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 41
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This cemetery, like the Ancient and Greenlawn, as well as the Nason Cemetery, belongs to the town. They are cared for by the town, the Wiscas-
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Wiscasset in Pownalborough
set Cemetery Association, and philanthropic individuals. It has recently been surveyed (September, 1932) by John Mayers of Dresden, who on his plan carefully recorded every known grave.
Greenlawn Cemetery
Greenlawn Cemetery is, of the five graveyards in Wiscasset, the one most recently set apart by the town for burial purposes. It is situated on Rumrill Road, a cross road between Bradford Street (better known locally as Hard- scrabble Road) and the South Dresden road. It is two miles from the pres- ent post-office.
The deed from Ruth Savage to the inhabitants of the town of Wiscasset is dated June 23, 1871. The deed runs thus:
Beginning at the channel of Montsweag brook, at the Northeasterly line of Francis J. Brookings; thence North-easterly by said brook about ten rods (10) to the most North- Easterly bend thereof; thence North-east across the Churchill lot, now or formerly so called at right angles with the North-east side line thereof, about twenty-five (25) rods to land of Joseph Rumrill; thence South east by land formerly of Samuel Sevey and others and land of said Rumrill to Toppan's North Line,14 now or formerly, so called; thence South by said Toppan's North Line to the road leading from Wiscasset to Wool- wich, by the dwelling house of said Brookings; thence Westerly by said road to land of said Brookings; thence North westerly by land of said Brookings, following the several courses thereof, to the first mentioned bound, containing thirty acres, more or less, and being the same premises conveyed to me by Joshua S. Savage & others, by their deeds dated May 2, 1871 and recorded in Lincoln Registry of Deeds in Book 247. . . .
The first persons to be buried at Greenlawn Cemetery were Charles and Ruth Albee.
The soldiers buried in Greenlawn Cemetery outnumber all the others. They are:
Charles H. Stinson Warren P. Lewis
Samuel A. Seigars
Isaac B. Dickinson
David G. Munsey Loring O. Pushard
Cassious C. Dodge Joshua Y. Savage George W. Nute
William Farnham John Wesley Foye Alexander Nute
Andrew Dunton Thomas H. Cowley Joseph Silvester
Richard N. Bailey Austin J. Blagdon Sewall J. Seavey
Stillman Blagden William H. Nutter Richard Small
T. W. Cromwell Isaac A. Macurda
Edgar Foye
14. Toppan's North line refers to the land belonging to Christopher Toppan in 1641, one of the earliest rights in this section. See Toppan's Right.
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1
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In Evergreen Cemetery.
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In the Ancient Cemetery.
The present Wiscasset Public Library. Built for the Lincoln & Kennebec Bank in 1805. Photograph by Brayton.
Hobson's Mill with Birch Point in the distance. Cushman's Mountain is the hill between the two chimneys.
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Organizations, Cemeteries and Banks
Edward Jones Charles W. Arthur
Henry D. Sidelinger
William Clark
William Henry Clark
George Leighton
Charles Averill Samuel Burk
Thomas Sherman
William McFadden
Bradford Pushard
Ruel Kincaid
Sewall Dickinson
David Garrick McRitchie
Amasa Sherman
James Bragdon (recently moved from Bath)
Woodlawn Cemetery
Before the organization of Woodlawn Cemetery in 1874 by Joseph Wood, there was a graveyard at Birch Point. It was the burial ground of the southeast school district.
Woodlawn Cemetery comprises upwards of five acres of territory, adja- cent to and including the former burial ground.
The fence at Woodlawn Cemetery was begun June 5, 1874, and com- pleted October 14, 1874. The formal deed of the additional land inclosed was executed and delivered September 14, 1874.15 From 1872 to June 5, I 874, a smaller piece of land then used as a cemetery, was entirely enclosed, and the fence surrounding it was not removed until the workmen com- menced to build the other in June.
The builders were Messrs. Isaac B. Dickinson and James Dickinson, who did the stone work and Willard Deering and L. S. Hubbard, carpenters.
The soldiers buried in this cemetery are:
General Abiel Wood Josiah T. Albee
Leonard Hilton
John C. Abott
George Scott
Peter Fredson
Robert Lambert
Edward B. Neal
Asbury E. Porter
Ezra B. Carr Thomas Otis
James W. Gray
John G. Somes
Charles H. Crossman
Leroy Young
Samuel E. Smith
Edwin Crossman
Ed Boston
Henry Baker
S. Eaton White
W. H. H. Bailey
The Nason Cemetery
The Nason Cemetery is on the middle stage road to Bath and was at one time a private burial place. Money was raised at the town meeting in April, 1852, for the purchase of this cemetery from A. Nason and the price paid was $ 50.
15. See Lincoln Records, Book 252, p. 375, Porter to Wood.
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Donald Wright
Wiscasset in Pownalborough
The house of Dr. B. A. Bailey stood between this graveyard and the road, and through the neglect of the town this cemetery has become over- grown with trees, long grass and weeds. Dilapidated stone walls are crum- bling, prostrate headstones and sunken graves, have turned this once cher- ished spot into a wilderness from which we hope to reclaim it and beautify this resting place of our dead.
One of the two soldiers buried here is Lieut. Morrill Hilton, 1756-1840, who was in Capt. Josiah Stearn's company at the Battle of Trenton. He was the grandson of Ebenezer Hilton who was scalped by the Indians at Mont- sweag. The other soldier is John E. Gould.
Among the soldiers buried in private burying places is Jonathan Hun- toon, the grandfather of Moses Huntoon, who lies in a little cemetery just across the brook from the north district school-house.
There are said to be five Indians buried here. Their graves are marked by rough stones near the center of the south wall.
The Lincoln and Kennebec Bank
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there had been but one bank incorporated to do business in Maine. That was the Portland Bank, oper- ated under a Massachusetts charter to run for the term of twenty years from July 1, 1799, with a capital of $ 300,000.
On June 23, 1802, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts grant- ed charters for two other banks in Maine, one of which was to be called the Maine Bank to be located in Portland and the other was called the Lincoln and Kennebec Bank and located at Wiscasset. It was chartered for a term of ten years from the first Monday in October, 1802. The building was com- pleted in 1805.
The bank building of two stories was of brick construction. There were two rooms on the ground floor and three above. The second floor was under rent to the county for the offices of the clerk of the courts, the register of probate and the register of deeds and there they kept their records and their files until the Lincoln County court house was completed in 1824. It origi- nally fronted on Main Street, where the main entrance was approached by a flight of stone steps. Another entrance connecting the back room with Main Street was on the east side of the house.
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Organizations, Cemeteries and Banks
The vault room in the basement was walled by a double thickness of brick and cement. It was in the northwest corner of the cellar and was 12 feet long, 7 feet wide and between 5 and 6 feet in height. The floor was formed by the natural granite ledge. At a time which ante-dated safes of steel one turned to stone and brick for durability and security. In this vault room was placed a jug vault, the base of which rested on the ledge, and the mouth of which was on a level with the floor of the banking room above. It was en- tered by a trap-door and a small ladder and in this jug vault was deposited the required reserve of $ 100,000 in specie.
The jug vault looked like a magnified bean-pot, or, to be less prosaic, like one of the huge jars in which hid Ali Baba's forty thieves. When this build- ing was purchased by Mr. Isaac Hobson in 1862 and changed into a resi- dence, he removed the vault and in it found a five-dollar gold piece which he gave to Samuel Peters Baker, the treasurer of the Mariners' Bank. The vault room became the Hobson coal bin.
Another jug vault, which is said to resemble closely that of the Lincoln and Kennebec Bank, is in the cellar of a house, still standing, at Head Tide, built there during the War of 1812 by Moses Carlton for a hideout, and it is prob- able that the papers and specie of the bank were stored there for safe keeping when they were removed from Wiscasset at that time. Both of these vaults are thought to have been built by Nehemiah Somes, a master mason then living in Wiscasset, to whose proficiency in his craft the Powder House still bears witness.
Tradition says that within the memory of men still living there was to be seen in a part of the Lee-Smith house (under the floor of the ironing room) a vault which it is said was that used by the bank when it began to do business.
It may well be imagined that to gather together and actually pay into the vault $ 100,000 in specie in the year 1802 was an unusual undertaking. The productive business was principally the building of vessels in the manufac- ture of lumber for export to European and West Indian markets. By mari- time exchange with the Spanish colonies Spanish coinage came into general use here and Spanish milled dollars, otherwise known as "Pieces of eight" were frequently named as a medium of exchange in deeds and contracts.
Several unredeemed notes of the Lincoln and Kennebec Bank are still to be found in Wiscasset, where they are prized as mementoes of the town's first banking institution.
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On the whole the bank16 did a profitable business and made dividends to the shareholders from the first year, the highest annual rating being ten per cent, and in no year less than six per cent, paying in all twenty dividends in its existence of ten years. At the end of this term it was liquidated by reason, it is believed, of the expiration of its charter. In liquidation the bank build- ing and the original lot of land upon which it stands together with the fur- niture and apparatus of the bank fetched the sum of $6,000.
16. In writing the history of the Lincoln and Kennebec Bank much has been taken from the files of correspondence addressed to Hon. William King of Bath. The above account is largely condensed from Wiscasset in the Early Days, by William D. Patterson, and the recollections of William Guild Hubbard and the Hobson family.
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XVII Industries
F ISHING is the earliest industry of which we have any record along this coast. Very soon after the discovery of Prima Vista, by Cabot, the fish- ing fleet came hither from Europe to gather the annual harvest from the sea and the coast fisheries furnished the first articles of export and became the foundation of navigation and commerce.
A famous fishing ground frequented by the explorers lies at the debou- chure of the Sheepscot River, where, within a radius of fifty miles, from the mouth of the Kennebec to that of the Penobscot, many rivers of great vol- ume empty into the Gulf of Maine. Besides those named are the St. George's, the Johns, the Damariscotta, the Sheepscot, and through the Kennebec-or ancient Sagadahoc-the Androscoggin, the Eastern, Cobbosseecontee Stream, Abagadasset and other smaller streams all of which ultimately find their way through this river to the sea.
To these coastal fishing grounds, not far from the outlet of the Sheepscot River, came in 1560, the four leading maritime nations, Spain, England, France, and Holland, casting for the Giant Cod. Twenty years later there were, on the Grand Banks, a hundred sail of Spanish fishermen to fifty Eng- lish craft. Spanish Biscay sent a score of vessels annually to kill whales; France sent one hundred and fifty, and Portugal fifty small boats for the cod-fishery.
Weymouth states that at an island six miles off the main-Monhegan-he found schools of fish and waterfowl so plentiful that he remained there for two days.
James Davis, the scribe of the Popham colony, writes that when some of its members came up the Tamescot (Damariscotta) and Pashipakokee (Sheepscot) rivers in August they found an abundance of oysters and lob- sters of prodigious size.
The Virginia colony sent hither its first fishing vessel in 1608. Six years later Capt. John Smith in a ship and Thomas Hunt in a bark arrived at Monhegan. Smith took possession of the island and there established his headquarters from which his extensive fishing transactions were conducted. Of the waters between Monhegan and the Kennebec, Smith wrote: "It was the strangest fishing pond ever seen" and that "a hundred fish from its
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waters were in marketable worth equal to two hundred of the eastern catch." Also "we took and cured forty thousand fish, corned or in pickle."1 He fur- ther states that: "In March, April, May and halfe of Iune, here is Cod in abundance; in May, Iune, July and August, Mullet and Sturgion, whose roes doe make Cauiare and Puttargo. Herring, if any desire them, I haue taken many out of the bellies of Cods, some in nets, but the Saluages com- pare their store in the Sea, to the haires of their heads: and surely there are an incredible abundance vpon this Coast."
It is quite probable that during the year 1623 individuals began a perma- nent residence upon Arrowsic Island near the mouth of the Sheepscot, and upon the mainland at the entrance of the river, also at Sheepscot, at Dama- riscotta, at Pemaquid, and at St. George's River.
Seven years afterward it was reported that eighty-four families besides fishermen were residing along the coast in this region.2
In August, 1682, when the return tide of population had fairly set in on the Sheepscot River, all fishermen and old inhabitants were, by order of government, to be restored and protected.
About this time settlers were permanently located on our river develop- ing a salt and spar trade. Timber was being shipped to European markets and salt brought to this port to preserve the fish shipped to Spain and the West Indies, sometimes direct, but more often via Portsmouth. Daniel Cam- eron, at Ebenecook Harbor in the latter half of the eighteenth century, was one of the first men to start the fisheries on the Sheepscot River.
During the years of the Revolution, the British patrol along the coast seriously affected the fishing, and this interruption was followed by the embargo placed on shipping, succeeded by the War of 1812.
Later came the mackerel fishing and before the Civil War broke out, there were fifty-nine Bankers and mackerel schooners owned at Southport. At that time instead of making two trips to the Banks for cod, the returned vessel would make the second cruise for mackerel, which at that season were large. A Boothbay fisherman stated that "he had seen the waters filled with mackerel from Burnt Island to Fisherman's Island, and that he remembered parties hooking seventy-five tubs of them in a day about the White Islands.">3
Fishing vessels called "bankers" were built along the Sheepscot River
1. Capt. John Smith, Description of New England (London, 1616).
2. Williamson, op. cit., I, 228.
3. Greene, History of Boothbay, p. 369.
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Industries
and at Woolwich, for the cod-fishery off the Newfoundland coast. John MacMillan Bailey, in the early fifties, built the schooner, Vesta, of 78 tons, old measurement, at the Bailey farm on a cross-road in Woolwich, about two miles from tidewater. When the Vesta was finished, they had a hauling- bee in which all of the available men took part. It required 210 yoke of oxen in four strings to haul the vessel down to Montsweag stream as far as the present Soule brickyard, and there she was left on the ice. The Vesta was rigged on the river and when the ice melted, in the spring thaw, there was the schooner already launched! At the time of the hauling, Mrs. Bailey cooked the dinner for all who participated in the work, a crew of one hun- dred men.
The Vesta was at first used in the cod-fishery, but later she went into the coasting trade and ran from Bath to Boston.4
In the Sheepscot River, before the mills polluted the stream, were great schools of fish. Salmon, shad and alewives were at the falls at Head Tide; striped bass at Sheepscot Falls; large oyster beds and scallops the size of a silver dollar were to be found on the river bank between Sheepscot and Wiscasset; while in the harbor were porgies, smelts, flounders and other varieties of sea food. Smelts were so abundant in this and the neighboring rivers that they were used for fertilizer. Scow loads of fish scrap from the canning factories were spread over the fields. Menhaden or porgies which had been caught in great numbers off the Maine coast disappeared for ten years, 1878-1888, and then returned for three years at the end of which time they again disappeared. Porgy oil was used in paint. During the season of 1874, Boothbay manufactured 174,000 barrels of porgy oil, or about 435,000 gallons, amounting to $ 1 57,600. These fish also yielded a residuum of 5,800 tons of "chum" valued at $63,000. At Bristol in 1875 the porgy catch amounted to 85,000 barrels. Porgy chum was shipped in large quanti- ties to Charleston, South Carolina, where it was combined with phosphate rock in the manufacture of fertilizer.
Schooners came from Colby's Cove and McCarty's Cove to the John- stons' salt store to get salt for their fish before starting out on a cruise. In 1871 Wiscasset had 122 vessels engaged in cod and mackerel fishing.
But the days have long since vanished when residents along the river banks were forbidden by law to feed their employees with fish dinners more than twice a week, and when farmers spread their cornfields with surplus
4. Statement of Sumner Bailey.
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shad and salmon for fertilizer. The pollution of the streams by drainage, the waste from mills, and the dams which block the run of fish in the rivers, together with the seines spread at their entrance, and the large hauls of beam trawlers, have despoiled the rivers of their former sport. Both dories and fishing lines are fast disappearing.
Wiscasset's magnificent adventure in the whale-fishing industry was un- dertaken just a century ago, and a description of it is given under the section in this book, Whaleship Wiscasset.
The Fur Industry
The fur-bearing animals of Maine are the bear, beaver, bobcat, fisher, marten, fox, lynx, muskrat, mink, otter, rabbit, raccoon, skunk, sable, squir- rel, weasel (ermine), and woodchuck.
The trade of beaver and otter skins in which the natives engaged with fishermen and explorers who came to these shores, followed the fishing in- dustry on the coast, and developed as soon as the vessels began to penetrate the rivers, where trading posts were established at the beginning of our history.
That the fur trade played a part of paramount importance in the devel- opment of this section of Maine appears to have gone unstressed by the most historians. It was due to the demand in Europe for peltries of beaver and otter that trading posts were established at Monhegan, Cape Newagen, and Pemaquid, supplemented soon afterward by truck houses up the rivers. When the natives came down from the inland lakes in the spring they would bring a rich harvest of skins-black bear, moose, deer, fox, marten and otter, but it was the skins of the beaver brought from Moosehead Lake and the Canadian wilds that paid the debt of the Pilgrim Fathers to the London merchants when the men of the Plymouth Colony were sore perplexed as to the means of defraying their obligation. It was principally due to the jeal- ousy of Wawenock fur trade with the French that caused the Tarratines, who brooked no foe, to make their brutal attack on our local tribe of In- dians, killing their chief and forever scattering the Wawenock clan; it was the theft of his cargo of beaver skins which turned the hitherto peaceful merchant, Dixie Bull, into a pirate. It was the fear of competition in their fur trade on the Kennebec that brought about the death of Hoskins, who had come from Piscataqua with a boatload of goods which he intended to
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Industries
exchange with the Indians for pelts, for whose death John Alden was apprehended.
Currency of gold and silver has not been the sole medium of exchange in this world of changing values, nor were coins prized as money by the abo- rigines when the explorers first came hither; rather did the Indians set store by the simple goods and chattels required in their daily lives-things such as weapons, hatchets, knives, iron kettles, skins, peas, maize, pumpkins, shells, beads, feathers and the like. Therefore, prior to the use of wampum, pelts were used in lieu of pelf. Thus for fifty skins Samoset sold all the lands on both sides of the Muscongus to John Brown. Nequasseag was bought by the first white settlers from the sagamores for thirty pumpkins and a hogshead of corn. In Moquine's deed to Bradford, Baggadusset quit- claimed to John Winslow, Sr. (and his partners) the "woods, meadows, rivers with all their privileges and appurtenances" included in the "land on both sides of the Kennebec from the lower end of Cobesiconte to the upper end of Weserunskick, for one sleeve coat and the Worth of two Skins of Liquor, the Worth of one Skin of Bread to Momkett's wife, alias Natchigo
The earliest fur-trading post in our immediate locality was a station on the upper end of Jeremy Squam Island, directly opposite Wiscasset Point, kept at first by Mr. Walker and later by Mr. Delano. Indian trails on the mainland leading north and south ended at Birch Point from which place the truck house was approached by canoe.
Another of the early fur traders named Winter imported liquor in great quantities from the West Indies which he exchanged with the Indians for furs. Tradition has it that he was assisted in his profitable transactions by his daughter, a buxom lass who wore a scarlet petticoat and a number eight shoe. His vessels bore the sacrosanct names of Angel Gabriel, White Angel and Holy Ghost-appellations which he may have thought sufficiently pious to prove a talisman to ward off the evil eye of his unholy transactions.
Lumbering
The principal standing timber of Maine consists of spruce, fir, pine, cedar, hemlock, poplar, white and yellow birch, maple and beech. The wood- wealth of Maine is still listed as one of her greatest resources, the acreage
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Wiscasset in Pownalborough
of her forest district being 9,500,000 acres while about half as much land lies outside of it.
Lumbering from the earliest days has ranked among her foremost indus- tries. Even in the remote times of the Northmen the prized mausur wood of Vinland was one of the objects of their voyages.
The spruce and pine trees on the banks of the principal rivers, the Saco, the Kennebec, the Androscoggin, the Penobscot and the St. Croix, with their many tributaries, were easily accessible. The logs were borne by the falling tide to lumber mills situated where nature had provided waterfalls which furnished mill privileges. The settlers used the force of the flowing tide to turn their water-wheels as the stream coursed outward to the sea.
Among the native trees the white pine holds a place of prime importance and in its virgin growth was seen to attain six feet in diameter at the base and two hundred and forty feet in height. Not infrequently pines are still found which measure four feet through. In recognition of its importance in the development of this district, the mast pine was given a central place on the seal of the state of Maine by Dr. Benjamin Vaughan, its designer.
It is said that in the halcyon days of shipping, each of the seaports of New England had its own branch of foreign trade, but their commerce was not always confined to one line of business. Wiscasset had her timber trade; Portsmouth and Newburyport, the Martinique, Guadeloupe and Porto Rico trade in outward cargoes of fish and homeward cargoes of molasses and sugar; Gloucester, the Surinam and West Indian trade; Salem and Beverly, the Sumatra, Africa, East India, Brazil and Cayenne commerce; Marble- head, the Bilbao business; Newport, largely the trade in rum and negroes; and Providence, the trade in spice and tea. Each of these old ports had its monopoly and permitted no poachers.
When the resettlement had taken a firm foothold here at the Point, lum- bering was its first activity, for houses, both dwelling and defensible, had to be constructed and vessels built, all of which made the demand for lumber of great importance. As early as 1675, Clarke and Lake were building ves- sels at Arrowsic and the timber of this region has ever been in demand for shipbuilding. Frames were made of the white oak from Woolwich, rein- forced by hackmatack knees grubbed out of the ground in order to get the natural L-shaped bend of their roots-the knees so procured being rated far superior to the sawed out knees of later days. Mast pine came from the
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