Friday, September 28, 2018

GOOD NEWS TO PASS ON!

Last evening at the historic Mother House on Stevens Avenue, Greater Portland Landmarks held their 2018 Preservation Awards Celebration and Annual Meeting and I was honored to receive a Preservation Leader Award.  Nominated by Joseph Dumais, from the City of Portland Cemeteries, I was totally amazed and surprised to hear I would receive such an honor.  However, it is a recognition which I need to share with all of you who supported this recovery project of the Grand Trunk Cemetery from its inception in 2010, and continue to do so to the present.

Although, in comparison to so many of the outstanding projects, our tiny cemetery and its preservation is an important piece of Portland history and deserves the recognition  So, I share this moment with the Friends of the Grand Trunk Cemetery, the Girl Scouts of Machigonne Service Unit who continue the legacy of Samantha Allshouse and Kayla Theriault, the wonderful, living relatives of some of the souls interred at the GTC, the Portland community,  and those of you who know the importance of preserving and caring for our ancient cemeteries who follow this blog.




Here is the write-up included on Greater Portland Landmark's web site.  I will include the link for you to read about each of the projects which received awards for your interest.  www.greaterportlandlandmarks.org.


I was very happy to have my husband, Joel who has always supported this recovery project from the beginning, Lynda Allshouse, Patricia Theriault, Norma and Benjamin Sawyer, Robert McMann and Joe Dumais present for the awards ceremony.  It was a pleasure to meet a number of people who seemed really interested in finding the cemetery, and I was pleased to tell them about the wonderful, newly installed street sign.  Here are photos:

On the day of installation of the lovely new sign
with crew members from Portland Cemeteries

The sign sits adjacent to the school on city property
and faces out on Presumpscot Street


Sometime, in the future, another interactive sign will be placed in the cemetery and replace the present kiosk and map.  I will keep readers informed,  and hopefully, we will hold an unveiling event and invite all to gather once more at the Grand Trunk Cemetery.

Finally, as has been our custom since 2011, we will hold our annual Cleanup and Planting Party on Sunday, October 28th at the cemetery, sponsored by the Portland Girl Scouts of Machigonne Service Unit and the Friends of the Grand Trunk Cemetery.  This is always an opportunity to provide a service to the GTC while enjoying the company of good people, and having fun.  

This year, additional activities have been planned to celebrate the 158th birthday of Juliette Gordon Low, Girl Scouts founder.  I hope those of you in our local area will join us,  and visit the Grand Trunk Cemetery.  You may even encounter the ghost of Miss Low wandering through the burial ground!  
Happy Halloween!



You may be interested in a new feature on Friends of Grand Trunk Cemetery Facebook page:  On this day.....records particular deaths for those interred at the GTC during the month. facebook.com/FriendsofGrandTrunkCemetery

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

From the Town of Gloucester at Cape Ann to the Town of Falmouth at Back Cove, Part II




Personal Reflection:  Weaving Threads into the Tapestry



     What an adventure this has been following the journey of Isaac Sawyer and others whose personal histories began in Gloucester and ended in Falmouth (Portland).  I have learned more about the city of my birth, and now, the city I adopted as home forty years ago, than I ever knew.

Much of the early history of both Gloucester and Falmouth have similarities.  Both are coastal towns which later, would become dependent on the ocean and water-ways for shipping lumber and goods,  and build sailing vessels, important to their prosperity; not, at the beginning.  Both towns, in their pre-history would have been home to native groupt who visited the coast to fisht during the summer months, but later, would become 'enemies' to the European settlers, and would be dessimated by contracting European diseases. 

Both towns, would be dependent on their 'planters', yeoman who would establish farms for their sustainance and would clear heavily forested areas to build their homes, gather marsh grasses for bedding their cattle and sheep, and thatch for their roofs, and hunt and fish along the rivers to suppliment their diets and feed their large families.  Both towns, would suffer loss during the European conflicts between England and France and would suffer destruction during the Revolutionary War.

     The early pioneers of Gloucester and Falmouth were independent and self-reliant individuals determined to create and maintain a life for themselves and their families, qualities which they shared with their fellows throughhout New England.

Early Map of New England, dated 1703


In New England the community and social idea, controlled and directed by provincial authority, was present from the beginning.  Groups of like-minded families organized themselves into "church and town," acquired a tract of land about six miles square, settled thereon according to definite rules, and proceeded to work out for themselves and orderly agricultural community.  The New England town was a carefully planned society."  The system, as originally conceieved and administered by the Massachusetts General Court prevailed throughout the province of Massachusetts Bay, in its offshoots, Connecticut and New Hampshire, and in its colony of Maine.

Since church and town were coeval and coextensive, the community formed around meeting house and village green.  Land was divided by lot into village plots fronting on the green, and outlying portions for farming, grazing and wood lots.  Other tracts were set aside for the common use of all. and still others, held for future needs. 

Taken from:  "The New England Town:  A Way of Life" 
by Carl Bridenbaugh
This was true for the first permanent sttlement of the Town of Gloucester when in 1642, the Massachusetts Bay Colony laid out the rocky land adjacent to the Annisquam River, and named it Gloucester, which received the name Cape Ann, was divided between three areas:  Jeffryes Creeke (Manchester), Gloucester (included Rockport; than called Sandy Bay, and Ipswich (including Essex).

The new permanet settlement focused on the Town Green area, an inlet in the marshes at a bend in the Annisquam River,  The area is now the site of Grant Circle, a large traffic rotary at which Massachusetts Route 128 joins the major city street,Washington Street (Route 127). The settlers built a Meeting House and focused the nexus of their settlement on the 'island' for nearly 100 years.
           "The new settlers homesteaded and fished, but the area was so thickly wooded, so in the beginning, lumber, not fish, was Gloucester's primary export. :It was so important, that in 1667, the settlement area that was to become Rockport, over a century later, was forbidden in order to protect the forest."  History of the Regionhttps.://capeannchamber.com/history-of-the-region/

     One of the early pioneers of Gloucester was Thomas Skillen who is significant to the story of Isaac Sawyer and his farm at Back Cove.  It's apparent from early Gloucester records, and from his mention in the Babson book, that he was in Gloucester before 1643.  This written into the Gloucester Archives regarding the 'Old Yard Bridge Street.'

Upon the 8th of the 12th mo. 1643
It is ordered that at the end of Lotts, Viz, Mr. Blynmans, Thos. Jones, Thos. Kents, and Thos. Skillings, betwixt, and old meeting house place, shall be half an acre, laid out for a common burial place, & that the town's men, from 16 years, and upwards, shall turn out, and build a stone wall, around it.



      On or about 1658, six men from Gloucester, early pioneers of the town would leave and move up the coast to the settlement at Falmouth where they would purchase land from the Cleeves and Tucker grants significantly impacting both towns and their histories. Here are the names of the six former Gloucester men who removed to Falmouth:

Matthew Coe, George Ingersoll, Phineas Rider, Thomas Skillins(g),
 John Wakley, and Thomas Wakley


 Three of these individuals do relate to our Isaac Sawyer.  I will include these records from John James Babson's History of the Town of Gloucester.

 

   Before heading back to the district of Maine and Back Cove, I want to share some tidbits of Gloucester History that I hope followers of this blog might find interesting and worth a visit to the old seaport town.

Prior to the first European settlement, the Pawtucket group of Indians, traveled the rivers and coastline, and established inland trails.  The area in the central part of Gloucester which would later be called the Commons or Dogtown Commons, was used for seasonal hunting and fishing.

Today, researchers are attempting to chronicle whether there may have been a more permanent Indian settlement in the area.

1605/ 1606  Samuel de Champlain sailed into Gloucester Harbor which he named 
                     Le Beauport.

1614             Captain John Smith named the area Tragabigzanda.

                     Upon his return to England, King Charles, renamed the cape after his mother, Anne of Denmark; thus, Cape Ann.

1623              English sailors employed by the Dorchester Company of England landed at Half Moon Beach and attempted to establish a seasonal fishing camp and settlement at the harbor.  After two years, the Dorchester Company disbanded,  A few of the earliest settlers who remained moved inland to Salem where they found more land beneficial to farming.

1640-1642       Resettlement was slow, but gradually, as Massachusetts Bay Colony, the area was granted a charter as a town and received the name Gloucester.

It was named for Gloucester in western England.  The first parish was located near present day, Grant Circle on Route 128 (near the southwestern corner of Dogtown).  Although the soil was rocky, there was plenty of room for grazing.  Cape Pond Brook (which flows through the southern part of Dogtown) powered Gloucester's early mills by the 1640's.  These included Ellery' s lumber mill, as well as a gristmill and fulling mill nearby.

Taken from:  Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey

1719         There was a general land distribution for all males in Gloucester/Rockport.  Three years later, land in the northern part of Cape Ann was divided into 136 woodlots for lumbering and cow rights for pasture land.  The pasture was located just north of the Commons Road and was managed communally, rather than assigning individual lots.  The common pasture was immediately to the north of the Commons Settlement, with woodlots, which were long, narrow strips, extending north and east.  It was probably proximity to the pasture that prompted some residents to move from the original settlement to the Commons are slightly to the northeast.
     There were about forty of these early pioneers who built homes in the heart of Cape Ann called Dogtown.  Some say it is still a place of mystery and legends today with the remnant of the glacial migration, large boulders, stone enclosures and cellars where the inhabitants once lived.  In the early 1700's some of Gloucester's wealthiest citizens resided in the Commons which privided safety from marauding French and English trooops and the occasional pirates who visited the coast.

   
Map of  The Commons/ Dogtown
   Here is an image of an early home;one story, with one room for all household living. Most had stone walls with kitchen gardens and dug out cellars for keeping food.  Amazingly, most residents in the early years of the settlement raised large families here.


18th Century Home with barn, not typical of those in the Commons.
The Layout of the Commons Road
Babson Musuem and Cooperage
This picture was taken in 1903 where it Dogtown was still used by farmers..
In this case, for keeping pigs.


All that remains of the abandoned colonial village are the numbered cellars.




     There is much more to pass on, but, I need to leave this piece unfinished with the promise of returning soon.  When Isaac Sawyer received his first lot of an acre of land to build his house in 1705, and an additional six acres a year later when he married Martha Bond, was it here in the Commons?

DOGTOWN COMMON

Inland among the lonely cidar dells
Of old Cape Ann, near Gloucester by the sea,
Still live the dead--- in homes that used to be.

All day in dreary spells
They tattle low with tongues of tinkling cattle
bells,
Or spirit tappings of some hollow tree,
And there, all night----all night, out of the
dark.---
They bark ----and bark.

By Percy MacKaye