USA > Maine > York County > Biddeford > Stories and legends of old Biddeford > Part 5
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" The sixth day of September, a mighty blast there fell, Upon the town of Biddeford, as is known very well. There was two promising likely youths most quickly snatched away, As they were walking in the street; how soon they're took away! One of them presently was slain, the other to the woods Was by those heathen led away.
The home of the Gordon brothers was on the Pool Road just below West Brook. The Cole mill (a sawmill) to which they started to work, stood on the river bank where the Saco-Lowell Shops now stand. The house of Captain Murch, near which the
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Indians lay in ambush, and watched the brothers approach, stood on the right hand side of Clifford Street as it leads from Pool to Nason's Hill. Starting from just beyond West Brook, a walk on the Pool Road to Clifford, and a short distance on Clifford after turning off the Pool Road, will retrace the footsteps of the Gordon brothers on that tragic September morning of 1746.
The next year, 1747, came the last Indian killing in Biddeford, On April 17th of that year, a man named Nathaniel Eliot and his son were killed near the Pool Road just above where the present Guinea Road turns off. The Eliots lived "near the Falls", which means that their home was somewhere near present Main Street. On this day in April they had driven down the Pool Road to the farm of William Murch which was below the old Pool Road church and on a private road just above the present Guinea Road. There they bought hay of William Murch, loaded it on their wagon and started out toward the Pool Road and home.
They were crossing a field, with the Pool Road in sight, when suddenly Indians ambushed in the woods fired upon them and the father was instantly killed. The story runs that even then the son might have whipped up the horses and escaped but the killing of his father so angered him that he seized the musket (men did not travel then without a musket handy) and paused to fire back at the Indians. Another Indian volley then killed him.
Flushed with that success the Indians swept down on the Murch farm, found Mr. Murch near the barn and took him prisoner. They entered the barn and maliciously cut out the tongues of all the Murch cattle - a strange piece of savagery for which no good explanation has come down. They then fled with their prisoner, made their way up river to the White Mountains and ultimately carried William Murch to Canada. Whether he was there ransomed, or simply released at the close of the war, is not known. But at any rate he was able to return to Biddeford the next year.
There is one humorous note in the story as it was later told, and written down in 1830. An aged woman of Biddeford remembered that on this day in 1747 (when she was five or six years old) her father came running into their Pool Road home , saying: "There must be mischief done, for Parson Morrill is running his horse."" Parson Morrill was the town minister, pastor of the old Pocl Road church (then the only church in Biddeford). He had been prstor for five years - but he was still only twenty-five years old. The story indicates that he was a grave and serious young man whose saddle horse usually proceeded at a sedate pace. As was later learned, the young parson had been quietly ambling along the Pool Road that morning, on horseback, talking quietly with his companion who was a visiting minister. Suddenly they heard the sound of the muskets that killed the Murches and soon saw Indians in the distance. Wheeling their horses around, the two ministers put spurs to their steeds and rode wildly up the Pool Road to the
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safety of the parsonage which seems to have been located a short distance above the present Morrill School and was strongly fortified. But no one seems to have written a ballad about the unlucky Murches - or about Parson Morrill's ride.
From this time on, the only Indians seen in Biddeford were . peaceful Indians. Those that came were from farther north, and came for the Spring and Summer fishing. Until industries began to be built on what is now Factory Island, that island was a favorite Indian camping ground. And sometimes when the Indians were holding a seasonal dance or festival, the noise from the Island would make Biddeford residents look apprehensively across the river where dark forms could be seen dancing - silhouetted against huge fires burning on the Island. In fact, the name Indian Island was in common use for many years after the American Revolution.
There were also seasonal Indian encampments along the lower river. A spring on the river bank, jsut back of the present Stella Maris School, was long known as Indian Spring because the Indians camped near it each Summer. It is the same site, incidentally, as that shown on Champlain's map of 1605 when he also found Indians camping there. Two hundred and fifty years later (in 1855), a Biddeford newspaper mentioned the fact that Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians were encamped at that spot. In the Fourth of July celebration at the Pool, the se Indians gave exhibition races in their birch canoes.
It is unfortunate that no early study was made of the . Saco Valley Indians before their survivors were driven away after the Lovewell War, in 1725. Afterwards confusion arose because habits and customs found among the Indians of the Far West, were incorrectly attributed to the Indians the first settlers had known here. One interesting illustration is in the contrast between the wigwam or teepee (both names being used inaccurately) of the Indians of the West, and the wigwams shown on Samuel Champlain's map of 1605. Below is an accurate reproduction of how the framework of the domelike wigwams seen by Champlain were quickly erected and fastened, before being covered with bark and skins:
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The missing Biddeford bell
Such evidence as has been found to support Biddeford's famous legend of the English bell, points clearly to this period of the Indian wars. For almost thirty years no town records were kept, showing that so many inhabitants had been driven away by the constant deadly fear of Indian savagery that those who remained were either too upset or too few to even hold a town meeting.
But in 1717 the town records began anew, never to be interrupted again. The very next year (1718) the name of Biddeford was adopted and legend insists that the name was taken because some of the new settlers had come from the English town of Bideford in the famous County of Devon. That such naming was not unusual is shown by the fact that at almost the same time the inhabitants of the district then known as Cape Porpoise, adopted the name Arundel. This was in 1719, and the town history of Kennebunkport written in 1837 says plainly:
"The town was called Arundel in compliment to the Earl of Arundel, descendant of Thomas, Earl of Arundel, one of the original proprietors of New England. Lord Arundel offered to give a bell to the town but it was never sent for."
As another interesting parallel there is the story of the town of Coleraine in Massachusetts which was named for a Lord Coleraine of Ireland. And an old history of 1839 says:
"His lordship was so well pleased with the honor done him that he sent the inhabitants a fine bell; but through the unfaithfulness of the agent to whom it was intrusted, it never reached them. It is believed still in existence, and used in one of the churches in Boston."
So Biddeford is not the only town in New England that blames Boston for a missing bell. Boston evidently had taking ways, and what Boston took Boston kept.
At any rate it is also clear that after adopting the name of Biddeford, the people here began almost at once to build a church or "meeting house". Little is known of that church except that it was begun about 1719, that it stood nearer to Moore's Brook than the present old Pool Road church, and that it was 35 feet long, 30 feet wide, had a separate door for men and a separate door for women, with separate stairs leading to the galleries for each sex. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for someone here to write back to friends or relatives in the English Bideford, telling of the town's naming and of the building of the new meeting house. And the history of the English town makes also clear that at this
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very time there was an English noblewoman named Grace, Countess Granville, who was Lady of the Manor of Bideford. We hardly need to recall the parallel stories of Arundel and Coleraine to realize that it would have been very natural for the Countess Granville to have shown her pleasure at the news of the naming of Biddeford in Maine with the gift of a bell.
It is true that Folsom's History, written in 1830, does not mention Biddeford's bell. But then it is not always realized that Folsom was not a native of Biddeford and in fact had only lived here about six years when he wrote his History. It has become increasingly evident in late years that he thus missed many good Biddeford stories. So far as is now known the legend did not appear in print until February of 1867 when the following note appeared in the weekly Biddeford newspaper:
"In the early days of Biddeford, a lady sent a bell to that place from Bideford, England, which arrived in Boston where it remained for a long time and was finally sold to pay for its freight and storage. An effort was made several years ago to secure it for the city, but it could not then be bought.
"Several of the citizens of Biddeford are again making an effort to secure it, and as it is one of the finest toned bells in Boston, and rightfully belongs to Biddeford, we hope they will be successful."
Unfortunately the newspaper did not follow up that note, and we know nothing more about that effort of recovery.
Old Steeple Bell of New England
Almost fifty years later, in 1910, a letter to the Biddeford Journal, gave a little more detail and told the legend as it had been handed down for 200 years in a Biddeford family:
"Lady Bideford, of Bideford, and for whom Biddeford was named, sent a present ... of a very large and beautiful bell which came in a sailing vessel from Bideford, England, to Boston, Mass. The freight was so large and the journey so long in those days from Boston to Maine that the good people of the Old First Church were hardly able to contribute the necessary freight money. Consequently the bell is in Boston in the steeple of the Old South Church."
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There is another, and more doubtful, version of the legend which says that it was a chandelier (not a bell) that was sent. But all versions agree that the gift came from a lady in Bideford, England; was intended for the church here; and that somehow the gift stayed in Boston. Later additions to the legend say that the bell was either destroyed in a Boston fire or that it became so worn with use that it was melted down and recast, and its identity lost. The one sure thing is that the bell never reached Biddeford, and that it cannot now be identified in Boston.
One other thing seems sure. Which is that the bell was intended for the church that was built in 1719, which was not the old church now standing on the Pool Road. The present church on the Pool Road was not built until 40 years later (in 1759) and was so completely remodelled in 1840 that there is now no resemblance to its 1759 appearance. Of the earlier church of 1719, for which the bell was actually sent, no description or picture has come down to us. But the illustration given below shows how it may have looked, and is based on the typical New England meeting house of the period of the Indian wars.
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STORIES
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Pt. 2 Part II - 1740-1800 Colonial Days The Revolution The Closing Century
Prepared by The McArthur Library for the City of Biddeford 1946
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, Foreword
This second part of the "Stories and Legends of Old Biddeford," contains both history and legend. On the historical side it unquestionably breaks new ground - for Biddeford, and possibly for Maine. It is largely based on a study of two old (and almost forgotten) York County courts. For one of them, the remarkable Court of General Sessions of the Peace, there is no modern counterpart.
For forty-one years, from 1762 to 1803, those courts held an annual term in Biddeford. In other words, they covered the Colonial days, the American Revolution, and the transition from the 18th to the 19th Century. Thus their records offer a rich mine of Maine social history. It
is a mine that has been totally ignored by Biddeford historians in the past, and no Maine historian seems to have worked this particular vein.
It is hoped that a third part of these "Stories and Legends" can be later issued. Such a Part III will cover Biddeford's story through the remarkable and eventful 19th Century. Particularly it will cover the fascinating and colorful story of the coming of the early French-Canadian pioneer families to Biddeford. Miss Helene Thivierge and others, have already helped the Library in the gathering of material for Part III.
Dane Yorke
September, 1946
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TABLE of CONTENTS
Chapter IV When Biddeford was a Colonial Town
1. The King's Highway in Upper Biddeford 41-43
2. The King's Highway and the upper ferry:
a . Chrisp Bradbury gets a raise in rates 44
b. The first chaise drives through Biddeford 45-46
c. Chrisp gets a beating and disappears 47
d. £ Elisha Allen takes over the ferry 47-48
3. Milestones appear on the King's Highway:
a. Ben Franklin shows them how to set up milestones 48
b. Jeremiah Hill sets them up in Biddeford 48
c. John Adams visits Allen's tavern, and hears an old lady talk 49
4. The Colonial innkeepers of Upper Biddeford:
a . Elisha Allen's dim figure 50
b. Captain Daniel Smith and his wife Rebecca 50
c. Rebecca marries Nathaniel Ladd 50
d. Rebecca feeds the Pepperrell "Royal" family 51-52
e. Nathaniel Ladd and jolly Dr. Cummings 53-54
f. The mock trial at Ladd's inn 54-55
Chapter V
Other Glimpses of Life in Colonial Biddeford
1. Colonial inflation and distress 56
2. The sad English traveller 57
3. The French Neutrals 57-59
4 .. . How a Colonial toothache was treated 59
5. The Pirate and the Bleeding Curse 59-61
6. The slaves of Biddeford:
a. The indentured whites 61-62
b. The negro slaves 62-65
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Table of Contents (continued)
7. Nathaniel Ladd frees his slaves:
a. Nathaniel Ladd's remarkable will 66-67
b. The widow Pepperrell and her sheep, and black Pompey 67-68
8. The King's "broad arrow":
a. The story of the mast pines 69-71
Chapter VI
Revolutionary Days in Biddeford
1. Biddeford men served at Saratoga, and under Washington at Valley Forge 72
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Why few Revolutionary stories were preserved 73
3. How war came to Biddeford and Falmouth 73-75
4. Fear, famine, and inflation in the Revolution 75
5. The British threaten from Bagaduce (Castine) 76
6. The false Armistice of the American Revolution 76-77
7. The town tries to catch a spy 77-79
8. "The Bloody Freshet" of 1775 79-80
Chapter VII
The 18th Century closes
1. "Ten men may save the City": Biddeford votes -
for the Massachusetts Constitution 81
2. The Hooper Inn:
a. "The St. Nicholas of Biddeford" 82
b. Three beds, half a table, and a lawyer's office 83
c. What the customers bought 84-85
d. The cost of food, drink and lodging - for man or horse 85
3. Biddeford's. first official map - 1795:
. a. The "Falls village" 85
b. The "mill . brow" 86
c. The industrial beginnings of Biddeford 86
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Table of Contents (continued)
4. The wild pigeons 87-88
5. The Courts of Biddeford:
a. Biddeford becomes a court town (1762) 88
b. Two unusual courts, and their wide. jurisdiction 88-89
c. The courts "meet 'round" 89-90
6. How the King's Courts met freedom 91-92
7. The Courts after the Revolution:
a. Harsh punishments continue 92-93
b. Marquess Myers and his Gaming Cards 93-94
c. A bowl of punch and a mug of toddy 94-95
8. The Courthouse and the Court procession:
2. Jere Hill and the Biddeford courthouse 95
b. The court parade 96-97
c. Judge Rishworth Jordan leads the procession in Biddeford
97-98
9. The Arundel witch-craze
98-101
10. The heresy trial of Jere Hill; its meaning and some of its results 102-106
An Afterword
A poet remembers Biddeford
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A Colonial Post-Rider
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Chapter IV
When Biddeford was a British Colonial Town
In
It is not often remembered today that Biddeford was once a part of the British kingdom. And not for just a few years. fact, from 1630 (when Richard Vines began the first permanent settlement here) to the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775, the rule of England lasted 145 years. That is about as long as from the death of George Washington (in 1799) to the end of World War II and the atomic bomb of 1945. And during almost all of those 145 years, Biddeford men and women were described as "liege subjects of our Lord the King" without anybody wanting to quarrel much, or to fight about it.
For example in October, 1762 (just fourteen years before the Declaration of Independence) a court of law held in the house of John Gray which stood near the present office of the Pepperell Mills. That York County court convened in Biddeford under a formidable mixture of Latin and English as follows:
"York ss: Anno Regni Regis Georgij Tertij Magnae Britanniae Franciee & Hiberniae Ect., Secundo:
At his Majesties Court of General Sessions of the Peace began and held at Biddeford within & for the County of York on the first Tuesday of October, being the fifth day of said month, Annoque Domini 1762."
And it is of further interest that at this same court a Grand Jury indictment was worded in this way:
"The Jurors of our said Soveraign Lord the King on oath: Do present that John Goodwin of Arrundell in the said County of York, Bricklayer, at Arrundell aforesaid for the space of three months last past together hath Absented himself from the publick worship of God on the Lords days, and that he the said John was dureing all that time able of body and not otherwise necessarily prevented from attending, against the Law of this Province in such case provided and in Evil Example to others."
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The King's Highway
Where today we talk of a national or state highway, the people of those days (the true Colonial days of Biddeford) spoke just as naturally of the "King's Highway" and meant the same thing. The records of the old court of law show, in 1763, this description of a road still in use in Biddeford:
"For the term of Twenty Years and upward there was and yet is a common King's highway leading from Saco Falls from the house of Elisha Allen, Innholder in Biddeford, by the Dwelling house of Nathaniel Ladd to the township of Wells ... used for the subjects of the said Lord the King, with their horses Coaches carts and Carriages to go and return at their will and pleasure."
The inn of Elisha Allen stood at what is now White's Wharf. The house of Nathaniel Ladd had been built by Daniel Smith and stood near what is now 26 South Street, close to Jefferson. Thus we know that the old road ran through parts of what are now five different streets - from White's Wharf to Main, Adams, Crescent, South and Elm. But none of those street names were known in Colonial times. It was all one road - the King's highway.
No one knows exactly when that King's highway was first laid out, but it could not have been much before 1730. The reference to "Twenty Years and upward" in the court record is significant because at this same term of court another King's highway (from Scarboro to Saco) was described as "Five Years and upwards", while a really old road along the coast was called "a common Antient King's highway ... from the time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary."
It does not make that Upper Biddeford road any older to call it, as some have done, an Indian trail. It may have been - but an Indian trail and a white man's road
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were two very different things. The Indians of the Saco valley had no horses or oxen ( "Tame cattle," said an old York County writer, "have they none, excepting Lice") and no wheeled vehicles. They travelled on foot, in single file one behind another, and thus an Indian trail was simply a narrow footpath winding around and between rocks and trees. The white man building a road, especially a King's highway, cut down trees, grubbed out stumps and rocks, laid logs over runs and brooks - in short he built a road, not a path or trail, and wide enough for riders on horseback or for an ox-team. The only use an Indian trail could be in such roadbuilding was to furnish a very rough line or trace.
At any rate the King's highway through Upper Biddeford is known to have been in use as early as 1730 and its most distinctive feature - the curious jogging curve now known as Crescent Street - is probably still fairly close to the original line of the road. There was a very good reason for that 250-yard jog in the highway. Colonial roadmakers always found it easier to run a road over a hill rather than to bridge or fill in a low or marshy piece of ground. This same King's highway, for example, crossing what was then known as "Saco plains" and "Saco woods" (the relatively flat stretch of land beyond Five Points, going toward Kennebunk) characteristically swung over and along the low ridge on which the Webber Hospital now stands (and that continues through Greenwood Cemetery) rather than along the present line of Elm Street which was then much lower.
As for Crescent Street, when the foundations were dug for St. Joseph's Parish Hall in 1939 (more than two centuries after the King's highway was built), the workmen uncovered a great sloping ledge of rock whose surface had been worn smooth and polished by running water. It indicated that once the present line of South Street between Green and Jefferson, had been a wet and possibly marshy drainage slope down which a brook flowed into a large pond ( six to ten feet in depth) that is known to have laid in the low land along what is now Center Street. By making the jog (that is now Crescent Street) in the King's highway, the Colonial builders kept the old road on high dry ground. Incidentally, it was even higher then than now. A deacon of the old White Church wrote in his diary in April, 1843, that he and twenty others of the congregation had spent three days blasting with powder "the Ledge in front of the Meeting house ... for the better accomodation of giting to it." And it was about that same time (1843) that South was cut through from Green to Jefferson. By that time Colonial days were long past.
It was just below that jog in the road that Daniel Smith built his house (near what is now 26 South Street, near City Square) and there in 1738 he opened the first inn in Upper Biddeford. An entry in the ancient town records for that same year suggests that not only was travel then coming from Boston and Portsmouth, but had begun also from along the upper Saco
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valley. That entry of 1738 reads:
"Put to vote whether the Town would allow the Highway the former Selectmen laid out from Lieutenant Daniel Smith's to the upper end of the Township, and it past in the Negative."
The entry apparently refers to the present Hollis Road and upper part of South Street. As the vote shows, there was then a road of some sort along that line but it was one not yet travelled enough, or well built enough, to be accepted for upkeep by the town authorities.
But over good road or poor road, the travel was coming down the King's highway past the inn of Captain Daniel Smith as he was later known. Innkeepers in those Colonial days were men of standing and substance, and Captain Smith served Biddeford not only as constable, deer warden, and selectman, but also as Biddeford's dignified representative on the General Court then (as now) the chief legislative body of Massachusetts. Captain Smith died in 1752 and three years later his widow, Rebecca Emery Smith, married Lieutenant Nathaniel Ladd (the lady seems to have likedmen with military titles) who had been an officer in the regular British army before he married and settled in Biddeford in 1755. The inn then became known as Ladd's Inn. Under those two men, Captain Smith and Lieutenant Ladd, it was a famous landmark on the King's highway for more than a full generation. More of its story will be told later.
The King's Highway and the upper Ferry
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