USA > Maine > Oxford County > Waterford > The history of Waterford, Oxford County, Maine, comprising Historical address, by Henry P. Warren; record of families, by Rev. William Warren, D.D.; centennial proceedings, by Samuel Warren, esq > Part 2
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
Across from the head of Winnipiseogee lake to Ossipee pond, thence to the Saco river, straight as an arrow, stretched the bloody trail over which the Sokokis Indians and their Canadian allies swept down upon the brave settlers on the Piscataqua, un- til Lovewell and his heroes, following them to their mountain fastness, well nigh exterminated them.
Over this trail came Col. Frye, the hero of Fort William Henry (who begged Monroe to allow him to cut his way through the Indian and Canadian savages of Montcalm), the Osgoods, Bradleys, Fes- sendens, Capt. Brown, and others to the infant settlements on the Saco ; over it too came the Twitch- ells, Ingalls, Chapmans, Burbanks, and Grovers, who pushed on to the Androscoggin by the "Scoggin road." When famine threatened the infant settlement at Pequawkett, in the winter of 1766, men were sent on snow shoes to Concord, N. H., for food, and over this trail they hauled in supplies on moose sleds. It was used for years, until it was superseded by a road which followed about in the same course.
From Pequawkett, by way of great Kezar pond, over Sabattis mountain to the Waterford Kezars, under Bald Pate and Rattle-snake mountains, near the Albany basins, by Songo pond to the Androscog- gin, just above Bethel hill, run the Scoggin or Pe- quawkett trail. It branched at the foot of Bald Pate in Waterford, and ran over Beech hill, by Mutiny
25.
SKETCH OF MAINE.
brook, west of Bear pond, to the head of Long pond. This was a favorite route with the Androscoggin In- dians when journeying in the summer to the sea- coast to fish, or to visit the Sokokis at Pequawkett. An easy day's journey carried them to the Saco or the head of Long pond. By canoes they floated down the Saco to Pepperelborough, or paddled over the lakes below us to the Presumpscott, and floated down the Presumpscott to the sea. By it the early settlers of Sudbury Canada, New Penacook, and Peabody's Patent1 came to their wilderness homes from Pequawkett, and when the Indians attacked the growing settlements on the Androscoggin in 1781, and carried Lieut. Segar and others into Cana- dian captivity, Lieut. Stephen Farrington led twen- ty-three men over this trail in hot, although vain, pursuit of the savages.
From Falmouth to Pequawkett ran a rough cart road through Gorham (over Fort hill), Pierson-town,2 joining the Saco trail at the river. This road was cut through as early as 1760. " Over it, every year, the people of Gorham drove two hundred or more cattle to be wintered on the great meadows of Frye- burg. During the summer they cut and stacked hundreds of tons of hay for their use. The herds- men depended upon game mainly for food, taking
1 Gilead.
2 Standish.
3
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
with them to their winter camp little except meal and pork.
A blazed path ran through the woods west of Se- bago pond in 1767, through Flints-town to Stevens brook, which was cut by the proprietors of Bridge- town. This road was not passable for wheeled vehi- cles until thirteen years later. The proprietors of Bridge-town had given Capt. Richard Kimball, in 1768, a lot of land, including a part of the present village of North Bridgton, on condition that he would keep a store and run a sail boat over the Sebago and Long ponds for the convenience of im- migrants. This he did for years.
These were the scanty means of intercommunica- tion in York county one hundred years ago; yet they were not scantier than were the means and wants of the pioneers who were struggling with the wilderness. The shire towns in 1775 were York and Biddeford. In 1799 all the inhabitants and territory north of great Ossipee river were formed into a dis- trict for the convenience of registering deeds, the office for which was kept at Fryeburg.
The county contained a population of about 15,- 000, one-half the population of the State; its taxa- ble property was about equal to that of the other two counties combined.
Cumberland county had the same eastern limit as at present, as far north as Livermore; thence it run north two degrees on a true course to Canada line.
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SKETCH OF MAINE.
Along the coast, as in York county, were old towns Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth,1 North Yar- mouth,2 Brunswick, and Harpswell. Except Harps- well, the settlement of these towns also dated back to the earliest colonial times. They were engaged in fishing, farming, and lumbering, each in its season. Falmouth Neck had a population of about 1,900 and was the seat of a considerable lumbering trade and some ship building. The population of these coast towns was less than 10,000.
The towns and plantations skirting these coast settlements made a narrower fringe than the back settlements of York county. Gorham, Windham, and New Gloucester had been but recently incor- porated. Above were the plantations of Pierson or Hobbs-town, New Boston," Raymond-town,4 Syl- vester Canada, and Otisfield,6 the last three of which could not have had a hundred inhabitants. The population of these three towns and the plantations was not less than 3,000.
North of these plantations, in eastern Oxford county, a few surveys had been made, but there was not an inhabitant. There was no road nor trail into the wilderness further than Raymond-town, except
1 Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Westbrook, Deering, and Falmouth.
2 Yarmouth and North Yarmouth.
3 Gray. 4 Raymond, Casco, and part of Naples.
5 Turner.
6 Otisfield and a part of Harrison.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
one along the Androscoggin, and that led no further than to the Falls1 at Pejepscot. The population of the county was not far from 12,000. The shire town was Falmouth.
Lincoln county included all the rest of Maine, or roundly, all of Maine east of a line drawn straight north to Canada from the great bend of the Andros- coggin at Livermore. The incorporated towns in this huge county, with the exception of Topsham and Belfast, were scattered along the Kennebec, Sheepscot, and Damariscotta rivers.
The Kennebec was settled as far north as Nor- ridgewock; the incorporated towns on it were Georgetown, Pownalborough,2 Woolwich, Bowdoin- ham,8 Pitts-town,4 Hallowell," Vassalborough,6 and Winslow.7 Georgetown and Pownalborough were flourishing towns, with a population of perhaps 3,000; the others were in their infancy, containing a few hundred inhabitants each. Straggling settlers were located on the Androscoggin above Brunswick and Topsham, as far as Lewiston Falls.
At this time the Kennebec was one of the main
1 Lewiston.
2 Dresden, Alna, Wiscasset, and Swans Island.
3 Bowdoinham and Richmond.
4 Pittston, Gardiner, and West Gardiner.
5 Hallowell, Augusta, Farmingdale, Manchester, and Chelsea.
6 Vassalborough and Sidney.
7. Winslow and Waterville.
ยท
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SKETCH OF MAINE.
routes to Quebec. The New England almanacs of one hundred years ago gave as particularly the dis- tance from Norridgewock to Quebec1 as from Boston to Norridgewock.
Edgecomb, Newcastle, Boothbay, Bristol, and Waldoborough had been but recently incorporated, and contained in all perhaps 2,000 inhabitants. The coast east of Bristol (Pemaquid) to Machiasport, and the Penobscot river to Orono, was scarred with rude clearings, few of which were made previous to 1760. The location of these towns and the poverty of the soil made the inhabitants at first more fishermen than farmers. The population of this county was not far from 9,000. Pownalborough was the shire town. The entire population of the Province was about 36,000;2 it paid one-twelfth of the State tax of Massachusetts.
Maine is a beautiful State to-day; before man
1 The route to Quebec in Canada was as follows:
Great Carrying Place, 30 miles from Norridgewock.
Chaudierre,
42
66
Sartigan,
60
Quebec,
96
66 66
2 The census of 1764 and 1772 gave the white and black population of the State by counties as follows :
1764.
1772.
York,
11,362
13,398
Cumberland,
8,291
10,139
Lincoln,
4,371
5,563
Totals,
24,024
29,100
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
disfigured her fair face she must have justified the seemingly extravagant praise of the early explorers. The bold coast, the thousand estuaries, the countless rivers, brooks, and ponds, the magnificent swells of land, made our State easily first in natural attrac- tions. But the disrobing of Nature proves often a sad disenchantment. A slope of ten thousand acres, when clothed with a heavy forest growth, shows none of its bogs or knolls, and but few of its rocks. Brooks and rivers shrink as the sun, pouring upon the naked land, dries the rills that once fed them, while a thousand storms wash from the rocks the moldering earth that once kindly hid them.
Waterford, with its twelve ponds covering in the aggregate 1,784 acres, its beautiful Songo river flow- ing eighteen miles in the town, its fertile ridges with their perfect slopes, was a beautiful township; and such it must have seemed to David McWain, its first settler.
PLANTATION HISTORY OF WATERFORD.
1775-1797.
David McWain was born in Bolton, Worcester county, Mass., Dec. 24, 1752. It was from this coun- ty and the adjoining county of Middlesex that Capt. Gardner's company was recruited, and doubtless
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SKETCH OF MOWAIN.
some of his townsmen were proprietors of the township of Waterford. Bolton, Harvard, Stow, Northborough, and Rowley furnished most of its early settlers. Of his early life I know but little. In the spring of 1775, with a companion, he started for the wilderness of Maine, they having purchased, for $40, the lot of land on which he afterward settled. There is a tradition that he was arrested at Dover, N. H., as a deserter from the Continental army and sent back to Bolton. This cannot have been true. Soldiers were easily raised in the spring of 1775, and the military organization of Massa- chusetts was too imperfect for such action in a far-away lumber town in New Hampshire. In the excited state of the public mind at that time, McWain and his companion, harmless though their business was, may have seemed dangerous persons to the people of Dover. They were detained at this town a few days. The companion, discouraged, sold to McWain his interest in the lot. Accompa- nied only by his dog McWain again started for his
1 The proprietary and plantation records of Waterford are lost. Who the proprietors were at any one time I cannot say. The records of Mas- sachusetts fail to give their names. I have gathered facts enough to convince me that no one person held a large number of lots in the town previous to its settlement, and that but few of the early settlers were original proprietors. Dr. Stephen Cummings, originally of Ando- ver, Mass., afterward a celebrated physician of Portland, was clerk of the proprietors. This explains the fact that plantation meetings were held at his house.
32
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
forest home by the way of Portland, Sebago lake, and Long pond. He may have come with Capt. Benjamin Kimball, in his sail boat, from Pierson-town to Stevens Brook. He may have come by the bridle path cut out on the west side of the pond in 1767, from Pierson-town through Flints-town to Stevens Brook. At this little saw-mill village,-which for years furnished the people of Waterford with their nearest grist mill and store,-McWain supplied himself with necessary provisions for a month's stay, and then boldly struck into the wilderness. He had a rude plan of Waterford with him. He followed Bear Brook until he reached his range line, and fol- lowed that until he reached his lot. On a corner of it, under a shelving rock, he prepared to spend the night. Building a huge fire he lay down to sleep. During the night he awoke very thirsty ; remember- ing a spring some distance back he went to it. After satisfying his thirst, he said that a sense of his loneliness came over him, and iron man that he was, he hurried back to the company of the dim light of his camp-fire.
On a corner of his lot,1 near the river, he built his cabin. Supposing himself the only settler between Bridgton and Canada, he was surprised one day by the homely sound of a rooster crowing. Supposing
1 Lot 10, Range 5.
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SKETCH OF MOWAIN.
that the fowl had strayed from the settlements below, he thought no more of it. A few days later an Indian squaw leaped from behind a tree almost upon him, apparently to frighten him. She beckoned him to follow her to his cabin, and in the Indian tongue de- manded something. He offered her different arti- cles to no purpose, until he brought salt, which she ate with the greediness of an animal salt-hungry. He went with her to her camp, at what is now known as McWains Falls, where he found quite a party of Canada Indians fishing.
They feasted him on muskrat soup and other de- lectable compounds, which he ate with all the relish he could assume. He fished and hunted with them, selling his peltries at Stevens Brook. They stole his silver, so with a large auger he bored a hole into a pine tree and in the cavity put it, carefully re- placing the bark. He forgot the money and the place of its deposit. Years after a hired man, felling trees, struck into this bonanza,-fifty dol- lars or more. He carefully collected the silver and carried it to McWain. For some time the old man sat in front of his fire, head on his hands, lost in thought. At length he recalled the circumstance. Thus unwittingly McWain taught the early settlers of Waterford a lesson which the wisest heeded, that the safest bank of deposit in a new country is a pine tree.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
McWain spent the winters of 1775 and 1776 in Bolton. He returned to Waterford in the spring of 1777, and never revisited his native place. He lived a solitary life. Once a month he went to Stevens Brook for supplies. One month he failed to come at the usual time. The settlers at the little saw-mill village waited a few days, and then sent in a party to see if "Mac" (as he was familiarly called) was sick; he was just able to drag himself to the door and let them in. For four weeks he had lain in his camp, prostrated by a slow fever. Yet this man of iron nerve never entertained a thought of abandon- ing his lonely home; his fitful dreams were rather of reclaiming the fertile acres on his beautiful ridge.
On his second return from Bolton, in 1776, he brought with him a cow big with calf. Bread and cream, berries and wild game were his choice food for years. His only table furniture was a dish and spoon.
He was never married, and lived without a house- keeper for thirty years or more,-one of his hired men doing the house-work. Tradition says that in 1815, without any of those pleasant warnings which custom has sanctioned, he bluntly asked a certain young lady whether she would come to his house as " mistress or maid." Confused, she blunderingly an- swered, "as maid." He never gave her an opportunity to rectify her mistake, somewhat to her disappoint-
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1169722 SKETCH OF MOWAIN.
ment it is said. McWain seemed indifferent to women; his cattle were positively afraid of them. If a woman went into his barn, the cattle would bel- low and thrash around in their stanchions as though mad. One day when plowing with his great four-ox team (he always kept four oxen, having a wholesome contempt for " steer teams"), Mrs. Eli Longley stepped over the wall directly in front of him. Wildly bel- lowing, with tails erect, the cattle tore across the field, smashing the plow against a rock and breaking the chain that connected them; they disappeared in the forest and were not seen for hours.
Mc Wain had a true pioneer's horror of being crowded. One morning as he stood on the huge rock behind his camp (south-east of the old McWain house), he spied smoke curling up through the forest in the direction of Paris, some twelve miles away. " Humph," said he, "I would like to know who is settling over there right under my nose!"
His farm1 was eight hundred acres in extent. He had one hundred and sixty acres of land improved in 1803; that year he kept forty head of cattle and fattened, chiefly upon milk, thirteen hundred weight of pork.
He died in 1825. In his will he made a few be- quests to his old servants, giving to his hired man his
1 McWain's farm embraced lots 10, 11, and 12 in Range 4 and 10 and 11 in Range 5.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
out lot,2 and to his housekeeper (that did not become mistress) a few hundred dollars. He gave the rest of his property to his nephew and namesake on the condition that he should live upon it, which he did until his death.
McWain was a man of medium height, but rather spare in figure; he was courteous though reticent, and strictly moral in his habits. He read his Bible through once a year. His coming here so long be- fore other settlers was providential, for he supplied them with grain until they could raise enough for their own use, they paying him in work. Hundreds of bushels of wheat and corn did he supply to these men, which they converted into hominy by a hand- mill, or " backed " from his house to the grist-mill at Stevens Brook, twelve miles away, and after 1790 to Jewell's mill, at Waterford City. When the settlers were pinched for food during the cold seasons of 1814-1816, refusing to sell his surplus corn to traders from Norway for cash, he kept it for his neighbors, and sold it to them for less than the market price, taking his pay in work. He heaped rather than "stroked" the half-bushel measure by which he sold to these half-starved people.
During the years 1780 and 1781 three other men with their families attempted a settlement in Water-
2 Lot 2, Range 4.
37
MIGRATION FROM MASSACHUSETTS.
ford, but the hardships of frontier life forced them to withdraw to the older parts of the State.
The close of the Revolutionary war led to the rapid settlement of Maine.1 The young men of
1 The following is a complete list, so far as I can furnish it, of the Revolutionary soldiers who settled in Waterford. I attach to their names a statement of their services during that war. This statemen of their services depends in part upon traditional testimony.
John Atherton, served throughout the war.
Joel Atherton, served throughout the war.
Jabez Brown, Lieutenant in the French and Adjutant in the Revolu- tionary war.
Aseph Brown.
Thaddeus Brown, served a year or more.
Daniel Barker, served throughout the war.
Ephraim Chamberlain, served three years.
David Chaplain, served under Lieut. Green in the Burgoyne campaign. Daniel Chaplin, served under Lieut. Green in the Burgoyne campaign.
Lieut. Thomas Green, was an officer in the French war and served throughout the Burgoyne campaign.
Africa Hamlin, Quartermaster during the war.
America Hamlin.
The father of these Hamlins was an officer in the war and a member of the Society of the Cincinnati.
Israel Hale, served throughout the war.
Oliver Hale, served in the Burgoyne campaign. Jona. Houghton, served in the Burgoyne campaign. Benjamin Hale, served in campaign against Cornwallis. Samuel Jewell, was in the battle of Bunker Hill. John Jewell, served throughout the war. Asa Johnson, served in the Burgoyne campaign. Joseph Kimball, served throughout the war. Jonathan Longley, served in the Burgoyne campaign. Eli Longley, served over a year. Eliphalet Morse.
[See note next page. ]
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
Massachusetts were in the Continental service during the war as regulars, or as well-drilled militia men were often in the field to resist invasion. The former returned home penniless, though their pock- ets were stuffed with paper. The militia or minute men, who were more often married, had suffered from the destruction of domestic and foreign trade, a worthless currency, and the constant interruptions to their business caused by real or reported inva- sions. The close of the war found the regulars without money, the minute men in debt. After a few congratulations over their success, they soberly studied their situation.
There were no trades for them to learn, and they were too old to learn them had there been any. Massachusetts was no more a manufacturing State in 1783 than is Alabama to-day. The fisheries and commerce afforded the more enterprising men along the coast an opportunity to gain comparative wealth. A few professional men and traders there were in every town, but nine-tenths of the people were farm- ers. The eldest son (by the unwritten law of primo- geniture that has always existed among the farmers
Josiah Proctor, served in the Navy.
Eber Rice, served three months. David Stone.
Stephen Sanderson, served six months. Abram Whitney.
Phineas Whitney, served throughout the war.
Judah Wetherbee, was in the battle of Bunker Hill.
39
MIGRATION FROM MASSACHUSETTS.
of New England) could stay at home with the par- ents and take the old farm; but the younger boys must shift for themselves. This was the alternative before them,-ten or more years of hard work as a farm laborer before they could hope to have money enough to buy in Massachusetts a poor farm, or ten years or more of hard labor and privation-with in- dependence-in Maine; in the latter the sanguine could see an Eden, the sober a rude plenty! What wonder then that for forty years there was a con- stant exodus of the most enterprising young men from the farms of Massachusetts to the wilds of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont! This drain was not checked until the breaking out of the " Ohio fever," in 1815, and the rise of manufacturing in southern New England. Perhaps it is not too bold an assumption to make, that had the discovery of the application of steam been postponed forty years, Maine would have been to-day by far the richest of the New England States, and Somerset and Aroos- took counties would have been as thickly settled as are Cumberland and Androscoggin. The frontier line of Maine has hardly been advanced a mile, ex- cept in the eastern part, since 1820.
If we sometimes complain that our boys gravitate toward the mother State, let us not fail to remember that every institution we prize,-the church, the school, our family and social life,-every characteris-
40
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
tic we possess,-our courage, faith, honor, and patri- otism,-was given to us by the mother State. It was her wisdom,-prejudice calls it selfishness,- which for one hundred years nursed and protected the infant settlements of Maine, and prevented the French civilization of Lower Canada from fastening itself on eastern Maine.
The proprietors of the town, to encourage immi- gration, gave to a few of the first settlers their lands ; they also offered the first thirty persons who would clear three acres of land, "put it into profit," and build a house sixteen feet square,-in other words, do what was called "settling duty,"-a right in the lands which the proprietors thought worthless except for the timber. Most of the parties who gained the right sold it for a trifle. They also prom- ised the first boy born in Waterford fifty acres of land to be given when he should come of age.1 This tract of land lay just east of Kedar brook, stretching from the pond some way above the parsonage. The proprietors offered their lands at very low prices. Lot 4, R. 12, was purchased by Major Samuel War- ren at fifty cents an acre, and he had the choice be- tween lot 4, R. 12, and lot 7, R. 10. Mr. Thaddeus Brown purchased lot 8, R. 7, for fifty cents an acre.
1 Ephraim Hapgood was the recipient of this bounty. The first girl born in town was Clarissa Johnson.
41
BOUNTIES TO EARLY SETTLERS.
But both of these men were obliged to do " settling duty." These were average lots; probably the best did not cost more than $2.00 an acre at that time, 1786. But as the town filled up the price of land rose rapidly. Between 1800 and 1810 wild land was probably as high in Waterford as it is to-day. In 1805 lot 4, R. 9 was sold for $800. It is said that lot 6, R. 10 had some time before this been sold for $1,000.
Most of the early settlers bought their land on credit. Benjamin Sampson, of Stow, Mass. (who bought lot 3, R. 13, and one of the Perley lots on Crooked river, and had two or three hundred dollars left), was one of the "solid" men of Waterford at that time. These lots purchased by Mr. Sampson were heavily timbered with pine, and were sold by him for a trifle,-less than $200. Fifty years later they were worth a fortune; not less than $40,000.
I have mentioned that five or six years after Mc- Wain settled here three men came in with their families ; but they were forced to withdraw to the older settlements on account of the difficulty of getting subsistence. One of them tried a second time, and a second time was forced to withdraw. In 1783, Daniel Barker,1 Jonathan Robbins,2 Aseph Brown," America Hamlin,4 Africa Hamlin,5 and Europe
1 L. 3, R. 4. 2 L. 5, R. 6. 8 L. 5, R. 5. 4 L. 6, R. 3.
5 L. 6, R. 4.
4
42
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
Hamlin came. Their lots were all in the south and south-west parts of the town. Their families did not come until two years later.
Sept. 8th, of the same year, Philip Hor, originally from Taunton, but last from Brookfield, Mass., came to examine a lot1 of land which he had previously bought, about half a mile west of Joel Plummer's. The next June two of his sons came with him; they spent the summer clearing land. Late in the fall he returned to Brookfield, leaving his sons to brave the severity of a long winter, or go to the older set-
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