Kennebec County Courthouse

by Mary Grow

Winslow wasn’t the only small town in this section of the Kennebec River valley with its own 19th-century lawyer(s), though no other seems to have been as conspicuous as Eleazer Ripley (see The Town Line, May 8, 2025, page 10).

Or maybe many were, and appear less known and important now only because of lack of information. A legal case that in 1825 enthralled an entire town and determined the futures of a dozen people might be completely forgotten by 2025.

Several local lawyers practiced in more than one town; and often, a lawyer who started in a small town would gravitate to Waterville or Augusta (or a more distant city). Your writer is reminded, again, that in the 1800s a trip from Sidney or China to a courthouse in Augusta or Waterville was not the casual undertaking that it is today.

This week’s article will offer information on three lawyers who, James W. Bradbury wrote in Henry Kingsbury’s 1892 Kennebec County history, practiced in the small town of China. The first two lived in China Village, in the north end of town.

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Chronologically as well as alphabetically, lawyer Abisha Benson comes first. He arrived in China in or before 1817, the China bicentennial history says (it does not say where he came from). Bradbury said he was practicing in China Village in the 1820s; two nephews, brothers Samuel Page Benson and Gustavus Benson, studied with him after Samuel graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825.

(Samuel and Gustavus were sons of a pre-1810 settler in Winthrop, a doctor named Peleg Benson. Bradbury wrote that Samuel opened his law practice in Winthrop in 1829 and was Maine’s secretary of state in 1838 and 1841 and a two-term Congressman in 1853 and 1855. He said nothing more about Gustavus.)

Of Benson’s law cases, your writer found no record. He left traces in town records as an apparently trusted and useful citizen.

Between 1819 and 1824 one of the topics at China town meetings (then held up to five times a year) was maintenance of the bridge across the stream feeding into China Lake’s east basin, just east of China Village. The history says an April 3, 1820, town meeting authorized paying Jacob McLaughlin $10 for a year’s repairs; a Nov. 6 meeting awarded a 10-year repair contract to low bidder, Benjamin Lewis, for $178.

On June 18, 1821, voters decided to review the Lewis contract and appointed lawyer Benson and two other men “to ‘examine’ the bridge and the contract.” In September, Lewis accepted a replacement seven-year contract. After more discussion, in which Benson’s participation is not recorded, in March, 1824, voters appropriated $694 for a new bridge.

In 1825, Benson was chosen a member of a larger committee to investigate whether China should create a poor farm to house paupers. The committee’s report, if any, is not recorded, the bicentennial history says; not until 1845 did China establish its poor farm.

The China history identifies Benson as a Mason, the first Master of Central Lodge, No. 45, in China Village. The Lodge’s charter was requested at a Dec. 27, 1823, meeting, and was approved April 8, 1824; Benson is listed as master from December, 1823, to June, 1826.

In March, 1827, Central Lodge members voted gifts of money to four members, including G. A. Benson (probably Abisha’s nephew) and J. H. Benson, “in consequence of their loss in the late fire.” The bicentennial history offers no additional information.

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Lawyer Alfred Fletcher, according to Bradbury’s summary, was a China native, born in 1818 (according to Find a Grave, Aug. 31, 1817). He was a Bowdoin College graduate. He read law with Sandford (elsewhere Sanford) A. Kingsbury “and practiced in China all his life.”

Fletcher first appears in the China bicentennial history in 1850, after almost 20 years of renewed public discussion of that bridge at the head of China Lake’s east basin that had taken some of Abisha Benson’s time in 1821.

The series of events Fletcher got involved in started with a special town meeting in the spring of 1831, at which voters appointed a bridge committee (unnamed in the history); recessed for 20 minutes while members reached a recommendation; and approved spending $800 to elevate their almost-new bridge by two feet.

The reason, as rediscussed at a Sept. 12, 1831, meeting, was that the Vassalboro mill owners who owned the China Lake outlet dam in East Vassalboro were keeping the lake’s water level so high as to repeatedly damage the bridge. The controversy continued through the summer of 1834, then disappeared from town records until May 19, 1843.

That day, town meeting voters appointed S. A. Kingsbery (probably lawyer Sanford Kingsbury) as one of two “agents” to either sue or make an agreement with the Vassalboro mill owners, and appropriated $149.50 for repairs. Discussions were suspended that fall, because, according to a resolution adopted at a September town meeting, there wasn’t much damage the previous spring; and “it is uncertain whether property can be found to respond [to] any verdict for damages that might be obtained.”

A June 1850 town meeting discussion led to the appointment of the committee Fletcher served on. Its assignment was to consider options: sue Vassalboro millowners, negotiate with Vassalboro millowners, repair the bridge and road. The history says the committee report does not appear in town records; but the bridge was repaired in 1851 and 1852.

The China history lists Fletcher as a selectman from 1851 through 1856; says he served on China’s town school committee in 1856-57; and lists him as selectman for another two years in 1865 and 1866.

Bradbury wrote that Fletcher “served two years in the state senate.” Legislative records found on line show he served in the House in 1857 and in the Senate in 1858 and 1859.

The legislators’ payroll for the legislature’s 36th session, a term from Jan. 7 to April 17, 1857, lists Fletcher as the representative from China and says he attended 101 days (as did the majority of legislators). His travel distance was 25 miles (one way, undoubtedly) and he was paid $207 for his service.

(Also on the payroll were three Aroostook County legislators who also attended 101 days, and obviously did not travel back and forth very often. The one who was only 195 miles from his home in Linneus got $241; the one from No. 11 [probably now Ashland], 250 miles from Augusta, got $252; Madawaska’s representative, 300 miles from home, got $262.)

A payroll for the Senate of the 37th legislature, for a term from Jan. 6 to March 29, 1858, names Alfred Fletcher as one of three members from the fourth (Senate) district. This document lists his travel distance as 50 miles (round trip); he was paid $171 for attending 83 days (the standard for that term).

During the Civil War, Find a Grave says, Fletcher enlisted Sept. 10, 1862; was mustered in a month later in Augusta; and was a captain in the 24th Infantry, Company G. The site describes him as “dark complexion, blue eyes, blk hair, 5′ 10 and ½ [inches].”

He left the army Jan. 10, 1863, short of his nine-months’ enlistment period. Find a Grave gives no explanation; it says simply “Resigned and discharged.”

Kingsbury’s chapter on military history lists six Fletchers from China who enlisted after the 1861 rush of Union volunteers subsided and state governments began offering bounties and other inducements. They included Abisha B. Fletcher and Capt. Alfred Fletcher. Abisha B. (for Benson) was Alfred’s younger brother, born in 1822; Find a Grave says he was a sergeant.

Alfred Fletcher married Elizabeth P. Larrabee on Dec. 12, 1841, in Vassalboro (according to FamilySearch). Elizabeth was born Aug. 22, 1821, or 1822, in Unity (then in Hancock County, after 1827 in Waldo County) or in Kennebec County (no town named).

The Fletchers had three sons, Find a Grave says: Eben L, born Oct. 11, 1842, moved to Belfast as a young man and died there June 1, 1920; George A., born in China July 9, 1845, and died there Sept. 8, 1848; and a second George A., born April 11, 1852, and died in Maine Sept. 22, 1907 (Find a Grave says he is buried in Dixfield).

Alfred Fletcher was 50 when he died Aug. 18, 1868, in China, according to his gravestone in the China Village cemetery. Family members buried there include his parents, Col. Robert and Nancy (Sprague) Fletcher; his widow, Elizabeth, who died Feb. 2, 1875; their second son, George, who lived only three years; and Alfred’s brother, Abisha Benson Fletcher, who died in June 1906.

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Then there is attorney Kingsbury, mentioned above as Alfred Fletcher’s law teacher (probably in the 1840s) and the town’s agent in 1843. Bradbury wrote one sentence about him: “Sandford A. Kingsbury practiced law in China as early as 1824.”

FamilySearch says Kingsbury was born July 31, 1782, in Claremont, New Hampshire. Your writer found two Sanford A. Kingsburys, father and son, listed in the on-line “Ledger,” self-described as “A Database of Students of the Litchfield Law School and the Litchfield Female Academy.” This law school was established in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1774, and closed in 1833, after educating more than 1,100 students.

The Ledger says the younger Sanford Kingsbury attended the law school in 1801. He graduated from Dartmouth College the same year, and got a master’s degree from Dartmouth “between 1807 and 1828.”

According to this source, Kingsbury moved to Maine and began to practice law in Gardiner.

FamilySearch adds that on Sept. 29, 1807 (or in October, according to the Ledger), in Hallowell, Kingsbury married Hannah Nye Agry. They had three children, listed as Rev. Sanford Agry Kingsbury (born Feb. 19, 1809, in Gardiner, became a Baptist minister, died Jan. 28, 1895, in Alton, Illinois); Caroline Hannah Kingsbury (1812 – Jan. 12, 1813, born, died and buried in Gardiner); and George Henry Kingsbury (born Oct. 6, 1817, in Gardiner, died Nov. 21, 1895, in Galesburg, Illinois).

FamilySearch says Kingsbury lived in Gardiner “about 10 years.” It lists him in East Windsor, Connecticut, in 1860 – before adding that he died in March, 1849, aged 66, and is buried in Gardiner.

The Ledger partly fills the gap after 1807. It says that in 1834, Kingsbury (and family?) moved to Kingsbury, Maine, “a new town…that had been named for him.”

(Kingsbury, Maine, Wikipedia says, is now Kingsbury Plantation, about 50 miles north of Waterville, in southwestern Piscataquis County. “Judge Kingsbury” paid $4,000 for it in 1833. He built two mills on Kingsbury Pond in 1835, sparking enough growth that the Town of Kingsbury was incorporated March 22, 1836. It was unincorporated in 1886 and “reorganized as a plantation in 1887.” Its 2020 population was 28.)

The Ledger lists among Kingsbury’s accomplishments working as a banker, helping incorporate the Maine Historical Society and serving as a Maine state senator from 1828 to 1830. The legislature’s database lists him as a senator from Kennebec County in the 9th, 10th and 11th sessions (1829 through 1831).

FamilySearch says Kingsbury and his widow, who died January 25, 1860, are buried in Gardiner’s Oak Grove cemetery. Find a Grave lists only two Kingsburys in that cemetery, Hannah and her daughter Caroline.

There is one Kingsbury in the index to the China bicentennial history. His name was William, known as Bill; he was a tavern-keeper in South China who continued to sell liquor after Maine outlawed sales. When members of a nearby Baptist church objected, he hired a neighbor, “for a barrel of flour and a barrel of pork,” to burn down the church. Bill was sentenced to two years in prison.

Main sources

Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Kennebec County Courthouse

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.