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 62
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Henry possessed two marked characteristics, one was a hankering for gin- gerbread, and the other a love of swimming, and his secret little peregrina- tions always led to the achievement of one or the other of these desires.
Neither his origin nor his real name was ever revealed, but from his knowledge of life in the forest, his familiarity with fur-bearing animals, and his skill in trap-baiting, it was inferred that, at some period of his life, he must have been a French Canadian trappeur, but no explanation was ever vouchsafed by him, for some untoward accident, presumably a blow on the head, had deprived Henry of the power of speech. He uttered only a lim- ited number of incoherent syllables, which, with the exception of a single phrase, formed his entire vocabulary. This noticeable exception could be overheard by the neighbors each evening when he was rounding up the hens for the night, for it was then that he became glib and fluent and swore at those fowls in perfect English.
Loyal to him in death as they had been during his restricted life, the Pat- tersons afforded him sanctuary in their lot at Woodlawn Cemetery, when he died January 14, 1908, and was buried under the borrowed name of James Henry.
Sometime about the year 1871, there came to town a foreigner who was known along the water-front as "George the Portygee." He had regular features, a dark complexion, hair that curled at the ends, small dark eyes and a thickset figure, short and squat. Though always cheerful he was a man of few words, who hailed from the Iberian peninsula, and was prevented by a lack of knowledge of the English tongue from giving vent to the endless verbosity which characterizes men of his race.
The burnt district of 1823 for several years thereafter went by the name of the Black Hills, and somewhere in this region during the summer of 1875, the unfortunate George fell into an open well. How he extricated himself is not known, but he was lost for seven days and wandered about in the wilderness, and the nickname of "Seven Days" clung to him in conse-
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quence. During the construction of Rundlett Block "Seven Days" used to carry brick and mortar as helper to the masons employed there. This exile from Portugal died in Wiscasset, but the date of his death is not known.
Edwin N. Logan was born in this town November II, 1838, but little is found concerning his early life. He was impressed about the time of the Civil War and forced to serve on the Queen's ship in the British Navy from which he escaped and by concealing himself in a barrel was brought home to the States. For many years he lived in this town and was a familiar figure along the wharves, where he was known as a dauntless and convivial sailor. When his health became impaired he went to Snug Harbor, Staten Island, where he died on June 26, 1906.
There was Aunt Rhoda Roberts, who piously prayed for the coasters and the crew who encountered the perils of the Great Boston ocean. It was she whose faith held fast to the belief in an uninterrupted course of life after death, as was shown by a reply she made to a neighbor, who having heard of Uncle Roberts's illness, had come to inquire after his health and had brought him a dish of baked beans on Saturday (not knowing that only an hour before Uncle Roberts had passed beyond the need of earthly things). Aunt Rhoda cheerfully said: "Thanks for the thought but Uncle Roberts is not suffering any more, he is now eating beans with the Angels."
The Widow Wink was one of the characters well known to the great- grandfathers of the boys of today, and it may have been the torment she suffered at their hands which caused Lucy Sevey to change her name for the last time and move to Boothbay.
Lucy Sevey was the daughter of Maj. William Sevey, who lived in the house later known as the Trask house. This house, which was burned many years ago, stood on the old Birch Point Road that led past the Sevey farms, one of which is the present home of Mr. Emery Gibbs, to the houses of that early settlement which they tried unsuccessfully to incorporate under the name of Whitehaven.
The first husband of Lucy Sevey was "Thomas Woodman, the hatter," which sounds like a fantastic and mythical character out of Alice in Wonder- land. He was actually the son of a Wiscasset shipbuilder, and was, until his untimely death at the early age of thirty-two years, employed in making beavers for the gentry of this town, for in his day, tall hats were worn not only by ministers, but also by barristers, physicians, ship-holders, sea-cap- tains and all of the leading townsmen.
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In the language of her time, "thrice in eight months Death swung his scythe as the Great Reaper exacted a heavy toll from the family of Lucy Sevey Woodman." Her only child, Thomas, a little lad of five years, died in the spring of 1796. The following September her husband, Thomas Woodman, died on his passage from Demerara to this port. On January 8, 1797, her brother William, the only son of Maj. William Sevey, was washed overboard from the schooner Mary, one of Orchard Cook's vessels, and drowned. Perhaps the tears she shed over this distressing series of dis- asters caused the muscles of her eyelid to weaken, for in early womanhood one of her lids drooped and fluttered and winked without volition on her part,2 and this quivering of her eyelid gave rise to her sobriquet, "Widow Wink."
Her hovel, as the settlers' cabins were called, was on Fore Street, not far from the Whaleship Wharf of later times, and south of the entrance to Big Foot Alley, which runs from the present Water Street to Middle Street, a lane named for the out-size feet of her cousin, Wyman Bradbury Sevey. So close to the edge of the water was the home of Widow Wink that one corner of it was supported by piles. Here she lived alone and conducted a genteel brewery whose sole output was ginger beer, sold in the little shop which formed the front room of her house. Behind this was her parlor and to the boys, who were the chief patrons of her ginger pop, she was wont to exhibit an oil painting in a garish gilt frame which hung on the parlor wall of a really beautiful woman, which she claimed was a portrait of herself in her younger days, ere the infirmity of winking was upon her, and to which she referred as acknowledged in its day to represent a young lady of great per- sonal charm. The art of portraiture, however, was lost on the boys, and the feud between the Widow and the "Wildcats," as the boys called their band, began when one of them alluded to it as a "fancy picture." Resenting this personal affront, she drove the "Wildcats" out of her store.
Soon after this expulsion a verse was pinned on her door by one of these young blackguards which ran thus:
Old Widow Wink, she lives here; She's the woman who brews the beer. At every stranger passing by, She looks up and winks her eye.
2. This malady is known to oculists as blepharo-spasm.
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Angered afresh by the impertinence of this epic, she would vent her wrath on the mischievous imps by throwing hot water at them in response to their taunts and jeers; and so the feud continued for weeks and months. Finally, one dark night a mysterious punt lurked stealthily around the foundations of the house by the riverside as vengeful "Wildcats" sawed vindictively and noiselessly through a pile which held up the corner of the widow's house, and then paddled as silently away. The tide came in and the next morning the poor woman found her home slanting at an angle which would have done credit to a Mississippi flood.
Among her many matrimonial ventures Lucy Sevey was married to a man named Kennedy, and after that to one whose name is not recalled, be- fore she finally married Nathaniel Pinkham of Boothbay, whither she went in 1826. Lucy Sevey Woodman Kennedy Pinkham died before 1834 for during that year the records show the marriage of Nathaniel Pinkham to one Mary Dockendorff, and the Widow Wink became only a haunting memory.
Thankful Averell was the daughter of Ezekiel and Priscilla (Tucker- man) Averell. She lived in the Boynton house on Federal Street which was the home of John Poole, who had married as his third wife her sister, Mrs. Charlotte Averell Holmes.
Few persons now living remember the thin, colorless little cap-maker, who in a tiny, cluttered upstairs room kept a strange conglomeration of caps, bonnets and hats, along with French flowers, feathers, ribbon, silk, velvet and braid, in short all things necessary for carrying on a millinery shop in a nutshell. On the table were manikins of her trade, that is, plaster block- heads, shaped like human heads, to which she fitted in turn snowy caps, frilled and bowed, to crown a matron's head, braids sewn together in the form of hats, or else she enveloped the block in a shirred calash. When the hats had been properly modelled she hung them in the top of a barrel which she covered closely after lighting a pan of sulphur that burned in the bot- tom of the barrel to bleach them.
Through a period of many years Thankful Averell held the monopoly of the headgear of Wiscasset. She died in Alna, March 1, 1876, at the age of seventy-two years.
And there was canny old Granny McFadden, who lived in one of the two wee cabins on Washington Street. She survived her husband, William, for many years and sold milk in little tin cans, but nary a drop was forthcoming
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until she heard the jingle of pennies in the bottom of the milk pails. It was a "cash and carry" system.
Thirza Seigars, gaunt, tall and muscular, that faithful soul took care of Dr. Theobald and his dogs and presided over his wash-tubs and soap-caul- drons. Thirza's soap was the pride of the parish, and she, herself, presented a scoured appearance of uncompromising virtue which kept the neighbor- hood in order.
Mammy Nordstrom, who lived on Water Street (about where is now the lumber yard of Harold Sherman) was the village midwife and she brought a baby for a cart-wheel, as the clumsy silver dollars were called.
There was Hannah Light who kept a tiny shop on (or off) Federal Street, where fresh eggs were the current coin for her commodities. Marty Anderson whose store was in the space between Webber's Tavern and F. Burton Haggett's house, prided herself on her Boutelle nose, and sold pep- permint candy.
Irish Mike and kind-hearted Katie Warnock lived in the two back rooms of a small house on Main Street, now no longer standing, but which then stood close against Colonel Erskine's fence (between the Holbrook and Macurda houses of today). The front room was used by the Baptists as a chapel and in it Mr. Morrill preached to his congregations. On one of these church nights, Michael Warnock, who was of that persuasion, appeared jauntily dressed for the occasion in a blue swallow-tail coat with brass but- tons, and a tall hat very much awry, and himself a little hilarious.
Few now remember old William Morelen who used to go to the shore of Finley Creek near the dyke, to hunt for a pot of gold which tradition said was buried there. According to his story, when he went one day to dig at that magnetic spot and thrust the crow-bar into the ground hoping to pry out the prize, the crow-bar bounced back over his head and he heard the jingle of coins as the witches seized the pot of gold, and the beat of hoofs as the crones crossed the bridge at the north.
The bridge across Finley Creek was then in the same place as the bridge of today, on the Westport Ferry road. The cellar of Morelen's house is marked by a clump of lilac bushes on the eastern side of the road, just south of the stone wall which forms the line fence between the farms of Alan Weeks and Flora Plumstead.
William Morelen, like Michael Warnock, died at the town farm.
Sometime during the last decade of the eighteenth century there came to
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Wiscasset from Ireland a dashing young man named Thomas McCrate, whose family took an important part in the commercial development and shipping of this town.
According to the story, McCrate sent home for his cousin, Betty O'Dee, to come over and keep house for him, and when her sojourn here had run from months into years it was tacitly understood that they were to be mar- ried. This plan, however, had a different consummation, for the day came when Thomas McCrate broke the news to Betty O'Dee that he intended to marry someone else and that it was her move next. Angry and indignant at being thus jilted and thrust out, Betty sent back to Ireland for her nephew, Johnny O'Dee, to come to America and champion her cause.
In due time Johnny O'Dee arrived here by stage from Bath, went to the McCrate house, where he supped with Thomas and Betty. How long he lived in Wiscasset is not known, but tradition goes on to say that one eve- ning he and McCrate went out together to walk on one of the wharves, and that Johnny O'Dee was never seen again.
Betty O'Dee left Wiscasset cursing the name of McCrate, and the super- stitious claimed that it was the fulfillment of her malediction, the curse of Betty O'Dee, that caused the destruction of their house, for the imposing McCrate mansion on Water Street, enshrouded in flames, was burned to the ground in the devastating fire of 1866. If so, the curse took the whole street along with it.
Whatever there be of legend in this story, these facts are substantiated: Thomas McCrate married a woman named Sarah who was born in Eng- land; Johnny O'Dee died in Wiscasset before January 22, 1800; the Mc- Crate house burned to ashes; and Betty O'Dee died unmarried and impov- erished in the Skowhegan alms-house.
The Witch of Windmill Hill
This witch did not live in a hovel in the purlieus of the village; on the contrary she inhabited, during her brief stay in town, one of the finest man- sions overlooking the bay; but whence she came and whither she went will always remain a mystery.
The house which was built by Silas Lee, Esq., at the end of High Street and occupied by him at the time of his death, was unoccupied for sometime after that unfortunate event. Thus it remained for a number of years until
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its moss-grown walls and windows overgrown with ivy presented the ap- pearance of one of those deserted old baronial castles3 in Scotland, each of which has its own pet banshee, warlock, troll or kelpie to haunt its empty halls and send cold shivers down one's spine.
Late one evening in the year 18-, two individuals were seen to enter this house by the eastern door, one of whom was a man of middle stature, about twenty-five years of age. His complexion was dark and a misanthropic gloom hung on his countenance. The other was a woman a little past middle age, and of haggard and careworn appearance. News of the arrival of the two strangers at the old mansion was soon circulated through the town and varied conjectures made as to the object of their visit.
For a number of days nothing more could be learned of these mysterious strangers. Curiosity was on the tiptoe of expectancy for further information, and the village gossips were busy recalling and relating the tales they had heard of spirit-walking in the dim light of evening, and of their always choosing some vacant and dilapidated building for their rendezvous. So to the category of the supernatural beings the strangers were relegated.
One evening the east door of the house was seen to open, and the man with a package of papers under his arm emerged. His first inquiry was for a printer. He announced himself as a Mr. Sumner who had been the editor of a periodical published in a remote part of this country, but who, on ac- count of persecution and misfortune had been compelled to relinquish his establishment and flee with his mother to some place unknown and distant, in order to elude the rage and violence of his enemies.
Shortly after this a new periodical issued from the press of this town, entitled the Northern Rainbow, and from the history he had given of him- self, as well as from the fact that he had been seen with a large bundle of papers under his arm, it was inferred that he was its editor.
The inquisition of curiosity was carried on unflinchingly and unsuccess- fully by the townspeople to discover more concerning the history and affairs of these two aliens, but every effort was baffled. The man held intercourse with none, and the woman was seldom seen. Sometimes in the dusk of twi- light or the mist of early morning, he was seen sitting on the well curb near the house, apparently in a frenzy, flourishing a wand (or walking-stick) in the most fantastic manner, often to the terror and danger of those who were accustomed to draw water from Lee's well.
3. This is the house which was copied from an old castle in Dunbar, Scotland.
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Still less was known of his companion; she associated with no one, and few recollect hearing her speak, except when her partner was defending the well with Quixotic valor, she could be heard uttering cries of encourage- ment and approbation from a garret window in the building. No one ever approached her closely enough to give an accurate description of her person. A glimpse of her was sometimes caught by a passer-by, from a window in a northern angle of the mansion, where, regardless of heat or cold, she occa- sionally made her appearance with a dim taper, when the full moon was riding high amid scudding clouds, and all was still save the shrill whistle of the storm wind howling around the corners of the old brick house.
At that time the entire population was divided into two classes, friends and foreigners, and foreigners these two strange beings ever remained. They preserved to the last a mysterious seclusion which defied every attempt to pry into their history.
Meanwhile the publication of the Northern Rainbow was continued, avidly received by some and avoided by others, who shook their heads menacingly whenever the newspaper or the puzzling strangers were mentioned. Innuen- does and dark suspicions multiplied daily. No good came of secrecy; the gentleman had been overheard using language not strictly vernacular; the strange woman was not of the salt of the earth; some had seen in them a flouting of the laws of the land. Jealousy and ungratified curiosity became turbulent and vindictive. Village gossip was soon amplified into village slan- der and only a straw was needed to transform persiflage to persecution.
One evening while Mr. Sumner was doing sentry duty at the well, and flourishing his wand in his usual fantastic style, a maiden who had come for water experienced a strange sensation in her head. She was not positive whether she had had a fit or whether the stranger had hit her with his stick, but a hue and cry immediately arose that Sumner had committed assault and battery. Officers of justice were requisitioned to apprehend this male- factor. The greatest care was taken lest, warned of his danger, he should escape, and the town be thus cheated of its quarry. Guards were accordingly placed around the house and the strictest watch maintained for several days and nights, but nothing could be seen of the strangers. Vigilance increased to no purpose, for nothing more was ever seen of them! Sometime after- ward a few persons summoned up sufficient courage to enter and search the house, but all that they found was an old broom without a handle, a tup- penny loaf and a neat's tongue, which food had been thrust through a
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broken window by some humane neighbor during the siege of the officers of justice.
The presence of this food, untouched, though the house had for days been beleaguered by an aggressive guard, was proof positive that these per- sons were in league with the powers of darkness. By what means their es- cape was effected has yet to be discovered. Skeptics say that the sentries were either bribed or caught asleep at their posts and that the strangers were sur- reptitiously spirited away in a boat at midnight and placed on a vessel in the harbor, which, taking advantage of wind and tide, sailed away before the dawn, with them on board; but the wise ones know, and the absence of the broomhandle proves it, that the Witch of Windmill Hill mounted the broomstick, that age-old chariot of witches, rose through the chimney and hied away to a destination unknown.
And if aught else be demanded to prove that they were supernatural folk, ask for a copy of the Northern Rainbow. Not a single paper has been found since the disappearance of the mysterious Mr. Sumner. It, too, disappeared like magic.
Rachel Quin
The children of Wiscasset have found their way to many lands, but it is doubtful if any one of them has been more widely known than Rachel Quin, who passed her entire lifetime of nearly ninety years in this village. She was so identified with the town that she was regarded as an integral part of Wiscasset.
Her mother, Rachel Hilton, was the only child of Morrill Hilton and his first wife, Anna Williams, a direct descendant of Roger Williams. Rachel Hilton was born December 30, 178 1, and she lived until May 3, 1876.
Her father, Michael Quin, was an Englishman by birth, who was sent for by some ship-owners to come to Baltimore to take command of a vessel. It is recorded that he was mate and sole survivor of the schooner Minerva, James Murray, captain, when she was wrecked in 1800, and that he was alone on the wreck for ninety-six hours before being rescued. He came to Wiscasset with the brothers John and Alexander Johnston, early in the year 1 803. His intention of marriage to Rachel Hilton was published May 22, 1 803, and they were married October twenty-third of that year. Two chil- dren were born to them. Michael Quin, Jr., the elder of the two, was
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drowned while a mere youth, he having shipped in a vessel which went down with all on board.
Rachel, their second child, according to the parish register was born March 6, 1807, in the little house at the foot of the Common, whose first recorded owner was Benjamin Colby, but which is better known to the pres- ent generation as "the Clapp house."
Michael Quin, the father, died at the age of thirty when Rachel was but four months old, and his widow was confronted with the difficult task of rearing and educating her two children.
The Quin house on the south side of Main Street, which for nearly a century was a landmark, was built by Morrill Hilton, Rachel's grandfather, from lumber grown on his own farm and sawed and planed at his own mill on the middle stage road to Bath. It was afterward known as the Daniel Baker place.
Where is now the home of Mrs. Jesse White (at the corner of Main and Summer Street) there formerly stood an old hostelry, the Washington Hotel, kept by Mr. Hovey. In it Otis L. Bridges from Calais, Maine, kept a school which Rachel attended. In 1842 Mr. Bridges was attorney-general of Maine.
The Quins, the two Rachels, were a perfectly unique couple. Their con- secutive lives spanned the era of transition from the time when Pownal- borough was a British colonial settlement, through the final years of the Revolution; the golden age of a prosperous American shipbuilding town; the thorny months of the Embargo; the War of 1812; and long after- wards, the Civil War. When General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, they planted an elm in front of their house in commemoration of that event.
Mrs. Quin, though not a midwife, assisted at the birth of no less than twenty-eight babies and supplied them with swaddling clothes, bearing cloth or shroud as the circumstances demanded.
Rachel Quin at the age of fifteen taught school, and when, two years later, she took up dressmaking she was assisted in her earnest endeavors by the patronage of such friends as Judge and Mrs. Bailey and John H. Sheppard.
A never-to-be-forgotten picture is that of these two Rachels sitting at work in their sunny room with its ancient cactus and its little pot of musk plant on the window ledge, with the old-fashioned garden showing through the open side door; the painted floor of bright yellow, always so spotlessly
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f
the day Lee surrendered at Appomattox, April 9, 1865. Rachel Quin in her doorway and the tree she planted
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Moving Day. Etta Turner's shed moved to the ice house and used as a tool shed. Any house could be moved with ninety yokes of oxen and five gallons of rum.
Lydia Blunt and Mr. Seigars collecting garbage.
Quaint Personalities and Folklore
clean; the paper patterns, endlessly increasing in number, pinned about the walls; the sweet herbs drying in the warm corners by the big open fire- place; the stairway which led to a mysterious attic above; the little cupboard with its bits of old willow ware; and the jangling of the bell with its spiral spring on the shop door which for nearly a hundred years announced the visit of friends. The current coin in exchange for their stock in trade, yeast, prayer-books, patterns and candy, was fresh eggs.
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