USA > Maine > York County > Biddeford > Stories and legends of old Biddeford > Part 9
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News travelled very slowly in those days; it took far more time then for the truth to catch up to a rumor. And old Parson Smith's diary still preserves some of the rumors that made the people here anxious. He writes, for example: "We hear that General Carlton of Canada is coming upon us with an army, and that 40 or 50 Indians are certainly discovered" - which later proved false. When Burgoyne began his march down Lake Champlain the parson recorded the news:
"We hear Ticonderoga is taken (by the British) ... news which throws the whole country into wonder and distress. Lord help us!"
That was in July. Three months later came the American victory at Saratoga and the surrender of Burgoyne's army - "Our people were mad in their rejoicing", wrote Parson Smith. Thus it went, as in all wars - good news, bad news, hopes up, hopes down. The year after Saratoga there were strong rumors of the English people being tired of the war and ready to talk peace. But there was to be three more years of fighting, before Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. Reading a general history of the Revolution, it would be easy to get the impression that those were three fairly easy years for Maine. It is true that most of the land fighting happened in the South. But the seacoast towns of Maine were kept continually on edge with threat of British naval landings. There was drought and threat of famine: "The Indian corn curls and is like to come to nothing, and there is no prospect of any potatoes nor turnips .... Lord have mercy upon us!" There was inflation: "Green peas sold at Boston at
$20 a peck. Board 60 dollars a week." That was in June, 1779.
Corn was $35 a bushel, Indian meal $30. By 1781 Parson Deane was writing: "Paid for two yards of cloth, $400." In that same year, within a month and a half before the surrender of Cornwallis, the news came to Biddeford and Falmouth that Benedict Arnold, traitor to his country, was raiding the Connecticut coast and had burned Groton and New London. "We fear he is coming on
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us," wrote Parson Smith. It was a very real fear, and it was justified. It was a fear, too, that had been kept alive for two years by the presence of British ships and British troops in Penobscot Bay. That enemy force had seized a point known as Bagaduce in June, 1779; they were strategically located to threaten the whole Northern New England coast. Parson Smith reflected the fears of all Maine towns on the seacoast when he confided to his diary, "We are in a sad toss; people are moving out. Never did I feel such anxiety." A badly organized, and badly led, expedition was organized by the Massachusetts authorities to drive out the British. Many local men took part. That unlucky Bagaduce expeditionary force met shameful and crushing defeat in August, 1779; incidentally it ruined the military reputation of Paul Revere who was a lieutenant-colonel in the expedition, but who apparently proved a better horseback rider than a military leader. When the news reached here, the good Parson Smith wrote again in his diary "Our people are in a sad toss, expecting an attack by the enemy." Thereafter during the war whenever strange vessels were reported or seen off the coast, the rumor ran from town to town that the Bagaduce British were coming for a retaliatory raid. As late as March, 1781, Parson Smith was writing "We are in a woeful toss by news ... of a scheme of an attack from Bagaduce." Biddeford was undoubtedly just as worried.
The American Revolution was a real war to the people of Biddeford, both to those who were in service and to those who kept the home fires burning. Some of the parallels to the wars of our own time have already been shown - the fear of raids, the rise of prices and inflation. But there is one interesting parallel that has never previously been emphasized. It will be remembered that the First World. War was marked by a premature celebration of peace, known as the False Armistice. A similar premature announcement marked both the German and Japanese surrenders in World War II. When people are hungry for peace, And it does not take much to make them believe a peace rumor. the people of Revolutionary Biddeford and Falmouth were no different from us in that respect. The American Revolution had its false armistice celebration, in fact it had several as old Parson Smith's diary records. On October 4, 1781, he wrote that handbills ( the newspaper extras of the day) had been received from Boston "with the news of the surrender of Cornwallis and his army .... Our people are rejoicing." But on October 15th he wrote sadly, "The great news of Cornwallis is premature." It was Cornwallis did not surrender until October 19th, and in those days without radio, telegraph, telephone or airplane, it was October 27th (more than a week!) before the news came by a galloping postrider along the old King's Highway to Biddeford and Falmouth. The same thing happened with the Treaty of Versailles that finally ended that war, just as another Treaty of Versailles ended World War I more than 135 years later. And the diary of the other Falmouth parson, Reverend Samuel Deane, gives a vivid picture of how long they had to wait for news in 1783. The
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dispatch rider left Philadelphia for Boston on March 23rd. He reached Boston on Saturday morning, March 29th. The news came to Biddeford and Falmouth early on Monday, March 31st. That rider seems to have carried authentic word of the signing of the preliminary treaty of peace at Paris on November 30, the year before! Our forefathers certainly knew how to wait for news. They had to learn the hard way. And still they did not have full assurance of peace. A month after that dispatch rider came, old Parson Smith was writing, "Our people had a grand rejoicing day ... Had a Public Dinner, and 13 cannon fired several times." But three days later he wrote again:
"People are all damped in their extravagant rejoicings, by accounts now brought that there is no Proclamation come for Peace but only for a cessation of hostilities, and that there is a violent opposition in Parliament against it."
That was in May of 1783. It was September of that year before the final treaty was signed. It was almost November before the news reached Biddeford and Falmouth. But at last peace had really come.
The town watches for a spy
In the Massachusetts archives there is still preserved an old document that gives an amusing glimpse of Biddeford excitement as the war for freedom began. It is dated June 28, 1775, just eleven days after the battle of Bunker Hill. It is a letter to the Provincial Congress then in session at Watertown in Massachusetts, and it is from the Biddeford Committee of Inspection - just about the same committee that in World War II was called the Committee for Civilian Defense. This is the letter:
"To the Honorable, the Provincial Congress
May it please your Honors: As we have tho't proper to forward to your Honors under Convoy of the Bearers, Messrs Noah Hooper and Edgecomb Nason, a Person who calls himself Thos. Neat, we apprehend it to be our Duty as a Committee of Inspection, to transmit you an exact detail of our proceedings relative to him, that he may be dispos'd of as your Honors may judge expedient - therefore beg leave to represent that on Saturday last, the Person in question arriv'd in this Town and being a Stranger some of the inhabitants were pre ossess'd with a Suspicion of his being a Spy. The Committee in consequence were immediately applied to - We attended - when he submitted to an Examination, and gave the following Account of himself - to wit, that
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he was a native of Britain - had liv'd several Years in America - had frequently travelled, and was well acquainted in most of the Southern Colonies, and had previous to the present unhappy Crisis of the unnatural Contest between Great Britain and her Colonie. acquired the Birth (berth) of a Steward on board his Majesty's Ship Senegal, Capt Doddingston, Commander. That he left England in said Ship about 10 weeks since - fully persuaded from the representations he had there receiv'd that the Disturbance in America was kindled by the Breath of a faction - by no means formidable, that it might easily be quelled, and was universally disapproved by the Cool and dispassionate of all Denominations in the Colonies - that the first american Port they touch'd at was Boston - where they soon had Orders to repair to Falmouth, in Casco Bay, at which place he had been two Weeks - that on his arrival in America, he found not a faction but the whole Continent joined in Opposition to
parliamentary Measures - that therefore he Could not in Conscience continue in a Service in which he must be Obliged to draw the Sword against America - for that Reason he had left the Ship and propos'd going to Philadelphia where he had several friends and Acquaintances - and that he should have applied for a Pass prior to his leaving Falmouth, but that he imagined such application would be attend- ed with Danger, as the Ship lay in the Harbor -
"In Order if possible to be more fully ascertained of the The rumor! truth of the above Declaration - we next day dispatch'd a Person to Falmouth to wait on the Committee there - who informed him that the Steward had departed the Ship - and that the Captain, supposing he had been detained by the People, sent a Message to Col. Preble to demand a Restoration of him - The Col. return'd for Answer that he knew nothing of him, but that he was seen a little while before, going out of Town - Col. Preble likewise inform'd the Messenger sent by us that he had had some conversation with this person and heard him say he intended to leave the Ship for the reason abovemention'd. He hired a Horse a little without the Town of Falmouth and came publicly to this place.
"The above may it please your Honors is a true Account of what we have been able to Collect relative
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to the person in Custody - And as the People here are uneasy, and still apprehensive that he may be inimical to the Interests of America - we have judged it most 'elligible that he should be sent to the Congress that your Honors may give further Orders concerning him, as your Wisdom may direct.
Rishw'th Jordan Benja. Hooper Thos. Gillpatrick ( Biddeford
( Committee of Inspection (for the Town of .
Biddeford, 28th June, 1775.
That is all that has come down to us, except that Congress appointed a committee of three who examined Thomas Neat and decided that he was not a spy. But before we smile too much at the tempest-in-a-teapot nature of that happening, it is well to remember how frequently and frantically people phoned the FBI at the beginning of World War II, accusing neighbors (as well as strangers) of being German or Japanese spies. All our wars have begun with a case of spy-jitters. The American Revolution was no exception.
The Bloody Freshet
One more story has come down to us of the beginning of the Revolution, and it shows the same unease. The incident occurred . in October, 1775, and like the case of Thomas Neat it was while the war still centered around Boston - and months before the Declaration of Independence. It is unquestionably a true story because it was told by James Sullivan who lived here at the time. Twenty years later (in 1795) Sullivan published the first history ever written of Maine. Massachusetts had then been divided into three districts, the northern one being known as the District of Maine. Thus the title of Sullivan's book - "The History of the District of Maine." This is the way Sullivan wrote the story:
"In the year 1775, the river Saco was found to swell suddenly, and in a manner very singular to the inhabitants on its banks: as there had not been rain sufficient to increase the waters so much they were at a loss to account for the appearance. But it was finally discovered to be occasioned by a new river having broken out on the side of the White Mountains, and issuing into the Saco. That river continues yet to aid the Saco, with considerable waters, though the exact quantity gained from it is not ascertained by any traveller, yet it is generally considered as furnishing Ellis' river, a branch of the Saco, with half its waters.
"When this new river issued from the mountain in October 1775, a mixture of iron ore gave the waters a red colour
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for several days, and the people who inhabited the upper banks of the Saco had a report that the river was bloody, and considered it as an ill omen on the public concerns."
It is stories such as that which help us realize what a really profound break, what an utter shattering of habit and tradition, the American Revolution was. For a century and a half the people here had looked on themselves as British subjects - "liege subjects of his Lord, the King", as the old court records run. England was the "mother country" even to men such as old Parson Smith of Falmouth, who was at least the third generation of his family in this country. Yet Parson Smith, it will be recalled ( see page 75), wrote in his diary "A civil war is now commenced", on hearing the news of the battle of Lexington. And the good Parson was not a Tory, nor an English sympathizer, but a sound patriot - as his diary shows.
Small wonder therefore that people should look at the swollen Saco in 1775 and think those strange waters, running as red as blood, should be a sign that disaster lay ahead for America. Superstitious fears and omens have been a part of every' war in American history - the people of Revolutionary Biddeford are not as remote from us in spirit and thought, as they are in time.
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Chapter VII
The 18th Century closes
When the Indians in 1675 burned all the houses between the Pool and the Falls of the Saco, they stopped the town's growth for more than thirty years. As the 18th Century began (with the year 1700), the town life was centered around Winter Harbour village, as the Pool was then called. But before the middle of the century the upper King's highway, the Smith tavern, the upper ferry, and the bridge - all these marked a growing population around the Falls. After the American Revolution, as the 18th Century drew near its end, this new center began to be called "the Falls village."
The first recognition of the change came in 1785. Up to that time all town meetings had been held in the one town church - which was known, appropriately enough, as "the meeting house." That church was located on "the road to Winter Harbour", about half way to the Falls. An annual town meeting took place in March and all town officers were then elected. But in 1780 Massachusetts adopted its first State constitution, and did so by popular vote. Out of the 1006 inhabitants of Biddeford, only 10 travelled to the old church on the Pool Road to vote. But Jeremiah Hill, the town clerk, boldly wrote on the official return of that vote "Ten men may save the City." Thereafter
a new election was held in April of each year, to vote for a Governor, a Lieutenant Governor, and State legislators. What the town vote was for the first two years, is not recorded in the town book. But when the entries do begin (in 1782) only 14 votes were cast, and the same number the following year. Some protest may have been made, that the old church was no longer a convenient meeting place. For the 1785 record runs:
" (Met) at the Meeting house in said town on Monday the fourth day of April, 1785, at three of the Clock in the afternoon, and by adjournment to the dwelling house of Mr. Daniel Hooper, Innholder in said Town, at five of the Clock in the afternoon on said day: the number of written votes returned .. are twenty-three."
The inn of Daniel Hooper stood on what is now the north side of Main Street, about opposite the foot of Foss Street. It may seem strange today that a tavern and a church should be looked upon as equal meeting places. But the fact was not strange in 1785. Not long before this, a noted minister of Massachusetts had lost his voice and had to give up preaching. For his new
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vocation he became a distiller of New England rum - and suffered no loss of dignity or public regard because of the change. Preaching was an honest profession, and so was distilling, and inn-keeping. That Biddeford election meeting of 1785 gave unconscious testimony to the fact that the church and the Hooper inn were the two centers of town life. That was true not only in Biddeford but throughout New England. Church and tavern went together.
The Hooper Inn
Behind a celebrated inn there was always a great personality. While the Hooper inn was in the name of Daniel Hooper, the real figure was Daniel's father - Benjamin Hooper. There is no doubt but that Benjamin was the most widely known inn personage in Biddeford history. His portrait has not come down to us but in an old letter, written 50 years after his death by a man who knew him, "Esquire Hooper" is called "the St. Nicholas of Biddeford." That phrase can only mean that he was ruddy, jovial, and round - the traditional figure of the jolly boniface.
Benjamin Hooper came to Biddeford from Berwick about 1740. He was then a young man of twenty. In 1744 he married Lydia Smith, daughter of Capt. Daniel Smith who just six years before had opened the first inn on the upper King's highway (see page 50). In court records of 1757, Benjamin is described as a "cordwainer". which meant that he was a worker in "cordovan" or fine leather. Before that, in 1749, he had been licensed as a "retailer" of drinks and thus The jovial host of the inn apparently kept a general store in connection with his leather business. In that same year of 1757 he was elected a selectman of Biddeford and in a court action of 1762 he is described as "Benjamin Hooper, Gent., and one of the Deputy Sheriffs in said County." They were careful in such descriptions in those days. So that the word "Gentleman" meant a man of distinction and property. As proof., Benjamin Hooper was chosen, along with James Sullivan and Rishworth Jordan, as one of the five members of Biddeford's first Committee of Safety and Inspection in the American Revolution. This was in December, 1774.
The year before (in 1773) he had built the large house, later
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called "the mansion house", and attached to it at one side a small one-story office for Dr. Aaron Porter who settled in Biddeford that same year. When George Thacher, the young lawyer, settled in Biddeford in 1782 (on the advice of James Sullivan) he also opened his office in the Hooper building. Up to then Squire Hooper seems to have kept just a general store, probably because Elisha Allen's tavern was still active and quite near. But Elisha seems to have retired in 1782 and in that same year Benjamin Hooper was first licensed as an "innholder", transferring the license the next year to his son Daniel who was then about 29 years old. Ten years later (1792) Prentiss Mellen settled in Biddeford on the advice of George Thacher, and he also took an office in the Hooper inn. Afterwards, Prentiss Mellen became the first Chief Justice of Maine and he then described his early Biddeford office thus:
"I opened my office in one of old Squire Hooper's front chambers, in which were then arranged three beds and a half a table and one chair. My clients had the privilege of sitting on some of the beds. In this room I slept, as did also sundry travelers frequently, the house being a tavern."
That the three beds in one room was not unusual is shown by the testimony of an English officer who spoke of the "general (American) custom of having two or three beds in a room", while another traveller said 'that after you were asleep the landlord entered, candle in hand, and escorted a stranger to your side, and he calmly shared the bed till morning.' "Any one who objected to a stranger as bedfellow, was regarded as obnoxious and unreasonably fastidious." Remembering that Squire Hooper was a son-in-law of Madam Ladd who as the wife, first of Captain Daniel Smith, and then of Nathaniel Ladd, had been mistress of the Smith-Ladd inn for more than thirty years - remembering that chain of descent we can be quite sure that in Prentiss Mellen's report we have a picture not only of the Hooper inn but also of those over which Madam Ladd and her famous husbands presided.
In 1789. George Thacher went to New York to attend the first United States Congress, and in that year secured for his friend, Squire Hooper, the appointment as Biddeford's first postmaster. And the postoffice remained at the Hooper inn until 1802 when both the Squire and his son were dead. As a general store, as an inn, as the only postoffice on both sides of the Saco River, the Hooper inn was the chief meeting place of the town. There the judges stayed when court was in session, there the mail- wagon stopped - at first once a week, then twice a week, and then (for what was considered remarkable service) three times a week. Townspeople dropped in for a bowl of toddy or flip, or to talk to travellers who had broken their journey for a meal or a night. When Biddeford built a court house, the Hoopers warmed and lighted it, and the old court records still show the
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typical entry: "Paid Daniel Hooper, Esq., the sum of Nine Dollars for furnishing the Court with firewood and candles at this term."
The old inn ledgers have been lost, but the account book for the Hooper store has been preserved. The old leatherbound folio gives an interesting picture of the merchandising of the day. It begins in 1785 and covers about fifteen years. The customers include the best-known names in Biddeford; they also include the names of Prince and Black Peter, who were former slaves. They show that the merchant then served as banker and moneylender, as well as storekeeper. And the list of different articles and the different kinds of merchandise sold, is literally amazing. As an example is the account of Dr. Aaron Porter, Biddeford's famous physician of the Revolution. Dr. Porter bought ribbon, powder (whether for the face or a gun, is not clear), candles, raisins, paper, tea, lumber, "500 Nails", and two quarts of New England rum.
The Reverend Nathaniel Webster, minister of the old town church on the Pool Road, bought flour, tobacco, corn, butter, indigo, sugar, molasses, writing paper, chocolate, "1 Chip Hatt", shoes - and "West India Rum" by the gallon. Colonel Rishworth Jordan, noted town dignitary, is represented with "3 pints W.I. Rum", which in those days represented just about three good drinks. Deacon Simon Wingate, a leading figure along the Pool road, and the accuser in Biddeford's curious heresy trial to be told later - even the Deacon's account shows "3 yds Tobacco, 4 gals. Molasses, 2 qts N.E. Rum."
There is one account in the old book (now over 160 years in age) that is of special interest, because it was an entry in that account that furnished the first definite proof that Biddeford had once been a court town of importance. The trail started by that account led to the story of the Biddeford courts that will be told on a later page. The single sentence "To your expences Court-week", was the clue in the following lines that led to the uncovering of Biddeford's court house and court history. This is the account of a visiting Boston attorney staying with the Hoopers. The reckoning is in shillings and pence:
"1784 . Sept. To 1 Bowl of Punch 2/5 To 3 Glasses grog 1/ to 1 Dinner 1/ To 2 Suppers 2/ To Lodgings 9 Nights 4/6 To 9 Breakfasts 9/ To 4 Dinners 5/ To Grog 4/ to 6 Bowls Punch 12/ To keeping .a Horse 9 Nights 12/ to 1 Bottle Wine 3/ To Oats 1/ To your expences Court-week 61/6
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To 1 Dinner for a Pigwacket man 1/ To 1 pint Wine 1/6 To Sundries del'd your brother Peter 40/6"
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That was the way the gentlemen of the professions lived (and drank) while travelling on business. Some of the costs are amusing. Lodging was 6 pence a night for a man - but it cost shilling fourpence", or three times as much, for a horse. Dinner cost a shilling, which was exactly as much as the cost of treating three friends to a glass of grog. And a bowl of punch, that great drink of genteel sociability, cost the price of three dinners. But the recipe of Squire Hooper's punch has sadly been lost. The recipe is known to have varied a little with each tavern. And a good punch recipe was, next to a genial host, about the best advertisement and drawing card of an old-time inn. It is pretty clear that Squire Hooper loved, and served, a good punch.
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