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History & Genealogy

CHAPTER XXI.

FARMINGDALE
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Location - Settlement and Settlers - Incorporation - Natural Features - Civil Lists - Valuation and Appropriations - Schools - Present Condition - Personal Paragraphs

 

 

 

 

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of General Henry Dearborn, was a woman of remarkable goodness and charity and beloved by all.  Doctor Parker died Nov. 9, 1837, and Mrs. Parker survived him till 1863.

     Nathaniel Kimball bought lot 2 of James Springer and built a house on the east side of the road in 1800.  He was a native of New Hampshire and came from Pittston, where he had built several dams. and mills which had in succession been swept away by freshets.  He married Sally, daughter of Major Henry Smith, who came from Germany in 1747 and settled in Pittston in 1764.  Major Smith served as a continental soldier in the French war, was at Ticonderoga and saw Lord Howe fall, and was at Quebec under WolfeMr. and Mrs. Kimball afterward built a large, two story house about where Mr. Brann's house now stands which, with a small house now standing near it, was burned some thirty years later, and these were the only early settlers' houses burned before the Cox house in 1890.  They had six children, of whom two were residents of Farmingdale after its incorporation: Nathaniel, who was long and well known as an enterprising steamboat owner and captain; and Hannah, who married Alexander S. Chadwick.

     William G. Warren also came here about the year 1800, and built the house now owned by Gilbert Eastman.  He was a prominent man, and was for many years a vestryman and warden in Christ church, as were also Doctor Parker and Major Smith.  He was grandfather of George E. Warren.

     On the lot and near the house of Doctor Parker, was the first school house on Bowman's point, and in 1800 the whole number of inhabitants on this tract was 117.  This tract was in Hallowell till 1834, when it was annexed to Gardiner.

     South of this old Hallowell line, numbering from north to south, the front, west of the road, was divided into acre lots five rods in width, and extending thirty-two rods back, having been surveyed and plan made by Dudley Hobart in 1803.  This plan was afterward copied into, and made part of, the Solomon Adams plan, by which all the lands in Gardiner were sold after its date, Dec. 30, 1808.

     Samuel Elwell was one of the first purchasers, he having lots 10 and 11, being the same where the houses of Ephraim Hatch and A. Davenport now stand. He at once built a house on lot 10, and this was afterward conveyed to Hon. George Evans, whose eminent ability and long and noble career find a more fitting place in another chapter.  No. 11 was conveyed to Captain Nathaniel Kimball, the well known pioneer in steamboating between Gardiner and Boston.  No. 9, the last home of Dr. James Parker, was sold by Mr. Gardiner, "subject to the rights of Elizabeth McCausland, widow of the late Henry McCausland, and their son, Robert McCausland."  These rights were those of occupancy without title, but

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the records are also a record of the shrewdness of Doctor Parker, he having bought them for $20 two weeks before the conveyance from Mr. Gardiner to him. No. 8 was sold to James Purinton in 1803, and he erected the house thereon, which was afterward the homestead of Robert Gould, who engaged in shipbuilding in front of the lot, and where the wharf now is.  Mr. Gould was a keen business man, and was fast acquiring a leading position, when he died of consumption in 1835, thirty-nine year old.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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     VALUE AND APPROPRIATIONS -

 

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     SCHOOLS -

 

 

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PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS.

     James W. Carter, son of Hiram and Virtue (Averill) Carter, and grandson of Jefferson P. Carter, was born in 1841.  He is a stone cutter and farmer, and since 1875 has lived in Farmingdale.  He  married Achsah A., daughter of Jacob and Eunice (Carter) Welch, and granddaughter of Jacob Welch.  Their children are: Hiram J., Eunice A. (Mrs. E. Crocket), Minnie E. (died 1873) and Arthur W. (died 1881)

     Joseph F. Clement, born in 1838, at Palmyra, Me., was a son of Samuel Clement. From 1873 until his death in 1886 he was a farmer where his widow and family now live. He was several years on the school committee and held the office of selectman. He was in the late war in Company A, 14th Maine, and from November, 1864, to February, 1866, he was captain of Company G, 109th U. S. Colored Infantry.

*Mrs. Stilphen's responsibility for this chapter ends here. - [ED.

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His first marriage was with Maria C. Keene, who died in 1873, leaving two children: Charles J. and Carrie M.  His second marriage was with Augusta J. Greene, who has one adopted son.

     Charles E. Dearing, born in 1837 in Webster, is a son of John and Caroline (Perry) Dearing, and grandson of Deacon Samuel and Mary (Drinkwater) Dearing.  In 1887 he moved to Farmingdale.  From 1855 until 1887 he was a machinist and since then has been a farmer.  He was in the army from July, 1862, until June, 1865, and was discharged as quartermaster sergeant.  He was taken prisoner at Gettysburgh July 1, 1863, and was taken to Richmond, Va., and held three months.  He married Emma, daughter of Dea. David A. and Sophronia (Macomber) White, and granddaughter of David and Mary White.  Their children are: Ernest W. and Marion P., living, and Albert C., deceased.

     Gilbert Eastman, born in South Gardiner, is a son of Samuel and Eliza (Luce) Eastman, and grandson of Samuel Eastman.  He was a carpenter until 1890, when he opened a music store in Gardiner, firm of G. & C. L. Eastman.  He married Ellen M., daughter of Seth and Sarah (Stewart) Rines.  They had one daughter, Lulie Grace, born May 28, 1869, died Nov. 10, 1870. Their only son is Charles L., who began the study of music when a boy and studied at Kents Hill, Boston and New York, and is now the junior partner of the above firm.

     William Faunce, born in 1813, was a son of John Faunce, who came from Ipswich, Mass., to Waterville, Me. Mr. Faunce came to Hallowell in 1845 and twenty years later he came to Farmingdale, where he was a farmer until his death in 1890, where his widow and son now live.  He married Lucy, daughter of Timothy B. and Eleanor (Webb) Haywood.  Their children were: Fred B., Ellen H. and John F., who are deceased, and William, born Feb. 5, 1860, who is now carrying on the farm of ninety acres.

     Thomas Gilpartrick, only survivor of eight children of Robert and Temperance Gilpatrick, grandson of Charles and great-grandson of Charles Gilpatrick, was born in 1836.  He is a farmer, and since 1877 has owned and occupied the Joshua Carr farm.  He married Louisa H., daughter of William Springer.  Their only child is Adelle R., who is a teacher in the Hallowell school.

     William A. Hodgdon, born in 1839, is the only survivor of three children of Jerry and Hannah ( Lord) Hodgdon, and grandson of Samuel Hodgdon, who was a shipbuilder during his life at Bowman's Point.  Mr. Hodgdon is a farmer.  He married Laura, daughter of James S. McCausland.  They have two children: Myrtle H. and Jerry L.

     Captain Abner M. Jackson, born in Pittston in 1803, was a son of Captain Benjamin Jackson.  Captain Jackson began going to sea with

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his father when a small boy, and at the early age of eighteen he became captain, which position he continued to fill very successfully until six years prior to his death, in 1873.  His first vessel was the brig Milton, followed by the Gardiner (which he commanded eight years in New York and Liverpool mail service), Kekokey, Rainbow, Jane H. Glidden, Medalion, Edenburg and Consolation.  His wife, who is still living, was Lydia W., daughter of Nathaniel Bailey.  Their two sons were: Charles E., who died in 1864, of yellow fever, while on a voyage as mate of a vessel, and James A. Jackson, born in Pittston Sept. 12, 1832, a druggist, of Gardiner.  He married Lucy D., daughter of Robert Thompson, and has had three sons: James R., Benjamin W. and Donald, who died young.

     H. W. JEWETT, OF FARMINGDALE AND GARDINER - This family name, now so generally dispersed throughout the American states, first appeared in New England early in 1639, when an English company of sixty people, with forty others, came to Massachusetts, where they, with Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, settled in April of that year, and organized the first church in Rowley.  Among the sixty English were two brothers, Maximilian and Joseph Jewett, who were made freemen of Rowley within one year, and both became prominent in civil, religious and business affairs.*
     Their parents, Edward and Mary Jewett1, were of Bradford, Eng. Joseph
2 was born there in 1609, and married Mary Mallinson in 1634.  They had six children, the oldest, Jeremiah³, being born in England.  Joseph was again married in 1653, and raised three other children. 
     Jeremiah
married Sarah, daughter of Thomas Dickenson, in 1661, and resided in Ipswich, but was buried in the Rowley churchyard in 1714.  The oldest of his nine children was Jeremiah, jun.4, born in 1662, who, when twenty-five years of age, married Elizabeth Kimball, and had four daughters and three sons.  Only through their youngest son, Aaron5, born 1699, the fifth of the seven, was the family name transmitted in this line.  He married Abigail Perley in 1719, and after a short residence in Scarboro, Me., returned to Ipswich, where he died in 1732, leaving three surviving children, of whom Moses, the second son, was baptized in Ipswich in 1722. 
     This Moses6, the fifth generation in America, married Abigail Bradstreet in 1741, and was with those patriots of Ipswich who took an early breakfast or a cold bite on the 19th of April, 1775, and went up to meet General Gage at Lexington and Concord, and attend to some imperative public business.  He was captain of a troop of horse which contained four of the nine Jewetts who went into that fight. 
     He left his gun and a good name to the seventh of his ten chil-

*The printed Historical Collections of the Essex Institute (Salem, Mass., 1885, Vol. XXII. ) contains thirty-six pages of valuable data regarding these two brothers and their descendants, as early families of Rowley.

 

 


Hartley W. Jewett]

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dren, James Jewett', who was born in 1755. This James, with his brother, Moses, removed in 1785 to Newcastle, Me.  Five years later he married Lydia Hilton, of Alna, Me.  They were the grandparents of the subject of this sketch, and passed their married life in Alna, where their five children were born, and where he and his brother, Moses, were respected and prosperous citizens.
     James Jewett, jun.8, the first of the five, was born in Alna in 1791, and became a master carpenter, as his father James had been.  His wife, married Sept. 16, 1822, was Mary A. Ayer, of Alna.  They resided at Alna, Me., where four of their children were born: Mary J., born June 27, 1823, died in 1859; James, jun., born Sept. 25, 1824, died in 1887; Hartley W., born June 11, 1826: and Nancy Elizabeth (Mrs. Peleg S. Robinson), born Sept. 25, 1829, died in 1875.  The family moved to Hallowell in 1832, where, on Shepherd's Point, Mr. Jewett operated a steam saw mill until its burning two years later, when they removed to Gardiner, where their only other child, John Jewett, now the popular conductor of the Jewett train on the Maine Central, was born in March, 1835, and where the parents died he in 1867, after more than thirty years of usefulness as a saw millwright and carpenter, and she nineteen years later, after an exemplary Christian life.
     Such is the family origin, and such the honorable antecedents of H. W. Jewett, of Farmingdale, whose lumber manufacturing interests at Gardiner have now for a third of a century played no inconsiderable part in the growth and prosperity of that city.  From the time his parents came to Gardiner in June, 1834, until he was seventeen years old, the village school, for a few winters and fewer summers, furnished his only opportunity for an education.  But it is the boy, and not the schoolmaster, who "is the father of the man," and in this case it seems that close observation of men and things, and the discipline of practical life, have fitted a man for business activity and large usefulness better than colleges and universities sometimes do.
     In 1846, when he first went into the lumber woods as a surveyor, he had to buy his time of one R. K. Littlefield, with whom he had begun to learn the millwright trade, and under whom he had helped build an overshot mill east of Brown's island.  Thoroughly familiar, for ten years, with handling logs in the river and their delivery to the Gardiner mills, he began in 1860 upon his own account the purchase of large quantities of logs on the upper Kennebec, and by rafting these in smaller lots, found profitable sale to the down river mills.  Before the present great booms of the log driving company were built, he had private booms at and above Gardiner, where he collected logs from the river, and delivered to the owners in Gardiner.  He first called attention to the plan of building the great Brown's Island boom, and largely through his efforts the driving company secured

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in the legislature the necessary charter.  Buying and handling logs in quantities occupied his attention until 1863*, when he began as a lumber manufacturer on the Cobbosseecontee, the career by which he is now best known in the lumber markets of the Atlantic states.
     Fair weather and smooth sailing furnish no test of capable ship masters, and only a close battle develops great generalship.  In forty years of business life Mr. Jewett has encountered a full share of reverses and disasters.  The national panic of 1873, in which he lost everything save his integrity and his courage, was followed nine years later by the great fire of 1882, which swept all the lumber mills from the lower dam in Gardiner, and left him a net loser by at least $75,000.  Courage and integrity were yet his unimpaired resources the one prompting him to begin at once the rebuilding of the establishment, the other giving him all needed credit among those who knew him; and thus upon the ruins of a fair fortune he again started, and within the next decade he once more appears among the solid men of the valley.
     His marriage Sept. 3, 1850, was with Harriet A., daughter of Thomas N. Atkins5, a shipbuilder of Farmingdale, who was born on the south end of Swan island (James Atkins4, of Sandwich, Mass., James3, John2, and James Atkins1, whose first child was born in Sandwich in 1790).  To them have been born two sons: Charles T., who died in 1862, and Thomas A. Jewett, born Sept. 23, 1861.
     James Jewett, the deceased brother of H. W. Jewett, married Thankful H., daughter of Thomas N. Atkins, and left one son, Arthur, now bookkeeper for H. W. Jewett, at Gardiner.

     Sumner B. McCausland, born in West Gardiner in 1830, is a son of Thomas H. ( 1804-1886) and Rhoda E. (Brann) McCausland ( 1809-1874).  His grandfather, James, who died in 1826, was a son of James McCausland, who was one of General Washington's body-guard.  His grandmother was Mary (Berry) McCauslandSumner B. came to Gardiner in 1850, learned the carpenters' trade with Sprague & Lord, was in the employ of W. S. Grant and P. G. Bradstreet several years, and since 1861 has been in the ice business, harvesting and wholesaling.  He has been a resident of Farmingdale since its incorporation, has been town clerk three years, selectman, assessor and overseer of the poor nineteen years.  His wife, Augusta A., is a daughter of Dr. John A. and Clarissa (Bodfish) Barnard, late of Livermore. Their children are: Antonio C., Mary Louise ( died in 1873) and Anna Belle.

     Daniel C. Mitchell, born in 1828, in Litchfield, is a son of Joshua and Nancy (Farr) Mitchell, who came from Lewiston to Litchfield in 1805.  Mr. Mitchell came from Litchfield to Farmingdale in 1868, where he is a farmer.  He married Elizabeth, daughter of Elias Merrill, and they have one daughter, Ava A.

     * See lumber mills of Gardiner city.

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     Reuben S. Neal, born Mar. 1, 1837, is the oldest of three children of Julius and Sarah (Seavey) Neal, and grandson of Joseph Neal.  He followed the sea a few years when a young man, and was mate of a vessel the last two years.  In 1861 he entered the army in Company C, 1st Maine Cavalry, and served thirty-eight months.  He has been a farmer in Farmingdale since 1864 on his grandfather Seavey's farm.  He has been elected by the republican party to the offices of selectman, representative and county commissioner.

     Elisha S. Newell, son of Ebenezer and Mary (Snow) Newell, was born in Durham, Me., being the fifth child and third son of a family of eight children.  He left home at the age of twenty-two years-having secured a common and high school education-served two years in a variety store in Durham as clerk, and taught school two winters, after which he commenced his railroad life.  He moved to Portland in 1869 and ran the train known as Jewett train for fourteen years and never knew what it was to have an accident.  In 1884, on account of impaired health, he was transferred to the Augusta and Gardiner train and was again, by request, transferred to the yard engine at Gardiner in 1891.  He is now a resident of Farmingdale and although a democrat he was elected to represent the republican district in which he lives, in the 65th legislature.

     George W. Paul, son of Oliver P. and Mary J. (Neal) Paul, was born in Saxonville, Mass., in 1847.  He came with his parents to Waldo, Me., in 1856.  He served in the late war from 1863 to 1865, enlisting from Waldo county in Company A, Coast Guards, and afterward attached to the 31st Wisconsin, serving in the army of the Potomac.  In 1872 he enlisted as a non-commissioned officer in the regular army and served one year in the Indian troubles on Platte river.  Since 1873 he has been a farmer in Farmingdale; previous to that he had been a stone cutter by trade.   He married Lizzie, daughter of Orrin and Sarah W. (Collins) Colcord.  Their children are: Edith M., G. Delwin and Ray J.

     Frank Richardson, born in Whitefield, is a son of Franklin and Louisa (Bailey) Richardson, and grandson of Smith Richardson.  He and his brother, George M., came from Whitefield to Farmingdale in 1889, and bought the old William Grant farm, where they now live.  Mr. Richardson has been street commissioner of Farmingdale two years.

     Renaldo Robbins, born in Bowdoinham in 1827, is a son of Elias and Lucinda (Hatch) Robbins, and grandson of Daniel and Elizabeth (Kendall) Robbins.  He came to Farmingdale in 1846, where he is a carpenter.  He married Catherine, daughter of Andrew and Mary H. (Bates) McCausland, and granddaughter of Henry and Abiah (Stackpole ) McCausland.  Their children are: Fred M., Mary E. and Willis E., who died.

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     Benjamin F. Sandford, born in Bowdoinham in 1823, is a son of Captain Thomas and Esther (Topping) Sandford, and grandson of John and Mary Sandford.  He has taught school twenty-three terms, and worked twelve years at plastering, in Boston.  He came to Farmingdale in 1855, where he is a farmer.  He was eight years a member of the school board and held the office of selectman seven years.  He married Mary M., daughter of David Thwing, of Bowdoinham. Their children are: Lilla M. (Mrs. N. Niles), George C. and Alice. They lost four: Laura E., St. Vincent G., James T. and John I. D.

     David C. Shepherd was born in 1837, in Delaware, Hunterdon county, N. J.  He was three years in the employ of the Knickerbocker Ice Company at Philadelphia, Pa., and in 1870 was made general agent and superintendent of their Maine business and since that time has lived in Farmingdale. He married Amanda Rudebock, of Hunterdon county, New Jersey.  They have three children.

     Ezra S. Smith, born in 1820, is a son of Jonathan and Hannah (Sleeper) Smith, and grandson of Jonathan Smith.  He came from New Hampshire to Hallowell in 1838, where he lived until 1871, when he came to Farmingdale, where he is a farmer.  He was two years collector and eight years deputy sheriff at Hallowell and in 1891 was selectman of Farmingdale.  He married Abbie, daughter of William Jones, and their children are: George E., Lizzie A. and Ellen, who died.

     Captain Samuel Swanton, born in Readfield in 1800, was a son of William and Lavina (Savage) Swanton, and grandson of William Swanton, of Bath, Me.  Captain Swanton began going to sea when but fifteen and continued until 1840, several years as master of vessels.  From 1840 until 1855 he was a ship builder at Bath, Me.  He died in Hallowell in 1869.  His marriage was with Rachel S. Gordon, of Readfield.  Their children were: Henry A., Annie E., Mary L., Susie J. (Mrs. R. G. Kimpton) and Charles L. Henry, Mary and Charles are deceased.  Annie E. married Samuel G. Buckman, who was several years a grocer in Bath, but since 1866 has been a farmer of Farmingdale.  Their children are: Nettie G. (deceased), Annie M. and Charles S. S.

     George E. Warren, born in 1838, is a son of George and Julia T. (Hutchinson) Warren, and grandson of William G. and Peggy ( Marson) Warren.  He has been engaged in the drug business as clerk and proprietor since 1856, and since 1882 has owned and run the present business on Water street, Gardiner.  He married Frances E., daughter of John Covell, and they have one daughter, Jennie H.  Mr. Warren has been town clerk since 1876, succeeding his father who had held the office several years.

 

NOTES:

 

 

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