Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Women’s role – Part 1

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by Mary Grow

After weeks of articles about men, your writer is ready to start trying to answer a reader’s occasional question: how did women in the Kennebec Valley in the 1700s and 1800s manage, with the large families many had and without modern conveniences and social services?

Answers are not easy (except in fiction), because, as professional historians realize, information comes from written records, and written records are mostly by and about men – primarily men who were leaders, making their actions seem important and allowing them to keep records or employ others to keep records.

The late British-American historian Bernard Lewis summarized the issue in his 1995 The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years. Historians, he wrote, may claim to write the history of a country; actually they write about “a few thousand privileged persons…disregarding the great mass of the people.”

Mostly true, he admitted, but not the historians’ fault: they are “limited by the evidence.” For most of the past, this evidence has been written by people with “power, wealth and learning” consequently, they have provided most of the information historians use.

Occasionally, however, a woman gets a chance to speak up about women’s lives. One example in the Kennebec Valley was midwife Martha Ballard, who has been cited before in this series.

Palermo historian Milton Dowe found another, the unknown (but probably female) author of the undated poem he included in his 1997 Palermo Maine Things That I Remember in 1996.

The poem, reproduced here by permission of the Palermo Historical Society, is titled Mama’s Mama. It reads:

Mama’s Mama, on a winter day
Milked the cows and fed them hay.
Slopped the hogs, saddled the mule
And got the children off to school.
Did a washing, mopped the floors,
Washed the windows and did some chores,
Cooked a dish of home-dried fruit
Pressed her husband’s Sunday suit.
Swept the parlor, made the bed,
Baked a dozen loaves of bread.
Split some wood and lugged it in,
Enough to fill the kitchen bin,
Cleaned the lamps and put in oil,
Stewed some apples she thought might spoil,
Churned the butter, baked a cake,
Then exclaimed, “For goodness sake!
The calves have got out of the pen!”
Went out and chased them in again.
Gathered the eggs and locked the stable,
Returned to the house and set the table.
Cooked a supper that was delicious,
And afterward washed all the dishes,
Fed the cat, sprinkled the clothes,
Mended a basket full of hose.
Then opened the organ and began to play,
“When you come to the end of a perfect day.”

(A version of the poem posted on line by a female blogger changes a few words, including specifying seven children who were gotten off to school.)

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Martha Ballard

Martha (Moore) Ballard was born in 1735 in Oxford, Massachusetts, and died in late May 1812, in Augusta, Maine. For most of her adult life she served as a midwife in the central Kennebec Valley, delivering more than 800 babies. Between January, 1785, and May, 1812, she kept a diary describing her daily life.

At least two Augusta historians were aware of her diary. James W. North occasionally quoted from it in his 1870 history. Charles E. Nash reprinted extensive, edited samples in his 1904 history.

Neither man thought its contents important. North’s verdict was “not of general interest,” Nash’s “trivial and unimportant.”

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Contemporary American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich disagreed. Seeing it as an unusually comprehensive description of social and economic life, she quoted from and expanded on the diary in her 1990 history, A Midwife’s Tale. Fellow historians thought her effort worthwhile; the book received numerous prestigious awards and prizes.

In her introduction, Ulrich wrote that in New England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there were two forms of day-to-day record-keeping “the daybook and the interleaved almanac.”

The former was primarily a business journal, sometimes with added information on family life, kept primarily by “farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, ship’s captains, and perhaps a very few housewives.” The latter involved people using blank pages of printed almanacs to add notes about the weather, the gardens, the neighborhood and public events.

Some of Martha Moore’s family were educated, Ulrich found: her Uncle Abijah graduated from Yale in 1726, and her younger brother Jonathan from Harvard in 1761. Martha’s grandmother could sign her name; her mother “signed with a mark.”

Ulrich did not know how or why Martha learned to write. She surmised that “someone in Oxford in the 1740s was interested in educating girls.”

Martha married surveyor Ephraim Ballard (1725 – 1821) on Dec. 19, 1754, in Oxford. They had nine children; three of their first four daughters died in a diphtheria epidemic in the early summer of 1769, aged eight, four and two years.

Sons Cyrus, born Sept. 11, 1756, and Jonathan, born March 4, 1763, and daughter Lucy, born August 28, 1758, survived; and on Aug. 6, 1769, daughter Hannah was born. Daughter Dorothy (Dolly) was born September 2, 1772, youngest son Ephraim, Jr., not until March 30, 1779 (the only child born in Maine).

Ephraim Ballard first explored moving to the Kennebec Valley in the spring of 1775 – bad timing, Ulrich pointed out, because most of his new neighbors were revolutionary sympathizers and he was not. Martha (and presumably the children) joined him in October 1777. In addition to surveying, Ballard owned and ran mills; the family ended up in the northern part of Hallowell, which became Augusta in 1797.

Martha made her first diary entry on Jan. 1, 1785. By then, Ulrich wrote, oldest daughter Lucy was married and living in Winslow. Martha and Ephraim had five children at home: Cyrus, 28 (Ulrich wrote that he never married, and wondered if he “was impaired in some way”); Jonathan, almost 22 (a short-tempered trouble-maker); Hannah, 15 and a half; Dolly, who would turn 13 in September; and Ephraim, three months short of his sixth birthday.

Their house at that time had two rooms downstairs, the east and the west room in Martha’s words; two unfinished rooms upstairs; a barn and a cellar. Ephraim’s sawmill and gristmill were nearby, plainly audible.

Ephraim Sr., was frequently away for days or weeks on his surveying work, and sometimes one or more of the children would stay elsewhere. In return, Martha often had one or two unrelated young women as household help, especially after her daughters married and moved out.

The earliest continuous diary excerpts Ulrich copied were from early August 1787, and the last series from May 1809. She used random individual entries to support her comments and analysis.

Judging by the diary excerpts, the bulk of Martha’s household work fell roughly into four categories: washing and cleaning; working with cloth; cooking; and farm work, tending animals and gardening. Other things to do included caring for her children until they left home (and sometimes when they came back for a while, or during her daughters’ pregnancies), helping her husband (and vice versa) and other miscellaneous chores.

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Ulrich wrote that Martha disliked washing and whenever possible delegated it, first to her daughters and then to other young women who became her household helpers. She quotes a Jan. 4, 1793, entry, after both daughter Hannah and a neighbor’s girl had moved to their new husbands’ homes: “I have washt the first washing I have done without help this several years.”

Nonetheless, the word “washt” – Martha’s spelling of “washed” – appears intermittently in the diary. Sometimes she washt; sometimes “the girls” washt. These references seem to have been to washing clothes; occasionally she specified what else was washt.

On Jan. 1, 1796, Martha wrote that she “washt and washt my kitchen.” On Jan. 5, she “washt the west room.”

On the 6th, four visitors came for tea and interrupted her: “I laid my Washing aside when my Company Came and finisht it after they went away Except rinsing.” Then she was called away to pregnant patients; it was not until Jan. 9 that she recorded, “I finisht my washing and did my other work.”

Later that year, Ephraim was away surveying from Sept. 5 to Oct. 14. Martha, coming home after spending the night delivering a baby, was pleased to find her husband home and well, but dismayed by the filthy “clothes, bags and blankets” he brought with him. Ulrich said it took three days to wash them.

Ulrich quoted another entry, from 1795: “My Girls have made me 2 Barrils of Soap this weak.”

Otherwise, neither Martha, at least in entries Ulrich chose, nor Ulrich herself talked about the work underlying that word “washt.”

The water would come by the heavy wooden pailful from the well or spring. It would be heated on the wood stove – welcome in winter, less so in summer – and poured into some sort of washtub. Clothing was washed by hand; floors and furnishings presumably with cloths or brushes or both.

Drying laundry could be a problem, too. Ulrich quoted an early (probably 1785) diary entry in which Martha wrote that Hannah hung a newly washed blanket on a fence outdoors and “our swine tore it into strips.”

The reference above to two barrels of home-made soap conceals more work

An on-line summary (by a contemporary soap company) explains that families like the Ballards would save wood ashes (for potash) and tallow from butchering and cooking grease (for animal fat).

The wood ash was collected in a barrel or trough lined with hay. Pouring water through the ashes leached out the potash. After reducing the water enough, the fat was melted and added. Mixing potash and fat thoroughly produced soap, the on-line site says.

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Here is Ulrich’s summary of how the Ballard women got a piece of cloth, based on the diary.

Ephraim planted flax seed in their garden; Martha and her daughters weeded and harvested it. Harvesting required pulling it by the roots. In August 1787, Martha recorded that she pulled flax on Aug. 3, until noon Aug. 4; and again, after several days tending sick neighbors, the morning of Aug. 15.

Male helpers then “turned and broke it.” Female neighbors helped “with the combing, spinning, reeling, boiling, spooling, warping, quilling, weaving, bucking, and bleaching that transformed the ripe plant into finished cloth.”

Combing the flax was an early-fall activity in 1789; on Oct. 5 and 6, while rain fell, Martha was at home combing flax. The first day she did seven pounds for herself and four for Cyrus; the next day, she didn’t record the output. She finished the job on Oct. 7, though it was a clear day (and “My girls washt.”).

Turning flax into cloth required a flax wheel – Ulrich wrote that by 1785, “Hannah and Dolly already knew how to operate the great woolen wheel and the smaller flax wheel that the family owned.” They produced “hundreds of skeins of cotton, wool, linen and tow thread, most of which their mother carried to others to weave.”

In the spring of 1787, Ulrich said, the menfolk put together a loom so the women could do their own weaving. Two neighbors helped set it up and showed Hannah how to use it; Hannah produced forty yards of cloth on July 4.

Thereafter, the women produced most of their needs, from sheets and blankets to handkerchiefs. Sometimes, Martha recorded, other women came and used their loom.

Martha’s diary sometimes mentions her knitting. One instance: she spent the first five days of December 1791, waiting for a Mrs. Parker to give birth, and while she was there knitted “2 pair gloves and 5 pair & ½ mitts.” (The Parkers’ daughter was born Dec. 7.)

To be continued.

Main sources

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 1990

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Revolutionary War Veterans Windsor, Palermo, China

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Gen. Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, October 1777.

by Mary Grow

This article is the last – for now – about the Revolutionary War’s effects on central Kennebec Valley towns. It again covers towns not on the river.

As previously mentioned, one effect was a post-war population increase throughout the valley, including veterans, most with families. Some of these men and their descendants became prominent in their new towns, shaping growth and development.

Missing from the historical record, at least as your writer has found so far, is all but bits and pieces of information on how the war affected its veterans. Occasionally there is a reference to a physical disability that could have been war-related.

Surely men in the 1780s suffered the equivalent of PTSD; how was it manifested, and what if anything was done about it?

When a group of veterans gathered on the porch of the general store on a warm summer day, did they one-up each other with war stories? Or was the subject forbidden?

Did a Maine veteran enjoy hunting, because he’d become an expert shot? Or was firing a gun to be avoided, because it brought back unpleasant memories?

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Revolutionary veteran William Halloway or Holloway is buried in Windsor, where he lived for at least some of his last 40-plus years. He was born June 18, 1747, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts; there he married Mary Molly Trask (born May 1, 1756) on June 23, 1773.

An on-line Daughters of the American Revolution site says in 1775, he bought land on a lake in Hallowell, “perhaps intending to trade in furs and timber.”

The DAR writer surmised that he changed his plans in reaction to the beginning of the war in April 1775. Another site says he enlisted in Bridgewater; the DAR writer said he sold his Hallowell land “in January 1777, while on furlough from the army.”

The website shows his hand-written pension application, in which he says he enlisted in the Massachusetts line as a private for a year in January 1776, and again for three years in the Continental service beginning in January 1777. The DAR record says he was promoted to corporal and sergeant in the Massachusetts line.

Just before his second term ended, Halloway enlisted yet again for the duration of the war. In 1782, he fell ill and was hospitalized for almost a year; then he was furloughed and sent home.

Halloway wrote that he served in “the taking of Burgoyne” at Saratoga, New York, in October 1777, and in the Battle of Monmouth, New Jersey, in June 1778, and wintered at Valley Forge.

The application is undated, but Halloway wrote that he was 71 years old, making it around 1818. He was then living in Malta, Windsor’s name from 1809 to 1820.

The DAR site says the Halloways had four sons and three daughters. The writer added that oldest son, Seth, was born “the year he left for war” (another site says 1773) and the second son, John, seven years later (Oct. 1, 1780), “bespeaking the long absence he endured from his wife and home.”

Three of the last four children were reportedly born in Maine, two in Hallowell and the last-born, Lydia, in Windsor in 1789.

Halloway died April 17, 1831, and Mary died August 11, 1844, both in Windsor.

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Oliver Pullen, born Oct. 17, 1759, in Attleborough, Massachusetts, was living in Palermo in 1836 (or 1835; the documents on line seem inconsistent, with a decision dated before the application was filed), when he applied for a land grant under the 1835 state law intended to benefit Revolutionary War veterans.

In his application, he said he enlisted from Attleborough in January, 1776, in a Rhode Island regiment in the continental army. He was honorably discharged in Fishkill, New York, at the end of December 1776.

In June 1777, he said, he re-enlisted as a private in the same regiment, for three years. Again, he wrote, he served the full term and took his “final and honorable discharge” July 24, 1780, near Morristown, New Jersey.

Summarizing his military service, Pullen wrote that he “was at the retreat under General [John] Sullivan from Long Island and at the battles at Long Island [August 1776] and White Plains [October 1776].” The inscription on his gravestone in Palermo’s Greeley Corner Cemetery Old says he served in Colonel Henry Sherman’s regiment.

(Palermo has two Greeley Corner cemeteries close together on Route 3, opposite the Second Baptist Church, where on-line maps show the intersection of Route 3 and Sidney Road. Find a Grave calls them “Old” and “New” with the adjective at the end of the name.

(Millard Howard wrote in his Palermo history that the town bought the land for the first cemetery in 1807. An on-line photo of its sign dates New Greeley Cemetery 1901.)

Pullen’s petition was rejected. A note says he “Did not serve three years”: under it is another note, “35 m 20 d.”

FamilySearch says Pullen married Abigail Page (born in 1761, per WikiTree, or 1767, per FamilySearch) in July 1782, in Vassalboro. They had at least four sons, this source says.

Sargent Sr., was born Jan. 9, 1784, in Winthrop, when – by FamilySearch’s dates and math – his father was 24 and his mother was 17. Gilbert was also born in 1784, apparently later, as his father’s age is listed as 25 and his mother’s as 17; his birthplace was Palermo. Stephen Sr., was born in 1786, in Palermo. Montgomery A. was born in 1794, no birthplace given.

Howard listed Gilbert Pullen as one of the privates in the Palermo militia unit that marched to Belfast in September 1814 to meet a threatened British attack during the War of 1812.

FamilySearch says Oliver Pullen was in Winslow in 1800 and in Waterville in 1810 (the part of Winslow that was on the west bank of the Kennebec River became Waterville in June 1802, so he probably changed towns without moving).

Abigail Pullen died in 1803, aged 36, FamilySearch says; WikiTree says she lived until Jan. 2, 1857, and died in Attleboro, Massachusetts. FamilySearch’s report that she is buried in Readfield, Maine, almost certainly confuses her with another woman.

Oliver Pullen died Dec. 8, 1840, according to his gravestone. Abigail is not among the 10 other Pullens buried in Palermo’s Greeley Corner Cemetery Old. Gilbert and his wife, Nancy (Worthing) Pullen seem to be the only members of the second generation.

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In addition to Abraham Talbot, profiled last week, two more black Revolutionary veterans are reportedly buried in China, Luther Jotham and his younger brother, Calvin Jotham.

An interesting on-line National Park Service article, in the form of a story map titled “Luther Jotham: A Journey for Country and Community” summarizes Luther’s life, including his Revolutionary service. The author began by saying that his record sounds like that of a typical Massachusetts militia man, who trained regularly to be ready for an emergency – except that before the Revolution, Massachusetts law prohibited Blacks from training in peacetime.

The writer said Jotham was born about 1759, in Middleborough, Massachusetts. His parents moved the family to Bridgewater, Massachusetts, before the Revolution, perhaps for better job opportunities.

After the December 1773 Boston Tea Party and the British occupation of the city, Bridgewater, like many other towns, organized a volunteer Minute Man company. Free Blacks were allowed to join, and Jotham did.

The writer pointed out that his motives might have included the stipend (one shilling for each half day of training) or the hope of improving his “social standing” in the mostly-white town.

The Bridgewater troops’ first quasi-military experience was in April 1775, when British forces moved from Boston to Lexington and Concord and met American resistance. The writer explained that in January 1775, British General Thomas Gage had sent troops to Marshfield, a Loyalist town about 30 miles southeast of Boston and about 20 miles northeast of Bridgewater. Militia units, including Bridgewater’s, marched to Marshfield, but did not attack.

On Aug. 1, 1775, Jotham enlisted in the Plymouth County militia and served for five months, stationed in Roxbury, Massachusetts, near Boston. He enlisted again as a militia man in January 1776; came home briefly in April; and re-enlisted in the summer of 1776.

During this period, he was for the first time involved in fighting. The website writer said his unit was in the Battle of Harlem Heights in September and the Battle of White Plains in October. When his enlistment expired Dec. 1, 1776, he again returned to Bridgewater.

Jotham enlisted for the fourth and apparently last time in October 1777. He served only briefly, because, the writer said, militia units were sent home after General Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga on October 17.

Back in Bridgewater, Jotham married for what the writer said was the first time and WikiTree says was the second time. WikiTree names his first wife as Elizabeth Cordner, whom he married Sept. 24, 1774, and who died in or around 1777.

The sources agree he married Mary Mitchel, born about 1755; WikiTree says the wedding was April 8, 1778, in Brockton. According to the National Park Service writer, the couple had three children, Lorania, Lucy, and Nathan.

In January 1779, this source says, Jotham bought 15 acres of land, thereby changing his status (in town records, apparently) from “labourer” to “yeoman,” that is, a “man who farmed his own land” instead of working for other people.

The writer found that Jotham’s life was not easy, at least partly because of his race. In November 1789, he and his family, and his brother Calvin, were among “scores of… working class families” whom the town selectmen ordered to leave town – a practice called “warning out,” used to get rid of residents seen as likely to become paupers in need of town support.

In the early 1800s, Jotham did leave town, moving his family to Vassalboro, Maine, for unknown reasons. There he bought 20 acres of land.

By 1818, when he applied for a pension as a Revolutionary veteran, his resources had dwindled. He wrote that his possessions included “a house, small hut, a few tools and household items.” He had “one cow, three sheep, and one pig.”

He claimed an annual income of less than five dollars, and added: “I am by occupation a labouring man but from age and infirmity unable to do but little.” An annual pension of $96 was approved in 1820.

The National Park Service writer said that Jotham’s wife Mary and all three children died in Vassalboro. In 1816, he married Reliance Squibbs (his second wife in this account, not mentioned by WikiTree), by whom he had two more children, Mary Anne and Orlando. Reliance died before Jotham got his pension in May 1820, and a witness to his application said the two children had also died.

On Dec. 20, 1821, in Vassalboro, Jotham married a woman named Rhoda Parker. Rhoda, listed as a mulatto in the 1850 census, was born in 1787 in Georgetown.

Find a Grave says she and Jotham had at least one son, born in Vassalboro in 1829 and named Calvin (after his uncle). The Park Service writer said there were at least three children of this marriage.

(The younger Calvin Jotham died Dec. 17, 1883, in Sherbrooke, Québec, where he and his white wife had a daughter and three sons between 1863 and 1880.)

By August 1827, Jotham was considered to need a guardian to manage his affairs, and a man named Abijah Newhall was appointed. Not long afterwards, the family moved to China, where Jotham died June 2, 1832, aged 81.

Rhoda applied for a widow’s pension in 1860. She died in October 1869, in China. Find a Grave says by then her last name was Watson; apparently she remarried after Jotham’s death.

Your writer found much less information about Luther Jotham’s brother, Calvin, and no details about his military service.

Find a Grave says he was born in 1759 in Middleborough, Massachusetts. He died in March 1841 in China and is buried in the town’s Talbot Cemetery. This site says he fathered a daughter and a child who died in infancy, both in Brockton, Massachusetts; it names no wife.

Main sources

Howard, Millard, An Introduction to the Early History of Palermo, Maine (second edition, December 2015)

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Area Revolutionary War veterans

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by Mary Grow

This sub-series started out to explore the effects of the American Revolution on Kennebec Valley towns, and turned into short biographies of some of the veterans who moved to the area after the war. In other words, one effect was an increase in population.

Not every veteran got his name in the history books for services to the town in which he settled, but some did. Returning to Major Carleton Edward Fisher’s history of Clinton, below are two examples of men he identified as Revolutionary War veterans who both held town offices and – with their wives’ indispensable help – contributed to population growth.

Unfortunately, historians almost never explored why men, and especially men with families, chose to leave more settled states and establish new lives in what was in the 1780s largely a forested wilderness. Even explaining that one family came to join a related family (as with several examples below) fails to explain what moved the first family.

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Timothy Hudson, born in 1747, came to the Kennebec around 1783 and lived in Clinton and Fairfield. On Sept. 20, 1781, he married Jane Brown, youngest sister of Ezekiel Brown, Jr., another veteran (see the Oct 2 issue, of The Town Line, p. 10). Ezekiel, Jr., and his wife, Mary Barron, had 10 children; the Hudsons had four daughters and four sons, born between 1784 and about 1803, at least three of whom married locally.

Like his brother-in-law, Ezekiel Jr., Hudson “held several town offices, including selectman, and six times was elected tithingman,” Fisher wrote. He was the town’s first treasurer, in 1790.

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Veteran Andrew Richardson, born in August 1760, came to Clinton in 1786 (his older brother, William, came in 1782, and later moved to Winslow). Fisher wrote that he captained Clinton’s first militia company and was elected its first selectman and tax collector in 1795.

Richardson served as one of the three selectmen in 1800, 1801, 1804, 1805, 1811 and 1812, according to Fisher’s list. He was tax collector in 1795; town clerk in 1798; town treasurer in 1797, 1803 and 1806-07; and in 1810 represented the town in the Massachusetts legislature.

Richardson married Hannah Grant on Aug. 15, 1782, Fisher said (probably citing a “family historian”). Between Dec. 3 of that year and 1804 or thereabouts, they had eight sons and two daughters (fifth son Hobart was also a Clinton selectman, for two years in the 1820s); two sons died in childhood.

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Fisher noted another veteran of importance to the town: Michael McNelly or McInelly. Born in Pennsylvania in 1755, McNelly served in both the Revolution and the War of 1812, Fisher said. He was in Fairfield by 1790, Clinton until the 1840s.

McNelly had two wives by whom he fathered four sons and five daughters between 1788 and 1807. Fisher wrote in 1970: “This family has the distinction of being one of the earliest settlers whose descendants still live here.”

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One more Revolutionary veteran from Albion: Rev. Francis Lovejoy, grandfather of famous abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy and his brother, Illinois Congressman Owen Lovejoy. Ruby Crosby Wiggin, in her Albion history, named Francis Lovejoy as one of Albion’s first settlers, arriving before 1790.

Lovejoy was born Oct. 30, 1734, in Andover, Massachusetts. On Jan. 24, 1765, he married Mary Bancroft (born Aug. 2, 1742), from Reading, Massachusetts.

Wiggin said they soon moved to Amherst, New Hampshire, whence Lovejoy enlisted twice, first in “Colonel Baldwin’s regiment” and again “to fill a quota of 3 year men from Amherst.” FamilySearch dates the first enlistment 1776.

(When writing about Lovejoy’s war service for a January 2022 article, your writer tentatively identified “Colonel Baldwin” with Loammi Baldwin, born Jan. 10, 1744, who was at Lexington and Concord with the Woburn, Massachusetts, militia. She continued:

(“He later enlisted in the 26th Continental Regiment, quickly became its colonel and commanded it around Boston and New York City until health issues forced him to resign in 1777. Wikipedia identifies him as the ‘Father of American Civil Engineering’ and the man for whom the Baldwin apple is named.” Baldwin died Oct. 20, 1807.)

An essay on the Find a Grave website dates Lovejoy’s military interest to 1757, when he was a member of the Andover militia and served in the 1759 Canada Expedition (during the Seven Years War that ended with the British capture of Québec from the French).

This source says Lovejoy first enlisted in the Revolutionary army in September, 1776; his regiment was in the Battle of White Plains, New York (Oct. 28, 1776). It dates Lovejoy’s second enlistment March 5, 1781, and provides no date of discharge.

Between 1765 and 1783 or 1785, the Lovejoys had six or eight sons and three daughters (sources differ), four born during the war years. Two boys FamilySearch says died in infancy; it gives no death dates for four others.

Wiggin wrote that the family came to the Kennebec Valley in 1790, to the home of Francis’s brother, Abiel or Abial Lovejoy, in the west part of Vassalboro that became Sidney in 1792. Mary and some of the four boys and three girls (called by one source the surviving children, implying that several had died by then) stayed in Vassalboro while Francis cleared a space for a cabin on the west shore of Fifteen-Mile Pond (later renamed Lovejoy Pond).

The Daniel Lovejoy whom Kingsbury listed as Albion’s town clerk and town treasurer in 1802 was most likely Francis and Mary’s fourth (of eight, according to FamilySearch) sons, born in 1776 in Amherst, New Hampshire, married on April 20, 1802, in Clinton, Maine.

Mary Lovejoy died May 8, 1792, before her 50th birthday. Francis died Oct. 11 or Oct. 12, 1818, just before his 84th birthday. Both are buried in Albion’s Lovejoy Cemetery.

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John Linn (later the name became Lynn) was one of Windsor’s early settlers, arriving around 1809. WikiTree and FamilySearch say he was born in Boston on Aug. 17, 1754.

During the Revolution, Linn served in Massachusetts militia units. In his 1993 Windsor history, Linwood H. Lowden wrote that Linn was a prisoner of war during part of his service.

On May 13, 1779, Linn married Rebecca “Babra” Anderson, in Shelburne, Massachusetts. She was born Sept. 3, 1759, Find a Grave says.

Meanwhile, Linn’s sister, Polly, and her husband, George Russell, moved to Bristol, Maine, and before 1800 George bought 100 acres “in a wilderness area north of Bristol that would eventually become Windsor, Maine.” On Nov. 8, 1800, Linn bought his brother-in-law’s land.

When the Linns moved to their Windsor land is unclear in Lowden’s account. Henry Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history says they “brought eleven children to Windsor,” and settled in 1803.

Lowden wrote that the family’s 10 children included several sons who were “close to adulthood.” They came from Boston to Bristol by ship and “walked most of the way from Bristol to Windsor,” he said.

FamilySearch lists four daughters and eight sons, of whom (at least) one son died in infancy. The first daughter was born in 1779, the last son in 1800, all apparently in Massachusetts.

Kingsbury lists John Lynn, Jr. (the oldest son, born in 17810, as a Windsor selectman, elected in 1812 and serving for five years, and as town clerk in 1812 and 1814 and town treasurer in 1813. The James Lynn who became treasurer in 1832 and apparently served for 15 years might have been another of John and Rebecca’s sons, born in 1790.

John Linn died April 28, 1834, and Rebecca died Dec. 20, 1834, in Windsor. They are buried in the town’s Resthaven Cemetery.

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One of China’s Revolutionary veterans was a black man named Abraham Talbot (the last name is spelled in many ways, including Tarbot, Tarbet, Talbart, Talbett, Turbut), described in the China bicentennial history as an ex-slave.

Find a Grave says he “was probably born enslaved,” because his mother was “probably” a slave in North Bridgewater (now Brockton), Massachusetts. This source calls him Private Abraham Talbot Sr., says he was born in 1757 and both he and his father, Toby Talbot, were Revolutionary soldiers.

An on-line genealogical site says Talbot was born May 27, 1756. On Sept. 3, 1787, still in Bridgewater, he married Mary (or Molley) Dunbar (born Feb. 22, 1758, in Braintree, Massachusetts). Her father, Sampson Dunbar, was also a Revolutionary soldier.

The genealogical website uses information from Talbot’s April 28, 1818, pension application for information about his military service. He wrote that he enlisted for nine months in May, 1778, and on July 10, 1778, at Fishkill, New York, joined a company in the Massachusetts Line (identified elsewhere as the 9th Massachusetts Regiment). He served until discharged in March, 1779, at least part of the time at West Point, New York.

In 1818, he wrote, his discharge papers had been destroyed when his house burned seven years earlier. He said he was “in reduced circumstances” and in need of support.

The application was accompanied by a declaration of his property, dated (the website says without explanation) May 25, 1820. Talbot wrote that he owned an acre of land and a “small hut,” with a combined value of $30; a “swine” worth five dollars; and another seven dollars’ worth of household goods and farm tools.

He also owned “10,000 ‘poor bricks in a kiln’ valued at $25.” The China history records, without specific dates, that Talbot owned a brickyard east of the head of China Lake, outside China Village.

In 1820, Talbot was about $100 in debt, and had maybe $10 of collectible debts owed to him.

He gave his occupation as “laborer” and wrote that he could not work much, “the flesh of my left leg being withered and perished.” He was living with his wife, Mary, who was 62 years old and unwell.

His pension application was approved.

The Talbots must have moved from Massachusetts to Maine right after they married, because the genealogical website lists all eight of their children – five sons, three daughters – as born in Fairfax (which later became Albion; parts of northern China and southern Albion swapped towns at intervals in the early 1800s). Oldest son, Ezekiel, was born Dec. 21, 1787; youngest daughter and last child, Roanna, was born Feb. 16, 1805. (Find a Grave says Ezekiel was born in Massachusetts.)

The website says when the 1800 census was taken, the Talbot household consisted of six people. Since six of the children were born before 1800, the website writer infers two children died in infancy.

Abraham Talbot died in Augusta or China (sources differ) on June 11, 1840. His widow died June 1, 1850.

Another on-line source describes the first Maine Colored Convention, held in Portland in October 1841. Among the delegates was Abraham Talbot Jr., described as “a window washer from Portland.”

This man was Abraham and Mary’s third son, born Feb. 28, 1792. The website reminds readers that the tradition of political involvement continues: among descendants of the older Abraham Talbot are Gerald Talbot, and his daughter, Rachel Talbot Ross.

Gerald Talbot, born in 1931, is the first black man to serve in the Maine House of Representatives. Talbot Ross, born in 1961, is Maine’s first black female legislator, elected to the House of Representatives in 2016. In December 2022, she “became the highest-ranking African American politician in Maine history” when she was elected speaker of the House, a position she held until December 2024. She is now a state Senator.

Main sources

Fisher, Major General Carleton Edward, History of Clinton, Maine (1970)
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892)
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993)
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964)

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Albion Revolutionary veterans

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by Mary Grow

Other towns included in this series that are in the Kennebec Valley, but lack direct access to the Kennebec River, are Albion, China, Palermo and Windsor. These towns’ earliest known settlers came later than the first settlers along the Kennebec.

As a result, few if any men already living in these towns enlisted during the Revolutionary War; they had too much else to do. However, all four towns’ histories (and other sources) mention veterans who moved into town after the war.

In Albion, for example, Ruby Crosby Wiggin, in her 1964 Albion history, said the town’s first settlers probably arrived after a fall 1773 survey. In a subchapter titled “War Records,” she wrote that the town was “not…even partly settled” until after the Revolution, “thus all Albion Revolutionary War soldiers enlisted from some other town.”

She named 13 Revolutionary veterans who became residents after the war and/or are buried in town. Your writer found another half-dozen on the town’s list of people buried in Albion cemeteries. Other sources added more names.

Beyond their names and their identification as Revolutionary veterans, your writer had difficulty finding information on these men. What she did find is full of gaps and inconsistencies.

Following are profiles of a few of these men, chosen on the basis of the amount of available and interesting information.

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An on-line site called Our Family History says Revolutionary veteran John Leonard was born about 1770 (no birthplace listed). This site says he married Abigail Phillips, also born about 1770, in the fall of 1789 (their marriage intentions were filed in Winslow on Sept. 27).

The Family History site and Wiggin agree that Leonard (and presumably his family) came to Albion about 1795. The Family History also says their five daughters and two sons were all born in Albion, two daughters before 1795, the third on Feb. 27, 1795 (and the second son and last child in January 1807).

Wiggin wrote that Albion’s first town meeting, on Oct. 30, 1802 (Albion was then Freetown, its name from 1802 to March 9, 1804), was held at 10 a.m. at the “dwellinghouse of John Leonard, in said Freetown, Inn-holder.”

In 1964, she said, no one knew exactly where the house and inn were, but an October 1797, deed description locates the Leonards’ land on the west side of current Route 202, “just south of the Unity-Albion town line.”

The buildings on the property “burned in the early 1900s,” leaving only a shed – and lilacs that, Wiggin wrote, every spring helped “to give us a mental picture of the old Inn as it may have looked.”

Wiggin wondered why the first town meeting was held so far from the center of town. She suggested it was because Leonard and Asa Phillips, who was authorized to call the meeting and was elected moderator, had been neighbors in Winslow and appreciated the value of an organized government; so Leonard volunteered a meeting place.

(Leonard’s wife, Abigail, was almost certainly Asa Phillips’ daughter.)

Until about 1811, Wiggin wrote, Leonard “seems to have taken an active part in town affairs.” Positions he held included fence viewer and school committee member in 1805; surveyor of highways and member of a three-man committee that marked “the town line” (which one?) in 1806; and later one of a seven-member committee that chose and bought a site for a town common.

The Family History site includes no death date; it and Wiggin say Leonard is buried in Unity’s Fowler Cemetery. Find a Grave does not list his name there.

Find a Grave does list Abigail Leonard in Fowler Cemetery, with a photo of her gravestone. She died Dec. 16, 1871, aged 101 years, three months and an illegible number of days.

Wiggin wrote that after Abigail was widowed, presumably around 1811, she lived with her older son and later with a grandson. She celebrated her 100th birthday by walking from the house where she was living to another grandson’s house “about half a mile away.”

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For Benjamin Libby, identified as Deacon Benjamin Libby, Wiggin found a bit of wartime history. She wrote that he was born in Berwick; during the war, was imprisoned in Charlestown, South Carolina; and after he was released, walked home to Berwick (something over 1,000 miles).

This story is also on line on the Geni website. A Daughters of the American Revolution website says Libby served as a marine, including on the sloop of war “Ranger.”

Geni says Libby was born Jan. 18, 1758, and married Polly Hearl, born June 8, 1759. They had six sons and five daughters between 1784 and 1800; most whose birthplaces are listed were born in Lebanon (northwest of Berwick on the New Hampshire border), where Libby had a farm and was a Baptist Church deacon.

The senior Libbys apparently moved to Albion before 1820. Wiggin wrote that Libby was a deacon for 40 years, “sixteen of them in the Baptist Church on Besse Ridge near his home.” Albion’s Libby Hill is named after him, she said.

Benjamin Libby died May 23, 1834, and Polly died July 19, 1845, both in Albion, where they are buried in Libby Hill cemetery.

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According to three different websites (Our Family History, FamilySearch, Find a Grave), two generations of Lincoln men who served in the Revolution are buried together in Albion’s Lincoln Cemetery.

George Lincoln was born about 1728 or about 1732 (sources differ), perhaps in Taunton, Massachusetts. On April 3, 1755, in the First Congregational Church in Rochester, Massachusetts, he married Keziah (or Kezia) Sherman, born in Rochester on Oct. 28, 1728. (Rochester is about 30 miles southeast of Taunton.)

They had at least two children, a daughter they named Keziah, born April 1, 1756, and a son they named Sherman, born in 1762 or 1763 (Find a Grave says both men’s birth dates are estimates; WikiTree takes 1762 from the younger Lincoln’s pension application).

Your writer found no information on George Lincoln’s service during the Revolution. His son, Sherman, was a private, WikiTree says; in the pension application he filed in July, 1832, he wrote that he was living in Rochester during his (unspecified) service.

The younger Lincoln married Chloe Blackwell (born July 28, 1765) on Nov. 2, 1797, in Sandwich, Massachusetts. WikiTree says their marriage was recorded in Rochester. (Sandwich is near the coast, about 25 miles east of Rochester.)

The pension application says Lincoln left Rochester in/around 1822, presumably with his wife and, WikiTree guesses, his father.

The China bicentennial history lists Sherman Lincoln “of Ligonia” (another of Albion’s former names) as buying pew number nine in China’s Baptist meeting house on June 20, 1823, for $25. Lincoln was still in China in 1840 (according to FamilySearch) and 1841 (according to Our Family History).

George Lincoln died in 1824, aged 96. Chloe died in August, 1841, and Sherman died Feb. 14, 1842, in Albion.

Find a Grave has a photo of a monument in Albion’s Lincoln Cemetery with George, Sherman and Chloe’s names, death dates and ages. WikiTree doesn’t guarantee George is actually buried there; the site says “(or at least his name is on the monument there with his son).”

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Samuel Moore (or Mooers) was born in March, 1748, in Candia, New Hampshire, (according to Our Family History). The source cites Albion town records saying he enlisted June 10, 1775, from Chester, Massachusetts, and his gravestone describes him as “A soldier in the Revolutionary war.”

On July 20, 1779, still in Candia, he married a woman named Sally (your writer found no further information).

Sources then skip to his last years. Our Family History says, “He is age 104 in home of Arba and Mary Shorey in 1850 census of Albion.” (Both Shoreys were Albion natives, Arba born in 1815 and Mary in 1818.)

Find a Grave quotes a newspaper article originally published in the Piscataquis Observer on Feb. 28, 1850, describing Moore, then a 105-year-old Revolutionary pensioner, at the Hatch House, where “He walks with as much agility as do most men of 60 years. He is desirous of getting married, provided he can find a young and virtuous lady of his years.”

(Your writer could not find information on the Hatch House.)

Moore died June 30, 1854, at the age of 106 years and three months. He is buried in Albion’s #4 Cemetery.

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William Morrison was born in Wells, Maine, on April 1, 1759. Find A Grave says he was at British General John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, New York, on Oct. 17, 1777 (when he was about 18 and a half years old).

On Feb. 17 or 18, 1783, still in Wells, Morrison married Kezia Gowen, born in 1761. Between 1785 and 1799, they had four sons and one daughter. Kezia died in 1835; her widower died Dec. 2 or Dec. 26, 1842. Find a Grave quotes from his Libby Hill Cemetery gravestone, which also describes him as “A soldier of the Revolution:”

My deathless spirit when I die
Shall on the wings of angels fly
To mansions in the sky

In 1950, Howard Schofield Morrison, in Albany, Oregon, published a 16-page paperback booklet titled “Some descendants of William Morrison, Revolutionary soldier of Wells, Lebanon and Albion, Maine.”

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FamilySearch’s summary of Barton Pollard, Jr.’s, life says he was born in Plaistow, New Hampshire, May 22, 1756; lived in Hancock (Maine) in 1790 and Clinton in 1800; registered for military service in 1838; died Sept. 10, 1828, in Albion.

Of Mary Phillips, who married Pollard in Vassalboro around 1788, the same source says she was born Aug. 22, 1772, in Vassalboro; lived in Brooks in 1838; registered for military service in 1836; died Aug. 18, 1845, in Bangor.

Wiggin wrote that Pollard enlisted from Raymond, New Hampshire. Given his birthdate, the year could have been any time after the Revolution began in April 1775 – but not 10 years after he died. Your writer doubts that Mary ever registered.

Major General Carleton Edward Fisher, in his Clinton history, wrote that the family “slipped back and forth between Clinton and Winslow” for some years: Winslow in 1789, Clinton in 1790, Winslow in 1793, Clinton in 1794 (Pollard bought an interest in a mill, and in 1796 was elected tax collector and constable), “gone again” by 1810.

RootsWeb on-line says they lived in Vassalboro from 1801 to about 1813, and then in Albion. However, FamilySearch says the last five of their 11 children (six sons and five daughters) were born in Albion, between 1801 and 1816.

The Pollards named their oldest son Henry Dearborn Pollard, presumably after Henry Dearborn, Revolutionary military leader who was an officer on Benedict Arnold’s 1775 expedition to Québec and later attained the rank of colonel.

(Wikipedia says Dearborn was discharged from the army in June 1783, and promptly settled in Gardiner. He became a major-general in the Maine militia; was appointed Marshal of the District of Maine by President Washington; and represented Maine in the United States House of Representatives from 1793 to 1797.)

Henry Dearborn Pollard’s next-younger brother, born in 1795, was named Marcus Quintus Cincinnatus Pollard.

(Wikipedia lists no such person. It does have information on Roman statesman Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus [c. 519 B.C. to c. 430 B.C].

(Revolutionary General Henry Knox, the country’s first Secretary of War, founded the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783, Wikipedia says. Its original goals were “to assist the officers of the Continental Army and Navy and their families, to preserve the ideals of the American Revolution, and to maintain the union of the former colonies.”

(Wikipedia says Henry Dearborn was “an original member of the New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati.”)

Main sources

Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964)

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Revolution affects Clinton residents

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by Mary Grow

As promised, this article will start with information on Samuel Varnum and Solomon Whidden (or Whitten), Revolutionary War veterans named in Major General Carleton Edward Fisher’s 1970 history of Clinton, Maine. Their (incomplete, as usual) stories will be followed by information on three more veterans, Elnathan Sherwin, Isaiah Brown and Benoni Burrill.

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Samuel Varnum (born Feb. 17, 1747 [Fisher] or 1746 [WikiTree, whose writer adds a Jr. after his name]) in Dracut, Massachusetts, did not move to Clinton until after his Revolutionary service, Fisher wrote. He enlisted for a year in the spring of 1776, and later in 1776 for three years.

A Varnum genealogy, digitized and on line, says Varnum first enlisted as a private in a company commanded by his brother, Capt. Joseph Bradley Varnum. He and many other men from Dracut transferred to the Continental Army; Varnum joined the Ninth Continental Infantry, in a regiment the genealogist wrote was mostly Rhode Islanders and was “formerly commanded by his brother, afterwards Brigadier-General James Mitchell Varnum.”

Fisher and the genealogist listed three New York battles in which Varnum’s unit was involved: Long Island (Aug. 27, 1776), King’s Bridge (aka Kip’s Bay, Sept. 15, 1776) and Harlem Heights (Sept. 16, 1776). WikiTree references his presence in Rhode Island in May and October, 1778.

Wikipedia calls the Battle of Long Island (aka Battle of Brooklyn, Battle of Brooklyn Heights) the first major battle after the Declaration of Independence and “the largest battle of the Revolutionary War in terms of both troop deployment and combat.” The British won and thereby “gained access to the strategically important Port of New York, which they held for the rest of the war.”

Less than a month later, the British extended their territory with an amphibious attack at Kip’s Bay. Wikipedia describes 500 Connecticut militia, armed with “homemade pikes constructed of scythe blades attached to poles” instead of muskets, facing an hour’s cannonading from five British warships, followed by a British landing force of 4,000 men (and later another 9,000). Despite General George Washington’s attempts to rally them, the Americans fled.

Kip’s Bay was close to Harlem Heights, in the northwestern part of Manhattan Island. Here Washington’s forces defended their position against British troops led by Major General Henry Clinton. Wikipedia says, “The battle helped restore the confidence of the Continental Army after suffering several defeats. It was Washington’s first battlefield success of the war.”

Fisher said Varnum moved to Clinton by 1781, and might have spent most of the rest of his life there. An on-line source puts him on the Kennebec, in the area that soon became Pishon’s Ferry, in 1789 or 1790. (Pishon’s Ferry was almost opposite Hinckley, in northern Fairfield, where Route 23 now crosses the river.)

WikiTree says Varnum was in Canaan in 1790 and 1800, in Clinton in 1810 and 1820.

Fisher wrote that Varnum married Mary Parker. The genealogy says they had three daughters between Feb. 11, 1789, and July 10, 1793, and on March 4, 1795, a son, Samuel, Jr. Two of the daughters married Vassalboro men.

After 1818, Varnum received a pension. The genealogy says it was $96 annually; by the time he died in January 1828, his pension income totaled $933. 06.

This source says Mary was still living in 1820, aged 71.

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Solomon Whidden or Whitten, Fisher said, was born June 1, 1754. WikiTree names his birthplace as Swan Island, York County (probably the Swan Island in the Kennebec, now in Sagadahoc County).

In May, 1777, from Bath, he enlisted for three years. WikiTree lists him as a private in two Massachusetts regiments and as a Massachusetts militiaman.

Whidden’s 1835 application for a veteran’s land grant, reproduced on line, is hard to read, because of the handwriting and because he ran short of space to describe his military career and overlapped some lines. It appears to say that he was present at General John Burgoyne’s surrender (at Saratoga, New York, on Oct. 17, 1777) and was discharged at West Point, New York, after serving his full three years.

He must have come to Clinton (or thereabouts) promptly, Fisher said, because when, on Sept. 26, 1781, his marriage intentions were filed, both he and his intended, Esther Goodwin (born in Castine in 1762, WikiTree says), were listed as from Kennebec (often used to mean Kennebec County; but Kennebec County was not created until Feb. 20, 1799, so in this case probably the Kennebec Valley). WikiTree says the marriage was in Canaan.

WikiTree lists four sons and three daughters, born in Canaan between 1782 and 1799. Fisher wrote that Esther died in 1814 (April 8, 1814, WikiTree says), and Whidden later married Sarah Boyton (born about 1756), for whom your writer found no more information.

In the 1780s and 1790s, Whidden lived mostly in Canaan. Fisher found that he “built the first sawmill on what is now the Carrabassett Stream [which flows into the Kennebec at Pishon’s Ferry] sometime before 1795,” when he sold it.

When he applied for a military pension in 1820, he was in Clermont County, Ohio, Fisher said.

Fisher wrote, “In August 1826 he returned to Maine to spend the remainder of his days with his children….” In his May, 1835, land grant application, Whidden said he lived in Milburn and had been a Maine resident for more than 54 years.

Whidden died in Skowhegan on Oct. 4, 1841, aged 87.

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Fisher said Elnathan Sherwin was “definitely known to have served” during the Revolution, but gave no details (nor did your writer find any on line). Fisher also wrote that later, Sherwin “was a lieutenant in Clinton’s first militia company, commissioned in 1787.”

Elnathan Sherwin was born in 1737 – March 9, online sources say – in Boxford, Massachusetts. His wife was Eunice Brown, (born in Holden, Massachusetts, in 1740, or February of either 1741 or 1742), oldest daughter of Ezekiel Brown, Sr. (making Sherwin brother-in-law of Ezekiel Brown, Jr., whose life was summarized in last week’s article).

FamilySearch says the wedding was Jan. 22, 1761, in Dunstable, in northern Massachusetts. FamilySearch and Find a Grave say their first son, Elnathan, Jr., was born in 1759, in Maine or in Dunstable. Geni says Elnathan, Jr., was born in October, 1762; WikiTree says 1762, in Dunstable; Ancestry says 1763.

FamilySearch and Ancestry.com list Elnathan, Jr, as the oldest of five children, naming three daughters and a second son born between 1765 or 1766 and 1778. Birthplaces, when supplied, mention Maine (not any town) and Massachusetts.

The senior Elnathan Sherwin was approved for a lot in Clinton in December, 1772, having been clearing it since the summer.

Daughter Mary was born in 1773, Ancestry says in Concord, Massachusetts. Fisher said she married (no date) John Whidden (born on Swan Island 1771), and their three sons and one daughter (named Triphena) were born between 1799 and 1806.

WikiTree names Solomon Whidden’s youngest brother as John, born on Swan Island March 10, 1771. This source lists John and Mary Whidden’s five children, three sons (the oldest was John, Jr., born July 13, 1799) and two daughters, Triphena (born July 23, 1801) and Mary Elizabeth (born March 2, 1812).

Fisher found that when Clinton organized an infantry company in October 1787, as part of the Lincoln County militia, Sherwin was the first man to serve as lieutenant, from Oct. 25, 1787, until he “moved prior to Sept. 1791.”

The Sherwins left Clinton in 1791 and returned by 1810, Fisher said. In 1810 (probably according to the 1810 census), the family included a teen-age girl named Cleopatra, whom Fisher identified as the Sherwins’ daughter Mary’s illegitimate daughter.

By 1814, the Sherwins were in Waterville, Fisher wrote. Find a Grave says Elnathan died in March 1815, in Clinton and Eunice died Oct. 30, 1829, in Holden; both are buried in Nashua, New Hampshire.

The Waterville centennial history has many references to Elnathan Sherwin, including his service in the War of 1812 and in the Massachusetts legislature for all but two years from 1799 through 1815: this man must have been Elnathan Sherwin Jr.

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Another Revolutionary veteran connected with Clinton was Isaiah Brown. Your writer hopes he was not closely related to the Ezekiel Brown Jr., who was profiled last week, because Fisher said Ezekiel’s sister, Abigail, was Isaiah’s second wife.

Isaiah Brown was born June 10, 1745, in Holden, Massachusetts (per WikiTree) or June 21, 1745, in Clinton, Massachusetts (per FamilySearch). (The two towns, north of Worcester, are about 13 miles apart.) In Holden, on Nov. 8, 1770, he married Phebe Howe, born in Rutland, Massachusetts, in 1749 (WikiTree). They had one child, a daughter named Dorothy, born Sept. 2, 1773.

Phebe died July 6, 1775, and both websites say on Dec. 27, 1775, Brown married Abigail (Nabby) Brown (born in 1751 [WikiTree] or 1753 [FamilySearch and Fisher]), in her home town of Concord, Massachusetts (well east of his former home).

Brown was a minuteman in Holden; his regiment responded to the events of April 19, 1775. At some point, he became a lieutenant in the Continental Army’s 18th Massachusetts Bay Provincial Regiment.

Wikipedia says this regiment was among those in the siege of Boston, until it was disbanded “at the end of 1775.” (The British did not evacuate Boston until mid-March 1776.)

Assuming accuracy of sources, the Browns soon left Massachusetts for Clinton. Their first son, Thomas, was born there Sept. 28, 1776, WikiTree and FamilySearch say (Find a Grave says Sept. 19, 1776).

FamilySearch (but not WikiTree) says Isaiah and Abigial had eight more children, five girls (the oldest was named Phebe) and three boys, born between 1778 and 1796. The site claims two girls, Sarah (1782) and Polly (1784), were born in Clinton, the rest in Holden.

Fisher wrote that Brown opened what might have been Clinton’s first tavern around 1800 at current Benton Station, and had a store there in 1807. He served briefly as a selectman in 1803.

Brown died in November 1815, and, FamilySearch says, is buried in Ames Cemetery, in Benton (formerly part of Clinton). Abigail died in Clinton in September, 1832.

Find a Grave says 84 Browns (from at least two families) are buried in Ames Cemetery. They include Isaiah and Abigail and their youngest son, Luke (Jan. 24, 1795 – October 28, 1890), and his wife, Mary “Polly” (Gilman) Brown (Jan. 21, 1795 – Jan. 18, 1866).

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Benoni Burrill was born Sept. 7, 1756, in Abington, Massachusetts, son of Thomas and Grace (Garnett) Burrill. (He was probably related to the Nathaniel Burrell profiled last week; your writer hasn’t the patience to untangle the genealogy.)

WikiTree’s biography says Burrill’s first military service was for three days in April 1775, when he was a private in a company that responded on April 20 to the April 19 events at Lexington and Concord. WikiTree does not explain why the company marched east toward Marshfield instead of heading north toward the Boston area.

On May 1, 1775, Burrill enlisted and served for three months plus eight days. On May 15, 1777, when he was 21 years old, he joined the Continental Army from a North Abington company, enlisting for three years or the duration of the war and serving as a fifer and a drummer.

Discharged Aug. 9, 1780, he re-enlisted and served in 1783 and 1784 (British commander Charles Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781) at Castle Island and Governor’s Island, in Boston Harbor. FamilySearch says he was promoted to corporal during this time.

FamilySearch says Burrill was always a musician. The site describes Fisher’s statement that he was “promoted to quarter gunner” as a mistake, due to a mistranscription of a hand-written record, which also changed his first name from Benoni to Benjamin.

Burrill and Lydia Ripley (born Feb. 26, 1761, in Weymouth, Massachusetts, about eight miles north of Abington) were married in Abington on May 26 or May 27, 1779. FamilySearch says they had six sons (including Benoni, Jr.) and five daughters between 1782 and 1803, all born in Abington.

Burrill died April 9, 1814, in either Clinton (Fisher and WkiTree) or Corinna (FamilySearch). His widow died June 12, 1852, in Corinna, where both are buried.

Main sources

Fisher, Major General Carleton Edward, History of Clinton, Maine (1970)

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Revolution affects Clinton

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by Mary Grow

Major General Carleton Edward Fisher’s 1970 history of Clinton includes a chapter on settlers who moved into the territory that became the town before 1782. He identified 10 of the men he named as Revolutionary veterans: Ezekiel Brown, Jr.; Nathaniel Burrell; Ezekiel Chase, Sr., and three of his six sons, Roger, Ezekiel, Jr. and Jonathan; Fred Jackins; John Spearin, Jr.; Samuel Varnum; and Solomon Whidden or Whitten.

In a later chapter on the military, Fisher named more Revolutionary soldiers, identifying seven who “were proved beyond a doubt to have lived in town during the war and then went into service from here.” They were Ezekiel Brown, Jr., the four Chases, John Spearin, Jr., and William Kendall; the latter’s service was described last week in the article on Fairfield. Still later, in an appendix, Fisher added information on another 16 Revolutionary veterans who died in Clinton.

Due to space limits, this week’s article cannot talk about all these men. Readers tired of the Revolutionary War may skip next week’s installment.

Your writer, after years of dealing with endless contradictions among and within historical sources, commends Fisher’s work highly. He obviously did a great deal of research from many sources on a wide variety of topics and produced a readable and informative book that has the additional virtue of being well indexed.

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Ezekiel Brown Jr., was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1743, or on March 8, 1745 (Fisher gave two different dates in two different chapters; Find a Grave says 1745). On Feb. 28, 1770, Brown married Mary Barron (born Jan. 20, 1752, in Concord). They probably moved to Clinton in 1772.

In May 1774, when Ezekiel and Mary’s second child (of 10) and oldest son, Ezekiel, 3rd, was born, the family was back in Concord. Fisher surmised Ezekiel, Jr., might have been studying medicine there, because on June 7, 1776, he “was commissioned a surgeon’s mate in Col. Jonathan Reed’s regiment,” and on Jan. 1, 1777, a surgeon in Col. Brook’s regiment.

Fisher wrote that Brown’s service involved participation in battles leading to British General John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, New York, on Oct. 17, 1777; and with General Sullivan’s Indian Expedition, the June through October, 1779, American attack led by Major General John Sullivan against upstate New York Iroquois tribes siding with the British.

Brown was discharged Jan. 1, 1781. Fisher wrote that the family returned to Clinton sometime between 1788 and 1790, and Brown became the town’s first doctor. He was also the first town meeting moderator, and served repeatedly; a selectman “almost continuously from 1797 to 1818”; town clerk for four years, tax collector for three years.

In 1818, Fisher wrote, Brown stated in his pension application that he was “unable to do much in his profession” because of age and the loss of “use of his left arm six years before.” The pension was granted.

Brown died in Clinton June 30, 1824; his widow died May 6, 1832. They are buried in Benton’s Ames Cemetery, as are at least four of their sons (among the 85 Browns buried there, according to Find a Grave) and one daughter, Elizabeth (Brown) Gray.

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Fisher listed Nathaniel Burrell (or Burrill) as one of the four sons of John Burrell, Sr., and his wife, Anne (Vinton) (or Anna Vinton, per WikiTree), who came from Massachusetts to Clinton sometime before October, 1781. John, Jr. (born in 1753), Bela (born May 20, 1756), Ziba (born in 1765) and Nathaniel (no birth date given), “who served in the Revolutionary War,” joined the parents.

Nathaniel Burrell is not listed in Fisher’s chapter on the military; nor in his appendix listing Revolutionary War veterans who died in Clinton; nor on any on-line source your writer found. Websites WikiTree and Geni name only John, Jr., Bela and Ziba as John and Anna’s sons.

Geni says John, Jr., was born Oct. 5, 1763 (a decade later than Fisher cited from the 1799 Clinton records), and was a private and a “Rev. War gunner.” Fisher wrote that John Burrell, Jr., had an inn near Pishon’s Ferry on the Kennebec (opposite Hinckley, in northern Fairfield, where state route 23 now crosses the river) in 1810; he was tax collector that year “and held other town offices.” Geni says he died Sept. 1, 1842, in East Sangerville, in Piscataquis County, Maine.

* * * * * *

Fisher identified Ezekiel Chase Sr., as “probably” Clinton’s first settler, referencing a 1771 petition for a land grant from the Kennebec Proprietors in which Chase claimed to have lived on the east side of the Kennebec for 10 years, with a “son that is 18 years old” living on an adjacent lot.

WikiTree says Chase was born May 24, 1728 (FamilySearch says May 28), in Newbury, Massachusetts. He married Anna Spaulding, born in 1731, in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, in Hallowell (or in Fairfield, as his second wife, WikiTree says) in 1747.

Fisher listed one daughter and six sons with birth dates between 1748 (daughter Eleanor) and 1775.

If the family was in Clinton in the 1760s, Fisher dismissed as obviously in error a genealogy that says all the Fisher children were born in Hallowell (although he said Roger [1749] and Ezekiel, Jr., [1761] were, as he named Revolutionary veterans in a later chapter). Other sources offer other birthplaces.

Ezekiel and Anna’s oldest son, Roger, was born Sept. 5, 1749, and in 1771 would have been in his early twenties. Fisher identified him as “without a doubt” the one referenced in his father’s petition. (Perhaps the father meant a son who was over 18?)

Fisher wrote that the Chases went to Hallowell when the Revolution started. Roger was still or again in Clinton in the fall of 1776, when he married a widow named Mary (Smith) Spear there; Fisher surmised he was managing the family’s property.

Ezekiel, Sr., enlisted in a light infantry company from Rowley, Massachusetts, Fisher wrote. (Newbury, his birthplace, and Rowley are north of Boston, about six miles apart.) Fisher said he was paid for service from July 18 to Dec. 31, 1780; but FamilySearch says he “registered for military service in 1781.”

FamilySearch says Ezekiel, Sr., died Jan. 1, 1808, in Fairfield.

Roger enlisted June 1, 1775, “and served …for two months and five days,” Fisher said. He was in Colonel John Nixon’s regiment. Your writer found no other record of his military service. On-line sources say he died Nov. 25, 1819, or June 25, 1822, in Concord, Maine.

Ezekiel, Jr., born June 4, 1761 (in Hallowell, per Fisher, or in Plymouth, Massachusetts, per WikiTree), enlisted from Milton, Massachusetts (about 35 miles from Plymouth; both towns are south of Boston), beginning his service May 18, 1778, apparently for nine months. On Jan. 7, 1781, he re-enlisted, Fisher said.

WikiTree says Ezekiel, Jr., served in 1777 with the Ninth Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army.

A descendant posted on the Maine Secretary of State website that Ezekiel Jr., was 16 when he joined the Continental Army. He served in Rhode Island, and was at the 1780 Battle of Springfield, in New Jersey. That same year, “he was captured by the British and imprisoned in the prison ship Jersey in New York harbor for 2 years.”

The account continued: “After the peace was signed, he struggled to get back to Maine, traveling in a cart because he could not walk.” In Maine, his descendant said, he was the second white settler in future Piscataquis County.

WikiTree says Ezekiel, Jr. died Sept. 14, 1843, in Sebec, a southern Piscataquis County town. The descendant gave his home town as Milo, about six miles from Sebec.

The descendant’s account adds that Roger Chase lost two brothers in the war, “one at sea, and Jonathan Chase at the siege of Yorktown in 1781.”

Fisher listed Ezekiel and Anna’s second son, who would have been born between 1750 and 1760, as “Jacob, went to sea and never heard from.” He gave no dates nor other details.

Jonathan, born in 1767 (one on-line source says July, 1767), was drafted Feb. 2, 1778 (according to Fisher; he would have been 10 years old, if all dates are correct), and according to the descendant quoted above and other sources was killed on or about October 19, 1781, during the Battle of Yorktown. Fisher’s two reports on his death, unlike the descendant’s, are worded uncertainly: “is said to have died” and “was reported deceased.”

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Frederick Jackins (or Jacquins, Jackings, many other spellings) was mentioned in the Sept. 11 article in this series as carrying a letter to Québec for Colonel Benedict Arnold as Arnold’s 1775 expedition passed through Clinton on its way up the Kennebec.

WikiTree says Jackins was born in Clinton in 1750, son of Christopher Jackins, who was born somewhere in Maine in 1729 and died in Clinton Village in December 1828, and an unknown mother. This source and Ancestry identify Frederick’s wife as Elizabeth (Jeakins) Jackins (1752 – 1800); both sources claim Frederick and Elizabeth were born in Clinton (a decade or so before the first settlers arrived?).

Your writer found no reference to Jackins’ military service elsewhere in Fisher’s history, nor in any on-line source. He and Elizabeth had three daughters, according to WikiTree, born in 1770, 1775 and 1778. Fisher listed Jackins as a town tax collector in 1797; WikiTree says he died in 1820, in Clinton.

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John Spearin Jr., Fisher said, was born March 4, 1764, in Pownalborough, according to a 1799 town record; but his 1818 application for a pension gave his birth date as March 3, 1765.

His parents, John Spearin Sr. (born July 20, 1720, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; died in 1790 in Clinton) and Sarah (Call) Spearin (born Sept. 8, 1740, in Amesbury, Massachusetts; died about 1790 in Portsmouth) were married in 1740 and moved to Clinton around 1770.

John, Jr. was a Clinton resident in March 1781, when he went to Beverly, Massachusetts, and enlisted. Fisher commented that John Jr., “is one of the few men who can be proved was living in town and went to that war from here.”

Spearin served in two Massachusetts and one New Hampshire regiment; was at “the capture of Cornwallis [Oct. 19, 1781] and other skirmishes”; and was discharged Dec. 31, 1783.

He came back to Clinton and on Nov. 9, 1784, married Mary Kendall, of Fairfield, sister of William Kendall (see last week’s article). Fisher noted that her birth date was listed as 1765 in the 1799 town record and 1767 in the 1818 document. WikiTree says April 15, 1764: FamilySearch says April 18, 1764.

Fisher said the Spearins had six daughters and four sons between 1786 and 1808, born in Fairfield, Clinton and other towns as the family moved around.

Fisher wrote that Spearin died Nov. 9, 1831, in Hartland. Mary’s death date is given on line as Feb. 20, 1852.

Main sources

Fisher, Major General Carleton Edward, History of Clinton, Maine (1970)

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Revolution affects Fairfield – Continued

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by Mary Grow

(See part 1 of this series here.)

This article will continue the story of Fairfield men who fought in the Revolutionary War, beginning – after a digression – with one important man mentioned last week, William Kendall.

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Photos of the memorial in Fairfield’s Emery Hill Cemetery that the Silence Howard Hayden Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, put up in 1911, show General William Kendall’s as the second name. After him come Daniel Page (miscarved as Daniel Pace), David Emery and George Parkhurst, all profiled in last week’s article.

Above these names, in a different script, is the name George Hobbs. A copy of the 1878 map of Shawmut shows a house owned by R. T. Hobbs; otherwise, neither George nor any other Hobbs is mentioned in the Fairfield history.

Fairfield Historical Society member Barbara Gunvaldsen has George Hobbs’ name, and the names of his commanding officers, on her list of Fairfield men who served in the Revolution. FamilySearch’s biography does not identify him as a Revolutionary War veteran.

FamilySearch says George Hobbs was born April 7, 1764, in Berwick, and died Sept. 1, 1853, in Fairfield. (Other men who fought in the Revolution were born as late as 1764.) Your writer found no other record on line, and nothing about R. T. Hobbs.

Compared to Hobbs, William Kendall is famous, although details of his military service are available only in specialized war-related records.

Kendall was born in Georgetown, Maine, on Sept. 1, 1759, according to Major General Carleton Edward Fisher’s 1970 Clinton history; Fisher claimed him as an early – before 1777 – Clinton settler. Find a Grave says he was born Nov. 19, 1759, son of Uzziah and Elizabeth (Pierce) Kendall.

The 1988 Fairfield history says he enlisted in Winslow (Gunvaldsen says in Clinton, as does Fisher, quoting his widow’s claim for a state bounty) in March 1777, as a private, and was “honorably discharged in 1780.” (Your writer surmises that his military titles came from later service in the state militia.)

Kendall promptly came to Fairfield. The town history says in 1780, he “took over” unfinished saw and grist mills atop a two-year-old dam Jonas Dutton built between the west shore of the Kennebec and the closest island, now named Mill Island.

These mills remained in the Kendall family until 1835, the history says, run by Kendall, a brother and an unspecified number of sons. Other men started mills, “but during this era the Kendall Mills were dominant.”

Kendall also bought most of the land that is now downtown Fairfield, with the result that the area was called Kendall’s Mills from 1780 until the post office there was renamed Fairfield in 1872.

Several sources tell the story of Kendall marrying Abigail Chase (born in Augusta, or Clinton, Feb. 2, 1765) on Christmas Day, 1782, and paddling with her in his canoe down the river from Hinckley, in northern Fairfield, to his property. One source questions this account, pointing out that the Kennebec was probably frozen on Dec. 25 and that a sleigh would be more appropriate for a newly-wed couple anyway.

The Fairfield history says the Kendalls lived first in a log house at the foot (riverside end) of present-day Western Avenue. Before 1800, they moved a short distance uphill into a big brick house “on the northwest corner of the intersection of Western Avenue and Newhall Street.”

The history quotes a traveling Congregational minister named Paul Coffin, who visited Fairfield in (or before) the 1790s. Coffin recorded that on a Sunday, he preached all day at “Major Kendall’s” and “Spent a pleasant evening with the Major and his comely and sweet tempered wife.”

Another quotation in the history is from an unnamed 1824 traveler who came south from Emery Hill, past the Emery, Park and Kendall houses. The Kendall house “then stood in the center of a large field extending to the road. Upon the bank of the river and nearly opposite the house stood General Kendall’s store, a small structure….Just below the store stood the saw and grist mills of Gen. Kendall, the only mills in the place.” One more house farther south completed the 1824 inventory.

Included in the history is an undated – probably 1890s – photo of the Kendall house. It was square, with a good-sized rectangular ell on the west, both two stories, and a slightly sloped roof. What looks like the main entrance faced south, on Lawrence Avenue, with a square portico.

On the east side was another large door, from which a sidewalk led to the Newhall Street sidewalk. The sidewalks look smoother than the unpaved streets.

Each visible second-floor wall had five windows, the center one above the first-floor door. Five tall chimneys rose from each corner of the square and the far end of the ell.

In addition to his manufacturing interests, the history says Kendall ran the store “on the site of the present [1988] post office building” until his death. He was a Fairfield selectman for eight terms.

An on-line genealogy adds that Kendall served as Somerset County sheriff (no date) and as a member of Maine’s first legislature (in 1820), and was Kendall’s Mills postmaster in 1816.

Find a Grave lists the first names – no dates or other information – of William and Abigail’s eight sons and three daughters. The oldest son was named William. The Fairfield history called him William Jr., and said that in 1827 he invented the “circular log saw,” which replaced the up-and-down saws previously used and “revolutionized the lumber industry because of its superior speed and control.”

William Kendall died Aug. 11, 1827, according to Find a Grave. The history writer regretted that he did not live long enough “to see the success of his son’s invention.”

Find a Grave quotes the inscription on Kendall’s gravestone:

Rest in peace, departed spirit
Husband, Sire, and friend is gone
All thy honor fame and merit
Pass away virtue still thy name shall own.

The writer surmised that Kendall left Abigail well off: under the March 1835 state law (see box), she applied for and received a 200-acre land grant, which she promptly sold for $70.

The on-line genealogy says Abigail died Oct. 14, 1855. The inscription on her gravestone in Emery Hill Cemetery reads:

Mother thou art gone to rest
Thy toils and cares are o’er
And sorrow, pain, and suffering now,
Shall ne’er distress thee more.

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The Fairfield history lists Reuben Wyman as another Revolutionary veteran, probably not related to the Daniel Wyman profiled last week.

Reuben Wyman was born in 1764 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the history says (an on-line genealogy says Lunenberg, a town in Worcester County; an on-line Wyman genealogy says 1762, in Fairfield [presumably Maine]).

When Wyman was 15, according to the history, he became a fifer in a regiment that went to Springfield. Afterwards, “he served continuously from 1781 until his discharge in November 1783, sometimes as a private and sometimes as a fifer.”

The genealogy says around 1785, he married Jonathan and Jerusha Emery’s daughter, Hannah (born about 1764), and they had at least two sons and two daughters between 1786 and 1793. The history says he married Olive Hunt, at an unknown date.

The Wyman genealogy confirms both accounts, with differing dates. This source says in 1778, in Dracut, Massachusetts, Wyman married Hannah Emery, born in 1758 in Dracut. They had two sons and three daughters by 1786; the first daughter’s date and place of birth are unknown, the oldest son, another Reuben Wyman, was born in Damariscotta and the last three children were born in Dracut. Hannah died March 25, 1816 (place of death not listed).

On April 3, 1823, in Clinton, Wyman married Olive Hunt, born in 1770. They had a son, born in Fairfield about 1825.

Wyman was a Fairfield selectman in 1791, the town history says. He was a Clinton resident when he “applied for recompense for his military services” in September 1818, but had returned to Fairfield by 1837 and, an on-line source says, lived there in 1840.

Several sources agree that Wyman died May 16, 1841.

The Fairfield history continues with a list of 10 Revolutionary veterans who moved to Fairfield, including those readers met last week and this week (see the Jan. 27, 2022, article in The Town Line history series for summary information on others).

Gunvaldsen’s list of Fairfield men who served in the Revolution contains 40 names, including all of those discussed in this and the preceding article.

* * * * * *

Across the Kennebec from Fairfield in the 1770s was what became the Town of Clinton, organized first around 1790 as Hancock Plantation and in 1795 as Clinton. Until March 1842, this town included what is now the separate Town of Benton, giving it more frontage on the east bank of the Kennebec River than it has had since Benton became a separate town (then named Sebasticook).

The Sebasticook River runs southwest through Clinton and Benton on its way to join the Kennebec in Winslow, creating a second water access for early settlers.

Henry Kingsbury’s 1892 Kennebec County history says this area was barely settled by 1775.

However, Fisher’s 1970 Clinton history names about 20 men, many with families, who were probably in Clinton by 1775. An on-line town website says there was a dam (with “a gap for fish”) across the Sebasticook River at present-day Benton Falls in or soon after 1769, and a sawmill on the Sebasticook built in 1773.

Fisher described the early Clinton settlers as mostly poor, “industrious, daring, even courageous,” as shown by their leaving “the relative comfort of well-established towns” for “a wild, untamed wilderness.”

They were starting their lives over, beginning by cutting enough trees to clear space for a house, garden and farm while using natural resources to stay fed and protected from the weather. The area beyond Fort Halifax was still Native American country; Fisher wrote that it was only after the War of 1812 that settlers felt completely safe from attack.

Fisher summarized the effects of the Revolution on the future town of Clinton primarily in terms of population change. Some of the first settlers moved southward during the war. After the war, some returned; and Fisher identified many families in the second wave of settlement, after 1782, as headed by Revolutionary veterans.

Information on several of these men will be shared in next week’s article in this series.

Land grants

In 1835, the Maine legislature approved a “Resolve in favor of certain Officers and Soldiers of the Revolutionary War, and the widows of the deceased Officers and Soldiers.” This action gave 200 acres of land to anyone who had served at least three years while a resident of Massachusetts, including the District of Maine. The land was in parts of Penobscot and Washington counties.

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988)
Fisher, Major General Carleton Edward History of Clinton, Maine (1970)
Fairfield Historical Society files

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Revolution affects Fairfield

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by Mary Grow

In the 1770s, the next town north of Winslow on the west bank of the Kennebec River was Fairfield, organized as a plantation in 1774; and on the east bank, the part of Clinton that later became Benton. This article introduces some Revolutionary veterans with Fairfield connections; next week’s article will offer information on more veterans from Fairfield and from Clinton.

The 1988 Fairfield bicentennial history says Jonathan Emery built the first house in town in 1771, on Emery Hill, upriver from the present downtown. (Last week’s article repeated the story that Benedict Arnold stayed with the Emerys for a week or more while his army got their heavy bateaux through the Kennebec River rapids.)

By April 1775, the plantation was home to nine families. The writer(s) of the history surmised that it took a while for the settlers even to hear about Lexington and Concord; and when they did get the news, it was “quite conceivable that concerns with their survival in the wilderness were more important to them than the political issues in the country from which they had emigrated.”

If the settlers feared a British attack, the writer continued, Fort Halifax was only four miles away. Feeling both otherwise occupied and unthreatened, no man from the nine families immediately “took up his flintlock and made off down the Kennebec to join in the conflict.”

The history records four of Fairfield’s early settlers as enlisting before the Revolutionary War ended: David Emery, who was Jonathan and Jerusha (Barron) Emery’s oldest son; Josiah Burgess and his younger brother, Thomas Burgess; and Daniel Wyman.

The Fairfield Historical Society’s collection includes part of a long article on the dedication of a monument in Emery Hill Cemetery honoring David Emery and three more Revolutionary veterans, William Kendall, Daniel Page and George Parkhurst.

* * * * * *

According to WikiTree, David Emery (Sept. 24, 1754 – Nov. 18, 1830 or 1834) was born in Dracut, Massachusetts. (So were the next six Emery children, three boys and three girls; at least one of David’s brothers, James [born in 1766] later moved to Fairfield, dying there in November 1831. Another son was born in Winthrop, Maine, in 1770, and the last boy and girl in Fairfield, in 1773 and 1777 respectively.)

David was 21 when he joined his father at the end of September 1775. He might have been in the militia in Massachusetts or Maine, the history writer said; but his first recorded service began March 12, 1777, when he joined the Second Lincoln County (Maine) Regiment, presumably at Fort Halifax.

An extract from an Emery genealogy, found on line, dates Emery’s military service to September 1775, when, it says, he enlisted in Captain Scott’s company on Arnold’s expedition. He went as far as Dead River, where he – and probably many others of his company – were among those who turned back.

He joined the army again in Massachusetts and served during the siege of Boston, which ended when the British evacuated the city in mid-March 1776. Enlisting yet again in Winslow, for three years, he joined the army at Ticonderoga, New York, and spent two years there, the genealogy says.

On Feb. 2, 1778, according to the Fairfield history, Emery transferred to the Continental Army and “completed his military career in General Washington’s Guard.” Mustered out at Valley Forge on Jan. 23, 1779, the history says (or March 1780, in Morristown, New Jersey, according to the genealogy), “he returned to Fairfield and married Abigail Goodwin.”

WikiTree’s account of his service lists officers under whom he served; it ends with “16th Massachusetts Regt. Life Guards, 1778-1780,” and says he was a private in this regiment. This source says Abigail was born in 1763 in Castine; dates their marriage intentions April 5, 1782; and lists six sons and four daughters born in Fairfield between 1782 or 1783 and 1809.

Find a Grave says Emery died in 1830; WikiTree says Abigail died in 1838, both in Fairfield. Find a Grave lists David, but not Abigail, among the 16 Emerys buried in Emery Hill Cemetery.

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Josiah Burgess (July 16, 1736 – Dec. 12, 1828), was a Sandwich, Massachusetts, native who moved to Fairfield at an unknown date. The Fairfield history says he came with his wife, Dorcas (another source names her Doris Lois Hinckley and gives her birth date as Sept. 26, 1742).

FamilySearch and WikiTree agree that Dorcas was Burgess’s second wife. He first married Lois Swift, on Sept. 1, 1764, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, by whom he had one son and one daughter. Lois died soon after the daughter was born.

Burgess then married Dorcas or Doris, on either Dec. 16, 1769, or Jan. 5, 1770, in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Josiah and Dorcas had two sons and four daughters between 1770 and 1781.

Perhaps because Burgess still had family in Sandwich, the Fairfield history says he returned there and in March 1776 joined the First Barnstable Company as a first lieutenant.

The history says Burgess’ service was mostly in Rhode Island and “around Falmouth” (Massachusetts). He resigned in March 1779 and came back to Fairfield, where he later served as a selectman for five terms; he was first elected Aug. 19, 1788, at the newly incorporated town’s first town meeting.

Burgess died Dec. 12, 1828, and Dorcas died March 5, 1838, both in Fairfield, several sources – for once, in agreement – say.

Thomas Burgess (May 23, 1741 – April 20, 1823), the Fairfield history says, joined his older brother’s company in March 1779, served seven days and came to Fairfield with Josiah. Here he married Annis Fuller; he, too, served as a selectman (six terms, according to the history) and twice as treasurer.

WikiTree’s summary says Thomas Burgess was born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and died in Rochester, Massachusetts. The related biography lists Fairfield as the place where Thomas was born (highly unlikely) and died (possible). It dates his marriage to Annis Fuller Dec. 3, 1767 (before, not after, the Revolution) and lists three sons and three daughters (including twins Sarah and Temperance) born between 1768 and 1782.

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Daniel Wyman (1752 – 1829) was born in Dresden and “moved up river the spring before the battle of Lexington and Concord. Unmarried and largely unsettled, he enlisted in the Second Massachusetts Line.” Wyman was honorably discharged at the end of three years (the history says 1776, an apparent error), married and spent the rest of his life in Fairfield.

At the Aug. 19, 1788, first town meeting, the Fairfield history says Wyman was chosen one of two tithingmen, with Lemuel Tobey. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says in New England, a tithingman’s main responsibility was “preserving order in church during divine service and enforcing the observance of the Sabbath.”

(The Historic Ipswich website has this paragraph: “A powerful figure in the dull monotony of Puritan meeting houses was the tithingman, whose task was to enforce the observance of the Sabbath and to preserve order during service. Armed with a knobbed rod in hand he kept vigil, rapping restless boys on the head to restore order. On the other end of the staff was a foxtail with which he banished the sleep of those who had nodded off.”)

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William Kendall was a major figure in the history of Fairfield (part of which was called Kendall’s Mills for years). His biographical information will be postponed a week due to space limits.

* * * * * *

Daniel Page, the Fairfield history says, was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1753 or 1754 (Find a Grave says April 16, 1754), and enlisted from that town as a drummer in 1777.

Find a Grave names his wife as Lydia Haynes, born in 1758, and lists two daughters and three sons, born between 1780 and 1797.

The history says Page applied for a veterans’ land grant from Fairfield before his death in September 1836 (Sept. 2, according to Find a Grave). The Maine State archives files include his May 1835, application, in which Page stated that he enlisted in 1777 and was honorably discharged in 1780 after three years’ service.

On Jan. 17, 1837, Lydia received a piece of land, according to the Fairfield history. Find a Grave says she did not have time to do anything with it, as she died Feb. 14, 1837, and is buried with her husband in Emery Hill Cemetery.

The third name on the stone over their graves is Sophronia Keith, who died March 20 (or perhaps March 29), 1833, aged 31. Neither of Daniel and Lydia’s daughters was named Sophronia, according to Find a Grave.

An on-line search for Sophronia Keith brought one result: FamilySearch said Sophronia Ann Page married Howard C. Keith on July 11, 1831, in Canaan, and they had at least one son, born in 1832. The website had no other information on Sophronia Page.

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George Parkhurst was not a Fairfield resident during the Revolution, but he is buried – and honored – in Emery Hill Cemetery.

Fairfield Historical Society member Barbara Gunvaldsen’s list of 40 Revolutionary veterans with a Fairfield connection says Parkhurst was born in Harvard, Massachusetts, in 1750 or 1752 (on-line sources accept 1752). FamilySearch says Parkhurst was born in Petersham, Massachusetts, Aug. 10, 1752. WikiTree names his birth town as Nichewog.

(Harvard and Petersham, northwest of Boston, are about 40 miles apart. Wikipedia offers Nichewaug, part of Petersham.)

WikiTree’s summary of Parkhurst’s military service says he first enlisted in May 1775, for less than eight months, during which he was in Colonel John Stark’s New Hampshire regiment and fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775.

In March 1777, Parkhurst re-enlisted in the Massachusetts Line and served another five years and three months. Major battles listed include Hubbardton, Vermont, in July 1777; Saratoga, in Stillwater, New York, in September and October 1777; Monmouth, at Monmouth Court House, in New Jersey, in June 1778; Stony Point, New York, in July 1779; and the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, that ended with British General Charles Cornwallis’ surrender on Oct. 19, 1781.

FamilySearch names Parkhurst’s wife as Cecelia de Wolf and says they married July 12, 1784, in Surry, New Hampshire, and had at least four sons and two daughters between 1782 and after 1797 (no date is given for the last son’s birth).

WikiTree says Cecilia was Parkhust’s first wife, by whom he had four children. She died about 1811, in Fairfield, and on Jan. 22, 1814, in Fairfield, he married Sarah Grantham, born there on Jan. 25, 1770.

Sarah gave Parkhurst another daughter, Lucy; Lucy’s biographical sketch – attached to the page with the marriage date – says she was born in Palermo, Maine, on Jan. 13, 1814. Sarah died in Fairfield sometime after June 1, 1830.

WikiTree says Parkhurst applied for his military pension on April 3, 1818, from Fairfax (later Albion). On April 11, he was approved for $96 a year. An “assets-test act” of 1820 led to the pension being taken away; it was restored on Feb. 7, 1827.

Parkhurst died on Nov. 21, 1830, in Fairfield, FamilySearch and WikiTree say.

Main sources

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

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Arnold’s expedition

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by Mary Grow

Before continuing upriver, this subseries will summarize the one Revolutionary event that did have a direct impact on towns along the Kennebec River. That was the fall 1775 American expedition intended to take Québec City from the British (who had taken it from the French in September 1759).

In September and October of 1775, Colonel Benedict Arnold led an army of about 1,100 men from Newburyport, Massachusetts, up the Kennebec River, across the Height of Land and down the Chaudiere River to the St. Lawrence.

Among documents at Fairfield’s Cotton Smith House, home of the Fairfield Historical Society, is a 1946 Bangor Daily News article quoting Louise Coburn’s Skowhegan history: she said the army consisted of 10 New England infantry companies and three companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania and Virgina.

(The 1890 Cotton Smith House has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992.)

Scattered partial reenactments of this “march to Québec” are being organized in the fall of 2025. Among organizing groups is the Arnold Expedition Historical Society, headquartered in Pittston’s Reuben Colburn house (built in 1765, a state historic site and on the National Register of Historic Places since 2004).

A personal note: your writer learned about Arnold’s march to Québec when she was very young, through the historical novels of Maine writer Kenneth Roberts. Arundel, published in 1930, tells of the expedition and the unsuccessful attack on the city. Rabble in Arms, published in 1933, is the story of the army’s retreat down the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers and Lake Champlain.

Roberts highly admired General Arnold. Each novel is told from the perspective of a participant looking back to his youth, so there are references to Arnold’s subsequent switch to the British side; but his conduct in 1775 is consistently praised, and his detractors damned.

Captain Peter Merrill, of Arundel, Maine, fictional narrator of Rabble in Arms, explained that he intended to write a history of part of the war, and found Arnold “an inseparable part” of his project. He wrote:

“Benedict Arnold was a great leader: a great general: a great mariner: the most brilliant soldier of the Revolution. He was the bravest man I have ever known. Patriotism burned in him like an unquenchable flame.”

Why, then, did Arnold switch sides in September 1780? To Roberts (and a few others) the answer is, again, patriotism. Having witnessed the incompetence, corruption and general worthlessness of the Congress that mismanaged the war, costing – wasting – too many lives, Arnold believed the country’s salvation required re-submitting to British rule, with competent Americans as administrators, until the colonies were strong enough to revolt successfully.

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Benedict Arnold

Arnold’s army left Massachusetts on Sept. 19, 1775; reached the mouth of the Kennebec the next day; and stopped first at Gardinerstown (later Pittston), south of Augusta. Here 200 wooden bateaux had been hastily built in Reuben Colburn’s shipyard at Agry Point (named for a 1774 settler), on the east bank of the Kennebec.

(An on-line map shows the Colburn House on Arnold Road, and Agry Point Road running south from the south end of Arnold Road and dead-ending on the south side of Morton Brook.)

According to Colburn House information on the Town of Pittston’s website, Colburn had suggested attacking Québec via the Kennebec and had sent General George Washington “critical information.” Given only about three weeks’ notice to provide the bateaux, he had had to use green lumber, which did not hold up well; the boats leaked copiously, and fell apart under rough handling, on the water and on portages.

The website says Colburn himself and some of his crew went upriver with the troops, “carrying supplies and repairing the boats as they traveled.”

Henry Kingsbury, in his 1892 Kennebec County history, wrote that the army moved immediately upriver to Fort Western in future Augusta, where Arnold arrived on Sept. 21. For more than a week, he and some of his officers stayed with Captain James Howard at the fort.

On the evening of Sept. 23, Kingsbury wrote (using Capt. Simeon Thayer’s diary of the expedition for his source), a soldier named John McCormick got into a fight with a messmate at the fort, Reuben Bishop, and shot him. A report in the January-February, 2022, issue of the Kennebec Historical Society’s newsletter says alcohol was involved.

A prompt court-martial ordered McCormick hanged at 3 p.m. Sept. 26. Arnold, however, intervened and forwarded the case to Washington, “with a recommendation for mercy.” The KHS report says McCormick “was sent to a military jail in Boston, where he ultimately died of natural causes.”

On a website called Journey with Murphy reached through Old Fort Western’s website, a descendant of Sergeant Bishop called him “the first casualty of the Arnold expedition.” She wrote that he was born Nov. 2, 1740 (probably in central Massachusetts); enlisted soon after the Battle of Lexington; and served at the siege of Boston before joining Arnold’s expedition.

By her account, McCormick’s quarrel was not with Bishop, but with his (McCormick’s) captain, William Goodrich. After McCormick was thrown out of the house where they were billeted, he shot back into it, hitting Bishop as he lay by the fireside.

Bishop was buried somewhere near the fort. Kingsbury believed Willow Street was later “laid out over his unheeded grave.” His descendant wrote that his body was moved to Fort Western’s cemetery, and was by 2024 in Riverside Cemetery.

On Sept. 24, 1775, James North wrote in his 1870 Augusta history, Arnold sent a small exploring party ahead to collect information about the proposed route. They went most of the way across the Height of Land. North said the party’s guides were Nehemiah Getchell and John Horn, of Vassalboro.

Alma Pierce Robbins mentions in her 1971 Vassalboro history several earlier histories. One, she said, referred to “Berry and Getchell who had been sent forward…,” implying that they were part of, or guides for, the scouting party.

Different sources list other local men as guides for parts of the expedition. WikiTree cites a 1979 letter from a descendant of Dennis Getchell, of Vassalboro (see last week’s article) saying Dennis and three of his brothers, John, Nehemiah and Samuel, were scouts for Arnold, with Arnold’s journals as the source of the information.

Rev. Edwin Carey Whittemore, in his 1902 centennial history of Waterville, also named Nehemiah Getchell and John Horn as guides for the exploring party. He added, quoting an unnamed source, that a man named Jackins, who lived north of Teconnet Falls, served as a guide for the expedition.

Major General Carleton Edward Fisher, in his 1970 history of Clinton, wrote that Jackins (Jaquin, Jakens, Jackens, Jakins, Jackquith) was a French (and French-speaking) Huguenot who came to Winslow via Germany around 1772. Fisher believed Arnold sent Jackins to Québec with a letter in November 1775, citing expedition records kept by Arnold and others.

(Your writer, extrapolating from other sources, guesses the letter was to supporters in and around Québec letting them know an expedition was on the way.)

Two Native guides, Natanis and Sabatis (Sabbatis, Sabbatus), are named in several accounts, and in Kenneth Roberts’ novel. Some sources identify them as Abenakis (also called Wabanakis), others specify the Abenaki/Wabanaki band called Norridgewocks. Some say the two men were brothers or cousins.

Robbins called them “guides of no mean ability.” Both spent time in Vassalboro, she wrote, and “there are a few reports of those settlers who actually knew these two Indians.” As of 1971, she said, Sabatis’ name was on a boulder on Oak Grove Seminary grounds. Natanis Golf Course, on Webber Pond Road, was named after the 18th-century Natanis.

North wrote that over the period between Sept. 25 and Sept. 30, Arnold’s men moved from Fort Western to Fort Halifax, some in the bateaux (with most of the supplies) and some marching along the east bank of the river on the rough road laid out in 1754, when the forts were built to deter attacks by Natives backed by the French.

Robbins cited an account that the whole army camped on both sides of the Kennebec, in Vassalboro “while their bateaux were being repaired”; and Arnold “was entertained” at Moses Taber’s house.

(Your writer found no readily available information on Moses Taber. He was probably one of the Tabers who were among Vassalboro’s early settlers. They were Quakers; Taber Hill, the elevation north of Webber Pond about half-way between the Kennebec River and China Lake, is named after them.)

In Winslow, according to Whittemore’s history, an early settler, surveyor, doctor and selectman named John McKechnie treated sick soldiers from Arnold’s army

Above Fort Halifax, there was a miles-long stretch of waterfalls and rapids. Here the men had either to unload the bateaux, carry them past the danger zone, bring up the supplies and reload the boats; or haul the loaded boats upriver, in waist-deep autumn-cold water, against a strong current, over a rocky bottom.

North quoted a letter Arnold sent to George Washington in mid-October in which he compared his men to “amphibious animals, as they were a great part of the time under water.”

Several sources say that while his army labored up-river, Arnold made his headquarters in the first house built in Fairfield, Jonathan Emery’s, a short distance north of the present downtown. The Fairfield bicentennial history says Arnold was there a week; a WikiTree biography says two weeks, during which Emery, a carpenter, helped repair some of the bateaux.

(There will be more about Jonathan Emery and his family in next week’s article.)

By the time the army reached Norridgewock Falls in early October, North wrote (referring to Dr. Isaac Senter’s journal), many of the boats were wrecked. Worse, the wooden casks of bread, fish and peas were soaked and the food ruined, leaving the men with little to eat for the rest of the journey but salt pork, flour and whatever game they could kill.

From Norridgewock, North wrote, it was forty miles to the Great Carrying Place where the army left the Kennebec to go overland to the Dead River. After a very difficult journey (described in more or less detail in numerous sources, including North), during which men died and several companies abandoned the expedition and went home, about 600 remaining soldiers reached the St. Lawrence River on Nov. 9.

They besieged Québec and, with reinforcements, attacked the city the night of Dec. 31 1775. They failed to overcome the defenders, and many men were killed, wounded (including Arnold) or captured.

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Kingsbury summarized one effect of the expedition on the Kennebec Valley in the first of his two chapters on military history. He wrote that “The rare beauty of the valley through which they passed, the waving meadows, the heavy forest growth, made a lasting impression” that was not erased by the much harder journey that followed. The post-war peace brought continued hardship and hunger in the valley as “famishing regiments of soldiers” seized any available food on their way to homes along the coast. It “brought, also, many of the members of the Arnold expedition back as permanent settlers.”

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892)
North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870)
Local historical society collections

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Revolution effects Vassalboro & Winslow

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William Vassal

by Mary Grow

A 1770s map of Kennebec River towns upriver from Augusta would look quite different from a 2025 map, or even an 1870s map. Currently, Augusta is the only area town with territory on both banks of the river (linked by two bridges).

Upriver on the west bank, one goes from Augusta north into Sidney, then Waterville and then Fairfield. On the east bank, the next town north of Augusta is Vassalboro, then Winslow, then Benton.

In the 1770s, Vassalboro included Sidney (the two separated effective Jan. 30, 1792) and Winslow included Waterville (which became a separate town on June 23, 1802). Fairfield, then a plantation (it became a town on June 18, 1788) was on the west bank only, as it is now. Opposite it was a piece of what became Clinton when the town was incorporated in 1795; Benton became a separate town in 1842.

These future towns along the river all had small populations in 1775. As previous articles have discussed, Fort Halifax, in Winslow, was built in 1754, and the area was inhabited thereafter. Much of the rest of the river valley attracted at least scattered settlers, especially after the Kennebec Proprietors had a survey finished and lots laid out by 1761.

Hallowell (including Augusta), Vassalboro (including Sidney) and Winslow (including Waterville) had large enough populations to justify their incorporation as towns on April 26, 1771.

The 1988 Fairfield bicentennial history says the first recorded log cabin was built on the river, a couple miles north of the present downtown, in 1771; in 1774, the area had enough families to be organized as Fairfield Plantation.

In Clinton, according to Carleton Edward Fisher’s 1970 town history (quoted in the town’s comprehensive plan on line), the first settler arrived after 1761, but before the Kennebec Purchase Company (aka Kennebec Proprietors etc.) began offering lots in 1763. Other sources propose other dates.

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Henry Kingsbury commented in his chapter on Vassalboro in his 1892 Kennebec County history that “The records of the town from 1771 to the present are in four leather-bound books, well preserved and beautifully written.”

Alma Pierce Robbins’ 1971 Vassalboro history includes numerous excerpts from these records, with miscellaneous references to the Revolution. She described residents as “somewhat lukewarm” and said they “did their share in a dilatory manner”; but “There were many who did join their fellow countrymen in the cause for ‘Liberty.'”

The earliest vote she cited was from an otherwise undated 1773 town meeting (probably in the spring): “to be exempt from sending a representative to the [Massachusetts] General Court, and to join Boston concerning the Liberty of the Colony.”

Another meeting was called in September 1773 to hear information from Boston and see if voters would create a Committee of Correspondence. (Committees of Correspondence were the local revolutionary organizations that shared information and coordinated efforts throughout the colonies.) Whether Vassalboro had one, Robbins did not say.

Town voters did choose a “Captain of the Town for the Emergency of the times” at a Jan. 16, 1775, meeting. The first captain was Dennis Getchell (see box), assisted by two lieutenants and an ensign.

At that same meeting, Robbins wrote, voters approved a long resolve to be sent to Massachusetts authorities. It referred to the Continental and Provincial Congresses’ “almost unexplained Love for the Liberties of their Country” and agreed to abide by current and future Congressional recommendations.

Town Clerk Samuel Devens added a promise to “tender their [the town’s] assistance whenever required.” A prominent resident named Remington Hobby carried the message to Massachusetts. (Hobby was mentioned in the Aug. 21 article in this series as Vassalboro’s delegate to a 1774 provincial congress.)

Robbins wrote that by July 1776, Vassalboro’s town meetings were called “in the name of the Governor and People of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay,” replacing the British monarch. (Hallowell made a similar change in January 1775, as reported in the Aug. 21 history article.)

During the war years, Tories were as unpopular in Vassalboro as elsewhere. Robbins mentioned instances of their being mobbed or arrested.

Her chapter on wars includes no details on Vassalboro soldiers in the Revolutionary army. In an earlier article in this series (see the Feb. 3, 2022, issue of The Town Line), your writer mentioned Amos Childs, Dennis Getchell and Charles B. Webber. On-line resources list land grant applications for John Bailey, Joab Bragg and Benjamin Collins, or their widows.

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The first Europeans in what is now Winslow were British traders. Kingsbury cited a 1719 survey that included reference to a man named Lawson who had a trading house at the Native village of Ticonic in September 1653.

By 1675, the firm of Clark & Lake owned this business, and Richard Hammond had a second trading post at Ticonic, Kingsbury said. Neither man survived the series of wars that began that year, as French-supported Natives tried to repel settlers coming into their territory from the coast.

As part of the settlers’ advance, the Plymouth Company (aka the Kennebec Proprietors and other titles) and the Massachusetts government built Fort Halifax (and its southern neighbor, Fort Western, in Augusta) in 1754. By April 26, 1771, the town by and across the Kennebec from the fort (still intact, though demilitarized after the French and Indian Wars ended in 1763) had enough people to be incorporated as the Town of Winslow.

Kingsbury had only one comment on the Revolution in his chapter on the town. He wrote: “In 1776 the people manifested their patriotism by appointing Timothy Heald, John Tozer and Zimri Haywood a committee of correspondence.”

Rev. Edwin Carey Whittemore, in his 1902 Waterville history, listed these three men as the first Committee of Safety (later, the Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety), and eight more — Ezekiel Pattee, Robert Crosby, Manuel Smith, Ephraim Osborne, Nathaniel Low, Hezekiah Stratton, William Richardson and Benjamin Runnals – as members of Winslow’s Committees of Correspondence through the war.

(Heald, Tozer and Haywood also served the town as selectman, town clerk and/or town treasurer. Ezekiel Pattee served 19 years as a selectman, three one-year stints as town clerk and, Kingsbury said, as town treasurer from 1771 to 1794, except for 1781, when Haywood had the job. In the 1780s, Haywood and Pattee each represented Winslow in the Massachusetts legislature, Whittemore said.)

In Winslow, Whittemore said, the first town meeting to be called in the name of Massachusetts Bay was on July 8, 1776.

Winslow had no money to meet the requirement to buy ammunition, so Whittemore wrote that voters borrowed shingles and clapboards from residents, including Pattee, Tozer and Heald, sold them and bought ammunition with the proceeds.

He gave no date for that transaction, nor for the decision to send three men “up the river to see whether any British force was approaching.”

As in other towns, Whittemore wrote that Winslow had trouble finding men to serve in the army and meeting government requisitions of clothing and beef.

General Isaac Sparrow Bangs did a great deal of research for his chapter on the military in the Waterville history, apologizing for the scant results and regretting that records were not compiled while Revolutionary veterans and their families were still alive. He came up with a list of more than two dozen service men’s names (a few might be duplicates), with varying amounts of information about each.

The first man on the list is Captain Dean Bangs (May 31, 1756 – Dec. 6, 1845), the writer’s grandfather. Still living on Cape Cod when the war started, he was a privateer for a year before serving in the army for two years. Dean Bangs moved to Sidney in 1802 and died there; his grandson called Waterville “his mercantile home,” from where he raised an artillery company during the War of 1812.

A private named John Cool (died Oct. 5, 1845, aged 89 years and six months) served from March 12, 1777 to March 12, 1780. Bangs wrote that on May 26, 1835, Cool wrote (on a pension or similar application?) that he was 78 years old and had been a Winslow/Waterville resident for 70 years. After his death, Bangs said, Cool Street, along the west bank of the Messalonskee Stream, was named after him.

Sampson Freeman served as a private from Feb. 1, 1777, to Feb. 5, 1780, including wintering at Valley Forge from December 1777, to June 1778. He was a free Black man who enlisted from Salem, Massachusetts; moved from Peru, Maine, to Waterville in 1835; and died in Waterville in 1843.

(The Town Line’s May 5, 2022, history article has more information about Sampson Freeman.)

Salathiel Penny or Penney (1756 – Sept. 22, 1847) Bangs found listed several times. Enlisting from Wells on May 3, 1775, Penney served eight months; he re-enlisted Jan. 10, 1776, for another 10 months; and yet again Jan. 1, 1777. Bangs wrote that Penney was “present at the surrender of [British General John] Burgoyne” on Oct. 17, 1777, at Saratoga, New York.

In another chapter in Whittemore’s history, Aaron Appleton Plaisted names Penney among pre-1800 Waterville residents.

Dennis Getchell

On-line sources say Dennis Getchell was born in Berwick in 1723 and married Mary Holmes (no dates given) in Wiscasset, in September 1761; the couple had at least 11 children, FamilySearch says. It then confuses the issue by saying all but two were born in Berwick, including those born after the Getchells moved to Vassalboro.

This source says Dennis, Jr., was born in 1771, in Clinton; or, a different source says, in Vassalboro. Daughters Anstrus and Lydia were reportedly both born in 1775, Anstrus in Berwick and Lydia in Vassalboro.

WikiTree mentions Getchell’s experience in the British military before he bought land in Vassalboro’s Riverside area in 1769 and 1770. At Vassalboro’s first town meeting, on April 26, 1771, he was elected first selectman.

WikiTree says: “On July 23, 1776, he was commissioned captain of the 5th company, 2nd Lincoln County regiment of Massachusetts militia. He and his company of 50 men served at Riverton, R. I., in 1777.”

Kingsbury agreed that Getchell was elected a Vassalboro selectman in 1771, and added that he served for eight years. In 1775, he was town meeting moderator. Another source says in 1786, he represented the town in the Massachusetts legislature.

Getchell died Aug. 23, 1791, according to a reader’s comment on WikiTree citing Martha Ballard’s diary; or early in 1792 (per WikiTree, which says his Aug. 2, 1790, will was probated Jan. 6, 1792).

Main sources

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)
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, (1902)

Websites, miscellaneous.