Radio Script #1075
Little Talks on Common Things
February 1, 1976
We have already told you how the company of Boston merchants who made the great Kennebec Purchase got started, and how they organized their first settlement of German immigrants at Pownalborough in 1752. Today we give you some more information about those owners of land 15 miles on each side of the Kennebec from Gardiner to Skowhegan.
The Kennebec Proprietors, like all companies of colonial landowners, were empowered to survey their holdings, layout townships, and make grants to new settlers, and the Proprietors could impose any conditions they pleased When a settler took up a lot. Until towns were chartered within a chartered territory and municipal government was set up under Massachusetts provincial law, any decision of the Kennebec Proprietors was absolute law concerning the land and the inhabitants’ rights.
Most of the Kennebec Proprietors had no intention of settling on the land themselves. Their interest was in land speculation. One reason why they formed a company made up of a number of wealthy merchants was that the larger the tract owned, the greater power and influence came to the owners. Massachusetts had a long tradition before 1750 that merchants who invested in land usually made money. In fact, they had brought that tradition from England, where ownership of land was the basis of wealth. The Boston merchants had, by the middle of the 18th century, made a great deal of money in trade, and they sought a way to invest those profits.
Banks were then unknown and such investments as modern stocks and bonds were rare. Except for loaning money to individuals, and thus assuming the role of a kind of private banker, a Boston merchant could only plow his money into more ships and expansion of his trade. Naturally those men turned to the vast unoccupied lands in the Massachusetts District of Maine.
Lumber was being rapidly used up in Massachusetts proper, and that province had no control over New Hampshire. Especially valuable were Maine’s huge pines, for which the British Navy and commercial marine had tremendous demand. Need for sawed lumber had also rapidly increased. To transport masts and lumber there was needed an increasing supply of ships. That meant shipyards. So, quite apart from the expectation that new settlers would increase the value of adjoining lands, was the prospect of substantial profit from lumber and ships.
Before settlers lots could be granted, the company had to exercise its authority to survey its lands. Through the last half of the 18th century, they employed several surveyors, the most important of whom were John Jones and John McKechnie.
Jones was a swarthy, out-of-door character, with complexion so dark that he was called Black Jones. He surveyed the lots for Sylvester Gardiner in Pittston, Dresden, Gardiner, Hallowell, and into the back country of China, Albion and Palermo. John McKechnie may assuredly be called the founder of Waterville. He built, at what is now the site of the pumping station on Western Avenue, the first mill erected on this side of the river, in 1775, twenty seven years before Waterville was separated from Winslow. That mill caused rapid settlement of the west side of the river. McKechnie had some skill as a physician though he never attended a medical school. He was always known as Dr. McKechnie, but he never made medicine his major work. He had come as a young man from Scotland in 1752, and had made himself a skilled surveyor. In 1760, the Kennebec Proprietors employed him to layout in lots their lands between the north line of what is now Augusta and the falls at Skowhegan.
To this day, all the deeds to land in Waterville go back to the survey John McKechnie made here in 1762. The fact that in 1775, he was wealthy enough to build a combined sawmill and gristmill on the Messalonskee shows that he had become a successful business man. He was helped by his wife’s social status . She was the daughter of Captain John North, commander of Fort St. George of Pemaquid, and member of the founding family of Norths in Augusta. But John McKechnie needed no such influence. His canny business sense is revealed by his compensation for his Waterville survey.
On behalf of the company Sylvester Gardiner told McKechnie he could have his choice of any lot between the north line of. Vassalboro and Skowhegan Fa1ls. McKechnie chose the best lot to be found at Ticonic Falls, the lot that controlled use of the power from those falls on the west side. What was meant by control of power was water rights or mill rights; that is exclusive privilege of putting up mills on the allotted land. When Asa Redington and Nehemiah Getchell built the Ticonic Dam in 1792, John McKechnie had been dead for ten years, but before other mill operators could take advantage of the dam they had to buy the land and McKechnie’s power right from the old surveyor’s heirs.
A lot north of McKechnie’s became, early in the 19th century, the property of Timothy Boutelle, Waterville’s most prominent early settler and speculator in land. Boutelle became a very wealthy man, President of the Ticonic Bank, President of the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad, a state senator, and the first treasurer of Colby College. Before Boutelle acquired that old McKechnie surveyed Lot 105 in 1808, it had been the property of Isaac Temple, for whom Temple Street is named. Temple bought it from one of the Kennebec proprietors, James Pitts.
When the survey was made, the surveyor was instructed to mark every fourth lot as a proprietors lot. Each lot was one-eighth of a mile on the river and one mile deep. So Lot 105, now the very heart of Waterville’s business section, extended from the Kennebec to the First Rangeway.
When the Proprietors divided among themselves their many proprietors lots, James Pitts, one of the original proprietors, got this particular lot in what is now Waterville. James Pitts had been interested in the Kennebec lands at least ten years before John McKechnie made the 1762 survey. He was a leader in the enterprise to establish Pownalborough. Under direction of his fellow proprietor, Samuel Goodwin, German immigrants had come there in 1752. During the next year, Pitts got into that enterprise deeply. He supplied the settlement with large quantities of goods, his pay coming from the Kennebec Proprietors as a company, for they had agreed to supply the settlers for their first year in the new place. He traded mostly in foodstuffs and hardware: bread, beef, pork, flour, rum, potatoes, rye, corn, wheat, salt, axes, hoes, pails, kettles, blankets, yard goods, pitch, yarn, lime, and candles. Between March and November of 1753 his bill came to $540. By 1760 Pitts’ original holding of 8,800 acres on the Kennebec had become, through additional purchases, a total of 20,000 acres.
A word is now in order about the Kennebec Proprietors’ first organized settlement, the German immigrants at Pownalborough. Because the Germans came from the vicinity of Frankfort in Germany, the settlement on the east shore above Swan Island and opposite the present town of Richmond was given the same name, Frankfort. But when, a few years later it was made the county seat of the new County of Lincoln, the name was changed to Pownalborough.
The immigrants’ life was not easy. They had no experience in turning wilderness land into productive farms. In fact, most of them were village artisans in the Rhineland, not peasant farmers. They had a hard time adapting to the Maine wilderness. Their needs were modest, with no luxuries. After the first year, they required from the Proprietors only what they could not make for themselves. Houses, furniture, farm implements, and food must all come from their own labor. While a few carried on, in a modest way, the trades they knew in the old country, they had to get somehow the ability to clear and till the land. There was not enough demand for their specialized skills. For instance, a potter would starve if he depended solely on the sale of his dishes. One result was that a large number of the first settlers gave up in despair and their lots reverted to the proprietors. But enough of them stuck it out to make Pownalborough a successful settlement.
In 1764, 12 years after the first immigrants had come, their minister, Rev. Jacob Bailey, wrote: “The people are thinly, settled along the bank of the rivers (Eastern and Kennebec) in a country of rugged and disagreeable prospect. They are so poor that their families are often in want of food and clothing. They live in miserable huts, which scarce afford shelter from the weather in this vigorous climate. I have seen many heart-breaking instances of extreme poverty. Multitudes of children have to go barefoot all winter. Half the houses have no chimneys. Many have no beds other than a heap of straw on the dirt floor. For months they subsist on potatoes roasted in ashes.”
How diligently the remaining settlers worked is shown by what the same Parson Bailey wrote four years later in 1768. “The banks of the Kennebec, which five years ago were covered by impenetrable forest and were almost desolate of inhabitants, are now adorned with pleasant fields, some stately buildings, and a multitude of people. Shipbuilding multiplies, navigation increases, and this summer several vessels bound for Europe have been launched here.”
The Proprietor whom the middle Kennebec area came to know best was Sylvester Gardiner. He was one of the promoters of the German settlement, and he was one of the few proprietors to make frequent personal visits to his lands. His holdings
were even larger than those of James Pitts, at one time exceeding 50,000 acres. He developed a large part of the towns of Pittston and Dresden, but his outstanding contribution to the future of the Kennebec Valley was his establishment of the community that became the City of Gardiner. At his own personal expense, he built mills, mercantile stores, warehouses, and homes for his workers. His ship brought in needed goods from the outside world and took out lumber, potash, and the early farm products.
Without the enterprise of Sylvester Gardiner, the settlement of the Kennebec above Merrymeeting Bay might have been much longer delayed.
Year: 1976