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 19
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As this was not the main highway between Frankfort plantation and the Point, no mention has been found of it in the records, but family tradition supplies the information that persons traveling on horseback or by chaise patronized this hostelry which was in charge of Wiscasset's early settlers.
Grover's Tavern
This ancient hostelry was built between the years 1768 and 1789. It is situated on the old Bath road very near the line which divides the township
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of Wiscasset from that of Woolwich, and is in the latter town. It was the first stop of the stage-coach on its journey eastward from Bath after it had crossed the Kennebec at Day's ferry, where on the Woolwich shore stood the ordinary of Robert White, well known for its drinks and drills.
Benjamin Grover, the owner of the tavern bearing his name, married a few years before July 3, 1789, Lydia --- , for on that date Lydia Grover and their little son John were drowned in Nequasset Pond. Benjamin Grover married secondly Joan Trott, by whom he had several children. He died June 6, 1833, aged sixty-five years.
The old toddy room was on the north side of the tavern, but the tap- room was nearer to the road and under the sharply slanting roof. This pub- lic house was famous for its flip, that favorite drink of the tavern-haunters -a decoction of beer, rum, and sugar. A pewter mug was filled about two- thirds full of beer and then slightly sweetened with dried pumpkin, molas- ses, or brown sugar and a noggin of Jamaica rum added. Into this mixture was plunged a piping hot ale mull which hissed and sputtered as a foaming, bubbling collar rose to the top of the cup, while the red hot iron gave to the brew the burnt flavor so highly prized by epicures of food cooked over glowing wood ashes and of the subtle taste of Scotch.
It was to Grover's Tavern that the nine Esquimaux of the Polaris drift party were brought from Washington, D. C., after their stupendous jour- ney of six months on an ice-floe. From preference they lived in the cellar and many neighbors remember them scuttling in and out of the bulk-head, the entrance to their abode. These children of the snow land chose the con- gested quarters of the underground room as being cooler and damper than the space above stairs, and resembling more closely their Greenland igloos.
Although the Polaris expedition was one of the epics of Arctic history in the last century, the story today is little known save by a few persons still living who recall that Thursday afternoon, June 12, 1873, when a crowd of townspeople gathered at the new railroad station to witness the arrival of the Esquimaux, who were brought to this town by Commander D. G. McRitchie.
In 1860-1862 Capt. Charles Francis Hall determined to make a voyage to the Far North, with the avowed purpose of finding, if possible, traces, if not survivors, of the lost expedition of 1845, undertaken by Sir John Franklin, whose final and fatal voyage had completed the discovery of the
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Northwest Passage, just before he himself perished in the Arctic. It was anxiety concerning their fate which aroused in Charles Francis Hall that unconquerable urge for Arctic exploration which ceased only with his life.
It was on his first Arctic expedition that Captain Hall found on the island of Kimicksuic, Baffin Land, the two faithful Esquimaux, Joe Ebierbing and his wife Tookoolito (Hannah) who proved themselves indispensable to Hall in this and his subsequent undertakings. They were with Captain Hall when he set sail on his third venture, which he stated "would be to the northern axis of the great globe," and for which President Grant approved of an appropriation of $ 50,000.
With Joe and Hannah was their adopted daughter, Ishlartoo, called Punna, the Innuit word for girl. When Hannah's baby girl, Tukeliketa (little butterfly) died, Captain Hall, to comfort the sorrowing mother gave her Punna, whom he had bought from her natural parents for a snow sledge, and this adopted child was tenderly cherished by the bereaved parents.
The other family were Greenland Esquimaux and came from Pröven, fifty miles south of Upernavik, where they joined the Polaris. They were Hans Hendrick, sometimes called Christian, his wife, Merkut, and three children, Augustina, Tobias and Succi. Hans had contracted to serve as dog driver at a salary of fifty Danish dollars per month. When he and his fam- ily boarded the ship their luggage consisted of bags, boxes, skins, cooking utensils, tools, implements of the chase and three puppies whose eyes were not yet open. As if these accessories were not enough on shipboard where space was so essential, a second son was born to Merkut, August 12, 1872, in latitude 80° 40' North-the very day that the Polaris started southward. This infant, though born one hundred miles further north than any habita- tion of man then known to exist, having been born under the American flag, was legally a citizen of the United States. By popular acclamation he was christened Charles Polaris, combining the name of the commander with that of his vessel. These were the nine Esquimaux who came to Wiscasset to escape the intense heat of a Washington summer. During their sojourn in the United States they were regarded as wards of the government, and while in Maine were quartered at Grover's Tavern.
On his last voyage Captain Hall sailed from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in July, 1871, calling in turn at New London (the home of his sailing master, Sidney O. Buddington), St. John, Newfoundland, Holsteinburg, Disco,
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Upernavik and Tessuissak, thence generally northward in an unrivalled run through an almost iceless sea to the highest latitude reached by the Polaris, 82° 16' North, which point they made August thirtieth, less than two months after their departure from Brooklyn. The progress made during the last eighteen hours was determined by dead reckoning.
Arriving at this latitude they came across a new strait or channel, which they were the first to discover, and which Captain Hall named "Robeson Strait" in honor of the then Secretary of the Navy. Here they halted, fur- ther progress being prevented by heavy floating ice. Drifting southward to latitude 81° 38' North, the Polaris went into winter quarters at Providence berg; but before this Captain Hall had died.
Early in October, Hall, with three companions, Chester the mate, Joe and Hans, had set out on a sledge journey, and it was during this trip, Oc- tober twenty-first, that he wrote his last dispatch to the Secretary of the Navy, the original draft of which was found in his writing desk on its exam- ination in Washington, after it had been carefully delivered to the Secretary of the Navy by Joe, its faithful custodian from the time it was picked up on the ice, after the separation of the rescued party from the ship, until its transfer to the hands of the proper person.
Almost immediately on his return to the Polaris after the sledge journey, Captain Hall was taken violently ill. He suffered from paralysis and de- lirium in which he had an obsession that the coffee, the only nourishment he had taken since his return, was poisoned. As he was in the best of health during the entire sledge trip, it was assumed that the sudden change of tem- perature from 15° to 20° below zero across the wind-swept wastes of open country to the stuffy quarters of the ship's cabin, a space of approximately 8 by 15 feet in which seven persons slept at a temperature of 70° Fahren- heit, was his undoing. He partly recovered from his first attack, but on the night of November 8, 1871, he suffered a relapse and died before morning. Three days later they buried their dead leader. His shroud was the flag of his country; his tomb, the great white north.
The command then passed to the sailing master, Captain Buddington, who was opposed to working the Polaris further north and his decision was irrevocable, so they started directly homeward.
About a fortnight after the death of Captain Hall, a violent gale swept down from the northeast, the force of which caused the Polaris to drag her anchors, thereby driving her against the ice island at the end of the cove.
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To this she was made fast and so remained until the following June. Dur- ing the winter the pack ice drove her higher up the berg, where her bow stayed fixed, resting upon the ice bed, while her stern swung up and down with the rising and falling tides. The strong stem piece was strained and some of her planking started, so that when she at last settled into the water she was leaking. Early in the month Captain Buddington ordered a boat expedition, under Chester and Tyson, to go up the shore as far as possible, to reconnoitre. One boat was crushed in the ice, but the men remained until recalled by the captain, about the middle of July, when they made their way back overland leaving the boats behind them.
When the ice broke a little, the Polaris freed herself and steamed cau- tiously southward, being constantly beset by icebergs. She was made fast to a huge floe and drifted south through Smith's Sound until they approached Northumberland Island. In October a fierce gale caught them, throwing the Polaris on her beam ends upon an ice-floe; so great was their peril that pro- visions were brought on deck in readiness to be thrown on the ice should it become necessary to abandon the vessel. Along with the provisions were clothing, papers, records, instruments, guns, ammunition, boats and tents for those who might decide that an ice-floe presented a safer prospect than a leaky vessel.
On October 15, 1872, the Polaris ran among icebergs where the ice pack jammed her with such force that she was thrown on her port side and Tyson says: "her timbers cracked with a loud report, and her sides seemed to be breaking in; a piece of ice being reported as actually driven through." It was felt that the time had come to abandon the ship and take refuge on the ice. Provisions and stores were ordered to be thrown out on the floe, to- gether with the records of the expedition, two boats and a scow, skins and clothing. Nineteen persons, including all of the Esquimaux, among them the baby of two months, were on the ice-floe when the Polaris, in the shift- ing ice and darkness, slipped her cables, and was carried away with fourteen men aboard. The great mass on which the ship rested crashed off and she took to the water drifting rapidly northward.
Those on the ice-floe having provisions sufficient for present necessity, also two boats, two kayaks, a canvas tent and some nautical instruments, not being far from land, did not at first feel undue apprehension. At midnight came a blinding snowstorm, and the party huddled together under some musk-ox skins; but when the next day dawned and the Polaris hove in sight
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under full sail and steam, but helpless against the driving ice, passed off to the eastward of them, and disappeared, then they knew that their only chance of rescue had gone with her. In that desolate world of frozen waters, with six months of Arctic night before them they were adrift and alone.
They had enough food for one month; Captain Tyson, who had assumed command of the Polaris drift party, gave orders that it must be made to last for five months. They had no shelter so they built snow huts. Thus began the most extraordinary experience of all of the unique adventures in Arctic history, that of the Polaris drift, for these nineteen souls with scanty ra- tions whose helpless voyage begun in latitude 77° 35' North had drifted to 53° 35' before they were rescued on April 30, 1873.
John Heron, the steward, kept a diary in which appears the following paragraph :
Christmas Day. This is a day of jubilee at home, and certainly here for us, for be- side the approaching daylight we have quite a feast today. One ounce of bread extra per man, which made our soup for breakfast a little thicker than for dinner. We had soup made from a pound of seal blood, which we saved for a month; a two-pound can of sausage meat, the last of our canned meat; a few ounces of seal, which with the blood, all cut up fine; the last of our can of apples which we saved also for Christmas. The whole was boiled to a thick soup, which I think was the sweetest meal I ever ate. This with half a pound of ham and two ounces of bread, gave us our Christmas dinner. Then in the evening we had our usual thin soup.
In Tyson's journal in mid-winter is this entry:
Jan. 29. Foggy with light east wind. The Esquimaux off as usual on the hunt. They do not stop for fog, cold or wind. They understand the situation they are in, and consequently they are the only ones here I can in any measure rely on. Were it not for "Little Joe" Esquimau though he be, many, if not all of this party would have perished before now. He has built our snow huts and hunted constantly for us; and the seals he has captured have furnished us not only with fresh meat so essential to our position, but without the oil from the blubber, we could have neither warmed our food nor had any means of melting ice for drink. We survive through God's mercy and Joe's ability as a hunter.
We are all well but one, Han's child Tobias. His stomach is disordered and very much swollen; he cannot eat the pemmican so he has to live on dry bread, as we have nothing else to give him.
The mercury is still frozen. The men are seldom outside of their hut now.
And hardest of all to hear was the cry of the hungry children for whom there was no adequate food. But the men sustained the party with fortitude
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well nigh superhuman and the women broke the awful silence with song. All through that dark and dreary winter those nineteen, men, women and children, huddled together under skins on an ice-floe which they estimated to be only four or five miles in circumference, and in thickness about twenty- five feet. With spring came the horror of the breaking up of the ice-floe. The part on which they remained had become so reduced in size that a walk of twenty-five paces from the snow huts which they had built upon it, brought them to its edge. Finally in desperation they launched their boat into the open water and pulled toward the west, hoping thereby to reach the coast.
Toward the end of April, as appears from the testimony of Tyson, they were reduced to two biscuits a day, ten to the pound, and a little pemmican. On the twenty-second they had nothing left but the kayak and some dried seal skins. On that day Tyson ate a piece of dried sealskin and his testimony stated that but for the coming of a bear he should have eaten the kayak next day. A hungry bear seems to have scented them and was discovered making his way toward them. Tyson says:
We saw him at a distance and all hands lay down upon the ice, and the bear, sup- posing we were seals, came close by. We had no guns but those of Hans and Joe and they both shot him. We bound a line to him and hauled him on the ice, and cut him up, having a hearty meal. We ate the meat raw.
In April came great gales from the south which rent the ice like paper. On the night of April fifteenth a hurricane bore down upon them at nine o'clock and a heavy sea boomed across the floe, carrying away everything that was loose. The night was one of terror seldom if ever endured by any other group of ice drifters. Tyson's great floe after hours of crunching against large bergs suddenly began to break up. On the twenty-eighth day of that month they had floated down to leads of open water and were in their boat. In the afternoon they saw a sail, approached it, and fancied they were saved, but lost it again in the fog. All night they watched with life and death in the balance. Could the sail which they had seen be naught but arctic phantasmagoria, a mirage to torture them? When daylight came they set their colors, a black blanket hoisted on two oars, rowed as madmen, shouted, prayed, and wept. The steamer never saw them and was slowly lost to view. As she disappeared beyond the horizon they were seized for the first time with despair. On the third morning, when the fog lifted about five o'clock,
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a tiny speck was revealed to the Tigress lying three miles away. The Polaris drift party fired guns and set up colors on their oars. Those aboard the Tigress heard nothing but they saw the signals! Hans launched the kayak and paddled alongside the Tigress, and that miraculous vigil of the nineteen heroic souls had ended in rescue!
They were taken to St. John, Newfoundland, by Captain Bartlett, from which place the U. S. Steamship Frolic (incongruous name for a rescue ship) which had been sent by our government, took them all to Washington, where they arrived June 5, 1873.
The information brought by the Polaris drift party concerning the situa- tion of the Polaris, when last seen by them, influenced the Navy Depart- ment to take prompt measures for the rescue of her officers and crew. Two vessels were dispatched, the sealing vessel Tigress which had picked up the Tyson group and the U. S. steamer Juniata. The Tigress reached Upernavik, where Hans and his family who had taken this opportunity to return home, disembarked. Many years after their homecoming, Hans and Merkut had another daughter, We-we, who, in 1913, kept house and did sempstress work for the MacMillan party then wintering in the sub-Arctic.
After the separation from Tyson and his companions, the Polaris in a sinking condition was finally abandoned by Captain Buddington, and the remainder of the expedition wintered in Lifeboat Cove, where they built a timber house covered with sails. They were picked up by the Ravenscraig and were taken to Dundee, Scotland, from which port they were sent home.
The Tallapoosa with the Buddington survivors arrived at the Washington Navy Yard, October 8, 1873. An investigation was held but no one believed that Capt. Charles Francis Hall had died other than a natural death.
During their sojourn in Wiscasset, Hannah and Punna remained at Grover's Tavern for some time after the others had gone and the elder woman is remembered as she walked along the village street fanning her- self vigorously with a palm leaf fan, for to her the mild temperature of Maine represented tropical heat. With true Innuit thrift she refused to leave the tavern as long as there was food there to be eaten. Eventually they both went to New London, Connecticut, to be near to the Buddingtons who had always befriended them. There also lived Miss Sylvia Grinnell, whose name was given to Punna.
From Wiscasset Mrs. Buddington received this unique letter from Han- nah dated
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June 22, 1873
Sarah Mother Buddington:
I shall never forget you. I now try to write you. I am well; Joe well: Punna very sick for thirty-four days, a little better now. I like to see you once more. So good to me. I never have time to do anything. Hans four children here too. I got eight children; no go with them home. Oct. 15, 1872 we come home down on ice. Old Man come by and by; he well.
HANNAH LITO.
The old man refers to Captain Buddington, who at that time had not been heard from; and the eight children, the other Esquimaux, for whom she kept house previous to their departure on the Tigress.
Mother Buddington came to Wiscasset, where in a day or two of familiar conversation with her she gained more thorough information about the af- fairs of the Polaris, from the Esquimaux point at least, than a month of offi- cial investigation at Washington could have elicited.
In 1878, Joe sailed again for the Arctic, with a party sent out by Morison and Brown of New York, under command of Lieutenant Schwatka, to prosecute a further search for the Franklin records. By this time there were two graves in the Star Cemetery at Groton, Connecticut, and ere he left the country, Joe was seen to kneel at Hannah's grave and to a person who was near he said: "Hannah gone, Punna gone, me go now to King William's Land; if have to fight, me no care!" Joe Ebierbing never returned to the United States.
Grover's Tavern, which had stood for nearly a century and three-quar- ters, was burned in 1939.
Stacy's Tavern
Probably few persons now living in Wiscasset have heard of Nymphas Stacy who came to this town soon after the Revolutionary War ceased and erected near where the hotel now stands a strong-framed two-storied wood- en house, having one immense chimney near the center and on the north side a lean-to. That house faced toward Main Street, and had out-buildings and sheds adjoining on the Middle Street end.
Stacy was born at Cape Ann, and is believed to have been a son of Deacon Nymphas Stacy, who died in 1804 and whose gravestone is to be seen in the Ancient Cemetery.
After the passing of time, Nymphas Stacy, Jr., was licensed as an inn-
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holder, and his house, famed for trencher and tankard, became the favorite resort of all the Free Masons of Wiscasset and vicinity, although he, him- self, was not of that fraternity. It is thought that the patronage of the Lodge may be attributed to some connection between the Stacy and Silvester families, for David Silvester, who was for many years Master of the Lodge, had two sons who married into the Essex County Stacy family. But it may have been due to the superior merit of Stacy's grog and punch, for while the Lodge sometimes patronized other houses of public entertain- ment, they returned again and again to Stacy's hospitable inn and his punch bowl, and there is no doubt that many a long winter night, such as that of December 2, 1793, with its "12 Boles of punsh" was made merry with song and story around Stacy's glowing fire-place. And on other than ordinary occasions were Stacy's services required-on anniversaries of the Festival of St. John the Baptist, when Lincoln Lodge used to dine there.
Stacy prospered as an inn-holder and man of affairs. He established a tan yard on the Federal Street brook and near it built another house19 which was occupied by one of his sons, and more recently by the Deering and Quinnam families. He served both parish and town; on parish committees, and as selectman for several years. He died honored and respected in 18II, leaving three sons, Nymphas, William, and John, and his widow who lived to the advanced age of eighty-seven years died in 1842. Perhaps the most distinguished of his descendants was the late Charles C. Beaman, who was an able member of the law firm of Evarts, Choate & Beaman of New York City, and who was prominent in the civic life of that community.
William, one of the sons of Nymphas Stacy, was for many years engaged in trade at the southwest corner of Main and Water Streets, which corner still bears his name. Being prosperous in trade and successful in marine ven- tures, he built, in 1827, the brick house which is now a part of the hotel. There he lived until 1856, when he, too, was gathered to his fathers. He was survived by his wife, Eliza, who was a daughter of Col. David Payson, Jr., of this town. They had several children, only two of whom appear to have reached the age of maturity. A son, William Stacy, was cut off in the flower of his youth while a member of the sophomore class at Bowdoin Col- lege in 1841.
William Stacy was much respected for the excellent qualities of character which all who knew him recognized. A few persons are still living who 19. This house is now occupied by Miss Effie Poole .
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remember the home life of his family in the house built by him, and they recall the graciousness and charm of manner of Mrs. Stacy and her sister, Harriet Payson, the beautiful Mrs. Flagg, a widow whose husband was at one time Master of Lincoln Lodge; also the visits here of Edmund Flagg, traveler, poet and writer.
From the time of the death of Mrs. Stacy, in 1867, to the present owner- ship of the brick mansion seems but a step, the title having passed from the Stacy family soon after the mother's death. During all of their occupancy of the premises the old tavern stood, gradually decaying and finally becom- ing uninhabitable, and yet when some of the boys tried to pull it down in 1876, the stout old timbers balked their efforts. For the safety of adjacent property it was soon after demolished and the débris removed.
After the conflagration which destroyed the Hilton House, Mr. Eben Frederick Albee, who had purchased the William Stacy house in March, 1894, for a private residence, enlarged and remodelled it for a hostelry. It was formally opened for business on July 30, 1904, under the name of "The Albee."
Later this hotel was taken over by Lee Marston, who was succeeded by Lester C. Greenwood, the latter being the manager for a Boston Company who ran it under the name of the "Wiscasset Inn."
The Washington Hotel
The Washington Hotel which stood at the corner of Main and Fifth Streets, or as they were then called, State and Court Streets, was built late in the eighteenth century by Abiel Wood. The old hotel had three stories on Main Street and four on the side street, owing to the slope of the land towards the river. It was built of wood and painted white and had a flat roof resembling that of the Manasseh Smith house further down the street which is now occupied by Dr. Day.
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