USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Prouts Neck > The story of Prouts Neck > Part 2
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These men made a business of catching beaver, which were then very plentiful in the Nonsuch River. There were also wolves and bears, for the killing of which the town paid a considerable bounty. Most of the travelers to and from this part of the province passed across the ferry, and the Ordinary, or house of the ferryman, at Ferry Rock, was the favorite resort of hunters and trappers.
The farms were small, and were within easy reach of the garrison houses and forts. The farmers depended on the salt marshes for the hay needed by their cattle through the winter. In the spring the cattle, except a few milch cows, were turned loose and left to provide for them- selves until autumn. They were all distin- guished by their owners' marks, which were entered in the Town Book, so as to prevent any controversies.
Of fish and game there were plenty. In ordi- nary seasons the crops of Indian corn, vegetables and grain were abundant. Fish, furs and lumber
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were exchanged at the trading posts or with oc- casional ships for supplies or household goods. After 1720 roads began to be built; there was an overland route to Portsmouth and Boston, and stage coaches came into use.
As early as 1641 the Black Point settlers had applied to Governor Winthrop for a minister. The first one of whom any record appears was the Reverend John Thorpe, of whom it is only known that Jordan and Jocelyn complained of him to the court in 1659 for "preaching unsound doctrine." In 1680 Captain Scottow conveyed to the Reverend Benjamin Blackman twenty- four acres near Ferry Rock, upon which the latter settled; but a few years later he moved to Saco. That he was a man of marked business ability, whatever may have been his talent for preaching, is shown by the fact that he became the proprietor of nearly one-fourth of the whole township in which he settled, owning every mill privilege on the eastern side of the river, together with almost the entire site of the present town.
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In March, 1685 it was agreed by the towns- men that "a minister should have fiftie pounds a yeare and a house to live in." In July it was ordered "that there should be a minister's house built upon the plaines," and Captain Scottow was instructed "to git a minister for the Towne as soon as may be possibly." A minister was obtained in 1686, the Reverend George Bur- roughs, who had graduated at Harvard in 1670. He had been preaching at Falmouth, had been driven away by the Indians in 1675, but had returned in 1683. How long he stayed at Black Point is not definitely known, but very possibly he remained until the desertion of the town in 1690. Later he went to Salem, where, in spite of his upright character and excellent reputation, he was put to death for the alleged crime of witchcraft in 1692.
A church had been built before 1671. Jocelyn speaks of "our Church, which was built upon a plain little more than half a quarter of a mile from our dwelling-house." Jocelyn's house was
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BATHING BEACH ABOUT 1890 (another view)
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near Ferry Rock, and the site of the church is said to have been on the slight eminence to the north that overlooks the marshes from the pres- ent golf course. This church was destroyed by the French and Indians in 1690.
After the French and Indian retreat from John Larrabee and his men at Black Point in 1703 the relations between the settlers and the Indians were more friendly, and white men and red frequently competed in athletic sports. A game called "base" was a favorite with both races, and the beach at Garrison Cove on the Neck furnished a fine ground for it. Gradually the Indians withdrew from the neighborhood, and when peace was made between England and France by the Treaty of Utrecht it was generally supposed there were no red men in the vicinity of Black Point.
Among the settlers was a man named Richard Hunniwell, who in the earlier troubled times had won the nickname of "Indian killer." On an autumn morning in 1713 a party of twenty men,
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headed by Hunniwell, left the garrison house on the Neck to collect and drive in the cattle, which had been left to graze at large during the sum- mer. No Indians had been seen recently, and the only man of the party who was armed was Hunniwell, and he only with a pistol. In an alder thicket at the west end of the Great Pond two hundred Indians were concealed, and as the company of settlers passed by on their way to the woods the Indians fired at them. Hunni- well fell at the head of his men, and only a single survivor escaped the ambush and got back to the garrison with the tidings. Nineteen settlers were massacred, and this tragic event gave the name to the stretch of water between the high- road and the beach, which is known as Massacre Pond.
In later days there were occasional outbursts. In 1723 Indians raided Black Point, killed Ser- geant Chubb of the fort there and Thomas Larrabee and his son Anthony while they were at work in the fields. For this and similar de-
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predations elsewhere the government of the province sent four companies of soldiers to break up the Indian settlement at Norridgewock, and when this had been accomplished delegates of the Penobscot tribe made a treaty of peace at Boston, which brought to a close another of these sporadic outbreaks.
With the second establishment of the town in 1720 progress began to be made in various direc- tions. There had been a "corn mill" in use at Black Point as early as 1663 and another at Dunstan in 1680. Now saw mills were built in rapid succession, most of them along the Non- such, where the valley furnished excellent timber. Strange to say, part of the lumber was used for paying the schoolmasters. In March, 1729 a committee of three was appointed "to see that there be a school carried on in town this year." The next year it was voted "that there be a Schoolmaster hired in town this year that can read and write well," and also "that the school be kept the first quarter of a year at Dunstan,
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the second at Black Point, the third at Dunstan and the fourth at Black Point." In 1737 it was voted "that Mr. Robert Bailey be schoolmaster this year in this town; that it be kept all the year on Black Point side, and that Mr. Bailey be paid 75 pounds in lumber for his services." Four years later Samuel Fogg was allowed "32 pounds in lumber for keeping school 6 months in Black Point Meeting House."
The settlements of Maine, industrious and thrifty, prospered during the peace, which was, however, broken again by the declaration of another war between England and France. In April, 1747 Indians appeared in Scarborough; but now they found strong fortifications where before there had been only unprotected houses. Fifteen or twenty forts had been built in the town, of various forms and sizes. Some were simple blockhouses, constructed of squared logs, one and a half stories high, about twenty feet square, and having a row of portholes on each side. Others, which were occupied by a number
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CORDUROY PATH TO THE SANCTUARY
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of families in times of danger, were much more extensive. Some of these had a second story, and this projected horizontally a foot or more, so as to give an opportunity to fire at any enemy who might try to scale the walls. Of one such fort it is related that eleven families resided there for seven years in perfect harmony, for "the war without made peace within."
After 1749 Scarborough suffered little from the Indians, but during the early wars few towns in New England had lost so many men in pro- portion to their population. The settlement at Black Point had borne most of the burden, hav- ing furnished nine-tenths of the settlers who had fallen. In 1758 Louisburg was captured, and in the next year occurred the conquest of Quebec. With the surrender of Montreal French power in America came to an end and the whole of Canada was ceded to England. This news filled all New England with thanksgiving, and nowhere was there more rejoicing than among the settlers at Black Point.
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With peace came prosperity. Maine was no longer debatable land, homes and farms were secure, and the labor that had formerly been expended on building stockades and forts could be used on the construction of post roads and school and meeting houses. In the Revolution- ary War Scarborough played the same patriotic part as other settlements in New England. Far from the field of action, the people had to de- pend for most of their information on uncertain rumors, passing from mouth to mouth. It is said that the only newspaper taken in Black Point at that time was received by Captain Timothy McDaniel. The meeting house was the place of assembly for all the town, and Sun- day the time. Regularly on that day - pro- vided the mail had arrived according to schedule - Captain McDaniel took his seat on the door- step of the meeting house at the close of the morning service and read to the congregation, eagerly gathered about him, the latest news of the war. There was a great celebration when
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word came of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown and another on the declaration of peace. These were stirring events, but they had little to do directly with the history of Black Point.
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III. PROUTS NECK
CAPTAIN THOMAS CAMMOCK, as has already been related, received his title of ownership to the Black Point lands directly by patent from the Council of Plymouth in 1631. This property he left to his wife for her lifetime, then to his friend Henry Jocelyn. Jocelyn married Margaret Cammock, and so became the proprietor of the Cammock patent. In 1671 Jocelyn transferred all his interest in Black Point to Captain Joshua Scottow.
Scottow owned many ships and did an exten- sive business in fishing until the French and Indians harried the coast settlements. He died in Boston in 1698, leaving his Black Point lands to his wife Lydia, with remainder to his children. Mrs. Lydia Scottow died in 1707, before the re- establishment of the town government in Scar- borough. The Black Point property was then in the charge of the executors of Captain Scot- tow's will, Judge Sewall and Scottow's two
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sons-in-law, Major Thomas Savage and Captain Samuel Checkley. In 1728 Samuel Checkley, the surviving executor, conveyed the Neck and all the original Cammock patent land, contain- ing more than three thousand acres, to Timothy Prout, Merchant, of Boston, for five hundred pounds. Timothy Prout, a descendant of one of the oldest families of Boston, had married Lydia, the daughter of Major Thomas Savage, Scottow's son-in-law.
Timothy Prout, with his wife and children, took up his residence on the rocky headland which had been known as Cammock's Neck and Black Point Neck, and which was now called Prout's Neck. His house was on the eastern side. He cleared the eastern, northern and southern sections for farming and used the re- mainder for pasture land. Near the present Southgate House was the site, according to tradition, of a dairy house built by Timothy Prout in 1744. He had also built a ferry house at Ferry Rock Point in 1741. Later Captain
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Alexander Kirkwood, a Scotchman, married Timothy Prout's daughter Mary, and built a house on the southwestern side of the Neck. Timothy Prout died in 1768, and his heirs made a division, by which his son Joseph received the paternal dwelling and a tract of land on the east, and the Kirkwoods a tract on the southwest.
Toward the close of the century the whole Neck came into the possession of the Kirkwoods. They conveyed a large tract on the eastern side to Timothy Prout Hicks, a grandson of Timothy Prout. He sold this later to Robert Libby, of Scarborough.
In the settlement of the various Prout and Kirkwood real estate transactions Judge Robert Southgate, of Dunstan, took a prominent part, and received, it is said for his legal services, land on the Neck. As attorney for the Prouts and the Kirkwoods he conveyed a tract on the south- west to John Libby, Jr., and Thomas Libby, 3d. Early in the nineteenth century the headland had become Libby's Neck - it was so called by
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that family - the eastern side belonging to Robert Libby, and the western side to John Libby, Jr. and Thomas Libby, 3d. So the title to it stood until 1830, when Thomas Libby bought the other holdings and became the sole owner.
1560653
Thomas Libby lived in a double one-story house on the western front. It was located on substantially the site of Jocelyn's garrison house. It is said to have been built originally by Tim- othy Prout and reconstructed by Alexander Kirkwood. Later a second story was added to it. This dwelling, well known to all the country- side as the Captain Thomas Libby house, was a farmhouse where fishermen could get their fish dressed and cooked and secure lodging for a few days in the fishing season. Later summer boarders were taken, and it became the first hotel on the Neck, given the name of the Prouts Neck House or Middle House. In time it fell into disrepair and disuse, and was finally pur- chased by Charles E. Morgan, Jr., who moved it
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back from the road and converted a part of it into a summer cottage.
It was in Captain Thomas Libby's day that the Neck - called by the owners Libby's, but by others Prout's - began to become popular with summer visitors. Silas Libby, the elder son, was given land to the southwest of his father's house, and built a small boarding house, the original of the present Cammock House. The second son, Benaiah, built to the eastward, and his house took its name from the beautiful trees that lined the highroad and became known as the Willows. These three houses, in a line on the western shore, overlooking the wide bay and the mouth of the Scarborough River, were the first hotels of Prouts Neck.
Captain Thomas Libby died in 1871. His children, Silas J., Benaiah and Minerva, divided the western tract of land into separate home- steads. A grandson built the West Point House near the site of the old fort defended by John Larrabee. In 1878 John M. Kaler built the
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" THE MEADOW "
Painted in oil by Frank Moss about 1890. Landscape on the present golf course Owned by Robert P. Jellett, Montreal
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Southgate, named for the Judge who had been one of the most distinguished citizens of the town and who had owned land on the Neck. Ira C. Foss chose the sea-swept point on the southwest for the location of the Checkley. Land for summer homes was in demand, and the Libbys placed their large holdings in the public market.
The western boundary of the original Black Point grant was the river that flows into the bay, which has been consecutively called the Owas- coag, Black Point, and Scarborough River. Near its mouth this stream divides, and the branch that is nearest to Ferry Rock Point is Libby's River, the next the Nonsuch, the third Mill Creek, and the main current that flows under the railroad bridge is the Owascoag or Dunstan.
The eastern boundary of the Black Point grant was the Spurwink River, where Ambrose Boaden kept the ferry that crossed to Robert Jordan's at Buena Vista. West of the Spurwink
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lies the wide stretch of sand and the cluster of cottages that are called Higgins Beach from the Higgins homestead on the river. Adjoining this are the high cliffs, known as Hubbard's Rocks, which form the sea front of the Jordan farm, and which extend, with many long ledges and curv- ing stony beaches, to the Kirkwood Inn and the Atlantic House.
From that point stretches Scarborough Beach, a magnificent crescent, reaching to Prouts Neck. Back of the beach near the western end is Great or Massacre Pond. The site of the Indian ambush of 1713, in which nineteen settlers were killed, was south of the pond and between it and the present highroad. North of the pond and at the edge of the Atlantic House woods, near the house of John M. Kaler, was where Scottow's fort was built in 1681, when it was decided that the garrison house on the Neck was too small and too far distant to offer proper protection to the farmers in their fields.
Scarborough Beach runs out in a point, off
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which lies Shooting, or Seal, Rock and the west- ern part of the crescent is sometimes called Prout's Beach. Here are the present bath- houses, and above this end of the shore, where the Neck juts out from the mainland, formerly stood the Jocelyn Hotel, destroyed by fire in 1909.
The Neck itself, a headland of some II2 acres, is roughly triangular in shape. Following the line of shore from the northeastern beach there are ledges, cliffs and coves, many of which have names. Cunner Rock overlooks the beach, and a little farther on is John Jocelyn's Cave, named for the brother of Henry Jocelyn, who spent nine years at Black Point, and who described his adventures in New England in a curious book entitled The Voyages of John Jocelyn Gent. Beyond this cave are the Pulpit or Castle Rocks, and offshore lie the Seal Rocks, where are often to be seen herds of the harbor seal. Eastern Cove, with its beaches of white and pink sand, curves out to Eastern Point, a low-lying ledge
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that forms one of the triangular points of the Neck.
On the side that fronts the open ocean the shore rises to the Gilbert Rocks, to Kettle Cove, to Spouting Rock and to Cannon Rock. These are known as the High Rocks, and were formerly called the Kirkwood Rocks, in honor of Alex- ander Kirkwood. . These splendid cliffs give way to lower ledges at the southwestern point of the triangle of the Neck, where stands the Checkley Hotel. Off the shore on this side are the two islands, the larger Stratton's Island, the smaller Bluff Island.
The third side of the Neck lies along the bay, paralleling the town road that runs from the Checkley inland. This part of the shore was the Garrison Cove of Henry Jocelyn's day, and on this side were Jocelyn's garrison house, Lar- rabee's fort and the Captain Thomas Libby house.
The Neck ends at the Southgate, which stands on high ground above the beach that curves to
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SEAVEY'S SHACK, INNER BAY, PROUTS NECK
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Ferry Rock, from which travelers embarked to cross the river to Blue Point, or to Pine Point, as the nearer settlement later came to be called. Around the headland of Ferry Rock is another beach, the site of the wharf and the flake yards, and another headland, Black Rock, on the edge of the marshes. Back from Ferry Rock and on the present golf course was the site of Henry Jocelyn's dwelling, and on the shore Timothy Prout had his ferry house.
There is much stray information about Prouts Neck in the early nineteenth century, and some of it may be worth recording here. Wild game was plentiful, water fowl in particular abound- ing, there being several varieties of coots, whistlers, Labrador ducks, old squaws, shel- drakes, dippers, teal, and black ducks. A hunter one day found in the cove between Stratton and Bluff Islands a flock of ducks so closely packed together that at the first shot he killed eighteen, at the second fourteen, and at the third ten. The islands at that time
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were only used for pasture, there being no houses on them and only a few trees. The owners kept oxen to haul lumber in the back country during the winter, and in the spring the oxen were ferried to the islands lean, and brought back in the autumn fat and sold for beef. A new lot was then bought for the lumbering season. Occasionally the water would become low in the springs on the island and sometimes cattle would swim two miles and land in the cove near Thomas Libby's house.
Indians used to come to the Neck in canoes and camp on Eastern Point during the summer to hunt for seals and porpoise and to fish. There was a ready market for seals; the average one gave thirteen gallons of oil, which was used for lamps, and the skin was used for moccasins.
One winter a school of the humpback whale, estimated as numbering perhaps a hundred, ten spouting at a time, was seen inside Stratton's Island. Great blue herons were common on the Neck; they nested in the fir trees, and some-
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times five nests were found in a single fir, the eggs being the size of hen's eggs.
The swamps and woods in the neighborhood of Black Rock were once the home of large flocks of wild pigeons, from which the marshes took the name of Pigeon Swamp. Later this became the haunt of big gray herons, frequently seen on the sand flats of the bay at low tide.
As late as 1844 there was a wharf or pier be- tween Ferry Rock and Black Rock where four schooners, or "Bankers" as they were called, were moored, and from which they sailed to fish for cod on George's Bank and the Banks of New- foundland. There were also at one time salt works on the shore, shallow trenches in which the sea water evaporated and crystallized. The salt was used to preserve or pickle the codfish until they were dried in the flake yards above the beach. Clams could easily be obtained for bait on the flats of the river, and sometimes eight to ten bushels were dug at a single tide. Later the most that could be obtained was two bushels.
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Scarborough clams were famous throughout the country.
There is much more verdure on the Neck now than there was when Thomas Libby acquired his property. Then there was an orchard and some garden land and the woods, about in ex- tent as they are now, and the rest was pasture, called the Great Pasture. The young maples, birches, hickories, and even the balsams and spruces were not allowed to grow up by the browsing cattle. The point where the Checkley is located was called the West Pasture, and here the farmers cut the best hay.
Some of the hickories, which are said to grow no farther north on the coast than Scarborough, are reputed to be nearly a hundred years old. The willows were planted on the western shore by Captain Joseph Pillsbury more than eighty years ago, he bringing them as saplings from Dunstan. At the same time Thomas Libby planted the elms near his house. When holes were being dug to set out some poplars behind
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BOARD WALK THROUGH WOODS, PROUTS NECK
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the Willows Hotel the skeleton of an Indian chief was found in a sitting position, decorated with wampum and round copper beads. It was surrounded by twelve other skeletons, and this is supposed to have been the burial place of Mogg and his warriors who fell in the attack on Jocelyn's garrison house.
On the lawn in front of Frank J. Hale's cot- tage is a patch of giant knotweed, and here it is said there were to be seen in 1840 the cellar and well of Thomas Cammock's original house. In laying the foundation for the brick garage of the West Point House in 1911 large basement stones were unearthed which were identified as the ruins of Larrabee's fort.
The land now occupied by the Country Club, and extending to Ferry Rock, known as the Ethan Wiggin farm, was used to pasture sheep. The sheep kept down the tree growth back of the dunes, and the pines that are now so plenti- ful there have sprung up in recent times.
In the 1860's and 70's Captain Thomas Libby's
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house was popularly called "the picnic house." Sunday schools for twenty miles around came there for their picnics. They would fish, dig clams and pick berries. The Libbys cooked the fish and clams for the picnickers, and provided tables and benches for dinner under the trees. A large spreading willow tree stood close to the porch of the Willows House, and there was a curving flight of steps from the porch up into the tree, where there was a seat, a haven of great delight for small children. Another attraction was a room on the second floor of Captain Libby's house where there was a collection of shells and articles made of hair, wreaths of ever- lasting and various pieces of handiwork made by the women of the household. There was also an old spinet and a spinning wheel, chairs painted with bright flowers, and braided rag mats. The Libby House, both for its interesting furnishings within doors and for the charm of its grounds without, was the most notable dwelling in the township.
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In the early days of the third settlement of Prouts Neck - that by the summer visitors - Captain John Wiggin had a primitive dwelling, referred to by him as a "hotel," on the edge of the shore in front of the Southgate. It was a one-story building with three rooms, and here the Captain sold lobsters, fish, cakes, candy, and anything else for which there was a demand. He also supplied dories for boating. A loqua- cious, convivial character, he made an unusual appearance in a long-tailed coat, red flannel shirt, high boots into which his trousers were tucked, and a high hat of gray felt. His hotel justified its name, if not in its size or appoint- ments, at least in the fact that it furnished many a hungry wayfarer with eggs, bread and butter, steamed clams, fried fish and coffee of a sort. It did a considerable business, for the next near- est shop was the "two-mile store" at the top of the hill where the Spurwink Road branches off from the road to Scarborough Station.
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