USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Portland > The history of Portland, from 1632 to 1864: with a notice of previous settlements, colonial grants, and changes of government in Maine > Part 31
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2 By this it would appear that they left their horses at Purpooduck, where Sawyer lived, near the ferry.
363
THE FORMATION OF THE FIRST CHURCH.
tery gave the charge; and Mr. Rogers of the second church in Kittery, now Elliot, made the concluding prayer. On the same day the church was formed and entered into a covenant which was subscribed by Thomas Smith, Isaac Sawyer, Thomas Has- kell, John Barber, Robert Means, Samuel Cobb, John Arm- strong, William Jeals, and William Jemison.2 To this entry on the church records, Mr. Smith adds, "We are the first church that ever was settled to the eastward of Wells. May the gates of Hell be never able to prevail against us. Amen." The church was extremely poor ; at its first meeting, July 10, 1727, a committee was appointed to gather something from among the inhabitants to defray the expense of the communion table on account of the poverty of the church. The first cele- bration of the Lord's Supper by the church was on the 20th of August, at which about thirty communicants were present ; Samuel Cobb was chosen the first deacon.3
1 This name is variously spelled in the town books, Jeals, Gilles, and Gyles.
2 Jemison, otherwise Jameson.
3 At the same meeting of the church, July 10, Mr. Smith says in his record, " The following votes were passed unanimously.
Voted-That in the admission of members into our communion, it be not ex- pected that there should be formal relations made, as has been the custom in other churches in this country, unless upon some particular occasion it may be thought proper.
Voted-That the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper be administered in about six or seven weeks as shall be thought proper by our pastor, four months in the win- ter excepted, that is from about the middle of November to about the middle of March.
Voted -- That there be a constant contribution every time the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is administered, to defray the necessary charges for the bread and wine.
Voted-That inasmuch as the church is at present but small and not able of themselves to defray the charge of decently furnishing the communion table, the matter be proposed to the people of the town, that if any are so piously in- clined as to assist us, they may have opportunity, and that Elder Armstrong and Mr. Haskell be appointed to go about to the inhabitants to gather what may be given to this end, and that the brethren of the church make up the rest by way of subscription.
This was the first meeting the church had and a very peaceable one."
364
HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
The next year, September 12, 1728, Mr. Smith was married to Sarah Tyng, daughter of William Tyng, Esq., of Woburn. On his return, he was met at Scarborough by a number of his parishioners, who escorted him home and regaled him and his bride with "a noble supper," prepared for the occasion.1 The town was a long time finishing his dwelling-house; we find as late as October, 1732, an appropriation of one hundred and forty-six pounds fourteen shillings and ten pence made for com- pleting it. It was the best house in the village for many years, as late as 1740, it contained the only papered room in town, and this, by way of distinction, used to be called "the papered room ;" the paper was put on with nails and not by paste.
1Smith's Journal. For further particulars relating to the settlement of Mr. Smith, and a copy of the church covenant, etc., see Smith's Journal, 2d edition, notes, pp 60-65.
CHAPTER XIV.
EDUCATION-SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS-EDUCATED MEN-PUBLIC LIBRARY.
In the first years after the revival of the town, the inhabi- tants were so much occupied in providing for the security of their estates and for their very existence, that but little thought or attention was bestowed on the education of their children. The earliest notice we have on this subject is from the records, September 15, 1729, eleven years after the incorporation of the town, when "the selectmen were requested to look out for a schoolmaster to prevent the town's being presented." Their consideration was then aroused, it would seem, rather from fear of the law than a proper regard to the importance of the subject. The existing laws required every town containing fifty families to support one schoolmaster constantly, and those containing one hundred families to maintain a grammar school. It was not until 1726 that the number of families brought the town within the lowest provision of the statute ; it is therefore probable, considering the poverty of the people, that no meas- ures for public education had been taken previous to the time mentioned in the record ; nor does it appear that any person was procured on that occasion.
The first notice we meet with of the actual employment of a teacher is in 1733, when Robert Bayley was hired at a salary of seventy pounds a year, to keep six months upon the Neck,
366
HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
three months at Purpooduck, and three on the north side of Back Cove.1 The next year the places of his labor were varied and he was required to keep two months each, on the Neck, at Purpooduck, Stroudwater, Spurwink, New Casco, and Presumpscot, and his salary was raised to seventy-five pounds. In 1735 his services were divided between the first and second parishes, seven months in the former and five in the latter.2 In 1735 he received six pounds extra as grammar schoolmaster ; this is the first intimation we have of the establishment of a grammar school in town, although it must have had the stat- ute number of families several years before. The same year Mr. Sewall kept here six months, and as no further notice is taken of Mr. Bailey it is probable that Mr. Sewall took his place. The next year Nicholas Hodge was employed, under a vote of the town to keep the grammar school, and the first par- ish was allowed the privilege of fixing the location on paying twenty pounds toward the salary.3 Mr. Hodge was then a stu- dent at Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1739; he kept here again in the three years 1739 to 1741, while pre- paring for the ministry under the care of Mr. Smith; he preached for Mr. Smith in 1743. It is probable that in 1737 the grammar school became a distinct school, in which higher branches were taught than had been before practiced, as in that
1 Robert Bailey was admitted a proprietor on the payment of ten pounds, August 17, 1727, and in February following a house lot was granted to him on the south side of Middle street, where Plum street has since been laid out. He probably came from Newbury where the Bailey family settled about 1642. The ancestor was John, who came from Chippenham, England, to Salisbury, about 1639, with his son John, and died in Newbury, 1651. A John Bailey was ad- mitted an inhabitant here, December 14, 1727, and Joseph in 1728. In 1745 Robert Bailey and his wife Martha were dismissed from the church in Falmouth to the church in North Yarmouth.
2 Purpooduck had then been set off as a second parish.
3 Mr. Hodge came from Newbury and was probably a relative of Phineas Jones, one of our principal inhabitants, whose wife was a Hodge from that town. Nicholas was born in Newbury, May 20, 1719, and died in 1743.
367
MONEY RAISED FOR IMPROVEMENT IN SCHOOLS.
year a person of liberal education had for the first time been employed. About this time Samuel Stone kept a school in his house on the bank of Fore river near the foot of Center street : Thankful Poge, born in 1731, in a deposition which she has left behind her, says she went to him two summers some time before Capt. Breton was taken the first time.1 In 1745 one hundred and thirty pounds were voted "to pay the schoolmas- ter now among us," and the selectmen were authorized to pro- portion his time in the several districts according to taxes ;2 the same year fifty pounds were raised by the town toward paying a grammar schoolmaster, and the people on the Neck by mak- ing up his salary were to have the school kept among them ; this favor was annually granted them until the division of the town. In the same year Stephen Longfellow, the first of the family who settled in town, and the ancestor of all of the name now among us, came here April 11, and opened a school in six days afterward : it was probably the grammar. school. He continued to be the principal instructor in town until he was appointed clerk of the court on the division of the
1 Stone was a boat builder by trade, he was admitted an inhabitant in 1727, and a house lot was granted him at the foot of Center street. He subsequently moved to Manchester, Massachusetts, where he died in 1778, leaving several children. Mrs. Poge was a daughter of Cox, who lived in a house which stood near where High street now enters Fore street, on the spot where the late Mr. Tinkham's house stands. There were then no streets opened in that quarter of the town. In going to school, she says, she went down a foot-path and crossed the gulley on a stringpiece. This gulley was formed by water running from the fountain and the wet lands in that neighborhood and entered the river near where Mrs. Oxnard's house is. These landmarks have been obliterated by modern improvements, and we may now define the gully as crossing York street about where Brown's sugar-house is. Teams had to pass on the beach under the bank.
2 The currency at this time was old tenor, which was at a depreciation of seven to one; upon this scale the salary of the schoolmaster was humble indeed, not exceeding eighty dollars in silver.
368
HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
county in 1760.1 In the early part of this time he occupied a
1 Mr. Longfellow was grandson of William, who was born in the county of Hampshire, England, about 1651; he came over a young man and established himself in the parish of Byfield, in Newbury, November 10, 1678 ; he married Anne Sewall, daughter of Henry Sewall, by his wife, Jane Dummer. Their chil- dren were William, Ann, Stephen, Eliza, and Nathan. In 1687 he went to Eng- land to obtain his patrimony : after his return, he joined the Canada expedition as ensign in 1690, under Sir William Phipps, and perished by shipwreck on the island Anticosti, October, 1690.
His son Stephen, born in 1685, married Abigail, a daughter of the Rev. Ed- ward Thompson of Marshfield, who were the parents of our schoolmaster Ste- phen, the fifth of their ten children; he was born in Byfield, February 7, 1723, and graduated at Harvard College in 1742. In 1749 he married Tabitha Bragdon, a daughter of Samuel Bragdon of York, by whom he had three sons, Stephen, Samuel, and William, and one daughter, Tabitha, married to Capt. John Stephen- son, 1771. Stephen was born in 1750, and became an honored and valued citizen here. William died young. Samuel was a loyalist in the revolution and died on Long Island, New York, in 1780 or 1781. William and Samuel left no chil- dren.
Stephen, who first came here, was for many years one of the most intelligent, active, and considerable of our citizens. He was clerk of the first parish twenty- three years, town clerk twenty-two years, register of Probate and clerk of the Judicial Courts sixteen years from 1760, and was the first who held the latter two offices in this county; he wrote a clear, distinct, and beautiful hand, in which accomplishment he was followed by his three successive generations of the same name.
He lived, at the beginning of the revolution, on that part of Fore street which fronted the beach, east of India street; his house was destroyed in the sack of the town by Mowatt, October, 1775, when he moved to Gorham, where he died May, 1790, universally beloved and respected. He was brought to this town for burial.
Mr. Longfellow had been keeping school in York when he was invited here. The following invitation, a letter from the Rev. Mr. Smith, brought him.
"Falmouth, November 15, 1744. Sir, We need a schoolmaster. Mr. Plaisted advises of your being at liberty. If you will undertake the service in this place you may depend upon our being generous, and your being satisfied. I wish you'd come as soon as possible and doubt not but you'll find things much to your content.
Your humble ser't. THOS. SMITH.
P. S. I write in the name and with the power of the selectmen of the town. If you can't serve us pray advise us of it per first opportunity."
The number of scholars in 1746, was fifty, embracing girls and boys of the fa- miliar names of that day, Smith, Moody, Mountfort, Brackett, Waite, Bradbury,
369
TEACHERS OF SCHOOLS.
building at the corner of Middle, and School, now Pearl street; he afterward kept in his house which fronted the beach at the lower end of the town. The second year of his engagement his salary was two hundred pounds. In 1747 forty pounds, and in 1748 sixty pounds were voted for a grammar school to be kept in that part of the town, which would pay the remain- der of the salary. In 1752 one hundred pounds lawful money were raised for schools, and six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence "were added to the Neck's proportion" to assist the inhabitants there to support a grammar school; the same sum was annually granted to the Neck for five or six years for the same purpose.1
In 1753 John Wiswell appears to have been keeping school here. Mr. Smith, under date of January 25 of this year, says, "our two schoolmasters (Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Wiswell) opened their schools on Monday 22d."2 Mr. Wiswell was the son of John Wiswell, who for many years kept the grammar school in Boston, and was born there. He graduated at Har-
1The currency had now been returned to a sound state; the paper had all been called in by an act which went into effect March 31, 1750, and the circula- ting medium was gold and silver, consequently the appropriation for schools was equal to three hundred and thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents.
2 Mr. Wiswell was ordained over the society in New Casco, November 3, 1756. In 1762 he became deranged and continued in this condition about six months. In 1764 he changed his religious sentiments, declared for the church of England, and accepted the call of the Episcopalians on the Neck to preach to them.
Jones, Cox, Gooding, Freeman, Bryant, Coffin, Stickney, Proctor, and Motley ; many of whom are equally familiar at the present time, descendants of the founders of our town.
The following notice was annually, with change of date, posted on the school- house door. "Notice is hereby given to such persons as are disposed to send their children to school in this place, the ensuing year, that the year commences this day, and the price will be as usual, viz., eighteen shillings and eight pence per year for each scholar that comes by the year, and eight shillings per quarter for such as come by the quarter.
Falmouth, December 5, 1752.
They had no newspapers in that day.
STEPH'N LONGFELLOW."
370
HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
vard College in 1749, pursued the study of divinity as a Con- gregationalist, and was settled as such in 1756, over the New Casco parish in Falmouth. In 1761 he married Mercy, a daughter of Judge John Minot of Brunswick, by whom he had several children. In 1764 he changed his religious views, ac- cepted the invitation of an Episcopal society just organized on the Neck, and proceeded to England to receive ordination. He returned in 1765 and continued to preach to his people until the breaking out of the revolution, when he joined the royalist party and took refuge, in May, 1775, on board the British fleet then in the harbor, in which he sailed for Boston and thence to England. At the close of the war, he accepted the call of some of his former parishioners and settled in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, over a parish they had formed there. Having lost his first wife, he married in Cornwallis a widow Hutchinson from the Jerseys, as the Rev. Jacob Bailey, the frontier missionary, who married them, writes. He died in Cornwallis in 1812, leaving two sons, born in Fal- mouth. Peleg, one of them, was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in 1816, and died at Annapolis in 1836, aged seventy-three. The Rev. Mr. Wiswell when here, lived in a house painted red, as most of the houses then were, which stood on the corner of Middle and Exchange streets, afterward owned and occupied by James Deering, and which gave place to the brick block built by that gentleman.
Peter T. Smith, son of the Rev. Thomas Smith, kept a school on the Neck in 1755, he began January 16; in the December following he moved to Windham, where he was afterward set- tled in the ministry :1 he graduated at Harvard College in 1753. Mr. Wallace afterward kept a school five or six years in a one story school-house which stood on the corner of Middle and School, now Pearl street, the same in which Mr. Longfellow had kept; he had a wife and lived in the same building ; he came
1 In 1757 he kept school and preached at Weymouth.
371
SCHOOLS AND THEIR TEACHERS.
from England where he had been employed as a draughtsman in the Navy Yard at Deptford. In 1756 Jonathan Webb came here from Boston, and probably soon after that time opened a school, which he continued to keep several years ; some of our old people can still remember the discipline of this teacher. He kept at one time in India street, next above the town-house, and afterward in a small building perched on the steep bank where the Mariner's church now stands.1 At another time he kept in his house which stood on Congress street, near. where Wilmot street joins it. He graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1754; in 1763, he married Lucy, the eldest daughter of Brigadier Preble, but had no issue by her. He died soon after the war commenced, having retired from school-keeping a number of years before his death. He was succeeded by Moses Holt, who graduated at Harvard College in 1767, but who was cut off in the midst of his labors and promise by con- sumption in 1772, aged twenty-seven.3
We may reasonably conclude that two schools conducted by male teachers were regularly kept upon the Neck from about 1750 ; that Mr. Smith succeeded Mr. Wiswell, and that Mr. Webb followed Mr. Smith. In 1760, the time of which we are speaking, the number of families upon the Neck was about
I The building rested on piles a little distance from the street, the passage to it was over a plank platform. He was called by the boys "pithy Webb" from a practice he had of putting the pith of the quill in his mouth when he cut it ; Ed- ward Preble, afterward the distinguished Commodore, went to him, and while there nearly broke him of this habit, though at his own bitter cost, by rendering. the pith on one occasion, very unpalatable.
2 Mr. Webb, after he gave up his school, for which he appears not to have been very well qualified, kept boarders ; the elder John Adams, when he attended the court here, which he regularly did for several years previous to the revolu- tion, always boarded with him.
3 Mr. Holt opened his school October 1, 1770. He had previously kept in Newburyport. He was engaged by Dr. Deane and boarded with him. May 7, 1771, he married Mary, a daughter of Deacon William Cotton, and died the Jan- uary following, without issue.
372
HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
one hundred and sixty-five, furnishing as we may fairly esti- mate, a population of about one thousand. Besides the male schools there was one kept for smaller children by the ancient dame, Mrs. Clark, who lived on Plum street. The severity of her discipline and her harsh manners still dwell in the memo- ries of some who have survived to our day, 1831.
In 1761 a great excitement was produced in town by the conduct of a schoolmaster by the name of Richmond.1 He was an Irishman and very severe in his discipline; but this cannot have been the sole ground of complaint against him ; and it is evident that he would not have ventured to return had he not been supported by a party in his favor. In 1761 he was carried before Enoch Freeman on a warrant, and bound over to appear before the Court of General Sessions "to answer his being presented for setting up and keeping school in Fal- mouth without the approbation of the selectmen." Alexander Ross and Dr. Coffin were his sureties.2 We learn nothing more of him after this time and conclude he was not able to withstand the storm that was raised against him.3 The next persons we find employed in this responsible duty were David Wyer and Theophilus Bradbury, who were then studying law, and were both admitted to practice in the Common Pleas in 1762 : Mr. Bradbury graduated at Harvard College in 1757, and Mr. Wyer in 1758. Mr Bradbury kept in Plum street in a house now standing next below the brick house on the east side of the street. They were probably not long engaged in
1 "Things remain in a dismal situation about the schoolmaster Richmond, a very worthless fellow, by means of whom the peace of the neighborhood of the Neck is broken up and dreadful quarrelings occasioned. The old selectmen sent him out of town, but he returned and kept school at - -. " Smith's Journal, March 9, 1761.
2 His name was John Montague Richmond.
3 Lyon, another "old countryman," kept school in Fore street, near Clay Cove, about the commencement of the revolution; he was an old man and very severe in his discipline, which rendered him unpopular. At this time and for many years after, boys and girls went to the same school.
373
SCHOOLS AND THEIR TEACHERS.
this employment, as after their admission to the bar, they en- tered at once into full professional business, being at that time the only lawyers in the county.
In 1762, the first parish, which then included the whole of ancient Falmouth, except the districts of Purpooduck and New Casco, was divided into four school districts, two of which were upon the Neck, the third embraced Capisic, Stroudwater, Sac- carappa, and Deerhill, and the fourth, Back Cove and the rest of the parish not included in the other districts.1 On the same occasion it was voted that each district should draw money in proportion to the taxes it paid, provided a school were kept in it the whole year ; no children were to be sent to these schools unless they could read in the Psalter. The dis- tricts on the Neck were divided by a line drawn across it "be- tween Mr. Freeman's house and Mr. Waldo's," which was a little east of the late Judge Freeman's house, now the "Free- man House" opposite the second parish meeting-house ; the upper district extended to Round Marsh; this fact shows conclusively where the dense part of the population was situa- ted at that time. The money raised for schools this year was one hundred pounds ; in 1761 but fifty pounds were raised, which was distributed as follows: To the Neck twenty-five pounds, Back Cove eleven pounds, Long Creek nine pounds, Saccarappa five pounds. Cape Elizabeth parish not being in- cluded in this distribution, may be considered as now set up for herself.
The only money raised for schools in 1763, was twenty pounds, which was wholly appropriated to a grammar school ; with this exception no money was voted for a grammar school for several years before and after, until 1771, when under an apprehension that the penalty of the law would be visited upon
1 The number of families in Falmouth in 1764, was five hundred and eighty- five, and the population three thousand seven hundred and seventy, one-third of which was probably on the Neck.
374
HISTORY OF PORTLAND.
them, they voted one hundred and fifty pounds for schools to be distributed according to polls, of which six pounds were to be added to the Neck's proportion to keep a grammar school and prevent presentment: the same amount was appropriated for that purpose the two following years.1
In 1764 the late Judge Freeman, then twenty-one years old, kept a public school and the next year a private school on the Neck. In 1767 William McMahan, an Irishman, opened a school at Stroudwater, and afterward kept at Woodford's Cor- ner for several years. Portland boys were sent out to him. He was severe but a good teacher. William Browne, Thomas Robison, John Deering, and Robert Cumming were among his scholars after the revolution. He was father of John Mahan, who kept a hat store here many years in the early part of the century.
In 1769 Theophilus Parsons, afterward the distinguished Chief Justice of Massachusetts, graduated at Harvard College and came here in May, 1770, to take a school. He brought a letter of recommendation from his father, Rev. Moses Parsons of Byfield, to Stephen Longfellow, in which he says his son "would be glad to keep school in a seaport and such a seaport as Falmouth, that he might have an opportunity to teach navi- gation as well as other branches of mathematics. He has kept school here to great acceptance and I believe you may venture
1 The sums voted for schools in different years were as follows.
1734
£48.5.0
1767
£65.0.0
1745
180.0.0 0. T.
1768-'70
100.0.0 each year.
1747
40.0.0 for grammar school.
1771
150.0.0
1748
60.0.0 “
1772
200.0.0
1752
100.0.0 lawful money.
1773
300.0.0
1755-'58
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