Radio Script #1106

Little Talks on Common Things
December 26, 1976

Since the beginning of this 29th year of Little Talks last September, we have given considerable recognition to events 200 years ago. In one of those broadcasts we told about the burning of Maine’s largest community, Portland, in 1775. Today, on this last broadcast in the calendar year of 1976, I want to tell you in more detail about the effect of the Revolution on that city. In 1775 it was just a good sized village called Falmouth, and not until a quarter of a century later did it take the name Portland. That is why Maine’s first newspaper in 1783 was called the Falmouth, not the Portland, Gazette. The entire peninsula that now contains the central part of Portland was in 1775 called Falmouth Neck.

That year was not the first time the village had suffered from enemy attack. In the spring of 1676, almost exactly 100 years earlier, Falmouth Neck had been attacked by Indians, aroused by King Philip’s War, and 32 white settlers had been killed. A dozen cabins were burned. Survivors fled to Cushing Island in Casco Bay, and did not return until two years later in 1678, when Fort Royal was built. Twelve years later, in 1690, that fort withstood an Indian attack for five days, but was finally forced to surrender to superior forces of French and Indians. Two hundred were killed and more than fifty others were carried as captives to Canada.

The first settlement on Falmouth Neck had been made about 1640, near the foot of the present Hancock Street, not far from the birthplace of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When the British burned the town in 1775 the population numbered nearly 2,000, largely occupying the area encompassed by Congress, Center, Fore and India Streets. The place then had 230 dwelling houses, but there was no street north of Congress. Everything between Congress Street and the Back Bay – the whole Forest Avenue area – was then uncleared woods.

The principal Portland street was India Street, then called King Street. On it most of the business structures were located. From India Street, Thames Street (now Commercial Street) extended to Preble Wharf and the ferry to what are now South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. On the water front, besides the long Preble Wharf, there were other shorter piers. On Congress Street, nor far east of Congress Square, still stands the old cemetery dating from pioneer days. It is near the Cumberland County Court House. In 1775, what is now the front part of the cemetery was parade ground for the local militia. On it stood the pillory, the stocks, and the whipping post – all of which saw a lot of use in colonial times. In the old cemetery are buried at least a hundred veterans of the Revolution, many of them unfortunately in unmarked graves.

Just before the Revolution a courthouse had been erected at t he corner of India and Middle Streets. It was there in 1775 that the inhabitants met and voted to refuse to surrender their arms to Captain Mowatt. Much that we know about Portland at that time comes from the voluminous diary of the town’s minister, Parson Smith, who presided over the First Parish Church on Congress Street, and whose house stood nearby on Congress, opposite the head of India Street. He had built his house there in 1728, soon after his arrival as the first settled minister. It was the last house to burn when Mowatt set fire to the town in 1775.

Though Parson Smith was too old in 1775 to serve in the army, he would have been glad to do so despite his standing as a clergyman. In fact, near the end of the Revolution, the venerable parson saw to it that he was represented. He sent his negro slave, Romeo, into the army, and at the close of the war gave the slave his freedom.

When news reached Falmouth of the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, the town had no newspaper and no bank. In fact it was not until that summer that it got its first post office. Even then it handled less than a dozen letters a week. Postage to Boston was 10¢. Mails were supposed to arrive once a week, but they were seldom regular. The journey to Boston took three days overland. It was usually a bit faster by sea, and with a fair southwest wind, the sailing time in the other direction, from Boston to Portland, was less than one day.

With 2,000 people, a dozen wharves, and a lot of shipping, Portland was large enough to have a number of taverns. Three were especially well known. On the corner of Congress and Hampshire streets stood Alice Greeley’s. It was a favorite meeting place for clubs and social parties. Alice was especially famous for her baked beans. That tavern was one that did not burn in 1775. It caught fire several times, but Alice, who had refused to flee when neighbors left, with the help of a loyal hired man, put out the flames as they caught. Marston’s Tavern, a two-story structure with dormered roof, stood in what is now Portland’s Monument Square. Opened by Robert Marston in 1762 it was operated in 1775 by his brother Daniel. Here Col. Thompson had detained Mowatt when he captured the British captain in May of that year. Mowatt’s humiliation at that time had been a compelling reason why he determined on revenge and burned the town in the following October. The largest tavern was Greenwood’s, at the corner of Congress and Silver streets. It had three stories and brick ends, solidly placed because the ends had no windows. The tavern saw several assemblies of Revolutionary companies, and in 1776 it was the scene of a court martial.

Ten years before the Revolution, in 1764, Parson Smith had been given an assistant who in fact succeeded the first minister. That man was known as Parson Deane, and he too kept a diary that tells us a lot about old Portland. Deane built a large house on a 3 acre lot for which he paid 60 pounds. The building’s four chimneys required 38,000 bricks. The parson really put on airs, for he was one of very few Portland men in 1775 to own a chaise that cost him 80 pounds. When he felt sure his house was in the path of the British destruction, Deane moved three loads of goods out into the country, but the house escaped and was still standing a hundred years later, when Portland observed the centenary of the Mowatt attack.

When the Revolution became a reality the people of Portland saw the necessity of better fortification. Mowatt’s burning of the town by approach from the sea could have been prevented if there had been powerful guns in a few forts. In the summer of 1776 ten cannon were sent from Boston, soon followed by others. They were distributed to the upper and the lower batteries on the harbor front, to the Great Fort on the hill where is now Fort Allen Park, and to Fort Hancock on the site of the present Southern Maine Vocational Institute.

In March 1775, about a month before the fight at Concord Bridge, a sloop reached Portland from England with rigging and sails for Capt. Crocker’s mast shop, then going up. The local Committee of Safety decided not to let the cargo be landed, so strong was the feeling against British commerce. Ever since the notorious Stamp Act, when stamps had been seized from the Portland Custom House rather than allow them to be sold, anti-British feeling had been mounting. The ship was ordered to return to England. That act by Portland inhabitants was an added reason for Capt. Mowatt to burn the town. Until that ship incident of March, 1775, old Falmouth had been dominated by Tories, loyal to the Crown. With that incident the patriots took over and dominated the place throughout the Revolution.

Despite the usually slow passage of news from Boston, information about what had happened at Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April in 1775, reached Portland quickly. By noon of April 21st the town knew about the fight and the British retreat, and the people were sure it meant that war had really come. The militia company at once started for Cambridge, but before reaching Portsmouth were ordered back to guard the strategic port of Falmouth. On April 26, just a week after the Concord fighting, the Falmouth selectmen sent a letter to the authorities in Boston. It said: “At this dangerous time we find our stock of powder greatly deficient. We therefore send money by the bearors of this letter to purchase powder wherever they can find it. If they cannot get any this side of Cambridge, we have directed them to wait upon you for advice, so that you may tell them where powder may be had.”

It was 19 year old Joseph Titcomb of Saco who rode a horse into Portland to bring news of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. On July 30, 1776, Parson Smith wrote in his diary: “Around here every fourth man is drafted into the army.”

News of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga reached Portland on October 26, 1777. Alice Greeley’s tavern was the center of the celebration. Buckets of potent punch were gleefully passed out of the windows to the crowd assembled outside.

At least a dozen Falmouth men spent the desolate winter of 1778 at Valley Forge. In February 1778, the town clerk posted this notice on the door of Portland’s First Parish Church: “Whereas a subscription is opened for the soldiers enlisted from this town in the Continental Army, who are now in camp at Valley Forge, destitute of shoes, stockings, and shirts, I am sure everyone who does not want to return to bondage will contribute such articles to be sent to our suffering soldiers.”

And with that account of Portland in the Revolution, we say goodbye until next week, in fact until next year.

Year: 1977