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 20
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Here the court was entertained when the sessions were held at this, the shire town of Lincoln County. Mr. Hovey was its first proprietor. Eventu- ally the hotel passed into the hands of Jonas G. Brooks about the year 1812 and it was then called Brooks Hotel. By him it was taken down and on that lot Deacon Christopher Averill built his home. The house is now owned and occupied by Mrs. Jesse White.
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On the second floor was a fine spacious hall where balls and parties were given, and it is said that the public dinner to Gov. Christopher Gore was given here when his Excellency visited Rev. Alden Bradford at Wiscasset in I 809, although he is believed to have been entertained by Gen. Abiel Wood.
At the Washington Hotel resided Mr. Henry Weed, a school teacher, and Mr. William Niles, who was afterwards Bishop Niles. And it was here, too, that Rachel Quin and little Miss Davis attended school kept by Otis L. Bridges, who later lived at Calais and became attorney-general of Maine in 1842.
In the western room of this hotel the Congregationalists used to hold prayer meetings.
The Wiscasset House
The first Wiscasset House was built at the Point by Gen. Abiel Wood on land adjoining that of Orchard Cook and was bounded southeasterly by Fore Street. This lot was conveyed to Wood by Tinkham, February 3, 180120 and conveyed by Wood to his son, Joseph Tinkham Wood, a year later21.
The old Groves house, one of the earliest to be built at the Point, stood on the lot purchased by General Wood. This lot and the one formerly owned by Orchard Cook, are now the site of the post-office.
A part of "General Wood's great house" seen in an old daguerreotype shows that it faced south and commanded an exceptional view of the har- bor. In this picture it bears a striking resemblance to the house on Main Street built by Francis Cook in 1795, before the roof was changed, the Nickels house built in 1807, and the home on High Street of Hon. Abiel Wood, which he began in 1811. The last was one of the eight sons of Gen. Abiel Wood.
It is not known in what year this house was opened as a hotel under the name of the Wiscasset House, but its first proprietor was Thomas Beales who was succeeded by Lemuel S. Hubbard. The latter is believed to have been the grandson of Lemuel Hubbard of Cornish, New Hampshire. The proprietor was born in 1804 and died in Richmond, Maine, January 20, 1884. His wife, Margaret, died in Wiscasset, November 13, 1871.
20. Lincoln Deeds, libro 47, folio 9.
21. February 10, 1802, Lincoln Deeds, libro 49, folio 21.
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The Wiscasset House was one of the many beautiful buildings destroyed in the devastating fire of 1866 when all of Fore Street was swept by flames and lay in blackened ruins for many years to come.
The Pitt Tavern
There appeared in the Eastern Repository, September 22, 1803, the fol- lowing notice:
N. B. The said William Pitt has opened a House of Publick Entertainment for Gentlemen, in the House formerly occupied by Timothy Parsons, Esq., in Wis- casset.
This house is still standing on Garrison Hill, near the Methodist Church, and is the one which has survived many changes and vicissitudes, it having been since the ownership of Parsons, an inn, a school, a temporary town hall, and the home of Lincoln Lodge.
An incident which occurred at the tavern of William Pitt was the visit of John Bernard.22 More than half a century ago Harper Brothers printed his reminiscences, and as Bernard was a keen, astute observer of men and man- ners, that portion recalling his visit to Wiscasset may be of interest.
John Bernard was a relative of Sir Francis Bernard (born 1714, died 1779), a British governor of Massachusetts, where he became so unpopular that when, in 1769, he was recalled, the departure of this persona non grata was celebrated by salvos of artillery and other demonstrations of joy.
The late Lawrence Hutton, who joined in an introduction to the book, called John Bernard one of the brightest of English comedians and a shrewd social observer, quick to see and acute in noting the value of what he saw. In England he was associated with Sheridan, Selwyn, Fox, and the leading wits and men about town, and in 1789, he was elected secretary of the famous Beefsteak Club of London.
Of his life in the summer of 1807, Bernard writes:
I thought of again visiting the north of New England on a lecturing tour, and ar- ranged with Caulfield, (an actor of general utility, good in everything, but in nothing great) to accompany me, his style of singing and recitation rendering him a desir-
22. Bernard, from whose Retrospections of America, 1797-1811, the above article is taken, was a brilliant actor-manager who came to America in 1797 and was engaged by the Philadelphia manager, Wignell, at a salary of one thousand pounds, then a handsome sum.
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able coadjutor. The limit of our journey was to be Wiscasset, the extremist seaport of Maine.
At Wiscasset we put up at an inn kept by an Irishman and our bills for the ensuing evening being distributed directly, no sooner did the news become public than the little town which I apprehended had never before been visited in a similar manner, became greatly disturbed. A crowd soon collected around the windows of the inn parlor in which we were taking our supper, to discover what kind of people we were. Several of the more respectable inhabitants took the liberty of stepping into the room, drawing a chair by the window and listening to our conversation. Others merely walked in as if to make an inquiry, and, taking a comprehensive view of us from head to foot, at once withdrew to impart the information they had acquired to their friends; while a still larger class, more diffident than the rest, only opened the door, took a hasty glance, and then again quickly closed it. We were most amused by a portly farmer-looking man, who, by his careless manner and easy speech, seemed to be a person of conse- quence in the town, and who walked into the room, tilted his chair back by the window, and throwing his boots over a bench, set himself deliberately to listen with great earnest- ness to our discourse. It happened that Caulfield was just relating in his humorous man- ner, some ludicrous circumstance he had taken notice of during the day, and before long the farmer was so pleased that, clapping his hands to his sides, he threw himself back in the chair and burst into a loud roar of laughter. We put down our knives and forks, and looked round at our uninvited auditor in some surprise. On getting over his fit of risibility, he returned our gaze with a highly satisfied expression; then getting up, put his hand in his pocket, and exclaimed : "Capital, gentlemen! Capital! You are right humorsome, I calculate. What's to pay?"
This produced a responsive roar from us, whereupon the puzzled worthy explained that from the humor and eccentricity Caulfield had displayed, he had supposed that he was relating one of the stories from our entertainment, and therefore, in the true spirit of honest trade, he wished to pay for what he had received. On being informed that we would accept no remuneration for what he had heard, he departed with a high opinion of both our talents and our liberality.
Less agreeable was the disappointment, on another ground, of a personage who merely put his head in at the door and withdrew it the next minute, apparently in much dissatisfaction, for we heard him exclaiming to a companion outside, "Tarnation, Squire Shaw, they're not so savage after all!"
These singular attentions, however, though they only excited our smiles, were to my wife as annoying as they were astonishing; and Caulfield, perceiving this, hit upon a plan for relieving us of our wondering spectators without giving them offense. Taking a hint from the offer of the honest farmer, he called in the landlord and desired him to acquaint the people at the windows (which had neither blinds nor curtains) that our prices were a dollar apiece to hear our entertainment and half a dollar to see ourselves. They were too good judges of a bargain for this not to take effect.
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He concludes his reference to Wiscasset with the statement that his two nights here were a great success.
It has frequently been stated that an Irishman's life is divided between smiles and tears and the inscription on a tombstone in the Ancient Cemetery bears a lasting record of the great sorrow that was visited on the Pitt family at the time of the plague, seven years after the visit of Bernard to Wiscas- set, when their daughter was one of the victims of the epidemic.
Fraternal affection erects his monument to the memory of Mrs. Catherine Hay, only daughter of Mr. William & Sarah Pitt, who died April 13, A D 1814, of Spotted Fever, after a short illness of 22 hours. AE. 27.
Tinkham Tavern
Joseph Tinkham, the son of Joseph and Agnes Tinkham, married Marcy Waterman, the daughter of Elkanah Waterman and Mary, his wife, Janu- ary 26, 1777. Before 1800 they had on Fourth or Pleasant Street, a house which was successively occupied later by William Lowell, the daughters of Judge Jeremiah Bailey, and Philip Munsey. This house was burned in 1913.
On its site was erected a modern house which was owned and occupied by Mrs. Freeman and later by Capt. James E. Ballard.
At the time that Joseph Tinkham lived there he kept a tavern, and in the records of the centennial meeting of the Wiscasset Fire Society we find mention made of it in this manner:
We have at this time a member, Silas L. Young, who although he did not join the Society until he was in his thirty-fourth year, was for a number of years fellow mem- ber with several of those old time worthies, who, on the evening of Thursday, the 22nd of January, 1801, at the house of Joseph Tinkham, Esq., instituted the Wiscasset Fire Society "for mutual safety protection and benefit."
The house in which that meeting took place was a house of public enter- tainment. There the members of Lincoln Lodge of Free Masons, of which Squire Tinkham was an efficient officer, used frequently to dine.
Tinkham did not join the Fire Society; perhaps on account of infirm health, for the following year he died. His widow carried on the business of inn-keeper and we find in a local newspaper the notice dated December
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13, 1803, that after a meeting to be held on the twenty-seventh of the month at John Anderson's Hall, "Supper will be provided at the Widow Marcy Tinkham's."
The Nickels House
Wiscasset, having weathered the vicissitudes of the Revolutionary War and the subsequent spoliations by the French, entered, during the last dec- ade of the eighteenth century upon a short-lived period of great prosperity, which ended summarily with the Embargo of 1807. During this thriving interval the wealth of the merchants and ship-owners increased so greatly that it was soon reflected in all trades and professions and was signalized by the erection of many fine and stately mansions, the survival of which are the salient reminders of the briefly enduring fortunes of those days.
Conspicuous among them stands the house on the northeast corner of Main and Federal Streets. Upon this site stood originally the house which was built by Col. John Kingsbury in 1763, and which was the first two- story house to be erected at Wiscasset Point.
Colonel Kingsbury had married Patience, the daughter of Abraham Top- pan of Newbury. He died in 1764, and for some time his widow, Madam Kingsbury, as she was called, continued to reside in their new house. Francis Cook, the first collector of the district of Wiscasset, at one time lived here and it is thought that he purchased the house from the Kingsbury heirs, but in 1795 he built a house at the corner of Maine and Union Streets, later called the Wales Hubbard house, and it was then that Capt. William Nickels is supposed to have bought the Kingsbury house.
The Nickels family came from Bristol, and Captain Nickels, being a re- tired shipmaster of considerable wealth, moved the old house to the corner of Washington and Federal Streets, where it was soon afterward occupied by Dr. Philip Theobald, and where it stands today, the oldest house in town of which we have a written record.
In 1807, Captain Nickels erected the present mansion on the former site of the Kingsbury house. The name of the architect is unknown, but the in- fluence of Bullfinch is seen in the elliptical hall and the beautiful circular staircase. This house with its lofty front and ornamental carving has ever attracted the admiration of the traveler.
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This building was erected when labor was but one dollar a day, and the best pine lumber could be bought for $ 14 a thousand. The entire cost of the house was $ 14,000, a small fortune at that time. Tradition says it took a man two years to finish the work in the front hall, and that it required the entire time of another man to keep the hearth fires supplied with wood dur- ing the winter season.
Soon after its completion in 1812, the only daughter of Captain Nickels died at the age of ten years, and the same year his young wife of thirty- seven years also died, leaving a bereaved and broken-hearted husband who survived her but a few years, and dying, left the house to his adopted daughter. Sometime later the Nickels heirs sold the place and it was run as a hostelry by Cornelius Turner and called Turner's Tavern.23 After the death of Turner in 1838, the house while remaining a tavern passed into other hands, when its name was changed to the Mansion House, which name it retained until 1870. At that time we find,
An important transfer in real estate has just been made. The old Mansion house on Main Street, the dilapidated condition of which has long been a source of regret to the community, has been sold to Captain William E. Wilcockson, who proposes to thoroughly repair it and open it as a first class hotel at an early date.24
It is said that Wilcockson bought this house for Thomas Saunders. He changed the name to Belle Haven.
This house next changed hands in the spring of 1871, when Seth Patter- son purchased it and for a brief period ran it likewise as the Belle Haven. His ownership must have been short-lived for we find from a local news- paper that in July of that year, Samuel B. Erskine was its proprietor. J. B. Merrill was also a proprietor of this tavern.
The state of Maine had been legally dry for many years when, in 1890, the man who ran the Belle Haven was suspected of storing and distributing rum in an illicit manner. One of the townsmen who knew him writes thus: "The officers captured Appleton last night in his own house, the craftiest fox of a rum seller we ever had in this place. They found him after a long and doubtful search seated on a ten gallon rum cask, in his bare shirt in a secret closet, very artfully contrived, and papered all over like the room in
23. The Siamese twins visited Wiscasset the last of September or first of October, 1828. They stopped at Turner's Tavern and were examined by Dr. Moses Shaw, then a practicing physician in this town. Statement of Anthony Nason. Cornelius Turner came from Sheepscot.
24. Seaside Oracle, April 1, 1870.
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which it was built. The wall sounded hollow on being struck and they smashed it down with axes. The town was greatly pleased to have this law- breaker safe in jail to await trial in October." Its name had been changed to Wiscasset House when, in 1892, this house was purchased by William Guild Hubbard, who ran it in connection with the Hilton House until 1900, when he sold it to Alvin Foye Sortwell, Esq., of Cambridge, Mass., whose heirs now own and occupy it. They have restored it to its original beauty of outline.
The Lee House Later the Bunch of Grapes
This old house which is located on High Street overlooking the Common has played its part in many of the romances and tragedies of the village.
Sometime in the year 1789, Silas Lee, Esq., came to Wiscasset from Con- cord, Massachusetts, and three years afterward, he erected the house which is said by architects to be the finest example of colonial architecture in this village, if not in the state of Maine. It is built of wood, with brick ends (tradition says ballast brick), and in proportion and precision of outline is almost monumental.
Silas Lee had an elder brother Jonas who resided in Concord. Jonas Lee was the father of four children, two sons who died in infancy, and two daughters, Mary and Ruth, who grew to maidenhood and were frequent visitors at the home of their uncle in Pownalborough, where Mrs. Lee, the former Temperance Hedge, was but six years older than Mary Lee.
It was during a visit to her uncle and aunt in this town that Mary Lee became betrothed to young James Whittier, the son of Ebenezer Whittier, the keeper of the tavern, and while here she became stricken with phthisis, of which she died February 14, 1795. Three years later James Whittier, who had gone on a voyage to the West Indies in search of health, died of a broken heart.
Ruth Lee, the youngest of the children of Jonas Lee, whose mother had died at her birth in 1777, herself died very suddenly at the home of a rela- tive, John Jones of Augusta, and was "buried in a private burying ground east of the Kennebec," a mile south of the bridge. Silas Lee died here dur- ing the epidemic of spotted fever in 1814. His widow, Mrs. Tempe Lee, survived until 1845.
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While the Lincoln & Kennebec bank which stands directly opposite the Lee house was in process of construction in 1805-1806, this house was used for storing specie and important papers in a vault beneath the kitchen floor.
In the year 1807, when the house was but fifteen years old, it was pur- chased by Gen. David Payson, and its former owner, Silas Lee, moved into the new house which he had built at the southern end of High Street.
General Payson, by "his wife Betsey" had a charming young daughter, Clarissa, who was affianced to Maj. Robert Elwell, a man of excellent re- pute, but who was many years her senior. There was then stationed at Fort Edgecomb on Folly Island, a dashing young cavalry officer, Maj. Samuel Lane Page, who, mounted on a white charger at the head of his men, used to cross the ferry to Wiscasset Point, making a vivid picture as he entered the town where he was the cynosure of all eyes. He stole Clarissa's heart, and one dark night she climbed silently out of a second-story window and slid down a juniper tree25 to keep a tryst with her lover. And so Clarissa Payson married Samuel Page. As she was an only child and only a child, the elopement was soon forgiven and Mr. and Mrs. Page lived for many years in the Payson home.
That she was also forgiven by Major Elwell is proved by the choice wedding present which he sent her, a silver sugar bowl and cream jug made by Cony and still in the possession of a Page descendant.
Clarissa Page died at the age of thirty-four and was buried with a still- born infant in her arms. In less than three months her mother, Mrs. Pay- son, died, and in 1831, five years later, Gen. David Payson died at the age of seventy-two years. This left no lineal male descendant of either the Lee or Payson families.
The house then passed into the hands of the Dows, Theophilus and Isaac, who ran it for a brief period as a tavern known as The Bunch of Grapes. Isaac Dow took the first floor for a boarding house, and a dancing- school was held in the parlor, while the neighbors heard the vibrant strains of old-fashioned waltz music.
In the year 1836, on his retirement to private life, after having served three terms as governor of the state, this house was purchased by Samuel E. Smith for a private residence and has since remained in the possession of his descendants; so it has been known for a century as the Smith House.
25. This tree may still be seen standing beside the Smith house.
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Formerly the residence of Col. Erastus Foote, the first attorney-general of the State of Maine. Built about 1785. The town pump is in the foreground. An old whipping-post used to be at this corner.
Dr. Kennedy's house, now Webber's Tavern.
Bell hung in the tower of the First Parish Church in 1800. It was No. 39 made in the foundry of Paul Revere.
First Congregational Church and Lincoln County Court House on the west side of the Common. Courtesy of C. M. Whitney.
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From its portals went forth to serve their country at the time of the war between the states, the sons of Governor Smith, one of whom, Capt. Edwin M. Smith, was killed at the Battle of Fair Oaks.
Joseph Emerson Smith, the second son of Governor Smith, wrote a novel entitled Oakridge, published in 1875, which involves a mysterious cave whose entrance is somewhere on the shore at the foot of Cushman Hill.
Benjamin F. Smith, the youngest son, likewise a writer of no mean re- pute, married a sister of Blanche Willis Howard, the well-known authoress, who wrote, while on a visit to the Smith family, One Summer, a novel writ- ten in, and located at, Wiscasset.
Harold Emerson Smith, the son of Benjamin F. and Marion Howard Smith, was one of the first Wiscasset men to enlist in the World War, join- ing the Canadian Field Ambulance in France, in 1915, before the United States entered the war.
His wife Susan (Grant) Smith has written many books which have been well received, Made in America being the first of a series treating of the handicraft of various countries.
Bailey's Tavern
There is a brick house standing at the northeast corner of Lincoln and Water Streets, which was in 1850 a public house or old ordinary, and Maj. Benjamin Bailey, a doughty and affable swashbuckler, whose sobriquet was Devil Ben, acted for many years as its popular and picturesque host. Wis- casset claimed three Benjamin Baileys who were identified by their nick- names, Fox Catch Ben, Praying Ben and Devil Ben, but the last one, Maj. Benjamin Bailey, was the most notorious and best known of these three quaint personalities.
The eighteenth century was noted for its pot-valiant men, and not only in England were the "three bottle men" to be found. Even in the nine- teenth century rum was considered a necessity for every constructive enter- prise; each stoning-bee, hauling-bee and raising-bee had its bill for liquor among its legitimate expenses, and even lawyers and ministers were some- times known to take a "wee sip for the stomach's sake," which might, per- chance, accelerate their pleading and preaching. Many were the habitués who gathered at Bailey's Tavern to drink Kill-Devil to the Great God Quaff. Before the first half of the nineteenth century had passed, however,
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a reaction had set in and Maine was going dry. In 1846, an Act was passed for the suppression of drinking houses and tippling shops which had the effect of restricting the sale of intoxicating beverages, and five years later, Neal Dow of Portland, then serving in the legislature, drafted the first complete prohibitory law to be passed in any state.26
Many of the tavern-keepers, disappointed by the falling off of profits from the sale of ardent spirits took a hostile attitude toward the temperance workers, attributing to them the source of their adversity and regarding them as the originators of a movement which deprived their caravansaries of convivial warmth and cheer.
Squadook, the old Penobscot chief, has been facetiously called the first temperance worker in Maine, on account of his pathetic letter to Governor Phips, in which he wrote: "Brother, once more we don't like a great deal of rum. It hinders our prayers, we buy too much of it, it hurts our souls . ... one kegg and one bottle is enough for one man."
But Bailey's grievance was of more recent date. The temperance workers were rampant and so was Major Ben, as a letter bearing the date of 1846 will show:
Tuesday evening the Temperance folk had a meeting, and the lecturer scored the rum-sellers. Old Major Bailey was present with thirty or forty of his followers. The Major sat in the middle of the church arrayed in his military uniform .- a coat with epaulettes on his shoulders, the big cap and plume, holsters and all. He refused to take off his cap saying that, if they tried to force him his head would go with it. They cursed every name that was on the list of petitioner to Selectmen, and behaved in such a manner that many of the ladies were terrified and left the house. The meeting broke up in con- fusion. They were prosecuted by the Selectmen the next day, but the doughty old Major refused to be taken and drew a knife on the officers, and got into his den sur- rounded by his comrades. The officers called upon the citizens for help, and when everything pointed to an impeding crisis, the Major surrendered with all the honors of war, and was allowed to march up to the court house alone. The entire company fol- lowed and were joined by eighty or a hundred of the townspeople.
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