USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 19
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All of these parts of the dwelling represent the division of Caleb's share, the one-sixth inheritance of other children of Abra- ham 2nd, and the two-sixths of their mother Hannah. By 1751 nearly all of the grandchildren of Hannah Preble had come of age, and there were great-grandchildren entitled to shares in her part of the house.
Colonel Esaias Preble, son of Samuel of Newtown, a neph- ew of Caleb, in order to acquire possession of the old inn, commenced to buy up the shares of his grandfather Abraham's property. By the time of his death in 1813 Esaias had bought all of the home place and also most of the Curtis grant. Esaias Preble Jr., who became the next owner of the homestead, no longer an inn, sold it in 1822 (10 acres SW of the road and 110 acres with buildings on the NE) to his brother William Pitt Preble, the noted lawyer and diplomat and the last Preble owner, who held possession until 1847.
To the eastward of Green Dragon Inn was the Dr. William Lyman farm (part Preble and part Weare land), most of which now constitutes the latest enlargement of the cemetery. The old Lyman family burial lot, set off by itself within an iron rail fence, along with an ancient grapevine extending over a hundred feet or more, and a few unpruned fruit trees nearly hidden in the under- brush, are the only reminders of this ownership.
On the small lot just west of the library stood the little house built (1720) by Phoebe Tanner, the first shopkeeper, in which Judge David Sewall and Dr. Job Lyman kept house during their bachelorhood, and the former lived with his first wife after his marriage. Here John Adams visited and drank tea with his
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college friend when he came to York in the years from 1770 to 1774.
The land on which the library stands was leased in 1790 by a committee of the First Parish to Jonathan Sayward for the use of the Reverend Isaac Lyman-one-fourth of an acre "half way between Judge Sewall's and the Meeting House on the north- west side of the highway"-for five hundred years, free of rent during the lives of Isaac and his wife, but for annual rent of thirty shillings thereafter, the proceeds to be paid to the Congre- gational minister. Beginning "at a well by the corner of the Judge's chaise house", the lot runs on a direct line to the southwest corner of the steeple of the Meeting House (supposed to be southeast six rods and two feet). "If [the rent] is not paid for five years at one time the Congregational minister [was permitted] to make entry and become seized thereof". In accepting these terms Isaac Lyman earnestly recommended to the minister not to accept and receive more than fifteen shillings annually "being in my estima- tion full value yearly".
Isaac Lyman's house was sold and the lease assigned to Barsham and Ruth Allen. The last member of the family in York died within the memory of people living in the mid-twentieth century.
Beyond the Town Hall stands the house which Benjamin Stone built in 1719 on land which he bought of his brother-in- law Caleb Preble to be the first tavern started on York Street after the Massacre. The house is better known as the residence of Dr. Alexander Bulman who lived there until he went on the Louisburg Expedition. Until her death in 1791 it remained the property of his widow, who willed it to her niece Abiel, the wife of Nathaniel Sargent, an early postmaster. Her heirs, Mary (Sargent) Lyman and brother James Sargent, sold it in 1853 to Luther Junkins, but Mary Lyman continued to live there until her death. A later owner, Frank Phillips Emerson, in 1865 remodeled what George Alexander Emery called "an overgrown two-storied dwelling house" by completely rebuilding the exterior.
The small triangle in the Village Square on which stands the Soldiers' Monument was once known as the "Little Parade", the "Big Parade" being the Common, which judging from a plan made by surveyors for the U.S. Navy in 1854, comprised the land between the Town Hall, the church, and the road. From all that can be learned the Little Parade came into existence when those who approached the Village by way of Long Sands Road
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intending to turn down towards the Harbor made a short cut across town land instead of staying on the road to the point of intersection with the Scituate Men's Row. In time a right of way was established, thus creating a triangle. The first known use of it was made, around 1790, when Simon Fernald, jailkeeper and a tavern owner, was allowed to keep his blacksmith shop there. In town meeting of April 6, 1831, permission was granted to Charles O. Emerson to place his office (then standing across the road on land of his brother Edward A. Emerson) on the Little Parade, "the lot where Simon Fernald's blacksmith shop formerly stood", on condition "that he keep said office handsomely painted and for no other purpose than for a lawyer's office, also provided said office shall always be for the use of the Selectmen of the town at all seasons of the year when a fire may be wanted, free of all rent to the town".
There is mention in a town record in 1838 of a public hay scales on the lot with the lawyer's office. In 1860, as the office had been removed, the town voted to release all rights in the triangle, also in the road to the east, to the first Methodist Church Society in York "to set their Meeting House on". However, the Society carried out other plans. In 1880 a "Liberty Pole" (flag- pole ) stood near the point of the triangle towards the Town Hall; probably it had been erected much earlier. In that year Wilson M. Walker was given permission to enclose the triangle, which thereafter was to be maintained as a public park and memorial. In 1906, after the Civil War statue was erected, a curbing was approved; in 1915 a fence, and after World War I, a cannon was set up. The cannon was removed some years later and stored in the woods back of the cemetery until in 1942 it was given to a scrap drive for steel for World War II. In 1955 the triangle was cut back in order to provide more room for traffic, and in the process the shape was changed to something other than triangular.
Across the main street from the Little Parade the land now belonging to the hospital was owned before 1683 by George Parker, the father-in-law of Peter Bass, his Majesty's gaolkeeper. To his house, the home of the Bass family, prisoners were taken during the winter months. The property was left to the stepson of Peter Bass, named Johnson, whose descendants lived there until it was sold to Dr. Alexander Bulman. In 1761 his widow and her second husband, the Reverend Thomas Prentice, sold two rods square "bounded northwest by Parsonage land where Mr. Rose's barber shop stands" and later two rods more, to Joseph
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Simpson. In 1787 Edward Emerson Jr. bought this lot and built his store on it. Eventually it became the site of the present bank.
On land eastward of the hospital hill, bought of Paul Dudley Woodbridge by Edward Emerson Jr. and sold to Daniel Sewall, stood the first post office in York.
The first sales of Woodbridge land were made, about 1760, to James Hennevil and John Kingsbury. On the site of the present Realty Building the latter set his house and blacksmith shop. The house was greatly enlarged after it was moved to its present loca- tion farther eastward on the same side of York Street.
Where the Austin Block now stands was a house built sometime before 1760 by James Hennevil. Here Samuel Nasson came to live after he married his first wife. She died there, leaving her husband and five children, and was buried in the old cemetery in the grave falsely called "the Witches Grave". Samuel Nasson, a hero of the Revolution, rose from private to the rank of major. With his second wife, the widow of General Jotham Moulton, he moved to Sanford. He was Sanford's delegate in 1787 to the Massachusetts Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution. After serving as a representative to the General Court he refused election to a second term on the ground that he had not had sufficient education. His son Peter was a drummer boy in the Revolution at the age of twelve. One of his descendants founded Nasson College in Sanford, Maine.
In later years George Lyman Emerson, a tenant, rented half of the property to Jeremiah Brooks on written condition that he would not "make fish" on the premises.
Part of the Austin Gas Electric Company store was once part of the old schoolhouse, moved from its location back of the church.
The next old house is an attractive little cottage with a questioned ancestry. According to the story handed down through generations it used to be the "Powder House", where war materials were stored when the building stood near the Preble garrison, but became the law office of Charles Octavius Emerson after it was moved to the Little Parade.
The remaining old house in the neighborhood, standing on the other side of the street, owned by Job Young in 1714, was bought by Jacob Curtis in 1724 and sold to Joseph Weare in 1725. In 1799 Daniel Weare, husbandman, the owner of this house, sold to William Frost, Esq., for one dollar and twenty-five cents
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. . all that certain Island lying and being off York Har- bour opposite to the town of York for many years past known by the name of Boon Island ... about three leagues East and be South from York Harbour and there is a ledge lays from the Island about two Gun Shott distance West and be North and there is a Shole point runs off from the Island about one Pistole Shott East be South the whole Island is supposed to contain about one and half acre at Low Water mark be the same in quantity more or less, this Island was granted to my Grandfather Joseph Weare, Mariner, by the town of York and the same Island hath descended from him down to me being the only surviving heir.
At the boundary line between the Village and the Harbor is a handsome brick building now owned by the Roman Catholic Church Society, which, though not to be considered an old or historic structure, serves as a memorial to a York man who by hard work and native ability became a credit to his town.
Jotham P. Norton (1837-1900) son of Daniel and Isabel (Parsons) Norton was born on a farm in the Clay Hill section on a road known as the Norton Road, now abandoned, and re- ceived only such education as was provided by a district school. At the age of nineteen he went to Lawrence to learn the mason's trade, and in 1861 he struck out for himself as a building con- tractor in Lewiston, Maine. For twenty-five years he was one of the leading contractors in Maine, erecting city buildings, churches, schoolhouses, business blocks, railroad stations, factories, and residences in Lewiston, Auburn, Waterville, Dexter, Damariscotta, Skowhegan, Augusta, Hallowell, Brunswick, and other Maine cities and towns. In 1872 he extended his bidding of contracts to the Boston area, where among his enterprises he built such projects as dormitories for Tufts College and churches in East Boston.
He made his own bricks for his many buildings. At first, he had two brickyards in Lewiston, with capacity to make from three to six million bricks a year. When his contracts took him farther afield, he had a large brickyard in Waterville and another in Augusta.
In 1884 he bought the George Goodwin farm on the banks of York River, by which purchase he acquired fifty acres of good clay. Here he made his bricks for his Boston contracts, and later concentrated on brickmaking with this as his permanent yard, employing from fifty to a hundred men. He bought more land, laid out one hundred thousand dollars in equipment and improve-
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ments, built docks, bought a schooner and built others, and had a sawmill. The capacity of his yard rose to eighty thousand bricks a day. In 1876 he engaged in the ice business on Kennebec River, sending ice to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. In York he built two sections of the York Harbor and Beach Railroad.
In 1896 he built the fine residence with its attractive view over Barrell Mill Pond, but he lived to enjoy it only four short years.
Because for a brief period after his death a tenant used it as an inn, the beautiful place has been known as Norton Inn rather than as the private residence of Jotham P. Norton.
Long Sands Road, starting at the Little Parade in the Village, was originally known as the Road Leading to Cape Ned- dick. In accordance with an order of the General Court it was laid out in 1699 by the selectmen as part of the road from Wells to South Berwick through Cape Neddick, across the beaches and over the present route past the center of town.
Henry Norton, the first to own the land nearest the Village was granted a tract between Meeting House Creek and the min- isterial land extending to the easterly end of York Heights. His nephew, George Norton, who took possession as his heir, built his house, which became the Norton garrison at about the time of King Philip's War. Possibly it is still part of the Emerson homestead. In 1708 the property was given to John Woodbridge and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of George Norton.
Parallel to and eastward of the Norton tract lay a similar though shorter grant to the pioneer Rowland Young. The present house on that property was built by a later Rowland Young shortly before 1748.
The highway leading to Cape Neddick, about as old as Long Sands Road, is still known as the Post Road. In this neigh- borhood Joseph Moody began his purchase of land for an estate in order to be near that of his brother-in-law Robert Rose while still his brother Samuel's assistant at Dummer Academy. Most of this is still the property of his descendants. In 1790 after their retirement, he built the beautiful house patterned after the Dummer Mansion in Byfield. On a part of his land was the home of his grandson Isaiah W. P. Moody, also master of a private school.
More might be told of the people and places in the early days of the historic old Village. And every passing year adds more to its interest and attraction.
BARRELL MILL POND AND ENVIRONS
FOR MANY REASONS Barrell Mill Pond may be considered the focal point of York. Here the history of the town began, and within a half-mile radius, most of the leading events in the first three hundred years took place.
According to tradition, when Indians from the Laconia region came to York-which they knew as Agamenticus-every spring until the plague of 1616 they followed a trail from the region of the Berwicks somewhat similar to the course of the present South Berwick Road (Route 91). When they crossed Bass Cove Creek at the foot of Cider Hill, they kept on a straight course below the hill, rather than taking the left turn to the top as does the modern road. From New Mill Creek they headed straight for Meeting House Creek, which course took them along what is now called the "Indian Trail". From the creek they pre- sumably fanned out to accustomed spots along the shore where the various families had tilled their gardens each year from time beyond reckoning.
All this is, of course, pure supposition, for fifteen years passed between the time when the last Indian departed and the first white man came, and there was no historian to leave any record. The trails, however, well-trodden for who can say how many decades, may well have been discernible even after fifteen years of disuse, and it is possible that white men followed them and made of them the bases of the earliest roads. Had the Gosnold party accepted the invitation of the Indians to come ashore at the Nubble in 1602, the scribe might have been able to give a description of the red man's Agamenticus in his report, which can still be read. From Captain Christopher Levett's report there is the clue that not a soul was living there in 1623.
Edward Godfrey stated in 1654 that twenty-four years previously he was the "first that ever bylt or settled ther", and accepting his words, it is generally believed that the first house in York was built in 1630. A study of the earliest deeds shows
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that Godfrey had his house on the southern bank of Barrell Mill Pond about two hundred feet south of Lindsay Road, the exact spot uncertain but near several springs which still exist. Godfrey took possession of all that point of land which included what is called in mid-twentieth century "the Huidekoper Field", and named it "Point Bolleyne".
After Sir Ferdinando Gorges had a mansion built near New Mill Creek in 1634, which his agents used in the trans- action of his business affairs, Godfrey traveled to it by way of the present Indian Trail, by what was then known as the "Path to the Christian Shore" (the name of the site of the Gorges manor ). When Massachusetts assumed control of Gorgeana, the commis- sioners confirmed to him, as part of eight hundred acres, thirty acres "as belongs to his home on ye North side of ye River". When in 1655 Edward Godfrey returned to England, where he died in 1663, he left this real estate in the care of Edward Johnson. His wife Ann received his farm at Seabury and his share of Stage Neck.
What is now Lindsay Road, from the Scituate Men's Row to the creek, had been but a path used in common by a few resi- dents of that neighborhood. In 1667, when the second church edi- fice was built by Henry Sayward, that path became a lane used by every citizen when he attended services on Sunday and by every- one who came to town on business in the Province of Maine, of which York was the "Metropolitan", for the church was also the courthouse. When that church was built on the southeast side of the path overlooking the creek, the stream of water with its broad bay came for the first time to be known as Meeting House Creek.
In 1680 Edward Johnson bought from the heirs the twelve acres of the Walter Norton land adjoining Godfrey's, on which he built a new dwelling close by the westerly side of Godfrey's house. In August of the same year he gave this house and land together with all his other real estate, and the use of the Godfrey land which he held in trust, to his son-in-law, John Harmon, who had married his daughter Deborah. From 1686 to 1689 John Harmon conducted a tavern, which became the Harmon garrison mentioned by Judge David Sewall in his account of the 1692 Massacre. No heirs of Godfrey made claim to his property at the creek, consequently John Harmon had in his control most of what became the Huidekoper Field and a considerable part of the property between the present Lindsay and Organug Roads. In the next generation John's son John increased the Harmon
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holdings by his marriage to Mehitable, daughter of John Parker, who owned most of the land between Indian Trail and Meeting House Creek. Another son, Johnson, inherited the garrison and its twelve acres and built a wharf and warehouse on Godfrey's land at the junction of Meeting House Creek and the river which came to be known as Harmon's Point.
Johnson Harmon (1680-1750) was the famous Indian fighter to whom John Greenleaf Whittier referred in his poem "Mogg Megone":
Steals Harmon down from the sands of York, With hand of iron and foot of cork?
In 1728 he sold the garrison house to Samuel Clark and moved into Godfrey's house, reserving to himself a path to the road. This path in the other direction extended along the westerly shore of the millpond past Paul's Hill to Harmon's Point. Known a hundred years later as Savage's Lane, it is no longer in use for its full length.
Shortly after Johnson Harmon returned from the siege of Norridgewock, enthusiasm developed for creating a pond of Meet- ing House Creek for power to operate mills. In January 1725-26 twenty-one leading citizens met and mutually agreed to form the "New Mills Company", to build a dam where the creek meets the river, and to erect and operate a sawmill and a gristmill; nineteen members signed, two withdrew. Johnson Harmon gave liberty to the company to make use of the land on the south bank and of his rights in the creek to build the mills and the dam which would flood parts of his property; in return he received an equal share with the others in the company. Elder Joseph Sayward made similar agreements for the use of his land on the opposite side, including in addition common rights in a path, one rod wide, near his house between the road and the river. Both Sayward and Harmon gave their deeds on January 26, 1725-26 "freely and willingly, fully and absolutely", declaring that in promoting the building of the mills, particularly the gristmill, they would pro- vide great benefit not only to themselves but to the town. By April 5, 1727, the dam, the two mills, and a new gundalo were built, equipped, and ready to operate. By the end of 1728, Joseph Sayward owned half of the shares in the company, having paid for most of them at least forty pounds apiece. Perhaps his en- thusiasm contributed considerably towards his financial difficulties in 1732. His son Jonathan in later years bought up almost all of
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the remaining shares, and made further use of the millpond by storing his spars and ship timbers in its waters. After his death in 1797, the mill property came by inheritance to his grandson Jonathan Sayward Barrell, for whom the pond is named.
By 1744, there were several houses standing on the east side of the road between the Gaol and the creek. Behind the Gaol, Hugh Holman had built his house in 1727, and beyond, at the turn of the lane, Nicholas Sewall had a dwelling and a tannery in operation since 1708. In 1714 Sewall bought of the town two acres of parsonage land on which stood "the Old Meeting House or ruins thereof" after every timber still worth salvaging had been put to use in other buildings. In the next year William Grow bought of the town the parsonage built for the Reverend Samuel Moody in 1699. In 1727 Wymond Bradbury and his sons, Wy- mond Jr. and John, had a house and a cooper's shop near Nicholas Sewall's tanyard, on a quarter-acre of ministerial land leased by the town.
On the other side of the creek the Harmon garrison and twelve acres had become the property of Benjamin Holt. Johnson Harmon's son Joseph had possession of the original Godfrey land.
Along the river Thomas Donnell had a farm wharf and warehouse, inherited from his father John. The families living on the south side of the river were accustomed to cross by Thomas Donnell's ferry and over his land to the Indian Trail. Neither the traveler nor the landowner was content with conditions. After much agitation, the matter was taken up in town meeting in 1744, and a vote was passed to authorize "a committee to view a road on the Northeast side of York River from Meeting House Creek Bridge down to the River by Thomas Donnell's wharfe and the road on the South West side down to Captain Sewall's wharf and mark out such further road or roads as they shall judge necessary to reconcile sd two roads for the best use and benefit of the Publick and make reports".
The committee brought in a report in February 1745 of how they had laid out a road through the lands of Benjamin Holt near Meeting House Creek Bridge, through Joseph Harmon's, and on through lands of Thomas Donnell to low-water mark by the northeast corner of his wharf. Furthermore, it was stated in the report that Joseph Harmon and Thomas Donnell would give so much of their lands as was required, but Benjamin Holt wanted ten pounds for his land. The committee agreed that he should
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be allowed that sum out of the town treasury; whereupon Thomas Donnell gave the ten pounds out of his own pocket.
But all was not settled yet. The low-water mark at Don- nell's wharf was not opposite the place where the road, built in 1719 between the lands of Samuel Sewall and Elder Joseph Holt, came to the river on the south bank. In 1746 it was voted to take another twelve rods more of Thomas Donnell's land up and by the river from his wharf in order to bring the ends of both roads in line. For this additional piece Thomas Donnell got his ten pounds back. Captain Sewall and Elder Holt gave necessary land on the south side of the river to the town. And so the road was built, but the river was still crossed by ferry.
In 1746 Benjamin Holt began what probably was the first real-estate development in York when he laid out his land in small lots on both sides of the new Lindsay Road. The first to build on one of these lots was Maximilian Tenney, whose house, built in 1746 near the corner of the road and the Indian Trail, is still standing. Another house is the so-called Lindsay Tavern, built by Stephen Lovejoy in 1753, later owned by Captain Abra- ham Adams, and then by Matthew Lindsay, whose widow for a short time conducted a tavern.
The prospect of building a bridge across York River had also been a topic of conversation, but as a dream to materialize in a distant future. The subject had been brought up in town meeting in 1742 when, more like a wish than an order, it was
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