USA > Maine > York County > Biddeford > Stories and legends of old Biddeford > Part 8
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= 1 Pew on the lower floor in the Biddeford Meeting House
200 Pounds
1 ditto in the Gallery ditto ( the same Meeting House)
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1 Negro Man, named Dick 250
1 Yoke of Oxen, 7 years old 285
260
1 Ditto, 6 years old Blue Broadcloth Coat & Waistcoat 60 tt
Pair Black Breeches 20
The Biddeford appraisers of that Biddeford estate dignified the negro man by at least recording his name. But in money value they tacitly set him down as worth only a little more than three good suits of clothes - and as less than two church pews or a yoke of oxen. Our Colonial forefathers were obviously not as conscious as we are today, of the difference between property rights and human rights. A slave, even in New England, was property first, and human second.
Through an entry in the old town records of Biddeford, we know the names of two other colored people who were probably Colonial slaves. The entry, dated July 25, 1778, reads:
"Cato & Cloe, Negro man & woman, both of Biddeford, intend Marriage "
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Also about the year 1785 there was a negro fisherman who lived with his family at the Pool. He was widely known as "Black Peter" and his name is so written in an old account book of that period. Black Peter had undoubtedly been a slave. Thus we have definite proof of at least twelve Biddeford slaves of Colonial days, counting the four named in the will of Nathaniel Ladd which is quoted below. Of those twelve we know the names of eight - Dick, Cato, Cloe (Chloe), Peter, Scipio, Bess, Patty and Dinah. There was also Madam Ladd's "Black Hitty." It will be noted that they had no family names - they were named like horses or cows.
How a slave was dressed in Colonial Biddeford
Nathaniel Ladd frees his slaves
Something has been told already of Nathaniel Ladd ( see pages 53 to 55). But just recently there has been discovered an old legal record that makes Nathaniel Ladd one of the most interesting and distinguished figures in Biddeford and Maine history. At the time Nathaniel Ladd lived, Maine was a part of Massachusetts ( and remained so until 1820) . Therefore slavery ended in Biddeford when it did in Massachusetts, and the date was 1783. In that year the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled that the clause in the State Constitution, adopted in 1780, which read "all men are born free and equal" - was a clause that applied to black men and women, as well as to white. It is worth noting that the author of that clause was the same John Lowell who
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just about ten years earlier had been paired with Nathaniel Ladd before the amusing mock court on that merry evening at the old inn in Biddeford ( see page 55). And an active supporter of Lowell in that freedom clause was James Sullivan, Biddeford's famous Revolutionary figure.
It is also interesting that while Nathaniel Ladd made the will that can now be quoted, it was James Sullivan who wrote that will for him. And it may very well be that the will was the result of discussions held by Sullivan, Lowell and Ladd before the old inn fireplace in Biddeford. This is the way the old document reads:
"In the name of God Amen: I, Nathaniel Ladd of Biddeford in the County of York, Gentleman, being of sound mind and memory though laboring under many diseases of body which I apprehend will soon put an end to my natural life, and thinking it my duty to make, adjust, dispose of the external things wherewith I am blest, do make and ordain this my last will and testament.
And Whereas, I have heretofore purchased a Negro Woman named Bess and a Negro Man named Scipio, and the said Negro Woman hath had born of her body two female children, the one named Patty and the other Dinah, and my Will is to set them free from that Servitude whereunto the laws of the Land obliges them: I do therefore in the first place give and bequeath to the said Bess, Scipio, Patty & Dinah and each of them severally and respectively their Time and Service during their natural lives, and do hereby Will and Order that they and each of them shall be set free and be at their own disposal respectively . .. .
And I do in the second place give unto the said Negro Man in consideration of his good Services, a Yoke of Oxen which. I now have, and my Gun, and my every day Cloaths (clothes) .
Also I give & bequeath unto my Wife's Grand-Daughter Margaret Smith one Feather Bed, one Cow and Six Chairs.
Also I give and bequeath unto my Wife, Rebecca Ladd, one third part of all my Personal Estate not herein disposed of ... "
That will of Nathaniel Ladd's is one of the most
noteworthy and remarkable documents in Biddeford annals. It was witnessed by James Sullivan, Dr. Aaron Porter and Robert Edgecomb Nason, who watched while Nathaniel Ladd (obviously in his last illness) signed his name. The date was January 21, 1776 - six months before the Declaration of Independence, and
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seven years before Massachusetts freed all slaves ( the second State in the Union to do so). It was eighty-seven years before the great Civil War ended all slavery in this country. Nathaniel Ladd died within a few months but he left, in that will, a magnificent monument behind him. Not only had he freed that family of slaves, he had also taken care to give them a start in freedom by providing the man, Scipio, with a gun (to hunt and shoot game for food) and an ox-team with which he could do hauling, farming, or other work to earn money. Nathaniel Ladd is a man of whom Biddeford can well be proud.
It may sharpen that pride to quote another legal document of the same time, and one that shows very different treatment of a negro man. It is also interesting as involving Lady Mary Pepperrell, widow of the famous Sir William and part of what good Madam Ladd used to call the Royal Family. The document is the record of a York County trial, held in York in August of 1775 - six months before Nathaniel Ladd signed his will, and four months after the battle of Lexington: The battle of Bunker Hill had been fought only two months before this court record was written, but the wording would certainly never suggest that a King had begun to lose his colonies. Or that any spirit of freedom was in the air. This is the document to contrast with Nathaniel Ladd's will:
"Be it remembered that David Sewall, Esquire, attorney for the Lord the King for this Term, being present in the Court of General Sessions of the Peace ... begun and held at York .... in the fifteenth year of the Reign of his Majesty George the Third, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith etc., Annoque Domini 1775, in his own person gave the Court to understand and be informed that one Pompey, a negro man of Kittery in said County, labourer, did with force and arms on the twenty-second of July, 1775, at Kittery aforesaid, Steal and Purloin two young Sheep .... said Sheep being then the property or owned by the Lady Mary Pepperell of said Kittery, Widow, and of the price of six shillings and eight pence each, against the Peace of the said Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity, and the Statute of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay in that case made and provided. Whereupon the said Attorney prays the advice of this Court on the Premises, and that the said Pompey now here in Court may answer to the said Lord the King thereon. And the said Pompey, being here present in Court, pleads Guilty.
"And after a full hearing the Court are of opinion that the said Pompey is Guilty; and therefore ordered that he pay unto the said Lady Mary Pepperell the sum of thirty-six Shillings, it being the threefold Damages. And it appearing to the Court that he is unable to pay
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the same, ordered that the said Lady Mary Pepperell or her Agent may dispose of him to any of his Majesty's liege Subjects for the space of four months in Service; and also to receive ten Stripes on his naked Back, and pay Costs taxed at twenty Shillings and two Pence and stand committed until Sentence be performed."
It must have dazed the poor Pompey, listening to that somber charge (after all the excitement of Lexington and Bunker Hill, whose news had come with galloping, shouting post-riders) - well, poor Pompey must have wondered if somebody had not blundered in linking up the taking of two young sheep with "the Peace of the said Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity." That document is not quoted to show how a negro was treated in those days; a white man, as the old records show, would have been treated just the same - been whipped, made to pay three times the damage, and
sold into servitude to pay the debt.
But it does show clearly
how a poor negro could fare in freedom, and why Nathaniel Ladd was so careful to provide Scipio with a gun and yoke of oxen. Whether the unlucky Pompey had stolen the sheep for food, or to get needed money, we do not know. But the Lady Mary Pepperell, through her agent, certainly took her thirty-six shillings for the sheep that were worth twelve.
That old record is also interesting from another angle, as showing how old ways of thought and action persisted in spite of war and talk of rebellion. Within a year the British troops were to march out of Boston, never to return, with their bands playing the tune "The World Turned Upside Down." But it took longer than that to make many realize that the Colonial days of Biddeford and Maine and Massachusetts - the rule of King and Parliament over this country - were done forever.
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The King's "Broad Arrow"
- - The "brand arrow:"
It is pleasant to turn from that darker side of Colonial life, to the story of the mast pines and the mast trade which sprang from the need of the English navy for the tall white pines of New Hampshire and Maine. Many a great English warship of Colonial days, boasted of masts made from the pines of the Saco Valley.
The early English explorers were all amazed by the huge pines found here. Some of these magnificent trees were six feet in diameter, nearly nineteen feet around, and almost two hundred feet tall. One such tree reached England in 1666 and was so enormous that an old record preserves the fact that even after that tree had been trimmed and rough hewed, it still contained almost 30 tons of timber. Such a tree was of course exceptional, but even the average tree reached a height of 125 feet, was about 10 feet round at the base, and represented a growth of 300 years, Small wonder that the pine forests of Maine and New Hampshire became the chief source of masts for the King's great wooden warships.
So prized were the masts that they made, that all pines more than two feet in diameter (at a point twelve inches above the ground) were declared the property of the King and could not be cut without special permission. Royal inspectors went through the woods, marking every tree of that size (or larger) with the King's "broad arrow". The mark was cut in the bark with a sharp axe. It was made with three cuts of the axe - two slanting, one perpendicular - and roughly resembled an arrow head, which explains its name. Anyone cutting a tree marked with the King's "broad arrow" was subject to heavy penalties - if caught. But few were caught, though many pines were cut. There was something, about that arrogant King's mark on a fine pine that roused people's ire and made them find ways of getting round, and evading, an unpopular law just as they have done many times in our history. Once or twice there was open resistance, and men disguised as Indians took good timber away from a King's inspector who had seized it at a sawmill because it measured more than two feet in width. These hated inspectors are said to have gone into the homes of the people here, in search of floor boards and doors made of planks two feet or more in width. Such a plank was
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taken as clear proof that a mast pine had been bootlegged (as we would say today) and the King's "broad arrow" disregarded. Which is why, it is said, that no Saco Valley home, built before the Revolution, will be found to contain boards more than twenty-three inches in width. The sawmills that secretly cut the great pines, were careful to trim all boards just under the twenty-four inch width. After the Revolution, when the King's "broad arrow" was just a curiosity, such trees were cut without stealth. It is from that later period that wide floor boards, and doors made of one piece of lumber, really date. Dining tables were known here with tops made of a single piece of plank. One such top was three feet wide and four feet long. The tree from which it had been cut was obviously a great mast pine.
The men who went from here to cut the tall pines, were said to have gone "a-masting." An old record of April, 1778, about the laying out of a county road (Tristram Jordan, Thomas Gillpatrick, Benjamin Nason, Jacob Bradbury and James Sullivan, were the local surveyors of that road) traces its line by mention of "the old mast camp" below Little Ossipee Pond, to the "mast way" on the western bank of the Pond and "on the northern side of Little Ossipee Mountain." Unfortunately that record of 1778 gives no clue as to just how long that "old mast camp" and "old mast way" had been there. But James Sullivan and his fellow-surveyors from Biddeford were evidently on the site of an old source of mast supply.
The men who cut the great trees were called "masters" and "mast-men" Before the tree was cut, its line of fall had to be determined, and all hollows filled in with yielding brush or branches - which was known as "bedding the fall." Since these trees were to be masts, bearing heavy sails, shaken by stormy seas, whipped by howling winds - since upon their strength and soundness depended the lives of the sailors on the ships with those masts, it was important that when those trees were felled they should be cushioned on the ground to avoid twisting strains that might produce hidden and dangerous weaknesses. Even the roads over which they were dragged had to be carefully surveyed and planned to avoid sharp curves or sudden bumps, or hills on which the heavy load might overrun and crush men and oxen. It
was careful, skilled, dangerous business, and the men who directed the long line of oxen (from 16 to 32 animals to a tree) and the teamsters and helpers as the great tree was hauled on mast-sleds or block-wheels (wheels made of great round blocks of creaking wood), such men were known as master-carters and it was a proud title. It was not everyone who could take charge of a tree on the ground where it had been felled, and then watch over every foot of its passage from the forest to the mast road and down to the mast shed at the mouth of the river. There skilled workmen, known as "mast-wrights", hewed it with hand axes and adzes into proper size and shape. A large mast- shed is said to have been at the mouth of the Saco River in Colonial days.
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In shaping the mast, the mast-wrights followed an odd rule - for each inch in diameter the mast should be three feet tall. Thus the largest diameter used (which was 36 inches) meant that the finished mast was 108 feet tall. That was a lot of timber to be in one piece, and it took a pine from 125 to 150 feet tall to make such a mast. Also there was no way of getting such long sticks into the hold of an average ship, and thus the trade was carried on in what were known as mast-ships. They were squat, bluff-bowed vessels. In the stern they had a large door or port that could be let down and the great long logs were pulled and pushed into the ship. In its long uninterrupted floor, the hold of such a mast-ship must have more nearly resembled the hangar deck of a modern aircraft carrier than any other type of Colonial ship construction. The mast-ships were about 400 tons, which was large for the day. They carried a crew of 25 men, and from 40 to 50 masts made up a full cargo. So valuable were those cargoes, so prized were the pine masts of Maine, that the ships often travelled in convoys protected by warships. In 1770 a mast 36 inches in diameter (and 108 feet long) sold in England for 110 English Pounds, or about $550. Thus the total cargo of a mast-ship could run to $25,000 or $30,000 in value, very big money for those days.
Because of the sand bar at the mouth of the Saco River, it is doubtful that the mast-ships came here to load. Sometimes the masts were made into large rafts and floated to Portsmouth and Boston. Others were sent to Portland, which at the time of the Revolution was an important port for the mast trade. In fact, one of the contributing causes of the bombing and burning of Portland ( then called Falmouth) in October, 1775, was the way the people there had hidden (and refused to give up) a cargo of pine masts that the English Captain Mowatt had been sent to convoy. The people of Maine had made up their minds to pay no more attention to the King's "broad arrow".
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Chapter VI
Revolutionary Days in Biddeford
A part of Biddeford's story in the American Revolution has been told in "An Introduction to Biddeford's History", pages 8 to 11. It should be remembered that in that war the actual fighting lasted from April, 1775 (the battle of Lexington) to October, 1781 (the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown). But peace was not formally declared until almost the middle of 1783, and thus the Revolution ranks as the longest major war in our national history - more than six years of fighting, with another two years of armed watchfulness and uncertainty. In those eight years Biddeford men went off to war, were killed or drifted away or returned. How many went or died or settled elsewhere or returned, has never been recorded - and cannot now be learned. Biddeford was then part of Massachusetts and her men served in the famous regiments known as "the Massachusetts Line", and their service was merged with that of the men of Massachusetts. The surviving records show that of the total of 231,771 men who served in the Continental army (what might be called the "regular" army) a total of 67,907- almost 30 per cent - were men from Massachusetts and Maine. The next highest State (Connecticut) furnished 31,939, or less than half the number from Massachusetts and Maine. After one desperate fight, George Washington rode along the front of his troops to thank the men whose courage had brought victory. As he passed, he took off his hat and exclaimed "God bless the Massachusetts Line." It is part of our Maine heritage that when he spoke those words he was in front of the Massachusetts' brigades made up of men from York and Cumberland counties. Men from Biddeford heard, and deserved, Washington's words.
Valley Forge
During the siege of Boston that followed the battle of Bunker Hill, James Sullivan wrote from Biddeford to a friend in January, 1776, that "more than one half of the men in the town" were already serving under George Washington. Other Biddeford men marched through the woods with Arnold to attack Quebec. Captain Jeremial Hill's company fought all through the hard campaign that began with Ticonderoga and ended with the great victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga. And Biddeford men marched and trained with rag-bound bloody feet ( they had no shoes) in the bitter cold and snows of Valley Forge.
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With all that record of service it would seem, at first glance, a little mysterious that so little has come down to us about those men. Their records have largely been lost, their personal experiences were never recorded. No newspaper reporters then travelled with the army, nor went to sea with the swift little privateers that sailed down the Saco and out to sea. The
Revolution had no Ernie Pyle. And the men who came back were like the men of World War I and World War II - those who had seen the most service, did the least talking about it. George Folsom, writing his History in 1830, did make an effort to cover the local story of the Revolution and there were many Revolutionary veterans still living at the time (the last one did not die until 1852). But Folsom was a young man of 28 without any experience in war or military service. And it is evident that he could not talk the language of the old veterans, and so failed to get the personal stories that would have meant so much now.
As to the people who fought the war at home, it is also unfortunate that no one left any written diary or other record - at least no diary or written memoir of that time was ever published or made publicly available in Biddeford. But in Falmouth (now Portland) the Reverend Thomas Smith ( see page 45) and his assistant, the Reverend Samuel Deane, made daily notes that were published in 1849. Falmouth was only 15 miles from Biddeford. On that October day in 1775 when the warships of Captain Mowatt began the bombardment that lasted from 9 in the morning until 6 at night, and burned more than 100 houses and buildings - all during that long day the people of Biddeford must have listened to the distant cannonading, and watched the great smoke clouds, and at night saw the glow in the sky of the conflagration. Watched and listened .- and all the while wondered if Mowatt would come next to the Saco River. It cannot be
doubted that the rumors, the true news, the false news, the fears and rejoicings, the hungers and anxieties that swept Falmouth were very much the same as those that swept Biddeford. The diaries of Parsons Smith and Deane are therefore a fair guide to Revolutionary Biddeford. Enough, at least, to give a good picture of the times.
The famous Boston Tea Party took place in December, 1773. In punishment the English King and Parliament ordered Boston closed to all commerce. In May, 1774, the British General Gage arrived with several thousand troops and by the middle of June the closing of Boston was felt strongly in Biddeford whose trade had been largely with and through Boston. On June 14 the church bell of Falmouth, also hard hit, was tolled dismally all day in protest at Boston's punishment. The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and established a system of Committees of Safety and Inspection to organize the country's defense. Biddeford, in July, adopted a strong resolution agreeing to treat as "an Enemy to his Country" anyone who should oppose the defense measures adopted by Congress and the town. Business was stagnated, even the law courts were dull. Folsom gives a picture of the times when he
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says that James Sullivan
Rev. Thomas Smith
"took his axe, week's provisions. and blanket, frock and trowsers ( trousers were then worn only by sailors, woodsmen and farm laborers at work - all other men wore knee breeches) and went .... to Limerick ... and commenced falling trees to reduce his lands to a state of cultivation for the support of himself and family. On Saturday evenings he returned ( the distance was nearly thirty miles) as black and as cheerful as the natives (Indians) when they return from a successful hunt."
There was hope that the troubles could be arranged so that there would be no war. In February, 1775, Parson Smith wrote in his diary:
"We have the King's speech to the new Parliament ... People are much joyed by the debates of Parliament, which they think begin to look in our favor."
But on April 6th he wrote again:
"We have been flushed for some days with news ... that the merchants and manufacturers and others (of England) were rising in our favor and that Parliament was likely to repeal all the Acts; but have now news that sinks us entirely - that Parliament and administration are violently resolute with 14 frigates and 4 more new regiments coming by force to oblige us to a compliance with the laws."
At about the same time (on March 31) his assistant, Parson Deane, was recording:
"Some minute men from Plymouth appeared in town with extraordinary sort of caps, who were found to be very expert in the military exercise".
Those Plymouth minute men, with their "extraordinary sort of caps, probably came to encourage and train the minute men of Falmouth, and undoubtedly some of them either came to Biddeford or were seen and marvelled at by Biddeford people. And just as undoubtedly the Plymouth men in caps made quite an impression among the ladies - and set Biddeford youths to wearing the same
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dashing headgear.
But almost at once came the battle of Lexington, on April 19th. The news reached Biddeford shortly after midnight of the following day, and the messenger was in Falmouth before daybreak. Parson Smith wrote gloomily, "A civil war is now commenced", and his associate, Parson Deane, added a few days later "People moving their goods out of town in great numbers." The fear was not of an invading army, but of sudden raids by a British fleet. The letters of James Sullivan constantly stress the exposed position of Biddeford and Falmouth as "seacoast towns", and his biographer says that when Sullivan moved from Biddeford in 1778 it was to place his family in interior Massachusetts for greater safety. The terrible example of the bombardment and burning of Falmouth by Mowatt's ships and marines, was never forgotten along this coast during the Revolution.
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