by Mary Grow

While looking for information for the previous articles on Maine’s legal and court systems and people who made them work, your writer came across related information that falls under two headings, people and buildings.

The limited research this series rests on found bits and pieces of information about some items. Others remain obscure; any reader who can contribute is invited to email The Town Line, townline@townline.org.

This article will share your writer’s findings about a few people, specifically lawyers, hoping readers find them interesting.

William Mathews, author in 1885 of one of the articles cited, called medicine and the law two professions that are “indispensable to society,” and also the two that are most frequently ridiculed.

The law, he claimed, has one “advantage over all other business callings: that eminence in it is always a test of ability and acquirement.”

Any other professional can fake it, he opined, and gain “wealth and honor” by “quackery and pretension.” A lawyer earns a reputation only by “rare natural powers aided by profound learning and varied experience in trying causes,” because both fellow lawyers and judges are constantly alert for any shortcut, omission, misstatement or other error, purposeful or accidental.

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James Bradbury’s history of the Kennebec bar, in Henry Kingsbury’s 1892 Kennebec County history, named many Augusta and Waterville lawyers and a few from smaller towns. The latter group included from Winslow, James Child and Thomas Rice; Lemuel Paine (and Bradbury mentioned Lemuel’s son Henry Paine, who was a lawyer, but not in Winslow); and George Warren.

In his chapter on Winslow in the history, Kingsbury named Rice and the Paines. He added Paine’s partner, “General Ripley, afterward the hero of the battle of Lundy’s Lane, Canada.”

Bradbury said Thomas Rice was the first lawyer in Winslow, settling there in 1795. Kingsbury said Winslow’s first lawyer was George Warren, “who came before 1791.” Rev. Edwin Whittemore, in his 1902 Waterville centennial history, agreed with Kingsbury (or perhaps just took Kingsbury’s word as truth).

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Thomas Rice was born in Pownalborough (according to Wikipedia), on March 30, 1763, Bradbury wrote; most other sources say March 30, 1768. Kingsbury listed “Esquire Thomas Rice” among early settlers along the Kennebec south of the mouth of the Sebasticook.

Bradbury said Rice graduated from Harvard in 1791 and read law under Timothy Bigelow (no dates or location provided; probably in Massachusetts, because Wikipedia says he was admitted to the bar in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, in 1794; and another Wikipedia article [on General Eleazer Wheelock Ripley], names Timothy Bigelow as Massachusetts House speaker in 1813). Rice opened his Winslow, Maine, practice in 1795.

According to Aaron Plaisted’s chapter on Waterville’s early settlers in Whittemore’s history, the first lawyer in that town (now city) was Reuben Kidder, who arrived in the spring of 1775. “He arrived four days before Thomas Rice, who, disappointed in having been anticipated, went to the east [Winslow] side of the river where he passed a long and useful life.”

Find a Grave says Rice married Sarah Swan (born May 6, 1777) on Oct. 22, 1796.

Rice had made a name for himself by 1801, when, on Dec. 18, he was elected one of five commissioners to petition the Massachusetts legislature to set off the west side of the Kennebec as a separate town (the legislature approved on June 23, 1802). Kingsbury said he served his adopted town as a selectman in 1802, and as treasurer in 1803, from 1810 through 1812 and again in 1830.

In 1807, Wikipedia says, the (District of) Maine supreme court appointed Rice one of Kennebec County’s examiners of counselors and attorneys. In 1814, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives; from 1815 to early 1819, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Failing to win a third term in the fall of 1818, he went back to practicing law.

Rice was one of the area lawyers Bradbury met after he opened his Augusta office in 1830.

Sarah died Sept. 26, 1840. On Feb. 16, 1841, in Winslow, Rice married Susanna (Susannah, Susan) Greene. They had one son, Thomas III, born in 1843 or March 4, 1844 (sources differ).

Rice died on Aug. 25, 1854, in Winslow, and is buried in Waterville’s Pine Grove cemetery, with first wife Sarah; second wife Susanna, who died Dec. 1, 1879; and son Thomas III, identified as Lieutenant Thomas Green Rice.

Thomas III enlisted for Civil War service in November 1863, Find a Grave says, joining the 2nd Maine Cavalry, Company B. He was a second lieutenant in Company D, 4th United States Colored Cavalry, when he died of a fever on Oct. 4, 1865, in Vidalia, Mississippi (according to Find a Grave; your writer finds no contemporary town named Vidalia in Mississippi, though there is one in Louisiana and one in Georgia).

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George Warren, according to Bradbury, was a son of General James and Mercy (Otis) Warren, leading Massachusetts patriots before and during the Revolution. James Warren, Wikipedia says, earned his title both as Paymaster-General of the Continental Army (July 27, 1775, to April 19, 1776) and as a major-general of the Massachusetts militia.

George was the youngest of the five Warren sons. The Geni website says he was born Sept. 20, 1766, in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Whittemore cited Warren opening his legal business by 1791 as an example of Winslow’s development, along with population growth, mills, fisheries and productive farms.

Bradbury called Warren “one of the lesser lights of the Kennebec bar, which was extinguished before the opening of the present [19th] century.” He credited Warren with “fine natural talents,” but said he “led a dissipated life, dying at Augusta in penury” after practicing briefly in Winslow.

Bradbury gave no dates. Geni says he died in 1800 (February 1800, according to another website) in Maine.

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James Loring Child, Bradbury wrote, was born May 31, 1792, in Augusta. He attended Hallowell Academy, studied law with two different two-man firms and was admitted to the bar in 1813. His first four years in practice were in Winslow in partnership with Rice, who was his senior by more than a generation.

Child had an Augusta practice from 1818 to 1822 and lived there for 30 years. He died in 1862.

The FamilySearch website summarizes the life of James Loring Child, born May 31, 1792, in Lincoln, Maine, and died on Aug. 10, 1862, in Augusta. He married Jane Hale (born Jan. 12, 1804, in Bradford, Massachusetts) on Nov. 10, 1822, in Portland; and was an Alna resident in 1830 (before returning to Augusta?). He and Jane had five sons and five daughters between Oct. 27, 1823 (when oldest son, Daniel Carleton, was born in Alna), and Jan. 15, 1846 (when youngest son, Robert Wainwright, was born in Augusta).

In Whittemore’s Waterville history, James L. Child, from Winslow, is listed as captain of a militia company that served briefly during the War of 1812.

None of these sources, except Bradbury, says anything about Child’s profession.

James Loring Child died Aug. 10, 1862; Jane died Dec. 14, 1873. Both are buried in Augusta’s Forest Grove cemetery, with all five of their sons and the two daughters who died in infancy (and three generations of other Childs).

In the Maine state archives index on line, under Executive Council papers, are references from the spring of 1822 to James L. Child’s role as Secretary of the Board of Commissioners Under the Act of Separation. Intermixed are references to James A. Child, including in titles of documents listed under James L. Child, leaving your writer more confused than usual.

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Lemuel Paine (often called Jr.), was born Dec. 2, 1758, Find a Grave says, supported by the barely readable photo of his tombstone on the website. FamilySearch lists his birthdate, probably erroneously or conflated with another Lemuel Paine, as Dec. 2, 1777.

His birthplace is given as Foxborough, Massachusetts, where, on Sept. 30, 1805, he married Jane Thompson (or Thomson) Warren, born Aug. 20, 1778. WikiTree agrees with this information in its Paine biography; on another page, the site dates the marriage Nov. 28, 1805, and says it was in Winslow.

The WikiTree biography says Paine graduated from Brown University in 1803, studied law with David Gilbert in Mansfield (Massachusetts, about seven miles from Foxborough), and “was admitted to the bar in due course.” He and Jane moved to Winslow (no reason or date given).

WikiTree says Paine was in the Massachusetts legislature in 1810. He was apparently not representing Winslow; the list of Winslow and Waterville representatives Whittemore included says in 1810 and 1811 the representative was Eleazer W. Ripley.

Kingsbury listed Paine as Winslow treasurer in 1814 and 1815. Wikipedia says in 1829 he served on Maine’s Executive Council.

WikiTree calls Paine “a firm and active supporter of all educational causes within his reach,” including Waterville College. An article by William Mathews, LLD, in the November 1885 issue of The Bay State Monthly adds that Paine’s poor health made him give up his law practice “for other pursuits,” and continues:

“He was familiar with the representative English authors, and specially fond of the Greek language and literature, which he cultivated during his life. He had a tenacious memory, and could quote [Greek poet] Homer by the page.”

(William Mathews [1818 – 1909] was a Waterville native; your writer profiled him in the Dec. 5, 2024, issue of The Town Line.)

The Wikipedia biography says Paine died in Winslow in 1852, age 93 (supporting the 1758 birth-date), and is buried in Howard cemetery. “It is said he was found lying upon a bed of hay with a rake by his side when he died, as if asleep.”

Jane died April 19, 1860, in Winslow, Find a Grave says.

Henry Warren Paine (or, Mathews and the Wikipedia biography say, Henry William) was the second of Lemuel and Jane’s three (Mathews) or four (FamilySearch) sons. His older brother was Ebenezer Warren, born in 1808; younger brothers were Frederick Augustus, born about 1812 (WikiTree lists him as unverified pending more research), and Edward Augustus, born in 1816.

Henry was born Aug. 30, 1810. Mathew called him “one of the most eminent lawyers of New England, whose career may be regarded as signally worthy of imitation.”

Mathews agreed with other sources that Henry Paine graduated from Waterville College, studied law with his uncle, Samuel S. Warren, in China, and attended Harvard Law School in 1832-33, gaining admission to the Kennebec bar in 1834.

His law practice was in Hallowell, starting around 1834, until he moved to Cambridge and opened a Boston practice in the summer of 1854. Mathews wrote that he had not moved sooner because he had promised to stay in Maine during his father’s lifetime.

The list of Paine graves in Winslow’s Howard cemetery on the Find a Grave website includes Lemuel, 1758-1852; his widow, Jane Thompson Warren, 1778-1860; and their oldest son, Ebenezer Warren, 1808-1830, and youngest son, Edward A., 1816-1884.

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For lack of space, information on Brigadier General Eleazer or Eleazar Wheelock Ripley is postponed to next week.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902)

Websites, miscellaneous.

by Mary Grow

William Penn Whitehouse has been mentioned in each of the three articles about Maine courts so far in this subseries; it’s time he got a page of his own (after a digression).

The first mention, March 27, identified Whitehouse as the author of the chapter on the history of Maine courts in Henry Kingsbury’s 1892 Kennebec County history.

By then, Whitehouse was 50. He was married, and he and his wife had had three children and lost two of them. After a dozen years as a Kennebec County judge, in 1892 Whitehouse was in his second year as an associate justice on the state supreme court. He and his wife were living in Augusta, in an 1851 Greek Revival house he bought in 1869.

That this distinguished and busy man made time to research and write a chapter for Henry Kingsbury is a tribute to both of them.

Your writer has failed to find biographical information on Henry Kingsbury or his co-editor, Simeon L. Deyo. On-line booksellers list Deyo as editor of History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, 1620-1637-1686-1890, and suggest it was originally published in 1890.

The book that Kingsbury and Deyo put together has about 1,300 pages (some page numbers are duplicated and one triplicated, 564, 564b and 564d [before and after 564b are unnumbered full-page illustrations]). The pages measure 7.5 by 10.5 inches; the print is fairly small. There are more than 200 illustrations, many full-page.

A few chapters are credited to Kingsbury; more than a dozen to other authors, like Whitehouse; none to Deyo. Twenty-five of the 47 chapters have no author’s name.

In his December 1892 introduction, Kingsbury (the only signatory, without Deyo) thanks “the twenty writers whose names these chapters bear” and “more than twenty hundred” people with whom “we” (including Deyo?) corresponded or spoke.

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William Penn Whitehouse was born April 9, 1842 (FamilySearch and other sources), or April 9, 1843 (Find a Grave), in Vassalboro. His parents, also Vassalboro natives (per FamilySearch) were John Roberts Whitehouse (1807 – April 16, 1887) and Hannah B. (Percival) Whitehouse (1808 -Nov. 29, 1876).

FamilySearch says John and Hannah were married “about 22 July 1827.” William was the youngest of their four sons and three daughters born between 1830 and 1842. Find a Grave lists the three older brothers but only one older sister.

The Find a Grave website has a long excerpt credited to Louis Hatch, author of a 1919 Maine history, but not from that book. Hatch said the Whitehouse family in America “has produced eminent churchmen, distinguished jurists and men of affairs and philanthropists that have had a national reputation, but none among them have more worthily borne the name and upheld the tradition than has William Penn Whitehouse….”

Writing when Whitehouse was in his late 70s, Hatch continued: “A man of the widest and most generous culture, his legal acumen and his fair mindedness together with a sense of duty which has a certain Roman quality have eminently fitted him for his lifework of the law. He unites a wide outlook and a scholarly culture with a keen and ready mind that has never lost its cutting edge. His gracious and urbane manners appear the natural fruit, as indeed they are, of his character and attainments.”

Hatch said Whitehouse began China Academy’s college preparatory course in February 1858, when he was 16 and still working on the family farm in Vassalboro, and learned so fast that he entered Colby College in September 1858. (China Academy was in China Village; chartered in 1818 by the Massachusetts legislature, it transformed into a free high school in 1880.)

James Bradbury, in his chapter on the Kennebec bar in Kingsbury’s history, agreed that Whitehouse went from the district school to “the China high school,” but wrote that the “scantiness of the knowledge there acquired” led him to enroll in Waterville Academy in February 1859 and enter Colby (for which Waterville Academy was a preparatory school) in September 1859.

Both sources agree Whitehouse graduated with honors in Colby’s Class of 1863 (making the 1859 entrance date more likely), and earned a master’s degree in 1866. Hatch said he taught for a while; both wrote that in 1863-64 he was principal of Vassalboro Academy (the girls’ school at Getchell’s Corner founded in 1837).

Deciding on the legal profession, Whitehouse studied law with area attorneys and in October (Hatch) or December (Bradbury) 1865 was admitted to the Kennebec Bar. He practiced briefly with other lawyers before opening his own practice in Augusta.

Hatch wrote that he was Augusta city solicitor for four years (Bradbury said he was elected in 1868) and Kennebec County attorney for seven years (or more, Bradbury said, appointed after his predecessor died and then twice elected because of his “efficient and impartial administration”).

In 1878, Bradbury wrote, Kennebec County Superior Court was created “as a county court auxiliary to the supreme judicial court” and Whitehouse was appointed the judge, a position he held until his 1890 appointment to the state Supreme Court.

Bradbury, like Hatch, had high praise for Whitehouse. Referring to his years as a lawyer, he wrote:

“Reared on a farm, and possessing the plain, practical directness which such a life inculcates, combined with the discriminating tastes of the scholar, and the keen analytical methods of a mind trained to an exacting profession, Judge Whitehouse speedily won an enviable standing as a man and a lawyer, and became a prominent figure in the public life of his adopted city.”

Later, he commented that Whitehouse’s habit of “taking cognizance of both sides” of an issue at first discouraged clients seeking a lawyer’s support, but later brought friends, clients and professional success, and was an important qualification for his future judicial roles.

Community activities Hatch and Bradbury mentioned included chairing an 1873 commission considering a new “insane hospital,” and in 1875 and later advocating for abolishing the death penalty.

The Kennebec County court was known unofficially as “Judge Whitehouse’s court,” Bradbury said. He called it “a very useful and important branch of the state’s judiciary.”

He named only one of Whitehouse’s superior court decisions: “the celebrated Burns ‘original package’ case,” which he called “the corner stone upon which rests [in 1892] the entire fabric of prohibition in Maine.” (See box)

Gov. Edwin C. Burleigh appointed Whitehouse an associate justice on the state supreme court on April 15, 1890. Bradbury observed that Whitehouse’s “splendid record” on the Kennebec County court was “his best recommendation” for the new position.

Whitehouse was reappointed by three later governors, Llewellyn Powers, on April 24, 1897; John Fremont Hill, on April 5, 1904; and Frederick Plaisted, on April 13, 1911. Plaisted appointed him Chief Justice on July 26, 1911, after Lucilius Emery, from Ellsworth, resigned.

Historian Hatch was again elated, writing:

“A profound knowledge of the law, a ripe and scholarly culture and trenchant mind were in him associated with a balance and sanity of temperament and a judicial habit of weighing evidence in its minutest detail. No man who has occupied the Supreme bench of the State of Maine, rich as has been its history, has by character of [or?] attainments more nobly carried out its highest traditions.”

Whitehouse resigned the position on April 8, 1913. He was succeeded by Albert R. Savage, from Auburn, who held the post until his death in June 1917.

Hatch summed up Whitehouse’s tenure:

“A profound knowledge of the law, a ripe and scholarly culture and trenchant mind were in him associated with a balance and sanity of temperament and a judicial habit of weighing evidence in its minutest detail. No man who has occupied the Supreme bench of the State of Maine, rich as has been its history, has by character of [or?] attainments more nobly carried out its highest traditions.”

He said nothing about why Whitehouse resigned. Apparently not due to illness or disillusionment, however, because Hatch said he re-opened his law firm and as of 1919 “commands an important and distinguished practice.”

In addition to his work for the new Augusta insane hospital, Whitehouse was a bank trustee, Hatch said. His “services to the State and to the legal profession” were recognized by honorary doctorates from Colby in 1896 and from Bowdoin in 1912.

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In politics, Whitehouse was a Republican (Hatch and Bradbury); in religion, a Unitarian (Bradbury, though his father was a Quaker and his mother a Methodist).

On June 18 (FamilySearch) or June 24 (Find a Grave and Bradbury), 1869, Whitehouse married Evelyn Marie or Maria Treat, born in Frankfort on June 4, 1836. The couple had three children: Robert Treat, born March 27, 1870; William Penn, Jr., born May 12, 1873, and died June 5, 1874; and Minnie Drew, born Oct. 13, 1875, and died Jan. 10, 1877.

William Penn Whitehouse died Oct. 10 or Oct. 22, 1922, in the Augusta house he bought in 1869. His widow lived until 1925 (your writer found no exact death date).

William and Evelyn’s son who lived to adulthood, Robert Treat Whitehouse, married Florence Brooks in 1894 in Augusta, according to FamilySearch. They had at least three sons, whom they named William Penn Whitehouse (1895 – 1976), Robert Treat Whitehouse, Jr. (1897 – 1965) and Brooks Whitehouse (1904 -1969).

The sons were born in Portland, where Robert practiced law. He died there in 1924; his widow died in Portland on Jan. 23, 1945.

Augusta’s Forest Grove cemetery contains the graves of 32 people named Whitehouse, including, according to Find a Grave, William Penn and Evelyn; their son Robert Treat and daughter-in-law Florence; their children who died as infants, William Penn, Jr., and Minnie; and their grandsons William Penn II, Robert Treat, Jr., and Brooks.

William Penn’s parents, John Roberts and Hannah (Percival) Whitehouse, and his brother Oliver (1839 – Oct. 31, 1869) are buried in Vassalboro’s Whitehouse cemetery, on Whitehouse Road, a former section of Routes 202 and 3 in southeastern Vassalboro.

The Burns case

An on-line search for the Burns original package case led your writer to a 1911 legislative resolve in favor of an Augusta businessman named Michael Burns.

The resolve was to reimburse Burns $3,132.86 “for his expenses incurred in defense of prosecutions instituted against him, without warrant of law under the specific order of the governor, and for loss of property and injury to his business.”

The document explained that in 1887, Burns was selling “original, unbroken, imported packages of alcoholic liquors.” He was complying with federal law, and both state law and three Maine Supreme Court decisions said his business was legitimate (despite Maine being a famously “dry” state in those days).

The Kennebec County sheriff and county attorney, the municipal judge, the attorney general, “the legal profession and all well-informed citizens” knew that it was legal to sell alcohol in Maine in these “original, imported, unbroken packages.”

Nonetheless, in June, 1887, the governor issued a proclamation directing the attorney general and the Kennebec County attorney to prosecute Burns for illegal liquor sales. (In June 1887, Maine’s governor was a Republican named Joseph R. Bodwell; he was elected in 1886, took office Jan. 6, 1887, and died in office Dec. 15, 1887.)

Obeying the governor, the county attorney had the sheriff, a man named McFadden, seize 56 cases of rum and 13 cases of whiskey, with a market value of $483. (The Waterville centennial history says Charles McFadden, a Vassalboro native who moved to Waterville, held various official positions, including Kennebec County Sheriff from 1884 to 1888.)

Burns hired a lawyer, and his case dragged on for three years. On May 29, 1890, the law court (i.e., the state supreme court acting as a court of appeals) agreed that Burns’ business was legal. In its September 1890 term, the “presiding judge” (unnamed) of the Kennebec County Superior Court ordered the cases of liquor returned to Burns.

(Whitehouse having been appointed to the Maine Supreme Court in April of that year, Bradbury’s report of his involvement puzzled your writer.)

Meanwhile, however, the legislative resolve says, on Aug. 8, 1890, a federal law had redefined the packaged liquor as contraband in Maine, and it had been sold in Boston, at a $300 loss.

The legislative resolve listed a total of $1,299.94 in losses and expenses Burns had incurred. It then added $1,832.92 for 23 and a half years’ interest to order the $3,132.86 reimbursement (and mentioned other losses for which it could have required reimbursement, but didn’t).

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed. Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).

Websites, miscellaneous.