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 8
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Likewise, the inhabitants combined to obtain what they needed. Twice they tried to build a bridge at the Narrows.
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The Town of Eden, Maine
The first time, they persuaded the legislature of Maine- this was in 1826, after The District of Maine had become "The State of Maine," in 1820-to let them raise money by a lottery. What happened to the lottery is unknown, but in 1830 we find the county court setting ferry rates for Captain William Thompson to charge. These were ten cents for foot passage, twenty-five for a man and horse, or a man and a yoke of oxen, thirty-one cents for a horse and carriage or an ox and cart, eight cents apiece for neat cattle, three cents apiece for sheep or swine. And then in 1836 the local magnate, George Black of Ellsworth, headed the Mount Desert Bridge Corporation, that soon built a bridge and almost as quickly became the property of the Thompson and Somes families, and functioned right up till 1917, when the county took over the bridge.3
In the town's life there turns up also the usual caginess of local politics. When the town line was drawn through Otter Creek between Eden and Mount Desert, the Eden members of the committee decided to be clever and move the line a bit north, by putting the "head of tide" at a higher point, and thus saddle Mount Desert with an in- habitant it thought would go on the relief rolls. Yet at the same time there was rugged honesty. When Eden later found that that same property was valuable, and that an Eden resident owned it and wanted to have it taxed in Eden, Selectman E. M. Hamor refused to go back on the original decision, and left Mount Desert that extra wealth. For the democratic town life brings up certain spiritual values-President Eliot recognized them in his sketch of John Gilley-and those spiritual values grew in the soil of Eden.
One thing in particular fostered those qualities; this was the church. In Eden, at the end of the eighteenth century,
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The Story of Bar Harbor
it was closely tied into the community, as it was elsewhere in Massachusetts. For then, under the laws of the common- wealth, every citizen must support the church. However, there was religious freedom, too. Any town could support whatever form of Protestant religion it chose, and pay for it out of taxes. And if any citizen wished to support another religion, all he had to do was set up a congregation and employ a minister. This system, which is in effect in Holland today, and is called "concurrent endowment," tended, naturally, to draw to each town the followers of one sect. In Eden, the local sect was the Baptist.
The church in Eden was not as old as the town. Frontier Maine had its troubles in settling ministers, and had to rely, at first, on the services of ardent missionaries, such as the Reverend Mr. Littel of Arundel, who used to go through the countryside preaching and holding communion services and performing marriages. Such conditions lasted, in fact, up to 1816 or so, for the Congregational missionary society recorded sending mission trips to the island as late as then. The extent of those conditions is recorded in the first mar- riage certificate of Eden, dated February 22, 1780. In it X and Y, there being no "Lawful Authority within thirty miles," took each other "in the Sight of God and certain Witnesses"-and high time it was for them to do so, for on May 18, a son was born. Yet the men of Eden desired to have religion, and when without ordained ministers held their Bible readings and prayer meetings, preparing for a church organization.
In 1799, finally, the step was taken. On July 5, at the house of Levi Higgins, the Baptist church was gathered. Elder James Murphy came to preside and was chosen mod- erator, after having opened the meeting with "Prayer and Praise and Sermon." The church articles and the covenant
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The Town of Eden, Maine
were twice read, that all might know to what they had agreed. The brethren pledged mutual fellowship and were pronounced by the moderator a church of Christ and "Intitled to all its Privileges." Elkhanah Higgins and Nicholas Thomas became deacons, on trial, Nicholas being the first to be baptized by immersion, and John Thomas became clerk. And so, as soon as it could "settle a minister," Eden had an official church.
It may seem strange that in Congregational Massachusetts -Maine being part of Massachusetts still-the Baptists could fit in so well. But in the matter of church government the Baptists do not differ greatly from their Congregational brethren; it is over the vital question of adult baptism that the difference arises. As do the Puritan Congregationalists, the Baptists call their pastors and ordain them and gather churches, and generally allow sway to the congregation. And except for the point of theology named, the Eden church was a Puritan church. As late as 1855 it was the Eden custom to sit to sing hymns and stand to take part in prayer, in the old Puritan way. And in the old Puritan way, the congregation was governed by an iron hand. The Eden church still holds the records of the lady who con- fessed her sins, and admitted she had been led into evil ways by low companions. She promised never again to be led from the true path, by their light-hearted gaiety, and never again to go to a quilting bee. Then, and then only, was she reinstated.
For among the Baptists, exclusion was a powerful weapon. Once one had been debarred from a congregation, that action was binding on all Baptist congregations, to which one could be admitted only on presenting a letter from the congregation from which one had been expelled. Not only could a member of a congregation be excluded;
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The Story of Bar Harbor
so could be a pastor. Thereby hang not one but two tales. Twice did a minister trying to settle in Eden suffer exclusion for grevious ill behavior with a young woman. Twice did such a minister, flanked by the elders of eastern Maine, come penitent seeking readmission, that he might take another parish, and twice did he receive only partial readmission- as church member but not as pastor-thus requiring re- election by another congregation.
To the regret of gossips-but probably to the better doing of justice at the time-part of the remission of penalty seems to have been oblivion for the offense. The page on which were recorded the evil deeds of Benjamin Downs has been torn from the records of the Eden church. So no one today can tell what happened, whether he lightly kissed a pretty girl or whether the unmentionable crime was something more serious than attendance at a quilting bee.
There was another sad tale of the Baptist church disci- pline, one that seems more in line with the usual ideas held of Maine. Deacon John Owen Hotchkiss, a sea captain- or, at least, a coasting captain-was somewhat at odds with his first mate as to who owed whom how much. So, when the mate died, Deacon Hotchkiss sold such of the mate's effects as would satisfy the debt. It can be imagined how that story came out, after local gossip had done its share with it. Deacon Hotchkiss was ordered to explain in public. As a result, hot letters passed, and the church had to find a new deacon.
After the War of 1812 was over, Eden settled down to a regular church. In 1817, Elder Enoch Hunting was called, with a promise of the Stephen Salsbury farm if he stayed long enough. That he did. The agreement was for fifteen years' service; he stayed fourteen and a half, and lasted as
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The Town of Eden, Maine
long as "concurrent endowment" lasted in Maine. That ended, even on a voluntary basis, in 1832,“ and Elder Hunt- ing then accepted a call to Dexter, getting the last install- ment of his farm as a parting gift.
And so religion went on in Eden. It was a deep thing in the lives of the citizens. "Uncle Eben" Hamor remembered attending hour-long sermons in the morning, and after Sunday dinner returning to another sermon in the after- noon. But the Baptists did not have things all their own way. They had to fight two great local battles, that of the meeting house, and that of free will. The meeting house battle was typical of local politics in a small town. Eden was, for all practical purposes, divided in two parts by North East Creek. Those to the west of it did not like the long trip to Hull's Cove to worship, and did not want Baptist worship when they got there. Most of them were Methodists, following John Wesley's "Methody Way" and relying on the ministrations of circuit riders who were doing what they could for the island and the rest of Hancock County. Perhaps votes and wealth were on the Baptist-Hull's Cove side of the dispute, but fair play came in to even things up. Maine town meetings don't usually vote down a large minority with a genuine grievance. You have to live for the rest of your life with those who differ with you-and there is always the chance, too, that they may become a majority. Furthermore, in Maine ways, the meeting house was not for the use of the church alone, but also for that of the town, a place wherein to hold town meetings. And in a town of large area it was customary to alternate the
* The Maine constitution apparently forbids "concurrent endow- ment," but Chapter 135 of the acts of 1820 permitted it on a voluntary basis. Once you had joined a church, you could be sued for its support, until 1832.
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The Story of Bar Harbor
places of meetings. So, why not have a second meeting house, in the western part of the town, to allow both a chance for those over there to go to meeting more easily, and for preaching by non-Baptists? That question was settled easily enough, by free enterprise. Proprietors built a meeting house and rented pews.
The other battle was a combination of conflicts over theology and personalities. Even today those who know can detect traces of it in the line-up on some minor town issues, and chuckle when they see who takes what sides. For it is one of those pleasant old-time feuds that add spice to local politics, without doing harm. Hull's Cove, and the Hamors, took their Baptist creed straight, with old-time Puritan theology. Bar Harbor proper, and the Rodicks on Bar Island, didn't agree with the Hamors, even though members of the respective families had intermarried from the start. They didn't think that God had decided at the moment a child was born, or at the moment the world was born, whether that child had a chance of being saved. They believed that free will existed. And so they had their own church, not large enough to support a minister, but large enough to have regular prayer meetings, right down to 1885.4
This picture of one side of its life may seem to depict Eden as a static town. Perhaps that was true, but the men of Eden were not static; they went about widely enough. Eden was not out of the main currents of American life. Far from it; the District of Maine, and later the State of Maine, was as truly part of the expansion of America as were the other frontier states, Ohio and Illinois and Ken- tucky. The sea, especially, kept Eden close to what was going on, as long as Eden kept close to the sea. (Indeed, at one time, in 1814, Eden was painfully close to what was
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The Town of Eden, Maine
going on.) All through the records of those early days are indications of a close connection with the whole country. Does the District of Maine want to become a State of its own, which question recurred with great regularity? Eden sends its delegates to a convention, although it is part of the eastern seaboard minority that agrees with Colonel John Allen in his opposition to immediate separation. Do com- munications improve? As has been told, Eden petitions for ferries and post routes. Does war come? Eden, as in the Revolution, both fights and yields. Does a foreign power * threaten to invade the New World? The navy plans a base within the Cranberries, and surveys the coast of at least part of Eden, for maps of a "great naval rendezvous." Do Canada and the United States verge upon war? Eden sends her volunteers to stand guard at Calais. Is there a political revolution in the United States, when the frontier states turn against "King Andrew Jackson" and his Democrats, the frontier party? It is Maine's swing that leads the way, when it went "Hell bent for Governor Kent," and started the tradition, "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." And Eden went for Kent. But to tell the stories of these events is not to tell local history. Postmasterships are set up; Nicholas Thomas of Eden got his commission in 1821 and passed it on to his son, Leonard J. Thomas, in 1825; the latter lived into Cleveland's regime, as the postmaster with the oldest commission. However, his was not continuous service, for
* Search in the National Archives has so far revealed no statement as to what enemy was feared when Portland harbor, Penobscot Bay, and Mount Desert harbor were surveyed. Probably the danger came from the threat of Spain and Russia, as agents of the "Holy Alliance," invading the Americas-the threat which, it will be recalled, evoked the enuncia- tion of the Monroe Doctrine. But let no one think that Bar Harbor saw the Russians only as enemies; in 1884, when a Russian fleet anchored in Somes Sound at the time of the Pendjeh crisis, the Imperial Russian Navy was welcomed as a warm friend.
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The Story of Bar Harbor
he was a staunch Democrat and went out when Whigs and Republicans came in, even though there was a custom, when politics was quiet, of reappointing him. It is of interest to learn how the post was carried, from Ellsworth to South West Harbor, to meet the coach that went from Bangor to Cherryfield and Calais along the coast. It is of interest to note that the Deacon Hotchkiss of the Baptist troubles was Bar Harbor's first postmaster, in a local office that closed, which fact prevents the Roberts family, with its unique record of three generations serving the same office, from claiming that the first Bar Harbor postmaster was a Roberts, though the first postmaster of the present office was Tobias Roberts the First. But the other events that have been listed are not part of local history, though they af- fected it. There is one exception; that is the War of 1812.
The war was not popular in eastern Maine. Just before it broke out, the selectmen of Ellsworth, headed by Colonel John Black, published a broadside appeal against entering so foolish a war. Thus, even when the British chased the frigate Adams up the Penobscot River and burned her, and then occupied Castine, it is likely that the men of Eden did not become overexcited about patriotism. However, it was one thing to follow the old Acadian custom of neutrality and doing business with both sides; it was another thing to allow destruction of property. When a British privateer forced Amariah Leland to pay $ 500 in gold to save a vessel on the stocks at Salisbury Cove from being burned, that was very different; and it was equally so when an American vessel loaded with pepper anchored at Bar Harbor, and William Mason was mortally wounded by fire from an English barge. Three men of Eden were prisoners of war- William Thompson, who found himself in Dartmoor prison, while Elisha Young and William Wasgatt went only as far
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The Town of Eden, Maine
as Halifax. Matters came to such a pass-probably as the English planned-that coastal trade in lumber was made impossible, and Eden had to live on game and fish. Then it was that the raid on Norwood's Cove came, when the British tried to land near South West Harbor and the local militia came out to fight. Eden got there late, after Mount Desert had finished the job and had driven off the attackers, and can claim only a supporting part in that much re- counted action. Then mysterious entries appeared on the town's books-the expenses of prisoners of war.
But after that glorious local victory, in which great pride is still taken, Eden yielded, and again seems tacitly to have let George III rule her. The selectmen of Trenton wrote, September 5, 1814, that they were giving in to the enemy, and then, on September 6, 1814, the Town of Eden sent, to "treat with the British at Castine," Nicholas Thomas, Richard Higgins, and John Cousins. There are no surviving details, but presumably the town yielded. And so Eden went back to its peaceful ways.
The peace was threatened again, when the Maine militia was called out in 1839 for the "Aroostook War," but General Winfield Scott's diplomacy prevented a loggers' quarrel from making America fight Canada. Eden men, who are listed, went to Calais to do border guard; they drew their pay, and came back. But, aside from discomfort and a free trip to Calais, nothing happened. And the even tenor of life again resumed its way.
For the Eden of the early nineteenth century was what a sociologist would call a "static society," in that respect being unlike its mobile and adventurous inhabitants. Its life was largely self-contained; it manufactured most of the prod- ucts it needed. As late as the 1880's, on Bar Island, then known as Rodick's Island, the Rodick family raised their
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The Story of Bar Harbor
own sheep, clipped their own wool, carded it, washed it, spun it into threads, wove it into cloth, and then sewed the cloth into clothes. Those were members of a family that owned the largest summer hotel in America. The work described was done because the Rodicks, like most families in Eden, had always made good use of what lay to hand. Mr. and Mrs. Rodick knew how to do these things, and did them. They would have thought themselves foolish not to, with the equipment at hand and plenty of time in the winter in which to use it. And if the Rodick family did this, as is known because a reminiscent member of the family wrote down an account of her early days, presum- ably their neighbors throughout Eden did the same. The rain barrel, the lye barrel, venison in the larder, salt fish, a barn full of hay-all the means with which the farmer keeps going were part of Eden's life.
But Maine-and Eden-do not think intelligent speciali- zation is foolish. If much was done at home, much, too, was done by itinerant blacksmiths, itinerant tailoresses, itinerant pedlers. Even the doctors were itinerant- either Dr. Kitteridge, who came over from Somesville, or "Madame Milliken," from Prettymarsh. They traveled not only to Eden, which was not far, but off the island. If someone turned up who could do something better than you could, and charged a fair price, you let him or her do it.
But, though Eden's economic life was static, her popu- lation was not. It was almost a rule of frontier life that some of the population should move away. That was true in Kentucky, from which Daniel Boone moved out, to get away from too many neighbors, to the quiet emptiness of Missouri. That was true, also of the Lincoln family, which wandered from Kentucky, where Abraham Lincoln was
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The Town of Eden, Maine
born, through Indiana, and, in Abraham's case, to New Salem, Illinois, until he ended up at Springfield. It was equally true of Maine. The only difference is seen in the fact that Maine did not, as did the West, have more fertile lands to which to go. There "the only fertile field"-with apolo- gies to Aroostook County-"was the sea." And though Israel Thomas, for instance, went to Houlton, in Aroostook, as the Thomases began to fill up the Thomas District, others went to sea.
It was especially natural for Maine to go to sea, for Maine provided the lumber from which to build the ships. In a sense, Maine had two frontiers, the logging frontier and the sea frontier, manned by the same kind of men. Those very workers who cut the logs then rafted them to the yards, cut them into timbers, and, very likely, sailed the ships that they built. A curious result came from this: The whole seafaring world took to singing Maine songs, and giving them Maine names. The songs sung in the "shanties" of the loggers became the "shanties" sung at sea, and were copied by seamen on all oceans. The name "shanties" proved a good one, and stuck, by misinterpretation of its origin as some derivation from the French verb "chanter," to sing. (Just so had Verrazano's "Arcadia" become, by confusion with the Abenaki "Quoddy," the place name "Acadia.") Thus it is that songs as old as the Elizabethan "Maid of Amster- dam" have had their names given to them from the waters of the Penobscot-St. Croix region. Conversely, the "shant- ies" reach back to the very center of the State. The most nearly complete text of "The Flying Cloud," the full thirty- six verses, was found not on the waterfront but far inland, almost at the Allegash. Its double frontier was Maine's way of expansion.
And that is the truth that lies behind "Uncle Eben"
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The Story of Bar Harbor
Hamor's statement that "the most profitable and perhaps the most extensive business engaged in by the early settlers of Eden was building vessels and sailing them." The story of Eden shipping, from the time when Israel Higgins bought the Sally in 1787 until the Elihu T. Hamor was launched at Bar Harbor in 1889, is typical of what happened along the Maine coast, from Casco Bay eastward. The first settlers built sloops and schooners, the next generation sailed them the world over. Finally, shipbuilding ceased, and, as vessel after vessel broke up, the men of Maine turned shorewards again. Such was the story of Penobscot Bay, now with towns filled with retired sea captains and a maritime museum. Such was the story of Eden's sea frontier.5
The first record of seafaring from Eden is the bill of sale of the Sally, now fortunately preserved by the Maine State Historical Society. After that there is a gap without records until the new enrollment list of Frenchman's Bay was started, in 1815. Various reasons, as will be seen, explain why an exact count of vessels constructed cannot be made, but it seems that at least one hundred-probably more nearly one hundred and twenty-five-vessels were built in Eden from the time when the schooner Hazard, of 120 and 90-95 tons, was built at Bar Harbor, and enrolled at the Frenchman's Bay customs house on May 22, 1809, until the schooner E. T. Hamor, of 52 and 70-100 tons, was built, apparently at Bar Harbor, and measured on July 26, 1889, at Ellsworth. During those years, and especially from 1815 to 1858, there was amazing activity. Vessels of varying sizes were built at Cromwell's Harbor, Bar Harbor, both sides of Hull's Cove (in 1838 Jonathan Hamor built the schooner Garden "on the opposite side of the road from the school house and launched down the hill into the cove"), Salis- bury's Cove, Hadley's Sand Point, Emery's Cove, North
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The Town of Eden, Maine
East Creek, North West Creek, Indian Point, and John McFarland's yard, as well as on Thompson's Island before that was set off from Trenton.
Shipbuilding in Eden was not a consistently active trade. There were bumper years and empty years. In 1853 seven vessels were built; none in 1836, and again none in 1856. During several years only one vessel was built; again, at times Eden provided three-quarters of the vessels built in the Frenchman's Bay customs district. In fact, the number of vessels built in Eden seems to have been a rough index of national prosperity. When things were doing well, ship- yards elsewhere had more orders than they could fill, and Eden turned from logging to shipbuilding. When things were dull, Eden went back to logging.
Gradually, however, Eden became the shipbuilding center of the Frenchman's Bay district, which extended from Naskeag to Schoodic Point. For a time, in the mid 1830's, when fishing bounties came in, and men in New England built ships to catch bounties as well as fish, there were a number of Eden-owned fishermen. But soon the local capi- talist, Tobias Roberts, William Thompson, and Stephen Higgins, found that they had better uses for their money. After that, though, almost every year someone in Eden went off to the Banks, while the fishing industry concen- trated in Gouldsboro and in Southwest Harbor, and par- ticularly in the hands of Horace Durgin and Deacon Clark. In later years, Hancock and Lamoine became fishing ports; as late as the 1890's the Lamoine fleet used to combine sum- mer fishing with that old Yankee stand-by, winter trade with the West Indies. What happened was that Eden built the vessels which others sailed, even to the peculiar point that the few fishermen that were in Eden hands, such as Benjamin Ash's Glide, had been built out of town.
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That did not mean that Eden did not have its quota of sea captains. In later years the usual stories were told of how many were living in town in retirement. Perhaps the large number was correct, being swelled by a local business prac- tice. Apparently, when a vessel was built either on specula- tion or on order, an owner, acting as master, sailed it to the port of delivery, probably at his own risk. For this there was a sound reason, sadly recounted in Nicholas Thomas's rhyming autobiography. Of his brig Royal Arch he wrote: "I sold her to some Boston men, They sailed her from the Bay, And I have never seen her since, And never got my Pay." If Mr. Thomas is to be believed-his remarks about Talleyrand make his veracity dubitable at times-there is a confirmation of this story in the utter absence of any Royal Arch from either the registers or the enrollment lists of Frenchman's Bay. Presumably the risk that the pur- chaser might thus "pay with the foretopsail" led to the many entries of vessels in the enrollment lists as new vessels built in Eden, and re-enrolled, after a partial change in ownership, at some port to the west, the owner-builder being listed as the master in the first registration. How many vessels were thus lost to the Frenchman's Bay registry can only be guessed.
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