Historic Towns of New England - Various 5 стр.

Already, library administrators and far-sighted educators and publicists foresee a time when it will be as compulsory for towns to establish and support free public libraries as it now is compulsory for them to establish and support free public schools. Massachusetts, perhaps, approaches nearer that ideal now than any other State, only ten of its 353 cities and towns being without public libraries.

Fortunately for the sociologist, the historian, the economist, and the lover of literature, the inhabitants of New England have not failed to chronicle in various forms and ways the deeds and thoughts of their contemporaries. Thus there is a large class of historic documents of which Bradfords history of Plimoth Plantation is the magnum opus. Then there are innumerable town histories,  of which the four-volume history of Hingham, Massachusetts, is a model,  family genealogies, sermons, diaries, volumes of correspondence, such as that which passed between John Adams and his wife, memorial addresses, such as Emerson and G. W. Curtis delivered at Concord, and Webster and Robert C. Winthrop at Plymouth, which inform and often inspire all who patiently explore their contents. Last, but not least, there are the products of New Englands representative authors, who in prose or poetry have recorded indelibly the higher life of their own or of passing generations. In short, a literature-loving people has given birth to literature, and the New England town of the past can never totally fade out of the memory of future generations so long as men and women are left to read the poetry of Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Aldrich, Lowells Biglow Papers, Harriet Beecher Stowes Oldtown Folks and A Ministers Wooing, the short stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins, Rose Terry Cooke, Alice Brown, Maria L. Pool, and Jane G. Austin, the prose romances of Hawthorne and F. J. Stimson, and the histories of Palfrey, Bancroft, Parkman, and Fiske.

That New Englanders in the past have been and even now are provincial, is the indictment of Europeans and of some Americans. That they have developed reason at the expense of imagination, utility at the expense of beauty, is also affirmed. Their Puritan ancestors are the butt of the ridicule of the caricaturist, of ultra-Liberal preachers and devotees of materialistic science, and of those who have never read history, European or American. No less an authority than Matthew Arnold has described the life of New England as uninteresting. To all such critics, the New Englander can and will reply with dignity and force when proper occasion offers, but this is not the place even to summarize his argument. Suffice it to say that the children of New England are ever returning to her. They sojourn for a time in Europe, the valley of the Mississippi, in Southern California, and in Hawaii. They find more salubrious climes, more beautiful works of ecclesiastical and municipal art, better municipal government, and sometimes greater opportunities for investment of capital and ability and choicer circles of society than those which exist in the towns in which they were born or reared. But in due time the yearning for the hills, valleys and seacoast of rocky and rigorous New England, for the established institutions, the generally diffused intelligence, the equality of opportunity, the sane standards of worth, and the inspiring historical traditions of the early home becomes too strong to be resisted longer, and back to the homestead they come some on annual visits, some as often as the exchequer permits, some never to depart. New England has thousands of citizens to-day who, having either made, or failed to make, their fortunes in the West, have returned to New England to dwell. Once a New Englander, always a New Englander, in spirit if not in residence. Travel abroad, or residence elsewhere, may modify the austerity, broaden the sympathy, polish the manners, and stimulate the imagination of the New Englander, but it never radically alters his views on the great issues of life and death, or makes him less of a democrat or less of a devotee of Wisdom.

PORTLAND

THE GEM OF CASCO BAY

By SAMUEL T. PICKARD

PORTLAND enjoys a peculiar distinction among New England cities, not only by reason of the natural advantages of her location, but because of the historical events of which she has been the theatre, and the men of mark in literature, art, and statesmanship whom she has produced. Among the indentations of the Atlantic coast there is no bay which presents a greater wealth and variety of charming scenery, in combination with the advantages of a safe and capacious harbor, than that on which Portland is situated. It is thickly studded with islands which are of most picturesque forms, presenting beetling cliffs, sheltered coves, pebbly beaches, wooded heights, and wide, green lawns dotted with summer cottages. It is of the beauty of this bay that Whittier, who was familiar with its scenery, sings in The Ranger:

The peninsula upon which Portland is located is almost an island. It is nearly three miles long, and has an average width of three quarters of a mile making it in area the smallest city in the United States, and the most compactly settled, for its forty thousand inhabitants occupy almost every available building spot. At each extremity of the peninsula is a hill on the summit of which is a wide public promenade, affording charming views to the east, of the bay, the islands, and the blue sea beyond; to the west and northwest, of the White Mountain range, all the peaks of which are visible, the intervening distance being about eighty miles. The Western Promenade is the favorite resort at sunset; the Eastern has charms for all hours of the day. Both can be reached by electric railways.

In 1614, Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, came prospecting along this coast, and gave the name to Cape Elizabeth, which it still bears, in honor of the Virgin Queen, then recently deceased. The first settlers, George Cleeves and Richard Tucker, came hither in 1632, and the settlement was known as Casco until the name was changed to Falmouth in 1658; it was incorporated as Portland in 1785. There were but few settlers in the first forty years, and these lived in amity with the Indians until the time of King Philips War.

In 1676, the settlement was utterly destroyed by the savages, and all who were not killed were carried into captivity. One of the killed was Thomas Brackett, an ancestor of the statesman who in these later days has made the name famous Thomas Brackett Reed. Mrs. Brackett was carried by the Indians dians to Canada, where she died in captivity. Two of her grandchildren came back to Falmouth when the place was rebuilt after the second destruction by the French and Indians, in May, 1690. In 1689, a large body of French and Indians threatened the town. They were routed in Deerings Woods by troops from Plymouth Colony, commanded by Major Church. Eleven settlers were killed and a large number wounded. It is a curious fact that Speaker Reed is also a descendant of the first settler, Cleeves. There is something remarkable in the persistency with which the descendants of the pioneers returned to the spot where there had been complete and repeated massacres of their ancestors. There are many families in Portland beside the one mentioned above who are descended from the pioneers who were killed or driven off by the savages.

The first minister of Falmouth was the Reverend George Burroughs, who escaped the massacre of 1676 by fleeing to one of the islands in the bay. Unfortunately for him, before the place was rebuilt he removed to Salem; he was too independent, however, to suit the dominant clergy, and was hanged as a wizard in 1692, on charges incredibly ridiculous. The speech made by this worthy man on the scaffold brought the people to their senses and ended the witchcraft craze. His descendants also went back to Falmouth and are represented in many families of the present city of Portland, who take no shame from the hanging of their ancestor.

So thorough was the second destruction of the place in 1690, that no one was left to bury the victims of the slaughter. Their bleached bones were gathered and buried more than two years after by Sir William Phips, while on his way from Boston to build a fort at Pemaquid. The settlement of the peninsula was resumed after the treaty of peace concluded at Utrecht in 1713, and for sixty years thereafter the growth of the place was rapid. When the town was bombarded and burned by a British squadron in October, 1775, there were nearly three hundred families made homeless about three quarters of the entire population. For nine hours, four ships anchored in the harbor threw an incessant shower of grape-shot, red-hot cannon-balls, and bombs upon the defenceless town, which had shown its sympathy with the patriot cause in a practical way after the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill. The spirited citizens of Falmouth might have avoided the bombardment by giving up a few cannon and small-arms; but this, in town meeting, they refused to do, even when they saw the loaded guns and mortars trained upon them at short range, and knew that Captain Mowatt had a special grudge against the place because of an insult put upon him by some of the citizens a few months earlier. The spirit of the town was not broken by the terrible punishment it received. A few days after Mowatt sailed away, while the ruins were still smoking, a British man-of-war came into the harbor to forbid the erection of batteries, and the demand was met by the throwing up of earthworks and the placing of guns, which forced the immediate departure of the ship. The lines of these earthworks are still to be traced at Fort Allen Park, a beautiful pleasure ground on Munjoy overlooking the harbor, and they are preserved with care as a relic of Revolutionary times. Another relic is a cannon-ball thrown from Mowatts fleet, which lodged in the First Parish meeting-house, and is now to be seen in the ceiling of the church which occupies the same site. From this ball depends the large central chandelier. There was an incident of the bombardment which illustrates the simplicity and coolness of a heroine whose name deserves a place beside that of Barbara Frietchie. The fashionable tavern of the town was kept by Dame Alice Greele, and here, during the whole Revolutionary period, the committee of public safety met, the judges held their courts, and political conventions had their sessions. It was here that the citizens in town meeting heroically voted to stand the bombardment rather than give up the guns demanded by Mowatt. But after making this brave decision they hastily packed up all their portable possessions and removed their families to places of safety, some not stopping short of inland towns, and others finding shelter under the lee of a high cliff that used to be at the corner of Casco and Cumberland Streets, at no great distance from their homes. Braver than the bravest of the men of Falmouth, Dame Alice would not desert her tavern, although its position was so dangerously exposed that every house in its vicinity was destroyed by bursting bombs and heated cannon-balls. Throughout that terrible day she stood at her post, and with buckets of water extinguished the fires on her premises as fast as kindled. When Mowatt began to throw red-hot cannon-balls, one of them fell into the dames back yard among some chips, which were set on fire. She picked up the ball in a pan, and as she tossed it into the street, she said to a neighbor who was passing: They will have to stop firing soon, for they have got out of bombs and are making new balls, and cant wait for them to cool! Portland ought to mark with a bronze tablet the site of Alice Greeles tavern. The building stood until 1846 at the corner of Congress and Hampshire Streets. It was then removed to Washington Street.

Portland had a rapid growth of population and increase in wealth during the European disturbances caused by the ambition of Napoleon. The carrying-trade of the world was almost monopolized by neutral American bottoms, and ship-building became then, as it continued to be for a long time afterward, a leading industry along the Maine coast. Great fortunes were made by Portland ship-owners. Many fine old-fashioned mansions that now ornament Congress, High, State, Spring, and Danforth Streets, were built by merchants in the first years of the present century, and are reminders of the peculiar conditions of that time. A sharp check to the rising tide of prosperity was given by the embargo act of 1807. After the peace of 1815, the trade with the West Indies grew into great importance, and for fifty years was a leading factor in the commerce of Portland. Lumber and fish were the chief exports, and return cargoes of sugar and molasses made this the principal market for those commodities the imports in these lines for many years exceeding those at New York and Boston. West India molasses was distilled in large quantities into New England rum, until the temperance reform, under the lead of the Portland philanthropist, Neal Dow, closed up the distilleries; in their place came sugar factories and refineries which turned out a more wholesome product. But about thirty years ago, changes in the methods of making sugar caused the loss of this industry to Portland.

The development of the canning business has of late years been an important feature of the industrial prosperity of Maine, owing partly to the fact that the climate and soil of this State produce a quality of sweet corn that cannot be matched in other States, and also to the fact that the system of canning now in use was a Portland invention. All over the interior of Maine may be found corn factories owned by Portland merchants, and, on the coast, canneries of lobsters and other products of the fields and fisheries of Maine.

Portland is the winter seaport of the Canadas, and several lines of steamships find cargoes of Western produce at this port. For this business the port has excellent facilities, as it is the terminus of the Grand Trunk Railway system, which has its other terminus at Chicago. There is another line to Montreal, through the White Mountain Notch, which, like the Grand Trunk, owes its existence to Portland enterprise. Of late years the lakes and forests and sea-coast of Maine have, to a marked degree, become the pleasure-ground of the Union, and, naturally, Portland is the distributing point for the rapidly increasing summer travel in this direction. Its lines of railway stretch northward and eastward to regions abounding in fish and game; the White Hills of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont are within easy reach. Steamers from this port ply along the whole picturesque coast to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. During the summer months, eight or ten pleasure steamers make trips between the city and the islands of Casco Bay, furnishing a great variety of pleasurable excursions. These islands, except the smallest of them, are the summer homes of a multitude of families many of them from Canada and from the Western States.

The ancient Eastern Cemetery, on the southern slope of Munjoy, is the burying-place of the pioneers, including the victims of the French and Indian massacres of two centuries ago. The graves most frequently visited are those of the captains of the U. S. brig Enterprise and His Majestys brig Boxer, both of whom were killed in the naval engagement off this coast, September 5, 1813. By their side lies Lieutenant Waters, mortally wounded in the same action. The poet Longfellow was in his seventh year at the time of this fight, and his memory of it is enshrined in My Lost Youth: