USA > Maine > York County > Biddeford > Stories and legends of old Biddeford > Part 10
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The Squire's son, Daniel, seems also to have been genial, though perhaps without the talent for public life his father displayed. But here and there are little touches in the old account book that bring back an echo of those old hearty days. At the foot of one account, written in a large bold hand, there is this note, dated February 18th 1792:
"This day settled all accounts from the Beginning of the World to the above date between us, except the account of the Schooner Polley, and there appears due to Benjamin Gillpatrick the sum of Two Pounds Seven Shillings As witness our Hands
Benja. Gillpatrick Daniel Hooper"
Biddeford's first Official Map
In June of 1794 the General Court of Massachusetts ordered each town in the State to prepare and submit an "accurate" map of its boundaries and principal roads. Things moved slowly then. It was November before the town held a special meeting in the Pool road church to appoint a committee for the survey. And it was May of 1795 before the map was finished - the first official map of Biddeford. The lower portion of that map (which is still filed in the Massachusetts archives) was reproduced on page 28 of the first part of these "Stories and Legends". The upper part, covering "the Falls village", is reproduced on the next page. Unfortunately that map does not show many of the local roads, known to have then been in existence. It was concerned with what we would now call the through roads, and with the landmarks that would interest the General Court. Thus only the Upper and Lower roads to Arundel (now the Guinea Road, and the Kennebunk Road - U. S. 1) are shown because they were the roads that would be used by through traffic. And the landmarks were the one town church, the courthouse, and the mills.
Sometimes the complaint is heard that the coming of the cotton mills in the 1840s turned Biddeford into an industrial
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town. But the plain truth is that the industrialization of Biddeford began more than a century before the cotton mills came. It can be dated back to 1691 when U. Captain Turfey built a sawmill on the riverbank just above the Falls. In 1720 Samuel Cole built a mill a little farther up, and built his home nearby. It was the son of Samuel, William Cole, who died at the early age of thirty-six. It was William's widow who married the cheery army surgeon with the Scottish speech, Dr. Donald Cummings (see pages 53-4), and the Cole house became known as "Cummings'". That section of Biddeford to the north of Smith street, and running from the Falls to opposite Gooch Island, was known as "the mill brow" before 1730. It not only held the mills, it also held some of the best homes and families of Biddeford. The site is wholly covered now by the buildings of the Saco-Lowell Shops.
The map of 1795 shows four active mills along the "mill brow", and two more just built. on Spring's Island. By 1800, Folsom says in his History, there were "seventeen saws in operation about the Falls" - of which twelve were on the Biddeford river- bank, Gooch Island and Spring's Island. By 1815 a minister of Saco was writing enthusiastically, "there is water enough for 2000 mills and factories. This town will one day be celebrated for its manufactories." It was the lumber trade that "made" Biddeford, and that began its industrialization. And the Saco River is now said to be the oldest river in the United States, from the standpoint of continuous lumbering operation.
There is one other point of interest in the map of 1795. That is the sketch of the old Pool Road church. The present structure is rather barnlike, and only one story. And repeated attempts have been made to point it out as a good specimen of Colonial architecture. This map of 1795 shows the church as it was originally built in 1759. It was two stories, it had a steeple, it was truly Colonial. But it was completely remodelled, and cut down to one story, in 1840. So far as its exterior goes, it is no longer Colonial.
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The Wild Pigeons
It is little known today that one of the distinctive sights of Colonial life was beginning to fade as the 18th Century closed. That was the hunting of the wild pigeons. Those pigeons had been a marvel to the early settlers. John Josselyn, the English lawyer, who lived at Black Point (Scarboro) in 1631 and again from 1663 to 1671, thus described them:
"The pidgeons of which there are millions and millions. I have seen a flight of Pidgeons in the Spring, and at Michaelmas when they return back to the Southward, for four or five miles, that to my thinking had neither beginning nor ending, length nor breadth, and so thick that I could see no sun. They joyned nest to nest, and Tree to Tree by their Nests many miles together in Pine Trees. But of late they are much diminished, the English taking them with nets."
But almost a hundred years later, good Parson Smith of Falmouth was writing in his diary on September 2, 1752:
"I rode with Major Freeman and Peter to (Windham) a pigeoning; we got near ten dozen."
More than 100 pigeons, divided between three hunters - it meant a lot of pigeon pie, But it wasn't sport, it was sheer killing. In his autobiography, the famous Neal Dow of Portland also wrote of "pigeoning" as he had known it in his early boyhood (he was born in 1804):
The passenger pigeon (The long, slender tail was very distinctive)
"Wild pigeons and other small game abounded ... Two of our neighbors made a business of hunting wild pigeons in the season, and I was often permitted to accompany them. Their general method of capturing the birds was with a net, so arranged that it would drop over a flock that had been induced to alight to feed upon buckwheat or other grain spread out to attract them.
It was interesting to watch the tame pigeons which were often used to decoy their wild relatives. They seemed to understand the game admirably, and almost invariably dodged out from under the net at the right instant to free themselves without unseasonably alarming the wild birds. After the net had fallen, the poor pigeons would squat on
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the ground with their heads sticking up like so many pegs through the net, and the hunters would then pass around, breaking each neck with a pinch. . . ... I think it is within bounds to say that three or four dozen was not an unusual catch with one drop of the net."
Those wild pigeons were the beautiful passenger pigeons that are now totally extinct. The last known specimen died in captivity in 1914 - but no great flock had been seen in Maine for almost a century before that. Even the brutal hunting that Neal Dow saw in the 1820s, had come to its end in this section before another ten or twenty years had passed. The flights of the passenger pigeons, in the Spring and again in late Fall, were a spectacle that was ending for Biddeford at about the same time that knee breeches were abandoned generally by men - in favor of long trousers.
The Courts of Biddeford
Something else that passed with the 18th Century was the annual coming of the courts to Biddeford. There were two of these courts, and both were old even in the 18th Century. Until 1760 the County of York took in the whole of Maine, and the county courts sat in the towns of York and Falmouth. But in 1760 the two counties of Cumberland and Lincoln were created, and the courts began to sit in Biddeford for the Fall term. For some reason there seems to have been no Fall term of court in 1761, but the next year (1762) saw the beginning of an annual "feature attraction" for Biddeford that lasted through the final years of the Colonial period, all through the Revolution, and beyond the death of George Washington. The last sitting in Biddeford was in October, 1803. The next year the towns of Kennebunk and Alfred replaced York and Biddeford as the court towns for the county.
It is really remarkable that these court sessions in Biddeford have never before been mentioned (or studied) in any history of Biddeford. Even George Folsom, though a law student as well as a practicing lawyer, does not mention them in his History. Yet they were well worth mention and study. In the old record books of their proceedings, still preserved at Alfred, a whole panorama of 18th Century life is spread out - for those who know how to read and view it. It isn't a full panorama; the great majority of the people, then as now, never had occasion to be in court. But those who did, came from many different walks of life. And came for so many different reasons that a real cross-section emerges. Partly this is due to the broad coverage of those old courts.
The first court, the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, had jurisdiction over purely civil matters- such as actions for
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debt, damage, trespass and other civil matters. Its trials were by jury, and it was presided over by four justices whose only requirement was that they be "substantial persons." No judge on that court, during the whole of the 18th Century, was a lawyer - that is, a man educated or trained for the law. The chief justice, for example, from 1736 to his death in 1759 was Sir William Pepperell, merchant and land owner. But in spite of the lack of lawyers, or perhaps because of it, the court's reputation for justice was high.
The second, and more unusual court, was the Court of General Sessions of the Peace. It also was an old court, going back in York county to 1691. £ Its jurisdiction, in the words of a legal historian of Maine:
"extended to all cases, civil and criminal, except divorce and crimes whose punishment extended to life, limb, or banishment; with power to summon juries appoint clerks and other officers. They also had jurisdiction as a Court of Sessions, to lay out highways, issue licenses to innholders etc .; also probate power in the settlement of estates. They combined the principal jurisdiction and duties of the Superior, Inferior, and Probate Courts, as subsequently established."
The records show that this court had power to lay taxes on the towns for the support of courts, court officers and the county jail. It punished towns for failure to keep highways in repair, and for failure to provide schoolmasters (see page 47). It tried and punished individuals for offenses against morals, for not attending church, for the illegal sale of liquor - even for playing cards. The movies were not known in 18th Century Biddeford, but the proceedings of this court certainly furnished a substitute in entertainment value. One of the features in that entertainment must have been the spectacle of the bench of judges. For on the bench, in this court, every justice of the peace in the whole county had the right to sit. Cases in the old records are common where 24 or more justices are noted as having been in attendance. The high point was reached in 1803, in the last court held in Biddeford, when a total of 41 justices are listed. They could not have all sat on the bench at the same time - the bench just wasn't big enough. But it is plain that enough did sit, at one time or other during the term, to make the historian wonder how the court reached its decisions. The wonder grows when it is remembered that for 30 years (from 1762 to 1792) both courts met in private homes and inn parlors.
The list of meeting places in Biddeford is interesting. From 1762 to 1767 the courts met in the house of "John Gray, yeoman". John Gray owned a valuable strip of land near the mill brow, and his house stood on the King's Highway close to where the office of the Pepperell Mills now stands. The records
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show that he was paid three pounds "lawful money," for the "Courts sitting in his house." From 1768 to 1770 the house of Dr. Donald Cummings was used, which stood on the "mill brow" between the river and what is now Smith Street. Dr. Cummings received forty shillings each term - about two pounds. The next year (1771) Nathaniel Ladd was paid "Three Pounds twelve Shillings", and this was probably the year of the famous mock trial (see page 55). Then Elisha Allen apparently made a low bid, because in 1772 the courts began using his tavern at rates that dropped to thirty shillings, in 1774, and then to "six shillings six pence" in 1775, and "ten shillings" in 1776. Those last two low rates, however, also measure the sharp drop in legal business (see page 73) caused by the anxiety and the uncertainty of the Revolution's beginning. But Elisha Allen's tavern, which stood at what is now White's Wharf, housed the courts until 1785 when a certain Marquess Myrrs ( of whom more will be later told) succeeded to the business. It seems likely that Marquess had bought out Allen and was in a hurry to get his money back. For his bill to the courts was three pounds which the judges evidently thought was too high. For the old records run:
"Ordered that thirty shillings (about one pound and a half) be allowed Marquess Myrrs, for the use of his room and benches this term, of his account for Three Pounds being the full worth as thought by ye Court."
Marquess Myrrs housed the courts for three years and then in 1788 Seth Spring took over and was allowed forty shillings "for the use of his room and candles." The next year Seth seems to have run foul of the courts on the cost of his services, for the 1789 record runs :
"Capt. Seth Spring having presented his account against the county for the use of a room in his house for the Court to sit in from the 13th to 21st inst., charged at Six Pounds. Ordered by the Court that he receive out of the Treasury the sum of Three Pounds in full thereof."
It seems probable that Seth Spring was then in charge of the old Allen tavern, because his later famous inn on Spring's Island was not built until after 1795. This is confirmed by the fact that an old almanac of 1795 gives Hooper and Spring as the two innkeepers of Biddeford, and specifies Spring as being at "Saco Bridge." And "Folsom in his History distinctly says that the bridge from Biddeford to Spring's Island was not built until "soon after" 1795. And Folsom further says that the first house on Spring's Island was not built until 1795. It seems very clear that the courts of Biddeford never met on Spring's Island. Because in 1792, after thirty years of "meeting 'round", the courts finally achieved a meeting place of their own. In those thirty years the courts of Biddeford had changed from being dispensers of "the King's justice, in which everything was done
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in the name of the King of England - into courts in which everything was done in the name of the people. The story of that change is interesting, and has never been told before.
How the King's courts met freedom
Studying the old court records of York county, we get a glimpse of what a really profound change the American Revolution must have seemed to the people at the time. It hit the courts especially hard, for the law is a thing of usage and custom and tradition - and the Revolution brought a condition that, to the legal mind, was utterly without precedent. That explains the stagnation of legal business at the beginning of the Revolution. In whose name would the courts sit, by whose authority could they issue writs and orders and administer justice? After the battle of Lexington in April, 1775, and of Bunker Hill in June of the same year, the situation was very puzzling. The country was in open revolt against the King; a patriot like James Sullivan was busily organizing Biddeford and other Maine towns for armed defense against the King's ships and the King's troops - and yet the forms of law were the King's forms and James Sullivan and other lawyers were serving as "King's attorney" in the courts. On page 67 is shown the charge against poor Pompey, the negro, accused of offending "against the Peace of the said Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity." That was in the summer
of 1775, and in October of that year the courts met in Biddeford at almost the same time that the warships of Mowatt were bombarding nearby Falmouth. That October term of court, still held in the King's name, is of special interest to Biddeford because at that time Rishworth Jordan, whose home was on the Pool Road where Stella Maris School now stands, took his place as a judge. His service, which lasted for 22 years, thus began at the last Biddeford court held in the name of the King of England.
It was Spring of 1776 before the lawyers could make up their minds how to meet the situation. And their solution was oddly lawyer-like. They took the old forms of the King, and everywhere the King's name appeared they substituted a new phrase - "The Government and People of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." In the old records of the court, dated June 29, 1776, there appears the new commission, bearing the quaint seal shown here. It is the seal that replaced - even before the Declaration of
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Independence - the King's seal in Massachusetts and Maine. The names of 20 York County men appear in that commission. Two of them were from Biddeford - Rishworth Jordan and James Sullivan. It took real courage then to have one's name stamped so plainly as part of what still seemed to many people an illegal and criminally rebellious movement.
The wording of the old commission to the judges is in part as follows:
"Know ye that we have assigned you and every of you jointly and severally our Justices to keep our Peace in our County of York, within our said Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, and to keep and cause to be kept, the Laws and Ordinances made for the good of the Peace and for the conservation of the same and for the quiet rule and government of our People in our said County, in all and every of the Articles thereof, according to the force, form and effect of the same, and to chastise and punish all Persons offending against the form of those Laws and Ordinances, or any of them, in the County aforesaid."
The "we" and "our" in that commission once referred to the King of England. Now it meant a people determined to be free. There is a great deal of meaning behind those quaint old lines.
The Courts after the Revolution
During a war the people are always looking forward to the war's end, when "things can settle down again." Also, at the same time, they are gloomily predicting that "things can never be the same again." It is true that a long war does make changes It is also true that the changes are not uniform, and oddly inconsistent. In fact, it is only looking backward, after years have passed, that we can really see what the changes actually were. The American Revolution was a long war, the longest war in our history. There were six years of fighting, eight years of strain and uncertainty. And yet, looking over the records of the courts of Biddeford for the closing years of the 18th Century, it is genuinely amazing how little change there seems from Colonial days. The courts were now in the name of the people, instead of the King; the judges spoke for America, and not for England. Bui the punishments decreed in the name of the people were the same that had been decreed in the name of the King. The forms had changed, but the ideas and spirit behind the forms were much the same. Poor old Pompey, sentenced in 1775, in the name of the King, to be whipped and sold into servitude by Lady Mary Pepperell, was the last man to suffer that punishment before Colonial days ended with the Declaration of Independence. But in 1782, with George Thecher of Biddeford as "Attorney for the
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Commonwealth", and with Rishworth Jordan of the Pool Road sitting as a judge, a white man was sentenced in the Court of General Sessions of the Peace to be given "Nineteen Stripes on the naked Back at the Public Whipping Post" and to be sold into servitude for "the space of six years." He had stolen goods in Saco ( then called Pepperellboro) whose "threefold damage" amounted to 384 Pounds 9 Shillings. Five years later (in 1787) another white man was sentenced to "Fifteen Stripes" and to be sold for 15 years for stealing from a gentleman of Berwick goods to the value of 300 Pounds. The threefold damage amounted to 900 Pounds, which shows that the courts then placed a value of 60 Pounds (less than $300) a year on a man's labor. As late as 1792, sixteen years after the Declaration of Independence, a white man was sentenced in this same court to be sold for three and a half years and to be "severely whipped on the naked back" for a total of 30 stripes. That harsh sentence was imposed for five complaints of theft that amounted even with threefold damages to only 27 Pounds 12 Shillings - about $125! He was whipped 10 stripes for the first complaint and 5 stripes for each of the other four - a total of thirty. It was a harsher sentence than any imposed before the Revolution in the name of the King.
The Colonial prosecutions for not attending church ( see page 40) seem to disappear after the Revolution. But new charges in the same spirit occur - for the offense of playing cards. A case of 1787 is of unusual interest because it was not only tried in Biddeford in October of that year, but it also involved Marquess Myers at whose tavern the court was then sitting. The unlucky Marquess, in other words, was both host and prisoner at the bar! It is unfortunate that more is not known of this same Marquess. His name was evidently unusual, so much so that old Daniel Sewall, the clerk of court, had a sad struggle spelling it. The first year it occurs in the records, the name is spelled Myrrs. The next year it is Myrs, and only in the third year did old Daniel hit on what must have been the right spelling of Myers. It is thought ( see page 90) that Marquess Myers was then in charge of the old inn of Elisha Allen. The record of the Myers' trial of 1787 is an amusing document. The presiding justice was Rishworth Jordan, and Jeremiah Hill and Benjamin Hooper were also on the bench. The record runs:
"Marquess Myers of Biddeford in said County, Innholder, appearing to answer an indictment of the Grand Jury found against him at this term, as follows: vizt. That Marquess Myers of Biddeford aforesaid, Innholder, being duly licensed according to law by the Justices of the Peace of the said County of York, in General Sessions assembled, to keep a public house of entertainment and to be an Innholder and Taverner within the said town of Biddeford: on the last day of June last past, and on divers other days and times between that day and the last day of September last past, at Biddeford aforesaid, with force and arms, had
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and kept in his said house, certain Cards, commonly called Gaming Cards, for the use of Gaming; and with force as aforesaid, that is to say with said Gaming Cards, did play and game with certain other persons to the Jurors unknown, there in his said house and in manner aforesaid did suffer and permit certain other other persons to the said Jurors unknown, resorting to his said house for the purpose of gaming, to use and exercise the game of Cards, that is to say, to exercise and use said Cards in gaming within his said house in evil example to all others in like manner to offend against the peace and dignity of this Commonwealth and contrary to the laws of the same in such case made and provided.
"Which Indictment being read to the said Marquess Myers, he pleads to the same 'Guilty of playing Cards. ' It is therefore considered and ordered by the Court that the said Marquess Myers pay a fine of Twenty Shillings to the Commonwealth for the use of this County, and costs of prosecution taxed at Twenty Shillings and Two Pence, and stand committed till Sentence be performed."
That indictment seems to have been drawn by Silas Lee, a young man who had been studying law with George Thacher, and who was then living with the Thachers in the house still standing at 208 South Street. Silas had just been admitted to the bar, and was Attorney for the Commonwealth at this term of court. And after all that elaborate legal wordage, Marquess Myers must have thought himself lucky (as indeed he was!) to get off with a total cost of forty shillings - about $10. Incidentally, at that same term the Court ordered Marquess to be paid 4 Pounds 5 Shillings "for the Court sitting at his house at last October term and this term." Which sum was a little more than double the fine and costs imposed on him for playing cards. there were no hard feelings.
Apparently
Twelve years later (in 1799, just a month before the death of George Washington) another card case came up in the court at Biddeford. It involved three well-known men of Biddeford, Christopher Gillpatrick, Daniel Deshon and John Townsend, who were indicted by the Grand Jury "for playing at cards in the house of James Coffin, innholder, in said Biddeford." Rishworth Jordan again presided, and Daniel Hooper and Prentiss Mellen assisted on the bench. But this time the offenders were let off with the mere paying of court costs. The idea of freedom was evidently spreading at last from the field of political freedom to that of. social freedom.
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