USA > Maine > York County > Biddeford > Stories and legends of old Biddeford > Part 6
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One thing that drew travellers down the road past the Smith Inn was a new ferry-crossing. For one hundred years the only ferrying place had been at the Narrows in Lower Biddeford (where Ferry Lane still shows the ancient line KING'S . FERRY of travel). But about the same time that Daniel Smith opened his inn on the King's highway, a A Colonial Ferry Sign newcomer named Chrisp Bradbury began a ferry across the river just below Indian (now Factory) Island. Ferrymen in the old days were noted for being very temperamental about their work. If they were on one side of the river and saw passengers signaling to them from the opposite side, they did not immediately hurry across to keep the passengers from waiting. And when passengers approached the ferry on the ferryman's own side, he would be just as likely to make them wait until he had a full load. There is evidence that Chrisp did not hurry too much, crossing and recrossing the river in his big flat-bottomed boat. Perhaps to make his passengers wait more cheerfully, perhaps to make a little extra money from them, Chrisp opened a tavern by his ferry. He was licensed as a 'taverner"in July, 1739.
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There is an official (and amusing) record of Chrisp as the first ferryman of Upper Biddeford. George Washington, in far- off Virginia, was just a ten-year old schoolboy when Chrisp Bradbury came into the York County court with this petition in July of 1742:
"Chrisp Bradbury of Biddiford, Innholder, complains to this Court that he being ferryman near Saco Falls in Biddeford aforesaid, that the fee for a single person has been four pence Old Tenor and for a Horse eight pence Old Tenor; that the same is no ways equal to the service and that other things rise in their value. Wherefore the said Chrisp prays that the fees of the said ferry may be raised by this Court as shall seem good to the Court. It is therefore considered and ordered by the Court that the fare or fees for ferrage be from henceforward one penny halfpenny each person and three pence for Horse."
Two forms of money were then in use, one known as "01d Tenor"and the other as "Lawful Money." That explains the curious difference in the figures given in the old court records. Chrisp made his petition in Old Tenor, but the judges gave their decision in Lawful Money, worth about four times as much as 01d Tenor. Thus Chrisp was really allowed an advance of about one- third in his rates - so that ferriage across the Saco was now six pence Old Tenor per person, and twelve pence per horse. There must have been plenty of talk and argument about inflation, around the old ferry when Chrisp gleefully collected his new rates.
It is also of interest that one of the nine judges making that decision was William Pepperrell. But he was not Sir William then. Three years later, Pepperrell was to win great fame by the capture of the fortress of Louisburg - and it was then that the English King (George II) made him a baronet. But
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in 1742 he was still plain William Pepperrell, Esquire.
Another interesting point in that old court record is the fact that neither Chrisp nor the judges made any mention of carriages using the ferry. No carriage is known to have travelled the King's highway in Upper Biddeford until 1745 and oddly enough it was a minister who made that pioneering trip. At this time the minister of Falmouth (now Portland) was the Reverend Thomas Smith, a great traveller. From 1720 to 1788 the Reverend Thomas faithfully kept a diary that has come down to us as a valuable picture of his times. In that diary he frequently speaks of Biddeford. In 1740, for instance, he mentions stopping overnight at Captain Daniel Smith's inn (the two Smiths were apparently not related) and in 1744 he was in Biddeford again - courting and marrying the widow of Captain Samuel Jordan of Biddeford. Then in 1745 he made this entry in his diary:
"I set out with my wife in our Chaise for Boston."
The date of that entry was May 27th, and as the parson and his wife drove toward the Saco the countryside must have been lovely with the advancing Spring.
We wish some artist had left a picture of the arrival of the parson's chaise at the ferry. Chrisp Bradbury's headquarters, as "taverner" and ferryman, were on the eastern side of the river below Cataract Falls. Against the background of the wooded river bank and the tumbling falls, would be the horse and chaise, the parson and his wife, the tavern and Chrisp, the waiting flatboat - and Chrisp and the parson dickering over the ferry fees. It must have been quite an occasion for Chrisp, fixing the fee for this first pleasure vehicle to cross the ferry. Did Chrisp charge just for two persons ( the parson and his wife) and one horse - a total of 24 pence Old Tenor? Or did he insist on an extra fee because the chaise took up more room in the boat than just two people riding one horse? Unfortunately the diary of the Reverend Smith does not answer those questions, although we can be fairly sure (knowing something of Chrisp Bradbury) that there must have been real dickering to make the fee "equal to the service." We also know that the parson and his wife completed their chaise ride to Boston (it took several days) and thus must have been ferried by Chrisp across the river below Indian Island, to land at about the foot of the present High Street where the King's highway struck the river. After landing they drove out past the Smith Inn. Their passing must have drawn as much attention, and caused as much talk, as the passage of the first automobile over that same road more than 160 years later. In 1745 folks marvelled to see a horse pulling a light carriage over the King's highway. And about 1905 the folks in Biddeford were marvelling to see a carriage go along without a horse, over the same route.
Incidentally, the parson and his wife must have had rough
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travelling. The chaise was merely a small carriage body hung on big leather straps over two wheels. It was easily overturned; and it was certainly very bouncy. As for the road, what it was like can be imagined from a description of the King's highway given in a Grand Jury indictment made twenty years after the parson's pioneering ride, but at the same Spring season after the frost had come out of the ground. The Grand Jury charged, with feeling, that the King's highway was
"Mirey, Rockey, Rooty, Rutty, Hilly, and in want of divers Small Bridges and in great Decay for the want of due reparation and amendment."
It certainly could have been no better when the parson and his wife made their trip in 1745. Which probably explains why the next time the parson went to Boston his diary shows that he left his wife home - and travelled himself by sailing vessel.
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No stagecoach travelled the King's highway through Biddeford in Colonial times. Post-riders, on horseback, carried the mail until 1787. There is a tradition that the private coach of Sir William Pepperrell drove through, but this must have been after Chrisp Bradbury gave up his ferry. Chrisp seems to have had a rather short career. In his time, the town of Biddeford took in both sides of the river - covering all of present Biddeford, Saco and Old Orchard. Thus Chrisp on one side of the river, and Captain Daniel Smith on the other side, were both elected in 1742 as
"the Men to take care that the Dear be presarved according as the Law directs" (there were game laws even then!)
Chrisp was elected the next year as "Constable on the Eastern side" (of the river), and in 1747 he was chosen one of the five
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Selectmen of the town.
As a Selectman for the town of Biddeford Chrisp again appeared in court in April 1748, accompanied by Rishworth Jordan, another Selectman. They were defendants and they listened solemnly while a "presentment" against the town was read
"for not being provided with a schoolmaster to teach children and youth to Read & Write as the Law requires."
Whereupon Chrisp and Rishworth, "promising to get a schoolmester settled for the future", were acquitted on paying (for the town) the court costs of "Twenty Seven shillings."
With that case finished, Chrisp came once more before the court and at the very same session. This time he appeared in a new role - not as Selectman, innkeeper or ferryman but as a "trader", a description then much used for men who speculated in land. Also Chrisp was now in the role of complainant, and his complaint was against four young men of Biddeford - and the wife of one of the four. He told the court that on a cold February night that year, the four young men "with the aid and assistance of the said wife":
"did disguise themselves by blacking their faces, turning their Cloaths ( clothes) and armed themselves with Clubs and other Weapons"
with which they grievously beat and pummelled poor Chrisp after dragging him from his warm bed, and out on the icy ground in front of the house. In addition, said Chrisp plaintively, they also broke "the glass windows" of his house - which seems to have added greatly to his sense of injury.
With its blacking of faces and other disguise, this court case of 1748 is curiously suggestive of the famous Boston Tea Party raiders of 25 years later. Also the fact that the court declined to hear the case (advising Chrisp to try a higher tribunal) rather encourages the suspicion that there was more to the case than appeared in Chrisp's complaint. At any rate Chrisp seems to have disappeared from the Biddeford scene. He
is known to have moved to Newburyport where he died in 1753. Before coming to Biddeford he had lived in York, where he married in 1737. He was licensed as a Biddeford "taverner" in July of 1739, so that his curious career here seems to have lasted just about ten years.
Chrisp's ferry was either taken over, or replaced, by Elisha Allen about 1746. Elisha made his headquarters on the western side of the river at what is now White's Wharf. By 1750 he had met with such success that he could pay twelve hundred English pounds (more than $6,000) for a strip of land covering about a
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half mile along the riverbank below White's Wharf. He built a store, and then a tavern for which he took out a license in July of 1753. The ferry business ended in 1767 when the first bridge ( a covered wooden bridge) was built from White's Wharf to Indian Island. The bridge was built, incidentally, over the violent protests of a Colonel John Tyng to whom Elisha had shrewdly sold his ferry. But Elisha was in favor of the bridge whose Biddeford end - maybe by good luck, maybe by good Elisha's management - came quite close to Allen's Tavern at the foot of the King's highway. Incidentally, if Sir William Pepperrell's private coach was the first to travel the King's highway through Upper Biddeford, then it must have been Elisha Allen who ferried that coach across the river - because Sir William died in 1759 before any bridge had been built on the Saco.
Milestones appear on the King's Highway
110 Miles to Boston
42 to
There were also no milestones on the King's highway before Sir William died. Those, by the way, came as a result of the enterprise of Benjamin Franklin. In 1753, the year Elisha Allen opened his tavern, Benjamin Franklin was appointed Deputy Postmaster- General of the Colonies. Characteristically, Ben did more than just watch the mail. For
Portsm" 15 To Falmouth one thing, he took on himself the job of improving the post roads with mileage markers. He actually did much of the marking himself, though he did not come as far north as Biddeford. It is said "he drove over the roads which were to be marked by milestones, seated Milestone in a comfortable chaise, of his own planning, followed by a gang of men and heavy carts laden with the milestones. Attached to the chaise was a machine of his invention which registered by the revolution of the wheels the number of miles the chaise passed over. At each mile Ben Franklin halted, and a stone was dropped which was afterwards set permanently."
The survey for milestones on the King's highway was made in 1765 by a surveyor named Miller. In October of 1767, Jeremiah Hill of Biddeford was appointed by the court to put up stones at the places Miller had marked. It is probable that one of these places was on the highway near what is still known as Mile Brook. If so, then the old brook undoubtedly marked the first mile from Allen's Tavern. Just how many stones Jeremiah Hill set up, we do not know. His appointment required
" that on one of the stones so put up in Biddeford there be marked in Letters and Figures the Distances from Boston, Portsmouth and Falmouth, according to the said Miller's survey."
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More than two years later (in January, 1770) the old records show Jeremiah Hill collecting "Forty shillings for setting up Milestones." Jeremiah and the times moved more leisurely than now.
But that date of payment makes us sure that the new milestones were in place when John Adams on horseback rode down the King's highway in Biddeford in July of 1770. John Adams was to be the Second President of the United States, but he never even dreamed of that honor in 1770. He was then just a Boston lawyer "riding circuit" in the King's courts of law. And in his diary, where he mentions this Biddeford visit, John Adams unconsciously reveals how much he and the people still thought in terms of English things. With three other lawyers, Adams stopped at the home of James Sullivan (who had come to Biddeford just the year before) which stood on the King's highway close to the covered bridge and Allen's tavern. A biographer of Sullivan describes the visit as follows:
"After refreshing themselves with punch, then the usual beverage, they all adjourned (from Sullivan's home) to Allen's tavern to dine; and, when they had finished their repast, Sullivan proposed to the party a visit to an ancient crone in the neighborhood who, from her great age and accurate memory of things long past, was one of the wonders of that part of the country . She was 115 years of age, having been born in 1655 near Derry, in Ireland. She remembered events in the reign of Charles the Second, having lived under seven English Monarchs."
We wish we could know more of this venerable old lady. Just where she lived, how long she had been in Biddeford, and who her family might be. It is probable that she was one of the group of Scothh-Irish settlers who came here about 1718 and who brought with them the art of making linen, and knowledge of the white potato. But unfortunately no other record of her has been found, other than this visit of John Adams, James Sullivan, and their lawyer friends. It is interesting to note, though, that where now an aged man or woman might proudly give the names of the Presidents in whose times they had lived, this old lady could speak only of English kings - for in 1770 there were no national Presidents, and no United States of America. And these are the kings she remembered, with the years in which the people of Biddeford and New England spoke of themselves as "liege subjects of our Lord the King":
Charles II 1660-1685 James II 1685-1688
William and Mary 1689-1702 Anne 1702-1714
George I 1714-1727
George II 1727-1760
George III 1760-
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The Colonial Innkeepers of Upper Biddeford
That story of the lawyers' visit is the only one that has come down to us from Colonial days, in which Elisha Allen's tavern is mentioned. His period as an innkeeper went beyond the Revolution, and lasted until 1783 when he seems to have left Biddeford. No trace of him afterwards has yet been found. The
building which housed his tavern was later owned by a Captain Samuel White for whom White's Wharf was named. But though Allen's tavern was for thirty years (from 1753 to 1783) a landmark and meeting place known far and wide throughout New England, Elisha Allen himself is a curiously vague figure in Biddeford annals. He never seems to have served in public office, as did Captain Daniel Smith. Nor did he have interesting friends, as did Lieutenant Nathaniel Ladd. During the Revolution he does not seem to have been active on any patriotic committee, though he was not a Tory. Apparently he was strictly a business man, with no interest except business, who never achieved a character and personality that made people remember him.
But Captain Daniel Smith, on the other hand, was obviously a personality even though we have no stories of him. He came here from Exeter, in New Hampshire, and married Rebecca Emery in 1719. They had ten children and evidently prospered, because when the Captain opened his inn on the upper King's highway in 1738 he also paid that year the fourth highest tax in town. When he died in 1752 he had accumulated several hundred acres of land, three negro slaves, four horses, twelve oxen, seventeen cows and calves, and twenty-four sheep. And although the careful inventory of his estate shows five feather beds, it also does not show any books and no chaise or riding chair as the only pleasure carriages were then called. That is interesting because the Captain was a real public figure (his public offices are listed on page 43) and in several court cases is described as "Gentleman", a term that in those days had a definite and honored meaning and meant particularly a man of dignity and substance. And his wife was also a personage. Yet it is plain, from that inventory, that the Captain and Rebecca must have either walked or ridden on horseback when they went anywhere. Undoubtedly Rebecca rode "pillion" behind her husband, holding tight to him to keep from falling off the horse as they jogged down the King's highway.
Rebecca and the Pepperrells
Riding Pillion
After the Captain's death, Rebecca Smith kept on the inn and was licensed in her own name as an innkeeper for the three years 1752, 1753 and 1754. Then in 1755 she married Nathaniel Ladd who had just retired after service as an officer in the regular British
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army. She was then 58 years old (her first marriage had been at the age of 22) and thereafter she was known as Madam Ladd. As Madam Ladd she was a noted Biddeford figure, and she is the only woman to achieve a personal epitaph in the old Biddeford town records. She died in 1786 (having outlived both her husbands) and under date of January 27th that year the town clerk of Biddeford made this formal entry in the town records:
"Departed this life at Biddeford in the 89th year of her age, Mrs Rebecca Ladd a noted midwife in this neighborhood. She had 10 children (3 alive), 48 grandchildren (33 alive), 82 great-grandchildren (70 alive), 4 great-great-grandchildren (all alive) Total 144. , of whom 110 are now alive"
Incidentally, that unique entry was made by Jere Hill, Jr., who was then town clerk and a noted Biddeford figure of his day. But it would hardly be suspected from that entry, that the worthy Jere was himself one of the 33 living grandchildren of Madam Ladd.
Just one known story of Rebecca Emery Smith Ladd has come down to us. And since it deals with Rebecca and the Pepperrells we are able to date the story as before 1759, the year Sir William Pepperrell died. As handed down in a Biddeford family the story runs:
"Madam Ladd always called the Pepperrells 'the Royal Family' because of the style in which Sir William travelled and the special attention he required whenever he stopped at her inn. She always made great preparations whenever she thought he might be coming. But once he almost caught her unawares.
THE ARMS OF PEPPERRELL
It happened one day that food was low at the inn, and Madam Ladd decided to make her pork barrel and the beans from her garden do for dinner. She gave one of her slaves, named Black Hitty, a basket and the two of them went out to the bean vines, some way from the house, to pick a mess of beans for dinner. Madam Ladd had put on an old dress for the picking and knew she would not be very presentable if company should come to the inn. So she kept an eye on the road while they picked. In those days there were practically no houses on what is now Main Street and from the inn there was a good view down the King's highway almost to the ferry. All of a sudden Madam Ladd saw the Pepperrell coach coming in its slow and stately fashion along the
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highway, but still some distance off. Conscious of her old clothes (and of the Pepperrell invariable display of scarlet and lace) she threw up her hands in dismay, crying 'Good heavens, what shall I do? The Royal Family is coming and I'm not dressed for them! '
"Realizing that if she could see the Pepperrell coach, then the occupants of that coach might also be able to see her as she hurried back to the inn .... well, the Madam knew a trick to get around that dilemma. She told Black Hitty to keep on with the bean-picking, and then she scouched down and crept along behind the bean vines. When she came to the edge of the patch she got down on her hands and knees (and at one or two bare spots actually wormed along on her stomach) to keep out of sight of the road till she made the inn back door. She had just managed to get inside and throw on another dress when she heard the Pepperrell coach stop in front. But luckily it was not Sir William and his wife who got
out. It was merely a footman in livery who came to the door to say that the Pepperrells were going a little further along the road just then, but would be back in time for dinner. Things fairly flew for a while in the inn kitchen then. A young pig was killed and roasted on the spit in the big kitchen fireplace. Beans and other vegetables were gotten ready, and cooked. By the time the Pepperrell coach returned and the Royal Family came in, an excellent dinner was ready - with Madam Ladd on hand to calmly greet them. But inside the worthy Madam was chuckling to herself. As she later used to say, 'There I sat in my best dress, fanning myself as if I never knew what hurry was. And no one would have thought that I had made my way from the garden on my stomach to receive the Royal Family!"
The old inn on the King's Highway
No authentic picture of the Smith-Ladd inn has come down to us. But this typical Colonial inn of the period shows how. it probably looked.
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The old inn and the mock trial
One other story that seems to be more than mere legend has come down to us about the Smith-Ladd inn. It seems to have first been printed in 1858 in the biography of James Sullivan, and that is still the best account that has been found. It specifically mentions Nathaniel Ladd as the keeper of the inn and calls it Ladd's Tavern. And because James Sullivan figures in the story we can date it as having happened between 1769 (when Sullivan first came to Biddeford) and 1776 when Nathaniel Ladd died. The probable date is about 1771 or 1772.
Before giving the story it is well to know more of Nathaniel Ladd. How he became acquainted with Rebecca Smith we do not know. It is possible that he was a friend of Captain Daniel's, because both men were born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where (at a later date) Nathaniel Ladd's grand- nephew (William Ladd) was to be famous as the "Apostle of Peace." We have not been able tofind any record of Nathaniel's service with the regular British army, but Folsom records in his History of Saco and Biddeford, in 1830, that in the British army he began a close friendship with Dr. Donald Cummings who had been born in Scotland and had come to this country as a
British army surgeon. So close was their friendship that Folsom says that Ladd persuaded Cummings to also leave the army and settle in Biddeford where in 1755 (the same year in which Nathaniel Ladd married the widow Rebecca Smith) the worthy Dr. Cummings married the widow Elizabeth Cole whose home stood on what was known as the "mill brow", the section along Smith Street now occupied by the Saco-Lowell Shops. In Colonial days some of the most respected homes in Biddeford stood in that section.
But to come back to the friendship of Nathaniel Ladd and Donald Cummings, what we really would like to know today is whether Nathaniel found the Widow Cole for Donald, to attract him to Biddeford, or whether Donald did his own finding - as he most certainly did his own courting. Folsom, in his History, speaks thus of the good Doctor:
"Possessing popular manners, and the reputation of great skill in his profession, he acquired in a very short time a very extensive practice. His services were in requisition abroad as well as at home, and aged persons in neighboring towns still speak of. Dr. Cummings as the most distinguished . practitioner of former days. In his habits he was social even to excess: cheerful and full of anecdote, he inspired good humor and friendly feelings where- ever he went. His death was the result of accident. Returning late on the night of April i, 1774, from a visit to .... Winter Harbour, he was thrown from
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