USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Freeport > Three centuries of Freeport, Maine > Part 15
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Up to a few years ago a small building, which had been a shoe shop stood on the site of the old shipyard. This has been moved to a lot about half way up the hill on the Flying Point road, where it has been remodeled into a dwelling.
The last steamer to ply between Mast Landing and Port- land was the Harraseeket and the fare was fifty cents. There were two stores then, but both buildings have disappeared.
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One, run by Joel Kelsey, was in front of the square house on the right after crossing the bridge to go up the hill toward Fly- ing Point. This building was moved in back of the house when it had ceased to be used as a store. The other store was on the opposite side of the road across the bridge and stood beside the boardinghouse. This was torn down and later the stable which was beside it next to the bridge, was burned. Daniel Curtis was the storekeeper.
At one time large quantities of firewood were shipped from Mast Landing and each spring the flats, through which the creeks wind, would be piled high with cordwood. This wood went to the cities and to brickyards and lime kilns.
The coming of the railroad left Mast Landing at one side of the beaten path. For a time corn was shipped by rail to Free- port village, carted to Mast Landing, ground into meal, shipped to Portland by water and there sold. With the burning of the mill, industry died and now Mast Landing, after two centuries, is merely a collection of a dozen or more houses, some of them very old.
At the end of a picturesquely curving wood road, about a mile from Mast Landing one comes upon the Frank Pettengill house. For generations it has stood in its beautiful setting of trees and flowering shrubs, facing the waters of a tidal river. It is of the old leanto type, with wide chimney and had at one time mitred clapboards. The kitchen is particularly interest- ing. It has a large fireplace, with a long, high mantel and the wall in which it is set runs in a fine curving line, similar to that of a bay window. And there is an interesting bit about this room's history. Tradition hands down that this house was once a trading post, at which time the kitchen was used as the store or trading room. In those days the windows of this room, facing north, were set in the wall at the eye level of a person outside the house. This window arrangement was plainly a precaution taken in dealing with Indians or others with whom it was well to take a care. There are fireplaces in each downstairs room and on one windowsill is the quaint old sun mark, deeply incised.
Set high above the Harraseeket River, at an earlier period one of the everyday water roads of commerce, this house was admirably adapted to the purpose of trading. As the earliest houses in Freeport were built along the shore, or as in this case,
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on an estuary, this fact together with the obvious age of the dwelling, places it as being probably the oldest house built in town and on its original site.
About 1747 Ambrose Talbot bought one hundred and fifty acres at Strout's Point of Jeremiah Powell, upon which the Tal- bot family still lives. He was apparently the original Ambrose Talbot and was a Revolutionary soldier, also the first deacon of the First Church when Freeport became a town in 1789. There were three contemporary Ambrose Talbots in Free- port and they were distinguished from one another by means of numbers, the next in age to the original Ambrose being known as Ambrose Second and so on. The original Ambrose had a son, Samuel, who also served in the Continental Army along with Joseph, his brother. Some years later another son, Simeon was in the War of 1812. Other settlers were attracted to this vicinity and by degrees a village formed which has played an important part in Freeport's history.
Early known as Strout's Point, South Freeport, because of its favorable position near the mouth of the Harraseeket, became a centre of the fishing industry when lumber, potash, pitch, furs and fish were the chief products of the region now in- cluded in the State of Maine. The peak of this activity was reached a few years after the War of 1812, when as many as twelve thousand barrels of mackerel were packed in a year. With the decline in the fishing industry the attention of the in- habitants turned to the more stable and more remunerative occupation of shipbuilding. Enos Soule opened a yard which was later operated under the name of Soule Brothers, and which ceased operations in the seventies. Captain Enoch Tal- bot was another early builder at South Freeport and in the 1860's Charles Bliss & Company launched fishing and larger craft.
One authority states that business was at such a low ebb in 1845 that but eight families were living in what is now the vil- lage of South Freeport. These were those of Captain Jacob Lincoln, Jonathan Stockbridge, Washington Soule, Captain Ambrose Talbot, Floyd Talbot, Alfred Waite and C. Paine. When shipbuilding was at its peak there were sixty dwellings, a church, graded school, store and post office.
A half-mile north of the village was another large yard es-
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tablished in 1853 by Cushing and Means. The title of the firm at the height of its activities was Briggs and Cushing, but is locally remembered as Cushing-Briggs. These firms built a considerable number of large craft and brought a sizeable amount of business to the surrounding country. It is said that on Saturday night the teams taking the carpenters and other workers home in the direction of Freeport village formed a line a half-mile in length. The last ship was built in this yard in 1880.
Several attempts were made to revive the fishing industry. One was by Alfred Soule and Samuel Bliss, who had a store and did packing as well. Another was by William K. Lewis and Brother, who for several years after 1876 did an extensive busi- ness with a total capacity of ten thousand cans per day.
The World War revived wooden shipbuilding and the Free- port Shipbuilding Company, operating in the old Soule Broth- ers yard, launched two of the Ferris Type steamers, which were produced in large numbers throughout the country. Another was barely begun when the end of the war came and it was therefore modified to become a five-masted schooner. After peace was established six of the swift little vessels known as "rum chasers," designed to capture liquor smugglers, were built under contract and then several fishing boats. Since then the yards have been entirely unused.
South Freeport serves as the land port of Bustin's Island, for launches make regular trips between the two points in order that cars of the cottagers may be left there. The store is con- ducted by E. S. Butler and also the post office, which latter re- ceives mail from the office at Freeport Square.
Before the coming of the railroad, Porter's Landing was the port for Freeport village, and the towns inland as far as Lew- iston. The west branch of the Harraseeket, upon which it is located, was navigable for larger craft than the depth of the east branch permits, so this naturally followed. As early as 1770 a road twenty rods wide was laid out through this village, connecting it with the Square. The present name is due to the early activities of Seward Porter and later those of his sons, of whom he had eleven. The Porters came here about 1782 and operated a salt works as early as 1793, evaporating sea water to obtain salt.
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There was an early tidemill here but the greatest industry was shipbuilding. It was here in 1812 that Master James Brewer built the famous privateer Dash for Seward and Samuel Porter, who were then in business in Portland - a ship which by her lucky ventures saved the owners from bankruptcy and then later sailed away and was never heard from again. Three of the Porters, John, Jeremiah and Ebenezer were lost with her. The Porters used the shipyards of Porter's Landing for a
Bridge at Porter's Landing
period of twenty-five years or more. Beside the Dash, the only craft of that period whose names we can give are the Tippoo Sahib, America and the schooner Morris. The Tippoo Sahib was built in 1814 and named for the Sultan of Mysore, an Indian potentate whose defiance of the British made him a popular hero with Americans who were then at war with the Empire. Built for a privateer, the news of peace came before she was finished so she eventually became a merchantman.
After the War of 1812 Joseph Porter opened a store at the Landing and at the same time Edwin Merrill joined with him in building vessels. In the 1830's Rufus Soule acquired the Porter properties and began to build vessels. He and his son, Rufus Cushing Soule, are said to have launched as many as one hundred craft, the last being the Daniel L. Choate, a ship of 1,150 tons and their largest.
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Three Centuries of Freeport, Maine
Packets plied between Porter's Landing and Boston be- fore the railroad came and much freight was also brought by water from Portland. Captain Robert Soule ran a packet from Portland to Porter's Landing. Fifty cents' freight was charged for a hogshead of molasses and the cost of hauling the hogs- head to Lisbon Falls by ox team, was one dollar. Molasses came from the West Indies and was considered a great luxury. A notable use of the syrup was to sweeten rum for the parson on his round of visits. It cost ten cents to freight a barrel of flour to Porter's Landing by sloop and twelve cents by ox team to Lisbon Falls. In 1839 the consumer paid fourteen dollars a barrel for the cheapest flour.
Captain Tristram Griffin, who died at Mast Landing in 1890, was one of the last of the shipmasters who landed freight on the wharves at Porter's Landing.
With the passing of shipbuilding little business came to Porter's Landing. A brickyard and later a crabmeat factory were the successors of the leading industry but now the wharves have rotted away and the ways where the ships were launched have disappeared.
On Torrey's Hill, until a few years ago was a small building which in Indian times served as a garrison house for that part of North Yarmouth. It is said to have been built by the Bartols. Instead of the usual board siding, hewn logs were set into the corner posts, forming a bulletproof structure. Like the other garrison house at Flying Point, there is no record that this was ever attacked or even threatened by the Indians. According to photographs made before it was taken down, the house ex- ternally was very like other story and a half houses in town. Lo- cally it was known as a blockhouse, but since a blockhouse is an entirely different structure, the building should properly be termed garrison house.
The Bartols, who built this garrison house, maintained a wharf near Porter's Landing, where a part of the freight brought by packets and coasters, was landed. It is also said that this family built vessels here, but if so there is no record of those built.
The northern part of Freeport is reached by the Ward Town road, which eventually passes the Quaker Church in South Durham. Ward Town is so called because of the number of
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Wards who at one time lived there. Nehemiah Ward was a tithing man and is said to have performed his duties conscien- tiously. On the Sabbath he was wont to place himself where he could comand a view of the road and it required a good excuse indeed for travelers to gain permission to pass his station.
The Free Will Baptist Church, now unused, is on this road and nearby, where the road crosses a brook are the foundations and dam of a one-time mill.
There are some old houses on this road but not all on their original sites. One of these, on the road's eastern side beyond the Church and set in a little from the highway, was moved by the Sylvesters from the Prout's Gore road and through their fields to its present situation. Another, with a high brick base- ment wall, was Captain Lambert's store, where for many years one could buy anything required by the farmer and his family. The first house on the right after leaving Route Number One, was the birthplace of Henry L. Koopman, which he himself said was built in 1799.
Other early families were the Townsends, Curtises and Syl- vesters. James Curtis was a house joiner here after the Revolu- tion. He was a representative to the General Court before Maine became a state and an officer in the militia.
The Gore, as it was called when the first surveys were made, is reached by a road branching on the right from the Ward Town road. A grant to Timothy Prout for services rendered as commissioner during the resettlement of 1722 included four hundred and sixty acres in the Gore and since that time the region has been known as Prout's Gore. At present one of the original Prout houses is still standing on the Gore road but not occupied. At one time this locality was well inhabited but people have moved away and the houses have either burned or fallen down.
A petition for a road from Prout's Gore was presented to the selectmen in 1799. There is no information available as to the action taken as a result, but we give the petition verbatim:
Freeport June 11, 1799
"We the subscribers as petitioners to the Select Men of the Town of Freeport, requiring you to call a meeting of the Inhabitants of said Town as soon as may be to see if
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the Town will Grant the Petitioners the road they have requested from Prout's Gore to the County Road near Mr. Ezra Curtis's as was run out by a Committee assigned for that purpose by said Town; to see what Terms the Town will grant said road upon as the Petitioners think it unreasonable the Town should not grant such a Public Road to the best Ship Channel in the Town of Freeport, and to see if the Town will give in exchange to Benjamin Parker Jr. Range A for the said Road from the head of his land to the salt water.
JOEL CHANDLER
JACOB JOHNSON
BENJAMIN WAITE THOMAS HASKELL
AMBROSE TALBOT JR JOSHUA MITCHELL
AMBROSE TALBOT 4TH AMOS CARVER
EZRA CURTIS
JOHN WEBSTER
WILLIAM SOULE
THOMAS SYLVESTER"
JOHN SOULE JR.
The Prout's Gore schoolhouse was sold recently and moved away from its former site. The building stood a few hundred yards from the Ward Town road on that leading to the Gore. The structure was old, but whether it was that erected in ac- cordance with the following petition, we do not know:
"We the signers hereof Request to be set off into a Sep- erate School District by our Selves for the purpose of hav- ing it convenient for our Children to atend instructions and to build us a School house by the old County Road where Range E intersects Sd. old County Road near Henchman Sylvester and in so doing you will oblige yours to serve
To the Select Men
James Curtis 1799"
From an old newspaper clipping we learn that Ezra Jordan came here in 1776 with wife Phoebe and two children, Abigail and William, and built a log cabin "on a hill a few steps from the present site" of the David Townsend farm. The cellar was a mere hollow in the ground and was plainly visible up to some years ago. These two children traversed two miles through the woods to attend school in a little hut near where Olman Collins lived in South Durham. Each day the pioneer mother, armed with a gun, accompanied her children to school, re-
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Old Neighborhoods
turning for them at night. Roads were unknown and the way was mapped out by the means of spotted (blazed) trees. The farmhouse was the fourth building to be erected on the premises and also the first house, since the coming of Ezra Jordan, the other three having been cabins.
Flying Point, because of its accessibility from the bay, was settled early in the history of old North Yarmouth, of which Freeport was then a part. Haines, Dummer and others are given credit for being the first settlers, but the Indian wars wiped out most of the traces of their occupation. Where they put up their log houses and what land they cleared we cannot say for the years of desolation before the resettlement, beginning in 1722, probably rotted their cabins, if they had not already been de- stroyed by Indians, and made young forests of their clearings.
There is on the farm which includes the tip of the Point a cellar which is said to have been under the house built by James Anderson, the first of the name to settle here. The house had a good foundation and was probably built to replace the log cabin, which usually was the settler's first home. There is a possibility that some of the material of this house entered into the construction of another Anderson house on the property which is known as the Frank True farm. This second house stood near the present dwelling, which was built about seventy years ago by Nathan True. The older house probably was the home of Jane Means Anderson, one of the survivors of the Massacre of 1756 and in it was born her grandson Master George Anderson, the noted shipbuilder.
A short distance east of the house is a creek and at the head of it was an old rotted pine stump, which could still be seen about forty-five years ago. It was all that remained of a huge tree which the Andersons would never allow to be cut down. This was due to a circumstance wherein the tree helped to save one of the early members of the family from death by the Indians. In remembrance of this fact it was allowed to stand, untouched by ax, until it fell of itself, long after the trees around it had all been cleared away. The story is that Anderson was at work on his land one day when he saw a party of Indians approach- ing. They had not seen him but he knew well that if he at- tempted flight he could not escape them. This great pine close at hand was a last desperate chance and he took it, drawing
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himself up and out of sight. At one point the branches grew thick and close together and into this natural cagelike forma- tion he crawled and was securely hidden. The Indians drew near and for some reason stayed quite some time near the tree and its fearful occupant. When Anderson was convinced that it was safe to descend he found he could not do so, he was much too tightly wedged into his refuge to leave it. There he stayed until an anxious searching party heard his calls and finally succeeded in extricating him.
Two or three hundred yards to the north of the True house still stands an old house, long occupied by the Wilbur family, which no doubt was contemporary and is one of the oldest houses on the Point. Somewhere in the vicinity there was an old blacksmith shop. The blackened interior timbers of the ell of the former Wilbur, now Barker house, may be the frame of this shop moved here when it had outgrown its usefulness else- where.
Further north and across the little brook on the righthand side was a brickyard last operated by a Mr. Collins. From this yard, as from similar ones in Freeport, bricks were shipped to Boston and other cities, so that no doubt the soil of Freeport forms the substantial part of some of the buildings now stand- ing there. The remains of a wharf are still visible. From this point the bricks were loaded and at high tide the schooner or sloop set sail with her cargo. It is said that the last cargo out never reached its destination. The small schooner on which it was loaded was sighted off Ipswich, Massachusetts, but never reached the Port of Boston. What happened can only be con- jectured.
Mr. Collins bought a great deal of wood to burn his bricks. One morning he was seen pounding the pile of wood which some one had delivered the day before, with a heavy maul. When asked what he was doing he replied that no one bought so much air as he did and that he was trying to settle the pile be- fore it was measured.
The Collins farm, now owned by Henry Nudd, was formerly owned by the Brewers, of whom Reuben Senior was contem- porary with Jacob Anderson. The present house, it is said, was moved here perhaps in Mr. Collins' time. The original house was no doubt the garrison house, to which the Means family
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Old Neighborhoods
should have gone to escape death. There is no record of the plan or materials of the garrison house, but if it was like that on Torrey's Hill it did not differ from other houses externally but was built with solid walls of hewn timber thick enough to stop the bullet of that day. There is no record or tradition that a hostile Indian ever fired at this stronghold but probably its presence averted some raids.
Beyond the Brewer property was that of Gideon Mann, who was evidently a two-fisted man, who had the reputation of kill- ing a wolf with his bare hands. He was an early settler and is said to have been a Scotch Irishman.
The Dummer grant and the Dummer claim included most of the territory now known as Flying Point, including the sec- tion toward Bunganuc. The Dummer claim extended from Pine Point to Tobacco Point and far enough inland to total somewhat less than one thousand acres. This land was ob- tained by Richard Dummer from George Cleaves. The names of the two Points are now Flying Point and Little Flying Point.
Richard Dummer came to this country in 1635 and is named by Cotton Mather in Magnalia Christi as one of the colonial magistrates. He was interested in sheep and cattle and appar- ently settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, for in May, 1635, he and "divers other gentlemen in England" were granted a farm "about the falls of Newbury" to keep "all the sheep and cattle that came over in the dutch ship this year." He was probably connected with the so-called "Company of Herdsmen," that projected a settlement at Sagadahoc, as the Kennebec was formerly termed. Perhaps Flying Point was considered as be- ing near enough to the Kennebec region called Sagadahoc to be a part of it. At any rate, Richard Dummer acquired land there and was reckoned an early inhabitant from 1660 to 1666, the reported year of his death.
His son, Jeremiah, was a goldsmith and silversmith, who had studied under Hull, the latter famous for minting the historic pine tree shillings for the Bay Colony. Jeremiah Dummer was a rich man and active in political life, so that when he claimed his father's land at Flying Point he received it without ques- tion. Then again he and some associates in 1685 were granted two hundred acres beyond Little Flying Point, toward Bun- ganuc, on which to settle a group driven from out the Ber-
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Three Centuries of Freeport, Maine
mudas. They were called Eleutherians, from the island which had been their home. We can think of few sharper contrasts than that between life on an island in the Bahama group and that which must be endured during a Maine winter. It is not sur- prising that after planting a few acres to corn the Eleutherians gave up and went to less wintry climates, leaving Dummer and his associates in possession of a grant which was joined to North Yarmouth.
Jeremiah Dummer's grandson, Jeremiah Dummer Powell, who inherited his estate, was a leader in North Yarmouth at the time of the Revolution. Practically all of the Flying Point section, therefore, was at some time the property of the Dum- mer family, as probably would be shown by the original deeds.
A peculiar feature of the road on Flying Point Neck seventy- five years ago was that at the boundary of each farm there was either a gate or a set of bars, to be opened before one could go on. Care must be observed to close what had been opened be- fore continuing, for otherwise livestock would stray. The ob- structions were there because the road, in spite of a hundred years of use, had not been accepted by the town and was main- tained by the owners of the properties to which they gave access.
Another feature was a box placed at the fork of the road from Freeport village. When any of the neighbors went to the vil- lage post office he gathered the mail belonging to those in the neighborhood and left it in this box. Each one was able to pick up his mail there, instead of waiting until he could get to the village. This was a crude beginning of rural delivery as it is car- ried on today.
As far as is known the earlier mills were located according to this old list:
"Tidal Sawmill, built on creek between Cousins River and Fogg's Point, 1753
Tide Mill at Porter's Landing
Tide Mill at Mast Landing
Sawmill at Mast Landing
Gristmill at mouth of Little River
Sawmill on Plummer property at North Freeport."
The title "Desert of Maine" for some years has been applied to an area in the southwestern part of Freeport, once known
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Old Neighborhoods
as the Tuttle farm. John Tuttle bought a tract of two hundred acres and farmed successfully for a number of years. At one time he specialized in potatoes, then seeding the ground to grass he turned his attention to sheep raising. Sheep eat grass down to the very roots and their sharp hoofs cut into the sod. It was due to this cause that a deposit of extremely fine sand was uncovered, which the wind drifted, forming dunes in some places and lowering the surface in others. By 1903, seventy-five acres were completely ruined for agriculture and since that date the area has been extended until high trees have been almost entirely buried and the effect is very like the great deserts of the world, although in miniature. About three hundred acres are now sanded and the area is increasing from year to year. The sand is remarkable for its fineness and presents veins of color, which make parts of the surface more attractive than that of the usual desert. Extremely fine sands have been found in other parts of the town, fifteen or twenty feet below the surface. These and the sands of the Desert of Maine may be part of some old lake bottom, long since buried and now coming to the surface through wind and erosions.
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