USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 26
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Another tavern was opened to the public in 1730 when Caleb Preble offered entertainment at the Preble homestead, call- ing it the "Green Dragon". Preble had trouble in keeping order, for in his first year somebody broke up his new sign by throwing rocks at it, and he hailed Nathaniel Ramsdell, unsuccessfully, into court in a suit for damages. Twenty-three-year-old Jedidiah Preble, who became a noted soldier after he moved to Falmouth, was fined and placed under bonds in 1730 for threatening to "lick or beat" his cousin Caleb in his tavern "within an inch of his life". Nor was it always smooth going at Ingrahams, according to court records. Perhaps those were the days when Father Moody is said to have made the rounds on Saturday nights and ordered the customers to go home so that they would be fit and in the mood next day for long church services. After the death of Caleb Preble in 1734, his
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widow conducted the inn until 1742, when she married Andrew Gilman who then became the proprietor.
John Woodbridge, having returned to living in the Norton house after the mortgage on the brick tavern was foreclosed, had retired as innholder. In 1757 his son Paul Dudley Woodbridge became a tavernkeeper in that house, and with lapses in his li- cense, carried on until 1794 when he was forced to sell to Edward Emerson Jr.
Edward Emerson opened a tavern in 1780 in connection with his store, which eventually came into the possession of David Wilcox in 1818.
In the prosperous period between 1760 and the days of growing tension which culminated in the Revolution, Esaias Preble's brick tavern was patronized the most. After court sessions the judges and their clerks, lawyers, and a few chosen notables customarily dined together at tables reserved for them and drove dull care away with display of the wit and humor which had been suppressed during serious legal proceedings. Dr. Job Lyman, broth- er of the Reverend Isaac Lyman, made a special event of paying for the dinner for the court on April 21, 1771, celebrating his appointment as justice of the peace. Town officials or groups of other prominent citizens would eat together when the court dinner was being held.
The close of important town meetings was similarly cele- brated by the voters. Jonathan Sayward, having been a judge until he was stripped of office on the suspicion of being a Tory, had been entitled to dinners with the judges. However when the senti- ment for liberty was running high in April 1774, three months after he as the town's representative at the General Court had voted as one of the seventeen "Rescinders", he was forced to sit with a more conservative group. "After [the] meeting", he wrote in his diary, "the former Selectmen and all the Justices and most that are called Tories did not Join the company as usual but went to Woodbridges by themselves".
Paul Dudley Woodbridge was most vociferous in the display of his "patriotism"-his signboard bore a likeness of William Pitt and offered "Entertainment for the Sons of Liberty". He received an all-too-favorable mention in John Adams's diary and letters, when the man who was to become the second president of the United States stayed at the "Sign of William Pitt" while in York (1770-1774). John Adams, interested in sounding out the patri- otic sentiments of the people he met on his journeys by encourag-
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ing them to talk, noted several conversations he had had with his York landlord by the fireplace, through which he formed the opinion that Woodbridge was "a staunch zealous son of liberty". Apparently he believed the man's declaration that he would gladly give his all for the cause. What he actually gave was a bill to the selectmen for a gun which he loaned to a soldier (Joshua Mac- Lucas) which had been broken; none of his sons went to war and he served on no committees.
Besides town meetings and court sessions, other regular events in men's lives were the training days of the militia, of which, since earliest times, every man between 16 and 60, unless he was a minister, lawyer, or government official, was obliged by law to be a member. Held sometimes as often as once a week in the days before King Philip's War, training days were almost en- tirely dispensed with during the heaviest Indian fighting, but were observed regularly again after 1725, though fewer musters were demanded. After Louisburg the laws required in each year only two "little training days" when only single companies met and performed on local grounds and one "great training day", called a muster, when a whole regiment would meet at some town designated by rotation. Over the years discipline was less strictly enforced, until musters became spectacles that were expensive for the officers and disreputable carnivals for the rank and file.
According to unsupported tradition, the first training field was the nearly-level ground in the neighborhood of the present Catholic Church in the Village. In depositions made in 1735 it would appear that in the years before the Massacre, musters were held in a field which would now contain the present "triangle", where the Soldiers Monument stands in the Village, and adjoining land. The last one so used was the large field back of the Green Dragon Inn.
Musters were abandoned by Act of Legislature in 1843; probably the last to be held in York was that of 1838. Charles Octavius Emerson, leading lawyer at the time and active in the cause for temperance, was not favorably impressed. Sarcastically he wrote:
Our country's defence has been out this day, for Re- view, discipline, &c. How grateful we ought to be for living under such an admirable system of Government. Our Mili- tary with its besotted ignorant officers, is about ditto with the Civil department. Our muster as well as the election is over & I am heartsick of both.
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Over the years the governor and General Court of Massa- chusetts appointed several York men to ranks higher than that of captain, and some rose to high office after Maine became a state. Jeremiah McIntire was Major General of the State Militia, and there were majors or colonels at one time or another in nearly all of the old families.
After the Revolution, when the state constitution was rati- fied in 1780, slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in accordance with the right of self-government granted to each state. In York the keeping of slaves had been taken as a matter of course since the early days of Massachusetts rule. The first mention is found in the report in 1689 of the trial and conviction of George Nor- ton's slave Peter who was hailed before the Province Court for stealing his master's wool and selling it for his own profit. Father Moody accepted the slave whom the parish voted to buy in 1733; in 1736 he had a girl slave Phyllis. Elder Joseph Sayward had an Indian slave in 1730. In all sections of the town, from Bell Marsh to Cape Neddick, there were one or more Negro slaves to be found in the families able to buy them.
From casual accounts it would appear that slaves were accepted into households on about the same status as were the white men hired for wages. They seem to have had more freedom than apprentices in that they were allowed to marry, but their terms of service were longer; they had more personal protection than hired men, and in general were accepted as childlike de- pendents who were never expected to grow up. Some went to war with their white masters; Caesar Talpey is listed with the volunteers who, under Captain Johnson Moulton, marched to- wards Boston after the news of the Battle of Concord and Lexing- ton reached York.
The most frequently mentioned slaves in York history were Prince, owned by Jonathan Sayward, and Dinah, whose master was Robert Rose. In May 1780 they were married and went to live in a little hut which Jonathan Sayward built for them on what has been known ever since as "Dinah's Hill". Two daughters were born to them; Phyllis, who grew up to be a servant of a Raynes family in Seabury, and Dinah, who died in infancy and was buried in a coffin improvised by the mother out of two trays.
From 1781 to 1784 Prince Sayward (as his master called him) served in the Revolution as a soldier after his friends bought his freedom of Jonathan Sayward for thirty-six pounds (Deeds 46-175). In his diary the Judge commented under date of March
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29, 1781: "My negro Prince enlisted and Past muster to go in the army without my consent". In the same year he sold another slave, Cato, for $275 to Jonathan Carlton of Newbury, who had the Negro enlist in the army in his stead.
The entry in the diary for February 3, 1789, reads: "Prince Sayward a free negro died aged over forty years he had been my servant. The new Constitution made him free & he was Babtized on his death bed and appeared a true Christian. I purpose to bury him at my cost as I have supported him in his last sickness". Widow Dinah lived on in her hut on the hill, with the aid of a war pension from the Government of semi-annual payments of $33.88. Gradually the hut decayed and was not kept in good repair. Mischievous children liked to plague her by putting live toads and snakes through the holes in the walls, and in her fright she would cry out and carry on much to the delight of the little villains. Winters, she was taken into the house of the Nathaniel Raynes family in Seabury, by two maiden sisters whom she served in their declining years. Here she lived near another Raynes family where her daughter was in service. Gradually she herself lapsed into senile decay and was sent by the town officials to the poor- house.
George Alexander Emery, a York historian, remembered fondly how one day, when he was small, Dinah took him by the hand and walked with him from his home on Sewall's Hill, across the bridge, and on to a stone wall back of General Jeremiah McIntire's house on what we call "The Indian Trail". This was on a "Great Training Day", and from his seat on the wall he could see the troops marching to the training field back of the former Green Dragon Inn. His most lasting impression of that day was that he got so excited when the guns roared and fifes and drums began to play that he fell off the wall. Surely Dinah did not dislike all small boys.
The dread of smallpox was a great deterrent to travel and to large public gatherings. Though known and feared since earliest times this disease raged to epidemic proportions during the last years of the eighteenth century, extending into the early nine- teenth. Smallpox victims were kept isolated in pesthouses main- tained by the town. Harris Island, then known as "Harmon's Island", was leased by the town for a time, during which it was inhabited only by those who had been banished to this "hos- patel"-the first in York. The town hired Captain Lindsay and his vessel to ferry patients over to the island.
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For a short time around 1792 all travelers entering a town were required by law to undergo a "smoking" in a public smoke- house. In York the town bought the materials for such a house of Edward Emerson and hired Daniel Simpson to build it. Where it was located is not known, nor how much it was used, but it is unlikely that any visitor to York ever endured such an ordeal as befell the Reverend William Bentley when on a day's journey between Salem, Massachusetts, and Brookline he was forced to take "four smoakings, in Cambridge, Brookline, Medford & Salem".
Until about 1925 there was a pesthouse of a later date standing near the far-east corner of the town farm property, near Long Sands Road. The tradition was that when visitors called they would cry out in order to warn the inmates of their presence. The inmates would go indoors and stay while the visitors placed food and gifts on a flat stone which lay a rod or two away from the pesthouse. The lonely sufferers would watch at the windows until their friends had withdrawn to a supposedly safe distance before they would come out and wave greetings and thanks.
In 1759. York was permitted to enjoy the use of Sir William Pepperrell's library consisting of the best books printed in England at that time. A "revolving" library containing a large number of volumes was placed in the First and Second Parishes in Kittery, and one in York, each parish having its use for a certain portion of the year. It is possible that the Second Parish in York was thus favored as Sir William's most important York property was in Scotland, adjoining the old Bragdon farm.
No more mention of a library in York is found until 1799. In accordance with a law passed by the General Court in that year a co-operative society was formed in York; a copy of the bylaws, dated 1799, is in the Old Gaol Museum, and a few of the books have been saved. The York Social Library sold stock as certificates of membership, which during the period of about ten years when the organization was active, were valued in inventories at four dollars each. No evidence of the existence of a library occurs again until some time after 1870.
The need for a library arose again, perhaps stimulated by the prospect of greater patronage in the boarding season when summer visitors were in town. Miss Sarah Varrell, around 1875, sought to meet the demand by conducting a circulating library in her home in the Harbor which quickly became popular. Summer visitors gave most of the books and created the "Harbor Library",
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which still exists, of which Miss Varrell was for many years the librarian. In his manuscript "Memories of York", Reverend Ralph Lowe wrote that he made some of the bookcases.
In 1884 some twenty teenagers were instructed in appre- ciation of literature through membership in "The Young People's Literary Club", organized by Miss Jane Sewall, daughter of Rev- erend David Brainerd Sewall, grandson of the noted Reverend Jotham Sewall. For several years this club met every other week from October to May by turns in the homes of the members. Membership, according to the Reverend Mr. Lowe, one of the group, was open to all young people who were willing to take active interest in the study assignments. For the first hour of the meetings Miss Sewall would lead informal discussion on the prescribed reading, and then there would be a social hour. "While the Club could not be called religious", wrote Mr. Lowe, "its general ten- dency was manifestly towards culture and character. . . . Through Miss Sewall's wise leadership something of lasting benefit was developed in those young people, and the general influence of the Club in the town was uplifting".
The York Public Library came into existence out of the salvage of the property of the York Neighborhood Club, organized around 1900 to provide indoor recreation facilities for the youth of the town. Of two clubrooms in the Realty Building one was used as a library. When the club died for lack of leadership, the Grange, on the suggestion of Mrs. Myron F. Cox, agreed in 1910 to sponsor a library for people of all ages, and maintained it in its clubroom over the stores in the wooden building opposite the bank until 1914, when it gave up its charter. The library was then moved to a store in G. Frank Austin's newly built Austin Block, where it stayed until 1922. For the next four years the library was in the First Parish vestry until the completion of the present attractive stone building.
The most graphic picture of life in York from 1760 to nearly 1800 is to be found in Jonathan Sayward's diary. It is lamentable that he chose to use the strictly limited space afforded by pages in almanacs for his observations. For August 23, 1760, he noted that there was rejoicing in York on the news that Montreal had been "taken" by General Amherst. One barrel of town gunpowder was fired in the guns and there was a large bonfire. Edward Emerson had by then been a tailor and a shop- keeper in the Village for five years, having bought of his cousin
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Samuel Moody, the preceptor, what is now the Wilcox House. Both Edward Emerson and Jonathan Sayward had ships of their own (Sayward had a fleet of five in 1760 and sometimes hired others) and they offered for sale luxury goods, both to eat and to wear, in greater variety than had been displayed in previous years. The arrivals and departures of ships in the West Indies trade therefore became matters of keenest interest to everyone.
Jonathan Sayward considered it noteworthy that he had paid his barber, Robert Rose, in full from spring until September. The chief items of his bill would be the regular care of his wig which would be called for periodically, taken in its special wig bag to the shop where it would be carefully cleaned and the curls reset, and then delivered to its owner in time for special occasions such as meetings of the Supreme Judicial Court and the attendant festivities. Robert Rose was also skilled as a peruke or periwig maker. His shop being in front of the Gaol, he was able to add to his income the money he received as the underkeeper of the prison and master of the House of Correction and as a tavern- keeper in the John Banks house near the Long Sands from 1759 to 1782 where the selectmen sometimes held their meetings.
A rather dreary picture of the social life enjoyed by the women of York at this time is given in a letter written by the Judge's daughter, Mrs. Nathaniel Barrell, after a visit to friends in Massachusetts during her husband's stay in England.
"Books, you know, are my principal entertainment in the country, as there are no Balls, no Assemblies, no Concerts of Music". And later, to her husband's hostess in London, "Cards- an amusement not quite so Common in America. Indeed a female gamester is as rare here as one wholly devoid of any relish for Cards can be in London". Her father seemed to have been too busy with his mills, warehouses, and ships to have time for the entertaining for which he was noted after the Revolution.
It was probably because of the memory of these dull years that Mrs. Barrell later became such a leader in the social life of York when her children were growing up. George Thacher, the representative from this district to the first Congress, wrote to his wife during a visit to York about the hospitality shown him at Barrell Grove. "Mrs. B. and family as usual were ready to show me every polite attention". In summer, parties of young couples would climb to the top of Mount Agamenticus for picnics and in winter they went on sleigh rides and returned for an "entertain- ment" to Barrell Grove.
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Edward Emerson Jr. gave a coming-of-age party at his father's tavern; though the Judge was not there to see it he wrote:
January 23, 1786. A violent gale of wind very sudden carried away part of the roof of Capt. Trevitt's house. Same day Edward Emerson Jun. was twenty-one years old. He made an entertainment for the young gentlemen and Ladies of the town. It was exceeding bad travelling not withstanding the young Ladies were so much engaged on the Frollick that they went Knee Deep in Snow water to honor Mr. Emerson and see and get sweethearts.
Edward Emerson Jr. gave a housewarming party when he had completed the remodeling of the Homestead in 1795, and during the same year Judge David Sewall entertained after his beautiful mansion was completed.
The social life of those days (1785-1795), however, is most interesting for the notables entertained. Brigadier General Jedidiah Preble, of the Massachusetts forces in the Revolution, was pleased to dine with Jonathan Sayward at a time when the patriotism of that gentleman was in doubt. General Henry Sewall, "with a respectable company", was also a dinner guest. In 1785 Theodore Lyman, born in York, son of the Reverend Isaac Lyman, entertained Judge Sayward in his new home in Kennebunk, "fit for a nobleman", and in turn Mr. Lyman with his new wife and a large company dined and drank tea at the Sayward mansion, thus beginning an exchange of dinners which lasted until Mr. Lyman moved to Waltham, Massachusetts. Two visits from Master Samuel Moody and twelve companions from Dummer Academy are recorded in the diary. Mr. Edmund Quincy, whose daughter married John Hancock, dined at the Sayward mansion. A young Italian nobleman, touring the country, came to York bearing a letter of introduction to Jonathan Sayward and was graciously entertained. But the visit of Governor John Hancock in 1791, with his wife and official staff, must have been most impressive, and at the same time most pleasing to the Judge, who valued it as an indication that he had been reinstated in public approval by the highest official.
After Coventry Hall was completed Judge David Sewall took over the reception of visiting notables, partly because of his office and his wide acquaintance with men in high position, but also because Jonathan Sayward was then in his declining years.
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In August 1794 he wrote in his diary: "Remainder of the month has been filled up with abundance of company which is rather Disagreeable to an old man who should have Silence and Con- templation waiting for the silent grave". Practically nothing is known of Judge Sewall's dinner parties, except that Jonathan Sayward and the Reverend Isaac Lyman and their wives and Edward Emerson were several times guests.
Accounts of other social events still exist. Mention is made in letters written by ladies of the Emerson family of teas and quilting parties at Mrs. Joseph Tucker's house on the Lindsay Road, giving the impression that she was popular as a hostess. Perhaps her invitations were more numerous on occasions when her wealthy sister, Mrs. David Hyslop of Boston, came to town in her elegant carriage, attracting awed attention as she rode behind a spanking pair of horses with "hoofs black balled and polished".
The most notable event in the social life of York was the occasion of a breakfast for President James Monroe who visited Judge Sewall while on tour in 1817.
There is an interesting sidelight in connection with Presi- dent Monroe's journey through York on his way farther down east. Continuing on their way after the breakfast at Coventry Hall, the party was halted by Lucy, the wife of Jeremiah Weare Jr. and granddaughter of Judge John Bradbury, in front of the Weare homestead on what is now Pine Hill Road but was then a part of the Post Road. Her husband wrote in his diary: "July 15, 1817 the President of the United States Mr. Munro passed by bound East accompanied with militia officers and troops in uniform about one hundred. Lucy Weare and Mercy Mack Saluted them with a hymn called the millinium".
Mrs. Weare (1754-1846) took the welfare of the women of the town as her personal responsibility. For December 28, 1833, the diary records: "Lucy Weare the wife of sd Jeremiah was taken sick all most all winter. She travels no more from house to house nor village to village warning the people to flee from the wrath to come. A D 1809 Mrs. Lucy Weare first traviled out and continued travilling and warning the people tell Dec. 28, 1833". Her visits must have been welcome to women on lonely outlying farms. There no doubt was a question-and-answer period after each lecture in which she passed on the news and gathered more to carry. Perhaps on occasion she brought along quilting patterns,
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or seeds, or cuttings from favored plants, and best of all carried messages from and to family and friends.
An account of a public celebration of a political nature held in Scotland in 1829 has been saved by Miss Alice R. McIntire.
The Eastern Argus, a newspaper printed in Portland, in its edition of March 17, 1829, carried a full account of the pro- ceedings, which reads in part:
On March 4, instant, the inauguration of General An- drew Jackson was noticed in the second Parish in York, called "Scotland Parish" in the following manner. The day was ushered in with the discharge of Cannon. At eleven o'clock a federal salute was fired under the direction of Cap- tain Josiah Chase, commander of the York Artillery company. Immediately after, a procession was formed at the house of Mr. Joseph Moody, under the direction of Maj. Jefferson McIntire who acted as Marshall of the day, and proceeded from thence to the Meeting house where notwithstanding the badness of the roads, a large number of citizens had assembled.
The performances were commenced by singing an appropriate hymn-after which the Throne of Grace was addressed by the Rev. Mr. Duncan in a solemn and very appropriate prayer. An Ode composed for the occasion by Doctor S. W. Baker was then sung by the choir with much applause, followed by an Address to the Assembly by Alex- ander McIntire Esq. After the performances in the Meeting house were ended the company returned to the house of Mr. Moody in the same order in which they went; and sat down to a table well stored with every kind of provisions, which the season of the year would admit. Elihu Bragdon, Esq. Presided, aided by Solomon Brooks, Doctor S. W. Baker and Major William McIntire as Vice Presidents. After the cloth was removed toasts were drank, accompanied with the discharge of cannon.
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