USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 21
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The area from the Beech Hill Cemetery to Main's Hill on U.S. 1 is the region more commonly recognized as the South Side. Here, too, a few owners each had many acres. The land beyond the Cemetery was owned by William Dunning, husband of Deborah Donnell who was the only child of Benjamin. Dun- ning's piece was comparatively small in width, but extended from the river to the Kittery line, as did the others.
Samuel Bragdon 3rd owned the next farm and Samuel Bragdon 2nd, the one beyond. Three Bragdon daughters born on this land had famous descendants. The house built by Samuel Bragdon 2nd in 1701, owned in mid-twentieth century by the Reverend Dr. Elwyn Spear, proved to have been built on land of William Pepperrell, causing a dispute which was settled by purchase of the land by the Bragdons. In this house were born Samuel 3rd and Dorcas. Tabitha Bragdon, daughter of Samuel 3rd, married Stephen Longfellow, grandfather of the poet; her sister Isabella, who married Richard King of Scarborough, was the mother of Rufus King, the eminent statesman. The daughter of Dorcas (Bragdon) Black was the second wife of Richard King and mother of William King, the first governor of Maine. The land, once owned by William Pepperrell until it was bought around 1740 by Jeremiah Bragdon, was still Bragdon land until about 1920.
Thomas Adams was granted the next parcel, which in the course of time came to his son-in-law Thomas Baker, then to Israel Smith, and from him to Moses Goodale.
Beyond the Adams property lies the grant to Henry Sayward comprising three hundred and seventy acres, which is by far the part of the South Side district of most historic interest. In the contract between the town and Henry Sayward, drawn in 1665 as part of the payment Sayward was to receive for building the church by Meeting House Creek, the town agreed to grant him "One Tract of Land ... Contayning the quantity of three hundred & fivety Acers, & Prell of Grassy swampe about Twenty Acers lying neare there unto . .". In 1674 Sayward mortgaged this land to Nathaniel Fryer of Great Island (Newcastle, New Hamp- shire) and apparently failed to redeem it. From the Fryers it came to William Moody of Newbury, Massachusetts. In 1723 Daniel Farnham, formerly of Andover, Massachusetts, bought
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one hundred and twenty acres of this tract from William Moody, out of which, in the same year, he sold his brother Ralph fifty acres. Daniel continued to sell and Ralph to buy until in 1734 Ralph bought all that remained in the possession of William Moody's heirs. Later the Farnham property was bought by Elijah Blaisdell, son of Ebenezer, or his descendants, and has been Blaisdell property to this day. He also acquired from the Young family the large promontory on York River, known then as Young's Neck, but ever since it came into Blaisdell possession as Elijah's Neck, pleasantly remembered by an older generation as the lovely spot where for years annual Sunday School picnics were held.
The adjoining land came into the possession of Josiah Main, whose grandfather John had come to York in 1676 from Casco Bay when the English settlers in that region were in danger of being exterminated in King Philip's War. The present line of Mains in York descended from Josiah's son John. Josiah's son Joseph bequeathed some of his land to his daughter Abigail, wife of Samuel Moulton of Cider Hill who built the dwelling, still standing, known as the Edmund Moulton Place.
The Beech Ridge section of York, extending down Beech Ridge Road from U.S. 1 to the Eliot boundary, attracted the in- terest of the pioneers by its dense forest. Here, in 1634 on the tributary of York River, was erected the first undershot or tide mill in America, for which the stream was called Old Mill Creek. By 1651 this mill was in ruins, but future millers, particularly Henry Sayward, kept saws whirring on both sides of the York River. After the original mill was abandoned, Edward Rishworth received grants of all the land westward of Old Mill Creek, and Sayward got his "free usse & Lyberty of the pine swampe . . . beginning on the westermost side of the sayd cricke, & soe Backe. two miles from the river side, soe fure as the bounds of the Town doth extend" as part of the terms in his contract to build the second church. Since there is no mention of permission given by Rishworth as the owner, one may assume that he held his grant merely as the recorder of town and county, but that true possession remained vested in the town. In 1665 when the contract was drawn up, York had been governed by the King's Commissioners for one year, and yet concern was already being felt that there could be changes of rulers at almost any time. Therefore Henry Sayward made provisions in the contract with which the selectmen concurred, but adding conditions of their own; on Sayward's part, that "if it soe fall out, that through the Changes of Tyms (he)
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should be deprived of ye Tymber or Lands" the selectmen would make good the loss on a basis of the value of the timber set at forty-eight pounds and the lands at seventy-two pounds to make up his charge for building to a total of one hundred and twenty pounds; on the selectmen's part, Sayward would pay such rents as any proprietors under his Majesty would have power to de- mand-thus guarding against the possibility that any or all pre- tenders might each levy taxes.
But Rishworth retained or had returned to him the title to the land, and years later, when probably the timber had been stripped, the ownership was acquired through foreclosure by Colonel Elisha Hutchinson, who sold two-thirds of a mile square of it, on both sides of Old Mill Creek between the river and the Kittery bounds, to a group comprising James Allen, Andrew Grover, Matthew Grover, Elihu Parsons, and Robert Gray. These men built homes and lived on this property before they agreed to make a division. Ralph Farnham and Ebenezer Blaisdell bought the other third of the mile square of Henry Webb, another Rish- worth creditor. Part of the third of a mile square tract is still owned by Blaisdells. The two-thirds of a mile square tract is substantially what is known as Barrell Grove, the farm which Jonathan Sayward acquired by 1763. After foreclosures on mort- gages, chiefly on the Grovers, and purchases of additional acres, he enlarged the Grover farmhouse and settled there his daughter and her husband Nathaniel Barrell.
Descendants of Matthew and Andrew Grover, Ebenezer Blaisdell, and Elihu Parsons are still living on Beech Ridge, and branches of several old families from other parts of York have homes there-McIntire, Trafton, Moulton, Welch descendants. General William McIntire and Sylvester McIntire were prominent residents in the middle of the nineteenth century, having their homes on the now-abandoned part of two roads leading to Scotland Bridge.
The marshy land of the section of Beech Ridge bordering on York River was considered valuable in the early days, until the pioneers succeeded in raising English grasses-timothy and red top-and the clovers. Farmers living at the lower end of the river acquired grants of this meadowland far up the stream for a source of coarse hay for their livestock and brought their winter's supply down by canoe or gundalo to their barns. There are two branches of York River, the southwest flowing down from York Pond, the northwest from Bell Marsh, and the land between has since
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earliest times been called "the Partings". Edward Godfrey gave a hundred acres of this land for the use of the ministry, and it has remained parish land ever since.
The importance of these marshes is shown by two letters:
Letter Wm. Peperell & others to Col. T. Westbrook Hond Sir
There is a house Lately made defenceable near ye head of York river built by Mr Robert Cutt and some few Inhabitants reside there the keeping of which house will be a very great Annoyance to ye Enemy and will be a great Security to the greatest part of Kittery, and all the Inhabi- tants on the south side of York river it being a place where the Indians frequently come in with their Scouts. You being at ye head of the forces doubt not but it is in Your Power --- Therefore our humble request is that Six or Eight Soldiers be posted there for the reasons above said.
Wee are Sir yr Humb Servts.
April 20th, 1724 Wm. Pepperrell
Among the signers of this petition were Joseph Moulton, John Thompson, Richard Cutt, Ebenezer Moore, Joseph Sayward, Joseph Hammond, Nicholas Shapleigh, William Pepperrell Jr., Samuel Came, Joseph Young, Jonathan Bean-most of them York men.
Colonel Westbrook reported to Governor Dummer and the General Court:
May it please your honour
The house that the Gentlemen Sett forth lies about a mile and a quarter from Major Frost's garrison so that the posting some soldiers there that they might have a Communi- cation one with another would be very much for the security of all the lower part of Kittery and the people on the south side of York river and to the people in getting their hay out of the marshes.
It being so great a Service to so many people I have presumed to lodge five or six Ineffective men that were not fitt to march till your Hon's pleasure be known in that Affair.
York April 28th, 1724. I am yr Honrs dutifull Hum- ble Servant
Thomas Westbrook
Through the lowland on the southwesterly side of Beech Ridge Road and opposite the beginning of the present Birch Hill Road, may still be seen the trail of the old Cutt Road, named for the
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"Mr Robert Cutt" of Kittery, mentioned in the letter of William Pepperrell, who carried on extensive lumbering and farming operations in this vicinity. Until the turn of the twentieth century this road extended from the present U.S. 1 in Kittery, past the point on Beech Ridge Road mentioned, and over the present Birch Hill Road and Bell Marsh Road in South Berwick, and all of it was known as the "Cutt(s) Road".
Following the Birch Hill Road from Beech Ridge across the river, one arrives at the crossroads in Brixham, with the Bell Marsh section straight ahead, with Scotland beginning not far away to the right, and with most of Brixham to the left. This is a region which suffered many times from attacks by small bands of roving Indians, but never from a full-scale attack such as the Massacre and at least two raids on Cape Neddick.
A reminder of more pleasant days is the spring near which the poet John Greenleaf Whittier saw "Maud Muller on a sum- mer's day". Above the Brixham Four Corners, on Route 91 to- wards Eliot, the spring, formerly called "Samuel Smith's Spring", still flows "through the meadow across the road" in a beautiful setting built by the Society for the Preservation of Historic Land- marks in York County with the permission of J. Arthur Parsons and family. In several deeds this region is called "Huckleberry" or "Whortleberry Plain".
Neighbors of the Smith family were Zebulon Preble, who bought land and built his house in 1720, and Samuel Thompson, who bought fifty acres of former Freethy land and the house built in 1727 by Robert Oliver.
One of the first settlers of the Brixham region, John Frost, was among seven men slain in the fields on the same day in King Philip's War. He is supposed to have given the present name of Brixham to the locality, for he called his fifty-acre grant "Brick- some" because that was his way of spelling the name of the Parish in England from which he came. His daughter Agnes married Alexander Maxwell, the founder of the Scotland settlement. His two sons, John and Philip, were some years afterwards driven away by Indians, but later members of the family came to York to renew claims to the Frost grant, and in this way caused the establishment of several other families whose names are still rep- resented in York. John Shaw, for example, married Elizabeth Ramsdell, and their son William married a daughter of Philip Frost; when the Frosts returned to York, William Shaw brought his family, and Nathaniel Ramsdell followed in 1710. John
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Linscott from Portsmouth received in 1691 a grant of twenty acres next to the Shaws. In 1717 Josiah Bridges became another neighbor of the Shaws. Thus neighbors formed close ties by inter- marriage, and together shared hardships and threats of Indian attacks. Their connections with the families in nearby Scotland were also close, perhaps aided by their common reliance in times of danger upon the McIntire garrison.
The Bell Marsh section, not far from South Berwick, was characterized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the locality of extensive lumbering operations, and ruins of the mills may still be seen near the swift-flowing brooks. Early mills such as those of the Nowells, the Junkinses, and the Gerrys are now known by the names of later owners.
Towards York Village from Brixham Four Corners lies Scotland. On the easterly side of the road stands the Shaw house built early in the eighteenth century; on the westerly side stands the house built by Daniel McIntire in 1707 and bought in 1758 by Ebenezer Simpson. In early days this neighborhood was known as Payneton.
Beyond the Simpson homestead stands the Scotland garri- son which Alexander Maxwell is credited with having built around 1676, at the time of King Philip's War.
This was the core of the settlement, for all of the Scottish bondsmen, Micum McIntire, Robert Junkins, James Grant "the Scotchman", James Grant "the Drummer", John Carmichael, Daniel Dill, and others, sought the assistance of Maxwell in order to make a new start in life. It is possible that the garrison was built by the Scotland community on land belonging to Alexander Max- well. He seems to have been a public-spirited man, for in his will he left his land and marshes to be divided equally between the church and the Reverend Samuel Moody. He did not mention the garrison as part of his property; in one deed he made casual ref- erence to it as standing in his garden or orchard. But in a deposi- tion for the Court of General Sessions held in York, April 2, 1706, Constant Rankin testified that he stayed at Maxwell's garrison. John McIntire, who bought adjoining land from him, might have been placed in charge after Alexander Maxwell's death in 1707, and in time acquired title to it.
The Scotland or McIntire garrison, one of few still standing in New England with a record of having withstood Indian assault, was occupied by the McIntire family until 1876. In its various rooms are preserved authentic examples of the steps in the progress
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of improving the methods of cooking and heating, of making butter and cheese, and of the tools used in the various trades with which a rural family needed to be familiar. It is possible that at least some of the woodenware-buckets, firkins, cheese pipes, etc .- may have been made soon after 1728 by Wymond Brad- bury and his son, the coopers on the Road to Meeting House Creek. There is an extensive collection of the Bibles, hymnals, and other books used in religious services during two centuries, truly unique in that all the treasures have been owned and used only by the family which still possesses them.
Until about the turn of the twentieth century there had stood farther along on the other side of the road, the Junkins garrison, similar in construction; it is not known when it was built or if it ever sheltered any families during an Indian attack.
The McIntire and Junkins families have a long record of service to the Town of York. Of the McIntire descendants, Syl- vester was a busy merchant and shipbuilder near Scotland Bridge; Alexander McIntire (1774-1852) was for many years prominent in politics, at one time or another held practically every office to which he could have been elected or appointed, and was town clerk when he died in 1852. In a later generation, John McIntire (1866-1940), an able businessman and owner of extensive real- estate holdings, was also president of a bank in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the Junkins family, which likewise had large holdings in Scotland, were several teachers, lawyers, and surveyors, of whom probably the most influential was Samuel Washington Junkins (1841-1929), schoolteacher, surveyor, administrator of many estates, at times guardian of orphans and aged persons, and promoter of every worthy cause.
To this neighborhood came also a few settlers who had not been Scottish bondsmen. Here Elder Joseph Kingsbury made his home and raised a large family after he married Patience Came in 1729. Philip Welch had married in 1693 an aunt of Patience Came and was granted thirty acres while a soldier at the garrison, but they moved within a few years, first to Beech Ridge and then to a dividend of land on the Outer Commons near Mount Aga- menticus where their descendants still have homes. Sergeant Peter Nowell from Salem, Massachusetts, another soldier on duty after the Massacre, married Sarah, a daughter of Peter Weare, and settled eventually on a large farm just beyond the garrison. A blacksmith by trade, he contracted for and built at least three forts down east, and in York built and operated several mills in
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the Bell Marsh district. In his will he left a farm to each of his six sons.
Beyond the garrison, towards the Village, is the house built for Reverend Joseph (Handkerchief) Moody in 1732, and nearby once stood the first church building of the Second Parish. Farther on is the road leading to the Scotland (or Swing) Bridge, and beyond, from the opposite side of the highway, the New Boston Road, now abandoned, once led to a small settlement known by that name which was deserted when the Kittery Water District created Boulter's Pond around 1950.
Between the Scotland Bridge Road and nearby Bass Cove Creek, the Bragdon family has the longest record of continuous settlement. Of the three sons of the pioneer Arthur (1597-1678) two, Arthur (1645-1690) and Thomas (1640-1690), a weaver, settled in Scotland. Deacon Arthur (1666-1743), son of Thomas, built the first dam and the first woolen mill at Chase's Pond. Elihu (1767-1854) in the sixth generation, shipbuilder and merchant at Scotland Bridge, prominent in town affairs and a delegate to the convention which drafted the Maine constitution, was the most famous. His grandson Joseph P. Bragdon held the office of selectman continuously for thirty-three years; Arthur Elihu Brag- don, brother of Joseph P., still lives on original Bragdon acres, in the interesting old house which has grown in size over the years. Part of the present Bragdon property was once a large farm owned by William Pepperrell Jr. and occupied by tenants of his daughter Elizabeth Sparhawk. Across the road from the home of Arthur Elihu Bragdon is the graveyard of the Second Parish in which is buried Reverend Joseph Moody, son of Father Samuel.
Neighbors of the early Bragdons were James Freethy, and later his son Joseph, part of whose property was still in possession of heirs with the same name until 1892, when the widow of Henry sold it to Joseph P. Bragdon.
From the Joseph P. Bragdon property the road dips sharply into a valley through which flows Bass Cove Creek (not to be confused with Bass Cove in the golf course by York River). Here in the eighteenth century the Came family had a sawmill. Having crossed this creek one leaves Scotland and enters the Cider Hill district. This is the region ravaged during the Massacre by the half of the Indian force which ranged westward and attacked individual houses in swift succession. A short distance from the creek, on the left when coming from Scotland, is a gravel pit-all that remains of Garrison Hill, once some forty feet
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high until it was lowered in 1914 by the removal of gravel used in the reconstruction of U.S. 1. On top had formerly stood Samuel Came's garrison, built about 1710, for which the hill was named. On that hill lived Arthur Bragdon 3rd (1670-cir. 1751), the young father who came upon the snowshoes piled at Snowshoe Rock on the day of the Massacre. Somehow neighbor John Bracy escaped, and some of his descendants still live on his shares of the Outer Commons. Past this gravel pit the road is straight, and from here the site of the Gorges manor may be viewed in the distance in the direction of Rice's Bridge. The main road takes a sharp turn uphill to the left, but just before the rise, on the right or west side, a lane leads to the old Moulton homestead, built in 1714 by Joseph Moulton, son of Jeremiah 1st. This in early days had been part of the "Way to the Corn Mill".
All the meadow between this lane and the river was once owned by Jeremiah Moulton 1st. Some twelve to twenty acres of it had been the manor of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, named by him "Poynt Christian", entirely surrounded by lands owned by Moul- ton. After the death of Gorges in 1647, his manor was placed by court order in the care of Edward Rishworth, acting as agent for a creditor, to settle execution for a debt of eleven pounds. For nearly forty years thereafter the rights of Edward Rishworth and the creditor Robert Nanney or his heirs were confirmed by the Provincial Court against attempts to trespass or encroach upon the land by Jeremiah Moulton. But in 1684 Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley as "President of the Province of Maine in New England" sold the property for twenty pounds (no house was mentioned) by warranty deed to Jeremiah Moulton, thus bringing the controversy to an abrupt end. For over two hundred years this valley remained in the possession of the Moulton family.
Going up the rise, thirty acres of the land on the right side of the road over the hill to the lowland about a half mile beyond once belonged to Edward Rishworth until he gave it to James Plaisted, the fourth husband of his daughter Mary. On top of the hill the land on the left of the road had for its first principal owners Arthur Came, Joseph Moulton, Nathaniel Masterson, and John Bracy. Later the Young family acquired most of it, be- ginning when Nathaniel Masterson left his property to his son-in- law Samuel Young who married his daughter Elizabeth, and following, when Samuel's son Jonathan inherited Came holdings from his father-in-law. Northwesterly of this land seventy-four acres were laid out to Edward Rishworth in 1661.
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On the slope of the hill towards York Village Matthew Austin owned forty acres on the easterly side of the road to the creek in the lowland, until William Pepperrell Sr. acquired it by foreclosure and sold it to James Grant. Austin, and later Grant, had a tavern near the mills.
At the foot of the hill New Mill Creek and its tributaries furnished sites for several sawmills and a gristmill, including those of Clark and Webb, successors of Ellingham and Gale, and of Henry Sayward. Before the Massacre every family in York came to this neighborhood where the only gristmill in town was located, and one of the four roads specifically laid out by the selectmen in 1699-"from the Lower End of the Towne to the Mill"-was the one in very early times referred to in deeds as The Way to the Corn Mill.
Two branches of New Mill Creek cross the road and meet after surrounding a knoll on the westerly side of the road. The land on both sides of the road was Benjamin Preble's homestead, the birthplace of General Jedidiah Preble. After Jedidiah received his inheritance he sold a part on the easterly side to Major Abel Moulton, who later (1761) built the house which is still standing, known as the Arthur Moulton Place.
Though Jedidiah Preble (1707-1784) was born in York, the story of his career is better known elsewhere in New England and in Canada than in his native town. He came into prominence during the Louisburg Expedition, but his first military service was in the successful Norridgewock Expedition in 1724. As "a coaster of Wells" he not only had his ship in service at Louisburg but he was also commissioned as ensign in the 4th company of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment under Colonel Sylvester Rich- mond.
In 1746 he received a captain's commission in Colonel Waldo's regiment. He had re-enlisted to return to Louisburg, and as captain of one of the five Massachusetts companies he was in- volved in "the disasterous surprisal at Grand Pre", January 31, 1747, and was called upon to negotiate for the survivors the terms of surrender and parole. He became a wealthy merchant and property owner after his return to civilian life in Portland, Maine. In 1754 he was commissioned to serve in the defense of the boundary in Maine between English and French possessions. In the following year he was ordered to destroy settlements and remove Acadians in the area of Cape Sable. In 1759 during the Seven Years' War, as brigadier general, he was given command
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of the newly built Fort Pownall near the mouth of the Penobscot River and kept it until the war ended in 1763. He returned to Portland where he became the city's wealthiest and most influen- tial citizen. Before the outbreak of the Revolution he served first as representative to the General Court and then, in 1773, as a member of the Council. After the Court resolved itself into a Provincial Congress in 1774, this body chose general officers for the armed forces of the Commonwealth, and appointed Jedidiah Preble to be commander-in-chief with the rank of major general. He declined because of age (he was 67) and on account of his sufferings due to wounds received in New York and Canada dur- ing the Seven Years' War. During the Siege of Boston (1775-76) he was an adviser to General George Washington.
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