USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Wiscasset > Wiscasset in Pownalborough; a history of the shire town and the salient historical features of the territory between the Sheepscot and Kennebec rivers > Part 11
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Wiscasset in Pownalborough
determine, for another influence came in. On September 19, 1733, a num- ber of prominent Boston merchants entered into an "Obligation of the Prioters Lands at Wiscasset between each other to pay the charges of settle- ment." For several years these men had been operating under the name of the "Proprioters of Sheepsgott," but from the year 1733 they appear from their records to have spent their energies on Wiscasset. One or the other of these companies bought the rights of the Davie heirs, acquired by purchase from the Indians in 1663. From the records of the Wiscasset Company, still preserved, it is evident that much of the progress of the settlement was due to their efforts. A plan preserved among these records shows an attempt to lay out a town after the Boston of that day.
With the incorporation of the township of Pownalborough came a con- flict in authority. By including Wiscasset in the township, the General Court recognized the authority of the Kennebec Company; by its purchase of the Davie rights, the Wiscasset Company felt that its title was superior. In 1762, however, a compromise was effected, and Wiscasset continued to grow under the patronage of the Wiscasset Company. This growth was so much more rapid than that of the other parts of the wide township that as early as 1752 a petition was sent to the General Court asking for erection into a separate township. This was denied, however, as were two subsequent peti- tions to the same effect, and Wiscasset continued to be a part of Pownal- borough, although Dresden and Alna were set off in 1794. At last, in 1802, Wiscasset was made an independent township.
The claims of the Brown, Drowne, Tappan, Vaughan and Noble patents either overlapped or else entitled the claimants to the same concession. Squatters came and took possession of lands already held under valid titles by heirs of the original grantees, and as time went on claimants as well as complications multiplied.
Toppan's Right
The tract of land containing about four thousand acres, lying between Montsweag Great River, now called Back River, which extends from Berry Island to Oak Island, and Montsweag Little River, now called Montsweag Brook, was purchased by Rev. Christopher Toppan, of Newbury, Massa- chusetts, about 1734-1735, from the heirs of John Tucker and Thomas Clives who held it under Indian deeds, and it became a part of the vast territory known as Toppan's Right.
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Land Claims
In 1702, Toppan bought of Walter Phillips, all the right, title, claim, and interest which he held in these eastern lands. Toppan also purchased the rights of John Mason's heirs, the Gents and others so that he became the owner of nearly all of the present town of Newcastle. He purchased the large tract which Phillips owned to the eastward of Damariscotta Pond, as well as the land in the vicinity of Montsweag. It was the boundary of the last-named territory which caused so much controversy.
Toppan conveyed to his three daughters, September 16, 1746, three- fourths of all of his unsold lands at Sheepscot, Damariscotta, and Mont- sweag, as well as other places in Maine, together with all mills, buildings, etc., to be equally divided between them. The other fourth he conveyed to his son Bezaleel, as by deed of September II, 1746.
Rev. Christopher Toppan died July 23, 1747,1 just eight days before the massacre of Montsweag in which Ebenezer Hilton and two others, who had settled on Toppan's Right, were killed by the Indians.
The depositions taken in the case of Sarah Mighill vs John Baker and Abraham Nason-which suit was brought thirty-seven years after the death of her father-are in the archives of the Supreme Judicial Court at the Suffolk County court house in Boston.
1. From the graveyard in Newbury, Massachusetts. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, I, 72.
"Here lyes the Body of Rev. Christopher Toppan Master of Arts, fourth Pastor of the First Church in Newbury; a Gentleman of good Learning, conspicuous Piety and Virtue, shining both by his Doctrine and Life, skilled and greatly improved in the Practice of Physick and Surgery, who deceased, July 23, 1747, in the 76th year of his age, and the 5 1 st of his Pastoral Office."
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VIII Public Buildings The Old Pownalborough Court House
T THE oldest court house in Lincoln County is in Dresden, on the eastern
bank of the Kennebec River, north of the Richmond ferry. It is no longer used for a court house but is the residence of Oliver Canby, the great-great-grandson of Maj. Samuel Goodwin, the agent for the Plym- outh Company.
In 1749, Samuel Goodwin of Charlestown and others associated them- selves together as heirs and assigns of Antipas Boyes and his associates, to whom the Colony of New Plymouth had conveyed the Kennebec tract in 1661, after the patent had lain dormant for eighty-eight years. They formed in Boston a partnership for the development of these eastern lands, which company was known as the "Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase from the late Colony of New Plymouth," later abbreviated to the Plym- outh Company.
In 1752, after making a careful survey of their lands, these Proprietors induced a large number of people, some of whom were Germans, but mostly French Huguenots, to settle on a plantation between the Eastern and Kennebec Rivers which they called Frankfort.
They built a defensible house on the bank of the river, which they first called Fort Frankfort, but later Fort Shirley, a plan of which in the Massa- chusetts Historical Society shows that its parade ground was 200 feet square, providing ample space for the court house which was built there about a decade later.
When Lincoln County was organized with Pownalborough as its shire town, the judges called to the attention of the Proprietors the fact that there was no proper building in which to hold the courts, with the result that on April 13, 1761, the Proprietors voted to build a court house within the parade of Fort Shirley. It was agreed to erect a building nearly square, or 44 by 45 feet, three stories high, with one room on the second floor meas- uring 20 by 40 feet, to be fitted with boxes and benches and all things need- ful for a court chamber.1 The master builder was Gershom Flagg, the Bos- ton housewright and glazier.
1. The court room was the west room on the second floor.
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View of High Street showing the Congregational Church, Court House, and the house built by Judge Jeremiah Bailey before 1803.
ET
IFK
....
....
The Georgian Court House of Lincoln County, built in 1824.
Interior of the Lincoln County Court House. In point of continuous use this is the oldest court house in Maine.
Public Buildings
The record runs: "the easternmost block house of Fort Shirley with the land on which it stands, to be appropriated for a gaol, and the easterly part of the barrack in which Major Goodwin now lives to be appropriated for a house for the gaol-keeper." All of this was to be for the use of the county for twenty-one years.
The last block of Fort Shirley was taken down in 1817,2 but the old court house is intact, and in the wing now used as a kitchen can still be seen one of the original windows with its "twenty-four lights" and old mullions.
Many celebrated jurists and lawyers have been heard within its walls. Among the noted men who have attended court there either as attorneys or judges are John Adams, afterwards President of the United States, who at the recommendation of Mr. Oxenbridge Thacher was engaged to attend the Superior Court at Pownalborough, on the Kennebec River, in the spring of 1765. He came as attorney for the Plymouth Company. There came also Robert Treat Paine, a signer of the Declaration of Independence; Increase Sumner, and James Sullivan, governors of Massachusetts-the latter, who was the historian, argued his first case there; William Cushing, appointed attorney for the Proprietors in 1760, afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States; John Gardiner3 the son of the founder of the city of Gardiner, known as a law reformer. He was the last of all the pro- fession in this country who came into court in the black robe and flowing wig of an English barrister. There were Francis Dana, Nathan Cushing, Thomas Davis, David Sewall, William Lithgow, Jr., Theophilus Bradbury, Roland Cushing, James Bridge, and Robert Auchmuty, the younger, who was asso- ciated with John Adams, at the time of the Boston massacre, in the defence of Captain Preston. Tradition also connects Theophilus Parsons and Judge Wilde with the old court house. After 1794 trials were held at the meeting- house at Wiscasset.
The town records give the following information concerning the repre- sentative from Pownalborough to the first Continental Congress. On the twelfth day of May, 1775, the selectmen of Pownalborough issued their warrant "In his Majesty's Name"" requiring the inhabitants of said town to
2. "Thursday, June 17, 1817, Mr. Bugnon and Mr. Austin took down the old blockhouse with the assistance of James Johnson and John Place."-Taken from papers at the old court house.
3. John Gardiner was lost in a packet off Cape Ann, October 7, 1793. He had had a dream of being drowned on that trip, but treated such superstition with disdain.
4. That the warrant was issued in the name of George III, does not mean that the warrant was actually issued by the king himself.
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Wiscasset in Pownalborough
"assemble at the dwelling house of Samuel Goodwin, Esq., on the 18th day of May instant," and "choose one or more members to Represent the Town in a Provential Congress to be held at the Meeting House in Watertown on the 3 Ist of May instant." Also to determine what "sum be allowed each member for his services and expenses." The meeting was accordingly held and it was voted to send one member "to represent said town in the Proven- tial Congress to be holden at Watertown," and "that Timothy Langdon be the member for the purpose above," and that he be allowed six shillings per day for his services and expenses while sitting, and allowing him four days to go and four days to return."
At the town meeting held July 10, 1775, it was:
Voted to send one member to the Great & General Court to be holden at Water- town upon Wednesday the nineteenth of July instant.
I. Voted that Thos. Rice Esq. be the member for the above purpose.
2ndly. Voted that Capt. John Decker Be a committy man for this town for stationing the three companies of soldiers on the sea-coast which are to be Raised agreeable to the Result of Congress.
The Court Seal. A. D. 1762. Organization.
"Lincoln ss, Anno Regni Regis Georgii Tertii, Magna Britannia, Francia et Hibernia Primo" was the opening record of the first session; and the first order designated Jonathan Bowman, clerk.
At His Majesty's Court of General Sessions of the Peace held at Pown- alborough, within and for the county of Lincoln, on the first Tuesday of June, being the first day of the month A. D. 1762, it was further "Ordered (at said session) that a Seal presented by Samuel Denny Esqr. the Motto whereof being a Cup and three Mullets, being the lawful Coat of Arms of the said Denny's Family with said Denny's name at large in the Verge thereof, be accepted and that it be established to be the common Seal of this Court."5
The courts were held at Pownalborough from 1760 to 1794, but the most important cases were tried at Falmouth.
Waldoboro was a half-shire town from 1786 to 1800, when the courts were removed to Wiscasset.
Lincoln County had so increased in importance by 1786 that its matters 5. Taken from Lincoln County Probate Records (1760-1800), W. D. Patterson, 1895, p. XX.
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Public Buildings
of law required an enlargement of judicial facilities. By act of legislation, the courts for Lincoln County were extended and enlarged in jurisdiction, by sessions of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts directed to be holden at Pownalborough, this year, Chief Justice Cushing, Judges Sargent, Sewall and Sumner presiding.
At a meeting held September 3, 1789, it was voted to petition for a change of courts from the west parish to Wiscasset Point and Timothy Landgon, Francis Cook and Abiel Wood were chosen a committee for that purpose.®
This determination to change the place for holding the courts seems to have been prompted partly by the inaccessibility of the old court house and partly because of the limited quarters allotted to travelers. A petition from Meduncook and Muscongus plantations to the General Court in 1767, rep- resents that strangers "have to lodge on the floor or in barns, or sit up all night by the fire.""7
At one time the basement of the old Pownalborough court house was used as a place of public entertainment. A protest against such use is in the Massachusetts Archives, signed by attorneys, jurors and others, who request the removal of the courts if better conveniences for travelers were not provided.
The courts were moved to Wiscasset Point in 1794, and this old historic court house, as has been said, is now a dwelling-house.8
The Wooden Court House
Court sessions in Wiscasset were held in the meeting-house of the east parish and also in Wiscasset Hall on the Common. The first term of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court was held in Old York Village on the second Tuesday of August, 1820, in the court house which was built in 1808, on the village green. This building is still standing and is used as the York town hall. It is said to be the only court house in the state that was standing
6. Document No. 40565 of the court files of Suffolk County is a petition from Bristol that the court may be held at Wiscasset. Dated May 22, 1786.
7. Bangor Historical Magazine, ii: 158.
8. Among the many priceless treasures in the Dresden court house is a sewing table which once belonged to Betsy Ross. Tradition says that from it she took the scissors to cut the five-pointed star for the first American flag. The table is owned by Oliver Canby, her descendant and the present owner of the house.
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f
Wiscasset in Pownalborough
and used as such in 1820, and its exterior is probably the same as it was one hundred years ago.
The second term of court for the County of Lincoln was held at Wiscas- set, on the fourth Tuesday of September, 1820, in what was then known as the court house, a wooden building erected in 1793, and situated about twenty rods south of the present brick court house, on what is now a part of the Common.
The existing court house, built in 1824, is located on one of the old Sheepscot Farms granted by Governor Dongan, the absentee governor of Pemaquid, when that region was called the county of Cornwall and was an appendage of New York. This building of Georgian architecture is the old- est court house in the state now used as such.
The courts were moved to Wiscasset Point in 1794, and "from that day to the present time Wiscasset has been the seat of legal administration of Justice for the communities (excepting Sagadahoc) occupying the territories of the ancient Jurisdiction of Cornwall of the Ducal Province of Pemaquid and dependencies.""9
Contract for The Old Wooden Court House
Among the business papers of one of the merchants of Wiscasset two old contracts relating to the above building were found, one of which is here reproduced.
The building known at first as "Wiscasset Hall," stood at the lower end of the Common, between the residences of Christopher Averill and that of Abiel Wood.
When the present Lincoln County court house was completed, the old one was sold to Col. Ebenezer Hilton, moved to the lot next west of the Hilton house, and named Lincoln Hall.
Contract No. I
Memorandum of an agreement made between Alexander Troup, William Sellar and Robert Miller, all now of Pownalborough, house carpenters on the one part, and the proprietors of Wiscasset Hall by David Silvester, Peter Bryson and Silas Lee, their committee, on the other part witnesseth, that the said carpenters do promise and agree in consideration of the promises hereafter expressed to be performed by said committee,
9. R. K. Sewall in Lincoln County Probate Records (1895), p. XXI.
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Public Buildings
to do and perform, complete and finish off all the inside of said Wiscasset Hall, viz: To clapboard the said Hall complete-to make corner boards with rustic corners to said Hall-To make and put up sixteen windows in the lower story of said Hall containing each twenty-four squares of eight by ten glass-The window frames and sashes to be made in such a manner as that the sashes may slide up and down by pullies-To make two doors to said Hall,-To make a balcony in the southeast front of said Hall, said balcony to be surrounded by a complete balustrade, but not to be supported by pillars, and to make a glass door opening into said balcony, with architraves the same as in the windows, the upper part of said door to be made and fitted to receive glass, so as to ap- pear the same as a window-and the said carpenters do further promise and agree to make gutters for said Hall and put them up and make and finish the coving in the Tuscan order-To complete and finish off the cupola on the top of said Hall in a plain, neat and decent manner in the Tuscan order-All the above work to be done in a good and workmanlike manner, and to be finished completely in the Tuscan order-
And the said Proprietors by their said committee agree and promise to pay said car- penters the sum of Seventy-Two Pounds for all the above work twelve pounds of which they agree to pay as soon as the said windows are completely finished-and twelve pounds more as soon as the said work is finished-and the remainder of said sum within six months after all the said work is finished.
Said floors and coving and the outside of said upper story to be finished by the first day of July next and the residue of said work by the last day of August next-And said committee agree to furnish all the materials seasonably so as that said carpenters do not wait for anything.
Made and executed this twenty-fourth day of May Anno Domini 1793-N. B. It is understood by said parties that there are to be put water tables on said Hall by said carpenters and that they are included in this agreement.1º
DAVID SILVESTER (Seal)
PETER BRYSON (Seal)
ALEXANDER TROUP (Seal)
WILLIAM SELLAR (Seal)
ROBERT MILLAR (Seal)
Signed in the presence of
WILLIAM PIKE JESSE PAGE
And at the bottom of the page we find the following bill and receipt- from the figuring of which we judge that the contractors received sixteen shillings more than was their due-but it is too late to correct the error:
10. As no picture of this building appears to have been preserved, the above description is all we have of Wiscasset's first court house. It was this former court house which burned November 28, 1 846.
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Wiscasset in Pownalborough
Extra work for door £4: 0:0
Boarding windows 6
Law expenses
3:10: 6
7:16 :6
Contract
72: 0:0
£80:12:6
Rec'd the above sum of Abiel Wood in amt.
ALEXANDER TROUP (Seal)
ROBT MILLAR (Seal)
The Lincoln County Court House
Upon the dismemberment of ancient Pownalborough by setting off the towns of Dresden and New Milford, now Alna, in 1794, it became neces- sary that here at Wiscasset Point a place should be provided for holding the courts. At the centennial celebration of the Congregational Church in 1873, Prof. Alpheus Packard, of Bowdoin College, stated that in 1786 a vote was passed to offer the use of the meeting-house to the Supreme Judicial Court and other courts of the county; that this license of course ceased when a court house was built; but that on occasion of the capital trial for the mur- der of Captain McMaster the throng eager to be present was such that the meeting-house was opened for the emergency; and that he recollected the arrangement of the large elders' pew for the judges, the deacons' seat for the clerk, the attorney-general and the counsel for defence and the jury being disposed in the adjacent aisles and pews, while the prisoner, in chains, was seated in the broad aisle. And so one may be led to the conclusion that until a building could be especially prepared for the holding of the courts here the old First Parish meeting-house was used for that purpose.11 Begin- ning with the time of the division of Pownalborough, the terms of the Supreme Judicial Court for the counties of Lincoln, Hancock, and Wash- ington, which had previously been held at Pownalborough court house, were ordered to be held alternately at Pownalborough, meaning Wiscasset, and Hallowell. The July, 1794, term was held at Hallowell, now Augusta, in the meeting-house then standing in what has later been known as Market
II. See the County of Lincoln. Address delivered at the centennial celebration of the one hun- dredth anniversary of the Lincoln County court house, at Wiscasset, Maine, July 23, 1924. Services under the auspices of the Lincoln County Bar Association. Taken from the address of W. D. Patterson.
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Public Buildings
Square, the court house not being sufficiently large. That term was held by Judges Paine, Sumner and Dawes, who as we learn from Judge Weston's centennial oration: "were accompanied by some of the most distinguished jurists of the day; among whom, besides Sullivan the Attorney General, were Theophilus Parsons and Nathan Dane, attended by three sheriffs, in their cocked hats, girt with swords, each with his long white staff of office."
There being no bell to summon court, the judges "moved by beat of drum, in a procession not a little imposing, preceded by their officers, and followed by the bar." And we may be sure that here in Wiscasset like for- malities were scrupulously observed.
Then there stood at the lower end of the Common a two-story frame building having a cupola which was known as Wiscasset Hall, which build- ing was pursuant to a contract made between Abiel Wood, the owner, and the county acting through its committee consisting of Thomas Rice, Orchard Cook, and Mark Langdon Hill. It was remodeled so as to provide jury rooms and a court room that was about 39 feet in length, all very plainly finished, lathed and plastered, for which the county agreed to pay $1,666.67 with interest after the executing of "a good and warrantie deed" in one year from the first Monday in June, 1798, the date fixed for completion. The building so acquired by the county had no accommodation for county offices nor places for deposit of records and files; and it does not appear where such were then kept, although certain statements have been encountered from which it is inferred that the register of deeds, Dr. Thomas Rice, kept all the records of that office at his dwelling-house, now standing on the State Highway near Lee Street. The volumes of records of deeds then num- bered forty; those in the probate office, eight; and those in the custody of the clerk of the courts, fifteen. Ten years later the Lincoln and Kennebec bank erected its two-story brick building which still stands near the site of the old court house, and soon afterwards quarters were secured therein for the county offices.
It will be remembered that in 1799 the northern part of our county was erected into a new county by the name of Kennebec. From the records of the town of Wiscasset it is learned that very soon after the admission of Maine as one of the states of the Union there was a suggestion that another new county be cut from Lincoln County, vigorous opposition to which arose here in Wiscasset where the matter became the subject of consideration by
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Wiscasset in Pownalborough
the inhabitants at regular and special meetings held in the years 1821, 1822, and 1823.
The subject of the new court house at Wiscasset had even earlier been considered, for at the January, 1818, term of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas for the Second Eastern District for Sessions business-as was then the somewhat peculiar custom-held at Warren, then a half-shire town, there were present the Hon. Nathan Weston, Jr., chief justice, Josiah Stebbins and Ebenezer Thatcher, associate justices, and James Rogers and James W. Head, sessions justices, and Judge Thatcher, Hon. Jeremiah Bailey and Nathaniel Coffin, Esq., were appointed a committee to consider the expedi- ency of repairing the court house at Wiscasset and of erecting a fire-proof building for county offices separate therefrom, or the expediency of build- ing a new court house in which fire-proof offices should be joined. It was the opinion of the committee that the county should erect a fire-proof brick building 44 feet long, 40 feet wide and 30 feet high. The matter came under the attention of the court having jurisdiction at various times; it being reported in September, 1822, that: the building occupied for public offices was not a fire-proof building within the intendment of the law; that the court house in Wiscasset was not worth repairing and "that whenever a fire-proof building is erected for the public offices it will be most economical as well as most commodious to erect a new Court House in connection there- with"; and at the January, 1823, term by a memorial from the inhabitants of Wiscasset. At the May, 1823, term of the Court of Sessions (Sessions business having again devolved solely upon that court) Nathaniel Coffin, Esq.12 was appointed an agent to build a court house in Wiscasset upon the place and according to the general plan to be designated by a committee of that court consisting of Hon. Ebenezer Clap of Bath, John Dole, Esq., of Alna, and Col. Isaac G. Reed, of Waldoborough. The town of Wiscasset, alert to secure the building of the new court house on a desirable location and where it would be an ornament to the town, at a meeting held May 17, 1823, unanimously resolved to voluntarily offer to the county such lot of land as the committee might select and immediately opened a subscription for that purpose, which offer was gratefully acknowledged by the committee of the court.
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