USA > Maine > Androscoggin County > Livermore > Notes, historical, descriptive, and personal, of Livermore, in Androscoggin (formerly in Oxford) county, Maine > Part 11
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TOLLAWALLA .- Every neighborhood of Livermore was always re- spectable except perhaps one, and that exception lasted only for a few years. I have already called its name, "Tollawalla." Perhaps there may still be some stigma upon or attached to that name, so I will do that away. This is the neighborhood lying from Col. Lewis Hunton's to Strickland's Ferry, on both sides the river. Old Mr. Wing, who kept the first ferry, with his wife, " Aunt Priss," old Mr. Norcross, and Haines Learned were the first settlers here. Nor- cross died, sometime prior to 1800, and was buried in the midst of a cold north-east snow storm. Learned failed in business, and went South, where he afterwards died; three of his daughters married Morisons, very worthy women. So all the old, first settlers had left Tollawalla except the Wing family. A family or race of Lovejoys came in there. I knew five of the men and one or two of the women. Things were missing by the people, and finally horses,
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etc., etc., and there were strangers, suspicious strangers, hanging about Tollawalla; but these depredations, perhaps most of them fancied, were increasing, and Bishop Soule, then Elder, his brother Nathan, my father, and many others made up their minds to bring the Tollawallians to justice, and rid the town of the evil. I can now look back fifty or sixty years, I trust with candor, and ever seem to see that this great zeal for honesty and right was carried so far as to be a persecution against the inhabitants of that neighbor- hood. It was about a State's prison crime for a stranger to be found there; several were sent to the State's Prison of Massachusetts for a term. The Tollawallians had to leave; some went to one place, some to another. But all this does not explain the etymology of the name " Tollawalla." This was the Indian name of the rips just below Col. Hunton's, and meant the little falls, rips, or rapids, and really in itself means nothing worse or more disreputable than the honorable name, Livermore. The rips were so called by the Rocco- meco Indians. My reader will readily see a similarity between this name and the name of that tribe itself, Roccomeco; also from the same tribe and language came the name of Rumford Falls, Penni- cook, or Great Falls.
I learned to count as the Roccomeco Indians used to, in my younger days, and to amuse the reader I will give their numerals, aiming to give their precise pronunciation in our letters, using no silent ones.
English
Indian
One
Pússuck (accent as marked)
Two
Nees
Three
Wass
Four
Yorr
Five
Palàmus (a as in father)
Six
Umkitùsh
Seven
Tebàmus (a as in father)
Eight
Sàsack
Nine
Noliwće
Ten
Metàla (a as in father)
I think I have already said that the Indian name of the river was Ain-er-es-cog-gin. These Indians used but ten numerals, but could repeat them at pleasure, as we do ours. This Indian method of counting, as well as many other facts before stated, I learned from my Uncle Samuel Livermore. So far Mr. Chase.
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
OF CERTAIN TRAMPS AND ODDITIES .- The town used to be vis- ited frequently-more perhaps during the last decade of the half century succeeding its settlement than at any other period-by pedlars, beggars, charlatans, tramps, and odd characters generally, some of whom made it at times their head-quarters.
Prominent among the pedlars was Joshua Brown, a native of some town on the lower Kennebec, who is said to have been crazed in early manhood by unrequited love. In the better days of his itineracy he carried his wares, consisting chiefly of needles, pins, thimbles, cotton and linen thread, sewing silk, and tapes, on horse- back. His traveling expenses-moderate as they were, for his pecul- iarities and strange simplicity made him a not unwelcome guest at the wayside homes where he was wont to call, and at which the charge for supper, lodging, breakfast, and horse-keeping could often be cancelled by a darning needle-gradually exhausted his capital, and he was compelled at last to trudge on foot, with his diminished stores. A fond, garrulous old man, whom the children were always glad to see and hear, his visits were not so much enjoyed by the elder sisters and maiden ladies of the household, to whom, to the great amusement of the mirth-loving younkers, he never failed, with absolute impartiality, to offer himself as a candidate for matrimony. When a matter-of-fact maiden lady, to whom he proposed marriage, answered with a prompt and curt negative, like the Laird of Cock- pen, upon a similar occasion, "he gave no sigh," but "mounted his mare," and only said as he rode away, "I think you must be a Fos- terite, my pretty dear," leaving her to wonder what that might mean.
There was a class of stragglers who frequented the town for many years, called " cider pots," who went from house to house beg- ging for cider. They were commonly hard cases, seedy and sodden, but inoffensive. One of a better type than the general is remem- bered. He was a man of education and had evidently seen happier days. He had the carriage and tone of a gentleman. Calling in the afternoon of a delicious summer day at one of the hospitable orchard-flanked mansions in the town, he inquired if he could be favored with a mug of cider. Receiving an affirmative answer, he seated himself in the doorway and patiently awaited the return of the large-hearted matron, to whom he had addressed his petition. When she had given him the cider he sat it upon the floor, and re- peated from beginning to end, in a voice of singular sweetness and
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
pathos, Wordsworth's "We are Seven." He then drank off his cider and bade the lady good-bye. She had never seen or heard the poem before, but the stanza,
" And often at the sunset, sir, When it is bright and fair, I take my little porringer, And eat my supper there,"
never ceased to haunt her memory until she was herself
" In the churchyard laid."
A peripatetic Irish tailor, by the name of Brennan, who made and mended clothes for the more substantial families, enlivened many a household by his tales of the "old country," and by good-natured threats of vengeance, with his goose, upon all enemies of good little boys and girls.
A well-remembered denizen for a year or two, between forty and fifty years ago, was Jeremiah Gilman, from Vermont, a sort of char- tered rascal, and the champion liar of the town. His fables were so impudently and outrageously improbable, so various and audacious, that Zachariah Chickering declared he received assistance from the father of lies himself. His name-and more's the pity-will doubt- less outlive that of the good deacon whom he had, as he boasted, " tackled " on a question of religion, and worsted "on the pinnacle of the Scripture."
A pseudo doctor, pretentious and imposing, haunted the town for a season about this time. He related with circumstantial detail and curious plausibility many wonderful cures of the sick and remarka- ble transformations of the healthy, which had been accomplished by his treatment. He found some dupes, but unfortunately they were not of "the slaves who pay." There was living in town a respecta- ble old gentleman, protuberant and unwieldy, whose wife was as singularly and inconveniently lean and thin as he was gross and stout. The doctor proposed, for a moderate consideration, to trans- fer, without pain or danger to either, the surplus rotundity of the husband to the wife. But reasonable as his terms were, he was not encouraged to make an experiment which promised results so happy and so greatly desiderated! He left town not long afterwards, dis- appointed, saddened, not to say affronted, by the want of faith of these excellent people in his power to do them good. But if they wanted faith, the gossips of the town, whose wonder and theme he
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
had been, did not ; nor did they cease for many years to lament the incredulity which deprived their neighbors of the benefit which they might have so surely derived from the magical power of the great doctor.
More substantial is the history and better verified are the works of William Godfrey Martin, who was a Hessian soldier, in the Brit- ish army, and served in America in the Revolutionary war. After its close he came to Maine, and for a good many years was in and about Livermore. He professed to have been an educated physician, and boasted of having effected some remarkable cures. He told a pa- tient that he was educated at the Royal College in Leyden, and had read "Booerhave in Latin, a book as big as that bed," pointing to an old-fashioned large-sized bed upon which the patient was reclin- ing; and that he bought his medicines by wholesale in Portland of the "Sharleyarvin," meaning the eminent apothecary and physi- cian, Dr. Shirley Ervin. "Having been born under Jupiter," he said, "I can generally tell what ails folks." He claimed to have been a Mason in the "ninth arch " before he left Germany.
9
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
CHAPTER X.
THE STORY OF THOMAS FISH, 1782.
BY ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.
ALMOST a hundred years ago,
While Maine's sparse hamlets were scattered wide, And threatened still by the savage foe- Where the turbulent Androscoggin's tide In fetterless freedom flowed at will,
Unspanned by bridge and untasked by mill- Unvexed, as it threaded the forest gloom, By floating lumber or hindering boom- Across the ice on a winter day,
As thickly the dizzy snow came down, A traveler toiled, on his tiresome way To New Port Royal from Winthrop town.
All day long it had snowed and snowed, And now the drifts were heavy and deep; For a score of miles he had kept the road Buried and blocked by the tempest's sweep- But beating his hands to keep them warm, He faced, undaunted, the blustering storm- For only a little space away The end of his weary journey lay. But all too soon did the shadows fall, And the chill gray twilight leave the skies, And night let down, like a solid wall, Its thick black curtain before his eyes.
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
With weary muscles and straining sight, He bent his head to the furious blast, And toiled and struggled with sturdy might, And pictured the rest he should find at last- Blessing the way-marks which let him know The hidden pathway beneath the snow.
Had he not walked it, in dark and light, Often and often, before to-night ? But the mighty wind, from the bleak northeast, Seized him and smote him and made him reel, His feet grew numb, and their aching ceased- But the sharp snow stung him like points of steel.
It beat like sand in his blinded eyes, And filled his nostrils, and choked his breath- And the cold seemed slowly to paralyze" His brain to a drowsy dream of death. Stumbling, wading-he rose once more Deafened and dazed by the tempest's roar, And yet again through the drifts he pressed, With cold hands beating his aching breast, And pulses faltering-while so near, Only a short half mile before, Were warmth and safety and friendly cheer In the dwelling of Farmer Livermore.
The farmer's kitchen was broad and bright, And cheerily out on the driving storm Streamed from its windows the ruddy light Of the social hearth-fire wide and warm; But the inmates shuddered beside the fire, As the raging tempest shrieked in ire, And the striving gusts in the chimney cried, While higher the snow-banks piled outside. But nine had struck from the tall old clock ; The ashes over the coals were pressed ; The door was fastened with bolt and lock, And the farmer's household sought their rest.
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
Long after fire and lights were out, And half asleep as the farmer lay, He dreamed, or fancied, he heard a shout In the stormy tumult, far away. Alert he listened-and caught once more The voice half lost in the wind's wild roar- Muffled, faint, on the snow-thick air, It came like the cry of a great despair- And the farmer, leaving his pillow warm, Went out in the darkness and strove to hear, In the fitful pauses of blast and storm, Again the voice that had reached his ear.
Long he listened, but all in vain- Never again came the pleading cry; Over the clearing, and wide pine plain, The wrathful tempest swept heedless by; And he turned again to the sheltering door, Doubting and querying more and more. " The night is terrible-who would be Out at a time like this," said he, "To face this bitter and bleak northeast ? " And he crept again to his pillow warm; " It was but the cry of a scared wild beast Roused from its lair by the howling storm."
The wanderer's heart grew sick with fear ; He had lost the road-and he struggled back Manfully, stoutly-for life was dear- Eager to reach the baffling track ; But, sore bewildered and chilled and blind, Crossed it, leaving it far behind, Floundering, plunging, with slow advance, Away from his life's last feeble chance. What wonder, when from his heart was riven The precious hope he had tried to nurse, If he lost all faith in earth and heaven, And blamed his fate with a bitter curse ?
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
Could he be lost ? He had passed this way On many a wide exploring tramp; Had planned with careful and close survey The road to the earliest settler's camp ; And long ere the first log house was made Had slept in the forest, unafraid,
With curtain of leaves and pillow of moss; Had roamed the ridges and swamps across, With compass and quadrant, stake and chain, And traced, and measured, and noted down, And conned, and studied, again and again, The boundary lines of the purposed town.
Was this the end ? Should he never see The growth and glory, by land and wave, Of the infant nation he helped to free, The young republic he fought to save ? Never again would his vigorous hand Clear the trees from the virgin land, Never with cordial warmth again Answer the grasp of his fellow-men ? Never more should he ford the streams Or rove the woods of the future town ? And was this the end of his happy dreams ? And thus must his brave, strong life go down ?
He thought of the home he had toiled to frame, The new-built house in the meadow set- (The faithful meadow still bears his name, And the half-filled cellar is seen there yet.) The home that waited its coming crown- The promised sweetheart in Winthrop town; And did she slumber with peaceful breath While he was battling alone with death? Or did she wake from her happy sleep, And peering out through the midnight dim, Noting the snow-fall dense and deep, Think of his journey and pray for him ?
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
Was this the end of his fond desire ? Was it for this inglorious close His life passed scathless amid the fire Poured from the cannon of foreign foes ? Was it for this he had dared to press Into the heart of the wilderness, And met and grappled, without a fear, The dangers and toils of the wild frontier ? Was it to die in the woods alone, Freezing slowly to senseless rock, He was saved in the perils his life had known, And spared by the Indian's tomahawk ?
Ah, how cruel seemed all on earth ! All he had prized, or loved, or known! What could friendship or love be worth, Since they left him to die alone ? Empty mockery seemed they then, Love of women and praise of men, False and hollow and useless all ;
And he pierced the night with his frenzied call, And pushed again through the hopeless drift, And shouted and shrieked with his failing breath, Striving with desperate will to lift The growing stupor he knew was death.
Did his heart go back to his fresher years, His early manhood,-his children twain, Who long with questions and sobs and tears Would wait his coming and wait in vain, Afar in their Massachusetts home ? Or did his wavering memory roam To the few bright days of his wedded life,
And linger last with his long-lost wife ? Haply her love's serene control, Hovering near him, a helpful power, Lent new strength to the tortured soul At war with fate in that dreadful hour.
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
Utterly wearied out, at length,
He paused by the roots of a fallen pine, Yet strove with his last remaining strength To leave some record, or trace, or sign, For those who would seek and find him there; On a half-burned stump, by the wind blown bare, With his trusty knife in the nerveless hold Of fingers stiff with the cruel cold, He tried to fashion a word-in vain- The knife escaped from his frozen hand, And his feeble message of love and pain No mortal ever could understand.
Powerless longer to strive or shout, He dropped on his desolate death-bed there; The final flicker of hope went out And left him alone with his black despair. Little he thought, as he slowly sunk Down to die by the pine tree's trunk, With never a helping hand to save Or beckon him back from his snowy grave- Little he dreamed, on his pillow cold, That after the lapse of a hundred years, His mournful story would still be told, With tender pity and many tears.
Sweetly a strange delirium stole The sense of anguish and pain away ; For a merciful moment, across his soul, A wondrous vision of summer lay ; The sunshine warm on the sweet pine woods, The murmur of wide, green solitudes, The glancing leaves by the breezes stirred, The gurgle of brook and the song of bird ; Softly the fluttering pulse grew still, As spent waves die on a pleasant shore ; The wrathful tempest had wrought its will, And the cold and darkness vexed no more.
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HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
And the merciless snow kept on and on, And draped his bed with a curtain white, And covered his cold cheek, pale and wan; And three days after, at fall of night- When a flying rumor of dread and fear Had startled the settlers far and near, And sore alarmed at his long delay, They followed his track where he lost the way- They found him frozen and stark, and bore, With awe-struck faces and whispered speech, His stiffened form to the very door
He had tried so vainly and long to reach.
There in the evening firelight warm, They thawed the frost from his rigid limbs, And gently straightened his poor bent form ; And with prayer, and sermon, and quaint old hymns, Their fitting and simple burial rite,
They buried him in his sweetheart's sight ; With tender reverence they laid him down Near her dwelling in Winthrop town. His grave was nameless, and none may know, So many the changing years have been, Where the kind earth opened, so long ago, Her warm, brown bosom and took him in.
Scarce remembered and seldom told, Even in the homes of the self-same town Where the traveler died of the bitter cold, Is the sorrowful history here set down, The mournful story of Thomas Fish; Yet oft indulging my childish wish, My father told me the legend true When fiercely the mad Maine snow-storms blew ; The tale of the gallant pioneer, Frozen to death in the driving snow Of the winter midnight, wild and drear, Almost a hundred years ago.
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APPENDIX.
A
PETITION OF SAMUEL LIVERMORE AND OTHERS, COMMITTEE, FOR A NEW GRANT-RESOLVE OF GENERAL COURT-ORDER FOR SE- LECTION AND LOCATION.
Province of the Massachusetts Bay.
To the honble Thos. Hutchinson, Esq'., Lieut. Governor and Com- mander in Chief in and over said Province to the honble his Majesty's Council and House of Representatives in General Court assembled the 29 day of Oct. 1770.
The Petition and Remonstrance of Samuel Livermore, Leonard Wil- liams, and George Badcock, a Committee appointed by a Society who were Proprietors of a Township of Land granted to Nath'l Harris, Esq'., and others by said General Court in the year 1736, as a gratuity for their service in the Reduction of Port Royal, humbly sheweth, That the said Proprietors in observance of the condition of their Grant proceeded to lay out said Township and returned a plan of the same to the same Court for their approbation which was approved of by them according- ly; That then the Grantees proceeded to perform the conditions of their Grant by allotting out the house lots, and some began to build thereon, and repaired to said town with design to dwell there, clear'd roads and built a saw-mill at the charge of the Proprietors, with many other charges, in the whole amounting to more than £1,000 of the then cur- rency, as by the Book of Records of said Proprietors clearly appears, besides their expence of time and labour. But yet it happen'd that a war broke out and many of the inhabitants were killed, others taken captive, others surprized and discouraged; and immediately by the set- tlement of the bounds between this Province and the Province of New Hampshire, to our great loss and disappointment, the town fell within the bounds of New Hampshire Province, whereby the Proprietors were wholly deprived of all the profit and advantages they expected to reap and enjoy for their services aforesaid, and suffered great loss not only
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APPENDIX.
in time but in money in laying out their lotts, clearing roads, &c., and have no way to obtain relief but by the interposition of your Honors. Your Petitioners therefore pray your Honors would take the same into your wise consideration, and appoint a committee to enquire into the equity of our claims and also the claims of several others who were in the same expedition, but have received no favor therefor, and who de- sire to be admitted with us, and grant leave to remove our pitch to some other place in some of the unappropriated lands in said Province, and your Petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray, &c.
SAMUEL LIVERMORE, LEONARD WILLIAMS, Committee.
GEORGE BADCOCK,
The Committee to whom was referred the Petition of Samuel Liver- more, Esq'., and others have enquired into the facts therein set forth and judge them to be true, and therefore are of opinion that the follow- ing Resolve pass :
In the House of Representatives June 11, 1771, Resolved that the Prayer of this Petition be granted, and that there be granted to the Petitioners, and to the assigns or legal representatives of the original Grantees in said Petition mentioned, their heirs and assigns, a township of the contents of six miles and three-quarters square, in some of the unappropriated lands in the Province of Maine to the eastward of Saco River, adjoining to some former Grant, to satisfy the Grant of a Town- ship therein mentioned, which they lost by the running of the line be- tween this Province and the Province of New Hampshire, and that the Petitioners at the cost of themselves and their associates cause the same to be laid out by a skilful surveyor and chainmen under oath and return a Plan of the same to this Court for their acceptance within twelve months, and the said Grantees shall hold the same to themselves, their heirs and assigns forever, upon the following conditions, viz .: That the Grantees within seven years settle sixty families in said Township, build a house for the public worship of God and settle a learned Protestant minister, and lay out one sixty-fourth part for the first settled minister, one sixty-fourth part for the ministry, one sixty-fourth part for the use of schools, and one sixty-fourth part for the use of Harvard College for- ever .*
Sent up for concurrence. T. CUSHING, Speaker. In Council June 11, 1771. Read and concurred. T. FLUCKER, Sec. Consented to. T. HUTCHINSON.
A true copy. Attest Record the above copy.
THOS. FLUCKER, Secretary. Per LEONARD WILLIAMS, Propr's Clerk.
*A further time for the performance of these conditions was allowed by the Legislature of Massachusetts, by Resolve June 17, 1779.
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APPENDIX.
To Lieut. Elijah Livermore and Mr. Elisha Harrington.
GENTLEMEN,-By virtue of the Power vested in us by the foregoing Grant we appoint you jointly to lay out said Township, with such other assistance as you shall find necessary, with the following instructions, that you go directly to Brunswick Falls. On your way thither call at Col. Bagley's, get what information you can of him, both as to the best land and best place. At Casco Bay consult likewise with Capt. Jones, and get what knowledge you can. At Brunswick take a Boat or Battoe and a skilful Pilot, go up Androscoggin River, see what the navigation is, proceed up as far as Rocky Meco, explore the distance from any Grant; if the land is good and will make a good Township lay one out 9 mile and forty rods long, and five mile wide if you can adjoin it any former Grant; if not and by extending to ten miles and { long you can obtain the Intervale lay it out there ten miles and { long and four miles and ¿ wide. If the land will not suit go up Little Androscoggin River; if the land will there suit lay it out under the same instructions. If you cannot obtain a Township there, take the best advice and best Pilots you can and lay it out in the best place and manner you can. We likewise appoint you, Mr. Elisha Harrington, Surveyor of said Township with power with the concurrence of Mr. Livermore to appoint and agree with some other skilful Surveyor to compleat said survey if you should be called off before you have compleated the same. We expect you will compleat a Plan of said Township and send or bring it to us as soon as possible that we may present the same to the General Court for their acceptance.
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