Radio Script #984

Little Talks on Common Things
October 21, 1973

A practice in settling Maine towns was the establishment of reserved lots. Even today in respect to Maine’s unorganized townships,the question is often asked. “What about the reserved lots?”

After the Indian wars in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and especially after the Battle of Lovewell’s Pond near Fryeburg and the raid on the Indian village at Norridgewock that caused the death of Father Rasle, most of the Saco and Norridgewock Indians retreated to Canada, and the provincial government of Massachusetts began to encourage settlement of their wilderness lands in Maine.

From 1733 through the rest of the 18th century, settlers were offered varying number of acres of free land if within three years the settler would clear five acres for mowing and tillage, build a house 20 feet square, with seven foot studs and each year, for at least five years, raise a crop of oats and corn. Collectively the settlers of 60 lots on any township were required to build a meeting house, settle a learned orthodox minister and make provisions for his support, also reserve three lots for public use – one for the first settled minister; one for support of the minister and one for schools.

This practice written into law in 1733, had begun much earlier. In Kittery, as early as 1669 lots were set apart for the ministry and for a school. Ray Abagi, in his important book “The Town Proprietors of New England Colonies” states, “In all the New England colonies conditions were imposed upon the grantees before the land was allowed “to become their property. Disregarding minor differences in the various colonies and at various times. The major conditions were to layout the land in equal shares corresponding to the number of proprietors; to reserve three additional shares, one as a gratuity to the first settled minister, one for maintenance of the ministry, and one for the support of schools.”

In 1760 the government of Massachusetts added a fourth share, for Harvard College, and that for more than half a century every new grant required that Harvard get a lot in the new community. The sale of those lots in the aggregate brought a considerable sum of money into the Harvard treasury.

Another change that took place for some forty years was the setting aside of a lot for a meetinghouse and sometimes the reservation of several lots, the proceeds of which were to pay for constructing the meetinghouse. In fact, as early as 1670, the general court of the Province of Massachusetts granted a tract six miles square to the proprietors of Suffield with the provision that 500 acres be reserved to provide funds to build a meetinghouse.

When Massachusetts became a state under the U. S. Constitution of 1787, its first state law concerning the public lands provided for a lot of 300 acres in each new grant to be reserved for the first settled minister, another similar lot for support of the minister, a third for schools, and a fourth for the future disposition of the legislature. It was that fourth lot that was later marked for Harvard College.

Typical of Maine grants was that to the Proprietors of Pondicherry, later incorporated as the town of Bridgton, in 1768. The grant stipulated that the proprietors must provide for the support of the ministry and must construct a house of worship that they must also set aside a lot to become the property of the first settled minister, one for the support of schools and another for Harvard. A more unique provision in the Bridgton grant was the stipulation that a lot be reserved for the first actual settler.

The original Massachusetts law had provided for the reservations in terms of shares rather than in measured lots. The fewer the number of shareholders among whom a 36 square mile grant was distributed, the larger would be the acreage of a single share. While the reservations in the Bridgton grant were specified in terms of lots, they were actually distributed in terms of shares so that the first settled minister’s single share in that town entitled him to four full lots, a total of 1440 acres. Rev. Nathan Church was then not only the best educated man but also one of the largest landowners in early Bridgton.

When grant was made to the proprietors of Livermore in 1771, the old system of shares was converted into fractions cf the whole tract. Livermore was somewhat larger than the usual township being 6 3/4 miles square instead of exactly six. The grant was to be located in some of the unappropriated lands east of the Saco River, on the conditions that the proprietors settle 40 families in seven years, build a house of worship, settle a learned minister, set aside 1/64 part of the grant as a gratuity for that first minister, another 1/64 for the permanent support of the ministry, another 1/64 for schools, and a fourth 1/64 for Harvard College.

Fourteen years later, in 1785, a grant of the tract that has since become the City of Brewer and the Town of Orrington put the specifications of reserved lots in terms of acres: 200 acres near the center of the tract for the support of the ministry, another 200 acres for the first settled minister and a third lot of 200 acres for future disposition by the legislature. A fourth lot, in earlier grants reserved for schools, was this time specified for use of a grammar school, which in 1785 usually meant a New England academy, or any schooling besides the common ungraded school. No mention in this Brewer grant was made of Harvard.

The grant of Skowhegan provided that the settlers must work for two days a year for ten years on the ministerial lot or in building the meetinghouse. Sometimes a town got around the requirement of a separate lot for a meetinghouse. In Belfast in 1769, when a division of the harbor lots was made, No. 26 on the east side, was set aside for the first minister and also to build a meetinghouse on the same lot. To pay a ministers’ salary each proprietor was required to pay three dollars a year on each of his shares to meet that obligation. Since this was a total of 51 shares, the annual amount, if it was all scrupulously collected, was $ 153, no magnificent salary even for those days.

The Plymouth Company of 1750, officially entitled the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purcuase, was the agency, rather than the Massachusetts government, that made most of the grants in Central Maine during the last half of the 18th century. From that company came the grant of Winslow, which originally included all of the present Waterville and most of Oakland, as well as the present Winslow.

The company’s common practice was to survey the area and divide it into lots. Then, when they made grants to individual settlers, those persons would be placed on the settlers’ lots as distinguished from the proprietors lots. When the area was surveyed, the proprietors reserved for themselves 400 acres out of every 900, leaving 500 acres for settlers’ lots. Usually each settler was entitled to two lots, made up of 100 acres in the first range and 150 acres in the third range, so that his two lots did not adjoin each other. Sometimes the grants went beyond mere assurance of settlers. In 1770, a group of people from Scarborough had settled at Machias and received a grant from the Massachusetts government. They agreed to settle 80 good Protestant families, build 80 houses, none less than eighteen feet square, clear and cultivate five acres on each lot, build a suitable meetinghouse, settle a learned Protestant preacher and provide for his support.

One huge area east of the Kennebec was the Waldo grant, that now contains Waldoboro, Warren, Rockland, Thomaston and other towns. In 1735, a total of 27 persons agreed to terms set down by the proprietor, Samuel Waldo, to settle themselves and their families on lots along the St. Georges River each to build a house within eight months on a lot of 100 acres facing the river end, pay Waldo quit rent of one pepper-corn a year. That token payment, of course of no practical value, was demanded in order to preserve the feudal claims to the whole vast tract in the Waldo family and thus prevent the land from reverting to the Crown. Each settler agreed to clear four acres within two years. Waldo, on his part, agreed to give each settler additional acreage in the second and third tiers of lots back from the river, if each such taker would pay him one penny an acre annually. As a result most of the original settlers subscribed for added land of 200 to 300 acres. In this instance it was Waldo, not the settlers, who agreed to build the meetinghouse at his own expense and to give whatever he pleased annually for the support of the ministry, give a 100 acre lot to the first minister and another for a free school.

In 1774, when pre John Taylor, negotiated with the Waldo heirs, for land that later became the town of Union, he got it for nine pence an acre, and there were no provisions for any public lots.

That part of Maine that lies between the Piscataqua and the Saco rivers contains its first incorporated towns, Kittery, York, and Wells. Even before those towns were incorporated, Sir Ferdinando Gorges had, in 1642 granted a charter to the inhabitants of Agamenticus, the region that later became York. The charter said, “The limits of the corporation shall extend east, west, north and south three miles every way from the church or chapel, or the place intended for a church or chapel.”

Massachusetts law then defined a town as any place that had a a church. A city was a town in which a bishop resided, and in 1642 Gorges made his little settlement of Georgiana a city, but no bishop had arrived when Civil War broke out in England. King Charles I was executed, and Gorges’ whole grant was in jeopardy.

Important as was the meetinghouse in determining 17th century towns, there was often trouble with its location. In 1659 the Massachusetts General Court decreed: “Since we find it impossible for the town of Kittery to meet in one place, the court decrees that Franks Fort be the meeting place for the lower part of the town and that for the upper part be at what the inhabitants.

Such then is the story of Maine’s early settlements. In all of them two provisions stood out, religion and education, as the historian Monson later recorded: “Our forefathers saw to it that as soon as their families were sheltered, the next structures were a house of worship on the highest hill and a schoolhouse on the nearest knoll.”

Year: 1973