Radio Script #1077

Little Talks on Common Things
February 15, 1976

It is too easy to assume that political influence by business interests is something new in our day. A person has to be at least 65 years old to remember anything about the Teapot Dome scandal, because today’s 65 year old man would have been only 10 when a member of President Harding’s cabinet went to prison for political deals with oil companies. No one now living remembers when Jay Gould tried to corner gold in President Grant’s administration, nor how the railroad barons, like Harriman and Stanford, obtained tax benefits and paid huge bribes to induce Congressmen to grant the railroads thousands of acres of western lands.

I want to tell you today about political control by business interests that affected Maine even before it had become an independent state. It is the story of how the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase got what they wanted from the government of the Province of Mass. Those manipulations began not only before Maine was a state, but even before there was any United States, when Massachusetts acted as a province of the British Crown.

The company officially titled “The Kennebec Purchase from the Late Colony of New Plymouth” was founded in 1749 to buy from the heirs of the four men who had bought it in 1661, the huge land grant originally made in 1629 by the British crown to the Plymouth Colony. That was land 15 miles on each side of the Kennebec River, from Merrymeeting Bay to the Wesserunset and the falls at Norridgewock.

To encourage settlers, especially after the French and Indian War presented constant threats in the region, the company saw the need of protective forts. The Province of Mass. had already built and manned Fort Richmond a few miles below the
head of navigation at what is now Augusta, and always short of funds, the Legislature was reluctant to build any farther up the river. Prevailing sentiment in the Legislature was to let the land company build its own forts.

History records that, in 1754, the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase made a deal with the Mass. government whereby the company built a fort at Cushnoc, Fort Western, and the government built one at Ticonic Falls, Fort Halifax. The government agreed to man both forts.

What has not been recorded in the historical accounts, at least not until Gordon Kershaw’s 1975 publication of his book, “The Kennebec Proprietors,” is how the company was able to make that deal. Moulton’s attack on the Indian Village at Norridgewock, that resulted in the death of the French missionary, Father Rasle, in 1724, had dispersed the Kennebec Indians so that most of them fled to Canada, leaving only scattered remnants along the river. Yet so many people in 1754 remembered the terrible Indian massacres of the 1720’s that it was easy to start an Indian scare.
The Kennebec Proprietors thought that only some really big scare would induce the Mass. legislature to grant them any such protection as would encourage settlers. So they told Gov. Shirley of a report that the French had built a fort at the Great Carrying Place on the Kennebec, a strategic point on the old Indian route from the Kennebec to the Chaudiere and the French capital of Quebec.

It is possible that this report reached the Company by way of English traders who made their way up the Kennebec, and the company leaders in Boston honestly believed the report to be true. But it is equally possible that they themselves invented the rumor.

What we know for a fact is that Gov. Shirley convened the legislature on March 28, 1754, and announced that he had reliable information of a French fort at the Great Carrying Place. Recalling the time of Father Rasle, he said this time the government must not wait too long as they had done before the expedition of 1724. He proposed a preventative expedition to drive the French away from the Great Carrying Place, and also to build a fort farther up the Kennebec.

Before they could vote the needed funds, the Legislature demanded that James Bean and two companies of York be employed to make a reconnaissance of the Upper Kennebec to see exactly what the situation was. Such an expedition could not even get started, to say nothing of completing its mission, before Shirley got the Legislature to act on the Governor’s proposal. On April 10, 1754, they accepted the plan to build at government expense a fort at the junction of the Kennebec and Sebasticook rivers, provided the company would build one at Cushnoc, the present Augusta.

What records of a contemporary meeting of the Kennebec Proprietors show is that they knew of Shirley’s endorsement before the legislators did. Previous to the April vote in the Legislature, they had set up a committee to supervise the construction of the Cushnoc Fort and had even agreed to name it Fort Western.

How could the Proprietors be sure that Shirley was on their side and would press their plans? From careful perusal of the company records, evidence has recently come to light that the Proprietors made it worth Shirley’s while to support them. Several months, but within a year, after the forts were built, Shirley received as a personal gift one full share in lands of the Kennebec Puchase. That was a generous gift, considering that the vast acreage of the Purchase had been divided into only 24 total shares. Shirley’s share came from the holdings of the leading proprietor, Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, but it was a gift not from Gardiner personally, but from the whole proprietary. Gardiner agreed to give up one of his shares, to be turned over to Gov. Shirley, on consideration that the company give to him, Gardiner, a personal ownership of 11,200 acres of land from that part of the tract still undivided and held by the whole company.

Dr. Gardiner later explained that he had bought his first share in the company in 1749, from a widow of one of the heirs of 1661. This is what the old doctor put down in writing about the Shirley transaction: “The Company thought it for their interest that Gov. Shirley should be interested in their patent, and if it would not be effected in any other way, the Proprietors should grant him one full share. There was some delay because no one in the Company could be found willing to part with a full share in return for the trifling amount of land the Proprietors were willing to allow for such sacrifice. I finally agreed to give up one share for this purpose, when at last the Proprietors by proper vote granted me compensating land.”

Gardiner’s lands were ten of the so-called Great Lots on the river, in what are now Gardiner and Pittston.

Persons disinclined to believe our colonial ancestors capable of bribery have suggested that Gov. Shirley accepted the valuable grant as compensation for actual expenses incurred in building Fort Halifax within the territory of the Kennebec Purchase.

But the facts speak differently. Shirley received his share in December, and the Fort Halifax builders were under contract by the previous April. It is true that creditors often had to wait not only months, but years, for money payments. But in this transaction no money was involved. Months earlier the Proprietors could have given Shirley a grant of land in compensation. The evidence prevails that the governor’s gift of a full share in the proprietary was not compensation for expenses but payment for political influence.

In December 1754, the Proprietors faced an urgent problem that demanded the Governor’s powerful assistance. They could expect that assistance only if the Governor had substantial financial interest in the Company. So it seems that his share in the Kennebec lands was, on the one hand a grateful acknowledgment of Shirley’s work in getting the forts built, and on the other hand it was gratuity for future expected efforts in behalf of the Company.

The Proprietors were, from the beginning, concerned about the validity of their patent. They were well aware that other interests, especially the Penobscot Proprietors at Brunswick had conflicting claims. It was tremendously important for them to have a friend at court. If they could only induce the King to grant now a confirming, amended charter, favoring their boundary claims, they would win.

That Shirley himself acted as the Proprietors wished there can be no doubt.

On December 31, 1754, he wrote a long letter to the Lords of Trade in London. He began by pointing out the importance of the Kennebec as defense against the French of Canada, a condition that had already caused the erection of two English forts, Western and Halifax. He went on to agree that, if settlers could be encouraged, they could locally supply men and provisions for those forts. He sang loud the praise of the Kennebec Purchase Co., whose proprietors had already demonstrated their loyalty to the King by building Fort Western at their own expense and at considerable cost. Shirley said he had personally examined the company charter,and had found it so persuasive that he was personally sponsoring the company cause. Shirley then wrote: “Their plan to settle 1,000 families in the area at their own expense can only be accomplished if their title to the land they claim shall be confirmed by a new or explanatory patent from the Crown, so as to put an end to the continued interruption they now meet from conflicting claims.”

“If such a new patent can be granted, it would be a most happy circumstance for His Majesty’s service. It would secure to the Crown the possession of the most important river in New England for stopping the encroachments of the French and gaining at the same time the principal passage into the Country.”

That letter leaves no doubt about Dr. Gardiner’s statement that it would be for the Company’s interest to have the Gov. as a shareholder in the Kennebec Purchase. Only the Gov. of all men in New England, had sufficient influence to secure a new patent. Shirley certainly did his best to get what the Proprietors, of whom he himself was now one, wanted to secure. That he was not successful was not Shirley’s fault. Records in the British Archives do not show that Shirley’s letter was ever passed on to King George II by the London Lords of Trade.

Anyhow, as time went on, Shirley lost interest. He refused to pay company assessments, and in May 1758, his delinquent share was sold at auction. But it did not all go out of the family. Robert Temple, Jr., son of one of the most prominent original proprietors, bought one-half of the share at the auction, thus keeping it in the family, because he had married Gov. Shirley’s daughter.

Well, that is the story of how the lands of the Central Kennebec became involved in political intrigue 225 years ago.

Year: 1976