USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 25
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He had already held minor offices-constable and tax collector in 1838, deputy sheriff in 1839, collector of customs from 1849 to 1853-but when he was free of the store he sought wider fields: sheriff from 1854 to 1857, state senator in 1866, collector of internal revenue for the First District of Maine from 1862 to 1870. In 1858 he was admitted to the Maine bar and established a private law practice. In 1871 he erected the Mar- shall House, and having built a superior hotel in a beautiful setting and being fortunate in attracting a wealthy, influential clientele, he was able to set the high standards for the development of York Harbor which have been maintained ever since. A man of vision,
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ahead of his times in thought and action, his services still benefit the Town of York.
As a historian he was of further service to his native town, for busy as he was in offices of town, county, state, and nation he took upon himself the office of town clerk from 1875 to 1879, chiefly in order to copy the scattered town records into orderly sequence, a task requiring the handwriting to fill two volumes of some five hundred pages.
In 1873, after he had formed an organization to raise funds for the reconstruction of the partially wrecked Town Hall and had directed the work of restoration, as principal speaker at the re-dedication exercises he gave an outline of York history which inspired his audience with renewed pride and respect for the town. He was the enumerator for York for the Census of 1880.
In 1841 he married Sophia Baker Bragdon (1820-1879), daughter of James and Maria (Baker) Bragdon, and they had the following children: Edward Simpson (1842-1915), George Al- bert (1843-1932), Mary Ann (1846-1872), Samuel Bradley (1849-1892), Juliette (1851-1935), Ida May (1854-1936), Francis Bacon (1857-1882), Sophia (1862-1920). Two years before his death in 1882 he married Mary Ann Talpey (1833- 1921).
JOHN CONANT STEWART (1850 - 1934)
THE ERA OF YORK AS as summer resort was already defi- nitely established in 1875 when John Conant Stewart came here to live and work. He was born in Ryegate, Vermont, in 1850, graduated from Dartmouth College in the Class of 1873, and from Dartmouth Medical College, as valedictorian of his class, in 1876. Having formed a friendship with Dr. Jasper J. Hazen while he taught in York schools for a few terms, he practised medicine in close association with him from 1876 to 1886.
But Dr. Stewart was essentially a promoter and a politician, and the healing of the sick did not require all his energies. Even before opening his doctor's office he was carrying on a business of trading in lumber on Simpson's Wharf in York Harbor. With a keen eye to the needs of a fast-growing summer resort he started new enterprises to supply the goods or the services that the summer colony demanded. From 1877 to 1887 he, with Charles L. Grant as partner, operated a stagecoach line to carry passengers and freight between York and Portsmouth; then when the prospect showed clearly that their horse-drawn system was to be outmoded by the use of steam, the two men contracted to help build the railroad, of which Dr. Stewart later was a director. In the organiza- tion and promotion of fraternal orders he was a leader; the S.S.S. Building Association was the first of several to engage his interest.
By 1886 he had reached a crisis in his life, brought on by palsy which caused his head and hands to shake during the rest of his life. His career as a doctor so ended, he took up the study of law in the office of Moses Safford in 1886, all the while under- taking new business ventures. In 1889 he entered into partnership with Jotham P. Norton to sell lumber and to manufacture bricks.
He was also active in political affairs and held a long suc- cession of town offices: on the Town Board of Health in the several years during which he was a doctor, on the School Com- mittee from 1879 to 1886, as constable from 1882 to 1889, as collector of taxes from 1882 to 1884; and he represented York in
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several state and county conventions. In 1890 he was elected state senator by the largest majority ever given in York County. In the Senate he served on the committees on labor, banks and banking, engrossed bills, and congressional apportionment, and he was chairman of the Committee on Temperance.
The list of the fraternal orders in which he was actively interested is long: he was a charter member of the Agamenticus Commandery, No. 191, United Order of the Golden Cross, in which he rose to highest office in the state; for five years he was Deputy International Chief Templar of the World for Maine. He was chairman of the Committee of the Grand Lodge of Maine, Independent Order of Good Templars, on the enforcement of the prohibition law; president of the People's Prohibitory Enforce- ment League in Maine; charter member of St. Aspinquid Lodge, No. 87, A.F. & A.M .; charter member of the Knights of Pythias, charter member of the Lincoln Council, No. 6, Junior Order United American Mechanics; a member of the Gorgeanna Lodge, No. 42, American Order of United Workmen; and charter mem- ber of Lodge No. 1 of Maine of the Workmen's Benefit Associa- tion. Also he belonged to the Sons of the American Revolution, and was elected to membership in the American Academy of Political Social Science.
In 1894, he found time to complete his law studies in the office of Judge Burbank in Saco and, admitted to the bar in 1895, became a member of the Maine State Bar Association.
There was a pattern in all of Dr. Stewart's enterprises. Personal profit was not the inspiration which led him into so many diverse interests. His life was devoted to service. Whenever par- ticular goods or facilities were in demand, he would find an active partner to carry on a business to supply that need. Whenever he could aid the condition of the workingman through death benefits, accident prevention, or improved working standards, he would take an active part in any fraternal orders which promised to accomplish such results. In the cause of temperance he was ever ready to do battle. To serve others was his business and his pleasure.
Probably no other Maine lawyer in his time was more widely known. State officials and prominent members of the bar sought his advice and conferred with him on matters far more involved than the affairs which normally occupy the mind of a country lawyer. Yet with all his varied interests, business and political, he still found time to welcome cordially a casual visitor.
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He never married, but he was as pleased as any father when he could make friends of young men and guide their future.
On June 4, 1934, he died after fifty years of devoted service in York. At the time of his death he was a partner with Ralph W. Hawkes. His home here was always the house on York Street in the Village which he had inherited from Dr. Hazen, his first friend in York. No man loved York more or served it more devotedly. His influence upon York was profound and his memory should long endure.
LIFE IN YORK
THE MEN WHO CAME TO SETTLE the plantation to be called Agamenticus under the leadership of Colonel Walter Norton contended with conditions and circumstances that were unusually favorable for pioneers. Captain Christopher Levett reported that much of the land had been cleared for planting by the savages, and more important, that there were no more savages to guard against. By 1632 the first trials and errors to be made in starting a settlement had been learned from the experiences in other planta- tions in Maine as well as in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Con- sequently the account of the beginnings of habitation in York does not begin with the clearing of forests or with the building of sod houses with thatched roofs. The forefathers of the old families in York, either as agents who had the backing of successful English corporations or as men of sufficient independent means, had a better start than earlier pioneers elsewhere.
The first houses, small one-story frames, were built of hand- hewed timbers, with floors of split logs. Within two years there was a sawmill in operation, so that the methods of construction could have been as good, thereafter, as any that were then known in New England. The most important part of the house, the fireplace, for heating and cooking, was built first, before the wooden frame was erected. Cooking was done by boiling in pots hanging from cranes or by broiling from spits placed in direct contact with the open fire, until ovens were invented for baking.
Some ovens were metal boxes which were movable and could be placed close enough to the fire in the fireplace to get the proper heat for baking. Others were built of brick, as a part of the chimney but separated from the fireplace. The brick ovens were of two kinds; one had a fire pot below the oven, in which a fire heated the baking chamber above; the other was a single space in which a fire was kept until the oven was sufficiently heated, then raked out and the food put in before the heat was lost.
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Some houses still standing have "parson's cupboards", built against the chimney to be kept warm by the heat from the fire- place. Here a special bottle of rum was kept ready in case the parson called on a cold day and might appreciate some warm stimulant. Pastoral calls were most welcome in those early days of unending toil when the men worked as long as there was day- light and the women worked still longer, and beginning in 1676, there was added the menace of Indian attack, and afterwards, for many, the rebuilding of ruins.
There was no improvement in the structure of houses worthy of notice in York until during Queen Anne's War (1703- 1713). The list of existing garrisons demanded by the General Court in 1711, with a tabulation of the number of families and soldiers each could hold, showed that a larger type of house was being built. Dwellings with two stories and attic became more common; some story-and-a-half buildings were made over by put- ting a second story between the first floor and the roof. The oldest houses had only a part cellar, if any, under them; in the new and remodeled houses full cellars were considered essential. Large chimney bases were built in the cellars, with arches set below the frost line, which became favorite places for the storing of "garden sauce". The most noteworthy, the arch in the cellar of the Wilcox House, takes up as much space as the whole floor plan of many of the earlier houses.
The next change came after 1760 when prosperous men built or developed larger houses. Jonathan Sayward enlarged his own house more than once, and within a few years he remodeled the Grover farmhouse into the large mansion that it became. In 1794 Edward Emerson Jr. expanded the older wooden Wood- bridge Tavern into the Emerson Homestead, and in the same year Judge David Sewall built his mansion which so impressed Jona- than Sayward that he wrote in his diary that he considered it "one of the grandest built in the county". At this time higher ceilings were built, as heating became less of a problem.
The Sewall Mansion was indeed a departure from any other house built hitherto in York, with its high ceilings and ornate fireplaces with beautifully hand-carved mantels. The workrooms of the house-the kitchen with a fireplace and two ovens, and con- necting auxiliary rooms and sheds-were like no others in town. In the second story, above the kitchen and next to the large chim- ney, is a room like an ordinary single bedroom until one looks in the corner. Here, instead of light hooks for hanging clothing, are
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heavy hangers for storing meat. The room is an indoor smoke- house, the smoke of an oven being admissable at will through a special flue, so that the operation of smoking hams became a part of ordinary cooking rather than a separate seasonal task carried on in another house built specially for the purpose. Another house in York, built in 1810 by Alexander McIntire on the hill on Lind- say Road, has a similar room. In planning his new house Judge Sewall was, it would appear, preparing to be host to large gatherings.
Life in homesteads fell into patterns that were similar in all households, for whatever trade was followed by the man of the house, basically he lived the life of a farmer. Doctor, lawyer, miller, weaver, cordwainer, blacksmith, or fisherman, he kept his own livestock and raised his vegetables and fruit, varying his daily work from those of his assocates only in the way by which he earned his income. Conditions obliged him to co-operate with and even to be dependent upon his neighbors. When several tasks had to be done within a limited time, when heavy work required the concerted work of many hands, when danger was imminent, when disaster occurred, each community responded as one family.
The women of a household-besides the mother and daughters-might include a widowed mother or mother-in-law, unmarried relatives, orphans, or hired help. Upon them would fall the full care of the house-cooking, washing, scrubbing and sand- ing floors, sewing. There were no conveniences-no "cook stove" until 1830-water was carried in from a well or spring, satisfac- tory oil lamps were not available until around 1850. The day's work might begin at three in the morning on washdays when much water was to be heated. The milk had to be cared for, cooking and baking done, butter churned, cheese made of the skimmed milk, pigs and chickens fed. At times there was soap to be made; in season fruit and vegetables were dried and stored for the winter. Always there was sewing, at least mending if not making dresses and shirts, sheets and towels, underclothes and work pants. Then there were ointments to be prepared in readiness for cuts, bruises, and lame backs, and family remedies for coughs. In most homes there was spinning and weaving to be done in the early days of the eighteenth century before there were mills for that sort of work.
In the early days, going to church-which was compulsory by law-was the principal opportunity for the women to see people other than the neighbors. Between the morning and the afternoon
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services they might spend the recess in one or more visits with relatives or friends who lived near the church, or in mild weather, with other families under a friendly tree.
No records have been found of elaborate wedding parties. Apparently the bride and groom visited the minister in his parson- age, or some qualified civil official, and made their vows. When a man married a widow he might follow a special formality to make known to the world that he would not assume the past debts of his wife or her former husband. Unless there were written agree- ments signed by the husband to the contrary, the wife's property, even her personal wearing apparel, became part of the man's estate. There exists a record of a widow being obliged to ask the judge of probate to release to her out of her husband's unsettled estate her own winter coat.
Widow Hepzibah Adams, however, who had inherited considerable property from her father, her former husband Rich- ard, and her father-in-law Samuel, and was also a shopkeeper in her own right, retained her full property rights when she took Dr. John Whitney for her second husband. For her benefit the doctor signed a full and explicit release:
. . . Now therefore the said John Whitney doth give and grant Hepzibah free Liberty, Power and Authority (by him never to be revoked) to go on in her Trade and business of Shopkeeping and merchandize (so that she noways In- volves or Troubles him thereby) and to make her Will and Testament and thereby dispose of the estates. And the said John doth renounce and disclaim all Right to Property vested in him or that may be vested in him by law in the estates.
Details of what women wore in the days before the Massa- cre appear infrequently in inventories, where one would expect to find them. Appraisers of estates were men who knew or cared little about such matters. Sometimes the item "wearing clothes" would be all the description given. A listing which might be taken as representative appears in the inventory of the estate of John Preble, who was killed in the Massacre, which included the cloth- ing of his widow, Hannah: "1 mantow, 1 pettycoat cotton and wool, 1 serge mantow, 2 cotton shifts, 1 linen shift, 1 pair stayes, 1 pair red stockings, 1 silk hood, 2 old silk hoods, 1 silk skarf, 1 green apron, her small linen, 1 white apron".
An inventory taken in 1727 at the Stover garrison in Cape Neddick shows a wardrobe somewhat out of place in York only
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three years after the siege of Norridgewock. Miss Susanna Stover, granddaughter of Sylvester, died at the age of twenty-seven leaving in her estate: "one sute of Silk Cloathes, one Sute of Chinch ditto, one sute of Callico ditto, one sute of Stuft ditto, one sute of Black and White Silk Crepe, one sute of black ditto, one quilted Petti- coate of Sheluns, a Riding whod, a mask, a Skarf, a black silk whod and silk apron". Then, in handwriting which becomes really troublesome:
a set of floword pinors & ruffels & nock origor, a sett of pinors and a read Ribin floward with Silvor, sundry Ribons and caps, something of musselin, a garlick ditto, and one striped handkerchief, two pairs of gloves (one pair of Holland ditto), red shoes and pattens, Tickin shoes, black shoes, Holland shoes and lace shoes, a gold locket and two gold rings, besides bobs, silver buttons, hose, shifts and aprons, a forrit, a fan, and more cotton and linen shoes.
It is safe to say that such a wardrobe was not made or bought in frontier York. Miss Susanna may have inherited all this from her grandmother Stover, a sister of George Norton and daughter of Henry Norton, who, with some of the Stovers and Nortons, left York for safety when Stover's garrison was aban- doned, and lived for some years in Essex County where such garments would have been more appropriate.
The inventory of young Alexander Bulman Jr., taken in 1750, is an example of the wardrobe of a young man in good circumstances. As an apprentice he had been living in the house- hold of Sir William Pepperrell. He left:
a Black broad cloth suit, new pair black Leather Britches, new coat & Britches of Sarge, an old Camblett coat, a blew Jacket, a light coloured one, One old blew coat, one Grey coat, 2 pr Old Britches (one black leather) 2 pair thread hose, 1 pair blew, on pr Worsted, 5 pr Old Worsted, 3 pr woolen ditto, 10 Cotton and Linen Shirts, one linen, 3 Cam- bric Neck clothes, 1 linen Westcoat, a Flanel Westcoat, a silk Handkerchief, a Rossett Gown, 1 woolen cap, 1 pair Silver reemd Shoebuckles, 1 pair Steel Knee buckles, 1 pair old Boots, one Beaver Hatt, a Wigg, one stone Mourning Ring, One plain Gold Ring, Two Holland shirts, 1/2 duz Silk Handkerchiefs.
But whatever the size of their wardrobes, widows and or- phans were otherwise carefully provided for. When death was imminent, provident parents sought in their wills to distribute
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more than sums of money which might quickly be wasted. They would stipulate in minute detail the actual goods and services each member was to receive. On the son who would inherit the homestead might, for example, be placed the obligation to see to it personally that the widow would each year be supplied with a specified number of cords of wood for fuel, with stated quantities of beef, pork, lamb, and whatever the farm might provide, with so many bushels of various vegetables and fruits, and barrels of cider, and that these items would not simply be reserved for her use but would be brought to her door and stored and in every way be made readily available. Nothing was left to chance. In one instance where a widow was left her third of the house from cellar to attic and of the barn and the garden and a place to store her sauce, "with right of ingress, egress and regress", the very number of feet from the northeast wall of the house was stated, which presumably made provision that no daughter-in-law could turn out to be hateful enough to prevent her from sitting by the fireplace. Unmarried daughters, as part of their inheritance, might be given living quarters in the homestead, certain animals, and free use of certain space in the barn for their keep as long as they remained unmarried.
Minors would be placed under the guardianship of some- one chosen by the children themselves. When they reached the age of seven, the value of the work they were then able to per- form was considered to be worth the cost of their keep. Bills pre- sented for their later maintenance were denied, for in the words of a decision handed down by probate judges, "Children of seven are self-supporting because masters could be found willing to assume charges of up-bringing".
For the men, life was stern and rugged. At first there was the work of the homesteader in getting settled, then came the establishment of a family business which entailed the building of roads into the forest or to the riverbank. For the settler on the Inner or the Outer Commons there was a return to the labor of making a clearing in the woods, while for an income he worked for the miller. Meanwhile there was scouting and fighting Indians; for some years life in garrisons. For all but a few there was no prosperity until after the Seven Years' War.
Yet it is surprising how extensively men traveled, even in the earliest days, mostly by water. Scouting the woods led soldiers to the farthest points of English possessions in Maine, but on long journeys troops would be transported part way by boat as far
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as practicable before they would march overland to their destina- tions. Civilians, for the most part, would engage passage on vessels to the extent that a scale of fares was established. In Judge Samuel Sewall's diary there are entries to show that Father Samuel Moody and his wife would drop in at his home in Boston, sometimes un- expectedly, and make visits.
In 1722 Father Moody preached in Providence, Rhode Island, to a congregation which invited him to return and preach for three months. Just as casually people came to visit in York, and some, like the Bradburys and the Sewalls, came to stay. Travel by horseback was common only for court officials, military men, and a few ministers; carriages were uncommon until after the middle of the eighteenth century.
For the benefit of travelers, inns were required by law, and towns were fined if such accommodation was not provided. Since people were likely to be detained at ferries by raging waters, bad weather, nightfall, or the hazards of the road, ferrymen, as a re- quirement for appointment, were obliged to be innkeepers.
The earliest inns or taverns in York were no larger than private homes. A room would be set apart for use for a night's lodging, and in these rooms the lodgers would be herded, some- times two or more in a bed. Another room would serve as an "or- dinary" or taproom where food and drink would be available.
To the townspeople also they were a necessity and a "house of entertainment", as they were usually called. For men living nearby, their only means of recreation lay in a short evening call at the tavern to chat over a mug of ale with neighbors or with strangers passing through. The taproom was their newspaper, their post office, their bulletin board, their auction room. Town officials transacted small matters there, business agreements were reached, and bargains made. In 1688 Joseph Moulton built a tavern on the Scituate Men's Row nearly opposite the present Organug Road; it must have been a larger house than was common in that day, for during the Massacre, the Indians killed or carried from there more than a dozen persons.
Larger and better inns were necessary after 1700, especially in the Village. Commerce in the District of Maine was steadily increasing and the contracts and court transactions connected with it were brought to York to be settled and recorded. All of Maine in English control was contained in the one county of Yorkshire until 1760, and the Town of York was the county seat.
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Court sessions attracted ever-growing attendance, and with ses- sions lasting longer, created a demand for meals and lodging. No inn had been built on the main street since Joseph Moulton's tavern was destroyed.
Benjamin Stone, who had married Miriam, daughter of Abraham Preble, in Boston, saw his chance when he came to live in York; having bought of his brother-in-law, Caleb Preble, three acres next to the church on Scituate Men's Row in 1715, he built a new house in which he conducted an inn. But the early death of his wife forced him to sell his property, in 1729, to Dr. Alexander Bulman. In 1720 a new brick tavern was built by another new- comer from Massachusetts. John Woodbridge of Newbury had married Elizabeth, daughter of George Norton, who in 1714 gave her all his property in York. The brick tavern, situated where later Coventry Hall was built, was conducted by the Woodbridges until 1727, when William Pepperrell Jr. came into possession of it by foreclosure of a mortgage. In 1730 Moses Ingraham of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, bought the property and conducted a tavern there until 1746, when his son Edward succeeded him. From 1756 to 1789 Edward's son-in-law Esaias Preble was the tenant of the .Pepperrell family; then it stood idle and “much decayed", having suffered damage in an earthquake in 1755, until Judge Sewall bought it and tore it down. Beginning in October 1730, the cold-weather sessions of the court were held at Ingra- hams; the first payment to Moses was three pounds, "it being for the use of his house to hold ye Courts in for this County & Extra- ordinary charges for firewood and Candles being in full discharge till April next".
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