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 Bradford’s 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 England’s
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, Lowell’s _Biglow Papers_,
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s _Oldtown Folks_ and _A Minister’s 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HISTORIC TOWNS OF NEW ENGLAND
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_:
“Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer,
Does the golden-locked fruit-bearer
Through his painted woodlands stray;
Than where hillside oaks and beeches
Overlook the long blue reaches,
Silver coves and pebbled beaches,
And green isles of Casco Bay;
Nowhere day, for delay,
With a tenderer look beseeches,
‘Let me with my charmed earth stay!’”
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
[Illustration: WHITE HEAD, CUSHING ISLAND, PORTLAND, MAINE.
AS SEEN FROM PEAK’S ISLAND.]
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 Philip’s 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 Deering’s 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
[Illustration: DEERING’S WOODS.
SHOWING BROOK WHICH THE SOLDIERS HAD TO FORD IN THE FIGHT WITH THE
INDIANS IN 1689.]
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
Mowatt’s 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 dame’s 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 can’t wait for them to cool!” Portland ought to mark with a bronze
tablet the site of Alice Greele’s 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
[Illustration: FIRST PARISH CHURCH.
CONTAINING THE MOWATT CANNON-BALL.]
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
Majesty’s 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_:
“I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o’er the tide!
And the dead captains as they lay
In their graves, o’erlooking the tranquil bay,
Where they in battle died.”
Commodore Edward Preble, of Tripoli fame, and Rear-Admiral Alden, who
fought at Vera
[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF LONGFELLOW (NOW A TENEMENT HOUSE).
SHOWING AT THE EXTREME LEFT THE BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS B. REED, PORTLAND,
MAINE.]
Cruz, New Orleans, and Mobile, both Portlanders, are buried here. There
is also a monument commemorating the gallant Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth,
who fell before Tripoli in 1804,--a volunteer in a desperate and tragic
enterprise. He was a brother of Longfellow’s mother, and a new lustre
has been added to his name by the nephew who bore it. In this ground
also, but unmarked, are the graves of the victims of the French and
Indian siege and massacre of 1690, and of the eleven men killed in the
more fortunate battle of the previous year.
The first house in Portland built entirely of brick was erected in 1785,
by General Peleg Wadsworth, who was Adjutant-General of Massachusetts
during the Revolution; it is now known as the Longfellow house, and
stands next above the Preble House, on Congress Street. The poet was not
born in this house, but was brought to it as an infant, and it was his
home until his marriage, in 1831. It is now owned and occupied by his
sister, Mrs. Pierce, who has provided that eventually it shall become
the property of the Maine Historical Society, which ensures its
preservation as a reminder that Maine gave our country its most widely
known and best-loved poet. The house in which Longfellow was born is the
three-story frame building at the corner of Fore and Hancock Streets.
Around the corner, on Hancock Street, is the house in which Speaker Reed
was born.
For his services in the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts gave General
Wadsworth a large tract of land in Oxford County, to improve which he
removed to Hiram, and the family of his son-in-law, Stephen Longfellow,
thereafter occupied his residence in Portland. To the end of his life,
the poet made this house his home whenever he visited the scenes of his
youth, and many of his best poems were written there. The central part
of the hotel adjoining was the mansion of Commodore Edward Preble, built
just before his death in 1807, and some of the best rooms in this hotel
have still the wood-carving and other ornamentation given them by the
hero of Tripoli. A grandson of the Commodore was one of the officers of
the _Kearsarge_ when that ship sunk the rebel cruiser _Alabama_, in the
most picturesque naval engagement of modern times.
We have seen that Portland has a history connecting it with the French
and Indian Wars, the Revolution, and the War of 1812. It was also the
scene of a curious episode in the late Civil War--the cutting out of the
United States revenue cutter _Caleb Cushing_, in June, 1863. The cutter
had been preparing for an encounter with the rebel privateer _Tacony_,
which had been capturing and burning many vessels on the coast of New
England. A delay in fitting her out had been occasioned by the illness
and death of her captain. In the meantime, the _Tacony_ had captured the
schooner _Archer_, and transferred her armament to the prize, which,
after burning the _Tacony_, boldly sailed into Portland harbor in the
guise of an innocent fisherman, with Lieutenant Reade in command. His
purpose was to burn two gunboats then being fitted out in the harbor,
but he found them too well guarded. He then turned his attention to the
cutter, which was preparing for a fight with him with no suspicion that
he was lying almost alongside. Captain Clarke had died the day before
Reade’s arrival, and Lieutenant Davenport, a Georgian by birth, was in
command of the cutter. At night, when only one watchman was on deck, a
surprise was quietly effected, and the crew put in irons. With a good
wind the cutter might easily have gotten away from the sleeping town
and slipped by the unsuspicious forts; but she was becalmed just after
passing the forts, and in the morning three steamers were armed and sent
in pursuit. At the time it was supposed that the Southern lieutenant had
turned traitor, but the event proved his loyalty; for he refused to
inform his captors where the ammunition was kept, and they had only a
dozen balls for the guns, which were all spent without injury to the
pursuers. The affair was watched by thousands on the hills and
house-tops, and on yachts which in the dead calm were rowed to the
scene. At length the town was startled by the blowing up and utter
demolition of the cutter; the Confederates had set fire to the vessel
and tried to escape in the boats, but were at once captured by the
steamers which had been circling around them. The _Archer_ was also
captured, with all the chronometers and other valuables of the vessels
bonded or destroyed by the _Tacony_. It proved an important check to the
operations of the Confederacy on the sea, and it came just one week
before the battle of Gettysburg and the capture of Vicksburg.
The first British squadron to enter the harbor of Portland after the
bombardment by Mowatt in 1775, came just eighty-five years afterward to
a day. It was sent to give dignity to the embarkation of the Prince of
Wales in 1860. It was in Portland, at what are now called the Victoria
wharves, that the Prince, then a young man of nineteen, took his last
step on American soil. His embarkation on a bright October day was one
of the finest pageants ever witnessed in this country. Five of the most
powerful men-of-war in the British navy, in gala trim, with yards
manned, saluted the royal standard, gorgeous in crimson and gold, then
for the first and only time displayed in this country. The deafening
broadsides when the Prince reached the deck of the _Hero_ were answered
from the American forts and men-of-war.
Another pageant, this time grand and solemn, was enacted in this harbor,
in February, 1870. A British squadron, convoyed by American
battle-ships, brought the remains of the philanthropist, George Peabody,
in the most powerful ironclad the world had then seen. The funeral
procession of boats from the English and American ships was an
impressive spectacle.
[Illustration: Henry M Longfellow]
It was a bright winter day, immediately succeeding a remarkable
ice-storm, and the trees of the islands, the cape, and the city sparkled
in the sun as if every bough were encrusted with diamonds--a wonderful
frame for a memorable picture. Nature had put on her choicest finery to
relieve the sombre effect of the draped flags, the muffled oars, the
long, slow lines of boats, and the minute guns from ships and forts.
The great fire of July 4, 1866, which burned fifteen hundred buildings
in the centre of the city, also destroyed an immense number of shade
trees, mostly large elms, the abundance of which had given to Portland
the title of “Forest City.” In a few years the buildings were replaced
by greatly improved structures; but the trees could not be improvised so
readily, and the scar of the fire is still noticeable from the absence
of aged trees in the district swept by it. Advantage was taken of the
clearing of the ground in the most thickly settled part of the city, to
lay out Lincoln Park in the centre of the ruins. This is now a charming
spot, with its fountain and flowers, its lawns and shaded walks.
The city is fortunate in the abundance and purity of its water supply,
which is drawn from Lake Sebago, sixteen miles distant. The natural
outlet of this lake is the Presumpscot River, which has several valuable
water-powers along its short course to its mouth in Casco Bay, near
Portland harbor.