USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 23
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With the decline of shipping, Lower Town became a quiet neighborhood, and in the days of poverty after 1812 a poor sec- tion. As described by a writer in the Salem Gazette in 1869: "Her wharves and storehouses, now dropping to decay, her streets laid out with so much care and precision, all spoke of a time when she had seen better and more prosperous days". But the Sayward mansion remained ever attractive to visitors, among them Sarah Orne Jewett, who often rode over from South Berwick to call on Elizabeth and Mary Barrell. To other, smaller, houses, notably that of Leander Donnell, came such well-known people as John Greenleaf Whittier and his sister, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who planted the still-thriving ivy cuttings he had brought from England.
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York River
There are many larger rivers Flowing outward to the sea, Than the one I knew in childhood Where I loved so much to be.
There are far more famous rivers Than the one I loved so well, Where we boys played so often, Of its ways had much to tell.
It had many coves and ledges, Curves and windings that we knew, Pines and birch trees, oak limbs hanging O'er the creeks we paddled through.
Sometimes with the tide we floated, Boys and girls of former years, And the shores and woods re-echoed With our laughter, fun, and cheers.
Youthful days and those companions To the great Beyond have passed, But the memory of those faces Will continue to the last. - REVEREND RALPH LOWE York, Maine
YORK RIVER
DISCOVERING YORK BY BOAT is an exciting adventure. Few rivers have an island so near the mouth which blocks the entrance so much that the sailor must round a half-circle of land before being able to see the prospect of the wide, almost straight, reach of water which is the haven he has sought. Forbidding as the curved entrance may seem to the timid, the landlocked harbor around the bend must give each newcomer the impression that he has entered a new world. Captain Christopher Levett saw it in 1624 and noted "There I think a good plantation may be settled for there is a good harbor for ships". Edward Godfrey considered it so fine a retreat from storms on the open ocean that he built himself a house in 1630 well up in the wide mouth of a tributary creek which is now known as Barrell Mill Pond.
The neck of land which so nearly fills the river's mouth was originally an island, but later a causeway was built to join it with the mainland. Its convenience and strategic location com- manded attention as a safe place in a strange land to live and to work, and since fishing was the foremost industry, and stages- racks on which to spread out fish to cure-were necessary for that work, the place was called Stage Island, later Stage Neck. The first trail or path through York from neighboring Wells to Kittery, following the coast as closely as possible, led across Stage Neck to the far end where the crossing of the river was shortest, and there a ferry was maintained. Edward Godfrey and Henry Don- nell owned the island in 1648, Godfrey's widow Anne gave her claims to children of Henry Donnell, and by 1742 the whole of it had come into the possession of Colonel Nathaniel Donnell by inheritance and purchase.
When, during the Revolution, the dwellers on the Isles of Shoals were forced by the General Court to move for safety to the mainland, twenty-two families of the "Shoalers" floated to York on the rafts they had made of their dismantled houses. Some of them set up their houses on Stage Neck, where they lived on the
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meager support of the General Court of Massachusetts. Over the years the neighborhood became the poorest section of town and so it remained until in 1871 Nathaniel Grant Marshall bought Stage Neck, and preparing to build the Marshall House, ordered all the occupants to tear down or move their buildings. A few owners of suitable houses moved them to various lots on the mainland, where three of them still stand in mid-twentieth century: one known as the Caswell House on U.S. 1A opposite Lancaster Hall, the Fred Donnell House, moved from the northwest side of York St. at Dinah's Hill to a lane off the south side of Woodbridge Road, and the Oliver Varrell House, west of Barrell Lane. A fourth one, the Ernest Webber House, which stood on U.S. 1A near the Village Fire Station in the Village, was torn down in 1959.
The early settlers along the banks of the river built wharves or piers-more of them than can be located today. The north bank between Stage Neck and the so-called "New Bridge", built in 1905, has always been the principal shipping center on the river. Here is the actual York Harbor, where most of the brigs and the schooners, the privateers and their prizes, came to anchor in the heyday of shipping between 1760 and 1800.
Just above Stage Neck, the ownership of the nearest wharf, traced to William Dixon, dates back to 1634. It came into the possession of William Moore who shared it with Colonel Na- thaniel Donnell. The Moore share, conveyed by William to his son John, was sold to Joseph Simpson, later to Obediah Donnell. The next wharf upriver, also on the old Dixon property, of which the first known owner was John Kingsbury, passed to Samuel Paul, then to Captain George Rendall, a privateer in the Revolu- tion. The first Jeremiah Moulton owned the next wharf, at the foot of what is now Varrell Lane, having bought in 1694 an ac- cumulation of several properties which Edward Rishworth had originally owned. One parcel contained what had been, up to 1660, the "landing place" of Richard Burgess, and another was land upon which Captain Job Alcock in 1680 had built his house which in 1685 is mentioned in court records as Captain Alcock's garrison. In his will Jeremiah Moulton bequeathed this property between Varrell and Clark Lanes to his grandson, Johnson Har- mon, from whom it passed to the latter's sons Joseph and Johnson Jr. Captain Thomas Harmon bought from the widow of Joseph Harmon the house and wharf northwest of the wharf of Edward Grow at the foot of Varrell Lane. William Grow had a wharf on the east side of Clark Lane, by the river, and his brother Daniel
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had one on the west. Major Samuel Derby had his store and office, while he was collector of the port, at the next wharf upstream.
The wharf built by Abraham (son of Nathaniel, and grand- son of Abraham) Preble and owned, in succession by Abraham Nowell, Sir William Pepperrell, Jonathan Sayward, Joseph Simp- son, and Edward Emerson Jr., became a part of the inheritance of the latter's grandson, Edward Miranda Emerson Keating, whose name it still retains.
In front of the Sayward mansion stood the wharf built, probably, by George Puddington, whose successor Major John Davis was the first to be noticed in the records as a York merchant. The mansion, built by Noah Peck and bought by Elder Joseph Sayward in 1718, later became the home of his son Jonathan. Here were Sayward's principal wharf and warehouses, but at vari- ous times he owned shares in or rented other wharves and storage space.
This stretch of waterfront, from Clark's Lane to the Say- ward mansion, was until about 1737 the Market Place, in accord- ance with Sir Ferdinando Gorges's directions in the Gorgeana charters that there should be a market place and that fairs should be held on two specified days in each year.
Barrell Mill Pond was created when a dam was built across the mouth of Meeting House Creek in 1726 in preparation for the building of a sawmill and a gristmill. Jonathan Sayward, who had acquired control by inheritance from his father, Elder Joseph, and by purchase from other shareholders, bequeathed his interest to his grandson Jonathan Sayward Barrell, by whose name the pond is commonly known. During the celebration of the 250th anniversary of York in 1902, and again in 1905 at the time of the fete when the Russo-Japanese Treaty was celebrated, the pond was called Lake Gorges, but this name has not survived. From plans and photographs it would appear that the flume was in the center of the dam and not at Harmon's Point, the location of Johnson Harmon's wharf, at the west end where the foot bridge now begins.
The stretch of river front above this point figured promi- nently in York history from early times. Here Thomas Donnell, son of Henry, built his house and a wharf from which he operated what was known as the Middle Ferry, as did his grandson and namesake. In 1755 Captain Thomas, son of John, sold half of his wharf and two warehouses to Captain Daniel Bragdon together with a small parcel of land on which Captain Bragdon built a
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house and also a wharf for his son Joseph. In time this house lot came into possession of Captain Samuel Lindsay, who in 1795 built the house later owned by the Newcomen Society. Because the widow of his son Joseph married Captain Timothy Grow the property has mistakenly been referred to as the "Grow House". In 1759 Captain Thomas Donnell sold the other half of his wharf and warehouses and all of his seventy-acre farm across the road to Captain John Stone. After Captain Daniel Bragdon's death in 1791, his half-interest became the property of Governor John Hancock by foreclosure of a mortgage held since 1787. Hancock was generous enough to allow his debtor's widow to retain full use as long as she lived. In 1784 Captain Joseph Tucker bought his father-in-law Captain John Stone's half-interest, and in 1800 he bought the other half from Ebenezer Hancock, brother of the governor and executor of his estate. As collector of customs Cap- tain Tucker had his home and office on this property; customs fees owed to the U.S. Government appear in the inventory of his estate as well as sums owed to him as charges for wharfage. In 1820 Jeremiah Bradbury, a later owner, also was collector of customs here. Years later, Joseph Tucker's house was sold to Charles Goodwin who floated it down-river to the Harbor Short Sands, whence it was moved overland to become part of what was later known as the Yorkshire Inn. Among the owners after Cap- tain Tucker was Edward A. Emerson, who owned a fleet of vessels which tied up at this wharf and had a shipyard where, it is said, was built his ship Agamenticus.
Above Sewall's Bridge, just beyond the rocky knoll, lies a broad stretch of meadowland of which, on the river front, the prominent feature is Bass Cove, the name which identified the area when it was in commercial use for more than two centuries. First the cove was the site of a mill known for several decades as "Card's Mill". The land between the rocky knoll and the cove had been part of the original Arthur Bragdon homestead, including a half-interest in the mill until 1763, when Dr. Job Lyman bought the property of the heirs of Joseph Bragdon. In 1784 Dr. Lyman. got possession of the Card farm above the cove, including the other half-interest in the mill. Isaac Lyman, his son and the heir to the property, conducted a shipyard there as well as a grist and a fulling mill. It has had many owners and many uses over the years; the last mill was known as Goodwin's. Later the property was used as a brickyard which furnished the bricks to build the new Marshall House; then it was acquired by the York Country
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Club for use as part of a golf course. Beyond Bass Cove Edward Emerson Sr. had a wharf, which he had bought of Amos Gowdy, originally the property of the ferryman, Freethy ..
Above the Bass Cove area there was another brickyard, operated from 1884 to 1900 chiefly by Jotham P. Norton, though he had various partners. Here he built docks to facilitate the load- ing of his vessels, and built the schooner Norton. Farther up, in the seventeenth century, was Rowland Young's wharf, later ac- quired by his son-in-law, John Bradbury. Rice's Bridge, built in 1805 near the site of Trafton's Ferry, lies just beyond.
Above Rice's Bridge, on the northeast side of the river is Gorges Creek, otherwise known as New Mill Creek, or Judicature Brook. The name "Gorges Creek" is logical enough, for the site of Sir Ferdinando Gorges's manor is just above the creek; and the name "New Mill Creek" was a natural choice, for the second set of mills (Ellingham and Gale's) was built there, almost opposite the site of the first tidal mill in America, built for Gorges in 1634 on Old Mill Creek across York River. But where the name "Judi- cature Brook" came from is still a mystery; perhaps the answer lies in some old court record yet undiscovered. This creek is the destination referred to when in several old deeds the Cider Hill Road was called "The Way to the Corn Mill". Several other proprietors operated mills in various locations on this creek be- tween the river and the South Berwick or Cider Hill Road: among them Henry Sayward, Pickering and Plaisted, and Joseph Moulton.
Farther up York River at Scotland Bridge, once known as the Swing Bridge, was a trading center. On either bank by the bridge were stores and warehouses during most of the nineteenth century. The most important trader, Sylvester McIntire, owned and operated seven wharves besides a store. Sometimes there was a ship tied up at every one of his wharves, while other vessels were at anchor awaiting their turns to take on cordwood or hay, the principal exports.
The south side of York River was never as much used, com- mercially, as the northeast bank. At Rogers Cove Samuel Donnell, son of Henry, had a mill in partnership with Francis Raynes. Strictly speaking, the mill was a hundred feet or so inland on Rogers Brook, and the many rocks that formed the dam can still be seen as they lie in a heap, but Samuel Donnell maintained a wharf on the river in connection with the operation of the mill.
Upstream, across from "John Hancock's Wharf", Samuel
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Sewall had a wharf which came into notice in 1740 when there was talk of building a bridge there "some day". Beyond Sewall's, Captain Joseph Holt Jr. also had a wharf and warehouse. What other wharves there may have been, perhaps on Old Mill Creek for the 1634 Gorges mill, are seldom referred to in the records and were not long in operation.
Most of the owners of these wharves also owned ware- houses. Passing vessels would turn into York Harbor for supplies just as the ships of the Bristol Merchants' fishing fleet had come in to trade at the plantation of Agamenticus. In the nineteenth cen- tury Varrells, Lowes, Donnells, Simpsons, and perhaps others carried on a slowly diminishing trade. Finally, when the two brickyards loaded their last cargoes and closed down, the era of shipping came to an end.
Shipping and shipbuilding in York became important after England won control of the seas in 1763. There was no more danger from Indians or from French or Spanish privateers for the first time in eighty-five years, and seafaring men made the most of their opportunity. The industry grew rapidly, with a setback during the Revolution followed by a quick recovery, which reached its height around 1795 until successive embargoes and the rivalry of deeper harbors brought it to an end. In 1784 Jonathan Sayward counted thirteen large vessels anchored in York River, the largest number he had ever seen there at one time.
The French and English embargoes around 1800 paralyzed trade with the West Indies. At first the venturesome owners and the doughty captains set out and risked capture until losses defi- nitely outweighed profitable returns. And again, during Jefferson's embargo in 1807 and during the War of 1812, voyages were chanced in trade with ports to the northward in Canada and Nova Scotia. And so the range of trade was shortened until at the end the last few captains and sailors were obliged to sign on at Portland or Boston or in ports still farther away when jobs on coasters out of York were not to be had. One or two references to whaling voyages are also recorded in early nineteenth-century reports, but the York men who engaged in them sailed in the employ of men from other ports.
When York became a summer resort, the calm waters of the river became popular for the use of small sailboats and canoes, and renting boats of various kinds was profitable for several propri- etors. Excursions up and down the river on regular schedules were carried on, chiefly patronized by picnic parties from the
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hotels and cottages. In those later years up to about the beginning of World War I, the only commercial vessels to be seen on the river were small fishing boats or an occasional coal barge.
All that is left of the shipping era are the stubs of the piers of a few wharves, some of which do not appear above water, even at low tide. At the west end of Stage Neck a few piers of the ferry landing can be seen when conditions are right; at the Market Place one or two stubs are visible, and the oldest wharves now in use may still contain some original material.
So passed an era when the whole economy was based on the activities at York River. The welfare of every family-on Ground Nut Hill or Brixham, on Mount Agamenticus as well as in York Harbor-depended upon whether Major John Davis or Colonel Nathaniel Donnell, Jonathan Sayward or the Emersons, William or Daniel Grow or Harmons or Varrells, each in his time could load vessels with York products and get safely back to York with cargoes of salt, sugar, and molasses, tea and coffee, as well as ribbons, hoods, shawls, and bolts of many different kinds of cloth.
Inland families were as much concerned as those near the waterfront to provide cargoes. There was beef, pork, and mutton to be raised and dressed, fish to be caught and cured, lumber and cordwood to be cut. Arrivals and sailings had to be watched, for all must be hauled in time to the wharves. This way of life has now disappeared; today only those whose business is to offer for hire small sailing or fishing craft or to supply conveniences for the sailboats and yachts of summer visitors are dependent upon the river for a livelihood.
York is divided into many districts -York Corner, York Harbor, York Heights, York Beach, York Cliffs, Cider Hill, Scotland, Cape Neddick -indeed, it would be difficult to throw a brickbat in any direction without danger of disabling a post- master.
- MARK TWAIN*
CAPE NEDDICK
FOR MORE THAN THE EARLIEST twenty years of York history Cape Neddick was the designation for what we would call the back country. Anywhere in Agamenticus north of the Village or the Harbor was so called until Massachusetts absorbed Gorge- ana and tried to establish fixed bounds. When the Reverend John Wheelwright and his followers were granted land in 1643 by Thomas Gorges and established the town of Wells, possession was given to the land between the Ogunquit and the Kennebunk Riv- ers, but when Thomas Wheelwright and a few others settled at Cape Neddick River the neighborhood for miles around in every direction was identified as Wheelwright's Farm, in consequence of which the two areas were indistinguishable. In Book I of York Deeds, for example, there are deeds written in 1650 and later, referring to land at Long Sands bounded by Little River as Cape Neddick Beach, which is now the eastern end of York Harbor. The promontory now called the Nubble (without reference to the little island off the end of it, which is the real "Nubble") was known as Cape Neddick Neck.
The earliest document known to show a definite owner of land having Cape Neddick River as a bound is a perpetual lease granted to Edward Godfrey, his son Oliver, and Richard Rowe, a London merchant, on May 4, 1638, covering fifteen hundred acres on the northeast side of "a Certain Creek or water-course there called by the name of Cape Neddick Creek". From the river the tract extended northeastward for two miles along the seashore, or roughly halfway to the present Wells line. Soon after he re- turned to Agamenticus, Godfrey turned his share over to William Hooke. For all that is known, the region was uninhabited until Thomas Wheelwright and others settled there soon after 1643, probably as squatters, and it came to be known as Mr. Wheel-
*At the 250th Anniversary of York celebration in 1902.
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wright's farm. The boundaries lay where anyone saw an advan- tage in placing them.
The first known title granted to an individual by any of the patentees was given to John Gooch between 1638 and 1640 to land on the east side of the river, at the mouth. Next, and ad- joining, was to Peter Weare, who had married one of Gooch's daughters. In 1649 Sylvester Stover and three others were granted-not by the patentees of the east side of the river but by the officials for the Province of Maine-"the Neck of Land oppo- site to Mr. Gouges Plantation ... on the South Side of the River and not yet disposed of & as supposed to be in the Limits of Accomenticus Patent".
With this grant, though uncertainty as to the right of title and ownership was expressed, a precedent was set which em- boldened the Provincial Court, on October 15, 1650, to order "that the inhabitants of Cape Nedicke are for to be rated for the payment of the ministers wages by such as are appoynted to make up rates for Gorgeana".
In December 1651 the Province of Maine (at that time composed of Gorgeana and Kittery) decreed :
It is ordered that Mr. Wheelwrights farme & Cape Nuttacke are hereby joined together as a Village of this province & have libertie annually to elect & send in a deputy for themselves who shall have power to grant warrants & appoynt any such person within the said village to serve them, which village shall soe Continew with their said privi- leges till they grow to be more Capable for a Towne.
"Cape Nuttacke" was to be assessed for taxes to be distributed equally between Gorgeana and Kittery.
As yet no definite bounds were set. The boundary between Wells and York was established by a Massachusetts commission in May 1659, but Cape Neddick was not therein defined. Indeed, in the middle of the twentieth century, Cape Neddick is still a vague part of York within reasonable distance from the Cape Neddick post office. Within it are included Cape Neddick Village, Fire- town, Cat Mountain, Mount Agamenticus, Clay Hill, Groundnut Hill, North Village and, subject to choice of inhabitants in the vicinity, Chase's Pond and Pine Hill.
Cape Neddick, then, was the first section of the wild coun- try north or east of the plantation of Agamenticus to be inhabited. Between lay a still wilder region conspicuous because of two
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beaches called the Long Sands and the Short Sands, traversable from the Village by a trail called the "Path Leading to Cape Ned- dick" (which later branched off, one path becoming the "Road to the Long Sands").
At the ocean shore one came to a long windrow of stones, known as a shingle by dwellers on the coast, and had a choice of walking or riding on top of this heap clear across a mile or more of beach, or of fording the swampland inland of the shingle, or of crossing to the sand beyond and traveling along the seashore. Conditions of seasons and tides governed the choice. According to tradition, at about a mile northeast of Long Sands Road, where there was later a railroad station called Oceanside, tides flowed in flooding the marshes through an inlet large enough for small boats to cross for safe anchorage during storms. Charles A. Grant, who in 1871 built the Sea Cottage later known as Hotel Mitchell, and now as the Anchorage, was said to have spread the first gravel upon the top of the shingle for the beginning of a more comfort- able road for his summer guests. It is therefore to be understood that travel across Long Sands for over two hundred years was always uncomfortable, often dangerous, and sometimes impossible. The alternate road through York from Wells to Kittery was from Cape Neddick Village over what became the Post Road (now U.S. 1), and by the Nason Road to the fork of Long Sands Road, and so through the Village.
The land at the Long Sands became available for owner- ship after Massachusetts disavowed the rights of the patentees and gave possession of their claims to the town. Shortly afterwards one citizen after another-Henry Donnell, Abraham Preble, Richard Banks, John Gooch, and others less well known-applied for and received grants. The first transient settlers known-Richard Wood and William Johnson-sold within a few years to Joseph Preble, fearing the threat of King Philip's War. Of the earliest houses, those of Stephen Preble on Long Sands Road, John Banks nearby, and Joseph Preble, the oldest, on the present Juniper Park Road, are still standing.
The land back of the road over the shingle, where now stands the front row of summer cottages, was swampy even to the extent of containing ponds. Between Long Sands Road and the highland at the Harbor there was a body of water large enough to be noted in a deed as "the Great Pond". And in the lowland known as Barberry Marsh, back of Oceanside, is a stretch of higher ground known to this day as "Oak Island". Countless
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