USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Prouts Neck > Old Prouts Neck > Part 3
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ship of land in New England was having a dangerous influence in old England.
Upon the acquisition of the Gorges Palati- nate of Maine by the Massachusetts colony, a difficult question arose concerning the government of the province. It could not be made a part of Massachusetts proper, for contained in the Gorges grant were fixed provisions for a particular system of prop- erty holding and management. There was no authority for representation in the Gen- eral Court. The two provinces were in their inception and organization distinct and sep- arate. A solution of the problem was found by considering the purchasing colony as lord proprietor in place of Gorges. Thereupon Thomas Danforth, its deputy governor, was in 1680 appointed President of Maine, in accordance with the terms of the transferred patent, and invested with powers for govern- ment in subordination to the new proprietor. Under this arrangement he confirmed the titles of the occupants and authorized leases
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in accordance with the Gorges charter. The leasehold system of land holding, with quit rents, therefore, came back again.
The population increased, but the people still lived in fear of the Indians, who, though it was nominally a time of peace, were far from friendly. Captain Scottow's business appears to have been large and prosperous. In 1681 he proposed to the townsmen that they build, according to plans which he would furnish and upon his land, a large stockade fort which should be more ample for protection than the existing garrison upon the Neck. The grant was to be made "on condition of paying Captain Scottow 12d yearly as being their demesne lord." The town in meeting accepted the proposi- tion and "the great fortification" so-called was erected with enthusiasm and alacrity. Its formidable proportions created a feeling of security, though there never was occasion to occupy it as a place of refuge. The fort was built of palisades set in a ditch wall; the location was on the ridge in the Atlantic
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House field, near the residence of John M. Kaler. A part of one of the bastions or flankers may still be traced in the edge of the woods.
In 1684 President Danforth, pursuant to authority given him, executed the well-known Danforth deed of Scarborough. It was a conveyance to Captain Joshua Scottow and six others, trustees, "in behalf of and for the benefit of the inhabitance of the Town of Scarborough" of all the lands within the Cammock patent and within the bounds of Scarborough as set out in the act of the General Assembly of Massachusetts in 1658, but excepting and reserving all rights and royalties appertaining to His Majesty in the Gorges charter, and confirming unto the in- habitants "all lands or propertys to them justly belonging." Quit rents, however, were to be retained and paid to the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. Under provisions of this deed the townsmen made allotments of the common lands, but appar- ently little attention was given to the rent
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paying provision. There was said then to be a slow, but steady growth in numbers and in prosperity.
At about this time there came another and a complete change in governmental matters. Proceedings had been pending in England since the time of the purchase in 1677 for the annulment of the Massachusetts colony charter. May 21, 1684, the English Court of Chancery issued its decree entirely revoking the charter. The letters patent were thereby in terms "cancelled, vacated and annihilated." All former grants were made void, and all lands under Massachu- setts dispensation reverted to the direct ownership of the English King. The oc- cupants became mere trespassers without right. Sir Edmund Andros was made royal Governor and took charge in arbitrary fash- ion. The Massachusetts possession was at an end, and all of her doings in Maine were declared invalid. Andros attempted to arrange with the settlers upon a basis of
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tenantry, but without results, and there was general confusion.
After four years of rule by divine right and unrestrained royal will, the period which Hawthorne calls the blackest days of New England, the dull tyranny of James II at home and abroad brought about the second English Revolution of 1688, when he was overthrown, and William and Mary were, without regard to succession by descent, elected sovereigns of England. James went to France and Louis XIV declared war in his behalf against England. The colonists here gave their hearty support to the new dispensation and Governor Andros was ar- rested and imprisoned.
Conditions were thus favorable and re- sulted in giving to a new province, with new boundaries and a new name, the province charter of 1691, called that of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This was substan- tially the same as the old colony charter which had been set aside. By it the Prov- » ince of Maine was made a part of the new
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aggregation and became subject to its laws. The royal grant, expressed in the province charter, did not give individual ownership of lands. They were to be held "in free and common socage," that is, by definite rental. The grants under provisions of the Gorges palatinate, and the Trelawney or Lygonia holdings, were also leasehold and nothing more. The Danforth deed, coupled with the enactments of the General Court, had gone farther. The Cammock patent had its own provisions. It was a pretty complica- tion from a legal point of view.
Meanwhile Prouts Neck had been saved from legal strife by the infinitely more seri- ous arbitrament of war. In 1690, just prior to the time of the province charter, Count Frontenac, the greatest of the French Gover- nors, had been by Louis XIV given full con- trol in Canada. He had served a previous term, and, more than anyone else, seems to have realized the resources of the American continent and the value of Maine to Canada. The war between France and England had
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been in existence for a year. Frontenac promptly organized a strong military expe- dition against the Maine settlements. The force was a combination of French, western Indian converts and such native Indians as he could assemble. In May, 1690, having destroyed almost everything to the eastward, the French with their Indian allies made an attack upon Casco Neck, now Portland. It was defended by a stockade of considerable strength, called Fort Loyal, and four garri- son houses. The fort was captured after strong resistance, and the greater part of the occupants were massacred. At Black Point and the Neck defense was considered hope- less, and without a contest the great fortifi- cation and the strong garrison house were abandoned and the entire population with- drew. The French and Indians continued their career of conquest as far as Wells, at the southern point of Maine. The church, the fortifications and the houses were de- stroyed, and for a dozen years the place was vacant of English inhabitants, and the
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Indians roamed there at will. There seems to have been no regular occupation by the French, for the very good reason that Fron- tenac was too fully occupied with the terri- ble contest with the western natives along the upper St. Lawrence and about the Great Lakes to maintain an offensive elsewhere. It may truthfully be said that Prouts Neck and Maine were saved from French domina- tion by the Indians of the powerful Five Nations.
Captain Joshua Scottow died in Boston in 1698, leaving his Black Point lands to his wife, with remainder to his children, by a somewhat complicated will. The same year Count Frontenac died, and the govern- ment of Canada passed into weaker hands.
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VII. THE SECOND SETTLEMENT.
THE inquiry is quite often made why there was little or no effort made to reoccupy Maine for so long a period after the French conquest. By the charter of William and Mary the place had become incorporated with and made a part of the strong and populous Province of Massachu- setts Bay. Consideration of affairs between the French and the English gives a suffi- cient reason. At the same time when the French occupation was being successfully accomplished, a powerful expedition was attempted under direction of Sir William Phipps, the first appointed royal Governor, for the capture of Quebec. That place was regarded as the particular source of the French activities. The assembling of a force for this purpose strained the colonial re- » sources to the utmost. King William had a
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European war upon his hands so that he could render no assistance. The New Eng- landers were a peaceful and agricultural people, and were without any regular mili- tary establishment. Yet all the men and ships that could be obtained were brought together for the attack upon the Canadian stronghold. Canada under Frontenac was a military province. It was organized for war. Its soldiery, though fewer in point of numbers, were trained and efficient.
The expedition was an utter failure, and was attended with appalling loss of men and ships. The Church of Our Lady of the Victories was erected in Quebec to com- memorate the outcome. Full possession of Maine by the French, however, was at the time prevented by fear of this expedition, and was further hindered by the fact that the struggle with the Five Nations, the Mo- hawks and their brethren, called the blood- hounds of the earth, required the full atten- tion of Count Frontenac. He was obliged to summons home all of the French troops
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for defensive purposes. The Canadian Gov- ernor was striving to transfer that war to New York and thereby get possession of the interior of the continent.
The Jesuit missionaries, therefore, with a few French officers, were all that were left to supervise the aggressive contest with the English in this locality. These missionaries had acquired complete control of the east- ern Indians, and they were vastly capable. No English settlement in Maine could be safe for a moment. Attacks were constantly made upon the occupied places along the southern border and reaching into Mas- sachusetts itself. York was captured and destroyed. Wells barely escaped. Thus Massachusetts was for the time exhausted financially and otherwise, and could assist but little even for defence. Occasionally raids were attempted with ships along the eastern coast, but with small degree of suc- cess. Prouts Neck in its abandonment was not of much consequence except as a place » for infrequent landings. Most of the inhab-
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itants were established elsewhere, many in Salem and Lynn; and so there is hardly anything to relate about this locality until after the peace of Ryswick between England and France, which was proclaimed in 1698, the year when the great Governor's earthly career came to an end. The peace, how- ever, was for the border province not even a truce. No adjustment was made of bound- aries in Maine and hostilities there were hardly suspended.
The second settlement is generally reck- oned as having begun in 1702. This, how- ever, was no organized occupation. The date is probably selected because in 1703 an attack by French and Indians was made upon a garrison house which had been built there, and the gallantry of its successful defence was such that it attracted wide his- torical notice. The fort, so called, was sit- uated at the westerly end of the Neck, upon the bank southerly of the West Point House, and its occupants, eight in number, consisted of Captain Larrabee and four Libbys of the
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first settlement, with three new men, Pine, Blood and another not named, all of whom, it is said, came from Lynn. The full name of Pine is not given, but there can be little question that he was the Charles Pine-the only one of the name ever mentioned-who from that time onward distinguished himself in the defence of the little community.
The brief pause following the peace of Ryswick had ended, and a new war, that of the Spanish Succession, called in America Queen Anne's War, had been declared in 1702, though news of hostilities had proba- bly not reached the Neck. The attacking force is said to have consisted of five hun- dred French and Indians, who had destroyed the incipient communities at Falmouth and Cape Elizabeth. The Prouts Neck block- house had a commanding position. Each occupant was a dead shot, and they defiantly refused to surrender. The making of a fron- tal attack against it was not a pleasant prop- osition, so under French direction an attempt was made to undermine the so-called fort by
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digging under the sandy bank. Before this was completed a heavy rain caused it to cave in, making a ravine, and the attack was abandoned. From this time others kept coming, and the place took on permanence.
The new population of Scarborough, at first few in numbers, steadily increased, but a comparison of surnames shows that there were but few of the former settlers who came back. The houses had been destroyed, and the years of absence had obliterated land- marks. Yet the local attractiveness of the place remained and the old assets of fishing, farming, hunting and lumber were still there. For some years it was a period of strenuous frontier life and hazard. The peninsula and its vicinity were the main positions of safety and resort. Beyond those contracted limits there was always danger from the hostile and stealthy red men, who capriciously came and went. Old traditions have been handed down of romantic as well as distressing epi- sodes, and of the heroism of men and women.
The names of Charles Pine and Richard
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Hunniwell are prominent in these tales of adventure. The stories about Pine espe- cially have an element of chivalrous daring. He is called a hunter and was said to have come from London and to have received regular remittances of money from abroad. He was feared rather than hated by the Indians. A popular anecdote about him relates that when the warriors were around in force they were accustomed to gather in the early morning along the curving beach on the southerly side of the now Country Club grounds, and, safely out of range, to challenge with taunts and insults the occu- pants of the blockhouse fort, which stood facing in that direction, to come out and fight. Once, before daylight, Pine went up the beach alone with his two guns and con- cealed himself in the seaweed and flotsam at the place where the noble red men were wont to assemble. They came as usual, and, as the relator tells the event in nautical phrase, the biggest one of all, after he had exhausted his vocabulary of abuse, "turned
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his back to the garrison and placed his hand upon his stern." Pine fired at the mark indicated and killed the pompous braggart instantly. All the rest fled in terror and panic. Whereupon Pine gathered up the equipments of his slain foe and sauntered back to his companions. At another time he went, again alone, beyond the Black Rocks and hid himself in an abandoned house in the woods which the savages used for a meeting place, and as they came in single file killed two at one discharge of his big musket. Again the others fled in fright, and Pine collected the spoil at his leisure and carried it back with him. An old map shows Pine's later residence across the bay at Pine Point. When the more quiet days came, he obtained a large tract of land on the Broad Turn road, near the Rocky Hill, where he lived and died, and in a neglected graveyard there his remains lie with an un- marked headstone.
The young wife of Lieutenant Hunniwell, with several of his children, were massacred,
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The Indians at length wiped out their score of vengeance against Hunniwell. One peaceful morning in autumn the cattle on the commons had disappeared. A band of twenty men, unarmed and without thought of danger, sauntered from the stockade to look them up. At the southerly end of Massacre Pond a numerous body of the sav- ages lay in ambush, and with a concerted dis- charge they killed nineteen, and among them Old Hunniwell. One only escaped. The body of Hunniwell was horribly gashed and mangled. The slain were buried together in a single grave and covered with a high mound of earth. "The Great Grave," situ- ated across the road opposite Mr. P. W. Sprague's game keeper's house, was conspic- uous for many years and is noted upon an old map. These stories are a part of the ancient folklore, and as Wendell Phillips declared, "tradition even though varied is nearly always based upon actual fact."
In spite of the danger and want of organ- ization, new people kept coming, largely
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from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and with enlargement of numbers the feel- ing of security and unity increased also.
The Peace of Utrecht between England and France came in 1713. Louis XIV, "the Grand Monarque," had to make a humiliating peace. The absurd waste of national funds upon the adornment of Versailles, and other royal extravagances lavished upon Madame Maintenon and otherwise, had crippled the resources of France. In the negotiations Louis strove to retain Acadia, meaning Eastern Maine, and declared that by the loss of Acadia "Canada will become useless, and the French marine be utterly destroyed."
This expression calls attention to the extraordinary importance and great profit of the mast industry. The forests of Europe are largely of hard wood with branching trees. The superior sailing quality of English ships was due in no small degree to their tall masts, obtained from the towering straight pines of Maine. Pepys in his Diary speaks of the building of warships being
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suspended for want of masts from America. Scottow and Westbrook were in this trade. Doubtless the long canal downward from Dunstan Landing was constructed to assist the passage of the mast-laden ships.
It provokes a smile to speak of this little point of land in connection with the world's affairs, but from its position it was like an aspen branch, so situated as to be moved upon by the winds of foreign relations.
Though open war between the French and English had ceased, the peace did not bring repose to Maine. It left the embers of war smouldering, ready for the next thirty years to burst into flame. Louis XIV died in 1715, and the feeble boy king, Louis XV, came to the French throne, with government by regent and by Madame the Pompadour. The Indian wars went on, with Canadian assistance and stimulated by what the per- sistent missionaries felt to be the highest religious purpose and devoted loyalty to la belle France. But the settlements increased in population and strength, the frontier line
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was slowly pushed back, and hostilities in this vicinity became mostly a matter of des- ultory raids and attacks.
In 1720 the Scarborough township gov- ernment was re-established and the town records brought back from Boston, where they had been reposing for thirty years. The old feudal idea regarding the holding of lands, though nominally existent, was in fact obliterated and forgotten. With the coming of the German Georges the rever- ence for English royalty had lost its force. The greater part of the land within the township limits consisted of commons. The right to control this land was claimed under varying construction of Massachusetts stat- utes both by the townsmen and by an or- ganization of owners who called themselves "proprietors." The disposition of these re- mote lands, however, did not affect Black Point, Prouts Neck and the occupied por- tions. The interior became developed fast, roads were laid out within the town. Fal- mouth was re-established in 1716, and soon
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there was an overland route to Portsmouth and Boston. The new parts of the township gained rapidly upon the older establishment.
With the opening up and rapid growth of the more remote parts, with their wealth of lumber, the seacoast lost its prominence. Almost as the railroads later usurped the place of stage coaches, the travel by land took the place of that by boats. Pemaquid, Spurwink and Cammock's Neck were no longer important posts and almost capitals, but became mere localities.
Scottow died in Boston and was buried, apparently, within the Old South Church. Workmen in later years uncovered a rather elaborate headstone there, bearing his name and the date of his decease, January 20, 1698, and his age, 83 years. By his will he gave all of his property to Lydia, his widow, for her lifetime. Thus the Cammock patent, including the Neck, again came into the possession and control of a woman. Mrs. Scottow died in 1707, while the place was still hemmed in by savages and harassed by
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constant threats of attack. Judge Sewall and
Scottow's two sons-in-law, Major Thomas Savage and Capt. Samuel Checkley, were made executors of his will. They do not seem to have exercised personal supervision, and in 1728 Samuel Checkley, the surviving
"His Majestie's Court in Boston," conveyed executor, by virtue of a license granted by
the Neck and the patent land and properties, together with all feudal rights and privileges, and with a boundary line extending from the Spurwink River to a point on the Nonsuch above the Clay Pits Landing, and containing more than three thousand acres, to Timothy Prout, Merchant, of Boston, for the sum of five hundred pounds. The surplus land afterwards became a subject of legal contro- versy, and a map prepared for use in court gives a good description of the whole local- ity. It does not appear that any of the Scottow family, except Captain Joshua him- self, during the long period of fifty-seven years of ownership, became residents within their Black Point territory. It is stated in
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one of the later lawsuit files that the actual residence even of Scottow was disputed, and an affidavit of Boaden, the ferryman, was filed to prove that "Capt. Joshua Scottow lived at Black Point, viz., the Neck and fort, eight or ten years before he was put off by ye Indians." It is somewhat curious to note that the peninsula is never referred to as Scottow's Neck.
The second settlement, so-called, which became established during this period, was in nearly all respects a new occupation. The old order had changed and was not renewed.
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VIII. THIS BECOMES PROUTS NECK.
THE purchaser, Timothy Prout, was de- scended from one of the old families of Boston. The Prout pew in Old South Church was next to that of the governor. He was a mature man with a family of six children. Three, and perhaps four, of them became residents here, and the others sub- sequently lived in Boston and elsewhere. When he came to the Neck the primitive conditions there had largely changed. The seashore, to its disadvantage, was meeting the competition of the inland country. The Half Century of Conflict between New France and New England, described by Parkman, was still existent, and did not cease until Wolfe captured Quebec, in 1759. The nations were not openly at war, but by using the Indian tribes for camouflage, the
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Algonquin races for France and the Five Nations of the Iroquois for England, the contest went steadily on. Maine generally was a buffer frontier and a dark and bloody battle ground, but the Scarborough settle- ments at the time of the Prout conveyance had become strong enough to defend them- selves.
This condition of partial security in south- ern Maine was largely due to the destruc- tion, in 1724, of the French missionary and military outpost at Norridgewock, far up the Kennebec River. Norridgewock had over- land communication with Canada by trail route in common use, and was regarded as the principal rallying place for hostile expe- ditions.
One of the Jesuit missionaries, Father Rale, had established and organized this Indian settlement. No man more devoted to his purposes than Father Rale ever lived. Of gentle blood and well educated, he had come from France and had consecrated his life to the conversion of the heathen natives
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and the establishment in America of an ideal government, whose supreme purpose should be devotion to his Church and his King. His influence with his Indian children was complete. He learned to talk with them in their own language rather than to allow them to be exposed to temptation by con- versation with the English, or with reckless French forest rangers. To assert, as is sometimes done, that he was a man of peace, and that he did not labor and organize to drive away the heretic English and substi- tute for them a population obedient to what he conceived to be God's will, is to make imputation against his sincerity and his character. The contest was distinctly be- tween Roman Catholicism and royal prerog- ative upon the one side, and Protestantism with popular government upon the other; and it was a time when Religion and Politics were in partnership. Father Rale was no neutral and no slacker. As representative of Church and King, his service was freely
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