Early settlers
Traces of human occupation in the Yarmouth area date to about 2,000 BC. During the years prior to the arrival of the Europeans, many Native American cultures existed in the area, [3] largely because of the natural features of the coastal land. Rivers provided several resources, including food, fertile soil, power for the mills and the navigability between the inland areas and the ocean. [4]
In 1643, Englishman George Felt, who had emigrated to Charlestown, Massachusetts Bay Colony, eighteen years earlier, purchased 300 acres of land at Broad Cove from John Phillips (1607–c. 1667), a Welshman, and thus became one of the first European settlers in Yarmouth. (His family in Bedfordshire, England, went by the family name Felce. He called himself George Felch, however, when he moved to America. He began to be known as George Felt in his later years.) [5]
Englishman William Royall (c. 1595–1676), [6] a cooper, emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, in July 1629, aboard the Lyon's Whelp . He was a servant in the Massachusetts Bay Colony Company, and after serving his seven years, he was provided with a land grant in the Casco Bay area of Maine. In 1636, he purchased a farm at what is now the upscale Lambert Point, next to Redding Creek, at the southern tip of Lambert Road, where he lived with his wife, County Durham native Phoebe Green. They had thirteen children together between 1639 and 1657, the first being son William Jr. [5]
The Royal River has ever-since borne an alternative spelling of Royall Sr.'s name, though two streets off Gilman Road — Royall Meadow Road and Royall Point Road — carry the double-L spelling. (One of the earliest maps naming the river Royal was a 1699 map by Wolfgang William Romer on which it was spelled "Roiall River.") [6] This stream and its vicinity were called by the Indians "Westcustogo" — a name that, until the early 1990s, was preserved by an inn of the same name on Princes Point Road at its intersection with Lafayette Street. [7] (The building remains but it is now occupied by another business.)
John Cousins (c. 1596–1682), a native of Wiltshire, England, had arrived a year or more earlier than Royall, with his wife, Mary, occupying the neck of land between the branches of the Cousins River and Cousins Island. [8]
By 1676, approximately sixty-five people lived in Westcustogo. Soon after, however, conflicts forged by King Philip's War (1675–1678) caused them to abandon their homes and move south. [3] John Cousins was injured and went to York, Maine, to receive treatment. He died in Cider Hill, York County, in 1682, aged 86. He deeded his real estate in Casco Bay to his wife. [5]
Some settlers returned to their dwellings in 1679, and within twelve months the region became incorporated as North Yarmouth, the eighth town of the Province of Maine. [5]
In 1684, an English military officer named Walter Gendall claimed to own all of Felt's two thousand acres in Casco Bay. He had purchased one hundred acres from him in 1680. [9] Gendall had emigrated to America from Cornwall around 1640. [9]
In 1688, during the early stages of King William's War, also known as the Second Indian War (1688–1697), while the inhabitants on the southern side of the river were building a garrison, they were attacked by Indians, and attempted a defense. They continued the contest until nightfall, when the Indians retired. It was not long before they appeared again, in such force that the thirty-six families of the settlement were forced to flee, abandoning their homes for a second time. Walter Gendall, who had been on good terms with the Indians, was killed. [9]
The unrest kept the area deserted for many years, but by 1715 settlers revisited their homes, by which point they found their fields and the sites of their habitations covered by a young growth of trees. The mills at the First Falls were rebuilt first. [5]
In 1722, a "Committee for the Resettlement of North Yarmouth" was formed in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay. [5]
In 1725, Massachusetts natives William and Matthew Scales were killed at the hands of the Indians. William's wife and daughter, both named Susannah, survived. His daughter married James Buxton the same year. They are both buried in the Ledge Cemetery. [5]
Joseph Felt, son of Moses Felt II, also perished. His wife, Sarah (Mills), and children were taken into captivity for five years. One of the captors remarked to Felt's widow: "Husband much tough man! Shot good many times, no die! Take scalp off alive; then take knife and cut neck long 'round." [10] Joseph Felt's daughter and George Felt's great-granddaughter, Sarah, married in 1720 Captain Peter Weare, who recovered the family in some woods near Quebec. He later drowned while crossing the river near his home. The captain's son and Joseph Felt's brother-in-law, Joseph Weare, became a noted scout, pursuing the Native Americans at every opportunity until his death during a trip to Boston sometime after 1774. His widow, Mary Noyes, remarried, to Humphrey Merrill of Falmouth. [5]
Once resettlement began, in 1727, the town's population began to grow rapidly. A proprietors' map was drawn up. It surveyed land divisions made with 103 original proprietors, each with a home lot of ten acres. If this lot was occupied and improved, the settler was permitted to apply for larger after-divisions. [5]
The structural frame of the first meetinghouse, the Meetinghouse under the Ledge, was raised in 1729 near Westcustogo Hill on what is now Gilman Road, and nine years later the first school was built at the northwestern corner of the Princes Point Road intersection. [5]
North Yarmouth held its first town meeting on May 14, 1733. [5]
In August 1746, a party of thirty-two Indians secreted themselves near the Lower Falls for the apparent purpose of surprising Weare's garrison, in the process killing 35-year-old Philip Greely, whose barking dog blew their cover. [5] His wife was Hannah. Their son, Captain Jonathan Greeley, died in an engagement with a British frigate off Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1781. He was 39. Hannah remarried, to Jonathan Underwood. [5]
In June 1748, [11] a large party of Indians surprised four people near the meetinghouse. They killed the elderly Ebenezer Eaton. [5]
Joseph Burnell was the only inhabitant of the town to be killed at the hands of the Indians in 1751. He had been on horseback near the Presumpscot River falls when he was ambushed and shot. He was found scalped, with his steed lying nearby, having been shot four times. [5] He left behind a wife and 14-year-old daughter, both named Sarah.
In 1756, Indians attacked the Means family, who lived at Flying Point. The family consisted of Thomas, his wife Alice, daughters Alice and Jane, [12] an infant son, Robert, and Molly Finney, sister of the patriarch and aged about sixteen. The family was dragged out of their home. Thomas was shot and scalped. Mother and baby ran back into the house and barricaded the door. One of the attackers shot through a hole in the wall, killing the infant and puncturing his mother's breast. John Martin, who had been sleeping in another room, fired at them, causing them to flee. They took with them Molly, whom they made follow them through the woods to Canada. Upon her arrival in Quebec, she was sold as a slave. A few months later, Captain William McLellan, of Falmouth, was in Quebec in charge of a group of prisoners for exchange. He had known Molly before her capture and secretly arranged for her escape. He came below her window and threw her a rope which she slid down. McLellan brought her back to Falmouth on his vessel. They married shortly afterwards. [5] Alice remarried, to Colonel George Rogers. Thomas is interred in Freeport's First Parish Cemetery, alongside his son. His wife is buried with her second husband in Flying Point Cemetery.
The Means massacre was the last act of resistance by the indigenous people to occur within the limits of the town. [5]
By 1764, 1,098 individuals lived in 154 houses. By 1810, the population was 3,295. During a time of peace, settlement began to relocate along the coast and inland. [3]
The town's Main Street gradually became divided into the Upper Village (also known as the Corner) and Lower Falls, the split roughly located around the present-day U.S. Route 1 overpass (Brickyard Hollow, as it was known). Among the new proprietors at the time were descendants of the Plymouth Pilgrims. [5]
The Yarmouth Village Improvement Society has added wooden plaques to over 100 notable buildings in town. These include: [13] [14]
- Cushing and Hannah Prince House, 189 Greely Road — built 1785. This Federal-style farmhouse remained the home of several generations of the Levi and Olive Prince Blanchard family from 1832 to 1912
- Mitchell House, 333 Main Street — circa 1800. Another Federal-style building, with an unusual steeply-pitched hip roof, it was the home of three doctors — Ammi Ruhamah Mitchell, who died "suddenly" in 1824, aged 62, Gad Hitchcock and Eleazer Burbank
- Capt. S. C. Blanchard House, 317 Main Street — 1855. One of the most elaborate and finely-detailed Italianate residences on the Maine coast, it was built by Sylvanus Blanchard (1778–1858), [15] a highly successful shipbuilder. The design is by Charles A. Alexander, who also executed the Chestnut Street Methodist Church in Portland. It replaced a building that is pictured in the oldest image (a drawing) of a Yarmouth street scene, drawn between 1837 and 1855 [16]
- Captain Rueben Merrill House, 233 West Main Street — 1858. Thomas J. Sparrow, the first native Portland architect, designed this three-storey Italian-style house. Merrill was a well-known sea captain, who went down with his ship off San Francisco in 1875. Few changes have been made in the building, because it did not leave the possession of the Merrill family between then and 2011
Another notable building is Camp Hammond (1889–90), at 275 Main Street, whose construction method is significant in that the building consists of a single exterior wall of heavy planks over timbers, with no hidden spaces or hollow walls. This so-called mill-built construction was used largely for fire prevention. [13] It was built by George W. Hammond. Frederick Law Olmsted, who is responsible for the layout of New York's Central Park, designed the landscape for the exterior. [17]
A "grasshopper plague" arrived in 1822, which resulted in the loss of wheat and corn crops. [5]
Around 1847, the Old Ledge School was moved from Gilman Road to today's Maine State Route 88, at the foot of the hill where the West Side Trail crosses the road. A 1975 replica now stands just beyond the brick schools on West Main Street. [5]
