<\/p>\n
One of the most important real estate deals ever to take place in Maine was the famous Kennebec Purchase. It occurred in 1661 when the Plymouth Colony sold its remaining Maine lands, for the sum of 400 pounds, to four men: Antipas Boies, Edward Tyng, Thomas Brattle and John Winslow, for the last of whom the town of Winslow was named. It was a huge tract of land extending from Casco Bay to Pemaquid, and from the Atlantic Ocean to Caratunk Falls at Solon.<\/p>\n
The four men and their heirs held title to the land for nearly a century, without any efficient attempt at settlement, regarding the wilderness territory as fit only for fishing and trading with the Indians. In 1749 there was held in Boston a meeting of the proprietors — that is, of the heirs of the four men who had bought the land in 1661. They formed a new company, admitted to it additional persons, and received from the provincial legislature of Massachusetts a corporate charter under the name of the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase from the late Colony of New Plymouth. It was that company which persuaded the Massachusetts government to build Fort Western and Fort Halifax in 1754.<\/p>\n
But during the many years between 1661 and 1754 there were other claimants to part of the land. The Wiscasset Company laid claim to the valley of the Sheepscot; the Pejepscot Company had a hold on Brunswick and the lower Androscoggin and the Pemaquid proprietors had a firm grasp on the Pemaquid peninsula and adjoining lands. After law suits extending for ten years, the claims were finally settled and the Kennebec Purchase was defined as extending along the Kennebec River from Merrymeeting Bay to Norridgewock, and including Bath and Phippsburg below the Bay. The tract was thirty-one miles wide, with the river in the middle of it.<\/p>\n
The head of the new company, the general manager of its affairs, was Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, the man who developed not only the town of Gardiner, but built mills on the Cobbossee, the Eastern River at Dresden, and the Sebasticook at Winslow. He personally directed the establishment of a seat of government at Pownalborough and furnished most of the funds for the court house one of Maine’s early public buildings that fortunately has not been torn down to make way for a filling station or a parking lot. Associated with Dr. Gardiner in the new corporation controlling the Kennebec Purchase were Benjamin Hallowell and William Vassal, for whom respectively were named the towns of Hallowell and Vassalboro.<\/p>\n
Strenuous efforts to secure settlers made possible the creation of towns on or near the Kennebec. On the same day in 1771 the Massachusetts Legislature granted incorporation to four towns: Hallowell, Winthrop, Vassalboro and Winslow.<\/p>\n
By 1816 so much of the land had been sold to settlers and investors that the Company decided to liquidate. They divided among the remaining proprietors such remaining lands as were susceptible to division. All the rest they sold at auction.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago I was so fortunate as to secure a copy of the catalogue of that auction held in Boston on January 22, 1816. It is a pamphlet of twenty pages that bears on its title page the following statement: “A Schedule of Lands, etc. to be sold at public auction on the floor of the Exchange Coffee House in Boston by the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase, on Monday, the 22nd day of January, 1816.”<\/p>\n
The very first item listed for sale is extremely interesting. It reads: “At Dresden, the old court house, and about one acre of land where it stands, and the gore of land near the court house, adjoining Goodwin’s land, supposed to contain about ten acres. Also the church lot, so called, fronting the Eastern River, containing one hundred acres, more or less, in the possession of George Gould.”<\/p>\n
The old court house was, of course, the now famous historical building known as the Old Pownalborough Court House, which stands near the river about three miles north of the present village of Dresden Mills. At that Boston auction in 1816 the court house was indeed sold to private parties and it had varied uses until it finally came into possession of the Lincoln County Historical Society, which now sees to its permanent preservation.<\/p>\n
In the auction were 110 surveyed lots in the town of Whitefield. After giving the dimensions and location of each lot, the pamphlet says about the whole Whitefield parcel in general: “These lots are all laid down on a plan made by James Marr, dated April 14, 1810. All the lands within the town of Whitefield, west of the Sheepscot River, are supposed to contain about 2,000 acres. The lands east of that river, contained in this parcel, contain about 5,000 acres.”<\/p>\n
Put up for auction were numerous lots in Malta, the old name for what is now the town of Windsor. Special attention was called to several lots with advantageous water fronts. Lot 26 was on Webber Pond, Lot 39 on Middle Pond, and Lot 74 on Moody’s Pond. Fifty of the auctioned lots were in Patrickstown, the old name for Somerville. Of that area in general, the pamphlet said: “This is a tract of land between Isaac Davis’ survey of Malta and the town of Jefferson. The whole estimated quantity of land in Patrickstown and its adjacent Long Pond settlement is about 6,500 acres.”<\/p>\n
One lot to be sold is described as follows: “A tract near the southwest corner of the town of Fairfax, bounded on the southwest by the town line of Harlem and on the northwest by the town line of Winslow.” There in a single statement we find two of the old, almost forgotten names of Kennebec towns. Fairfax was Albion and Harlem was China.<\/p>\n
For some reason, not entirely clear, Unity Pond was then called Twenty-fiveMile Pond. Of course the pond itself is less than five miles long, but the whole distance from the source of its principal feeding stream to its lower end is indeed about 25 miles. Anyhow the surrounding land itself, part of what is now in the towns of Unity and Burnham, is designated on the old maps as Twenty-five Mile Pond Plantation. Here is the description given in the auction pamphlet of 4,000 acres for sale in that area: “A tract of land in the rear of the fifteen mile lots east of the Kennebec River (you will recall that the old Kennebec Purchase extended about 15 miles each side of the Kennebec), containing about 4,000 acres, according to a plan made by Charles Hayden of Winslow on October 1, 1812. About 500 acres of this area are covered by the pond. The great road from the Kennebec to the Penobscot passes through this tract, and there is a valuable mill on the site.”<\/p>\n
The great road referred to was the old stage route from Augusta to Bangor, passing through East Vassalboro, China, Albion and Unity, over the Dixmont Hills to Hampden.<\/p>\n
Numerous lots were listed as located in Plymouth Gore. That name stuck me. My memory about old Maine names just wouldn’t identify it. I had to look for help and I found it in Atwood’s “Length and Breadth of Maine”. There, to my surprise, I found that what is now one of Somerset County’s largest and most prosperous towns was just a tiny place in 1816, for only in the previous year had it gained status as a town, being incorporated in 1815 as the town of Plymouth Gore.<\/p>\n
It is now Pittsfield, which indeed still had another name before it got its present title in 1824, because in 1819 it was reincorporated as the town of Warsaw. At that time it lost part of its territory to Twenty-five Mile Plantation. A few lots were left for sale even in the well settled towns of Augusta and Waterville. In the former were 330 acres, according to Philip Bullen’s plan, in the rear of the third range of lots on the east side of the Kennebec. In Waterville was a 60 acre lot, according to Samuel Downing’s plan of 1808.<\/p>\n
In Freedom the auction included a tract lying east of Fairfax and north of Palermo, not yet surveyed but presumed to contain 300 acres. That is the way the last holdings of the famous Kennebec Purchase were disposed of at an auction in the Exchange Coffee House in Boston on a blustery day in January, 1816.<\/p>\n
Did you ever see a book called “Picturesque Maine”, published in Portland in 1880, and compiled by M. F. Sweetser? I think you will be interested in what that eighty year old volume says about Waterville. Here it is: “A group of quiet streets, shaded by venerable elms and bordered by peaceful homes, with a factory or two, giving contented employment to a few score of industrious men; churches of all the creeds of Christendom, wide rural roads, a bright and rushing river, breaking into whiteness and music at Ticonic Falls -such is Waterville, one of the fairest villages of Maine, and one of the summer resorts of the future. Already the great hotel, the Elmwood, lifts its handsome front above the trees. Parties of guests ride away from its verandas, through the countryside to the island-strewn lakes of China and Belgrade, to the cascades at West Waterville, and along the picturesque river road. Near the sleepy hamlet of Winslow remains one of the block houses of Fort Halifax, the ancient defense of this valley.<\/p>\n
“At Waterville also stand the buildings of Colby University, whose grim Baptist founders little dreamed that this school of their prophets would be the training ground of the most cantankerous of American politicians, Benjamin F. Butler.”<\/p>\n
This old book was obviously designed to advertise the State of Maine, and author Sweetser could wax just as poetical as can any modern writer for the Maine Development Commission. Listen to this ecstatic utterance about Maine’s second largest body of inland water:<\/p>\n
“What Loch Katrine is to Glasgow and the streams of Sabine Hills are to Rome, Lake Sebago is to Portland, the source whence certified rivers flow downward for leagues, to gush forth refreshment in the urban homes. The gallant McGregors surrounded Katrine with the glamor of legend, and Sir Walter Scott elaborated its charms in a glowing stanza. But it was Sebago that taught Nathaniel Hawthorne many a weird tale, while the years of his youth were spent on its shores; and the more melodious harp of Longfellow and Whittier have sounded its praises in flowing numbers.”<\/p>\n
Author Sweetser vented his political spleen several times in the book, just as he had when he referred to Ben Butler in his description of Waterville. This is what he wrote about the city of Bath: “Farther down the Kennebec is the decadent old maritime city of Bath. where fleets of the stateliest ships were built in the halcyon days of American Commerce, before our flag had been swept from the seas by Anglo-Confederate cruisers and the legislation of freshwater senators.”<\/p>\n
Of Rumford, Sweetser wrote: “Here, among the swelling limestone ridges and blueberry covered mountains, are the finest falls in Maine, where the great Androscoggin descends 160 feet in a succession of thunderous leaps over bold walls of granite. The natural attractions of this place would make it a second Switzerland, but the practical Yankee mind already dreams of better things, in respect to profit, and foresees it enjoying the revenues of a second Lowell. The Arcadia which surrounds an eligible water power in New England must become a second Birmingham and the oreads give place to the mill girls.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1959<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #423, Broadcast on May 31, 1959<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[800,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}