USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 22
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Beyond the Major Abel Moulton Place was the Colonel Johnson Moulton farm extending to Long Hill Road, so-called, which led to the mills at Scituate Pond and Cape Neddick (now Chase's) Pond. Perhaps some marker should be placed near the corner of this road to commemorate the fact that three officers who served in the Revolution from York once had their homes in this vicinity.
In early days the section known as Scituate was the property of members of the Preble, Banks, and Bane families, by whom the Scituate marsh was made into Scituate Pond by damming a brook. In 1721 John Preble built his house on land opposite the pond given him by his father Benjamin. In 1763 Lemuel Woodward purchased property in this neighborhood from Hannah, widow of James Bane, lieutenant of rangers in Nova Scotia; later a descend- ant bought the John Preble place. By marriage the Woodwards have been connected with the Sedgeley's whose ancestor John built (1715) the house on the Chase's Pond Road later owned by Lowell Grant and his descendants.
On the other side of the road is Ferry Lane, originally one of the four principal roads. Now cut off by the crossing of the Toll Road, it was part of the King's Highway or the Post Road until 1803 and was of great service as an access to the corn mill. Formerly there was another road, running in a westerly direction to the river between the lands of John Freethy and John Bradbury. Known as School House Lane, it was used with the permission of the owner, John Bradbury, whose children attended the first schoolhouse in this vicinity near the South Berwick Road. Under the leadership of Lewis Bane 3rd, a committee of residents in the neighborhood in 1746 had been given permission by the town to
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build a schoolhouse at their own expense, and later the town, having voted funds to complete the building, included it as one of two schools in District 1.
A short distance farther on, the South Berwick Road (Route 91) joins with U.S. 1 as part of York Corner. This section of town, with its triangular grass plot on U.S. 1 near the eastern end, did not take on its present aspect until 1803 when in the course of straightening the highway between Portsmouth and Portland the stretch from the juncture of the South Berwick Road and Rice's Bridge was laid out across field land, thereby cutting off the ancient course up the South Berwick Road and over Ferry Lane to the bridge. In 1827 that piece of U.S. 1 from York Corner to the Post, or Nason, Road was built, thus creating the triangle.
Before these changes were made this neighborhood had no descriptive name; the juncture with the South Berwick Road appears to have been considered vaguely as the beginning of Upper Town. For a time it was called Scotland Corner. The resi- dence built in 1721 by Lewis Bane 2nd, and still standing, is the first old house on the northerly side of U.S. 1 near Route 91. Lewis Bane 2nd was the coroner for the District of Maine who tried to send help to the men shipwrecked on Boon Island in 1710, as told in the novel, Boon Island, by Kenneth Roberts. His son Jonathan built the old house, still standing on the hill at the eastern end of the Bane lot, near the Chase's Pond Road. Across from the Lewis Bane house stands the Jeremiah Bumstead house (1732) which was bought for Dr. John Swett by his father. The Chase's Pond Road, once known as "Parsons Lane", separated Parsons and Simpson property.
The Triangle formed when, in 1827, the road was cut through was originally taken from land of John Preble, later owned by his granddaughter, Alice Donnell Simpson. George Lyman Emerson bought it as the site for his grandfather's store, which he called "Emerson's Stand", that had stood on the present Wilcox House property in the Village. Here Nathaniel Grant Marshall was employed as a clerk until he bought out Emerson, for a short time with Charles O. Clark as a partner and afterwards alone. The property was sold to Francis Plaisted Jr. in 1849, and his son, George F. Plaisted (1840-1917), popularly called Mayor, had a general store and printing shop there and published the first weekly paper in York.
York Harbor
Not long ago by night I woke from sleep, So gently that I thought myself to be Again at home beside the voiceful sea, And heard the solemn murmur of the deep. 'Twas not a time of storm when great waves leap Beyond the narrow bounds of stake or tree; So soft came their music up to me I could distinguish every curve and sweep. There was the constant sounding that I knew Of waves that rolled upon the sandy shore; Then came a moment's hush as though they all Were held by force unseen to mortal view, And backward flowed as they had done before, A mingled sound and silence, rise and fall.
- REVEREND RALPH LOWE (1866-1959)
York, Maine
YORK HARBOR
YORK HARBOR is that part of York within the area bounded on the northeast by the approximately two hundred feet of Long Sands Road nearest the ocean, on the southeast by the ocean, on the southwest by York River from the mouth to the dam at the lower end of Barrell Mill Pond, including Stage Neck and two islands, Bragdon's and Harris, thence northeastward, following the line of what used to be the railroad right of way-now almost unrecognizable-back to Long Sands Road, the point of begin- ning.
Until Massachusetts took possession in 1652, this area was a part of one of three dividends allotted to Humphrey Hooke and three partners when Agamenticus was parceled out to the paten- tees in the division of twelve thousand acres in 1641, except that Stage Neck, then an island, was held as common land.
This part of York was known as "The Lower End of Town" or "Lower Town" (the area west of New Mill Creek was "Upper Town") until it was well established as a summer resort; after Nathaniel Grant Marshall opened the doors of the first Marshall House in 1871 it acquired the name of York Harbor. The history of Lower Town is best told by a consideration of each of several parts.
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Following shore lines and starting at the easterly corner of Lower Town by the sea at Long Sands Road, and giving boundaries the names by which they are presently known, the first part to be considered might be the area between Long Sands Road and Lob- ster Cove, the next, the promontory between Lobster Cove and the road to Stage Neck, then from the Neck to Clark Lane, then between Clark and Barrell Lanes, and finally the land bordering on Barrell Mill Pond as far up as to be in line, at a right angle, with the Catholic Church, formerly the Norton Inn.
The first part, facing towards the ocean, was given slight attention by the early settlers, whose interests were centered on York River. To them this was wild back country which, if men- tioned at all, was considered a part of Cape Neddick.
The next section, between Lobster Cove and the road to Stage Neck, the largest of the areas to be described, consists mostly of rocky headland towards the sea which slopes inland to marshland early named "the Ashen Swamp". In 1643 William Hooke, as agent for his father Humphrey, sold to John Alcock one hundred acres of the promontory which was then known as Alcock's Neck.
Far out, near the northeasterly end of the Neck, there is a cleft in the granite ledge where, until around the turn of the present century, the tides would pour into a hollow with a boom- ing roar which would inspire awe in the minds of anyone passing within hundreds of feet-hence the name "Roaring Rock". This peculiarity was lost when the hollow was at least partially blocked by falling boulders. One of the tales told to the credulous among the early summer visitors was that pirates used to carry their loot into the cave at Roaring Rock and emerge with it on top of Sentry Hill, more than a mile away.
For a few years after 1678, Alcock's Neck was mentioned in deeds as "Dummer's Neck", as John Alcock had sold half of his farm to his son-in-law, the Reverend Shubael Dummer, minis- ter in York from 1665 until he was slain in his dooryard during the Massacre in 1692. Richard Milbury, for some years a tenant, acquired from the Dummer heirs all of the original hundred acres besides other parcels, and until about 1940 this farm was owned by Milbury descendants.
Caleb Norwood of Gloucester, Massachusetts, who in 1708 came to work in Samuel Donnell's inn across the main street from the head of the road to Stage Neck, married Alice Donnell, daughter of Samuel. Their son Augustus married Mary Milbury,
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daughter of Samuel and granddaughter of Richard. In his will, drawn in 1777, Elder Samuel Milbury left half of his real estate to his son Samuel, and half to his grandson Samuel Norwood. In time, all the Milbury land became Norwood property, known as Norwood Farms.
In 1718 Abiel Goodwin, who had come from Reading, Massachusetts, in 1716 and had married, first, Hephzibah Preble, and second, Sarah, daughter of Richard Milbury, bought some fourteen acres at the end of the Neck adjoining the Harbor Short Sands, and built a garrison house. When in 1916 the Fergus Reids planned to build a modern house on the site, Dr. Seabury W. Allen, the former owner, moved the old building across U.S. 1A to the knoll opposite, and it became the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Adie.
When, after 1875, there was great demand for house lots, the three related families-Norwoods, Goodwins, and Donnells- became principal sellers. Among the earliest cottage owners, Mrs. Anna H. Mason of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, first bought Goodwin land in 1873, and in 1881 her husband, Hartley W. Mason, bought adjoining Donnell land near the Harbor Short Sands, all of which is still owned by their descendants on what is known as "Mason's Hill". Up to 1885 there was no public highway between the road to Stage Neck and Long Sands Road. Gates at each end barred "the road to the Norwood Homestead" until, in that year, the town accepted that part of what is now U.S. 1A. Within twenty years after the railroad was put in opera- tion in 1887, more than fifty cottages were built in that neighbor- hood.
Many of those early cottage owners, as well as their descend- ants who continued to summer in York, are remembered for the interest they took in the welfare of York, among them, Henry Field, Emmeline Cheney, Francis A. Peters, William S. Doolittle, Dr. E. Hollingsworth Siter, H. Blanchard Dominick-the list is long.
In 1897 congenial visitors and cottagers organized the club known as "The Reading Room", and purchased a Goodwin house on Mason's Hill, now, remodeled and enlarged, the Hillcroft Inn. Thirteen years later, the small cottage having been outgrown, the new, present clubhouse was built, also on Goodwin's land. Hum- phrey Turner Nichols, wit, raconteur, poet, and author of appro- priate phrases in classical Latin, whom Judge David Sewall would have appreciated, was a charter member and for more than fifty
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years the leading funmaker for his fellow members. In those early days he had several illustrious associates to inspire his best talents, among them such distinguished authors as Thomas Nelson Page, Arthur C. Smith, John Fox Jr., Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley"), and such truly "active members" as Charlton Yarnall, Frank W. Jones, Duncan Hunter, and Charles J. Steedman.
The Reading Room is also the meeting place of another so- cial club organized in 1928, named officially the Volunteer Veter- an Firemen's Association of York, but commonly known as "The Red Shirts". This organization owns an ancient fire engine, called "Protection No. 2", which dates back to 1853, as well as historic equipment and mementos of great fires. Their motto is "It isn't the flames, Boys, it's the Fumes". Once a year they take part with the York Village Fire Department in their field day, ending in the evening with their annual meeting and a steak dinner at the Reading Room.
The next section of Lower Town, from the Harbor Short Sands to Clark Lane, was in earliest days the most important part of York. On the river front were built most of the wharves and warehouses to which the settlers brought their products to barter for their necessities. The road to Stage Neck was a part of the first road when travelers through Maine followed the trail that was as close as possible to the ocean. "The Road to the Ferry", they called it, for at the farthest end of the island or neck, a ferry was maintained to carry travelers across the narrow part of the river to Raynes Neck (now Seabury) where the trail continued on to Kittery. On this road Nicholas Davis had a tavern, later owned by Henry Donnell's son Samuel. After the former Davis Inn was destroyed in the Massacre, Samuel built a new house as a tavern and a garrison on the other side of the main street. That this house still stands was made known early in this century when an electrician, installing a lighting system, found himself boring through plank side walls in the building.
This was the home of Colonel Nathaniel Donnell Jr. (1689-1780) of whom all the Donnells in York are descendants. It is possible that he was nearly as wealthy as Jonathan Sayward, but the facts are obscured because so little about his personal life is to be found. Through Nova Scotia records it would appear that his field of trading operations was in that area. At least as early as in 1727 Nathaniel Donnell Jr. (so-called as the younger of the two cousins), son of Samuel and captain of the sloop Hopewell, and his cousin Nathaniel Donnell Sr., son of Thomas and captain
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of the sloop Endeavor, both then at Annapolis Royal, obtained permission to load up and carry coal from the mines along the Bay of Fundy to Boston. In 1734 thousands of acres of land were granted to Nathaniel Donnell Jr. and to his brother Samuel Don- nell Jr., both merchants, as patentees for mines in Nova Scotia. This appears to be the time when the most enterprising Donnells sought wider fields than York for the fulfilment of their ambitions. Probably because he spent so much time between 1724 and 1745 in Nova Scotia little about Colonel Donnell appears in Maine records.
He received the title of "Colonel" when he was appointed lieutenant-colonel under Colonel Jeremiah Moulton in the Louis- burg enterprise, probably because of his years of experience as a merchant in that area and his knowledge of French customs and language. After his return to York he became more prominent in town and church affairs. In 1755 he was appointed agent in charge of the Acadians, a very fortunate arrangement for them. Like the Pepperrells Colonel Donnell owned much real estate in different localities, and his York holdings were also extensive. He bought the remainder of the Joseph Preble farm at Long Beach from various heirs for his son Samuel, whose wife Elizabeth had inherited the house (built in 1676) and a share of the land. In 1743 he acquired fourteen acres, now the Lobster Cove section, and built on it the dwelling known as the Tabitha Hutchins house, for his son Nathaniel Jr. 3rd; later it became the home of a grandson, Timothy, a soldier in the Revolution, the direct an- cestor of all Donnells now living in York. The Colonel inherited and bought from his brothers Stage Neck, part of which had orig- inally belonged to his grandfather Henry, the remainder given to the family by Ann Godfrey along with one-half of Great Island. The remainder he purchased from the heir of a fisherman to whom it had been sold. For nearly one hundred years it was called Donnell Island. Later it was owned by three members of different branches of the Bragdon family, and from one of them acquired its present name.
No doubt Jonathan Sayward expressed the sentiment of the people of York when he wrote in his diary on February 9, 1780: "Died, Nathaniel Donnell, Esq., aged 91 an old disciple of Jesus Christ he was son of the first councillor in the Province of Maine after it was joined to Massachusetts and Plimouth under the last charter he had a very good character he had an excellent mother".
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William Dixon, one of the earliest settlers, is known prin- cipally because his property was inherited by Moore grandsons whose descendants, Moores and Lowes, still owned it in the twen- tieth century. The Moores shared ownership of the wharf nearest the road to Stage Neck with Nathaniel Donnell Jr. The first clear knowledge of owners to the westward begins with Edward Rish- worth, whose property extended from about Varrell Lane to Clark Lane, as those streets are now named. Job Alcock, son of John, bought part of it and built a garrison on the river front in 1680. By 1694 Jeremiah Moulton Ist owned most of it, along with thirty-eight acres on Sentry Hill granted by the town in 1685 and called "the Back Pasture", and he willed it to his son-in-law, Johnson Harmon.
The widow of Johnson's son Joseph sold the house, garden, wharf, and pasture to Captain Thomas Harmon. One of his grand- daughters, Olive Grow Clark, and her cousin Mary Harmon Em- erson left property they had inherited from Captain Harmon and Timothy Grow to the town, thus establishing the "Clark-Emerson Fund", to be used for the support of a free high school. The in- heritance of Hannah Grow Kingsbury, sister of Olive Grow Clark, was left to the Methodist Society, and in her honor "Kingsbury Hall" in the church in the Village is named. The Emerson and the Kingsbury cottages, built by the cousins, became part of the Emerson Hotel. Near the old Grow homestead at the foot of Clark Lane, later the summer home of Marshall Morgan, stood the warehouse on the Grow property where was stored the tea which caused the "York Tea Party".
The Harmon mansion became the property of John H. Varrell and was conducted by him as a hotel known as the "Har- mon House". On the site was later built a hotel called "Harmon Hall", now a private school.
Where the Emerson Hotel now stands is the site of the old "Chapell or Oratory" which served as the first meetinghouse, and near it was the first graveyard, in which Thomas Morton of Merrymount, who died in Gorgeana in 1645, may have been buried.
The land on the opposite or northerly side of the main street, between the Samuel Donnell garrison and a line nearly opposite Varrell Lane, was largely owned by Colonel Nathaniel Donnell or his heirs and by the Moores as heirs of William Dixon. After Colonel Nathaniel Donnell Jr. came into possession of his inheritance from his father Samuel, his first sale was of a lot to
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David Philbrook, or Philbrick, which marked the first settlement of that family, whose descendants have ever since been represented in York.
Sentry Hill, the rocky ledge running sharply up from the main road, was in early days "commonage", or common land, until the Stated Commons were laid out for distribution between 1732 and 1750. Of two little old houses across the street from the Emerson Hotel, the one to the eastward, built by Daniel Dill, known as the Varrell Homestead, was in 1782 the first purchase made by John and Rachel Varrell, who came to York from the Isles of Shoals with several of their children during the Revolution. For more than a century the Varrell family was prominent as merchants, as property owners, and as hosts to summer boarders. The adjoining house, built by Job Welles in 1755, was bought by Colonel Nathaniel Donnell, who in 1765 sold it to his nephew Captain James Donnell, a hero of the Revolution, whose descend- ants made it their home until 1882. The land at the southwest corner, opposite Dinah's Hill, was part of the Abraham Preble Jr.'s property until his son Captain Edward in 1727 sold to An- thony Baker thirteen and a half acres that after several other transfers came into the possession of Richard and John Adams. Possibly part of the original Anthony Baker house is still in- cluded in the residence known in this century as the Cadwalader House.
On both sides of the road, from Clark Lane to Barrell Lane, was the homestead of Abraham Preble Jr. (son of Nathaniel, and grandson of Abraham), previously Rishworth property. Here he built in 1710 a garrison, wharf, and warehouse. After his death his widow married Peter Nowell, who bought most of the property from the heirs and willed it to his son Abraham. The latter sold a lot on the river bank to Nathaniel Preble, who built a house, later owned by Major Samuel Derby, 1727-1807 (but torn down in 1959). Earlier a half-acre on Barrell Lane had been sold by the widow of Abraham Preble, and later bought by Elder Joseph Say- ward, who built for his two youngest sons Henry and Joseph, both of whom died young. The widow of Henry Sayward later married Captain Richard Trevett, the first collector of customs in York after the Revolution. Abraham Nowell's property was acquired by Sir William Pepperrell whose grandson, the second Sir William, in 1773 sold it to Jonathan Sayward. A quarter-acre at the foot of the hill by the river Sayward gave to his granddaughter Sally
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(Barrell) Keating (1759-1854) and her husband, a clerk in Say- ward's employ from 1773 to 1783. For nearly a year after their marriage in 1778 the Keatings lived in the mansion with grand- father Sayward; then on the day of his second marriage they moved to the Keating home in Kittery.
"No grand children could have behaved with greater Duty and affection than they both have done", he wrote in his diary on the day they left. In 1782 the Keatings returned to York to live in the former Abraham Preble Jr. house, still standing, which Jonathan Sayward had moved onto their lot. Richard Keating died in July of the next year, leaving his widow, two daughters, and a posthumous son. The entry in the diary for December 23, 1783, reads: "I offered and carried my great grandchild Richard Keating to Baptism. Perhaps I am the first Great grand parent that offered a great grandchild in York". The Keatings, living in the house across the way, are often mentioned with affection in the diary. For October 18, 1792: "I had a Live pink Posey gathered in my Garden by my Great Grand child Sally Keating". On May 30, 1795: "On Wednesday last my great grandson Richard Keating went to Berwick Academy to School". Another entry brings to mind an age-old superstition. Under date of February 23, 1793, he wrote, "My granddaughter Sally Keating's hands has been remarkably filled with warts to the number of 48-all are gone. Judge Sewall being a Seventh Son hath several times stroked them".
Just how old Sally Keating was when she first exercised the talent for writing, inherited from both Sarah and Nathaniel Bar- rell, is not known, but a poem over a hundred lines in length in her handwriting (now in the Old Gaol Museum) was written in February 1797 as a letter of condolence to the wife of Major Samuel Derby on the occasion of the loss of a son by drowning. Her first novel, Julia and the Illuminated Baron, was published in 1799, followed by Dorval or the Speculator, in 1801, Amelia or the Influence of Virtue, in 1801, and Ferdinand and Almira, a Russian Story, in 1804. She sold her property in York in 1804, and having married General Abiel Wood in the same year, moved to Wiscasset where she later became known as "Madam Wood". Her final book, Tales of the Night, was published in 1827.
The wharf built by Abraham Preble Jr. was sold by Jona- than Sayward to Joseph Simpson. In 1797 it was bought by Ed- ward Emerson Jr., and became a part of the inheritance of his grandson Edward Miranda Emerson Keating, whose parents were
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Miranda (Emerson) and Madam .Wood's son, Richard Keating. The house built by Joseph Simpson 3rd in 1780 still overlooks the wharf and the site of Edward Emerson Jr:'s warehouse.
Between Barrell Lane and the inland boundary of Lower Town near the Catholic Church and bordering on the southwest on Meeting House Creek or Barrell Mill Pond is mostly flat field land. Where now stands the Sayward mansion had once stood the wharf, warehouse, and inn of George Puddington, whose widow married Major John Davis, the first merchant in York. A later owner, Noah Peck, built there before 1718 a new house which he soon sold to Elder Joseph Sayward. His son Jonathan bought half of the property; the other half was willed to another son, Jeremiah. Jonathan became sole owner by buying Jeremiah's half when the latter moved to Rhode Island.
To the westward of Barrell Lane, when that road was known only as "The Way Leading to the Market Place", stood the dwelling and schoolhouse given by the town to the first school- master, Nathaniel Freeman.
Much of this section became property of the Black family, of whom Mary, in the fourth generation, daughter of Samuel and Dorcas (Bragdon) Black, became the second wife of Richard King, a wealthy merchant of Scarborough. To him Dorcas and her son Samuel sold all of the Black property, which extended from the creek to nearly as far as the present Woodbridge Road. In 1790, William King, later the first governor of Maine, a younger son of Richard and Mary, who had bought the Black property from his mother, sold thirty-six acres of it to Jonathan Sayward Barrell, and the remainder to various others.
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