Radio Script #913

Little Talks on Common Things
December 26, 1971

Recently I ran across some more information about Fort Halifax and I want to share with you what I have learned.

Somehow, perhaps even before they left the homeland across the Atlantic, the Pilgrims who established the first white settlement in New England, knew that British fishing fleets were coming regularly to the Maine coast, especially to the large island we now know as Monhegan. As early as 1621, the Pilgrim shallop went to Monhegan and Pemaquid to seek badly needed supplies from the fishing ships. On that and repeated trips the Pilgrims learned that the Indians were bringing furs down to the mouth of a big river, the Kennebec, to trade those furs with the fishermen for European goods.

In 1625, when the Pilgrims had secured sufficient goods to warrant their own trade with the Indians, they sent Edward Winslow with a load of corn to the Kennebec. He returned with 700 pounds of beaver skins and a quantity of other furs. Governor Bradford, and his associates at Plymouth decided their best plan would be to seek a land grant for the Council of Plymouth that would give them control of a large tract on the Kennebec, where they could set up a post for exclusive trade with those Indians. They succeeded in getting a grant of land between the Cobbosseecontee and the falls of Nequamquick, extending 15 miles each side of the river, and at a place called Cushnoc, now Augusta, they set up their trading post.

There had long been controversy as to what was meant by the Falls at Nequamquick. We know that later proprietors gained ownership as far up the river as Norridgewock, so that we usually consider the old grant to have been from the vicinity of Gardiner to the fall at Norridgewock. But there is clear evidence that such was not originally the case. In 1763, nearly 150 years after the Kennebec Grant to the Pilgrims, Col. Lithgow, the commander of Fort Halifax, stated that he had lived on the Kennebec since 1748, and had become well acquainted with the river. He knew perfectly what the Indians had always called Ticonic Falls and he insisted that five to six miles below Ticonic Falls were the Falls of Nequamquick. What Lithgow identified as Nequamquick Falls were the rips at Vassalboro. Lithgow said Nequamquick was not a perpendicular fall, but rather a rippling which broke at all times of the year, and unlike lower ripples between Ticonic and Cushnoc, was visible as a drop even at high water.

The obvious reason why the Pilgrims set up their trading post at the Cushnoc rips, near Augusta, rather than farther up the river, was that that place, near where the Augusta dam was later built, was the head of tide water, and as far up the river as the Pilgrim ships could go.

Between 1625 and 1640 the Indians shrewdly sought other, better paying buyers for their furs, and the Pilgrim trade declined, the Boston buyers often getting the best of it. So the Pilgrims abandoned their Kennebec post, though they retained the land grant until 1661. In that year they, sold the patent to four men, one of whom was the very Edward Winslow who had made the first trading voyage up the river in 1625. The four men were called Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase.

In 1749, a few of the heirs of the four proprietors of 1661 decided to ascertain who were the other living heirs of those four and form them into a company or buy their rights. The lands in the patent area were being invaded by squatters, and the planning heirs felt the time had come to see just what they owned and how they could get some profit out of it. The leading spirit in the plan was Robert Temple of Boston, and on September 1, 1749, a number of interested persons met at his house. The result was a company officially known by the long title “Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase from the Late Colony of New Plymouth.” It became better known by the shortened title “The Plymouth Company”.

Here we again turn to the long statement by Col. Lithgow made in 1763. He said: “In 1749, Captain Robert Temple told us he was concerned in an old patent by which he and others were entitled to a tract of land between Cobbosseecontee and Nequamquick, and he asked me where Nequamquick was. I told him I did not at that time know, because I had been no further up river than Cobbosseecontee. Captain Temple told us there were many heirs who would sell for a trifle.”

In 1752, finding Fort Richmond on the west side of the Kennebec, just above the present Richmond village, in bad decay, the Plymouth Company erected two blockhouses with cannon on the east side of the river in what is now Dresden. They called this defense Fort Shirley, in honor of the provincial governor of Massachusetts.

It was the time of the French and Indian Wars. Two years later, General Braddock would suffer his bad defeat by French and Indians near Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania. In Maine, French and Indians from Canada came down the Kennebec on frequent raids, killing some of the settlers and taking others captive to Quebec. The Plymouth Company saw no hope of permanent settlements above Fort Shirley until there could be a fort at Ticonic Falls. That point was strategic, because it was where the Sebasticook joined the Kennebec.

or centuries, the way the Penobscot Indians had kept contact with the Norridgewocks was to make the short crossing from the Penobscot river to the headwaters of the Sebasticook and down that stream to the Kennebec. When the French made allies of most of the Maine Indians, it was the regular route between the Penobscot and Quebec. A fort at Ticonic would stop that communication, which had become so disastrous for English settlement. There was, however one important snag. Above Augusta the river was so shallow that no sloop could bring provisions, ammunition and stores directly from Boston to Ticonic. At Augusta, then called Cushnoc, there had to be a protected warehouse for storing goods unloaded from the sloop to be transported bit by bit in smaller craft up to Ticonic Falls.

Therefore, the Plymouth Company made a proposal to Gov. Shirley that his own expense would put up a fortified warehouse at Cushnoc. The governor accepted, and the result was Fort Western at Augusta and Fort Halifax at Winslow.

At that time, in the spring of 1754, the Plymouth Company was composed of about thirty members, several of whom were the wealthiest and most influential men in Massachusetts. Naturally they had great influence with the Governor and General Court. To explore the situation, choose an exact site for the Ticonic fort, and set the work under way, Gov. Shirley chose Capt. John Winslow, great grandson of the Edward Winslow who had made the Kennebec trading voyage in 1625. Shirley immediately made John Winslow a general of the province, and he was thereafter known as General Winslow.

The Governor, fearing that the Indians might interfere with erection of the fort, first sought and obtained a treaty with them, which he personally concluded at Falmouth, now Portland. He then sent General Winslow with some 500 troops to the Kennebec, with orders not only to start a fort at Ticonic, but to go on up the river to the great carrying place between the Kennebec and the Chaudiere, where it was rumored the French were building a fort. General Winslow chose to build the Ticonic fort at the junction of the Sebasticook and the Kennebec. On July 6, 1754, Captain Isaac Illsley left Falmouth with 12 carpenters, contracting to spend two months at Ticonic starting the fort. On August 30, Governor Shirley sailed up the river to inspect the work. He ordered Captain William Lithgow, commander at Fort Richmond, to leave that post about to be abandoned, and take charge at the new Ticonic fort.

Lithgow found the situation unsatisfactory. The site chosen by Winslow on the river bank had behind it a high hill, and Lithgow thought the fort ought to be on that hill. Winslow considered a redoubt, guarded by a few men, placed on the hill, would sufficiently protect the fort. It seemed inconceivable that any cannon of arms larger than simple muskets could be brought agains t the fort except by way of the river. Lithgow laid before the governor three alternate plans: (1) to build on the hill; (2) to continue on the Winslow plan near the riverbanks; (3) to alter the Winslow plan to make the fort more compact and more easily defensible, and to place not one, but two redoubts on the hill. The third plan was accepted, and the Fort Halifax shown in the old drawings was of Lithgow’s fort, markedly changed from the original Winslow plan.

The fort was named Halifax in honor of Governor Shirley’s British friend and patron, the Earl of Halifax.

Why Lithgow gave up his preferred plan to place the fort on the hill and accepted the compromise of the fort near the river and two guardhouses on the hill is explained in a letter he wrote to Gov. Shirley on October 18, 1754: “As the fort is overlooked from an enemy behind within cannon shot, I had chosen to move it to that height, but when I learned that transportation of sufficient stone for the foundations would occupy three teams of oxen for five months, I consented to the alternate plan.”

Most of the timber for Fort Halifax was not hewn on the spot, but was bought off the river from Augusta. When hewn and ready for placement, it was assembled into rafts and towed up to Winslow, each raft guarded by troops. In order to make sure provisions could go up when the river was impassable, the Governor ordered a road from Augusta to Fort Halifax up the east side of the river – the first road constructed above Augusta. It did not prove very practical. Lithgow later said it was frequently in winter filled with ten foot drifts.

Fort Halifax consisted of two large buildings surrounded by a palisade. At the northeast and southwest corners of the palisade were large blockhouses with cannon. At the southeast corner was a smaller sentry box. The northwest corner was formed by an end of the large two story officers’ quarters that ran along the north side. Along the east side were the single story barracks for the troops. The remaining blockhouse, now carefully preserved by the State, after previous restoration by the DAR, was originally the blockhouse at the southwest corner of the fort. The dimensions of the whole fort formed nearly a perfect square, with the south side along the Sebasticook and the west side along the Kennebec. The present tracks 6f the Maine Central R. R. pass through where was once almost the exact center of the fort.

And with this additional information to our previous broadcasts about Fort Halifax, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1971