USA > Maine > Hancock County > Traditions and records of Southwest Harbor and Somesville, Mount Desert island, Maine > Part 2
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MOUNT DESERT ISLAND
not leave them where they were. Finally, after much discussion, La Saussaye elected to try to reach the French fishing grounds on the Banks of Newfoundland where he hoped to find the vessels of his countrymen who would take him to France. Accordingly, he and Father Masse and thirteen others were given a boat and provisions and, joined by the pilot and his boat, they rowed and sailed eastward until they met two French trading vessels on the southern coast of Nova Scotia and they were taken safely to St. Malo. Fathers Biard and Quentin, Capt. Fleury, the mate La Motte and the rest of the company with the Jonas, were taken to Virginia where Governor Dale wished to hang them all and probably would have done so but for Capt. Argall's interposition.
Argall is often described as a tyrannical monster and his attack on St. Sauveur is held up to horrified listeners as proof of his cruelty. The fact is, he was acting under orders from his superiors and according to his instructions it was his duty to expel all French invaders from English lands. His treatment of the prisoners is described by Biard as courteous and kindly.
Gilbert Du Thet reminds us of Gabriel in The Wandering Jew in his ardor for the Jesuit cause. He died the day after he was wounded and thus his prayers were granted, for Biard wrote that "on our departure from Honfleur he had raised his hands towards heaven, praying that he might return no more to France, but that he might die laboring for the salvation of souls and especially of the savages. He was buried the same day at the foot of a large cross which we had erected on our arrival."
And so the young French Brother and the companions who died with him have slept for more than three hundred years in unmarked graves on the grassy slope of Fernald Point.
The length of the stay of the Jesuit colony at Fernald Point cannot be accurately stated. Historians who have declared them to have lived there and worked among the Indians for some years are mistaken. According to Father Biard's Relation their stay could have been but a few weeks at the most.
On the arrival of the Treasurer at Jamestown, Governor Thomas Dale was filled with rage by the attempt of France to make a settlement on territory claimed by the English King and he directed Argall to return at once to the coast of Maine to
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TRADITIONS AND RECORDS
demolish the buildings which the French had begun and to "wipe off all stain of French intrusion from shores which King James claimed as his own."
This action was entirely unauthorized as the colony at Vir- ginia had no jurisdiction over any part of North America. But Argall acted under orders from Governor Dale and in the Treas- urer, and accompanied by the captured ship Jonas and another smaller vessel, he sailed north on what Parkman calls "his errand of havoc." Biard and Quentin embarked with him.
They landed at Mount Desert, destroyed every vestige of the work of the colonists, cut down the cross where Gilbert du Thet lay buried, sailed on to St. Croix island and demolished all that remained there, then went on to Port Royal where they destroyed all buildings, uprooted the crops, killed the animals, carried off even the locks and bolts of the doors and then set fire to the pitiful wreck of the settlement.
Thus perished the hopes and plans of Madame de Guerche- ville for the establishment of Jesuit dominion on the shores of our land. The only redress she obtained for the destruction of her property was the return to her of the Jonas. Her dream of colonization vanished but her name is forever linked with the history of Mount Desert Island.
The destruction of the Jesuit colony at Mount Desert was the first act of overt warfare in the long struggle between France and England for the control of North America.
For nearly a century and a half there was no attempt made at settling the rocky shores of Mount Desert Island. But the harbors were not entirely solitary and deserted during those years. Fishing vessels from several European countries had coasted every summer along the shores of New England soon after Columbus' discovery, if not before, and it is not likely that Southwest Harbor remained unknown to those sailors.
In several maps of the sixteenth century, New England and the neighboring states and provinces are set down as Terre des Bretons or Tierra de los Bretonnes and there is a tradition that Bretons and Basques visited the northern shores of America before the voyage of Columbus.
This is but tradition but Parkman records it and goes on to say, "There is some reason to believe that this fishery existed
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before the voyage of Cabot in 1497; there is strong evidence that it began as early as the year 1504; and it is well established that in 1517 fifty Castilian, French and Portuguese vessels were engaged in it at once; while in 1527, on the third of August, eleven sail of Norman, one of Breton and two of Portuguese fishermen were to be found in the Bay of St. John."
John Verranzo coasted the seaboard of Maine in 1524 ; Rober- val and Lescarbot with their French ships, Menendez of Spain, the ships of Francis Popham all cruised along Maine shores in the early part of the sixteenth century. In 1522, because of the heavy interest owned by Englishmen in American fisheries, we are told that several men-of-war were sent out to escort home the returning vessels. These ships may have lain at anchor under the shadow of Mount Desert hills.
In 1603 Capt. Martin Pring sailed along the Maine shores and historians relate that "during the next few years the coast of Maine and the shores of Massachusetts were carefully studied for sites for settlements.
Capt. Weymouth sailed along the New England coast in 1605 and captured three natives on the Maine shores which he sold or gave to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Capt. Hannam, sent to assist Capt. Henry Challons in investigating the New England shores with a view to colonization, took back to the Plymouth Company in England "the most exact discovery of that coast that ever came into their hands." It is not likely that these captains failed to visit and to map "one of the largest and best harbors north of Chesapeake Bay."
Brencourt, in August of 1611, had also made a careful study of the coast from St. Croix to the Kennebec. It is recorded that in 1607 there was an old fisherman of France named Savolet found at Nova Scotia, who claimed to have voyaged to these fishing grounds for forty-two consecutive years and in 1608 when Champlain arrived at Tadoussac he found Basque fisher- men and fur traders carrying on a brisk trade with the Indians. According to Father Biard more than five hundred French ves- sels sailed annually at this time (1614) for the whale and cod fishing and the fur trade."
With all these ships sailing up and down the New England coast it is more than reasonable to suppose that many of them
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TRADITIONS AND RECORDS
had found refuge from heavy seas in Southwest Harbor and that the place was well and widely known among seamen. Doubtless many times during that century and a half the eyes of French, Spanish, Portuguese and English sailors had looked upon the Mount Desert hills and the keels of their ships had ruffled the waters of Southwest Harbor.
French, Dutch, Portuguese and English coins have been fre- quently found at Manset, Seawall and at High Head at Center and their dates show that voyagers from these countries must have been here in the early fifteen hundreds.
"The gray and thunder-smitten pile That marks afar the Desert Isle"
can be seen sixty miles out to sea and is the first landmark along the Maine coast for mariners.
A "Guide to Mount Desert" published in Boston in 1878 says, "It was in Somes Sound that Henry Hudson anchored his little vessel, the Half Moon, in 1609 when on his way south to explore the Hudson River. . . Here Hudson delayed some time and cut a new foremast. Here also, to possess himself of the peltry of the savages, he attacked them with cannon and musketry. He probably landed not far from Fernald Point where the Jesuits attempted a colony in 1613. ... This is perhaps the first and last time that Dutch cannon ever resounded in Somes Sound where Argall's guns were heard four years later."
The records of the third voyage of Henry Hudson to America in 1609 when he discovered the Hudson River, tell us that he lost his foremast in a great gale, that on July fifteenth, when he came to the coast of the New World it was enveloped in a dense fog; that he "entered a deep bay" and there his men cut, made and stepped a new mast. While this was being done the ship lay at anchor. Geographers agree that this must have been on the coast of Maine and that "the deep bay" was Penobscot Bay.
There is a story told by one historian that the ship was anchored in Southwest Harbor while the repair work was being done and that the mast was cut on the shores of Somes Sound.
Hudson's own record says that after the ship was ready to sail, while Hudson was attending to the last details, some of his men took their boat and their guns and went to the settlement
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of the Indians, who had been friendly and generous with them, and "drove the savages from their houses and took the spoil of them as they would have done to us."
It would seem that if the Indians had been so cruelly treated in 1609 by the white men, they would not have welcomed the coming of the Jesuits to Fernald Point four years later. But there is the story and at this day it can neither be verified or disproved.
On Nov. 19, 1622, Robert Mansel, an Englishman, purchased the island of Mount Desert for 110 pounds ; but as he made no settlement or improvement he could not hold it. It was called Mount Mansel for some years.
In 1688, seventy odd years after the wrecking of the Jesuit settlement, private ownership began. Mount Desert Island and two square leagues upon the opposite mainland were granted as a feudal fief by the Goverment of Quebec and Louis XIV to Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a soldier of Acadia who became its Seigneur. He is recorded as living with his wife upon the eastern shores of Mount Desert Island on May 11, 1688. Later he became the founder of Detroit but he still signed himself in his later documents, in ancient feudal fashion, Seigneur des Monts deserts.
In 1713, Louis XIV defeated on the battlefields of Europe by the treaty of Utrecht, ceded all Acadia save only Cape Breton with the strong fortress of Louisberg to England. But the war- fare went on until the capture of Louisberg in 1758 and the fall of Quebec in 1759, which marked the final downfall of the French Dominion in America.
The Province of Massachusetts was granted that portion of Acadia which now forms part of Maine, extending to the Penob- scot River and including Mount Desert Island. Sir Francis Ber- nard, the last English Governor of Massachusetts before the breaking of the revolutionary storm, was instrumental in secur- ing this grant to Massachusetts and so, "for distinguished ser- vices" the Island of Mount Desert was awarded to him. James Truslow Adams writes of the land grants made at that time, "The speculators cared little for the bloodshed, riots and feuds arising from the overlapping of claims. Massachusetts under- took to make grants of doubtful validity for the towns in Maine,
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hoping to overcome the defective titles by enlisting the influence of Governor Bernard in having the grants validated by England, by granting him the island of Mount Desert."
King George III later confirmed the grant.
In September 1762, Governor Bernard sailed from Fort William in Boston Harbor with a considerable retinue, to view his new possession and kept a journal that may still be seen. He anchored in "the great harbor of Mount Desert" just off the pres- ent town of Southwest Harbor, which he laid out with his sur- veyors ; he explored the island, noting its fine timber, its water power for sawmills, its good harbors, its abundance of wild mea- dow grass "high as a man", and of "wild peas"-beach peas per- haps-for fodder, and its wealth of fish in the seas. He had himself rowed up Somes Sound, a glacial fiord which deeply penetrates the island, cutting its mountain range in two. This he called "the river", as in that region other inlets are called today, following the custom of the early French. And he visited Somes, the earliest settler from the Massachusetts shore, then building his log cabin at the Sound's head, where Somesville is today and walked around to see a beaver's dam nearby at whose "artificialness" he wondered.
At Southwest Harbor he laid his plans for a country place for himself and a future town. He had surveys of the island made under his oversight as Hutchinson's History of Massa- chusetts says he was a clever draughtsman and "a very ingenious architect." A few extracts from his journal show that he and his surveyors spent a busy week.
Oct. 2 We anchored about the middle of the Southwest Harbor about 5 p.m.
Oct. 3 After breakfast Went on shore at the head of the bay & went into the woods by a compass line for above half a mile ;
Oct. 4 We formed two sets of surveyors: I and Lieut. Miller took charge of the one & Mr. Jones, my surveyor had the care of the other. We begun at a point at the head of the S West Harbour, proceeded in different courses & surveyed that whole harbour except some part on the south side.
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Oct. 5 It rained all morning &c. We compared our observa- tions & protracted the surveys : in the afternoon we sur- veyed a Cove in the North River.
Oct. 6 I and Lt. Miller surveyed the remainder of the S. W. harbour & a considerable part of the great harbour. Mr. Jones traced and measured the path to the Bass Bay creek and found there many haycocks. In the after- noon we made some general observations and corrected our former surveys. . . .
Oct. 7 Took an observation of the sun rising. . .
Oct. 8 We observed sun rising ; but could not take his ampli- tude by reason of clouds near the horizon. Mr. Miller surveyed the Island on the East side of the river. Mr. Jones ran the base line of the intended Township. . . . In the afternoon Mr. Jones finished his line, & we gath- ered various plants in the Woods. In the evening I received several persons on board proposing to be set- tlers; and it was resolved to sail the next morning if the wind would permit.
Oct. 9 At half after 8 we weighed Anchor; stood for the sea in a course S S W
Two years later a more extensive survey was made. The plan of the proposed town drawn by the surveyor, Mr. John Jones of Dedham, Mass., with instructions in Governor Bernard's own handwriting is still existing. I copy as follows:
"From the great harbor commonly called Mount Desert Har- bor there is a passage to a smaller harbor called the Southwest Harbor. This is said to be half a mile over, and round this it is proposed to lay out a town. It is proposed that all lots shall face the bay ; that at the head of the bay facing the entrance, if the situation is good, shall be fixed a point, the centre of ten lots, from which on each side, the lots are to be measured; but this is not necessary if the ground don't favor it. I would have the lots five acres, that is two chains in front to the bay, and twenty-five deep, where the ground will allow it which must not be expected everywhere.
Between every ten lots into which parcels I would have the lots divided, should be a chain left for a road to (be) laid to the
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out-lots. Such of these passages as are not likely to be principal roads may hereafter be contracted, as I propose to do. I pro- pose at present to grant the lots by tens together, leaving an interval of ten lots ungranted between every two sets of ten lots granted. In one of these sets of reserved ten lots, I propose to set out lots for a Meeting house and School; and one of the pleasantest sets (in the centre or otherwise) I shall reserve for a settlement of my own. I would therefore, have a choice spot of about ten lots set out for myself, from whence the other lots may be reckoned in sets of tens, more or less, with a way between each lot. * It is my intention to see it (the place) if I can before the surveyor has finished the present work. My intention is to grant to any one of the sixty first settlers, a home lot of five acres and an outlying lot of fifteen ; and also if the quantity of salt meadow is answerable to the report of it, I will add to each settler five acres of salt meadow to lie in common and to be mowed only and not pastured unless it lies high enough to bear cattle without hurting the land. But this last I do not promise absolutely until I have had the salt meadow surveyed. Mr. Jones is desired to engage chainmen and assistants to be under his direction."
The plan of the proposed town is finely drawn and colored and the land laid out into lots extended from Southwest Harbor to Bass Harbor.
In a survey of the island made the year previous to the laying out of this town, the ruins of an ancient house are referred to as one of the landmarks near Southwest Harbor, showing that set- tlers had been here of whom history has given no account,
Governor Bernard fully intended to develop his Maine posses- sions and among his papers are two interesting documents. One dated September 8, 1764, is entitled "Proposals for settling a Colony of Germans at a Town in the island of Mountdesert." The other is "Proposals for a fishery at Mount Desert, October 5, 1764, and the paper goes on to state the conditions under which such a fishery will be established and managed.
When Bernard's grant was at last confirmed he had been out of the province for a year and seven months and was unable to promote further settlement or development of his Mount Desert
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lands. On April 30, 1779, an act was passed to confiscate the estates of "certain notorious conspirators against the government and Liberties of the inhabitants of the late Province, now State of Massachusetts Bay" and Bernard was deprived of his Ameri- can property. The confiscation included his stately mansion on the shore of Jamaica Pond as well as his far-off island on the coast of Maine and thus Mount Desert Island, once the property of the Crown of France, once that of England and twice granted privately, became again the property of Massachusetts.
On June 16, 1779, Sir Francis Bernard died at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. By his will, made September 23, 1778, before the confiscation act was passed, Sir Francis left to trustees for his son John, the island of Mount Desert, one half of which was restored to John Bernard by an act of the General Court, June 23, 1785, since he had "produced to this Court ample testi- mony of the uniform consistence and propriety of his political conduct previous to, during and since the late war, and whereas the estate of his father, Sir Francis Bernard, deceased, has been confiscated, to wit, the Island of Mt. Desert which was by the last will and testament of said deceased made previous to said confiscation, devised to said John."
On November 6, 1786, Marie Theresa de la Mothe Cadillac, or Marie de Cadillac as she signed herself, grand daughter of the Lord of Mount Desert, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, arrived in Boston from France to claim her inheritance. On July 6, 1787, by act of the General Court, an undivided half of Mount Desert was bestowed upon her and her husband, Bartolemy de Gregoire, thus recognizing a portion of the old French grant made to Cadillac by Louis XIV in 1689.
Mount Desert was held in common by John Bernard and Madame de Gregoire until, during that same year, upon peti- tion of Madame de Gregoire for a division, the General Court sent surveyors down from Boston and the island was divided; the western half, including the town of Southwest Harbor, which his father had laid out, being given to Bernard and the eastern half, where Cadillac had once lived and where Bar Harbor, Northeast and Seal Harbors are today being given to Marie de Cadillac and her husband, Bartolemy de Gregoire. They went
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to Hull's Cove, on Frenchman's Bay, and lived and died there, selling their lands piece by piece to settlers. It is from these two grants made by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to the grand daughter of Cadillac and to the son of Sir Francis Ber- nard, each holding originally by a royal grant, that the titles to the land on the island descend. The dividing line from the north shore of the island to the head of Somes Sound was called by the early settlers "The French line" and is mentioned in many old documents.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, Mount Desert Island remained remote and inaccessible to the travelling public except by sailing vessels. But as in all coast towns of that time, the men of the island sailed the world over and in many cases the wives and children of the captains sailed with them. To those at home came letters from ports on the other side of the globe and the names of foreign cities were household words. The streets of London, Havre, Calcutta and Shanghai were familiar to many of the youths of the island and often the cap- tain of a ship bound across the Atlantic was not yet out of his teens.
Little villages grew up along the shores, the great pines were cut and shipped away, town government was established, roads were built and schools opened and a bridge was built to connect the island with the mainland. Then came steamboats and the life was changed.
The Boston and Bangor Steamship Line was established; a local steamer connected Southwest Harbor with it through Egge- moggin Reach and Penobscot Bay from Rockland. Some artists in their summer wanderings came to Mount Desert and their paintings of its wild beauty attracted notice at the city exhibi- tions and brought other travellers to the region. Summer life at Mount Desert began.
Note-Much of the foregoing chapter is taken by permission from a pamphlet prepared by the National Park Service for Acadia National Park and several paragraphs from the writings of Dr. William Otis Sawtelle of Haverford, Pa. and Islesford, Maine.
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EARLY VISITORS AT MOUNT DESERT ISLAND
Among the meager records of Mount Desert Island before white men settled it is the story of the captivity and sufferings of one Thomas Cobbett, son of a minister by the same name at Ipswich, Massachusetts. During King Philip's war in 1675 and 1676 the frontier settlements were harried by the Indians, the settlers murdered or carried into captivity and their property destroyed. One Walter Gendal had been driven from his house and fled to Portsmouth where he induced some venturesome young men to accompany him in a "ketch" to see if some of his goods could not be rescued. So in October 1676 Gendal with James Fryer, son of the merchant who fitted out the sailing craft for the purpose and young Cobbett, who had been employed for some time by Mr. Fryer and who was a close friend of the son James, sailed away with six other young men on this errand.
While they lay at anchor at Richmond's Island the Indians surprised them, wounded young Fryer so severely that he died some time after, and the little band was finally forced to sur- render.
The Indians divided their prisoners and young Cobbett fell into the hands of "one of the ruggedest Fellows" who took him by devious ways to "an Island called Mount Desert where his Pateroon used to keep his Winter Station and to appoint his Hunting Voyages." There he continued nine weeks in a wretched condition, being forced to do hard labor and to receive but small allowance of food.
At the end of nine weeks the Indian wanted some powder and decided to send his captive to Castine to secure it. There the prisoner found an Indian who had been at his father's house in Ipswich and who assisted in getting him released. Two Eng- lish vessels were in the vicinity and the captain of one of them gave the Indians "a fine Coat" in ransom for the young man, who was returned to his home.
The next glimpse of Mount Desert on the pages of history is in the early spring of 1688 when Sir Edmund Andros made a journey from Boston eastward to inspect the frontiers. After working bloody havoc at some of the little coast settlements, he caused a census to be made of all the white people living between
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the St. Croix and the Penobscot rivers. The document is now in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society and is dated May 11, 1688. It reads as follows :
At Penobscot
St. Castine and Renne his servant.
At Agemogin Reach
Charles St. Robin's Son. La Flower and wife. St. Robin's daughter.
Pettit Pleasure by Mount Desert
Lowery, wife and child. Hind's wife and four children .- Eng- lish.
In Winskeage Bay on the eastern side of Mount Desert Cadolick and wife.
At Machias
Martell who pretends grant for the river from Quebeck. Jno. Bretoon, wife and child of Jersey
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