Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Bacon families: Sidney early settlers

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by Mary Grow

Among early settlers in Sidney against whose lives your writer brushed while trying unsuccessfully to learn why someone chose to name the town after a long-dead Englishman were the Bacon, Faught, Lovejoy, Marsh and Snow families.

Now she presents more information about the Bacons, with a double warning: readers uninterested in genealogy should skip this article, and those who read it and are not confused by the end haven’t been paying attention.

The Sidney Bacons started with three brothers, the third, sixth and seventh of 11 children (eight sons, three daughters) of Josiah Bacon II and Sarah (Davis) Bacon. Why these three moved to Maine while their siblings stayed in Massachusetts, who knows?

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The oldest brother (who was not mentioned last week) was David, born Aug. 30, 1730, in Bedford, Massachusetts, and died in 1819 in Sidney, according to the on-line website Familysearch. Michael Denis listed him in his admirably comprehensive Bacon genealogy, found on line.

Beyond these sources, your writer has found no other information about David Bacon.

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Ebenezer Bacon plan for land, 1773. (Courtesy of Maine Memory Network)

Ebenezer Bacon was born in Bedford Sept. 15, 1736. In 1762, in Boston, he married Abigail Farwell (1734 -1817), widow of Levi Richardson (whom she had married in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753). These two are the first of many Ebenezer and Abigail Bacons to live in Sidney.

Denis found in an earlier Bacon genealogy that Ebenezer came to Maine in 1755, as part of the British garrison at Fort Halifax, in what became Winslow. His name is in records of fort expenditures and activities until 1759; he was involved in repairing boats, hauling hay and providing 30 gallons of rum.

After the war, this source says, he settled in Vassalboro, where he got a land grant in 1763 or 1773 (sources differ) and bought land from younger brother James in 1769. James’ lot is specifically identified as on the west – Sidney – side of the Kennebec; the writer added that when Ebenezer sold it in 1772, he said it was in Vassalboro (Sidney not yet existing, why not?).

(Is this the same Ebenezer Bacon who had a large farm in the north end of Waterville by 1770? Quite probably, but your writer cannot prove or disprove it.)

This early source says Ebenezer Bacon was a constable in Sidney in 1775, a tithing man in 1777 and a surveyor of highways in 1778.

Bacon died in 1798; he had made his will Feb. 12, 1798, and it was probated Aug. 2. His widow, Abigail Farwell Bacon, died in Waterville in September 1817.

Ebenezer Bacon’s genealogy, as found on two different websites, is a masterpiece of confusing names.

To begin with, Ebenezer (1736) and Abigail Farwell named their children Frances (born in 1763), Ebenezer, Jr. (1765; he was executor of his father’s will), William (1768) and Abigail (born Aug. 23, 1770, in Sidney).

Ebenezer Jr., married Hannah Lovejoy on Nov. 28, 1793, in Vassalboro.

Hannah Lovejoy was born in Sidney Nov. 19, 1773, daughter of Captain Abiel Lovejoy, Sr. (1731- 1811) who married Mary Brown (1741 – 1812), “the belle of Charlestown [Massachusetts],” on Dec. 14, 1758. (There will be more about the Sidney Lovejoys in a later article in this series.)

Ebenezer, Jr., and Hannah had at least seven children, as follows: Columbus Clark (1794), Ebenezer Farwell (1796), Evelina (1800), Julia Ann (1803), Elizabeth (1806), John Hancock (1808, labeled a twin but no other name is listed) and Samuel Adams (1812).

Separation record, 1816. (courtesy of Maine Memory Network)

Only the two oldest were born in Sidney. Later births in Waterville make it seem likely that Ebenezer Jr., was the Ebenezer Bacon who was elected one of Waterville’s three selectmen at the July 26, 1802, town meeting, the first after Waterville separated from Winslow.

The moderator for that meeting was Elnathan Sherwin, born in 1762, in Dunstable, Massachusetts. This prominent citizen represented Waterville in the Massachusetts legislature from 1799 through 1809 and again from 1812 through 1815; in September 1814, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Augusta-based militia.

Sherwin’s wife was Abigail Bacon, born Aug. 23, 1770, daughter of Ebenezer (1736) and Abigail. The Sherwins had four daughters and two sons; the older son they named William Bacon Sherwin, after his uncle William (1768).

One Lovejoy genealogy says Capt. Abiel and Mary (Brown) Lovejoy had two other daughters besides Hannah who married Ebenezer Bacon, Jr. The oldest Lovejoy girl was Abigail, born Jan. 1, 1770, in Pownalborough; on Dec. 1, 1794, she married William Bacon (1768; Ebenezer Jr.’s, younger brother), in Vassalboro.

The genealogy where your writer found this information lists no children from this marriage.

The Bacons did not have a monopoly on Ebenezers. The genealogy just mentioned says Captain Abiel and Mary Lovejoy’s youngest daughter, Phebe (born Oct. 1, 1785, in Vassalboro), married Ebenezer Morse (born in 1787 on Cape Cod), on Sept. 12, 1803, in Vassalboro.

Between 1805 and 1828 Phebe gave birth to seven sons and three daughters, all born in Vassalboro or Sidney. Of course, one son was named Ebenezer (Morse, not Bacon).

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Backing up to the first generation of central Maine Bacons, the youngest was David and Ebenezer’s kid brother James H., born in Massachusetts in 1737 (according to Alice Hammond’s history of Sidney) or on June 30, 1738 (Denis). He married Abigail Marsh, born in 1747.

Hammond wrote that James H. “was educated as a physician,” without further details. He served in the British forces (location unspecified) in 1758; got a land grant in Sidney in 1763, was involved in numerous land deals and ran the tavern where the first Vassalboro town meeting was held in 1771.

Denis, again citing the earlier genealogy, wrote that James H. and Abigail had at least three sons, whom they named James (no birth date, but he was old enough to marry in June 1791), William Marsh (born in 1782) and – of course — Ebenezer (born in 1788).

A newspaper article that Hammond quoted said William Marsh Bacon married Polly, born March 9, 1783, and “probably a sister to Abial Lovejoy.” Familysearch, however, says William Bacon married Polly Densmore on Jan. 1, 1806, in Sidney.

This source says Polly Densmore was born March 9, 1788 (not 1783), in Vassalboro, daughter of Samuel and Mary Polly (Lovejoy) Densmore. Find a Grave identifies her as Polly Mary Densmore Bacon, and shows a photo of the gravestone of “Mary wife of Wm. Bacon.”

One source says Mary Polly Lovejoy was the daughter of Capt. Abiel Lovejoy, Sr., and sister to Abiel Lovejoy, Jr. (1764 – 1858). Her daughter Polly (Densmore) Bacon, by this account, was the granddaughter of one Abiel Lovejoy and the niece of another, but sister to neither.

Find a Grave says Mary Polly (Lovejoy) Densmore was born April 30, 1761, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and died in Sidney Nov. 19, 1789, when she was 28 and her daughter Polly was a child (whichever of Polly’s birth dates is correct).

The newspaper article and Familysearch disagree on how many children William and Polly Bacon had. Here is a combined list of these alleged grandchildren of James and Abigail Bacon, listed in birth order.

The oldest was Polenah, or Paulina, or both in either order, born in 1805 (when her mother was 17 years old) or, according to her gravestone, June 25, 1806, and died on April 12, 1879, in Sidney. On Feb. 9, 1824, Paulina married William Hamlin or Hamlen (1801 or 1802 – 1879), born in Augusta. Sources say they had 13 or 14 children, several of whom died young.

(Namsor.app, a web name checker, says Polenah is a female name, perhaps of eastern African/Kenyan or Israeli origin. Abial is also east African, farther north, perhaps Ethiopian.)

Next came a son Familysearch says was named Polemah or Pliney, born in 1806. The lack of additional information suggests he died in childhood.

Abial Densmore Bacon was born Jan. 12, 1807. He married Almira Faught (born about 1813, or 1816) in Hallowell on Dec. 26, 1847; they had three daughters before she died March 7 or 8, 1859. He died Dec. 3, 1878, and is buried in Sidney’s Reynolds cemetery with his wife and other Bacons.

Familysearch next lists two daughters, Abegail Densmore (born Jan. 12, 1807, so presumably Abial’s twin) and Abibail Dinsmore (born June 12, 1808). The similarity of names (or are they the same name, carelessly copied?) and, again, the lack of more information suggest neither girl lived past infancy.

The next son listed was a second William Marsh (though he is not called Jr. in any source your writer found), born April 21, 1810. He married Sarah Hamlen (or Hamlin; born 1810?) on Nov. 14, 1832, in Sidney; she was probably the sister or half-sister of his sister Paulina’s husband (sources disagree on dates and on Sarah’s middle initial). William and Sarah had a son, Oliver William Bacon, born Dec. 6, 1833, in Augusta.

William and Polly’s next son was Alfred A., born July 17, 1813 (Familysearch) or 1814 (Find a Grave), husband of Parthenia F. Thayer (1821 – Oct. 16, 1893) and father of James A. Bacon (1845-1919, bearing his great-grandfather’s first name) and Clara Elizabeth Bacon (1851 – ?).

Alfred, Parthenia and son James A. are buried in Reynolds Cemetery. Clara married Horace A. Reynolds on April 6, 1872, in Sidney and lived there for “about fifty years.” According to Find a Grave, neither Clara nor Horace is buried in Reynolds cemetery, despite the matching names.

William and Polly’s daughter, Harriet Thomas, was born July 5, 1815, married John Ham and died in Norridgewock, Jan. 15, 1875.

Nancy Densmore was born May 9, 1818. She married John Brackett on Dec. 23, 1838; there is no record of children.

William and Polly’s last child was a son they named Artemas Kimball (June 21, 1820 – Sept. 27, 1870). He married Esther E. Young, in Hallowell, on July 30, 1848; their son, Edwin K. Bacon, carried on the family name from 1849 to 1913.

Artemas was the only child his grandfather James could not have known – James died in 1819. His widow, Abigail, lived until 1834, and could have met some of her great-grandchildren.

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In one final confusion, your writer searched for the gravesites of James H. Bacon family members buried in Sidney, having found references to burials in the Lovejoy cemetery and a cemetery called first Densmore and now Dinsmore.

The list of Sidney cemeteries on the Find a Grave website includes Lovejoy, but not Densmore or Dinsmore. Sidney’s Dinsmore cemetery was found on a town website related to the cemetery committee, with a note saying it is also called the Bacon’s Corner cemetery.

In the Lovejoy cemetery, Find a Grave lists James H. Bacon; Abigail; their son William, who died Oct. 15, 1852; and William’s widow, Mary Polly Densmore Bacon. In the Dinsmore cemetery, Sidney’s municipal list has the same four names.

Hammond, describing Sidney cemeteries in 1992, wrote this paragraph:

“On the Densmore Road near Bacon’s Corner is an old burial ground which at one time had a tomb with the name ‘Lovejoy’ carved on a granite block over the door. The land was sold by Densmore to a group of neighbors. It has no visible means of support. Since it borders a public road no right of way was necessary.”

On July 29, 2024, your writer found, on the north side of Dinsmore Road a short distance east of Bacon’s Corner, a plainly labeled Lovejoy Cemetery. Marked graves include those of the four Bacons listed above, and William and Paulina (Bacon) Hamlin and three of their children.

Main sources

Denis, Michael J., Families of Oakland, Maine December 2023 found on line.
Hammond, Alice, History of Sidney Maine 1792-1992 (1992).

Websites, miscellaneous.

EVENTS: Learn about the art of rug hooking at Chapman-Hall House

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Chapman-Hall House

Textile artist Kathie Hills will demonstrate and discuss the art and craft of hooking rugs at the historic Chapman-Hall House, on Sunday, August 11, from noon to 4 p.m. Her demonstration is free and open to the public.

Hills will demonstrate the craft and exhibit pieces she has created after learning rug hooking from LaVerne Dickson and Margorie Freeman, local women known for their mastery of this functional art form. A member of the Waldoboro Historical Society, she is well versed in the history of hooked rugs and their significance to Waldoboro.

On permanent display at the Chapman-Hall House are 12 antique hooked rugs, two of which show designs in the early stages of development.

Also included in the exhibit is a copy of the 1884 E.S. Frost Rug Patterns catalog. Edward Sands Frost, of Biddeford, was famous for selling canvases printed with pattern designs for various size rugs, as well as foot stool covers and slippers. Only a few pattern illustrations are printed in the catalog, which offers for sale nearly 200 canvases at prices ranging from 15 cents to $1.25.

The Chapman-Hall House is located at 270 Main Street, Damariscotta.

For more information about the Lincoln County Historical Association visit www.lincolncountyhistory.org and Facebook at Lincoln County Historical Association Maine.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Sidney

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by Mary Grow

The town on the west bank of the Kennebec River south of Waterville that is now Sidney began as part of Vassalboro, the town on the east bank.

There seems to be unanimous agreement among historians that Sidney was incorporated as a separate town on Jan. 30, 1792, and that it was named after the British courtier, man of letters and soldier Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586). (See box.)

The historians your writer found are equally unanimous in their silence on two topics: why Sidney separated from Vassalboro, and why the new town was named in honor of a 200-years-dead Englishman.

Two important sources your writer consulted are Alma Pierce Robbins’ 1971 history of Vassalboro and Alice Hammond’s 1992 history of Sidney. Both wrote about the Native Americans who lived along that stretch of the Kennebec and the Europeans who supplanted them.

Hammond, focused on the west bank of the river, repeated two legends about the Natives, one that indicated that swimming across Messalonskee Lake was a test of hardihood for young Natives, boys and girls alike.

Messalonskee Lake, aka Snow Pond, was once entirely in western Sidney and is now shared by Sidney and Belgrade, the next town west. It is more than eight miles long and makes up about the northern two-thirds of Sidney’s west boundary.

Hammond, again quoting the collector of legends, wrote that the name Messalonskee came from the Native word “muskalog,” or giant pike (still known as a muskellunge or muskie). Wikipedia says the alternate name Snow Pond recognizes Philip Snow, a settler there in 1774.

(Another important wet area is the Great Sidney Bog, in the southern end of town. In William D. Williamson’s 1832 History of the District of Maine, he wrote that Sidney covered 20,000 acres, “of which 1,000 is a bog.”

(Hammond, in 1992, said the bog covered 640 acres, two-thirds in Sidney and the rest in Augusta. An on-line State of Maine website calls the bog an area of statewide ecological significance, a 605-acre example of a Raised Level Bog.)

In her Vassalboro history, Robbins gave the 1761 survey by Nathan Winslow as the Kennebec Proprietors’ action that spurred settlement on the Vassalboro section of the Kennebec. Early family names she mentioned include Bacon, Faught, Lovejoy and Marsh.

“The land transactions in Vassalboro were in the beginning more active on the west side of the river,” Robbins wrote. One reason she gave was the streams that flowed into the Kennebec from the west and were dammed to provide water power for sawmills and grist mills.

Henry Kingsbury, in his Kennebec County history, gave a second reason, Sidney’s “superior attractions for settlement.”

“After inspecting the adjacent sections on either side, an observer must have been agreeably impressed, then as now, with its comparatively level surface and the infrequency of rugged hills and still more rugged rocks,” he wrote.

For the prospective farmer, he continued, “The soil on the eastern half, that borders the river, is very favorable for cultivation and the production of grain and grass, but not as well adapted to fruit trees as the western half, in which apples are a staple crop.”

He also praised the “variety and enormous growth” of the forests, which kept mills busy “for more than half a century”; and recognized the value of the river as a transportation artery for farm and forest products.

After Vassalboro was incorporated on April 26, 1771, Robbins wrote that the first town meeting was held May 22, 1771, at James Bacon’s. She described him as “physician and innkeeper.” He is referred to in various sources as Dr. James Bacon and as James H. Bacon; your writer thinks these references are all to the same man.

Robbins did not say on which side of the Kennebec James Bacon had his tavern. Michael Denis, in his extensive Bacon genealogy, says it was on the west – Sidney – side; and your writer has found supporting evidence.

Dr. James Bacon was born June 30, 1738, in Billerica, Massachusetts. On Sept. 23, 1764, in Hallowell, he married Abigail Marsh, born in Menden, Massachusetts, Nov. 24, 1747. Her father, John Marsh, had come to what would become Sidney in 1760; in 1763, Denis wrote, Bacon received a land grant in future Sidney.

Between 1767 and 1790, Familysearch says, the James Bacons had seven daughters and three sons (other sources list fewer children). They named their oldest daughter, who was born in 1767 and died in 1812, Abigail. Her birthplace is given as Kennebec, Maine, and she married a Vassalboro man in 1786.

The oldest son was James Josiah Bacon, born in 1770 and died in 1834. Familysearch says he was born in Vassalboro and married a Vassalboro woman in 1791.

At least four of James and Abigail’s children were born in Sidney, according to Familysearch. They were Sarah B., born in 1775 (and died in Sidney); Lydia, born in 1781 (and died in Sidney); William Marsh, born Sept. 22, 1782 (and was married and died in Sidney); and Ebenezer, born in 1788. Hannah, born in Maine about 1778, died in Sidney (Find a Grave has a photo of her gravestone in Sidney’s Field Cemetery; it says she died June 11, 1867, age 89).

James Bacon’s older brother, Ebenezer Bacon, was definitely a Sidney resident. Robbins cited a July 14, 1773, deed to him from the Kennebec Proprietors for 500 acres “lying on the West side of the Kennebec River.”

Ebenezer Bacon was born in Bedford, Massachusetts, on Sept. 15, 1736, and married Abigail Farwell (1734-1817), in Boston, in 1762. She was the widow of Levi Richardson, whom she had married in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753.

Ebenezer and Abigail had at least two daughters and two sons, born between Jan. 1, 1763 and Aug. 23, 1770; Familysearch says all four were born in Sidney. The older boy was Ebenezer Bacon Jr., born in 1765; the younger girl, born in 1770, was Abigail.

The senior Ebenezer died Feb. 12, 1798, in Sidney. Abigail died in Vassalboro in September 1817.

Robbins summarized what she considered major actions at that first Vassalboro town meeting in 1771, and at following ones. Among decisions pertinent to Sidney were a spring 1773 vote to provide “a burying ground on each side of the river”; and a November 1773 decision to build a meeting house on the “west side of the river.”

In 1786, she wrote, without further explanation: “Talk of separating the Town by the river began, the east side to keep the incorporation.” A few paragraphs later, Robbins wrote, “In 1793 the accounts between the Towns of Sidney and Vassalborough were adjusted, and Vassalborough became the east side of the Kennebec River.”

When Alice Hammond took up the story of Sidney as a separate town, she described the 1761 survey by Nathan Winslow that laid out three tiers of lots on either shore of the Kennebec. In 1774, she continued, John Jones surveyed two more tiers west of the original three, “completing the survey from the Kennebec River west to Lake Messalonskee.”

Between the two surveys was a narrow strip, called a gore (many Maine towns had gores). The gore, too, was divided into lots. Hammond wrote that one of its six sections, including five of its 56 lots, was named the Bacon Tract .

Hammond found copies of land deeds from the 1770s at the Kennebec Registry of Deeds in Augusta. She listed some of the early Sidney landowners as Dr. James Bacon, Ebenezer Bacon, Abiel (alternately spelled Abial in the early documents she cited) Lovejoy, and John Marsh.

She then reprinted a Feb. 26, 1892, Kennebec Journal article listing early Sidney settlers, in recognition of the town’s 100th anniversary.

This list includes William Bacon (Sept. 22, 1782 – Oct. 15, 1852), James and Abigail’s son. The newspaper writer said:

“Mr. Bacon kept a tavern in the house that sits where Carlos Hammond now [1892] lives and it is said used to dispense ‘New England rum’ at a ‘four pence ha’penny’ a glass. It was from him that Bacon’s Corner takes its name.”

An on-line map shows Bacon’s Corner in south central Sidney, west of Interstate 95, the four-way intersection of Dinsmore and Shepherd roads with Middle Road.

Sidney’s first town meeting, Hammond said, was called by Abial Lovejoy, constable, at David Smiley’s. Smiley she described as an “inn keeper on the River Road,” the closest to the Kennebec of several north-south roads through Sidney.

Hammond did not date the first meeting, but it was early in 1792, because the second one was in May of that year, she said. Voters at that meeting chose a four-man committee to settle accounts with Vassalboro.

Hammond said nothing more about the committee, but apparently its work succeeded, since Robbins was able to report that the towns’ accounts were settled in 1793.

Sir Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney

Wikipedia’s long article on Sir Philip Sidney calls him a “poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age.”

He was born Nov. 30, 1554, at Penshurst Place, a still-standing medieval castle 32 miles southwest of London. The house, built in 1341, had been in the family since 1552, when King Edward VI granted it to Sidney’s grandfather.

Sidney was the oldest of at least three children. Educated at Christ Church, part of Oxford University, he went on his first diplomatic mission at age 18, one of a delegation that failed to arrange a marriage between Queen Elizabeth and a son of the French King Henry II.

(Readers may remember that Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, was known as “the virgin queen” – she never did marry.)

After three years in Europe, Sidney returned to England where, Wikipedia says, he occupied himself with “politics and art,” including terms in Parliament in the 1580s. Simultaneously he was active in the military, fighting for the Protestant cause in Ireland in 1575 and 1576 and in the Netherlands in 1585 and 1586.

His literary works included a collection of poems, a romance and a critical work on poetry. The Wikipedia writer considered the last two influential in the subsequent development of English literature.

Queen Elizabeth knighted Sidney in 1583. The same year, he married Frances Walshingham, 16-year-old daughter of the Queen’s principal secretary; they named their daughter, born in 1585, Elizabeth.

On Sept. 22, 1586, Sidney was wounded at the Battle of Zutphen in the Netherlands, where English troops were supporting Dutch Protestants against Spanish Catholics. He died of gangrene on Oct. 17, aged 31.

Main sources

Denis, Michael J., Families of Oakland, Maine December 2023 found on line.
Hammond, Alice, History of Sidney Maine 1792-1992 (1992).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).

Websites, miscellaneous.

China Historical Society Museum open to public Saturday during China Community Days

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The interior of the China History Museum.

To help promote this year’s China Days celebration, the China Historical Society’s Museum will be open for exploration on Saturday, August 3, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. This facility, located in the old town hall, on Lakeview Drive, contains for the present time the society’s collection of artifacts, documents and memorabilia, and is a vast treasure of the town’s history. Any and all are welcome to visit and they will be pleased to show you the space and its contents. You may even discover a part of your own family’s past. Hope to see you there!

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Waterville

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Waterville, 1895 – by George E. Norris

by Mary Grow

Waterville, now a city, started as the part of Winslow on the west bank of the Kennebec River.

In the 1902 centennial history, editor and writer Edwin Carey Whittemore traced Winslow/ Waterville’s origin from Native American settlements onward.

He wrote that the territory of the local Kennebec (or Canabis, or other spellings) tribe extended from the Atlantic at Merrymeeting Bay up the river to Moosehead Lake, with related inland areas.

One of several Indian villages on the river was in present-day Winslow on what Whittemore called Fort Hill, the high land on the north side of the Sebasticook River as it flows into the Kennebec. This village, Whittemore said, covered “nearly a mile” along the two rivers and had by 1902 had already been explored for Native relics.

There was a small Native burying ground farther upriver, Whittemore said. On the west (now Waterville) bank, there was no evidence of a village, but a large cemetery ran “from what is now Temple street to the site of the Lockwood Mills” at the foot of present-day Main Street (two long city blocks).

Whittemore described some of the corpses found as foundations were excavated for city buildings. He surmised this burial ground served the village across the river.

The falls in the Kennebec, the village on the east bank and the nearby area on both banks were called Teconnet or Ticonic (or other spellings). Native inhabitants interacted with early Europeans – as summarized in the June 6 article on Winslow’s early days, traders beginning in the mid-1600s, followed by soldiers manning Fort Halifax, built in 1754.

Stephen Plocher, in a history of Waterville found on line, and Henry Kingsbury, in his 1892 Kennebec County history, say the early trading posts were on the west bank of the Kennebec, across the river from the Native village.

Plocher wrote that Richard Hammond should be “considered Waterville’s first white resident”; his “trading house on the west side of the river” was operating in 1660. Aaron Plaisted, in his chapter on early settlers in Whittemore’s history, agreed. He wrote that Hammond was “the first white man known to have any connection with the West Side” in his 1660 trading house.

Kingsbury, however, wrote that the Clark (or Clarke) and Lake trading post, which he dated from 1650, was on the Waterville side of the river. And Plaisted continued the sentence quoted above with the statement that Clark and Lake “had a trading house in this vicinity seven years earlier [than 1660].”

Whittemore implied the same location when he quoted from an account of the wars between Natives and settlers that the 1692 burning of “the fort and settlement at Teconnet” ended “the history of earliest Waterville the metropolis of the Canibas [Kennebec] Indians.”

Plaisted wrote that from the mid-1600s to the mid-1750s, there is no information on Europeans in the area. In 1754, he said, “there were no settlers.”

Building a fort enticed a few brave men to buy from the Plymouth Company (or perhaps a Native chief), or to claim a homestead without legal formalities. The end of the wars with French-supported Natives in 1763 let settlers feel safe moving farther away from the fort.

The west side of the river was called either West Side or Ticonic, according to Plaisted. Another source suggested the west side might have been called West Winslow at some point, though he gave neither date nor evidence.

The settlement on both sides of the river became a plantation named Kingfield or Kingsfield (your writer found neither an explanation for the name nor a date for the plantation). On April 26, 1771, the plantation was incorporated as the Town of Winslow, named for Massachusetts General John Winslow, who had supervised the building of Fort Halifax.

Located in the heart of the historic downtown district, Castonguay Square is one of Waterville’s oldest public gathering spaces. Gifted to the city by land deed in 1840, “The Commons” was renamed Castonguay Square in 1921 for Arthur L. Castonguay, the first soldier from Waterville to be killed in action in World War I.

Plaisted said Dr. John McKechnie surveyed parts of both sides of the river “from Winslow to Hallowell” and was an early settler on a west-side lot that ran from the Ken­nebec west to Messalonskee Stream.

(Messalonskee Stream is the outlet of Messa­lonskee Lake, aka Snow Pond, which is shared between Sidney, the town south of Waterville, and Belgrade, west of Sidney. The stream leaves the north end of the lake, goes north through Oakland, west of Waterville, and turns east and south through Waterville to join the Kennebec.)

Plaisted named several men living in Waterville by 1770. In addition to McKechnie, they included Ebenezer Bacon, on a large farm by the river in the north end, close to the Fairfield line; and William Brooks at the north end of the present downtown business district, who “probably built the first of several houses erected on that site.” More families owned riverside property farther south, to the town line.

Whittaker found that voters at a May 1772, town meeting accepted “the road which is now Main street and College avenue,” the main artery on the west bank from contemporary Fairfield south – past Bacon’s farm and Brooks’ house — through contemporary Waterville.

Plaisted and Kingsbury said Winslow’s west-side population quickly outgrew the east-side population. Kingsbury cited three pieces of evidence: the west side got the first doctors, “who always choose the most central point”; there were “very early” mills on Messalonskee Stream; and the majority of names in early “civil or business records” were “clearly westsiders.”

The 1790 census showed 779 Winslow residents; Plaisted and Kingsbury agreed that only about 300 lived on the east side. Kingsbury listed by name more than 60 men who “lived and paid taxes” in future Waterville in 1791. Plaisted went on to postulate that by 1802 the west side “probably” had about 800 inhabitants, out of 1,250.

The historians said the mills on Messalonskee Stream, which was smaller and easier to dam than the Kennebec, were one reason for west-side growth. In 1792, Plaisted said, Asa Redington and Nehemiah Getchell built the first dam across the Kennebec at Waterville, sharing the cost with Dr. McKechnie’s heirs.

There was no bridge connecting the two sections of Winslow, and no historian your writer has found talked about ferries or other regular connections. The Quakers who lived in North Fairfield (west bank) and worshipped downriver in Vassalboro (east bank) crossed the Kennebec and the Sebasticook by fords, locations unknown.

Ernest Marriner, in Kennebec Yesterdays, listed 18th-century ferries in Fairfield, Vassalboro and Augusta and the 1797 Augusta bridge. “For some unaccountable reason,” he wrote, the Kennebec was not bridged at Waterville until 1824.

Whittemore said the first vote to make the west side a separate town was in 1791. It carried, 13 to seven, but was not implemented, Whittemore suggested because so few men voted.

Instead, for some years town offices had two incumbents, one for each side of the river, and town meetings alternated from one village to the other. There were repeated discussions of a division, usually with the Kennebec as the boundary.

Whittemore mentioned one proposal for a town line “one mile west of the river.” And Plaisted said a 1795 petition to the Massachusetts legislature proposed the name Williamsburgh – perhaps, he suggested in honor of Dr. Obadiah Williams, another early resident.

Whittemore summarized, “The expedient of holding town meetings alternately on the east and on the west side of the river was not satisfactory. Two collectors and a double set of town officials did not conduce to harmony.”

The division of Lincoln County to create Kennebec County, effective Feb. 20, 1799, might have given impetus to the division of Winslow.

On Dec. 28, 1801, Winslow voters sent the Massachusetts legislature a petition to turn the west bank settlement into a separate town named Waterville. The main reason for division they cited was the difficulty of crossing the river “in several parts of the year,” especially spring, to attend a religious or town meeting on the other side.

The Massachusetts legislature approved the incorporation of Waterville on June 23, 1802. There is no record of who chose the name or what he or they had in mind.

One suggestion is the obvious: lots of water, with the Kennebec River and Messalonskee Stream. Historian Ernest Marriner suggested the name was selected to avoid displeasing any of several prominent men who wanted the town to bear their names.

Kingsbury and Plaisted would have preferred the name “Ticonic.” Kingsbury called the Native name “more liquid and flowing” than the white man’s choice. Plaisted wrote that it had a “flavor” that the hybrid French-English “Waterville” lacked.

Plocher, on the other hand, found the choice appropriate – perhaps prophetic – in view of the role French-speaking Canadians played in Waterville’s later growth.

By 1802 only one of the three selectmen was an east-side resident; he was authorized to call the next Winslow town meeting, while Waterville would hold its initial meeting on the west bank. This meeting was held Monday, July 26, 1802, and elected a long list of town officials (including Ebenezer Bacon as one of Waterville’s first three selectmen).

(Confusingly, Whittemore wrote this town meeting was held in the East meeting house. He did not mean east of the Kennebec: later, he says the second meeting, Aug. 9, 1802, was in the west or Oakland meeting house, that is, in western Waterville. The east meeting house was in current downtown Waterville between Main Street and the river, near the present Waterville City Hall.)

Plocher summarized another major change in this west-side town: its west side, too, developed as an independent center, with numerous manufacturers using Messalonskee Stream’s water power. An Oakland website says by 1850, there were four dams on the half-mile of stream below the lake’s outlet; it quotes a man who described the stream as “lined with factories.”

This source credits these manufacturers, “unhappy about taxation,” with proposing a separate town named West Waterville, incorporated by the Maine legislature on Feb. 26, 1873.

Local voters changed the name to Oakland in 1883, Plocher says “to establish a more distinct identity.” Mapquest on-line says the name was “presumably” chosen because of “all the oak trees in the town, though some favored the name Weldon” (for which Mapquest offers no explanation).

The remainder of Waterville was incorporated as a city early in 1888. An on-line source says on Jan. 12. Whittemore wrote: “Waterville began her career as a city by the acceptance, January 23, 1888, of the amended city charter, which had been granted by the Maine Legislature, March 4, 1887.” The charter is reproduced in his history; it says it is amending a Feb. 23, 1883, charter.

The vote to accept the charter, Whittemore said, was 543 to 432. He did not explain whether the opponents objected to the idea of a city or to specific provisions in the charter.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Plocher, Stephen, Colby College Class of 2007, A Short History of Waterville, Maine Found on the web at Waterville-maine.gov.
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Celebrating 75 Years: China Historical Society annual meeting and China Elementary School Anniversary

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A large crowd gathered at the China Middle School for a nostalgic journey by the China Historical Society (photo by Eric Austin)

by Eric W. Austin

The annual meeting of the China Historical Society, held on Thursday, July 18, was a delightful blend of business and nostalgia. This year, the meeting doubled as a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the China Elementary School, a cornerstone of our community since 1949. The event, hosted in the gymnasium of what is now the China Middle School, saw about three dozen attendees come together to reminisce and reflect.

Founded in 1974, the China Historical Society has been dedicated to preserving the rich history of our town. The society is always looking for new members, with annual dues set at a modest $10 to support the cause. Prospective members can sign up at the town office. The society is also working on launching a website and a Facebook page to keep everyone updated on upcoming events.

This event was video recorded and will eventually be made available to the public, likely on the (soon to be set up) YouTube channel for CHS.

Scott McCormac

The annual meeting kicked off with the usual business, including the approval of last year’s minutes and the election of new officers, with Robin Adams Sabattus stepping in as the newest board member. Scott McCormac, current President of the Historical Society, underscored the importance of their mission, and highlighted the challenges of consolidating historical information in one place.

The event then shifted gears to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the China Elementary School. Built in 1949, the school replaced numerous small “one-room” schoolhouses scattered across town. These smaller schools were essential before the days of a bus system, ensuring that every child had a school within walking distance. When the new elementary school opened, all the small schools closed simultaneously, leading to initial overcrowding in the new building.

Historical tidbits from the original dedication bulletin reveal that the town appropriated $10,000 for the new school’s construction over three years, with master builder Louis Z. Masse overseeing the project. Letha Wilson served as the first principal, and G. Wayland Jones was the Master of Ceremonies at the dedication.

The highlight of the celebration was hearing from former students like Richard Dillenbeck and Shirley Fitzgerald, members of the first eighth-grade class to graduate from the new school in 1949. Dillenbeck shared a humorous memory about the excitement of having running water and indoor bathrooms, recalling the uncomfortable “three-hole” outhouses they used before. Fitzgerald reminisced about playing games like hopscotch and tag during recess and noted that only four of the original 23 classmates are still alive today.

Richard Dillenbeck, left, and Shirley Fitzgerald reminisce about their days at China Elementary School. (photo by Eric Austin)

Former teacher Wayne Bengtson, who taught at the school from 1968 to 2008, also shared some of his memories. He recalled the influx of students in the 1980s after China students scored well on the first Maine State Educa­tional Assessment standardized tests.

After the reminiscences, long-time custodian Tim Roddy led a tour of the school, including a visit to the basement, which once served as the school cafeteria during its early days. The tour was a hit, offering a trip down memory lane for many attendees.

The China Historical Society continues to engage the community with projects like an upcoming display at the Albert Church Brown Memorial (China Village) Library about the narrow-gauge railroad. Bob Bennett is also working on organizing a tour of the railroad for later in the summer, promising more opportunities for residents to connect with their local history.

The anniversary celebration was a heartwarming reminder of the strong community bonds that exist in the town of China, Maine. The Historical Society’s efforts to preserve and share local history ensure that future generations will also know the stories that shaped their town. Residents are encouraged to join the society and participate in future events, contributing to the rich tapestry of China’s history.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Fairfield

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Fairfield, 1895 (photo by George Norris)

by Mary Grow

This article brings readers to Fairfield, northernmost of the four municipalities in this series on the west bank of the Kennebec River. Fairfield is across the river from Benton and Clinton (subjects of the June 13 and June 20 articles).

Fairfield is one of the two towns in the series outside Kennebec County; it is far enough north to be in Somerset County. (Palermo, in Waldo County, is the other outsider; see the July 4 history article.)

Fairfield was settled and incorporated only on the west side of the river, unlike Augusta, which began and still is on both banks, or Vassalboro and Winslow, which lost their west sides (the names of Waterville, originally Winslow, and Sidney, originally Vassalboro, remain to be discussed).

The present town started as Fairfield Plantation, according to a history on the town’s website. The 1988 bicentennial history book, prepared by the book committee of the Fairfield Historical Society, says the plantation was organized in 1774, and the town was incorporated June 18, 1788.

Why Fairfield? When your writer summarized the town’s history in an April 16, 2020, article in this series, she quoted Ava Harriet Chadbourne’s Maine Place Names as saying the name was due to the area’s “natural beauty.”

An unrelated on-line account supports Chadbourne. It says Fairfield, California, was named by an early settler after his home town of Fairfield, Connecticut, and cites a 1903 issue of the monthly Connecticut Magazine saying Fairfield, Connecticut’s “name is descriptive of the tract.”

When Fairfield? is a question one writer in the bicentennial history raises. Most of its authors referred to the 1788 town as Fairfield, and called only the present downtown section Kendall’s Mills, named for an entrepreneur who arrived in 1780.

The writer of the chapter titled Military Involvement, however, wrote, “Because of William Kendall’s dominance in the Town it was known as Kendall’s Mills until the name was changed to Fairfield in 1872.” Another chapter says the name of the Kendall’s Mills post office, not the town, became Fairfield in 1872.

The town was not named after its first settler: multiple sources say he was Jonathan Emery, who in 1771 “built a house on Emery Hill [a short distance north of today’s downtown] near the banks of the Kennebec River.”

The bicentennial history says the house started as a log cabin that was “later sheathed with boards” and otherwise modified. Cianbro Corporation took it down in 1982, the history says.

Jonathan Emery came from Dracut, Massachusetts. His son Samuel, born June 15, 1773, was probably the first white child born in Fairfield, the history says (but see below).

On-line Emery genealogies are full of arguments and contradictions. Majority opinion says Jonathan (born Nov. 23, 1722, in Haverhill, Massachusetts; died June, 1807, in Fairfield) was married twice. His first wife was Jerusha or possibly Johannah (Barron) Emery, from Dracut, Massachusetts, born Aug. 4, 1735. She and Jonathan had nine or 10 children before she died in 1781.

One genealogy identifies Jonathan’s second wife as NN. Another calls her a widow named Whitten. Neither provides dates.

Several sources say Emery came first to Winthrop and then to Fairfield. None explains why he came to Maine.

Contemporary downtown Fairfield began with the first dam built to use a portion of the Kennebec’s water power. It ran from the west bank to the island now called Mill Island, the westernmost and largest of half a dozen islands in that stretch of river. Jonas Dutton started building the dam in 1778; in 1780, Revolutionary veteran William Kendall came to Fairfield and took it over.

Kendall (Sept. 11, 1759 – Aug. 11, 1827) was born in Georgetown. The bicentennial history says he joined the army as a private in March 1777, and was honorably discharged in 1780. Why he came to Fairfield is unstated.

He bought and finished Dutton’s dam and built a sawmill and a grist mill on top of it. The mills remained in the family until 1835.

Several sources tell the story of Kendall paddling his birchbark canoe upriver on Christmas Day 1782, to marry Abigail Chase and bring her back to his Fairfield home. The bicentennial history is inconsistent about where Abigail lived and which house her new husband brought her to.

The chronological introductory section says he “brought her down the Kennebec from what is now Hinckley.” Most sources call Hinckley the site of the former Pishon’s Ferry (where the Kennebec has been bridged since 1910).

The writer of the Military Involvement chapter specified Noble’s Ferry, which was downriver from Pishon’s Ferry. (See the June 20 article on Clinton.)

The history says Kendall’s first house was a log cabin near the river, at the north end of the present downtown area. The writer of the introduction said the couple lived there until the late 1790s, when they moved into a large brick house farther south and farther from the river.

The Military Involvement writer implied that immediately after putting up the log cabin, Kendall “proceeded to dig a cellar and to build the first frame house in the village.” He brought his bride down the river “to the home he had recently completed.”

Kendall also bought land downstream from his dam, starting the present commercial center. The history says he ran a store farther south on the river until he died in 1827.

Kendall’s Mills, and now downtown Fairfield, was/is in the southeastern corner of town. The local histories list another half-dozen early population centers, three upriver from Kendall’s Mills and three in the rest of town.

The next upriver settlement has been called Shawmut since 1889; previous names included Philbrooks Mills, Lyons Mills and Somerset Mills (the name of the post office there from 1853 to 1889). The area was farmland until 1835, the history says, when Ivory Low “bonded his farm with the water power to Milton Philbrook of Fairfield for the round sum of $40,000.”

Philbrook presumably built a dam, though that fact is not recorded. His original mill soon changed hands; Waterville lawyer Alpheus Lyon built Fairfield’s first flour mill there. The history does not explain the names Somerset Mills and Shawmut.

Next up the river was Nye’s Corner, where the post office was Fairfield Corners from 1822 to 1882, the history says. Named for the numerous Nye family, this village in the 1830s was “the hub of the Town with its stores, church, hotel, blacksmith shop, hat manufacturer, cooper shops, coat and shoe shops and carriage shops.”

About eight miles upstream from Kendall’s Mills, at Pishon’s Ferry, was East Fairfield, now Hinckley, in the northeastern corner of town. The name Hinckley, the bicentennial history says, honors George Walter Hinckley, founder in 1889 of the Goodwill Home and School.

Of the three inland settlements, the southernmost, almost due west of Kendall’s Mills, is Fairfield Center. Northward, inland from Nye’s Corner, is North Fairfield; and in the northwest corner of town is Larone.

Neither the on-line nor the printed town history is clear on the origin of the Fairfield Center settlement. It might be part of acreage on the west bank of the Kennebec purchased by two Massachusetts men, Joseph Dimmock and Joseph Nye, on Oct. 11, 1781.

Dimmock and Nye were required to survey 60 195-acre lots and find settlers for them and to build three roads in the tract. If your writer has correctly located their land, they succeeded: the bicentennial history says Fairfield Center, on the main road from Waterville to Skowhegan, had the Fairfield post office from 1807 to 1872, and stores and taverns that made it the town’s “business section” (no dates given).

North Fairfield’s first settlers the bicentennial history describes as “a group of Quakers from Massachusetts” – hence one of its early names, Quakertown. It was also known as Black’s Mills and Blacknell’s Mills, for reasons your writer has not ascertained. The Bowerman brothers, Elihu, Harper and Zaccheus, were the initial settlers.

(There is more about the Bowermans in the history article in the April 20, 2016, issue of The Town Line.)

The village of Larone is in extreme northwestern Fairfield, on Martin Stream. Martin Stream, which the bicentennial history says is named for an early trapper (no first name given), flows into the Kennebec River at Hinckley.

The history says the first settler was Abraham Potter, who paid Massachusetts $1.25 an acre for his farmland. Opening a road to Norridgewock encouraged more settlers, including Daniel Winslow (no date given) who dammed the stream and built “a mill for tanning purposes, a grist mill and later a lath saw.”

The village was therefore called Winslow’s Mills until residents wanted their own post office and a new name for it. Citing an earlier history specifically of Larone, the bicentennial history says during a meeting organized to discuss the post office, Tilly Emery, who owned a roan horse, offered “the roan,” “meaning that if no other way was provided, his horse could bring…[the mail] in.”

Others present amended “the roan” to “Larone,” “and the named was unanimously adopted.”

The writer added that “Mr. Emery became the first postmaster, although Mrs. Emery did most of the business.”

A contemporary on-line map shows these seven early Fairfield settlement centers (plus three other localities).

Two more second-generation Emerys

Some of the varying lists of Jonathan and Jerusha Emery’s children begin with Private David, born in Dracut in 1754. One list, of six sons and four daughters, includes Samuel; two sources say he was born June 17, 1773, in Winthrop (not Fairfield).

An 1890 genealogy, copied on a newer genealogical site, says when Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Québec went through Fairfield in September 1775, 21-year-old David Emery joined and went as far as Dead River. When Lieutenant Colonel Roger Enos and about 450 men turned back from there late in October, Emery came with them.

(Dead River is about 80 miles north and west of Fairfield. Roger Enos [1729 -1808] was a Connecticut native who had been a soldier since 1759 [the French and Indian War]. He was court-martialed for leaving Arnold’s expedition; defended himself on grounds of the lack of food, supplies and boats for the troops; was acquitted and rejoined the army.)

Emery then served in the army outside Boston until March 1777. He spent two years at Ticonderoga, New York, the genealogist wrote, before going to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to join General George Washington’s Life Guards.

Discharged in March 1780, at Morristown, New Jersey, he returned to Fairfield. The genealogist found an April 5, 1782, record of marriage intentions between “David Emery and Abigail Goodwin [1763 – 1838] both of Kennebeck River without the boundaries of any town, but in the county of Lincoln.” The marriage did not get recorded because the town was not incorporated, the genealogist explained.

David and Abigail had six sons and four daughters. David died in Fairfield on Nov. 18, 1830, and is buried in Emery Hill Cemetery.

Another genealogy says David’s younger brother, Samuel (the one who might have been Fairfield’s first white child), married Deidamia Johnston, whose date and place of birth are unknown. Between April 1786 and April 1817, the couple had 11 children whose names are listed – the website says there were a total of 15.

The children were born in Fairfield except for William (Nov. 20, 1801) and Samuel (May 22, 1810), who were born in Phippsburg, this source says (without explanation).

Samuel was 69 when he died March 7, 1839, in Fairfield; he, too, is buried in Emery Hill Cemetery. Neither Deidamia nor her sister-in-law Abigail have identified graves there.

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society, Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988)

Websites, miscellaneous

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Albion

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Monument erected in Albion for Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an Albion native. On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob while defending the site of his anti-slavery newspaper, the St. Louis Observer. His death both deeply affected many individuals who opposed slavery and greatly strengthened the cause of abolition. (photo courtesy of Maine: An Encyclopedia)

by Mary Grow

Of the town and city names your writer has explored in this subseries, none has yet been as frustrating as the Town of Albion.

Sources agree on names and dates. In 1802, Freetown Plantation was incorporated, including most of present-day Albion and the northern end of what is now the separate town of China.

Ruby Crosby Wiggin wrote in her 1964 history of Albion that in March 1803 plantation residents petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to create a town. They received three separate approvals, Wiggin wrote, by the House and Senate plus the Governor, and on March 9, 1804, the Town of Fairfax was incorporated.

On March 10, 1821, the Maine legislature approved changing Fairfax’s name to Lygonia (Lagonia, Ligonia). On Feb. 25, 1824, the name was changed again, to Albion.

So said Wiggin. And Henry Kingsbury in his Kennebec County history. So says Wikipedia. And the on-line Maine an Encyclopedia, which adds that Albion is the old name for England. And a website called FamilySearch. And a website called greenerpasture, quoting Wikipedia. And a website called mainegenealogy.net. And a website called heirloomsreunited, which skips Freetown Plantation, naming only Fairfax, Ligonia and Albion.

Some of these sources describe boundary changes, especially in Fairfax; the early 1800s saw multiple land transfers. Some name inhabitants — early settlers, famous people, heads of household listed in the 1790 and 1820 censuses.

Your writer found not one source that explained any of the four names, and not one that explained why the area had four successive names anyway.

* * * * * *

Freetown was a not uncommon name for an early Maine settlement, presumably expressing the settlers’ belief that they had moved beyond the reach of government. But the men who established Freetown promptly asked to live in an incorporated town, and the 1802 Freetown Plantation became the March 1804 Town of Fairfax.

Wiggin had a theory. She wrote that Freetown’s first town meeting, starting at 10 a.m., on Oct. 30, 1802, was held at John Leonard’s house, which she located on the west side of current Route 202 close to the Unity town line, in the northeastern corner of town.

Leonard and Asa Phillips, who was chosen town meeting moderator, “were neighbors in Winslow [incorporated in 1771] before coming to Freetown Plantation,” Wiggin wrote. She surmised that after “something like five years” in this unincorporated area, they were ready to again “enjoy the same privileges their former neighbors in Winslow were enjoying.”

The Oct. 30, 1802, meeting only chose local officers, Wiggin said. A second plantation meeting, on March 28, 1803, included an article to “petition…the General Court [the Massachusetts legislature] for an incorporation of this plantation just as the [boundary] lines now run.” Wiggin said nothing about a name for the incorporated entity.

She wrote that this area’s settlers mostly came east from the Kennebec Valley or north from Jones Plantation (later China). Neither she nor any other source your writer found gave a date for the first land claim more specific than “before 1790.”

Wiggin and Kingsbury agreed the first settler(s) are not known. Kingsbury added that the “weight of evidence seems to point to the Rev. Daniel Lovejoy” (a Congregational minister who moved to the west shore of Lovejoy Pond before 1790, according to Kingsbury).

Wiggin disagreed. Referencing family papers, she said Daniel Lovejoy was only about 14 years old when his father, Francis, and the rest of the family settled on what was then Fifteen-Mile Pond; Francis, therefore, has a stronger claim to the “first settler” title.

(Francis Lovejoy’s most famous grandson was abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy. Two previous articles in this history series have been about the Lovejoy family, in the Aug. 13, 2020, and Feb. 1, 2024, issues of The Town Line.)

Kingsbury went on to list six families he said were in Albion when the 1790 United States census was taken, naming four (plus Lovejoy): Crosbys, Libbeys, Prays and Shoreys.

Wiggin wrote: “Although the Shoreys, Prays and Libbeys were here very early, we believe that there were others who were here even earlier.”

She said the 1790 census report divided present-day Albion between Hancocktown (another name for Hancock Plantation, mentioned in the June 20 history article as including present-day Benton and Clinton) and Jones Plantation (now China).

Men Wiggin was sure were in Albion by 1790 included Bela or Belial Burrill, Jonah Crosby, Jr., and Robert Crosby, Samuel Davis, Thomas Fowler, Nathan Haywood and Francis Lovejoy.

Kingsbury said Robert Crosby’s homestead was “near the foot of the pond,” and in 1892 part of the land belonged to his grandson, Ora O. Crosby.

Wiggin identified Robert Crosby’s first grant by its 1964 owner, and implied it was at the southwest end of Lovejoy Pond by referring to two dams; an 1811 or 1812 sawmill on a stream; and the “new road completed in 1961” (Route 202?) that runs over the mill site.

(The “new road” also crossed “the spot where the old workshop used to set [sic] at the top of the hill.” Here, Wiggin wrote, the “curved pieces on the arms of the Christian Church pews” were probably made – “at least the patterns for them used to be stored under the workshop bench.”

(The Albion Christian Church, she wrote later in her history, was organized Jan. 1, 1825, at “the home of Brother Robert Crosby.” She listed the nine founding members as Elder Samuel Nutt; Robert and Abigail Crosby; Luther and Ethelinda Crosby; William and Demaris Crosby; and Franklin and Lovina Barton. Luther, Demaris and Lovina were children of Robert and Abigail, she said.)

At least three families who lived in what eventually became the north end of China are included as early Albion settlers: the Burrills, Washburns and Wiggins.

Anecdotes about two of these men illuminate the frequency of the boundary changes mentioned in last week’s account of early days in China.

Wiggin wrote that Nathaniel Wiggin (March 16, 1750 – Sept. 15, 1823) built a log cabin on a hill northeast of the head of China Lake. The 1790 census listed him as a Jones Plantation resident; when Freetown’s first town meeting was held in 1802, he was a resident there. “Thus, he lived in Jones Plantation, Freetown, Fairfax and possibly Lagonia without moving from his home place.”

Japheth Washburn is quoted in the China bicentennial history as writing (in a Jan. 14, 1850, letter) that before the 1818 incorporation of the Town of China, “my Dwellinghouse was in Winslow – across the road, directly opposite, stood my store, in Albion, and 40 rods south, stood my Potash, in Harlem [later China].”

(Washburn was referring to his potash works, where he would have poured water through wood ashes and boiled down the leachate to a solid mass, potash or potassium carbonate. Potash was an essential ingredient in soap, one of many products commonly made at home in 19th-century Maine.)

Kingsbury and Wiggin both named more Albion families who arrived by the early 1800s. Their lists partly duplicate each other. Neither includes a settler named Fairfax.

* * * * * *

Wiggin summarized, without explanation, the March 1821 name change: “the name of the town was changed to Lagonia, or ‘Lygonia,’ (both spellings were used) but some of the residents were still not satisfied and in August of that same year another meeting was called to see if they could get it changed back again to Fairfax, but to no avail.”

Voters at a special meeting in December, 1822, did not pass an article to go back to Fairfax, she wrote. In January, 1823, a five-man committee was elected to draft a petition for the selectmen to present (presumably to the Maine legislature) requesting the name Richmond; apparently nothing happened. On Jan. 8, 1824, voters chose a seven-man committee to petition the legislature for Fairfax, again without success.

Lygonia – the most common spelling – was the name of a British province in southeastern Maine from 1630 or 1639 or 1643 (sources differ) to 1658. It encompassed a roughly square area bounded on the southwest by a line that ran about 50 miles from the coast near Kennebunkport almost to the New Hampshire border; on the northwest by a line that reached the Androscoggin River, enclosing most of Cumberland and part of Androscoggin counties; and on the northeast by a line slanting back to the coast near present-day Brunswick.

The coast was the province’s southeast boundary. Lygonia covered 1,600 square miles, by one estimate, including the present Sebago Lake region and the coastal and riverine areas that were the first parts of Maine to be settled.

Wikipedia, whose writer supplied the 1830 date, says Lygonia was a grant from the Plymouth Council for New England to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Gorges named it in honor of his mother, Cecily (Lyon) Gorges.

(Gorges [1565, 1567 or 1568 – May 24, 1647] was a Plymouth Company member and recipient of royal grants covering much of what became Maine. Though he was influential in Maine’s early history, his story is outside the limits of this series.)

In 1658, Lygonia became part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Your writer found no connection between this Lygonia and the inland Lygonia that succeeded Fairfax.

* * * * * *

Citing town records, Wiggin wrote that at an April 5, 1824, meeting, Lagonia voters were asked to accept the name Albion for their town, and agreed. Again, she gave no explanation for the action or the name.

As previously mentioned, Albion is an old name for Britain. Wikipedia offers a scholarly article on the origin of the word (from early Celtic, via ancient Greek), referring to sources from the sixth century B.C. into the Christian era.

“By the 1st century AD, the name refers unequivocally to Great Britain,” the Wikipedia writer says. However, it was soon replaced by words that led to the Roman word “Britannia” and related names.

An on-line Encyclopedia Britannica article says “Albion” is the earliest name for “the island of Britain,” as distinct from Ireland and other islands that make up the British Isles. “The name Albion has been translated as ‘white land’; and the Romans explained it as referring to the chalk cliffs at Dover (Latin albus, ‘white’),” the article continues.

More recently, the Wikipedia writer says, English explorer Sir Francis Drake christened California “Albion” when he visited there in 1579, during his voyage around the world. When the provinces of Québec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were united as the Canadian Confederation in 1867, alternative names “briefly suggested” for what became Canada were “New Albion” and “Albionoria” (translated as “Albion of the North”).

Your writer cannot connect any of this information with people in Lygonia, Maine, choosing a new town name early in 1824.

Historian Ruby Crosby (Bickmore) Wiggin

Headstone of Ruby Crosby Wiggin in Willey Cemetery, in Benton.

Historian Wiggin’s full name is Ruby Crosby (Bickmore) Wiggin. An on-line genealogy (managed by Roger Keith Crosby, who last updated it two years ago) says she was born in Albion on Dec. 5, 1908, daughter of Merlon Linley and Pearl Eleanor Bickmore.

Pearl Bickmore was born in Calais in 1887, to parents whose first names are not recorded in the on-line genealogy, and was adopted by Ora Otis and Hannah Buzzell Crosby.

Ruby married Raymond Kenneth Wiggin (Jan. 29, 1907 – Nov. 2, 1998). Raymond Kenneth Wiggin was the son of Elmer Ellsworth Wiggin (1868 – 1953); who was the son of George Martin Wiggin (1835 – 1905); who was the son of Ezra Wiggin (1803 – 1894); who was the son of Nathaniel Wiggin, Jr. (1777 -1860); who was the son of Nathaniel Wiggin (born March 16, 1750, in New Hampshire; died Sept. 15, 1823, in China).

Ruby Crosby Wiggin died in Clinton, June 8, 1996.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).

Websites, miscellaneous.

EVENTS: China Historical Society going back to school

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Members of the China Historical Society (2023). (photo by Roberta Barnes)

photo source: JMG.org

by Bob Bennett

The China Historical Society will be hosting a remembrance and tour of the 75-year-old China (Middle) School following the annual meeting on Thursday, July 18. It is intended these activities will begin in the gym of the building, on Lakeview Drive, at about 6 p.m. Head Custodian Tim Roddy has offered to be the tour guide and though there is some on-going work, he is confident there will be plenty of access. The memories of the attendees will be voiced in the gym and it is hoped that many students, teachers and other China residents of all ages will be on hand to share their experiences. From previous messages and postings, it appears this event is generating quite a bit of interest and enthusiasm, and the CHS is looking forward to a fun and reflective evening; please put it on your calendar!

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: China – Palermo

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by Mary Grow

The next town north of Windsor is China, which, like Windsor, began life as a plantation and did not acquire its present name for some years after the first Europeans settled there.

China Lake

A dominant feature of the town is what is now China Lake, earlier known as Twelve Mile Pond because it was 12 miles from Fort Western and the Cushnoc settlement. China Lake is almost two lakes. A long oval east basin runs north-south, with the main inlet at the north end. A short channel two-thirds of the way down the west shore, called the Narrows, connects to a ragged sort-of-oval west basin, with its western third in Vassalboro.

The outlet is at from the northwest side of the West Basin. Outlet Stream runs north through Vassalboro and Winslow to join the Sebasticook River before it flows into the Kennebec River.

Henry Kingsbury, in his Kennebec County history, wrote that in the fall of 1773, the Kennebec Proprietors had surveyors Abraham Burrell (Burrel, Burrill) and John “Black” Jones “lay out 32,000 acres [50 square miles], including the waters” into approximately 200-acre farms.

Jones spent the winter of 1773-74 in Gardiner and finished the survey in the spring, creating a March 19, 1774, plot plan that Kingsbury reproduced. It is usually called John Jones’ plan, without mention of Burrell; and the Proprietors, Kingsbury said, named the area Jones Plantation.

In Gardiner, Jones met Ephraim Clark (July 15, 1751 – Oct. 20, 1829), from Nantucket, youngest son of Jonathan Clark, Sr., (1704 – 1780) and Miriam (Merriam, to Kingsbury, or Mirriam) (Worth) Clark (1710 – 1776). Ephraim came to Jones’ surveyed area in the summer, took up almost 600 acres toward the south end of the lake’s east shore and built a house.

Following Ephraim to China came his older brothers Jonathan, Jr. (1735, 1736 or 1737 – 1816), and his wife, Susanna (Swain, 1751-1821, according to on-line sources, or Gardiner, according to Kingsbury, who gave no dates); Edmund (1743 – 1822); and Andrew (1747 – 1832 or 1842); his sister and brother-in-law, Jerusha (Clark) Fish (Dec. 20, 1732 – Sept. 25, 1807) and George Fish (Aug. 15, 1746 – unknown; he died at sea on his way to England, sources say); and his parents.

Jonathan, Jr., and Edmund settled in 1774 on adjoining farms on the west side of the lake, south of the Narrows. Andrew chose a lot at the south end. The Fishes settled farther north on the east shore, near the present Pond Meeting House on Lakeview Drive. Jonathan, Sr., and Miriam reportedly lived with Ephraim.

In 1774, the southern part of China, about nine-tenths of the present-day town, was incorporated as Jones Plantation, almost certainly named for surveyor John Jones (though the China bicentennial history says “some sources mention an early settler named Jones from whom the name was taken”).

Settlement expanded over the next two decades. On Feb. 8, 1796, the bicentennial history says, the Massachusetts legislature made Jones Plantation a town named Harlem. The history quotes a source saying the origin of the name was the Dutch city of Harlem, but adds there is no evidence to support the statement “and no evidence of a Dutch settlement in China.”

Wikipedia says “Massachusetts legislative member Japheth Wasburn [sic] submitted the name.” This statement is incorrect; Japheth Coombs Washburn provided the name China 22 years later (see below), but he did not move to the area until 1803 or 1804.

The northern end of today’s China was first called Freetown Plantation. Various boundary adjustments in 1804, 1813 and 1816 moved the acreage temporarily to Fairfax (later Albion), then added land from Fairfax and Winslow.

Harlem, like other early towns, was headed by an elected board of three selectmen, assisted by a town clerk, a town treasurer and other officials as needed. At Harlem’s first town meeting, held at 11 a.m., Monday, March 28, 1796, Ephraim Clark was elected one of the three selectmen (with Abraham Burel and James Lancaster), and also the treasurer and the surveyor of lumber.

On Feb. 18, 1818, the Massachusetts legislature approved an act creating a new town that combined northern Harlem, from about the middle of present-day China, with parts of Fairfax and Winslow. The bicentennial history offers only a surmise, not a definitive explanation, of the action: southern Harlem residents were dominant in town government and northerners wanted more say.

Grave of Japheth Coombs Washburn, in China Village Cemetery.

Japheth Coombs Washburn, who lived in the pending new town and was Harlem’s legislative representative in Boston, was directed to have the new town named Bloomville. However, a town up the Kennebec had been named Bloomfield since February 1814, and that town’s legislative representative objected to so similar a name, fearing mail delivery problems.

Washburn, on his own to name the new town, chose China because it “was the name of one of his favorite hymns and was not duplicated anywhere else in the United States.”

(Bloomfield was combined with Skowhegan in 1861. An article by William Hennelly, chinadaily.com.cn, reproduced in the June 15, 2017, issue of The Town Line, says China, Michigan, was named in 1834, the name proposed by explorer Captain John Clark’s wife, who was a China, Maine, native; and China, Texas, began as China Grove [of chinaberry trees] in the 1860s.)

After another four years of contention, during which Harlem voters tried first to reclaim and then to join China, in January 1822 the by then Maine legislature combined the two, creating the present Town of China. There were minor boundary adjustments with Vassalboro in 1829 and with Palermo in 1830.

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Sheepscot Lake

Two Palermo historians offer three versions of the naming of that town, northwest of China (thus one tier of towns farther from the Kennebec River).

The earlier was Milton E. Dowe, whose 1954 history begins with Great Pond Settlement (sometimes Sheepscot Great Pond Settlement), so called because it was “near the Sheepscot Great Pond.” This large lake in the southern part of present-day Palermo is on the Sheepscot River.

(For the origin of the name “Sheepscot,” see the history article in the Feb. 22, 2024, issue of The Town Line.)

The second historian, Millard Howard, writing in 1975 (second edition finished in September 2014 and copyrighted in 2015 by the Palermo Historical Society), praised Dowe’s history, without always agreeing with it.

About 1778, Dowe wrote, Stephen Belden “rode through the wilderness on horseback with his Bible under his arm” and built a log cabin to found the settlement. His son, Stephen, Jr., born on the spring of 1779, and daughter, Sally, born in the fall of 1880, were the first boy and girl, respectively, born in Palermo.

Grave of Stephen Belden, who is buried in Dennis Hill Cemetery, on the Parmenter HIll Road, in Palermo.

Howard said Stephen, Sr., arrived in 1769, accompanied by his wife, Abigail (Godfrey) Belden (1751 – 1820), and an older son named Aaron. He dated Stephen, Jr.’s, birth to 1770, and said the couple had three more daughters after Sally.

“Probably,” Howard said, Stephen, Sr., was a New Hampshire native; and before coming to Great Pond he might have lived in nearby Ballstown (now Jefferson and Whitefield). Find a Grave says Stephen, Sr., was born Feb. 14, 1745, in Hampshire County, Massa­chusetts. He died June 15, 1822; he and Abigail are buried in Palermo’s Dennis Hill cemetery, on Parmenter Hill Road.

Dowe wrote that the 1790 census listed 26 families in what was by then named Great Pond Plantation. Howard said most later settlers chose land beside the Great Pond; he surmised Belden chose a place farther north because he was settling without title and did not want the Kennebec Proprietors’ agents to find him.

Dowe and Howard agreed that the “township” was first surveyed in 1800, marking (preliminary) boundaries with Harlem (later China), Fairfax (later Albion), Davistown (later Montville) and Liberty. Howard dated the survey to August, 1800, and named the surveyor as William Davis, of Davistown. Apparently incorporation as a plantation followed.

(Dowe said the plantation was resurveyed in 1805; but since the lines were marked on “trees and cedar posts,” they tended to disappear, and boundary disputes, especially with Harlem and then China, persisted. In 1828, Dowe wrote, Palermo’s western boundary was permanently delineated and marked by a stone monument in Branch Mills [a village the two towns now share].)

Dowe found records of plantation meetings between 1801 and 1805, with elections of local officials and passage of local regulations. Howard added that the first, and only, clerk elected and re-elected was Enoch P. Huntoon, aged 25 in 1801, a doctor from Vermont who was one of the settlement’s “most respected citizens.”

Early in 1801, 56 men (including both Stephen Beldens) from “a place commonly called Sheepscot Great Pond Settlement” (no mention of a plantation) petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for incorporation as a town named Lisbon. Similar to the 1808 New Waterford petition mentioned last week, their document cited the “great difficulties and inconvenience from the want of schools and roads and many other public regulations very necessary for happiness and well being” that resulted from being distant from “any incorporated town.”

Dowe offered no explanation for the proposed name Lisbon.

Howard wrote that on Feb. 20, 1802, while the Sheepscot Great Pond petition was pending, the Maine town of Thompsonborough was authorized to change its name to Lisbon. He commented that for residents looking toward future greatness, “One way to get off to a good start was to borrow something of the grandeur of a foreign capital by using the name.”

With Lisbon already taken, Palermo, capital of Sicily, became a candidate; and, coincidentally, the popular plantation clerk’s full name was Enoch Palermo Huntoon, Howard wrote. “One wonders,” he added, “if…anyone…realized that Palermo, Sicily, had been one of the greatest, most cosmopolitan, cities in medieval Europe, and had a more impressive place in history than did their first choice.”

Dowe provided two other “legend only” accounts of the name Palermo.

The first story is of “a group of men…sitting around the stove at one of the local stores about 1804,” debating names. One of them pointed to the words on a box of lemons from Palermo, Sicily.

The second story says Sicilian Italians who had come “up the Sheepscot River to trap” camped near the lake and named their campsite “Palermo.”

The Massachusetts legislature approved incorporation of Palermo on June 23, 1804, Howard said. He and Dowe agreed the first town meeting was not until Jan. 9, 1805; neither explained the delay.

Main sources

Dowe, Milton E., History Town of Palermo Incorporated 1804 (1954).
Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984).
Howard, Millard, An Introduction to the Early History of Palermo, Maine (second edition, December 2015).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).

Websites, miscellaneous.