USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Portland > Portland city guide > Part 7
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Contemporaneous with the incorporation of the Town of Portland was the quickening sentiment of the District of Maine toward becoming an inde- pendent state. This flared into the open in February, 1785, when the Fal- mouth Gazette, in the second month of its existence, published the follow- ing acrostic:
F rom th' ashes of the old, a Town appears, A nd Phoenix like, her plumy head she rears. L ong may she flourish; be from war secure M ade rich by commerce and agriculture
O 'er all her foes triumphant: be content
U nder our happy form of government;
T ill (what no doubt will be her prosp'rous fate) Herself's the mistress of a rising State.
The several separatist movements seemed to have had their repercussions in the religious life of Portland at this time. In 1787 the Second Congrega- tional Parish was formed, and Elijah Kellogg was ordained its minister. The Second Parish, however, continued to pay one-quarter of Parson Smith's salary.
The closing years of the 18th century witnessed the rapid evolution from a war-torn village to a bustling maritime center. A number of important events occurred during this period. In 1786 the new coach delivery of mail had been inaugurated between Savannah, Georgia, and Portsmouth to Port- land, replacing a postrider system that had been started in the early days of the Revolution. Commencement of this regular mail-coach service marked the first attempt at passenger transportation in Maine. In May, 1790, Port- land's recently established District Court conducted the first capital trial under the new maritime laws of the young United States with a case which involved Thomas Bird, alleged to have murdered the master of a ship on which he had served as sailor. Bird was found guilty and a month later was publicly hanged. Maine's banking system was inaugurated in 1799 with the opening of the Portland Bank.
During these years Portland's population rapidly increased, and to pro- tect the town against a recurrence of the Mowat outrage, Fort Sumner was built on North Street in 1794. Life having been rather serious, hitherto Portland had never entertained a theatrical company, but in October of this year a traveling troupe presented The Lyar and The Modern Antiques,
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Portland City Guide
or the Merry Mourners. In 1796 Tukey's bridge between Seacomb's and Sandy points was completed; this was a toll bridge and greatly facilitated travel to the east. When the Duc de la Rochefoucault visited Portland in 1797, he was so impressed with the town that he gave considerable space to a description of it in a book published in London in 1799.
In 1806 Portland's Commodore Edward Preble, who had brought fame to his country's navy in 1804 when he successfully attacked the Barbary Coast pirates at Tripoli, received orders to build in Portland eight gunboats and a bomb ketch for the "musquito fleet" approved by Congress. These boats were constructed in shipyards on Clay Cove. Antedating modern communi- cation systems was the Portland Observatory, built in 1807 by Captain Lemuel Moody as a lookout for incoming vessels. House flags of many Portland shipping concerns were kept at the observatory and flown from the tower's mast to notify the owner when his ship was sighted.
These first years of the 1800's saw brick replacing lumber for construc- tion purposes, and many new buildings were being erected throughout the town. Benevolent and charitable associations were being formed. When Dr. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, visited the town in 1807, he made note that "no place along our route hitherto, could for its im- provement be compared with Portland. ... Few towns in New England are equally beautiful and brilliant. Its wealth and business are probably quad- rupled."
Although American trade with Great Britain had been suspended in 1806, local customs receipts in that year totaled $342,909, and the water front was a hive of activity. New wharves jutted out into the harbor, and ships from many domestic and foreign ports lay at anchor awaiting dock- ing space. Fore Street at that time followed closely the harbor's outline, and from it extended the busy wharves. Sailors of a dozen nationalities thronged the water front, and grog shops were merry with tipsy seamen loudly sing- ing the new ditty:
Old horse, old horse, how came you here? From Sacarap to Portland Pier I've carted boards for many a year. Till killed by blows and sore abuse, I was salted down for sailor's use The sailors they do me despise They turn me over and damn my eyes; Cut off my meat and pick my bones, And pitch the rest to Davy Jones.
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History
With the enforcement of the Embargo Act in December, 1807, shipping and trade came to a standstill. Eleven commercial houses stopped payment and by 1808 Portland was deep in depression; people who a year before had entertained lavishly, now stood in line before the soup kitchen that had been established in the town hall in Market Square.
During those dark days Portland's Federalists vehemently demonstrated against the Embargo Act and frequently violated it. With repeal of the act in 1809 the town immediately forged ahead. In 1810 the population had increased to 7,179; two years later 35,512 tons of shipping were locally reg- istered. With the declaration of war against England in 1812 local export and import trade was again affected, but shipbuilding spurted ahead with the construction of privateers. Built in Portland during this period were the Yankee, the Hyder Ally, the Rapid, and the famous Dart. For many years Old Dart Rum was sold locally. The builder of the Yankee, John F. Hall, at this time invented a breech-loading gun and sold the patent to the United States Government. After the War of 1812 Hall supervised the manufac- ture of this gun for the government at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. The Dash, famous in maritime history, although built in Freeport was Portland owned; this craft made 15 captures in seven cruises. Nearly forty privateers were registered in Portland at that time, and during the War of 1812 nearly a half-hundred rich prizes were brought into this port.
On September 5, 1813, the War of 1812 was brought forcibly to Port- land when the American brig Enterprise, commanded by William Burrows, and the British Boxer, with Captain Samuel Blyth in command, met in bat- tle 40 miles out from the local harbor. After a short but decisive battle the Boxer surrendered to its American attacker. Blyth had been killed during the battle, and the commander of the Enterprise was so severely wounded that he died the following night. Both vessels came into Portland Harbor; the captains, each wrapped in his country's flag, were buried with impressive ceremonies in Eastern Cemetery.
When peace was concluded in 1815, the subject of the District of Maine's separation from Massachusetts again became a paramount issue. A year later a petition was presented to the Commonwealth asking for separate statehood for Maine; the referendum held in the District resulted in a bare majority, not the five to four plurality demanded. Again revived in 1817, it was not until June, 1819, that Massachusetts agreed that a majority vote would be accepted. The convention to frame the constitution for the new state met in Portland later that year. On March 4, 1820, the State of
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Portland City Guide
Maine was admitted by Congress to the Union, strangely enough through the Missouri Compromise. Antislavery feeling was high and as Missouri wished to enter the Union as a slave state, the admission of Maine was com- plicated with that of Missouri. Acceptance of these states was made pos- sible by Henry Clay's Missouri Compromise Bill by which slavery was al- lowed in that State, but not elsewhere west of the Mississippi River north of the southern boundary of Missouri. Portland became the first capital, the first Maine Legislature convening here May 31, 1820.
In 1821 the capital of Maine was a town three miles long with an average width of three-quarters of a mile. Geographically, it was the smallest town in the State. Portland then had seven public schools and about forty private schools, six fire engines, a library of 1,200 volumes, ten churches, a brick courthouse, a "gaol," and the new Statehouse. Besides these there were banks and insurance offices, a post office, a customs house, an iron works with furnace, seven slaughter-houses, as well as many workshops and stores.
In this thriving town a Quaker boy named Neal Dow, later to father Maine's Prohibitory Law, was in his adolescence. In subsequent years he told of certain aspects in the Portland of the 1820's which had made a marked impression upon his mind, undoubtedly laying the foundation for his "dry law." In his Reminiscences he wrote that military musters, obliga- tory for the contemporary militia, were "little else than burlesque occasions for days for drunkenness and much that was worse. . . . Among the rich, educated, and refined of the day, frequent victims of intemperance were to be found, as well as among those whose temptation and liability to excess are generally regarded as greater. Liquor found place on all occasions. Town meetings, musters, firemen's parades, cattle-shows, fairs, and, in short every gathering of people of a public and social nature resulted in- variably in scenes which in these days would shock the people of Maine into indignation, but which then were regarded as a matter of course. Private assemblies were little better. Weddings, balls, parties, huskings, barn- raisings, and even funerals, were dependent upon intoxicants, while often religious conferences and ministerial gatherings resulted in an increase of the ordinary consumption of liquor. ... At the time of the admission of Maine to the Union, and for thirty years thereafter, her people probably con- sumed more intoxicating liquor in proportion to their numbers than the people of any other state."
Portland's population increased nearly forty-seven percent during the next ten years. The War of 1812 demonstrated the need for quicker trans-
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History
portation, and railroads were spreading over the East. Back in 1791 a com- mittee had been chosen to consider opening a canal from Sebago Lake to the lower Presumpscot River; a charter was granted in 1795, but not until 1821 was interest again stimulated. A new charter, under the name of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal, was procured for a waterway from Water- ford, in Oxford County, to Fore River, for which in 1823 the sum of $50,- 000 was voted to be raised by lottery. Falling short of the sum needed, the Canal Bank was incorporated with the provision that its stock be invested in the canal. Work on the waterway commenced in 1828 and was com- pleted in 1830 at a cost of $206,000.
In 1828 there was an ever-increasing feeling in Portland that, as the capital of Maine, as shire town of Cumberland County, and as a port of considerable maritime importance, the town should become a municipality. That year application was made "to see if the inhabitants would take meas- ures for adopting a city government." Older residents, however, were averse to the change, and the petition was denied. In the next few years de- termined efforts were again made to change the town's status, and on April 30, 1832, the City of Portland was duly incorporated, with Andrew L. Emerson as first mayor.
The "Sepult City"
Shortly before the incorporation of Portland as a city a number of the lanes and alleys with their characteristic names had been dignified as streets. Chub Lane, Fiddle Lane, Fish Lane, Lime Alley, and Love Lane became re- spectively Hampshire, Franklin, Exchange, Lime, and Center streets. "Hog- Town," a name given because of the all too numerous pigsties around Brackett above Spring Street, continued to flourish. The swamp around Federal and Temple streets where alders and whortleberries grew and the pond at Pine and Vaughan streets were drained. Portlanders began build- ing fine new homes farther west. In 1836 the Eastern and Western prome- nades were laid out, which led the Portland Argus to ridicule editorially: "They may be very pleasant for those that keep horses and gig and have nothing else to do but ride about, but they will not be the least advantage to nine tenths of the taxpayers of the city." This was the period when Huckster's Row, a long group of commercial buildings, started the thriving business that developed into the present-day shopping district of Congress Street. Huckster's Row provided Seba Smith with much of the color for his 'Major Downing Letters,' first published in the Portland Courier, which
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Portland City Guide
for a time convulsed the nation. On Munjoy Hill was the Muster Ground where the Sea Fencibles had drilled, and where, on the Fourth of July, Portlanders celebrated America's Independence by drinking beer and munch- ing gingerbread, enjoying peep shows, riding flying-horses, and listening to grandiloquent oratory.
By 1835 plans were projected for a railroad to link Portland with Can- ada. The Federal Government appointed Colonel Stephen H. Long to sur- vey possible routes, but the severe national depression of 1837-39, in which Portland banks lost half their capital and suspended specie payment, frus- trated such an undertaking. However, in December, 1842, five years after a charter had been obtained, the city was connected by rail with the rest of New England by the Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth Railroad. It ex- tended from this city to Portsmouth, a distance of 51 miles, where it con- nected with a line into Boston.
Portland's merchants were not particularly enthused over the city's rail- road connection with Boston, for they believed business would be drawn away rather than attracted; this had been demonstrated in the loss of com- merce that formerly had come through the Notch for shipment from this port. They were, however, very much in favor of facilitating travel to the interior, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Canada. In February, 1845, John A. Poor, a pioneer railroad promoter, succeeded in obtaining a charter for the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad to connect Portland with Mon- treal. On July 4, 1848, Judge William Pitt Preble, president of the line, inaugurated construction, and two years later the railroad was opened to North Yarmouth. Early in 1853 costal Portland was connected with Mon- treal by 292 miles of railroad; a route was at last opened beyond the White Mountains with connections to the grain-growing West. A month after its opening this line was leased to the Grand Trunk Railway System of Can- ada. In 1851 the Kennebec and Portland Railroad was opened, and two years later service was started on the York and Cumberland Railroad and its connecting roads. By the late 1850's Portland was the railroad center of the State.
Although railroads were dominant in the public mind, steamships were gradually being improved in mechanism and appearance. By 1823 Cap- tain Seward Porter's steam-engined, flat-bottom boat, contemptuously called "The Horned Hog," which a year previous had serviced Casco Bay, was succeeded by a regular steamer, the 100-ton Patent. In 1832 Amos Cross placed the Victory in service between Bath, Portland, and Boston. A year
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History
later Cross and Cornelius Vanderbilt put the Chancellor Livingston on this route. The Livingston had been built in 1816 by Robert Fulton and run on the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. Apparent by 1843 that a prompt and regular schedule should be maintained between Portland and Boston, the Portland Steam Packet Company was organized to supply this need. The following year the company inaugurated its new policy with the Com- modore Preble, a 286-ton steamboat propelled by a 50-horsepower engine; the 309-ton General Warren was shortly added. Even in the face of active competition from other sailing packets and from the railroads, the Port- land Steam Packet Company's records for 1848 reported 25,000 passengers and $43,396 in freight receipts. Portland's transatlantic service began in 1853 with the arrival of the Sara Sands, commanded by Captain Washing- ton Ilsley of this city, an accommodation that continued for over a half- century.
With the growth of railroads several large companies set up offices in this city. Among these was Greely and Guild of Boston, a firm of large-scale importers of West Indies molasses; in 1845 they established an experimental plant to attempt production of sugar from molasses. The firm failed, but its manager, John B. Brown, carried on the business with Dependence H. Furbish, an employee, who had discovered a means whereby sugar was suc- cessfully obtained from molasses by a steam process. In 1855 the firm was chartered as the Portland Sugar Company. Another large corporation or- ganized in this period was the Portland Company, founded in 1846, which manufactured steam engines and railroad equipment.
By 1850 it was manifest that direct connections were necessary across the city between the Atlantic and St. Lawrence and the Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth railroads which had terminals on opposite sides of the city. The proposal of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence to build a road along the frontal tidewater and across the wharves, if the city would construct the necessary filled-land and pay any land damages, met with opposition which shrieked "increased taxation." However, by 1852 Portland's water front was remade, and Commercial Street - 5,883 feet long, 100 feet wide, with 26 feet in the center for railroad tracks - was constructed at a cost of $80,- 000. The new street was soon lined with warehouses, stores, and wharves, and by this time the Portland Sugar House had forged ahead to become the largest importer of molasses in New England.
With the organization in 1853 of the Portland Board of Trade by 50 of the city's leading merchants, plans were made to develop the port of Port-
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Portland City Guide
land. Among its important early accomplishments were the securing of Federal funds for dredging, marking, and safety-lighting the harbor, and the establishment of pier frontage lines for local wharves.
The middle and late 1800's marked the period of Portland's intellectual giants. In 1850 Neal Dow was elected mayor of the city and the next year drafted Maine's famous prohibitory law. In 1858 James G. Blaine, who was to become the "plumed knight of American politics," was wielding a trenchant pen as editor of the Portland Advertiser. A versatile man about town was John Neal, who, a number of years previous had gone to Eng- land "to prove an American could write something John Bull would read"; as early as 1836 he had advocated woman suffrage. In this period the sculptor, Paul Akers, was creating his marble statues, and Henry Wads- worth Longfellow was at work on his poems. Local writers, such as Na- thaniel Parker Willis, familiarly known as N. P., his sister Fanny Fern, and Seba Smith were each establishing international reputations. In 1859 Port- land's new city hall was opened to the public; designed by Boston's James H. Rand, it was completed at a cost of more than a quarter of a million dol- lars and soon became a center, not only of civic but also of social affairs.
In the mid-century slavery was a disputed issue in Portland, but with the fall of Fort Sumter the city rallied to the North's call for troops, sending 3,636 men to the War. Also mustered into service were the Light Infantry, the Mechanics Blues, the Light Guards, the Rifle Corps, and the Rifle Guards - all volunteer militia companies. Ligonia was a barracks, and Portland a martial-looking city, full of uniformed men. The city paid bounties to soldiers amounting to $320,116, and $105,473 to dependent fam- ilies; $100,000 was contributed to various benevolent agencies. The Civil War actually touched Portland with the so-called Tacony Affair in June, 1863, when Lieutenant Charles W. Reed, in command of the Confederate States Navy cruiser Tacony, blew up that ship after commandeering the local fishing schooner Archer, intending to steal into Portland, capture the revenue cutter Caleb Cushing, and set fire to the wharves and shipping. They captured the cutter, but a calm sea forced the rebels to tow it out to open sea. By this time the city was aware of the theft, and boats were sent in pursuit. The raiders, mistaking one of the pursuing craft for a Yankee gunboat, fired the Caleb Cushing, which exploded and sank. The Con- federate seamen were hauled aboard the victorious pursuers and brought to Fort Preble as prisoners of war.
With the close of the Civil War, Portland's economic life, which had been
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History
somewhat disrupted, gradually returned to normal. On July 4, 1866, the city had a great but tragic celebration of Independence Day and the close of the War of the Rebellion. Bunting and streamers decorated the city streets and buildings, long parades wound along the principal thorough- fares - the entire city was in a festive mood. When the fire bells clanged in the late afternoon, little attention was paid to them by the holiday throngs, but their gaiety was soon turned to horror. A boy had carelessly thrown a lighted firecracker which landed in a boatbuilder's yard on Commercial Street, igniting chaff which spread to the building. The wind blew hard from the south, and all around were wooden buildings. By the time the firemen arrived Brown's Sugar House was aflame, and wind-borne embers kindled row after row of adjacent homes, stores, and offices. Half of the reservoirs of the city were drained, water was pumped from wells, cisterns, and the harbor, yet the fire could not be quenched. Night came with an illumination not planned, the fire gaining momentum as it ate through the heart of the city. Homes, banks, stores, newspaper offices, warehouses, churches, schools, and landmarks that went back to the foundation of the city were destroyed. Twelve million dollars worth of property was destroyed, and ten thousand people were made homeless. Munjoy Hill became a city of tents, and the old soup kitchen in the Market House again fed the hungry. Portland, from Commercial and Maple streets eastward to Back Cove, was a charred ghost town. Late that month Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to a friend: "I have been in Portland since the fire. Desolation! Desolation! Desolation! It reminds me of Pompeii, the 'sepult city.'" Resurgam
After inventorying the property loss occasioned by one of the greatest fires in the United States up to that time, Portland began to rebuild the razed area. Streets were widened, others eliminated. Pearl Street was broadened and extended from Back Cove to the harbor. In January, 1867, the city aldermen provided the first park; the lot bounded by Pearl, Con- gress, Franklin, and Federal streets, now Lincoln Park, was purchased by the city for $86,703 and was first designated Phoenix Square.
Although the city had discussed the possibility of piping water from Se- bago Lake nearly twelve years before the fire, the proposal had been re- jected because of the cost entailed. The 'Great Fire' impressed upon the city the urgent need of an adequate water supply, and in November, 1868, Mayor Augustus E. Stevens signed a contract with the Portland Water Company to pipe from the inexhaustible supply of Sebago Lake to the city.
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Portland City Guide
The lake, 17 miles northwest of the city, with an elevation of 272 feet above mean low tide in Portland, is about twelve miles long and four to five miles wide, thus guaranteeing not only excellent and pure drinking water but enough pressure for fire-fighting purposes.
During this period of reconstruction Middle Street became the princi- pal retail center, and on that thoroughfare in 1868 John B. Brown built the Falmouth Hotel, which shortly became a center for Portland's social life. Meanwhile Exchange Street had become the city's financial district. In the Bramhall and Munjoy sections new brick homes were built. Also in 1868, the new City Hall occupying the site of the present building was erected. The construction of the elaborate marble Post Office on Middle Street and the granite Customs House on Commercial Street, together with the many new edifices so impressed the local correspondent of the Boston Journal that he wrote in his column: "The fire has put Portland fifty years ahead."
During the latter years of the 19th century Portland's harbor, always ice free, was included among the eight principal eastern seaboard ports rec- ognized by the U. S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. Due to the agricultural expansion of the western states and western Canada, a steady stream of commerce started to flow through the Great Lakes and down the St. Lawrence River en route to foreign ports. These arteries, how- ever, were not navigable in winter, being choked with ice, and to hold this commerce, Canada was forced to find a winter port. Portland, recently connected with Montreal by the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, be- came the American point of handling for Canadian commerce. Profiting by the wars of Great Britain and China, Yankee packets were making trips from Portland around the "Horn" to China in three months' time. Full- rigged ships, carrying cargoes of the West Indies trade, dotted Portland's harbor. The fishing industry was also growing, and Maine's Portland and Castine were vying with the Massachusetts towns of Gloucester and Marble- head as chief centers of cod fishing.
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