USA > Maine > Androscoggin County > Livermore > Notes, historical, descriptive, and personal, of Livermore, in Androscoggin (formerly in Oxford) county, Maine > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14
82
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
1865 ; collector of the port of Boston in 1865 and 1866; U. S. sen- ator, elected (1848) for four years to fill a vacancy, and subsequent- ly elected for three full terms; aid-de-camp of Governor Fairfield ; commissioner of schools for the County of Penobscot, and commis- sioner of the State of Maine in 1861 and 1862 in respect to her fortifications. Hannah Livermore, born 1814, married Dr. Thomas B. Townsend, M. D. Bowdoin College, who died soon after his mar- riage.
DR. CORNELIUS HOLLAND was in the practice of his profession as a physician for a few years after 1805. His home was at Monroe's. He finally settled at Jay (now Canton) Point, where he had an ex- tensive practice. He died 1871, at an advanced age. He was twice elected to congress from the Oxford district.
When Dr. Hamlin removed to Paris he was succeeded by DR. BENJAMIN PRESCOTT, a son-in-law of Gen. John Chandler, of Mon- mouth. Dr. Prescott was a native of Winthrop, and had a good reputation in his profession.
In 1809, he sold his house to DR. BENJAMIN BRADFORD, and set- tled in Dresden, Me., and afterwards moved to Bath. Dr. Bradford moved to Livermore in August of that year, where he resided till his death in May, 1864, at the age of eighty years. He was the son of Chandler Bradford, of Turner. As a physician, he was careful and judicious and had a large practice; as a man, he was genial, wise, and of rare humor; as a citizen, useful and honored. He was for several years a member of the Maine legislature from Livermore, and in 1841 was a member of the executive council. He was much esteemed by Governors Lincoln and Kent, with whom he was in in- timate relations, for his good sense and admirable colloquial powers. He was the treasurer of the town for fifty-one consecutive years. Dr. Bond, in his letter quoted elsewhere, speaks of him in terms at once appreciative and just. He married Martha Bisbee, whom he survived (she having died in 1863), and by whom he had a family of thirteen children, of whom the following survived him: Flora, widow of Merritt Coolidge, Esq., a merchant of Portland; Osca, widow of John W. Bigelow, Esq., of Livermore; Celia, wife of Maj. Elisha Coolidge, of Jay; Henry Bond, farmer, who resides on the old place, and two years after the death of his father was elected town treasurer, which office he has held ever since; Martha, wife of Joseph Locke, who lives in Minnesota; Algernon Sidney, a farmer, who also lives in Minnesota.
83
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
The old social library, which, for many years, furnished excellent reading to the families of the subscribers, was kept at Dr. Brad- ford's. There were in it a goodly number of valuable books, largely histories and travels-as Hume, Robertson, Marshall, Gordon, Bruce, Brydone, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague. There were also on its shelves Goldsmith's works, including "The Earth and Animated Nature;" The Spectator, in eight volumes, and other books of the best kinds. The modern novel had no place there, but the works of Cervantes and Le Sage were on its catalogue, and not seldom in the hands of its patrons; and the doctor had a private library-to which his neighbors had access-not large, but much read. A man of quiet but excellent humor, he had no books which he read oftener or enjoyed more than the works of Laurence Sterne, Dean Swift's Tale of a Tub, Knickerbocker's History of New York, and the poems of Peter Pindar and George Colman. Tristram Shandy furnished an inexhaustible resource for quotation and illus- tration. Dr. Bradford was pretty regularly supplied by Rufus Pray, then a law student in New York, with Noah's Advocate, and his neighbor, the storekeeper-whose love of reading possibly exceeded his interest in the shop, and who found more pleasure, it may be ven- tured to say, in Burns' poems than in day-book or ledger-was a sub- scriber to the New England Galaxy, edited by Joseph T. Buckingham. In good things and bright sayings these papers led all others in the country. If Noah excelled in humor, Buckingham was unrivalled in satire. His "attentions" to Alexis Eustapheive, the Russian con- sul at Boston, and to the Rev. John Newland Maffit, with his Brom- field Street pranks, afforded these neighbors infinite amusement.
To see one of them approaching the honse of the other on a stormy day, when the session might be long and uninterrupted, gave unbounded pleasure to the young people of the favored household, who understood well what was coming-the news of the day, the funny sayings of Noah, the sharp ones of Buckingham, the anecdote never stale however often repeated, the freshest joke of the neigh- borhood, the body-shaking laugh of the genial doctor, the more ex- plosive one of his companion-and with these, at not infrequent intervals, discourse on higher themes, earnest discussions of topics political, religious, literary, and social, when Algernon Sidney, Burke, Jefferson, Archbishop Tillotson, William Whiston, Dr. Priestley, Jonathan Mayhew, the dialogues of Elhanan Winchester,
84
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
Addison, Goldsmith, or Dr. Johnson, were quoted and commented on.
Sometimes Capt. Kendall and, perchance, Capts. Waters and Pray were present also, and at such times the discourse was more likely to be political, when State matters and public men were discussed with rare intelligence and the freedom that became independent thinkers. At one time, the theme might be the Missouri comprom- ise and John Holmes' connection with it, or the separation of Maine from Massachusetts with references to Mr. Holmes' theory of " five- ninths ;" at another, it would be the controversies of the Bucktails and the Clintonians in New York, or the "era of good feeling," heralding the election of Dr. Eustis as governor of Massachusetts ; again, it would refer to the Panama mission, and later to the north- eastern boundary question, and the labors of their honored friend, Enoch Lincoln, the chivalrous governor, whose love of Maine was so earnest and so touching. Previous to the new departure at the close of Mr. Monroe's administration, the doctor, the storekeeper, and Capt. Waters had been republicans, and the other captains, fed- eralists; but they came together in the support of John Quincy Adams, for president, against Mr. Crawford in 1824, and Gen. Jack- son in 1828, and were never afterwards divided in their political views or party affiliations.
When theology or religion was the topic, as was not seldom the case, it needed no great discernment to discover that they were all stanch adherents of the Broad Church, reverent in feeling, and apt and valiant in the maintenance of its views and doctrines.
Of these neighbors, since the recent decease of Capt. Pray at the age of eighty-five years and twelve days, one only-the venerable Israel Washburn, the storekeeper and long-time magistrate-re- mains. While he is nearly blind from the effect of cataracts, which began to be a source of inconvenience about fifteen years ago, his general health is excellent, and his memory, at almost four score and ten, is remarkably active and distinct, covering things new and old, and small as well as great, so thoroughly that it would seem no event or anecdote of which he ever had knowledge-from the day when a boy of five years he advocated the adoption of the federal constitution, against Daniel Wilbur, to the general election in 1872, in which he took a lively interest-had escaped its marvellous grasp.
TIMOTHY HOWE was a well-educated physician and a man of much intelligence. He came to Livermore in 1814, or perhaps earli-
85
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
er. In November of that year he was member of a committee to petition the legislature. He lived at the village in 1816, and soon afterwards moved to Turner, where he passed the rest of his life. His son, Timothy O. Howe, was born in Livermore Feb. 24, 1816. He was educated to the bar, settled in Readfield, Kennebec County, and represented that town in the State legislature in 1845. He em- igrated to Wisconsin soon afterwards, and settled at Green Bay, where he practiced law with success, and was judge of the circuit and supreme courts from 1850 until his resignation in 1855. In 1861 he was elected, and in 1867 and 1873 re-elected, to the United States senate. He married a daughter of Francis F. Haines, Esq., of East Livermore. Z. HI. Howe, postmaster at Monroe, Wis., is also a son of Dr. Timothy Howe.
Previous to the division of the town, DR. WILLIAM SNOW, DR. CHARLES MILLETT, DR. WILLIAM B. SMALL, DR. WILLIAM CARY (father of Annie Louisa Cary, the great vocalist), and perhaps others were in practice on the cast side of the river.
DR. S. B. MORRISON was in practice at the village for several years. Since his removal DRS. BARNARD, WILLIAM DROWN, AL- BERT L. FRYE, J. W. BRIDGHAM, JOHN LADD, and I. C. DUNHAM have been physicians in the town.
7
86
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
CHAPTER VIII.
NOTES MISCELLANEOUS.
FREE MASONS .- Preliminary steps towards the organization of a Lodge of Masons were taken in March, 1811, and as early as the second day of July of that year intelligence was received that the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts had granted the petitioners a charter, convey- ing full powers as a Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, by the name of ORIENTAL STAR LODGE, No. 21. At a meeting April 21, 1812, the charter, bearing date June 13, 1811, and of masonry 5,811, signed by Timothy Bigelow, Grand Master, Francis J. Oliver, Senior Grand Warden, Benjamin Russell, Junior Grand Warden, John Proctor, Grand Secretary, Andrew Sigourney, Grand Treasurer, was re- ceived. At this meeting the following officers of the Lodge were chosen, viz .: Samuel Small, Master; William H. Brettun, Senior Warden; Simeon Waters, Junior Warden; Jesse Stone, Treasurer ; Sylvester Strickland, Secretary. Aug. 28, 1816, "the Lodge was duly constituted and solemnly consecrated, according to the ancient usages of Masons, by the M. W. Grand Lodge of Massachusetts." A hall for its accommodation was built at the Corner in 1818. An act of incorporation granting the right to hold real and personal es- tate was passed by the legislature Feb. 10, 1823. While the Lodge was kept in working order and officers were generally elected from year to year, no work was done from February, 1829, to December, 1843. After the period of inaction, superinduced by the Morgan excitement, had passed, the Lodge awoke to new life, and has since enjoyed a satisfactory degree of prosperity. Many of the best citi- zens of Livermore and neighboring towns have been connected with it.
In a compendious and model History of the Lodge, recently pub- lished, prepared by Hon. Reuel Washburn, a long-time member, and P. G. M. of the Grand Lodge of Maine, some notices are given of the original members. It is therein said that Samuel Small was by profession a physician, who in the prime of life had an extensive
87
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
practice and the confidence of his patients, and who as a man had the respect of his fellow-citizens; that he served his adopted town in the legislatures of Massachusetts and Maine, and the County of Oxford in the senate of Massachusetts and of Maine, and was also a member of the executive council. As a Mason he was a devoted friend, and well posted in the lectures and work. He died at the age of eighty-three years. Oriental Star Lodge have great reason to respect his memory. Others are mentioned as follows:
" William Henry Brettun was an active business man, who amassed a large property.
Simeon Waters was a saddle and harness maker by trade, but has always given some attention to farming. He has been several times elected representative from the town of Livermore in the leg- islature of Massachusetts.
Sylvester Strickland was a trader and merchant.
Oliver Pollard was a trader and innholder.
Isaac Livermore was a well-educated gentleman-lived on a farm -health feeble-could not do much labor, but was popular as a magistrate, and did considerable business in that line.
Libeus Leach was a farmer.
Ithamar Phinney was a farmer.
James Johnston was a foreigner, an Irishman, engaged in farming. He had a diploma duly authenticated by the Grand Lodge of Ire- land.
Isaac Root was a minister of the gospel.
James Waite was a blacksmith.
Aaron S. Barton was a housewright.
Jesse Stone was a tanner and innholder-very much beloved.
Dexter Walker was a farmer and deputy-sheriff.
Cornelius Holland was a physician with large practice. He has had the confidence of his constituents in a high degree. Has been twice elected to the senate of Maine from Oxford County, and twice elected representative in the congress of the United States from the same county. He was also a member of the convention that framed our State constitution, and represented the town of Canton the first two sessions of the legislature."
Dr. Small was a resident of Jay, as were Rev. Moses Stone, Still- man Noyes and Joseph Covill, Esqs., gentlemen of great worth and respectability, and active Masons, whose loss was sincerely mourned by their brethren and their fellow-citizens generally.
88
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
Dr. Holland was of Canton. This " venerable and much respected brother died at his late residence " on the second of June, 1870, aged eighty-six years, ten months, and twenty-four days.
MINISTERIAL AND SCHOOL FUNDS.
The lands reserved in the grant of the town for ministerial and school purposes were sold many years ago, and the proceeds were placed in the charge of trustees. The interest on these funds may be used from year to year. Upon the division of the town, the pro- portion equitably belonging to East Livermore was paid over to that town. The income of the ministerial fund is apportioned annually to the several religious societies, according to the direction given by the legal voters to the assesssors.
POSTMASTERS AND MAIL CARRIERS.
The first postmaster in town was Dr. Benjamin Prescott, and the next was Dr. Benjamin Bradford. When, about 1830, Dr. Bradford removed to the farm which he had purchased of Alexander Kincaid, Isaac Strickland was appointed postmaster, and after he had held the office for a few years it was removed to the village, where it has since been kept, and where there have been several postmasters, the present being G. T. Piper.
Offices were subsequently established at North Livermore, Liver- more Center, and South Livermore. Reuel Washburn was the first postmaster at North Livermore; Jesse Stone the second; the post- master at this time is Roscoe Goding. The postmaster at Liver- more Center is John Bigelow; at South Livermore, Job Chase.
The first mail carrier (1806) was Josiah Smith. His route was from Portland, via New Gloucester and Turner, to Livermore, re- turning by way of Hartford, Buckfield, and Paris, and making the round trip once a week. Previous to this time John Walker had for many years visited Portland weekly, as a sort of expressman, carrying and bringing packages, doing errands, and taking and bringing letters to and from the nearest post-office on his route.
A post route was established, after the close of the war of 1812, from Readfield, by way of Livermore, to Farmington, and Jedediah White was the first post rider thereon. In 1826, a route from Brunswick was established, and "post" Chase was the first carrier of the mails on it. For two years previous to this time, Joseph Griffin, of Brunswick, had maintained a mail route from Brunswick
89
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
to Jay, principally for the distribution of the Maine Baptist Herald, of which he was the publisher. The Readfield and Farmington line was discontinued before 1830, and routes opened and mails put on which supplied its place. One route was from Augusta to Dixfield ; another was from Portland to Farmington, on both of which the mails were taken in coaches, or stages, as they were called.
CENTENARIANS.
Although there have been a good many men and women in town who have lived to be more than ninety years old, only two have reached an age not bounded by a century of years. They are CAPT. DAVID HINKLEY, and SARAH, widow of JESSE KIDDER. Capt. Hinkley was born in Bath, Me., Jan. 8, 1766. His father moved to Hallowell and settled on Hinkley's plain-from whom it derived its name-in 1775. Capt. Hinkley well remembered the passing of Arnold's expedition, in September of that year, up the Kennebec en route to Quebec. This occurrence was the more distinctly im- pressed upon his memory, from the fact that a fine patch of water- melons, which he had himself planted, was robbed by Arnold's men. He settled in Livermore in 1805, and died here December, 1867, having reached the great age, lacking a few days, of one hundred and two years. He voted for Washington for president at the first election under the constitution, being then twenty-three years old, and he voted at every subsequent presidential election that was held during his life. His last presidential vote was for Abraham Lincoln in 1864. The following notes referring to Capt. Hinkley and his times are copied from the journal of a family residing in Livermore :
" He was an intelligent man and a good citizen. He voted for Washington at the first election of president under the constitution, and voted at every presidential election since. In September last (1867) he rode six miles to vote for Governor Chamberlain, and a few days before he died expressed a hope that he might live to vote for Gen. Grant for president.
Benjamin Franklin was in the vigor of his years, and George Washington was a young man of thirty-four, when Capt. Hinkley was born. Wolfe had fallen at Quebec but a little more than six years before, and Gray's Elegy, which Wolfe recited the night before he fell, had just been published. Dr. Johnson was maintaining that taxation was no tyranny, and the first Pitt was still the grandest figure in the house of lords.
90
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
How much came to pass, how many things were done, within the limits bounded by the life of this venerable man! Will the little one of to-day, who shall live till 1967, see as much accomplished within his time ? Will he measure improvement in morals, progress in science, art, literature, in religious ideas, in government, in mate- rial helps, equal to those witnessed in the lifetime of Capt. Hink- ley ? Will the turnpike, the steamboat, the railroad, the photograph, the telegraph, be superseded by achievements as much greater than they as they are better than what they displaced ? Will our chil- dren travel from Livermore to the ' Hub' in half an hour, and from the ' Hub' to the moon in half a day ?"
Mrs. Kidder, daughter of Dea. Ebenezer Humphrey, a prominent citizen of Oxford, Mass., was born Oct. 30, 1771. She married Jesse Kidder of the same town. They came to Livermore in 1802, to which place her brother, Peter Humphrey, had previously moved. They settled on the farm under the hill about half a mile west of that of Gen. Learned, and where Mr. Kidder died in August, 1857. Mrs. Kidder is now (1874) living with John White, whose wife is a distant relative, upon the farm on which she has resided for more than seventy years. She is very deaf, but although in her one hun- dred and third year her health is remarkably good, and her face smooth and fair as a girl's.
FERRIES.
The first ferry opened was below the farm now owned by Col. Lewis Hunton, in the neighborhood of Tollawalla. It was called Wing's Ferry. In a few years it was apparent that it was not on the line of any of the principal highways necessary for the accom- modation of the residents of the town, and it was abandoned, and a ferry, formerly Fuller's but now called Hillman's Ferry, was established at the Intervale. Another ferry was opened below and near the Falls, and yet another at Lieut. Benjamin's. This last- named ferry was discontinued some forty years ago, and a ferry was opened in the southerly part of Tollawalla, called first Norris' and afterwards Strickland's Ferry. The Androscoggin, being a river that rises rapidly and to a great height in freshets, and the cross- ings being unfavorable for the maintenance of bridges on the line of the principal highways, no bridge was erected across the river with- in the town until about 1850, when one was built at the Falls. It was carried off in the freshet of 1870, but was rebuilt in 1872.
91
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
RAILROADS.
There is no railroad in Livermore, but the Androscoggin Rail- road, now a branch of the Maine Central Railroad, extending from Leeds Junction to Farmington, runs upon the East Livermore side of the river the entire length of the former town, and near its east- ern boundary. A charter, however, has been obtained for a road to extend from Lewiston, via Auburn, North Auburn, Turner, North Turner, Livermore, Canton, and Dixfield, to Rumford Falls. This road, as far at least as Livermore, is likely to be built at an early day. Traversing a productive farming territory and passing several thriving villages, as this road will, when built, it will constitute an important and valuable feeder to whichever of the roads leading rom Lewiston to Portland it shall be connected with. Whether it shall be united with the Maine Central road or with the Grand Trunk road, a branch will doubtless be built from Livermore vil- lage to the Falls.
CHANGES-THE SITUATION.
The town is no longer in many respects what it was thirty or forty years ago. Its families have changed ; old familiar names are no longer familiar; old customs, habits, and ways of working, thinking, and speaking have passed away, and new ones have taken their places. Much that could not well be spared has been lost. The era of the picturesque, the humorous-it will not do, remem- bering the civil war, to say the chivalrous-is perhaps past. The shoemaker, and his poor relation, the cobbler, the traveling tailor and seamstress, the fulling-mill and carding machine, the "potash," the quilting, the husking, the paring bee, and, it may be feared, the spelling school, are things of history, and seldom anything more. They have felt the inevitable law ; but his claims to be a philosopher will not be readily admitted who denies that the operation of this law is on the whole for improvement and progress, and for improve- ment and progress here in Livermore as well as elsewhere. Doubt- less, the emigration to other places of so many active and intelligent young men and women as the town has spared in these later years is, in many respects, to be regretted; but there are considerations which will not be overlooked whenever the subject of these losses is presented, and which will suggest that they are not wholly irrepara- ble. The exodus of young men from the town has been materially repaired by the introduction of labor-saving implements and expedi-
92
HISTORY OF LIVERMORE.
ents, and especially by railroads. The annual product, though varied in kind somewhat from what it was forty years ago, is as con- siderable in amount, and of greatly increased value, whether meas- ured in money or by its power to purchase commodities of necessity, convenience, and luxury.
The practice of the farmer now is to sell at home for cash, and many articles which formerly had no marketable value now yield a handsome profit. Formerly, the markets were Hallowell, Bath, and Portland, principally the last. The average farmer would, in the course of a winter, go to market three or four times. His pung, drawn by a single horse, would take a load of eight or nine hundred pounds, and the trip would occupy, if the last-named towns were the markets visited, three days. A dressed hog, a tub or two of butter, half a dozen cheeses, a keg of cider apple-sauce, a hundred pounds of dried apples, and perhaps a few chickens or turkeys would form a not unusual assortment, and would make a reasonable load for a single horse to draw over a highway so uneven and snow- blocked as the farmer would be likely to find. The contents of his pung would, ordinarily, bring him not over fifty dollars, half in cash and half in goods. The money paid out on the trip would be not far from three dollars. Net result: cash, $22.00; goods, barter price, $25.00, cash price, $20.00=$42.00. To-day the same articles would yield him at his door at least $125.00 cash. But the change to the farmer's advantage does not stop here. Not only does he re- ceive nearly three dollars where forty years ago he received one, for such products of the farm as have been mentioned, but other prod- ucts, which at that time had no sale, because they would not bear transportation, are now important sources of income. Potatoes, ap- ples, and green corn for canning may be mentioned in this category. It is a poor yield that does not give more than one hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre, and an exceptional year when they cannot be sold on the farm or at the neighboring station for fifty cents a bushel. Apples, which are cheaply and extensively raised, are worth from two to five dollars a barrel at home-an average for ten years not falling below three dollars. Green corn, where a canning house is not too far off, will return a profit of fifty dollars to the acre; it sometimes yields a hundred.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.