville, given at the time of its incorporation as a separate town in 1802, means "a town or city located on the water," here the Kennebec River.
As to the identity of the earliest settlers, there is no means of knowing. Clark and Lake had a trading post on the west side of the river between 1650 and 1675, and are the first white men of whom there is any record. It is doubtless true that the population of Wins- low on the west side of the Kennebec was greater at an early date than that upon the east side. In 1791 the population of the entire town was 779, of which 479 lived on the west side. Separation was a fore- gone conclusion. The first recorded proposition for such a division was at the Winslow town meeting of 1795. The warrant for this town meeting of Waterville was issued by Asa Redington, justice of the peace, and directed to Moses Appleton, physician, requiring him to notify the inhabitants of Waterville to meet in the public meeting house of Ticonic Village on Monday, July 26, 1802. This public house had been built in 1797.
No early settler of Waterville was more active or useful or more entitled to respect than Dr. John McKechnie, an educated phy- sician, a civil engineer and land surveyor, possessed of sound practi-
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cal judgment wherever he was placed. He was a Scotsman who had come to this country in 1755 and to Winslow in 1771. Although he did not make a business of his profession, it is said he was a physician in Arnold's army, when it was at Fort Halifax in 1776. He was the first owner of Lot 103 under the Plymouth Company.
John Cool, a Revolutionary soldier, was the next settler south of him. On the north, Dr. Obadiah Williams owned Lot 104. He was also a surgeon in the Revolutionary Army at Bunker Hill. He came to the western part of Winslow from Sidney in 1792, and the same year built the first frame house on that side of the river. In 1791 he gave the land for the first meeting house, now the City Hall Park, and was a valued public citizen. Dr. Moses Appleton, to whom the warrant for the first town meeting was directed, originated from New Ispwich, New Hampshire, graduated from Dartmouth College, studied medicine, taught school in Boston and came to the present Waterville in 1796. He opened the first drug store in Ticonic Village and was for many years the most noted physician in this section.
Daniel Moor came here in 1798. His sons, March, Wm. and Daniel, began business in boating and lumbering; then they built river steamers by the dozen. They sent five to California, sold two to Cornelius Vanderbilt and one or more to Nova Scotians, besides sev- eral nearer home. No bridge was built on the Kennebec between Waterville and Winslow until 1824. That year a covered toll bridge was erected by a stock company, but it was washed away in 1832. An- other, similar one was built by private parties, including Jedediah Morrill, Timothy Boutelle, the Redingtons and James Stackpole.
Early mills were built on the Emerson Messalonskee Stream in its course through Waterville, one of the earliest saw mills by Asa Emerson for whom the stream was named. At the upper dam Dr. McKechnie had built his saw and grist mills before 1780. There were early tanneries, small but efficient; Sanborn's was one and Pearson's, more important. The post office at Waterville was established in 1796. Asa Redington, a Revolutionary soldier, was the first post- master. He came from Massachusetts soon after the war.
Newburgh, 1819
Newburgh in Penobscot County, bears a name which describes it as "a new town." The suffix is of Scottish origin. It is embraced within the limits of the Waldo Patent and was sold by General Henry Knox to Benjamin Bussey. Settlers began to arrive about 1794. The town was incorporated under its present name in 1819. It was one of the four townships selected February 5, 1800, to make good the de- ficiency in the Muscongus or Waldo Patent, a large share of which was assigned to General Knox. The settlers' lots had to be reserved in
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the grant to the Waldo heirs. Already a goodly number of hardy pioneers were there.
Between 1794 and 1798 or not long thereafter, had come Captain Edward Snow, a retired sea captain and a Methodist min- ister as well, who is accredited with being the first settler. Cullum Muffit is said to have been the second on the ground, and then Messrs. George and Ichabod Bickford, Thomas Morrill, Spooner Alden, Freeman Luce, Levi Mudgett, James Morrison, Abel Hardy, Ezekiel Smith, Daniel Piper and others. Settlement was measurably kept back for a time by the exorbitant prices asked for the land by Mr. Bussey; but after his death, the heirs and their agents were more reasonable and the plantation or township filled up more rapidly. It was Plantation No. 3 until 1819, when it became a full-fledged town.
When the first town meeting was held at the call of Rufus Gil- more, there were about forty voters in town, of whom thirty-four were present. Spooner Alden was moderator and Mr. Gilmore, clerk. Both of these with Benjamin Folsom were elected selectmen, asses- sors and overseers of the "New Town," Newburgh.
One of the earliest settlers of Newburgh was David Gilmore, who came from Franklin, Massachusetts, and for many years was agent for Benjamin Bussey. He was a land surveyor and assisted in laying out the Hallowell Military Road and the townships in Aroos- took County. He also surveyed the Calais Road, held prominent town offices, was county commissioner for two terms and was chosen to represent the town in the Legislature. Rufus, his son, was also a prom- inent citizen, adjutant of the militia on the Hampden battleground in 1814 and afterward promoted to be a colonel. He was a land sur- veyor for many years and like his father filled many town, county and state offices.
Jacob Dearborn came as early as 1786, cleared up a farm and made a home for a large family. He was a soldier in the War of 1812 and took part in the Battle of Hampden under General Blake. Re- spected as a citizen, he lived to a ripe old age. Daniel Smith emigrated to this country in an early day with his father, Jeremiah Smith. He was one of the very first settlers in the town and had to go miles on horseback to mill through the woods, as no roads were laid out. He too was at the Battle of Hampden in the War of 1812. He was a Representative to Portland, one of the first in the county, and held many town offices. Elisha Piper of Parsonsfield had settled in New- burgh in 1799. It was a wilderness when he came in. Levi Mudgett had also emigrated from Gilmanton, New Hampshire, in 1799; one of the first settlers in the town, he cleared up a farm and built a house.
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Like many of the other citizens of Newburgh, he too served at Cas- tine in the War of 1812.
Newburgh is on the old stage route from Bangor to Vassal- borough, through China in Kennebec County. The town house is halfway across, almost at the exact geographical center of the town. The headwaters of a number of streams are in this town, but no stream cuts completely across it, except a tributary of the Sowadabs- cook and this only in two branches part of the way and only across a little more than the northwest quarter of the town. In older days hemlock and other woods of Newburgh forests prompted a large business in hauling bark and cordwood to Bangor and elsewhere on the Penobscot.
Greenville, 1836
The town of Greenville in the western part of Piscataquis County is situated on the southern extremity of Moosehead Lake.
The southern part of the township was a public grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to Thornton Academy at Saco, while the northern section was given by the State of Maine in 1820 for the aid of Saco Free Bridge.
Nathaniel Haskell of Westbrook purchased the Academy Grant and moved his family, a widowed daughter, Mrs. Waldron, and her children, into a completed house in 1827. The township was organized as Haskell's Plantation in 1831; in 1836 it was incorporated as the town of Greenville, the name meaning the "verdant town," or a town of virgin forests. Greenville has ever been the base of supplies for the lumbering operations on the lake and its tributaries, the starting point of explorers, fishing parties, hunters and tourists and is the chief har- bor for the lake's steamboat navigation. The northern part of the town has been valued more for its timber than for its agricultural pursuits. Alexander Greenwood, Esq., lotted the south half into two- hundred acre lots in April, 1825.
In the summer of 1824 Nathaniel Haskell and Oliver Young felled ten acres of trees, and John Smith, Mr. Haskell's son-in-law, six acres on an adjoining lot. The next summer, Mr. Haskell cleared his first opening and felled seven acres more. He also cut out part of a road leading to the lake. By this time Cowan, Littlefield and others began to lumber on the lake and to have supplies hauled in by sledding over the road. In 1826 Haskell and Young raised the first crop in town and put up a house, and the following summer cut the first hay. Mrs. Waldron eventually married Oliver Young and settled near by. Wm. Cummings was the next to move in a family, and Isaac Sawyer, Mr. Shaw and Mr. Tufts were other early comers.
A few years later, in 1831, Samuel Cole arrived, and Edmund
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Scammon and John Gerrish soon after him. In 1829 Messrs. Varney, two brothers from Windham, built a saw mill on Wilson Stream so that boards and sawed lumber became available, and in 1830 Mr. Haskell also put in a small grist mill.
Mr. Phineas Pratt, for many years principal of Saco Academy, and Samuel Cole purchased the wild land. The state had granted Mr. Haskell six hundred acres of wild land to reward him for opening that remote township. For this he received $600. In 1832 Samuel Cole and Isaac Whitcomb built a saw mill on Eagle Stream, a branch of Wilson Stream, and this passed to Oliver Young. All the earlier settlements were up on the East Ridge from one to three miles dis- tant from the lake. Up to 1832 there were only six or seven families.
In 1830 Mr. John Gerrish had begun to clear an opening on the South Ridge and the next year moved his family there and cut a new road from the foot of the lake, connecting with one extending to Monson. New settlers came in. In 1835 Henry Gower made the first clearing where the village now stands and built the first store the following year. Mr. Hogan put a small steamboat for towing rafted logs upon the lake in 1836 and large sailboats came into use. The important business has always been lumbering. The first lake steamer was launched in 1838. Moosehead Lake is the greatest of all New England lakes and cuts through the almost trackless wilder- ness for a stretch of thirty-five miles, hemmed in by rugged mountains and flanked by virgin forests. Whittier wrote "To a Pine Tree" after visiting this vast area of water.
Centerville, 1842
Centerville in Washington County lies fifteen miles northwest of Machias in about the center of the county, hence its name. It was formerly known as Plantation No. 23, East Division. It was incorpor- ated in 1842. Milton and Peaked mountains in the western part of the town are the principal elevations. Machias River runs through the eastern part southward, and Chandler River and its branches drain the western part of the town. Great Falls on the Machias River have a descent of twenty feet in sixty rods.
The heads of families in 1820 were Obediah Allen, John Bar- ton, Mathew Coffin, Carl Carleton, John Harrington, Joshua Wood, John Wood and four others.
Woodville, 1895
Woodville lies in Penobscot County, on the west bank of the Penobscot River. It was formerly Indian Township No. 2 or West In- dian, lying opposite Indian Township No. 1, now Mattawamkeag. It was organized in 1854 as Woodville Plantation, someone of the family
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of Benjamin Stanwood giving it the name. It became a town in 1895. The suffix ville is the French word for town or city, therefore the name Woodville is a descriptive term meaning a "town or city abounding in woods."
The principal stream in the town is the Pattagumpus, an In- dian word meaning, according to an intelligent Indian guide, Joe Francis, "a sharp turn in the river where the bottom is gravelly." The town is straight up the valley of the Penobscot; it has in itself a rather large territory and is surrounded by large tracts of land.
The settlement of most of the towns on the Upper Penobscot or in the vicinity of Mattawamkeag was by men who came to work upon the Military Road from Lincoln to Mattawamkeag or Houlton, between 1830 and 1835. Chas. Scott and James Dudley came from Machias, Maine, to the upper part of Woodville in 1832. A year afterward, Moses and Mark Scott made clearings and settlements in the vicinity. A year or two previously, the Scotts had made settlements in Chester which lay between the lower end of this township and the Penobscot River. In most cases, log huts were built in the little clear- ings of the pioneers, until as prosperity dawned upon their efforts, they hewed out timbers from the abundant pine in their midst, and obtained boards to cover their homes from Lincoln, where the nearest mill was located. This continued for some time.
In 1837 Clark Hanson made a falling of ten acres of trees on a place near the Chester line, near which Temple Ireland had made a settlement in 1832, the first and only clearing in that part of the town. In 1833 Peleg Otis and Wm. Mayberry came from Brewer and made openings where the James Glidden and James Pond farms are. Mr. Otis was to have a state lot given him if he would make a farm here. Meanwhile, or within ten years, settlements increased in the upper parts of the township and especially down by the Penobscot River. James Dudley, 2nd, and Roland and Chas. Dudley made some slight clearings, all of which have since been abandoned. These were in the vicinity of Medakeunk Rips in the Penobscot River. James Dudley, 2nd, built a mill on Eagle Stream close by the banks of the Penob- scot River about 1840. This stream empties into the Penobscot River a short distance above the mouth of the Medakeunk Stream.
In 1842 Benjamin Stanwood came from Eden, Maine, now Bar Harbor, and settled near the Libby place; his son, Calvin, lived there later. John White and Simon Hanson about 1840 made farms, the best in the town, on a high point of land back of Eagle Stream. With the exception of half a dozen farms, the settlements in Wood- ville are made on the county road running to Medway; all the rest is an almost unbroken wilderness. Geo. Glidden, who came to Wood- ville in 1836 from Pittston, died about 1850 and his son, George, born
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in Pittston in 1806, succeeded him. He was extensively engaged in farming and lumbering. In the year 1895 Woodville became a town.
The general term land is often found in the names of Maine towns defined by a prefix which distinguishes the particular type of land or some outstanding characteristic or trait.
Hartland, 1820
At least three of the names of Maine towns in addition to one city, Rockland, have the word land as a suffix: Hartland, Oakland and Woodland. Hartland is situated in the southeastern part of Somer- set County. It was formerly called Warren's town, No. 3, from Dr. John Warren of Boston who was the first private proprietor of the township, from whom the settlers derived their titles. He also owned our present towns of St. Albans and Palmyra. The present town of Hartland was settled about 1800 and was organized as a plantation in 1811. Hartland formerly was a part of St. Albans, where the first house was erected by Stephen Hartwell who also put up the first saw mill in the village which later became Hartland. Hartland is an old English name, meaning the land of the hart, or the deer, and the town received its name from that source, some writers say, when it became incorporated in 1820, one of the two last towns incorporated before the separation. A present resident of the town, however, states: "Hartland got its name from being in the 'Heart of the Hills,'" since the surface of the town is very uneven.
Black Stream and Sebasticook River, the outlet of Moose Pond, are the largest streams. The principal water power of the town is on the Sebasticook, at Hartland Village, near the eastern border of the town. Some of the manufactories located here have been grist, lumber and carding mills, factories for making shawls, cassimeres, satinet, mills for doors, sash, blinds and carriages, and two tanneries, one for sole and one for upper leather.
The town was first settled by James Fuller about 1800; Wm. Moor was also an early comer, as was Imlah Withee. When Wm. Moor came, he and his family made the journey through the woods in the autumn, and crossed Moose Pond on the ice. Mr. Moor car- ried a heavy pack and his wife hauled not only their son, James, then two years old, on a hand sled, but also the saw for the mill which Mr. Moor planned to build in the new settlement. There was a heavy pine growth at that time, and logs were rolled from the present vil- lage square on skids to the mill which Mr. Moor did build soon after his coming. "Squire" Warren, the proprietor, was often seen on the streets wearing a tall hat, characteristic of the aristocracy. The old Hartland House was originally built as a tavern in 1811.
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