USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Portland > Portland by the sea; an historical treatise > Part 6
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The destruction of Norridgewock, like that of York, was a dreadful event, but it was effective. The Indian warfare in Maine from that time almost wholly ceased, though occasional depredations occurred until the capture of Quebec by Wolfe in 1759. The achievement was celebrated in Falmouth as a great victory. In 1727 a general conference was held with the remnants of all the tribes on Munjoy's Hill, and this was followed by a long period of freedom from hostilities.
A review of the situation when ten years had passed after the establishment of Major Moody and his friends upon the Machegonne peninsula shows that Old Falmouth, with sound laws and careless of foreign entanglements, might be con- sidered as being then upon a stable basis. The place was poor, but had a population of more than four hundred. Parson Smith in his diary says that people came there constantly, "flocking to the place." The public control of the common lands
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was most beneficial. New inhabitants were ac- cepted by vote, and the immigration was limited to those who were of character earnest and worthy, and likely to make good citizens. Con- ditions therefore had worked themselves out so that the place had quite generally a selected population. The foundations of Falmouth as a township and sea-port were being laid in a manner so careful as to be a guaranty of a safe and widely expanding future.
XI
THE BUILDING OF A TOWNSHIP.
T HE long years that had passed since George Cleeve erected his cabin upon Machegonne had wrought almost complete changes in the New World. In the beginning Maine was pre-eminent because of its wealth in furs, fisheries, lumber and the amplitude of its harbors. The choice places of occupation then were upon the convenient coast. Now, when Portland by the Sea was in condition to assert itself in earnest, the rich fur trade had gone almost completely into the hands of the Canadian French. The fisheries, though still called "the New England Silver Mine," were meeting the strong competition of those upon the Banks of Newfoundland. The lumber business still held its own and ship- building and commerce had grown into rapidly increasing importance. The interior of the coun- try was broadening out with farms and villages, while the seaboard had developed much of general business and water transportation.
After 1714, when George the First, a German who could not even speak the language of the country, came to the English throne neither the colonies nor the old country itself had much of reverence or even of respect for royalty. The settlers, who were then old residents on this side of the ocean, had been thrown upon their own
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resources and had been obliged to depend upon their own individuality. This had become their home land and they had acquired pretty fully the feeling of self-reliance. In large part they were restless under any limitation upon their political freedom of action. The neglect of England was the opportunity of America, and the people here were, without being themselves aware of it, making progress towards independence. Those who came seemed from the first to have a vision of a future city. Indeed all the conformation of the locality suggested such an idea. Falmouth Neck was then little better than a wilderness, but its area was not large enough for a farming population and its little streams could furnish but limited power for the turning of the wasteful water wheels of the time.
Early attention was given to the establishment of streets. The first of which record is found was Broad Street, laid out by Gov. Danforth when he held his court at Fort Loyal in 1680. This extended inland from the landing place. It was the main thoroughfare and had three-acre house lots marked upon each side. There was also the old country road running westerly from Broad Street and following about the course of present Congress Street. Another way was laid out along the water front. The part of this which extended easterly from Broad Street to the meeting house upon the point was called Thames Street and the westerly portion of the same which reached to about present High Street had the name of Fore Street. In the period of abandonment these
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street locations became obliterated by disuse and the growth of trees. In 1724 the new municipality formally laid out again the old Broad Street, giving it the name of High King Street. This title remained until 1837 when it yielded to the present name of India Street. Old Fore Street was also regularly established from Meeting House Point westerly to Round Marsh. This street still retains its ancient name. It was the chief busi- ness thoroughfare. Upon this were "The black wharves and the slips" of Longfellow's youth, it having its course along the waterfront until present Commercial Street was filled in and built about 1850. The portion of the old country road from India Street westward to the present junction with Middle Street was given bounds and named Back Street, and later Queen Street. The other part of the country road was called Main Street. Back Street and its continuance, Main Street, afterwards received in their entirety the present name of Congress Street. Middle Street, com- mencing on King or India Street and extending to the junction at Back or Congress Street, was also one of the carliest established and has retained its primitive direction and name. Other streets were located at about the same time such as Fish Street, now Exchange. As the town grew, addi- tional ways for travel were laid out quite regularly and often with odd names, such as Fiddle Lane and Love Lane, most of which names have later been altered and more euphonious ones sub- stituted. For a long time there were upon the Neck large individual holdings of wood land and
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pasture and tillage like the Bramhall, Brackett and Munjoy farms.
Travelers by land from Falmouth west were obliged to follow a shore route, sometimes called the King's Highway, crossing rivers near their mouths by ferries. There was a ferry across Old Casco River kept by John Pritchard. The first ferry landing on the Neck was on the east side of Clay Cove, and on the other side at Fort Preble Point. It so continued for quite a long time but, as it was difficult to "call across" to the ferryman on the other side, and in foggy weather signals could not be seen, the terminals were moved to about the places used by the present Cape Eliza- beth Ferry line. There was a fording place for crossing at Stroudwater and in 1738 a bridge was built there. Horseback riding was of course the only method of travel across the ferries and over the wandering trails.
It is a testimonial to the character of the place to note that one of the earliest objects of attention was to make provision for the regular exercise of religion. In May, 1719, the town appointed Major Moody to look out for a suitable minister and voted fifty-five pounds for his support. In 1721 Jonathan Pierpont, a graduate of Harvard College, was engaged for six months and the engagement was renewed in 1722. The increased harassment of the Indian War then caused an interruption for a couple of years. In 1720 they had voted to build a meeting-house but the work went on slowly. In 1722 the General Court made a grant, of forty pounds to assist in the purpose and the
REVEREND THOMAS SMITH
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frame was covered and enclosed. Danger of im- pending attacks upon the town made this a time of destitution and distraction. In 1725 Major Moody and Benjamin York in behalf of the town engaged workmen and the outside of the building was finished but without glass in the windows. The location was at north side of Middle and west side of India Streets. This was the condition June 23, 1725 when Rev. Thomas Smith came to preach temporarily. The arrival of Mr. Smith, who was then but twenty-three years old, began a new era in the ecclesiastical affairs of the town and had great influence upon the town itself. He had graduated from Harvard in 1720 and had declined a very favorable call to a Massachusetts parish. He continued preaching and the next year received an invitation to remain at an annual salary of two hundred and thirty-three dollars and board. After long deliberation he accepted and was regularly ordained March 8, 1727.
Mr. Smith was during all of his long life active in public as well as in church affairs and a man of influence in the community. From his first coming he kept a private, personal diary which has been published with annotations, and as it makes constant references to current events, there is found in it a most valuable account of the devel- opment of the place and the manners and lives of its people. The pastorate of Rev. Thomas Smith continued until his decease in 1795, at the great age of ninety-four years. In 1764 Rev. Samuel Deane became his assistant and was his successor. Mr. Deane also kept a quite full diary.
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All of Old Falmouth was established by the General Court as a single parish and so continued until the Cape Elizabeth portion, west of Fore River, was in 1737 made a parish by itself. In 1753 New Casco, east of the Presumpscot, was incorporated as a church organization, and in 1759 Stroudwater was also separated, becoming the fourth of the parishes within the town. All of them were of the so-called territorial order which supported religious worship by legal col- lection of Church rates. Willis, in his history, gives a very good account of the organization of the churches.
As early as possible attention was bestowed upon education and the establishment of schools. During the earlier years the dwellings were widely separated and there was continual danger of hostile attacks. In those times the children were dependent upon the little that their parents could give in the way of instruction. The first school- master mentioned was Robert Bayley, who in 1733 was hired at a yearly salary of seventy pounds to keep a school six months upon the Neck and three months each on the south side of Fore River and on the north side of Back Cove. He was succeeded in 1736 by a Mr. Sewall and after him Nicholas Hodge, a Harvard graduate. Then Samuel Stone kept a school on Center Street. In 1745 came Stephen Longfellow, great-grand- father of the poet, who was for fifteen years the principal instructor in the town. During all the time from the first the schools have been, as they
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THE BUILDING OF A TOWNSHIP
are now, a principal part in the upbuilding of the community establishment.
Of this constructive period there is little to say further than that Falmouth continued to increase, not with great rapidity but with steady and harmonious development. Trade and commerce grew to be the leading interests of the coast towns, and among them Falmouth early attained prom- inence. It was soon surpassing York and Pema- quid and becoming the chief commercial emporium of Maine. The export and import trade with the English, the French and also the Spanish sugar producing localities in the West Indies and places along the Caribbean Sea, increased to such extent as to attract attention abroad. The building of ships as well as the shipping itself formed a large part of the business of the place. An incidental reference to Falmouth Neck in 1727 mentions thirty ships as being at the same time in the harbor besides a considerable number under con- struction upon the stocks. The procuring of masts for the vessels of the King's navy and for the English merchant marine was a large and very lucrative business. The superior qual- ity of English shipping was due in no small degree to the lordly pines of Maine which gave superior area of expansion for their sails. Col. Thomas Westbrook of Stroudwater who had, it is said, made the first of such shipments from Dunstan Landing, Scarboro, in 1719, and had come to Stroudwater in 1727, was made the mast agent for the British King.
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No official census of population was taken in those days, but the references in the private diaries and occasional estimates suggest a con- tinual and steady increase in the number of inhabitants and its business operations. In 1735 all of Maine constituted the single county of York, and in that year Falmouth was made a half shire town with York, and the Court of Common Pleas held its sessions alternately in each place. In 1738 it is noted that there was built at the lower falls on the Presumpscot River a mill dam which was the most extensive piece of constructive work which at that time had ever been attempted in Maine, and that it was required to have included in it a sufficient fish way for the passage of the migratory fish that annually came in great numbers.
Yet, over the expanding prospects of this enterprising town we note the almost constant shadow of threatened war and the fear of hostile attacks. The French had never admitted that the name "Acadia," in the peace treaty concession of 1713, included anything west of the St. Croix River. By way of the strenuous trail up the Chaudiere, over the rocky height of land and down the Kennebec, constant communication was kept up with the Indians of Maine. It was but little help that the Canadians received from their cor- rupt and dissipated King, but there was no relax- ation of their own activities. Falmouth was protected in its rear by a tier of frontier settlements that were growing up. Buxton, called Narra- gansett No. 1, Gorham or Narragansett No. 7,
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also Windham and present Brunswick had res- idents hardy but few in number. In these settlements the musket and the garrison houses were with the pioneers necessary adjuncts of the plow and the woodman's axe. Yet, on its un- fortified water frontage Falmouth was conspicu- ously open to foreign aggression. George the Second was the British King and his government as yet had but little thought of the colonies, except that their markets were becoming of ac- count to the mother country. In 1741 the so- called war of the Austrian succession, involving France, England and Spain came on. The Span- ish power, as well as that of France, was still of large account upon the sea. A grant of money was made by the General Court for the building of a breastwork fort for protection of the exposed shore and harbor. Col. Samuel Waldo of Fal- mouth was made commander of a regiment which was raised. Blockhouses were established, and even the house of Parson Thomas Smith was put into condition for defence. Open war was soon declared between England and France. Even before that time the coastwise skippers had re- ported that the French fortifications at the east- ward were being put into condition for offensive warfare. Not only Falmouth but all of New England was alarmed. The Indians, too, under skillful and crafty guidance were everywhere mak- ing hostile raids at unexpected places and times. Thus this town of varied fortune, but always attractive and progressive, found itself facing a condition of affairs which might well cause serious apprehension.
XII
LOUISBURG AND THE END OF THE FRENCH MENACE.
I N the year 1745 there was brought about an event which was of great moment in colonial affairs. The supposedly impregnable French fortress of Louisburg was captured by an aggre- gation of almost unorganized train bands of colo- nial militia. Although our Falmouth was but one of a considerable number of participants in the undertaking, the accomplishment itself was of sufficient importance to effect a marked influence upon the future prospects of this municipality.
On the southeast side of Cape Breton Island, in a very prominent position was early located a small town known as English Harbor. This, at the time of the peace of Utrecht, 1713, was in the hands of the French and they claimed that it did not pass to the English by the cession of Acadia. About 1720, according to plans drawn, it is said, by Vauban, their greatest military engineer, they began to fortify the place, and in the succeeding twenty-five years had spent upon it a sum equiv- alent to ten million dollars of modern money. It blocked the way to any hostile ascent of the St. Lawrence and with its ample harbor and rock- bound shores afforded an admirable base of sup- plies from which a French squadron might threaten Falmouth, Boston or any other English city upon the Atlantic coast. It was a safe resort for their
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piratical privateers and military expeditions. This was claimed to be, next to Gibraltar, the strongest fortified place in the world.
Immediately upon the declaration of war in 1744 the French commander sent a squadron which surprised and destroyed the little English port of Canseau, in Nova Scotia, and the prisoners there captured were taken to Louisburg and soon after were exchanged. William Vaughan, a graduate of Harvard and an enterprising man of large affairs, had an estate on the Damariscotta River, and his properties, as well as those of others were in im- minent danger of destruction. Some of the returned captives informed him that the fortifications of Louisburg, and the garrison as well, were in a state of complete demoralization. Vaughan conceived a plan, which Parkman, by reason of its foolhardiness calls "A Mad Scheme," to surprise and capture this extensive and supposedly impregnable for- tress. William Shirley was the King's governor of the Massachusetts Province, which included Maine. Shirley took hold of the proposition with enthusiasm and called together the members of the General Court in secret session. Most of them regarded the project as little less than a piece of insane folly. Finally, however, it was voted by a majority of one to make the attempt. Other colonies were urged to join, but while they did not refuse they gave but little of assistance.
In Massachusetts, and in Maine especially, where the harbors were full of fishermen and water craft thrown out of employment by the war, the . suggestion of such an expedition was taken up
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almost with the zeal of crusaders. The other colonies entered upon the proposition more cau- tiously. Within seven weeks from the issuance of the Governor's call for volunteers the preparations had hastily been made and the armament was afloat. On March 24th the colonial fleet sailed from Nantasket. No particular records were kept, but it is reckoned that there were in the expedition about 4000 fighting men, exclusive of the sailors, and of these some 3600 came from Massachusetts. Included in this latter number, and reckoned as Massachusetts men, more than one-third part were sturdy pioneers from Maine. Each volunteer received six pence per day and furnished his own musket and clothing. The commander of the expeditionary force was William Pepperell of Kittery. The second in command was Brigadier General Samuel Waldo of Falmouth and Col. Jedediah Preble of the same place was another participant, and Capt. Moses Pearson was com- mander of the local company. Capt. Edward Tyng, also of Falmouth, was naval commodore of the fleet. On April 5th, before the ice had gone out, the expedition arrived at its rendezvous. The fortifications were surrounded by moats, ditches and other special defences. Within the embrasures of the fortress were 148 cannon. The defenders had heard of the Yankee approach but treated it only with scornful derision.
The whole account reads like an improbable romance. The French garrison was composed of some six hundred regulars, a large part of whom were Swiss mercenaries, also some fourteen hun-
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dred militia and the inhabitants of the town, all of these being in a nearly mutinous condition. The attack began with a rush. May 2d, Vaughan led four hundred of his hardy frontiersmen to the hills in rear and captured the magazines of ammu- nition and naval stores with quantities of pitch and tar. These were set on fire and the dense smoke drifted down over the grand battery, frightening the garrison who could not estimate the number of the attacking force. A company of two hundred men within those walls, it is said, might easily have stood off an attack by five thousand without cannon.
This was the decisive event of the siege. The terrified occupants fled, and Vaughan from within, made report, "By the grace of God and the courage of thirteen men I have entered the royal battery." The expedition, however, was soon in desperate straits. The harbor was in possession of the French and supplies ran low. Almost accidentally four English men-of-war, urged by Governor Shirley, came and with the Colonial fleet took possession of the harbor. A large sixty- four gun French frigate, loaded with ammunition and stores, arrived and Commodore Tyng, by a pretended attack, lured the French ship into the harbor where she was surrounded by the English and colonial war ships and surrendered. This captured supply saved the expedition. The siege went on with more than two months of hardship and endurance. Half of the attacking force had become wasted away by military losses, exposure and sickness. A bold front was then put on with
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reports of large reinforcements on the way, and on June 17, 1745, the whole great establishment was surrendered upon the sole condition that all the garrison and inhabitants should be transported to France. This proposition the assailants gladly conceded.
The capture of Louisburg occasioned inex- pressible rejoicing. Parson Smith tells of the wasteful consumption of gunpowder and the recklessness of the celebration in Falmouth when the result was made known. There, most of the able-bodied men had gone with the expedition. It was more than a triumph. It was an historical and a national event. The news was received in England with astonishment as well as joy, and in France with consternation. The rude colonials had accomplished this amazing undertaking upon their own initiative and practically without as- sistance. Europe awakened to the fact that a new continent had become a factor in world affairs. As to Old Falmouth it found itself in a position of pronounced leadership.
The war with France continued, and affairs upon the English part went on with small success. One result of Louisburg was that the French government was aroused by the impending danger to their American possessions. The next year the most powerful fleet that had ever been sent to North America sailed from Brest for Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. One of their most experienced commanders was in charge of the whole force. He was to retake the lost fortification and then range along the entire coast of the
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English colonies. They were to winter in Casco Bay. The alarm in Falmouth was intense. A town meeting was held and the selectmen were directed to make every effort for defence. Several blockhouses were built, and they also had two great guns as a part of their plunder from Louisburg. At Spring Point, where Fort Preble now stands, was erected a battery, the first of Portland fortifications. It was a plucky undertaking, but how long this bold defensive would have held back eleven ships of the line and twenty frigates, if the crisis had come, one can imagine.
The expedition, however, did not get started until autumn, and when they arrived they found no safe harbor into which they might sail. A tremendous September gale came on and a con- siderable number of the ships foundered upon the rocks and many of the transports were lost with their cargoes of troops. The whole expedition was disorganized, and it is said the admiral com- mitted suicide. The battered fleet and army sought winter quarters where they suffered ex- tremely from exposure and found no opportunity to refit. In the spring the fleet again sailed, but only to be overtaken by another tempestuous storm by which it was so much weakened that the expedition was abandoned, and the remains of the forces returned to France. The result was quite like that of the destruction of the great Spanish Armada. The failure of this powerful armament was regarded by the colonies as a ยท special intervention of divine providence in their
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favor, the more so because no English ships were sent to aid in their defense.
The French in Canada during these years of warfare put forth their best efforts to keep up constant attacks by land upon the settlements. This was done by sending expeditionary leaders with ammunition and supplies and promoting Indian hostilities. Their government was strictly military in character and all of their people could be utilized for war purposes. The Canadian offensive, however, was limited as all of their strength and more was needed to maintain their hostile line opposed to the English and Iroquois along the southwestern frontier. Falmouth, how- ever, was to some extent protected by the outlying buffer towns on the one side and the sea upon the other, but her people were kept in continual alarm although they constantly sent military expeditions to assist other places.
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