Radio Script #1072

Little Talks on Common Things
January 11, 1976

On several broadcasts during the many years of this program, I have mentioned the formation of the company called the Kennebec Purchase in 1749, the company that succeeded in getting forts built at Augusta and at Winslow so that there was protection for settlers, and by diligent efforts and generous grants succeeded in getting so many people to take up Kennebec land that, only 22 years after the company’s formation, four of those settlements were large enough to become incorporated towns. For indeed, it was on the same day in 1771 that the Massachusetts Legislature granted incorporation to Winthrop, Hallowell, Vassalboro, and Winslow.

The land company officially titled “The Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase from the late Colony of New Plymouth,” had such a prominent part in developing the Kennebec Valley at the time of the American Revolution that, on this 200th anniversary of our nation’s birth, it is appropriate that this season’s broadcasts of Little Talks should give detailed attention to the Kennebec Purchase.

First let us have a brief review of the essential facts that I have at some time before already told you, but about which, in this Bicentennial year, it is well to be reminded.

To set the record straight, we must go back to the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony early in the 17th century. In 1629, believing that the way to pay their debts to English creditors was through fur trade with the Indians, Governor William Bradford and Associated Pilgrims secured from the King a charter granting them rights on the Kennebec River. The Pilgrims had no intention of settling that region, they only wanted rights of exclusive trade with the Kennebec Indians. But, as was then the custom in all royal grants in America, the charter actually placed under their control the lands from Merrymeeting Bay to some indefinite place on the river above Norridgewock, and included all land to the extent of 15 miles on each side of the river – an immense acreage.

The Pilgrims set up a trading post at what is now Augusta and made enough money in the fur trade to payoff their British debts before 1635. As beaver began to be scarce on the Kennebec and other interests got in the way, it was not long before the Pilgrims abandoned that post. Having no interest in settlement, they did nothing more until 1661, when they sold the whole tract to four men for ~00, equivalent to no more than $2,000 in purchasing power when the American dollar was fixed in 1792, but worth about $100,000 in today’s currency values. Those four men were all Boston merchants: Antipas Boies, Edward Tyng, Thomas Brattle and John Winslow.

Like the earlier Pilgrims, those four did nothing to bring in settlers. Even had they tried to do so, the Indian Wars,especially the bloody conflict with King Philip in the late 1670’s, would have prevented successful settlement.

Nearly a century went by. The original four purchasers of 1661 had all died. Three of them had numerous heirs, and outsiders had bought some of the fractional interests.

In the 1750s, a number of wealthy Boston merchants and landowners, led by Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, decided that speculation in what were called the Eastern lands, the vast wilderness of Maine, ought to be profitable. By that time 130 years had elapsed since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and 120 years since the settlement of Salem and Boston. The intervening century had seen several thousand immigrants come in to the New World to augment the children produced by the earlier arrivals. The demand for land on which to settle, clear a farm, and become a real property owner was urgent. Properly handled, said Dr. Gardiner, investors in a company of land developers controlling a big area could. make a lot of money.

Those Boston merchants already knew something about the Kennebec River. The lands from Merrymeeting Bay to Norridgewock already had such fertile open space that there were expansive Indian cornfields near Swan Island and Richmond, near the site of present Augusta, and at the ancient Indian site at Old Point between Norridgewock and Madison. So Gardiner and his associates laid a plan to buy from the heirs and assigns of the four men of 1661 the rights to the old Kennebec lands granted to the Pilgrims in 1629.

Their organizational meeting was held at the Royal Exchange Tavern in Boston on September 21, 1749. Present were nine men who made themselves the initial proprietors, although they had much work to do before the could own even half of the outstanding rights.

One of the company’s problems was that the vital charter of 1629 had disappeared. Samuel Goodwin, later known as the founder of Pownalboro, the Kennebec’s first town above Merrymeeting Bay, was the man chiefly responsible for finding that important document. In 1721, Goodwin’s father had bought half of another’s holding of 1/22 of the whole tract, and Goodwin had inherited that right to a large acreage. He was thus made the first proprietor in the new company, and took upon himself the task of validating his own and his associates’ rights by finding the necessary charter. Goodwin learned that Perez Bradford, a collateral relative of the long-ago Governor of the Plymouth Colony, might know something about it. Bradford had lived for a time near Falmouth (now Portland), but in 1750 was a resident of Swansea, which he represented in the Mass. Legislature. Bradford told Goodwin he was sure the old parchment was in the possession of Samuel Wells of Plymouth, who had obtained it while he was a commissioner to settle the boundary between the Plymouth Colony and Rhode Island. Bradford said Wells got the charter from an elderly lady who had hidden it in her home. Bradford’s information proved to be correct, and when the company was duly incorporated, it got legal possession of the charter. To get that incorporation took until 1753, because the company had to show that they actually owned rights to more than half the alleged area of the old Plymouth grant.

In fact, in 1752, Paschal Nelson, one of the absentee fractional owners in England, received a letter which said: “The patent was stole about 40 years ago, and but lately was found at Newport, Rhode Island, but by whom it was carried away, whether by proprietors of Indian deeds or by others, we do not know.”

By 1753, the speculators had discovered that ownership of the lands had become so splintered that some persons held as little as 1/192 of the 1661 purchase. So at a meeting in 1754, the now legally incorporated company voted that one share in the new company should represent 1/24 of the whole purchase, and that fractional shares should be recognized in terms of 192nds. A little arithmetic makes it clear that 8/192 was 1/24, or a full share.

It is time now to hear a bit about the leaders of the Kennebec Proprietors. Present at the meeting in December 1751, were eleven shareholders, some of them owning more than one share. Those eleven were Sylvester Gardiner, Nathaniel Thwing, William Bowdoin, Edward Winslow, Thomas Marshall, John Wendell, James Pitts, David Jeffries, John Tufts, Samuel Goodwin and William Brattle.

This does not mean that in 1751 there were only eleven shareholders. Other owners who could not attend the meeting were Robert Temple, William Bowdoin’s brother, James, Gardiner’s close associate Benjamin Hallowell, Florentius Vassall for whom Vassalboro would be named, and Gershom Flagg, who later took part in the building of both Fort Western and Fort Halifax.

The company became involved in a great deal of litigation, and one of their principal attorneys was John Adams, who would become the second President of the U.S. In fact, Adams made several tedious trips by sailing vessel to Pownalboro, where he tried cases in the new courthouse. It was at that December meeting in 1751 that the proprietors decided to start a real town on their Kennebec lands. Samuel Goodwin, who had already started to clear a lot in what is now Dresden, led the movement.

Where would the settlers come from? People near Boston proved unresponsive and the company turned to foreign lands. The idea of getting foreign immigrants for settlement in America was not new in 1751. Moravians had come to Georgia in 1735. Richard Temple, before he became a shareholder in the Kennebec Proprietors, planned to bring Scotch-Irish to Bath, but his plan failed. A few did come and settled at Georgetown. In England, a Lincolnshire company also attempted to bring Ulsterites to Warren, near the German settlement that Samuel Waldo had already recruited at Waldoboro.

In 1748, James Bowdoin wrote articles for the Boston Gazette, encouraging foreign settlers on Massachusetts lands. In 1749, while Gov. Shirley was absent, Spencer Phips nephew of Maine’s Sir William Phips, was acting governor. To the Mass. Legislature Phips advocated the introduction of “industrious and well-disposed Protestant foreigners” to the unsettled lands of the province. A Pennsylvania German, Joseph Cullier, became interested. He made several recruiting trips to Germany. There he met Frederic Crellius, a doctor who had accompanied Waldo’s immigrants to Maine in 1742, but had returned to Europe to become a ship broker in Rotterdam.

By every means at their command, sometimes very shady, Cullier and Crellius enticed immigrants. But poor management and sharp competition from other recruiters spoiled their plans for large numbers. Yet somehow Cullier got a cargo assembled. On the ship Priscilla they left Rotterdam in late June 1751. They had a wretched crossing of four months, finally reaching Boston on November 14, 1751. The poor immigrants were desparate, hopelessly in debt to pay for the voyage. They were quite ready to accept Dr. Gardiner’s offer to pay their passage to the company’s new town above Merrymeeting Bay, which had been named Frankfort with the very idea of attracting Germans. Besides free passage, Gardiner would see that the company supplied the group with a full year’s provisions.

The settlers arrived at what is now Dresden in the spring of 1752. Three of the shareholders besides Gardiner were already there, and with the help of the Germans they built a garrison house and stockade. Then in 1761 the company built the three-story courthouse that still stands there, now a national historic shrine. They also built a fort and named it for the governor, Fort Shirley.

Because those Germans came from cities and were not used to farming, to say nothing of clearing forest land, they had a hard time. But the company kept its promise, and by 1755 the community had become a permanent settlement, and its name was soon changed to Pownalborough.

Year: 1076