Radio Script #1172

Little Talks On Common Things
October 8, 1978

Many times on this program some attention has been given to Vassalboro, which in the early 19th century was, next to Hallowell, Kennebec County’s largest town. I have frequently noted that the town was named for Florentius Vassall, one of the proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase of 1749. It might be more accurate to say that it was named for the Vassall family, because Florentius was only a representative of one of Boston’s most influential families of that time, several of whom were interested in Maine lands. In England the Vassall family first gained prominence when it valiantly served the Crown during the ordeal of threatened invasion by the Spanish Armada in the late 1500’s.

In March, 1629 King Charles I granted the petition of a company in London to give them rights to a prospective colony in New England, in addition to the rights already granted to the Plymouth Colony. The new charter was granted to a corporate body called the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. A member of the company was Samuel Vassall. He and his son William both served as members of the Company, and William was the first of the family to come to America as a member of the settling group known as the Winthrop Colony that settled Boston in 1630. In 1648 William left Boston to make his home in Barbados, where the family already owned large holdings. There he died in 1655.

However, William’s great-grandson, Florentius Vassall, came as a young man to Boston, where relatives of his great-grandfather had already stayed after the latter’s departure for Barbados. By 1750 six Vassalls had graduated from Harvard. Most of the family were Tories, supporting the King when the American Revolution began. Like many other Tories, they fled the country and their estates were confiscated. But, as in the case of Sylvester Gardiner, the head of the Kennebec Purchase, after the Revolution many estates were restored, including the interests of Florentius Vassall in land on the Kennebec River.

There is no evidence that Florentius Vassall ever saw his Maine lands. Like many other Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase, he was an absentee owner. Until 1761 the exact area of Vassall’s domain somewhere between Fort Western and Fort Halifax was extremely vague. In that year the Kennebec Proprietors employed surveyors to layout the land north of Hallowell into settlers’ lots. Nathan Winslow was employed to survey the Vassall holdings and John McKechnie to survey the area north of that tract, which now includes Waterville. What became fixed as early Vassalboro was from Lot 51 to Lot 102 on the east side of the river, and from Lot 35 to Lot 82 on the west side. While the general surveyor was Nathan Winslow, it was a more famous surveyor, John Jones, who actually laid out the lots. He was the same man who surveyed into lots the towns of China and Windsor. Everybody in his time knew him as Black Jones, because of his swarthy complexion.

After the building of Fort Western and Fort Halifax, and the road built by Governor Shirley along the east side of the Kennebec to connect the two forts, Vassalboro became the most rapidly settled area north of Augusta, far exceeding the early population around Ticonic Falls. An early settler was John Getchell, for whose family the community’s largest early settlement, Getchell’s Corner, was named. In 1768 he was granted 250 acres in Vassalboro, and he moved there from peWri~1!;<:m~Jft)f”d~~ where he had arrived several years earlier. Almost as early came Abiel Lovejoy, who settled on the west side in what is now Sidney. Other early comers were Isaac Farwell,Samuel and William Howard, and Benjamin Brown.

When Vassalboro was incorporated as a town in 1771, Getchells had become so numerous and so prominent that the first selectman was Dennis Getchell, a tything man was John Getchell, and a fence viewer was Nehemiah Getchell. The census of 1800, some twenty years after the end of the American Revolution, showed as heads of families names still well known in Vassalboro. They included &1.ssett, Burgess, Cro~s. Drummond, Faught, Hobby, Hussey, McFadden, Redington, Taber and Taylof.

For many years the dominant religious group in Vassalboro was the Society of Friends, the sect better known as Quakers. As early as 1779, on a trip to the Maine wilderness, David Sands, from a Quaker colony in New York, found living on the Kennebec a fellow Quaker named Remington Hobby, whom Sands induced to form a Quaker society in the area. In 1780 their numbers were’sufficient to establish a formal Quaker meeting called the River Meeting of Friends. Their meetinghouse, on the site of the present chapel at Oak Grove, was completed in 1786.

At first the settlers had to take their grain to Sylvester Gardiner’s mill at Gardinerstown for grinding, but by 1770 they had in Vassalboro both sawmills and gristmills, and those led to further settlement. Two important families that had come in the 1750s were the Faughts and the Lovejoys, both of whom settled on the Sidney side of the river. One old manuscript says: “Then went Abiel Lovejoy, Benjamin Noble and James Tyne up the river one mile above Negambekee Falls, and seized a tract of land on the west side of the Kennebec.”

Thus early Vassalboro saw more action on the west than on the east side of the river. But the east side was not neglected. In 1764 James Flagg of Gardinerstown sold an east side lot to Charles Webber, and in the same year the name Vassalboro first appeared on a deed, when Pratt Chase of Vassalboro sold his land to James Taber.

In 1766 the inhabitants petitioned the proprietors for a grist mill on Seven Mile Brook. The petition said: “The most of us are able to raise a great part of our bread- and expect soon to raise all, but we greatly need a grist mill, there being none nearer than the Coboseecontee where we have to pay two shillings a bushel. We urge the proprietors to build us a mill on Seven Mile Brook, or at least grant us the privilege to build one ourselves.” The Proprietors were already hard pressed for funds. They refused to build the requested mill, but did allow the settlers to do it themselves. So, at their own expense , the people put up Vassalboro’s first gristmill.

When John Getchell arrived in 1769, he was soon followed by relatives and acquaintances, not only from Pownalborough, but from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In 1783, after the town had been incorporated for a dozen years, a more careful survey showed that Vassalboro included a total of 5,160 acres in both land and water, that 1,680 acres were in lots already settled and held by inhabitants, that non-residents held only 364 acres, but 1,450 acres, still in lots not yet sold, were in the hands of the Proprietors. Of the town’s total 5,160 acres, 1,650 were in lakes and streams, or had been set out for roads, leaving altogether a bit more than 3,500 acres for settlement. Vassalboro, in its original extent, was indeed a large town.

In 1796 Vassalboro got its first post office, the one at Getchell’s Corner. By 1827 it had five other post offices: Cross Hill, East Vassalboro, North Vassalboro, South Vassalboro and Riverside. Vassalboro was fortunate to have transportation up from Augusta via the river except during the winter, and even then sledding over the ice was sometimes possible. More important was the gradual improvement of the road Gov. Shirley had ordered in 1754, to connect Forts Western and Halifax. That road passed right through Getchell’s Corner.

In 1847 John Lang, owner of land and mills in Vassalboro, and himself resident of a large and prosperous farm near Getchell’s Corner, insisted it was time for Vassalboro to have railroad connection with the outside world. The Androscoggin and Kennebec RR was then being built far over on the west side of the river, connecting Danville Junction with Waterville by a route through Lewiston, Monmouth, Winthrop and Belgrade. Knowing that a charter had already been granted to build a road called the Portland and Kennebec from Brunswick to Augusta, Lang became leader of a group determined to have that road extended up the east side of the river through Vassalboro to Waterville. It took several years for Lang and his associates to win their battle, because such a railroad would necessitate the building of two expensive bridges, one at Augusta, the other between Winslow and Waterville. But in 1854 the fight was won, and a railroad called the Somerset and Kennebec was built from Augusta to Skowhegan, crossing the tracks of the Androscoggin and Kennebec at Waterville.

One important development of Vassalboro occurred at Riverside. There settled the Brown family, giving to the place its original name of Brown’s Corner. In the 19th century the family’s leading member was Benjamin Brown, who there conducted a general store and a stage tavern. He was one of the founders of the Insane Hospital at Augusta and was prominent in state government.

Meanwhile the growing community at the outlet where leaves the stream that empties China Lake into the Sebasticook and the Kennebec, became the thriving village of East Vassalboro. Even faster was the growth of North Vassalboro where John Lang had developed an important woolen industry. Naturally, with the increase in population and the greater prosperity, came schools and churches, fraternal organizations, and the many social groups that make our Maine towns.

There is much more that could be told about Vassalboro, but you can read it all in the excellent history of the town that was published only a few years ago.

Year: 1978