USA > Maine > The beginnings of colonial Maine, 1602-1658 > Part 24
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1 The reference is to Aulney's seizure of the Pilgrims' trading house at Penobscot (Castine) in 1635. Mather's Journal, 26, 27.
2 Edward Trelawny, in a letter from Boston to Robert Trelawny about this time, wrote : "Let all idle reports, touching the conversation of God's people here, be utterly abolished and find no credence with any who wish well unto Zion ; for I assure you, they deserve it not ; if I may speak my conscience that tells me they are a people truly fearing God, and follow the paths that lead to Jerusalem, for they manifest the same apparently in the whole course of their conversation. For my part I have just cause ever to bless the Lord for so high a favor in bringing me hither, and shall account it the greatest happiness that ever befell me; and though I must confess, at your first motioning of it, it was somewhat averse and distasteful to my untamed and unbridled nature, yet since the heavenly conversations and sweet life of the
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have taken pleasure doubtless in extending a hearty welcome to one so well and so favorably known as Richard Mather.
The James, having August 12 continued her voyage to Massa- chusetts bay, encountered heavy winds August 13 and 14, and then anchored at the Isles of Shoals. There the great storm that desolated the New England coast on the following day broke upon the vessel at its island anchorage. Seamen and passengers alike trembled at the violence of winds and waves. The ship, in immi- nent peril from the first, lost her anchors at length, but miracu- lously, as all thought, escaped the rocks that showed themselves here and there above the breaking billows, and reached open sea ; whence, after the storm ceased, the James made her way in safety into Massachusetts bay and finally into Boston harbor. "The Lord granted us as wonderful a deliverance as ever people had", wrote Mather in his journal.
The Angel Gabriel seems to have reached Pemaquid about the time this destructive storm descended upon the New England coast, and was at anchor in the harbor. Abraham Shurt and many others were there to extend to the new colonists a good English welcome. But though the vessel was securely anchored in her desired haven, the fury of the storm wrought her total destruction. When Richard Mather received the tidings of the loss of the Angel Gabriel, which included one seaman and three or four passengers as well as a valuable cargo, he entered the record in his journal with a chastened heart and hand. Indeed the sudden, unexpected destruction of the strong ship made a deep, abiding impression not only upon those who witnessed the scene, but upon the dwellers in every hamlet whither the story of the loss of the Angel Gabriel was carried. More than a century afterward the Pemaquid proprietors placed upon their seal the
people here hath so far wrought upon and vindicated my conscience, that I would not (I profess seriously from my very soul) be in my former base, abom- inable, odious condition, no, not for the whole riches of the world." Tre- lawny Papers, 72, 73.
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device of a ship, and surrounded it with the legend, "The Angel Gabriel. A. E. Pemaquid, 1631".1
There are few sources of information concerning the lives of the early settlers. So far as is known, no one among them kept a journal in which were recorded the common experiences of daily life on the Maine coast at that time. Certainly no such journal has come down to us. In fact the Trelawny Papers, in which is preserved the correspondence of John Winter and others asso- ciated with him at Richmond's island in the interests of Robert Trelawny, are almost our only source of information along this line of inquiry. These, it is true, give us glimpses of every day matters at a single locality for the most part; but even such glimpses may be fairly regarded as representing life at other points from Agamenticus to Pemaquid.
The choice of a settlement was not an unimportant matter. Previous to 1630, the country for the most part was open, and the settler who ventured to locate on the mainland made his habita- tion without much inquiry as to land titles. After that time, arrangements were made with the various patentees who received grants from the council for New England, or from Sir Ferdinando Gorges.
Having selected a location, the settler cleared a plot of ground and erected his dwelling, a rude, log structure in the early period. At Richmond's island suitable buildings were provided for living and trading purposes. Winter's house was forty feet in length, eighteen feet in breadth, and had a fireplace so large that brew- ing, baking and boiling operations were carried on at the same time. In an adjoining house was the kitchen; and here, also, were "sieves and mill and mortar". Corn was first broken in the mortar, then ground in a hand-mill and afterward sifted. Over the kitchen were two chambers. All of the men in Winter's employ-there were forty-seven in 1637-slept in one of these chambers, and each man had his close-boarded cabin or bunk.
1 A stands for Aldworth, E for Elbridge, the two Pemaquid patentees ; 1631 is the date of the patent. Me. Hist. Society's Coll., Series I, 5, 218.
.
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THE BEGINNINGS OF COLONIAL MAINE.
"I have room enough", adds Winter in a letter to Trelawny, "to make a dozen close-boarded cabins more, if I have need of them, and in the other chamber I have room enough to put the ship's sails into and all our dry goods". 1
In the open space on the mainland, near the house built by Cleeve and Tucker, and which they cleared for their own uses, Winter had a cornfield, containing four or five acres and fenced with poles six feet high, driven into the ground and pointed. Writing to Trelawny in the early part of October, 1634, Winter could say : "Our harvest of Indian corn is not all in yet, but if fair weather [continues], it will be in about five or six days hence. I think we shall have about twenty hogsheads of corn good and bad ; the frost has taken some of our corn that was not fully ripe, but [it is] not much the worse for it".2 Winter also had swine on the mainland, "about seventy pigs, young and old", he writes ; "and I hope we shall have more very shortly they feed themselves when the acorns do fall".3
The fertility of the soil is often mentioned by the early New England writers. Winter makes reference to it. "There is nothing that we set or sow but doth prove very well. We have proved divers sorts as barley, peas, pumpkins, carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic, radishes, turnips, cabbage, lettuce, parsley, melons, and I think so will other sorts of herbs if they be set or sown."" This record occurs in a letter written in the autumn of 1634. Winter's diligence in establishing so soon a well-cultivated gar- den was doubtless manifested by other early settlers.
From the sea, however, the colonists derived largely their means of subsistence. Cod, haddock, halibut, bass, abounded and mack- erel at certain seasons of the year. The dwellers on the shores of the upper waters of the Sheepscot were especially favored in their food supplies. "They wanted nothing they did not have."
1 Trelawny Papers, 31, 32.
2 Ib., 53.
3 Ib., 31.
4 Ib., 50.
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Plenty surrounded them. All kinds of fish still known in our rivers and streams, such as salmon, trout, bass, shad, herring, alewives, smelts, etc., were to be had in their season; also clams and oysters. The marshes, at certain times in the year, furnished a rendezvous for wild geese, ducks, teals and other birds. The nearby forests, also, abounded in game, furnishing extensive hunt- ing grounds for those who ventured to make their way into such primeval seclusions;1 some of them "gentle sportsmen" like Cammock, the Josselyn brothers and Michael Mitton, who mar- ried Cleeve's daughter Elizabeth.
Household articles were doubtless few and of a primitive kind. When Cammock set up housekeeping he gave Trelawny a some- what extended order, thus: "two good kettles of copper, one big- ger than another, one iron pot, one iron possnett [a small pot], one frying pan of a good size, one gridiron, a fire pan and tongs, pot-hooks and pot-hangers ; one dozen of howes [hoes], six iron wedges, one hand saw, three sieves for corn, one finer than the other ; and one dozen of wooden platters and one good dripping pan and a pair of bellows."2 With such an outfit Cammock cer- tainly had no difficulty in providing generous entertainment for the good livers whom he made his guests.
The chief industry among the early settlers was fishing. In fact, it was the great value of the fisheries that attracted many of these settlers to the coast of Maine. Winter's reports to Trelawny were not as favorable as those that first awakened attention in England. The best fishing, he said, was in January and Febru- ary, while the reports of explorers and voyagers had reference for the most part to the abundance of fish off the coast of Maine in summer time. Writing June 18, 1634, to Trelawny, Winter said : "If you purpose to follow your fishing here, you must expect to have your ship here by Christmas. Since March we have had bad fishing this year." June 11, 1635, Winter writes, "the later
1 The Sheepscot Farms, by Alexander Johnston. Me. Hist. Society's Coll., Series I, 9, 138.
2 Trelawny Papers, 21.
17
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THE BEGINNINGS OF COLONIAL MAINE.
fishing hath proved but ill with us". A like report followed in June, 1636 : "The fishing this year hath proved very ill". So, too, July 8, 1637, he wrote, "The fishing since the middle of Feb- ruary hath proved very ill." But as Winter, in this last letter, adds, "there is but little hope of doing good here upon fishing except we have good pliable men, and such I lack", he discloses, in part at least, the reasons for the want of success which he so frequently deplores.1
Probably most of the settlers traded more or less with the Indians, who soon found that furs could easily be exchanged for hatchets, trinkets and especially the "strong waters", of which there seems to have been no lack at any part of the coast. The best places for such traffic were on the large rivers, those natural highways by which the Indians easily descended from their vil- lages back in the country to the trading posts established on the river banks, or at some convenient location not far away. Win- ter, at Richmond's island, was at a disadvantage in seeking to secure trade with the Indians. In one of his first letters to Tre- lawny, who evidently had suggested efforts in this direction, Win-
ter wrote : "I have not received from them [the Indians] since I came to this land but three skins, and that was two months after I came hither, and was for strong waters. There hath not been to this island one Indian all this year, nor to the main to our house, that brought any skins to trade." Having discovered that at Richmond's island he was remote from the lines of traffic, Win- ter attempted to reach the Indians in their villages forty or fifty miles in the country ; but waistcoats, shirts and stockings attracted no trade. When, however, he bought a few beads and sought trade by them, beaver was produced and trade effected.2
Winter's reference to an Indian trade in which "strong waters" entered into the account recalls the fact that the importation of intoxicating liquors was a matter of not unfrequent occurrence at Richmond's island. "Great store of sack and strong waters
1 Trelawny Papers, 26, 55, 83, 107, 108.
2 Ib., 27, 28.
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ADDED SETTLEMENTS.
comes in all the ships that come hither", Winter wrote to Tre- lawny in one of his letters; and in the same connection he men- tions the arrival of a vessel from the Canaries "laden with wine, strong waters, sugar and some pitch". "Aquavite" had a prom- inent place in his invoices and accounts, and mention is also made of "butts of sack", "pipes of Portugal wine", etc. "If you can send some good sack you may; that will sell", wrote Winter to Trelawny, July 8, 1637. Doubtless a part of the supply was for use in trafficking with the Indians, but the accounts show that both fishermen and settlers brought with them to the new world the drinking customs of the old.1
The absence of women among the early settlers is a noteworthy fact in this connection. No women came with the Popham colo- nists. Furthermore, no mention is made of women in connection with the efforts put forth by Captain John Smith and others to bring settlers to the Maine coast in 1615 and later. John Brown of New Harbor probably brought his family with him; and this may be true of William Cox and others in the same vicinity. John Winter left his wife in England when he came to Richmond's island as Trelawny's agent. The first mention of his wife, as present with him in his island home, occurs in a letter written July 10, 1637,2 and it is supposed that Mrs. Winter and the daughter Sarah accompanied Winter on his return from England in 1636. Cleeve's wife, and daughter Elizabeth, were with him when he is first mentioned as a dweller at Spurwink, and evi- dently the two came hither with him. But the Trelawny papers give us few glimpses of women in that early period. Winter, writing to Trelawny July 11, 1633, says: "If any of our com- pany's wives ask for their husbands, tell them that they are all in good health."3 Some of these husbands, it may be, were here only temporarily, and intended to return to England sooner or later. It is probable, however, that others intended to remain
1 Trelawny Papers, 174, 183-198.
2 Ib., 115.
3 Ib., 24.
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THE BEGINNINGS OF COLONIAL MAINE.
and send for their wives as soon as they found conditions favor- able. When such conditions were discoverable as the settlers became more numerous and secured for themselves comfortable homes on cleared land, families that had been separated were reunited and family life was re-established. But unfavorable con- ditions were found at Jamestown, Va., in 1607, and at Plymouth, Mass., in 1620; so also in the beginnings of the later Puritan movement to Massachusetts bay, though doubtless in a less degree than among the earlier colonists. One can hardly escape the con- clusion, therefore, that colonization upon the Maine coast would have been followed by better and more enduring results, if from the beginning the scattered settlements in a larger degree had enjoyed the helpful, encouraging, restraining influences of women.
The great patent issued by James I, November 3, 1620, placing the northern or Plymouth Company on an equal footing with the southern or Jamestown Company, authorized the council for New England "to make, ordain and establish all manner of orders, laws, directions, instructions, forms and ceremonies of govern- ment and magistracy fit and necessary for and concerning the government of the said colony and plantation so always as the same be not contrary to the laws and statutes of this our realm of England".1 The council, however, made no efforts to exercise this authority. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, as had been stated, made some attempts in this direction within his own territorial limits, but they were ineffectual.
The grant of Pemaquid to Robert Aldworth and Giles Elbridge, in 1631, gave them liberty "to make orders, laws, ordinances and constitutions for the rule, government, ordering and directing of all persons to be transported and settled upon lands hereby granted".2 There is no evidence, however, that Aldworth and Elbridge, or either of them-Aldworth died in 1634-attempted to establish civil government within their territorial limits. Abraham Shurt, their agent at Pemaquid, seems for awhile to
1 Farnham Papers, I, 31.
2 Ib., 170.
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ADDED SETTLEMENTS.
have represented his patrons' interests on this side of the Atlantic ; but there is nothing to indicate that he was in any way empow- ered by them to assume any governmental proceedings. Later, Thomas Elbridge (a son of Giles Elbridge, who died in 1644) came over to Pemaquid to look after his father's interests; and is said by Shurt to have "called a court",1 but it was rather for the purpose of collecting payment for certain fishing interests than for the trial of civil causes generally.
It was natural, therefore, as the number of settlements increased on the coast of Maine, that the lack of good government should be noticed and made a matter of comment and complaint on the part of those who desired better conditions. "Here lacks good government in the land", wrote Winter to Robert Trelawny, June 26, 1635, and he added, "for a great many deal very ill here for want of government". A part of his trouble was with the men in his employ, as Trelawny's agent. "They think to do what they list", he wrote, "for here is neither law nor government with us about these parts to right such wrongs, and I am but one man". Later, urging Trelawny to send over "honester men", Winter added, "for I have a bad company to deal withal, being here in a lawless country". He had in mind not only fishermen, however. "Our husbandmen", he added, "prove also bad".2 Such complaints are frequent in Winter's letters. Moreover, Winter had his trials in wider circles, complaining loudly of Cleeve, and living at times in strained relations with Cammock and Mackworth. This state of things at Richmond's island and vicinity existed at other places on the Maine coast. A sore lack of organized government was everywhere felt and acknowledged. Manifestly Gorges and the other members of the council for New England had not sufficiently considered their responsibility in making suitable provision for the establishment of some kind of civil government over that part of New England which they had
1 Johnston, History of Bristol and Bremen, 58.
2 Trelawny Papers, 61, 109, 136.
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THE BEGINNINGS OF COLONIAL MAINE.
opened to settlement, and into which they had encouraged men to enter.
Here on the Maine coast, there was lack also of the restraining influences of religion. It is true that Gorges, and those interested with him in the Popham colony, sent hither with the colony Rev. Robert Seymour ; but when the colonists returned to England in the following year, he returned with them. So, also, when Rob- ert Gorges was sent over in 1623 as governor of New England, Rev. William Morrell, who had received an appointment as super- intendent of the churches of New England, came with him; but both returned in the following year without having assumed offi- cial functions. A third Episcopal clergyman, Rev. Richard Gib- son, accompanied Winter, it is thought, when he returned to Richmond's island in 1636. He soon had trouble with Winter, which is not surprising ; and there were other "troublous spirits" in the neighborhood, so that after about three years, having mar- ried the daughter of Thomas Lewis of Saco, he removed from the province, and not long afterward he also returned to England.1 Until after 1640, these were the only ordained Protestant clergy- men connected with the Gorges interests.
Edward Trelawny, a brother of Robert Trelawny, was at Rich- mond's island in 1635. A letter written by him to his brother not long after his arrival mentions an earlier request "for a reli- gious, able minister". It is "most pitiful to behold what a most heathen life we live"; and he contrasts conditions at Richmond's island with those he was made familiar with during a visit to Bos- ton, making mention of "those sweet means which draws a bless- ing on all things, even those holy ordinances and heavenly manna of our souls, which in other parts of this land flows abundantly even to the great rejoicing and comforting of the people of God".2 It may have been this appeal that led to the appearance of Rev. Richard Gibson at Richmond's island in the following year.
In the absence, therefore, of regular, continuous governmental
1 Baxter, George Cleeve of Casco Bay, 81, 82.
2 Trelawny Papers, 72, 79.
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Ashton 11° August 2638
SIR FERDINANDO GORGES TO GOVERNOR WILLIAM GORGES.
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ADDED SETTLEMENTS.
restraints of any kind, and also of the helpful influence of reli- gious institutions, except as mentioned above, conditions in the Maine settlements were such that the colonists found themselves in circumstances which must have been, at least to many, distress- ing in a very large degree. Nor was this all. These conditions influenced many who came hither intending to make homes for themselves between the Penobscot and the Piscataqua; but who on their arrival met with disappointment at what they saw and heard, and continuing their journey established themselves in the more orderly settlements of Massachusetts bay.
CHAPTER XV.
THE FRENCH AT CASTINE.
T HE charter of Nova Scotia, granted by James I, September 10, 1621, to Sir William Alexander,1 secretary of state to the king, included the territory on the Atlantic coast from Cape Sable to the mouth of the St. Croix river, and northward to its "remotest source"; thence northward to the nearest river "discharging itself into the great river of Canada and proceeding from it by the sea shores of the same river of Canada eastward to the river . commonly known and called by the name of Gathepe or Gaspie, and thence southeastward to the islands called Baccaloes . thence to the cape or promontory of Cape
Britton lying near the latitude of forty-five degrees or thereabout ; and from the said promontory of Cape Britton toward the south and west to the aforesaid Cape Sable, where the circuit began"; also "all seas and islands toward the south within forty leagues . . including the great island, commonly called Isle de Sable or Sablon".2 By a subsequent charter, Charles I,
1 It is conjectured that Sir William Alexander's attention was first directed to Nova Scotia by Claude de la Tour, a French Protestant who had been in that country with Pourtrincourt. It is known that in 1621 he was in Scot- land, where Sir William was secretary of state to King James. When Cap- tain John Mason returned from Newfoundland, Sir William sought an inter- view with him by inviting him to his house. Mason advised him to avail himself of the opportunity opening on this side of the Atlantic for securing large land possessions, suggesting that he confer with Gorges and seek his assistance in securing from the king a grant of territory northeast of the grant to the council for New England. But Sir William went directly to the king, who conveyed to him the territory of Nova Scotia. For an extended account of Sir William's connection with American affairs, see Sir William Alexander and American Colonization, by Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, A. M., Prince Society, Boston, 1873.
2 Farnham Papers, I, 59, 60.
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THE FRENCH AT CASTINE.
July 12, 1625, confirmed the grant of James I, and a clause was added which incorporated Nova Scotia with Scotland.1
Two years later, with the aid of Sir David Kirk, who was a French Protestant, Sir William Alexander instituted measures for the expulsion of French settlers within the limits of his grant, and to a considerable degree these measures were successful. Opposition, however, was awakened on the part of France, the French king insisting that the territory invaded was within the limits of New France; and, in order to advance the interests of the monarchy within the disputed territory, an organization was formed,2 known as the Company of New France. To this com- pany, the whole territory was ceded by the king on condition that French occupation of Acadia should be strengthened by new colo- nists. With this end in view, preparations were made for an expedition thither under the direction of Isaac de Razillai.3
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