USA > Maine > Hancock County > Bar Harbor > The story of Bar Harbor, an informal history recording one hundred and fifty years in the life of a community > Part 6
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It was on Saturday, March 30, that at Stephen Richard- son's house at Bass Harbor the inhabitants of Mount Desert Township first exercised the rights of self-government the Revolution had given them, and met to consider their local problems. Besides the immediate one of finding cash where- with to pay for a record book, there were three vital prob- lems to be solved. One was the election of a committee of correspondence, safety and inspection, that committee which should be the local revolutionary organization. On this, besides Stephen Richardson, were Ezra Young and Levi Higgins, both of Hull's Cove and therefore of the subse- quent Bar Harbor. The next was the protection of the pre- cious island hay by a meadows committee of John Tinker, Thomas Wasgatt (then living at some place near Salisbury Cove) and Abraham Somes. This committee was instructed to "call on Mr. John Tinker and Mr. Amariah Leland to render an account of what hay was cut and carried off the Island last year." Apparently there was success in this, for at the next meeting a committee was appointed to settle an account with Mr. Daniel Sullivan of the present Sullivan, Maine, in the presence of Captain Crabtree, who gave his
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name to Crabtree's Point. Thirdly, the plantation took to road-building. A "rode" was to be laid out from Camp Cove, on the north side of Hull's Cove, to Cromwell's Har- bor, where Mr. Burrell lived, this to be done by John Thomas, Elisha Cousins, and Silas Parker, with Josiah Black and Ebenezer Salsbury to be surveyors to "repair the above said Rode." That meant that they would work out their taxes on that "above said Rode." Then the same committee was to lay out a road to Mr. Thomas Wasgatt's. These roads were accepted the next year, with one change, "that the road go through Mr. Black's field the old way as usual, and the landing remain as usual." Clearly, Mr. Black had not enjoyed his shores being a public landing and had almost succeeded in making a change. The same committee was also instructed to lay out landings, two at Hull's Cove and one at "Mr. Higgins' landing near Bar Island," the present Bar Harbor.
The meeting then adjourned, to meet again on June 10, and then choose a captain, Ezra Young, and two lieutenants, Abraham Somes and Levi Higgins, for the militia. One other vital action was taken. No one on Mount Desert Island had clear title to his land, as interlopers trying to cut hay probably often pointed out. Therefore Stephen Rich- ardson was sent to Boston, to petition the convention, now sitting there, for confirmation of titles. That was granted; one James Cockle, whose Bernard title was in doubt, received a single share of marsh land, and Mount Desert Island went its way.6
For some time, war stayed away from the Island. Thanks for that were due to a Nova Scotian, Colonel John Allen, who threw in his lot with America. Colonel Allen, like the Baron de St. Castin, had a gift for handling the In- dians, and was able at first to rouse them to raid their
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hereditary enemies, the English. He was persistent. The Passamoquoddy Indians, it is said, still hold as their most treasured possession a letter sent them, at Allen's request, encouraging them to stand firm. The letter is dated on the lowest day of the fortunes of the colonists, Christmas Eve, 1776, and it came from the banks of the Delaware River. It was written just before the crossing at Trenton, and shows Washington as determined as ever in the face of adversity, and writing with that steady confidence of his that made that night's river crossing so memorable. The Indians did stand firm, and at the start of the Revolution Colonel Allen had the initiative, as he went up and down the waterways of the Penobscot, the St. Croix, and the St. John.7
During this time, Mount Desert Island was at peace, and left no recorded history. One thing seems noteworthy, the sorting out of the population into loyalist and Patriot. Per- haps it was more friendly than the happenings elsewhere, so vividly portrayed in such novels as Oliver Wiswell. John Thomas, Junior, for instance, is said to have slipped over to Nova Scotia for the duration, and then returned, while his father remained as a local leader of the committee of correspondence. But names begin to disappear from records -such names as Josiah Black and Silas Parker of Hull's Cove, "Mr. Burrell" (first name unrecorded) of Cromwell's Harbor. In their place came more Hamors, Rodicks, and Salsburys to double the population by 1779. It was at Mount Desert that Allen received news that was good for the nation but turned out to be bad for him and for eastern Maine. His letters record that at Mount Desert he heard the first rumors of the "Northern Army" having won an overwhelming victory. Thus eastern Maine learnt of Sara-
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toga and of Burgoyne's surrender that brought in France on America's side.
And then war really came. In 1778, after Saratoga, the English gave up their hopes of a friendly reconquest of the united colonies, and settled down to fighting in real earnest, even though with smaller forces. With Halifax as a naval base, and with the lumber of Maine as a vital war material, it was only logical for an expedition to set up an advanced base at Castine. The same reasons that had led the Pil- grims there, and La Tour, Grandfontaine, and D'Iberville, brought the British. And, typically, the British sent too small a force at first.
So the men of Bar Harbor saw their first active service, when the militia of Lincoln County went out to aid Richard Saltonstall's flotilla in its attack on Castine. Typically, again, the unorganized Americans procrastinated, until the British relieving force, under Sir George Collier, sailed into Penobscot Bay. Allen, disgusted at the mess, withdrew. Now his job would be not one of raiding the British in Nova Scotia but of propaganda, trying to keep the Ameri- cans loyal. Some sign of that is seen, in the next to last entry made by the Mount Desert Committee of Safety, thanking Colonel Allen for visiting them with his Indians.
This was just a respite. On February 24, 1781 (February 25 by sea dating) war came to Bar Harbor. That evening, at five-that is, with the light already very low-in squally, west-northwest weather, H.M.S. Allegiance made her land- fall at Schoodic Point, in light conditions already so bad that she seems to have mistaken Petit Manan for Mooseabec. In the dark she slipped up through the Porcupines, to cast anchor about ten, when she rode at a light bower, hove short to half a cable. Two landmarks were supposedly in
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view, the house at Duck Brook of Ezra Young, that at Frenchman's Bay of Daniel Sullivan. Just where the Al- legiance anchored is uncertain, since the distances her log gives to these points make no sense. Probably it was in the channel just past Long Porcupine, where the lights of both houses would come in view. What was done is known with exactness. "Two boats were mann'd and arm'd," and at three a.m. Captain Young was roused from sleep by British seamen and marines, and taken on board for questioning. Some information the British possessed. They had their ways of knowing, from a family on Cranberry Island, as the settlers at Naskeag had learned to their cost the year before. At any rate, "by threats, etc." and "other informa- tion" it was discovered that Daniel Sullivan was at his home, and that Colonel Allen might be near by. Promptly volunteers were again called for, and another house was broken into at night. Daniel Sullivan then went on board. He is slandered, in the British records, by the assertion that he offered his daughter to a marine sergeant for freedom to escape, which offer the sergeant declined. Sullivan was a valuable capture and hostage, as the brother of a general. In consequence, he was sent to New York to the ill-famed hulks, and died in or, rather, just upon release from prison. It is he for whom the town bears its name. Captain Young went ashore, and Bar Harbor seemed to have dropped out of the Revolution.
The next day the Allegiance, in the light weather that follows a northwester, stood out of the bay. In a snow flurry, a sail was sighted, and boats again "mann'd and arm'd" after shots failed to bring the fugitive to. The boats returned, reporting contact but failure. Was this, by any chance, the legendary occasion when a British man-of-war fired at the "schooner" of Schooner Head, those three white
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rocks that from the water, in a fog, seem to be a schooner's sails? This is the nearest evidence.8
After this, there are no more entries in the records of the committee of correspondence; indeed, the book is a blank till 1789, when it sees use again as the record book of the Town of Mount Desert. Probably, Mount Desert Island followed the lead of its neighbors to the westward and became quietly neutral, though of that there is no official record.
For a moment, as before, important decisions in Bar Harbor's history were made far away, in two cases in Paris. The first such decision came in 1782, when John Adams and Silas Deane came to help Benjamin Franklin to make peace with the British. For the old Acadia boundary con- troversy had flared up again. There were those loyalists at Castine to take care of, and by a little jiggle of the Massa- chusetts boundary two new provinces could be carved out of Nova Scotia, one a New Brunswick named in honor of the royal house of Brunswick that ruled over England, and the other a New Ireland, named in honor of the island that was at that moment fighting to win self-government from England. It would be possible to place the loyalists here as settlers. So Franklin of Pennsylvania and Deane of Con- necticut were willing to give up this territory. To them a few miles east or west of uninhabited coast did not matter, and it would be pleasant to sweeten the negotiations with the kindly Richard Oswald, who was giving up so much, by a concession in return. But to Adams of Massachusetts, who knew how Bernard had struggled to maintain the old boundaries of the province of Massachusetts, the region was worth arguing for. He knew that the English govern- ment then in power held high ideas of strictly legal be- havior. He repeated to the English authorities Bernard's
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old arguments-indeed, showing them the Journal of Phips's expedition, that spoke of taking Mount Desert. The English agreed. The legal documents for founding New Ireland were canceled and the St. Croix River was made the boundary. Then the commissioners, after marking a map in Benjamin Franklin's possession in such a way as to show they did not know the difference between the St. Croix and the Megavudic Rivers, went on to other matters, having left Bar Harbor under the stars and stripes.9
Another decision in Paris came two years later. A middle- aged woman from Toulouse went to London, as she seems to have done several times, to lay claim to her seigneurie at Mount Desert. This time, she received the answer that under the newly negotiated treaty the land lay within the limits of the United States. In 1784, therefore, armed with a letter of introduction from the Archbishop of Toulouse, she addressed the French foreign minister, the Count de Vergennes. The latter, presumably delighted to be asking the Americans for something rather than having them ask him, passed her on to the American minister, Thomas Jeffer- son. Mr. Jefferson, in turn, passed her on, explaining that he represented only the congress of the United States, and that her seigneurie lay within the limits of one individual state, Massachusetts. But Jefferson did not merely give Mme. de Grégoire née De la Mothe Cadillac, a "brush-off"; he gave her letters of introduction to Governor Bowdoin of Massachusetts and Samuel Adams, and persuaded the Marquis de Lafayette to give her one to General Henry Knox, who knew Maine well. Likewise, De Vergennes wrote to Joseph de la Tombe, the consul at Boston, asking him to intervene in favor of Mme. de Grégoire.
This De la Tombe did. The Massachusetts archives con- tain the polite letter he wrote to Governor Bowdoin, which
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the latter forwarded to the General Court, there to be re- ferred to committee and let drop. That was natural enough. Why should the committee on eastern lands grant possession of property that had always been assumed to have an English title to it, merely on the presentation of a copy of a Versailles copy of a paper to be found in Quebec? But it took a year for Mme. de Grégoire to realize that she would not get her grandfather's seigneurie by writing for it, but must come and get it. Then she took ship, with her husband and three children, to secure the family properties at Douaquet and in Detroit.
It might have paid her to set sail sooner, for it was that delay that may have cost her half of Mount Desert Island. In the interval between her writing and her sailing another claimant appeared. This was Francis Bernard's eldest son, John, who had stayed on the Kennebec River, as a land speculator, when his father went back to England. At this he had been a failure. The Lincoln County deeds tell a sad story of bad guesses and diminishing assets, until the young man finally threw up the sponge, stopped trying to sell land to others, and went down East to try to make use of land himself. There, at Pleasant Point in Quoddy Bay, General Rufus Putnam and Park Holland found him. Poor Bernard was trying to do as other young men did, carve a home out of the wilderness, was making very heavy weather of it, and was perplexed by his failure. General Putnam and Surveyor Holland, who perfectly well knew why he was failing in something he had not been brought up to, took pity on him. They were down East surveying for the com- mittee on eastern lands, added him to their surveying party, and thus gave him a job. More than that-they, or some other persons of influence, put him back on his feet finan- cially, so much so that in 1785 John Bernard appeared be-
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fore the General Court of Massachusetts with a proposal that at least one half of Mount Desert Island be granted to him, in consideration of the fact that he had been loyal to the patriot cause and had inherited the island from his father, in 1777, so that when the act of deprivation had been passed in 1779 it should not have destroyed his title. This request was fortified by a long list of signatures of Kennebec Valley settlers who would attest his loyalty. At the same time, John Bernard informally suggested to the committee on eastern lands that if he were granted one half the island he would buy the other half, and would not ask for any new survey. This pair of proposals seemed accept- able, and the Great and General Court of the Common- wealth of Massachusetts granted to John Bernard of Bath, in the County of Lincoln, an American citizen, an undi- vided half of Mount Desert Island. Promptly, John Bernard, now styling himself Sir John, baronet, but still of Bath in the County of Lincoln (though he was not to keep that address long) mortgaged his half of the island and with the proceeds set sail for England, there to take up the family estates, become English once more, accept a West Indian governorship, and die without heirs, leaving, for all practical purposes, his mortgagor, Thomas Russell, as the effective owner of half of the island, through the mortgage he had had registered promptly at Pownallborough.
It was the day after the Senate had passed the act granting this land to John Bernard, that Joseph de la Tombe pre- sented to the General Court the petition of Mme. Marie Thérèse de Grégoire, grand-daughter of M. de la Mothe Cadillac, to have possession of his seigneurie of Douaquet, to which the terms of the treaty of Utrecht entitled him. The result has been told.
In August, 1786, Madame and Monsieur de Grégoire,
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armed with the letters of introduction mentioned above, set sail for Boston. At the autumn session of the General Court they again prosecuted their plea, with a new petition. This was again bandied about. The General Court was divided in mind. The Senate, which in those days deliber- ately represented property, wished to protect and further a property right, and wanted to make the grant. The House, which was chosen to represent persons, wished, perhaps, to protect the actual settlers, and refused. Yet there was sense in what the De Grégoires were suggesting. They spoke truth when they asserted that a local jury would not give them justice. They made a sensible suggestion when they offered to give good title to all settlers in occupation, or in possession of grants from the commonwealth. The nat- ural solution was to procrastinate, using as a pretext the seeking of legal advice. This the General Court did.
Monsieur and Madame de Grégoire must have been puz- zles to the legislators of Massachusetts. Clearly, very clearly, these two thought they had a valid claim to the land. Clearly, they were puzzled and frightened and ill at ease-the sort of people who won pity, a pity that was translated into loans of money. Also, clearly, they did not know what the situation was. And there the clarity stopped, for to the legislators of Massachusetts, either the propertied men of the Senate or the representatives of the towns in the House, there was something strange about giving land to a French family just because a forgotten army officer said he had landed near Mount Desert Island and cleared land. That was why it seemed natural to ask an advisory opinion from the supreme court.
The court, with justification, passed the question back, pointing out that it could not give an advisory opinion in a specific case where it might later have to render a final
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decision. To the attorney general, then, the knotty problem was sent, of whether the treaty of Utrecht gave any legal right to the land at Douaquet. He solved at least his own personal problem, by not giving any answer at all.
Here the perplexed De Grégoires dug into their baggage and came up with the letter from the Marquis de Lafayette to General Knox. In itself the letter said little-simply that Knox would be the best person to advise the De Grégoires about getting possession of the land they said they owned. But it bore the precious name of La Fayette. Certainly, after it was sent to Knox and after De la Tombe had sent to the new General Court, that met June I, a sharp note suggest- ing that something be done, the De Grégoires got results.
First the Senate acted, voting to give the De Grégoires their claim, but as a gift and not as a matter of principle. Not that its honorable members knew that heirs existed of Martel of Magesse, or of St. Aubin of Passamoquoddy, or of Lefebvre of Grandchamp, waiting for a rule to be established, but there was no harm in being careful. Then the Senate prepared to naturalize the De Grégoires, so that they might own property. However, the house balked at the snobbish naturalization bill, which stated that the nat- uralization was to secure the grant, and it took the No- vember session, with a milder naturalization act, before Barthélemy de Grégoire, his wife, and his three children, as listed in madame's handwriting, took oath, through an interpreter, were made citizens of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and thus owners of the Seigneurie of Douaquet, or of such of it as had not yet been granted.
It might be thought that the De Grégoires were now in clover. Here they had accessible American land, 168 miles nearer to France than was Boston. In later years the Duc d'Eprémesnil thought he had a chance of securing a
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real fortune by buying 10,000 acres of Township Number 7, the present Ellsworth, and made a calculation that 200 acres of land would in seven years pay for clearing itself and would in addition provide £595, 15 shillings of profit from crops alone, and then be rentable annually at the purchase price. But the De Grégoires-in this being in advance of the flood of later French exiles-learned pain- fully that the figures so gaily put down did not make sense, unless one worked the land with one's own hands.
For with the grant the De Grégoires' troubles had only begun. Having acquired the land, they had to find it. There- fore they, first of all, petitioned the General Court to have their grant surveyed, which was done by Nathan Jones of Gouldsboro, of the Margaretta affair fame. Jones, with a perhaps natural desire to get the new purchase away from his home, found that the Douaquet River was not the Taunton River, as had been first reported, but the Skill- ings River, thus removing some good land from the De Grégoires. Then he and John Peters surveyed the mainland, and left out some land across the Union River. This, how- ever, did not establish the De Grégoires' claim to Bar Har- bor. Their title to any part of the Island of Mount Desert was marred by the fact that John Bernard had an undivided half interest in the whole island. Promptly the De Grégoires began a division suit, only to run into difficulty in finding a representative of Bernard to appear for him. But at length, in 1788, title was secure enough for the De Grégoires to have their first land sale.
They went "down East" with Philip Langlois, who is said to have procured for them from Quebec copies of their grant, and acted as interpreter. In a day-long session, at Oak Point, Trenton, they issued, at $5 apiece, in milled gold dollars, deeds to 100-acre settlers' tracts, plus a few
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"acts of generosity,"-as the deeds put them-to doubtful settlers, and a few genuine sales, including one to the ever useful Mr. Jones. Then they went back to Boston, which the deeds, except for one to the Jones family, named as their home. If most of the $5 paid for a settler's deed went to the surveyor, the De Grégoires fared badly by this trip.
Probably they were in sad straits-by this time they were in the hands of Perez Morton, the moneylender. Now they offered for sale the whole 104,272 acres that they thought that they owned. Advertisements lyrically praised the lands they had to offer. But as soon as the Centinel reached Port- land, a voice was raised in opposition. On May 21, Samuel Freeman published an advertisement, warning all and sundry that the proprietors of Trenton owned that town- ship, the former Number 1. This forced the De Grégoires to reply, offering warranty deeds and pointing out that "the frivolous pretences of MR. FREEMAN do not extend to Mount Desert and a large tract of land near the same." But no purchasers appeared.
Then, on August 25, a new device was tried. An auction of 1000-acre lots was announced, to take place at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern. Bar Harbor-for that, in effect, was the De Grégoires' half of the island-was thus described.
All its coast is favoured with little harbours commodiously situated for fishermen and a number of creeks where Mills are established. The main Lands which surrounds [sic] the-bay, is watered by several large rivers, on which there are a great quantity of Mills, where are supplied every year a number of foreign vessels with Lumber and Timber. All the coast abounds with fish of every kind, and the cod fishery is very handy, and carried on to very great advantage.
Everything that the advertisement said was true, except as to the size of the rivers. Fishing was good; to this day
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there is, on the other side of Mount Desert Island, at Bass Harbor, an important fishing industry. Foreign ships did come for lumber; in a short visit in 1792 Bancel de Confoulens, D'Eprémesnil's agent, saw two such vessels, one loading for London, one for the West Indies. There were mills, too, on every creek. In fact, that was what was wrong with the whole offer-all the best sites were already taken. Therefore, all that happened was that no sales were made, and the De Grégoires sank deeper and deeper into debt. Finally, they had enough sense to move to their island and raise some more money giving quitclaim deeds.
There is little indication of just how they got there. Neither in Maine nor in Massachusetts do they appear in the 1790 census; but probably they were in Boston, for the census taker found there a curious household of a Madame Gregory and four "other free persons" at the head of which was not a woman but a free, white male. It sounds as if the census taker had tried to understand Madame de Gré- goire's French-to the end of their lives the De Grégoires spoke no English-and in desperation put a man at the head of the family and made the notation that there were four more in it. Then the family had to leave Boston. Not only did they owe Perez Morton more than he felt the land was worth; they owed the bakers and Consul de La Tombe. Also, at last the Bernard partition went through, giving them the eastern half of the islands. But though the quit- claim deeds they gave must have brought in some money, not enough was raised to meet their debts.
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