Radio Script #314
Little Talks On Common Things
October 14, 1956
Like almost every other visitor to Nova Scotia, I went across to Cape Breton on my trip to the province this summer. Cape Breton, though an island off the continental shore, is indeed an historic part of North America. John Cabot stepped on its shore in 1497, and probably four hundred years earlier the Norsemen had sai led their high-prowed Viking ship into its sheltered harbors.
Cape Breton perhaps possesses the oldest name of any place on the North American continent. It was cal led Cape Breton by the Basque fishermen who came to its shores before Columbus made his famous voyage in 1492, just as we know they came in the early 15th and possibly even in the 14th century to Monheqan Island, Maine. Those intrepid Basques named the big island off Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, after their own cape on the shores of the Basque country on the boundary between France and Spain.
When the first Queen Elizabeth reigned and when Shakespeare was writing his plays, fishermen from all western Europe came to Cape Breton’s snug harbors, landed on the coast to dry their nets and salt their fish, then sai led away for home. Year after year the fishing fleets from France and Spain, from Portugal and the Italian States, from England and Scandinavia, came regularly to the big island. When the great fortress of Louisburg was bui It in 1725, there developed around it one of the largest towns in al I colonial America prior to 1750 — a city of 6,000 inhabitants. We must reserve the story of Louisburg, with its rich associations for Maine, unti I next week’s program. Suffice it tonight to say that Louisburg on Cape Breton Island is one of the great landmarks of al I the history made on this side of the Atlantic.
Cape Breton is a hundred miles long and 80 miles wide, thus comprising a seVenth of all the area of the province of Nova Scotia, of which Cape Breton was made a part in 1820, having previously been a separate province of Canada since 1784.
Cape Breton’s chief natural product is coal. ~~re than 10,000 men are employed in the mines, which in some places extend out six mi les under the sea.
The pri nci pa I mi n i ng center is Sydney Mi nes, situated a few mi les from the ci ty of Sydney which, next to Halifax, is the largest city in the province, with 32,000 people. When Sydney was founded in 1785, it was first cal led Spanish Bay, but the first roya I governor of Cape Breton renamed it in tonor of his friend Lord Sydney, colonial secretary of Great Britain.
Cape Breton people like to brag about their firsts~- the things for which their island was the pioneer. They opened the first coal mine in Canada in 1720; at Louisburg they bui It the Dominion’s first lighthouse in 1731; they provided the site for the first airplane flight in the British Empire; and they saw erected on their shores the first wireless station in the vlestern Hemisphere, when the Marcon i stat i on at G I ace Bay first sent and rece i ved messages ove r the air.
In spite of all this claim about firsts, for the tourist the glory of Cape Breton is the Cabot Trai I, the drive around the island, which is just as thri 11- ing and just as spectacular as the drive around the Gaspe. Just north of the Acadian French vii lage of Chetticamp, half way up Cape Breton’s west coast, the visitor enters the Cape Breton National Park and begins the steep ascent to the highlands. The road winds over lofty peaks and down through stream-streaked valleys, with breath-taking vistas of land and sea bursting one after another into view. Suddenly one comes into the tiny vi I lage of Pleasant Bay on the island’s north shore, where 185 people live by fishing. Unti I 1927, when the trai I was bui It, th is vi II age cou I d be reached on Iy by water — a long sa i I to the nearest neighbor. Like so many others allover Nova Scotia, the people of .
Pleasant Bay ‘are al I of Scottish descent.
A few mi les east of this Scotch vi I I age is a unique structure called the Lone Sh1e ling. It is a rep Ii ca of the stone huts used by the crofters of Scotland whi Ie tending their sheep in the hi lis. Bui It like those huts, even to its thatched roof of straw, th is 1 i tt Ie roads ide hut is a remi nde r of the ori gi n of Cape Breton’s dominant population. How did it happen to be bui It? An aged resi dent of Pleasant Bay, probab Iy homesi ck for 0 I d Scot I and, decreed ,i n his will that a certain sum should be used to erect on the public highway of the Cabot Tra i I th i s remi nder of his nati ve I and.
Midway across the Cape one goes over the height of land and gradually descends into Sunrise Val ley. From the height the view is marvelous — ferti Ie meadows hundreds of feet below, rol ling hi I Is on al I sides, and off in the distance the blue waters of St. Lawrence Bay, with the horizon just shutting out the glimpse you would like to get of Newfoundland.
It is hardly conceivable to us of Maine that some of the settlements on what is sti I I the lonely northern part of Cape Breton have been inhabited by wh ite men longer than any town in our part of the Kennebec Va Iley.1 ngon i sh, one of Nova Scotia’s most famous summer resorts, is a very old town. Here, as early as 1620, when the Pi Igrims landed at Plymouth, a French settlement had been thriving for a number of years, and in 1740 more than 50 fishing vessels claimed Ingonish as their home port. It is sti I I moose country, but with nothing like the moose they had 150 years ago. I n I ngon ish they te I I you that in 1789 moose hides brought ten shi Ilings each, and the animals were so plentiful that 9,000 carcasses were found between Ingonish and Cape North when soldiers were sent out from Sydney to stop the slaughter.
Now, after. that trip over Cape Breton island, let’s get back to old time tv1a i ne .
One of the early settlers in what is now the town of Readfield was Elisha Smith who, with hi s wife Susannah, settled near what is now Readfield Depot in 1769.
The New Plymouth Company, and especially its most energetic proprietors, Sylvester Gardiner, Thomas Hallowell and Wi II iam Vassal, were offering alluring inducements to seTTlers. Already much of the land fronting the Kennebec had been taken up and The proprietors were eager to secure settlers for tracts back inland from the river, especially with frontage on the lakes such as Cobbosseecontee and Maranacook.
In the 1760’s many of the inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard were attracted to Maine. For insTance, Rev. John Tripp came from there to Hebron, where, with his friend Deacon Barrows, he founded both Hebron Academy and the Hebron Church.
Young Elisha Smith, son of Deacon Rainsford Smith, a prominent Vineyarder, had heard many stories about Maine. Instead of being hemmed in on a tiny island, a man in Maine had a lot of elbow room. There were enormous trees, said to be four feet through and a hundred feet ta II. There were rush i n9 ri vers with an abundance of fish. The forests were full of game, and Maine had been famous in the fur trade ever since the early days of the Plymouth Colony.
Elisha had two uncles, Gideon Lambert and Nathan Smith, who had been to ~4aine, and whose STories about it to their nephew were alluring. Both had been soldiers in the mi I itia troop, raised in the colonies during the French and Indian War, and Gideon at least had seen the ruins of the deserted Indian vi Ilage at Norridgewock, where Father Rasle had been ki I led. Both Gideon and Nathan had slept in the barracks at Fort Western and Fort Halifax.
So in the spring of 1769 Elisha Smith brought his bride Susannah to Pond Town in the District of Maine. They had been married only since the previous December. They traveled by sloop from Lambert’s Cove on Martha’s Vineyard to Ha II owe lion the Kennebec. There they loaded thei r possess ions on a two-whee led cart, to be hauled by oxen over the blazed trai I that served as apology for a road from Ha I lowe II to \1i nthrop. Then they went by boat up Lake Maranacook to land which Elisha had purchased from the Plymouth Company.
Pond Town in 1769 was a large tract which included al I of the present towns of Wi nth rop and Readf i e I d and part of vlayne. Eli s ha ‘s lot was on the eas t side of Lake Maranacook, southeast of what is now Readfield Depot, near what in later times became known as the Packard place. There Elisha bui It a log cabin with the help of his uncle Gideon Lambert, the French and Indian War veteran, who had al ready sett:,ted at Winthrop.
EI isha’s grant from the Plymouth Company was typical of those given to sett I ers a I I a long the Kennebec. His lot measured 200 acres and was granted to him without cost, provided he bui It a house not less than 20 feet square and seven feet stud, brought to fit tillage five acres of land within three years, and that he shou I d actua I Iy dwe lion the p remi ses duri ng that ti me. As was us~ ual with all of those grants, the Proprietors made one reservation: <‘reserving all mines and minerals within the hereby granted premises, with liberty of digging and carrying off the same.”
Some day the full story of mining and prospecting in Maine must be told.
From the time when Gi Ibert and Weymouth first carre to the mouth of the Kennebec, there was thought to be mineral wealth in Maine. The rumor would not die. So, when they granted land to settlers, the Proprietors of the New Plymouth Company reserved the m i nera I ri ghts.
In 1770, when Elisha had been only a year in the community, he was one of the signers of a petition to the Massachusetts Legislature for the incorporation of Pondtown Plantation as the Town of \vinthrop. In 1771 he signed another petiti on Uto exempt us from payi ng Provi nce tax for ten years, as we wi II be at great expense in clearing roads, bui Iding a house of public worship and a schoo J!’. Aga in in 1772, afte r the town had been incorporated, ~e s·l gned another petition which said: TfThe inhabitants of this town are all new settlers, so new that six years ago there were but two families in the compass of the town.
The nearest town on the Kennebec Ri ve r is a di stance of five mi les. The roads are new and almost impassable with teams during the summer season. Therefore the inhabitants cannot have the advantage of lumbering as people can who live on the Kennebec. Their whole dependence is upon what they raise from the land. The inhabitants are thus very poor. Money is scarce among them and hard to be pro-.” – cured.
The next year, in 1773, a petition for relief from Massachusetts taxes said that they had no way to export their lumber and fish. All they had to sell was their cattle and nobody had money enough to buy those animals.
In 1777 Elisha signed another important document. It was·a petition addressed to the General Court, asking that the signers be exempt from draft in the Revolutionary Army, not because they were unwi Iling to fight, but because it would leave their homes unprotected. Memory of the dreadful Indian wars was sti II fresh, and men simply couldn’t face the prospect of leaving their fami lies in those wi I derness cab ins.
Shortly before 1780 Elisha Smith moved his fami Iy of wife and daughters to a p lace on the Androscoggi n ca lied Port Roya I. I t was the site of the future town of Livermore. For several years it had been a favorite hunting ground of the Readfield settlers. Before 1774 there was only a blazed trai I from Winthrop to Livermore, but in that year a committee was appointed to make a bridge and clear a road between Winthrop and Port Royal.
In the two decades before the dawn of the 19th century, the town of Livermore was settled chiefly by small farmers. Rev. Paul Coffin reported 130 of them in 1798. They grew wheat, rye, oats, and Indian corn, as wei I as hops, peas, beans and root vegetables. It was Elisha Smith who planted the first apple orchard in the town.
In 1793 Livermore bui It a meeting house. One of its promoters was Elisha Smith, and when the town was incorporated in 1795, he was one of the selectmen.
Thus he did his ful I share to give a start to the ~~ine town which a century later would be famous as the home of the five celebrated Washburn brothers.
Elisha lived a long, fruitful life, dying at his home in Livermore in 1841, at the age of 91 years. He had seen two wars, that of the Revolution and of 1812. He had been a SUbject of Great Britain and of the United States without ever leaving American soil. And he had lived in two states without ever leaving the same Ma i ne reg iOD, for the sites of his homes in Readfi e I d and in Li vermore were in Massachusetts when he bui It his homes upon them and in Maine when he died.
Year: 1956