Stoking the Embers of War is a historical novel set in Portland, District
of Maine, Massachusetts, 1789-90. The Treaty of Paris, which officially ended
the American Revolutionary War, was signed less than seven years earlier, in
1783, and though all that remained of the war’s inferno was little more than
smoldering embers in the memories of those who survived, passions ignited by the
conflict still ran thick and hot through the veins of the wounded. The people of
Falmouth Neck saw their homes burned to the ground at the very outset of
hostilities, and a contingent of Falmouth militiamen participated in the
Penobscot Expedition, which resulted in one of the worst disaster in U.S. Naval
history. In 1786, the people who lived on the Neck split off from Falmouth and
incorporated the town of Portland, but the District of Maine was part of
Massachusetts until 1820. On July 21, 1789, an unregistered English sloop was
captured while anchored at Cape Porpoise and impounded at Portland the next day.
There were four individuals on the vessel when it was taken: Josiah Jackson of
Newton, Massachusetts; Thomas Bird of Abbots Leigh, England; Hans Hanson of the
Kingdom of Norway; and an African boy known only as Cuffey. Jackson, Bird, and
Hanson were examined before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which was
then seated at Portland. It was determined that their ship was the Mary, an
English slave trader, and that its rightful master, Captain John Connor of
London, England, had been murdered and thrown overboard off the coast of Africa
six months earlier. Josiah Jackson, the American, was immediately released; Hans
Hanson, the Norwegian, was tried for aiding and abetting in the crime, but was
acquitted. Thomas Bird, the Englishman, was tried for the piratical murder of
Captain Connor, and was convicted; the only person held accountable for the
crime. On June 25, 1790, he was escorted to the gallows on Portland’s Bramhall
Hill by U.S. Marshal Henry Dearborn who would later be appointed U.S. Secretary
of War by President Thomas Jefferson. The story is narrated by Jeremy Haggett, a
Boston newspaper reporter whose brother, Lewis Haggett, was a U.S. Continental
Marine killed in action at Bagaduce during the Penobscot Expedition. The Haggett
brothers are the only fictional characters in the book.

Quality paperback, 268 pages, $11.95 or Kindle download $4.95.

In 1729, eleven years after the incorporation of Falmouth (much of which, including the Neck, is now Portland), the selectmen were asked to look for a schoolmaster so the state wouldn’t levy a fine on the town.  The law required towns with at least 50 families to employ a qualified schoolmaster to teach their children to read, write, and cipher.  For whatever reason, their failure to do so had either not been noticed or had been deliberately overlooked for seven years because the number of families in town reached 50 in 1726, and the Board of Selectmen searched for a proper schoolmaster for four more years after they were asked to act on the matter.

Finally, in 1733, Robert Bailey was hired to serve as Portland’s first schoolmaster.  He was instructed to “keep six months upon the Neck, three months at Purpooduck (now South Portland), and three on the north side of Back Cove.” [1] The following year Schoolmaster Bailey spent two months each at the Neck, Purpooduck, Stroudwater (now Westbrook), Spurwink (now Cape Elizabeth), New Casco (now Falmouth), and Presumpscot (now Portland’s East Deering section).  In 1736, Bailey’s salary was increased and a grammar school was established where boys could learn Latin in preparation for college as the law required for towns with 100 or more families. Secondary schools, which emphasized Latin, rhetoric, and advanced arithmetic for boys entering college, were rare outside of the major population centers such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, circa 1726.

There is no further mention of Mr. Bailey after 1736 and it is assumed that he was replaced by a Mr. Sewall who kept school on the Neck for six months and was in turn replaced by Mr. Nicholas Hodge, a student at Harvard.  When Mr. Hodge graduated from Harvard in 1739, he studied for the ministry under the tutelage of Rev. Thomas Smith, and earned a small income by continuing to serve as Portland’s schoolmaster from 1739 to 1741.

Nicholas Hodge was succeeded by Samuel Stone who kept a school in his home “on the bank of Fore river near the foot of Center street [sic]”.[2]  Eventually, Mr. Stone moved to Manchester, Massachusetts, and in 1745, Stephen Longfellow (Harvard 1742), the great-grandfather of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, came to Portland from York in response to an invitation from Rev. Thomas Smith.  According to Portland historian William Willis, the following year Mr. Longfellow had 50 students.

By 1753, Stephen Longfellow and John Wiswell (Harvard 1749) were both schoolmasters on the Neck, but three years later Mr. Wiswell was called to serve as pastor of the Congregationalist Church at New Casco in 1756.  In 1764, he traveled to England where he was ordained as an Episcopal minister and returned to Portland in 1765 to serve as pastor of Portland’s newly established Episcopal church.  But Mr. Wiswell was a Tory and shortly after the American Revolution began, he took refuge in Boston and later returned to England.  After the war, he accepted an offer to serve as pastor of a church in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia.

Commodore Edward Preble

Peter Smith (Harvard 1753), son of the Rev. Thomas Smith, opened a school on the Neck in 1755, but the following year he moved to Windham.  He was succeeded by a Mr. Wallace who kept a schoolhouse on the corner of Middle and School (now Pearl) Streets, where Stephen Longfellow had also taught.  Also in 1756, Jonathan Webb (Harvard 1754) came to Portland and soon opened another school on King (now India) Street.  He was known to his students as a strict disciplinarian and, when he was well out of ear shot, they called him “pithy Webb” because he had a habit of putting the pith of a quill in his mouth when he cut it.  When a young student, Edward Preble, who would later become the distinguished naval commodore, almost broke Schoolmaster Webb of his habit by making the pith of the quill next to be cut very disgustingly distasteful.

Theophilus Parsons

Portland’s next schoolmaster, Moses Holt (Harvard 1767), taught but a very few years before he died of consumption (tuberculosis) at age 27.  Samuel Freeman (attended Harvard), a former student of Stephen Longfellow and later Judge of Probate for Cumberland County, kept a public school on the Neck in 1764, which became a private school the following year.  In 1767,

Theophilus Parsons (Harvard 1769), who was to become the distinguished Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, opened a school on the Neck in 1770.  While fulfilling his teaching responsibilities, Parsons read law under Theophilus Bradbury and was admitted to the Cumberland Bar in July of 1774.  His school was on King (now India) Street, and later on Back (now Congress) Street.  John Frothingham (Harvard 1771) also kept a school here and studied law under Mr. Bradbury with Mr. Parsons.  In 1790, John Frothingham would be appointed by U.S. District Court Judge David Sewall to serve as a defense attorney for Thomas Bird and Hans Hanson who were charged in the murder of Captain John Connor.  Hanson was acquitted, but Bird has the dubious honor of being the first person to be executed under the authority of the then new U.S. Constitution.

Madeira 1792.

One of Portland’s earliest resident physicians, Dr. Shirley Erving (1758-1813) came from Boston in 1789.  His maternal grandfather for whom he was named, William Shirley (1694-1771), was a former British colonial administrator and twice served as governor of Massachusetts.  Shirley Erving enrolled at Harvard in 1773, but when the war with England broke out he left college and studied medicine in Boston for a time, and later went to Europe to continue his studies.  His father, John Erving (1727-1816) was a very wealthy merchant in Boston, but he was a Tory and fled to England when it was clear the English would have to abandon Boston.  

In addition to his medical practice in Portland, Dr. Erving also operated an apothecary at the west end of Middle Street, on the south side.  According to his advertisement in the Eastern Herald, he sold an assortment of drugs, medicines, groceries, dye stuffs, etc., and also “An assortment of WINES and SPIRITS, free from adulteration . . . “.  One is left to wonder if the phrase free from adulteration implied that other merchants and perhaps the taverns might be watering their wines and liquors.

The wines and spirits he offered, exclusively for medicinal purposes no doubt, included Madeira, a fortified Portuguese wine; Sherry, a fortified Spanish wine; Lisbon, a Portuguese port wine; Malaga, a sweet, fortified Spanish wine; Tenerife, a sweet, red wine made at and named for the largest of the Canary Islands; Claret, a dark red wine from the Bordeaux region of France; French Brandy, probably a fruit brandy that didn’t qualify as cognac; Jamaican, West Indian, and New England rum, “all of which he will sell on the most reasonable terms.”

Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

The first newspaper published in the state of Maine was established in Portland (then still part of Falmouth) by Benjamin Titcomb, Jr., and Thomas B. Wait.  The paper, a weekly, was named the Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, and the first issue appeared on the streets of Portland on Saturday, January 1, 1785.  It continued under this name until April of 1786, when Portland was incorporated as a separate town, at which time the Titcomb-Wait partnership was dissolved and the newspaper was renamed the Cumberland Gazette.

District of Maine in 1795

Less than five years later, on October 8, 1790, Titcomb started publishing the Gazette of Maine in opposition to Wait’s editorial positions.  According to Portland historian William Willis, “Some dissatisfaction existed at this time against Mr. Wait by a number of respectable people, who took offense at the freedom of his remarks and at his advocating for office some candidates who were not popular with the majority in town.”

It appears that a heated campaign was waged for Maine’s single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The candidates were George Thatcher of Biddeford (incumbent), who was being challenged by Josiah Thatcher of Gorham, Nathaniel Wells of Wells, and William Lithgow of Georgetown.  Mr. Wait supported George Thatcher, but a majority of Portland’s voters opposed him.  The contest grew to be so rancorous that Mr. Wait was personally assaulted, others were threatened, and Samuel Cooper Johonnot, an attorney who had come from Boston but a short time

The First Congress met in Federal Hall in New York City in 1789. Drawing by Archibald Robinson.

earlier, was driven from town.

The vote count returned for Portland was as follows: Nathaniel Wells – 65; Josiah Thatcher – 23; George Thatcher – 21; William Lithgow – 1.  Maine was still part of Massachusetts at this time, but it was a separate district entitled to one U.S. Representative.  On a district-wide basis, George Thatcher, who was endorsed by Thomas Wait’s newspaper, was re-elected to another term.

In 1792, the Cumberland Gazette was renamed yet again, this time to be called the Eastern Herald, and the rival newspapers of Thomas Wait and Benjamin Titcomb, Jr., coexisted on Portland Neck until September of 1796 when John Kelse Baker, formerly an apprentice to Thomas Wait, purchased both newspapers.  Rather than continue both, Mr. Baker published but one on a semi-weekly basis, and called it the Eastern Herald and Gazette of Maine.  A subscription for a period of one year cost $2.50, and the list of subscribers that Baker acquired with the purchases contained 1,700 names.

Thomas Wait had come to Portland in 1784 from Boston where he had been associated with a newspaper called the Chronicle.  He was editor of the Cumberland Gazette in June of 1790, and committed the Dying Statement of Thomas Bird, as dictated by Bird, to paper.  Bird was convicted of murdering Captain John Connor and was hung from a gallows on Bramhall Hill on June 25, 1790.  Wait remained here for about 30 years, eventually returning to Boston where he died in 1830.

Benjamin Titcomb, Jr. became the leader of Portland’s first Baptist Society in 1801, and moved to Brunswick in 1804 where he served as pastor of that town’s first Baptist Society.  He was the son of Deacon Benjamin Titcomb, Sr., a blacksmith, who served as foreman of the Federal Grand Jury that indicted Thomas Bird for piracy and for the murder of John Connor, master of the English slave ship Mary, off the coast of Africa.

When Cumberland County was established in 1760, Moses Pearson was appointed to serve as its first sheriff and, as such, Cumberland County’s first law enforcement officer.  Pearson was born in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1697, and was trained as a joiner or cabinet maker.  He settled at Portland Neck in 1728 or ’29 and was very active in town affairs serving as town clerk, selectman, and town treasurer.  He was also elected several times to represent the town in the General Court.  Pearson served as sheriff for eight years, until 1768, and died ten years later at age 81.

Interior of the "Old Jersey" British prison ship docked at New York.

Sheriff Pearson was succeeded in office by William Tyng who was born in Boston in 1737 and settled at Portland Neck in 1767.  Two years later, he married Elizabeth Ross, a native of Scotland.  In 1774, Sheriff Tyng received a colonel’s commission from Massachusetts Governor Gage.  He was a Loyalist and shortly after the battle at Lexington, he left Portland and placed himself under the protection of the English authorities in Boston.  He was sent to New York, where he stayed for as long as it remained under an English flag, and later settled in New Brunswick, Canada.  While in New York, he provided much humane assistance to rebel captives held on British prison ships, especially those he knew to be from Portland in the District of Maine.  After the war, he returned to Maine and settled in Gorham where he spent the remainder of his life.  William Tyng died on December 10, 1807, at age 70.  His funeral was held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Portland.

Cumberland County’s third sheriff was John Waite, another native of Newbury, Massachusetts, born in July of 1732.  His father, also John, was captain of a coastal packet that sailed between Boston and Portland Harbor and in 1738, when young John was six years old, the family moved to Portland Neck.  They lived on the road fronting the beach below King (now India) Street for many years.  In the latter part of his life, the elder John bought part of Peaks Island and lived there until he died in 1769, at age 68.

"The Death of General Wolfe" painting by Benjamin West.

His son John was a sea-captain and, in January of 1759, he married Hannah, daughter of Phineas Jones of Portland Neck, with whom he had 13 children. In the early part of their life, they lived in a house on the west side of Exchange Street, which Hannah inherited from her father.   He was captain of one of the transports that participated in the invasion of Quebec under the command of General James Wolfe in June of 1759. From the deck of his vessel, the Swallow, he witnessed the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and wrote an account of General Wolfe’s death during that assault.

In 1776, he was a member of the Provincial Congress, and was chosen town treasurer, a post he held for almost ten years.  Also, in 1776, he was appointed sheriff of the county and colonel of the first regiment when Colonel William Tyng abandoned his post and fled to Boston.  Colonel John Waite served as Cumberland County Sheriff for nearly 34 years, resigning in July of 1809 at age 77 due, he said, to the infirmities of age.  He died in 1820 at age 88.

Colonel John Waite was one of the last truly colonial figures on Portland Neck.  He stood straight as an arrow, topped with a three-cornered, cocked hat of the Revolutionary period.  His coat was blue with bright buttons, a buff vest, and a sword hung by his side.  Rarely was he seen without his white staff, his badge of office, in hand, and even in his later years he had a very impressive effect on his contemporaries both old and young.

His youngest sister, Emma, was married to the Cumberland County Jailer, Thomas Motley.  Sheriff Waite and the entire Motley family came to know the Englishman, Thomas Bird, quite well during Bird’s imprisonment in the county jail for nearly a year (1789-90), and they all held Bird in very high regard.

18th Century Court Trial

Two Massachusetts lawyers were the first to settle in Portland: Theophilus Bradbury (Harvard 1757) from Newbury, and David Wyer (Harvard 1758) from Charlestown; both arrived in 1762.  Portland historian William Willis tells us that “Bradbury was grave and dignified in his deportment, while Wyer was full of gayety and wit”.  And at a time when Portland was adjusting to divisions because of religious differences, Bradbury represented the First Parish Congregationalists, and Wyer advocated for the Episcopalians.

Bradbury and Wyer were the only two lawyers residing in Portland until 1774 when Theophilus Parsons (Harvard 1769) was admitted to the Cumberland County Bar.  Parsons also came from Newbury, Massachusetts, and the very next year following his arrival, he returned to Newbury.

John Frothingham's house on the corner of Free and Center Streets in Portland in 1884. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

After the death of David Wyer in 1776, Theophilus Bradbury was left the only lawyer in Cumberland County until 1778 when John Frothingham (Harvard 1771), a native of Charlestown, Massachusetts, moved to Portland from Greenland, New Hampshire, where he had found work as a schoolmaster.  It was Mr. Frothingham’s turn to be left the only lawyer in the county when, in 1779, Mr. Bradbury returned to Newburyport, Massachusetts.

John Frothingham did not remain alone for very long.  Before the dawn of a new decade, Royal Tyler (Harvard 1776) came to Portland from Boston, but he stayed no more than two years and moved on to Boothbay.  Mr. Tyler would serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont before his career was over.

Daniel Davis arrived in Portland from Boston on horseback in 1782.  According to Willis, Mr. Davis was “not liberally educated”, but in 1796 he was chosen to succeed William Lithgow, Jr. in the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Maine.  Daniel Davis was appointed solicitor general of Massachusetts in 1801 and served in that capacity until 1832.  He returned to Boston in 1804, and died in 1835.

In 1789 Salmon Chase (Dartmouth 1785) and Samuel Cooper Johonnot (Harvard 1783) opened law practices in Portland.  Mr. Chase came from Cornish, New Hampshire, and Mr. Johonnot came from Boston.  And in 1790, Mr. William Symmes (Harvard 1780) came to Portland from Andover, Massachusetts, where he had previously practiced law.

John Frothingham and William Symmes were both appointed to serve as defense attorneys for Hans Hanson and Thomas Bird, who were charged in connection with the murder of Captain John Connor, master of the English sloop Mary, off the coast of Africa.  U.S. District Attorney for the District of Maine William Lithgow, Jr., who lived at Fort Western (now Hallowell), rode to Portland on horseback to prosecute Hanson and Bird.  The trial, held on June 4, 1790, was moved to the First Parish Meeting House because the new courthouse was too small to accomodate the crowd that wished to witness the trial.  Hanson was acquitted, but Bird was found guilty and was sentenced to death, though he swore in his dying statement that he was innocent.  He was hung from a gallows on Bramhall Hill on June 25, 1790.  Bird’s body was buried at Portland’s Eastern Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

Apothecary Medicines. Photo by Doug Coldwell. Wikimedia Commons.

There were no trained physicians living at Portland Neck during the early years of the town’s development.  For many years, Rev. Thomas Smith, Portland’s first ordained minister (1726) and one of the very few well educated men on The Neck, served in a dual capacity as physician to the townspeople’s bodies as well as their souls.  At the time, it was very common for ministers in outlying settlements to perform this double-duty. 

Guy's Hospital, London. Founded by Thomas Guy (1645-1724).

Twelve years after Rev. Smith settled on The Neck, Dr. Nathaniel Coffin arrived (1738) from Newburyport, Massachusetts.  The following year (1739), Dr. Coffin married Patience Hale and soon thereafter the couple built or purchased a home and office on India Street where they raised six children: Sarah, Nathaniel Jr.,Jeremiah, Francis, Mary, and Dorcas. 

Rev. Smith’s journal notes on December 8, 1760, “The people upon this Neck are in a sad toss about Dr. Coffin’s having the small pox, which it is thought he took of a man at New Casco, of whom many there have taken it.  It is also at Stroudwater.”  Perhaps sensing that his days were numbered, and that the “people upon this Neck” would be left without a proper physician, Dr. Coffin sent his son, Nathaniel, Jr., off to England in 1763 to study medicine at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals in London.

Dr. Nathaniel Coffin, Jr., returned to The Neck in 1765 where, historian William Willis tells

Eleanor Foster Coffin (1744-1825). Oil by Gilbert Stuart.

us, “he entered upon a very full and lucrative practice”.  Soon after opening his medical practice, he married Eleanor Foster of Charlestown, Massachusetts.  They had eleven children, including five sons who were all said to be “handsome in person”, and six daughters who were said to be “among the most attractive ladies of their day.”

In January of 1766, at the very beginning of the year following young Dr. Coffin’s return from England, his father, Dr. Nathaniel Coffin, Sr., died.  Fortunately, however, he would not be required to look after the health of Portland’s rapidly growing population alone.  In 1765, the same year that he returned from London, Drs. Edward Watts and John Lowther settled on The Neck. 

Dr. Lowther arrived from Tuxford, county of Nottingham, England and a few months later, in August of 1765, he married Rebecca Bradbury of York.  He immediately opened his medical practice in a building on the corner of Middle and India Streets, where he also ran an apothecary dispensing medicines, drugs, and other chemicals. Later, he  built a home on the corner of Middle and Lime Streets, where he and his wife raised seven children.  According to Willis, Dr. Lowther was “a skillful physician and surgeon”, but “liberal and careless of money, and often embarrassed in his affairs.”

Dr. Edward Watts was a surgeon and physician stationed at Fort Pownal in 1759 under Brigadier Jedidiah Preble.  On May 22, 1765, he married Mary Oxnard, the daughter of a Boston merchant whose two brothers, Thomas and Edward Oxnard, were merchants in Portland.  Dr. Watts also opened an apothecary shop to complement his medical practice, and later built a three-story, wooden house on Middle Street, which Willis tells us “was then the largest and most conspicuous in town”.  Here, he and his wife, Mary, raised eight children including five sons, two of whom would be lost at sea.

Dr. Shirley Erving's bill for attending the birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1807. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

These three physicians looked after the ill and injured of Portland for nearly a quarter of a century before Dr. Shirley Erving arrived from Boston.  His father, John Erving of Boston, was an eminent merchant and a royalist who bestowed upon his son the best education money could provide, for as long as it lasted.  Shirley attended Boston Latin School, and entered Harvard College in 1773, but with the outbreak of the American Revolution, his father fled the country and his property was confiscated.  Shirley Erving left Harvard and studied medicine with Dr. Lloyd of Boston, and later completed his studies in Europe, then returned to Boston for a time before moving on to Portland.

Dr. Erving married Mary Coffin of Boston in 1786.  Three years later, in 1789, after their first child, Frances, was born, they moved to Portland where Dr. Erving continued his medical practice and added yet another apothecary to the commercial establishments on The Neck.  According to Willis, he also became Portland’s “inspector of pot and pearl ashes, a great article of commerce at that period.”

All four of these men were practicing medicine on and about Portland Neck in 1790 and might well have attended the trial and execution of Thomas Bird.  It is likely that one of these physicians pronounced Bird dead after the hanging.

Dr. John Lowther died at Portland in 1794.  Dr. Edward Watts died suddenly at Wells on June 9, 1799, en route to Portland from Boston.  Dr. and Mrs. Shirley Erving moved back to Boston in 1811 and he died two years later, in July of 1813.  And Dr. Nathaniel Coffin, Jr., died at Portland on October 21, 1826.

Portland Head Light. Courtesy State of Maine.

There were no lighthouses on the coast of Maine in 1784 when a group of merchants submitted a petition to the Massachusetts Legislature requesting the construction of a light at Portland Head, which was then part of the town of Falmouth, but is now within the boundaries of the town of Cape Elizabeth.  In 1786, when the residents of Falmouth Neck broke away from the town of Falmouth, they took their new name from the promontory long known to mariners as Portland Head.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ca 1843. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

Initially, nothing happened, but in 1787, three years after the petition was submitted, two people were killed in a shipwreck at Bangs (now Cushing) Island, near Portland Head, and the Massachusetts Legislature appropriated $750 for the immediate construction of a lighthouse.

Jonathan Bryant and John Nichols, two local masons, were hired to build a stone tower 58 feet high, but funds ran out before the project was completed.  Then, in 1790, the same year that Thomas Bird, an English seaman, was tried and hung in Portland for piracy and murder, the U.S. Congress appropriated $1,500 to finish the job.  It was determined, however, that the light could not be seen from the south and the plan was changed to make the tower 72 feet high.  Bryant resigned in protest, and Nichols finished the lighthouse in January 1791.

Keeper Joshua Strout 1869-1904.

Captain Joseph Greenleaf, a veteran of the American Revolution, was appointed to serve as the first keeper at Portland Head Light, which went into service on January 10, 1791.  Greenleaf died in October of 1795, while fishing in his boat on the Fore River, and he was replaced for a short period by David Duncan, who in turn was succeeded by Barzillai Delano, a blacksmith, who became keeper in 1796.

Winslow Lewis, a contractor, advised in November of 1812 that the upper portion of the tower was poorly built, and the lantern was also poorly constructed.  He recommended lowering the tower 20 feet and installing a new lantern, which was done in 1813.

The Annie C. Maguire wreck.

Brazillai Delano died in 1820, the year that Maine separated from Massachusetts.  He was succeeded by his son, James, who served as keeper from 1854-61.  The next keeper was Joshua Freeman who, according to local legend, kept a supply of rum that he sold to visitors for three cents a glass.

A sign posted at Fort Williams Park reads:  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow often walked from Portland to visit this Lighthouse.  The Keepers were his friends and it is believed he sat her for inspiration for his poem “The Lighthouse”.

“Sail on, Sail on ye stately ships,

And with your floating bridge

The ocean span.

Be mine to guard this light

From all eclipse.

Be yours to bring man near

Unto man.”

A Fresnel lens replaced the lamps in 1855, and after 40 people died in the wreck of the English ship Bohemian in 1864, the top 20 foot section ofthe tower was restored.  In 1869, Captain Joshua Strout, a native of Cape Elizabeth and a former sea captain, became the light’s keeper.  Joshua and his wife, Mary, raised eleven children in the keeper’s house.  Their parrot, Billy, a well-known member of the household, was said to help Keeper Strout watch for inclement weather, which always prompted Billy to say, “Joe, let’s start the horn. It’s foggy!”  Billy lived to be over 80 years old, and It is also said that, in his declining years, his favorite pastime was listening to the radio.

Keeper Frank Hilt 1929-44.

When the Halfway Rock Light was completed in 1871 on a rocky ledge in Casco Bay near the town of Harpswell, authorities determined that Portland Head Light was less important than it had been and the tower was, once again, shortened by 20 feet in 1883.  However, there were many complaints and one year later the tower was restored to its former height.  Three years later, the English bark Annie ran aground on the rocks at Portland Head.  The Strout family managed to get a line to the vessel and rescued all aboard, including the captain’s wife.  On a rock near the lighthouse there is a painted inscription: Annie C. Maguire, shipwrecked here, Christmas Eve 1886.

C. Maguire

Keeper Robert Thayer Sterling.

By the turn of the century, Joshua Strout was the oldest keeper on the Maine coast.  He retired in 1904, and died three years later, at age 81.  Joshua was succeeded as keeper by his son, Joseph, who remained until 1928, ending 59 years of the Strout family at Portland Head.  Captain Frank O. Hilt of St. George, Maine, became keeper in 1929 and remained until 1944.  According to the Lighthouse Museum, one of Hilt’s “more unusual accomplishments was the construction of a giant checkerboard near the base of the lighthouse tower.”

The last civilian keeper was Robert Thayer Sterling, of Peaks Island, who succeeded Hilt and remained until he retired in 1946.  Then

the U.S. Coast Guard assumed responsibility for Portland Head Light until August 7, 1989.  In October of 1993, the property was deeded to the Town of Cape Elizabeth.  (Note: Unless otherwise noted, photos are provided courtesy of the Portland Headlight Museum.)

Rev. Samuel Deane, ca 1800. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

Rev. Samuel Deane was born July 10, 1733, in Dedham, Massachusetts.  He was educated at Harvard College where he took his first degree in 1760.  Three years later, Mr. Deane was appointed tutor at Cambridge and held the office until he accepted the invitation to become assistant to Rev. Thomas Smith in Portland, Maine.

Mrs. Eunice (Pearson) Deane, ca 1800. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

His wit and sharp mind are well illustrated in an anecdote told about his service as a guide in the Museum of Harvard College.  While showing a stranger some of the curiosities of the museum, the stranger asked about the history of a particular long and rusty sword.  Mr. Deane replied that he believed it was the sword that the Biblical Balaam used when he threatened to kill his ass.  The stranger observed, “but Balaam had no sword, he only wished for one.”  Mr. Deane is said to have quickly replied, “Oh, true, that is the one he wished for.”

On October 17, 1764, Mr. Deane was ordained in Portland’s First Parish Church.  The following year he was settled and purchased a three acre lot of land on the west side of the meeting house extending from Congress Street down to Back Cove.  (Note: The meeting house stood on the lot now occupied by the stone Universalist-Unitarian Church in Portland between Elm and Chestnut Streets one block east of Monument Square.)   His home was built on the lot (on the corner of Elm and Congress Streets across from the Portland Public Library) in the autumn of 1765 described as “two stories high, with a sharp roof falling on each of the four sides from the ridge-pole, with Lutheran (stained glass) windows in front”.  And on April 3, 1766, he married Eunice Pearson, daughter of Moses Pearson, who was the first Sheriff of Cumberland County.

When British Captain Henry Mowatt burned the town in 1775, Rev. Deane’s home was not destroyed, but so many of his parishioners had to leave that he and Mrs. Deane moved to Gorham where they  established a residence on a farm they referred to as “South Green”.  They built a single story gambrel roofed home there and lived in it for seven years.  But Portland historian William Willis tells us that even in 1782, the year Rev. &  Mrs. Deane returned to Portland Neck, “the Parish was in a sad state; its members were scattered, their property had been laid waste, their meeting-house, riddled by the shot of the enemy”. 

The Rev. Thomas Smith, 94, died in May of 1795, leaving Rev. Deane, 63, sole pastor of Portland’s First Parish Church until 1809 when Rev. Ichabod Nichols was ordained and became his assistant.  Mrs. Eunice Deane, whom Willis referred to as Dr. Deane’s “faithful companion and wise counselor for forty-six and a half years”, died October 14, 1812.  She was five years his senior, 39 years old when they married, and 85 at the time of her death.  They had no children.  Dr. Deane did not long survive and, Willis wrote, “on the 12^th of November, 1814, he calmly resigned all his earthly relations and burthens, in the eighty-second year of his age, and the fifty-first of his ministry.  His last words were “Death has lost all his terrors; I am going to my friend Jesus, for I have seen him this night.”

Congress Street, Portland. 1800. The Deane residence, center, and the First Parish Church to the right. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

Dr. Deane was an passionate farmer and most of his land was planted in crops and orchards all the way down to Back Cove.  He experimented with potatoes and various other crops, and kept meticulous records.  In 1790, he published The New England Farmer, or Georgical Dictionary containing “a compendious account of the ways and methods in which the most important Art of Husbandry, in all its various branches is, or may be practiced to the greatest advantage, in this country.”   He probably attended the trial of Thomas Bird on June 4, 1790, which was held in his church, and was very likely at Bird’s execution three weeks later helping the English seaman prepare for his final voyage.

According to Willis, in person Dr. Deane was “tall, erect and portly, of good personal appearance, and of grave and dignified manners; he was possessed of a keen wit, and fond of social conversation, in which he could always make himself agreeable.  His style of preaching was calm, and without much animation; his sermons were brief, plain and practical, and without ornament or display; they wre well written, but not calculated to kindle or excite an audience.  He aimed more to convince the understanding than to alarm the fears or arouse the passions.”

“He had no sectarian zeal or bigotry about him; he was ready to commune with kindred spirits, and sincere lovers of God, whatever may have been their speculative belief in regard to his nature and mode of existence.  His faith in God, in the mediation and atonement of Jesus, in the influences of the Holy Spirit, and the salvation of the just, was clear, firm and unwavering; but he did not believe himself to be infallible, nor that it was his office to judge his neighbor for modes of belief, provided his conduct was right, nor pronounce him condemned of God, for any mistake on a metaphysical dogma.  His language was, ‘The Deity will not punish us in another world for not having understood in this what cannot be understood.’ “

General Peleg Wadsworth's house and store on Back (now Congress) Street in Portland, 1786. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

Silhouette of General Peleg Wadsworth.

Peleg Wadsworth was born in Duxbury, Massachusetts, May 6, 1748, to Peleg and Susanna (Sampson) Wadsworth.  He graduated from Harvard College in 1769 and gained employment as a school teacher in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he met Elizabeth Bartlett (1753-1829).  They were married in 1772, and settled in Kingston, Massachusetts, until the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, when he organized a company of minutemen and was chosen captain.  He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1777, and was appointed Adjutant General of Massachusetts in 1778.

In 1779, General Wadsworth served as second-in-command to General Solomon Lovell, commander of land forces sent to attack a British fort at Castine, Maine.  The engagement, known as the Penobscot Expedition, was one of the worst naval defeats in American history.  Commodore Dudley Saltonstall was in overall command of the naval forces, which consisted of 43 warships representing most of the American fleet.  Lt. Colonel Paul Revere also served in this campaign as the

commander of artillery.  Generals Lovell and Wadsworth went ashore at Castine with 1,150 Continental Marines and militiamen.  Some 400 of the troops under General Wadsworth scaled a cliff under constant enemy fire and though they suffered 100 casualties, they laid siege to the British fort over a period of two weeks.  But Commodore Saltonstall was so shaken by their heavy losses that he refused to land reinforcements, which allowed time for the arrival of British reinforcements.  Saltonstall ordered Lovell to retreat and over the next two days the American fleet, though superior in strength, fled up the Penobscot River pursued by the British.  Some of the American vessels were captured, but most ran aground and were torched and then abandoned.  All 43 of the ships were lost.  Commodore Saltonstall was blamed for the disaster.  He was later court-martialed and relieved of his command.

The following year, in March, General Wadsworth was given command of the entire Maine Militia.  On February 17, 1781, British soldiers from Fort George in Castine overran his headquarters in Thomaston.  He was captured and imprisoned, but he and his cellmate, Maj. Benjamin Burton, escaped one night and made their way back to Thomaston.  Later, he joined his family in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he remained until the war was over.

Mrs. Anne Longfellow Pierce. Courtesy Maine Historical Society.

After the war, in April of 1784, General Wadsworth returned to Maine and purchased a lot of land on Back (now Congress) Street in Portland.  He engaged in surveying and over the next two years ordered enough bricks from Philadelphia to construct the first entirely brick home built on Portland Neck.  For many years he operated a store out of a barn built beside the house.  In 1814, after a roof fire, a third floor was added to the house, and in 1901 the property was left to the Maine Historical Society by General Wadsworth’s granddaughter, Mrs. Anne Longfellow Pierce whose brother, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, grew up in the house, which is today known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House.

In 1790, General Peleg Wadsworth and his family probably sat on their wide window seats and watched U.S. Marshal Henry Dearborn lead Thomas Bird to the gallows on Bramhill Hill where Bird was executed for the murder of Captain John Connor, master of the sloop Mary.  That year, General Wadsworth purchased 7,800 acres of land about 40 miles northwest of Portland.

In addition to his military service, General Peleg Wadsworth served as a presidential elector and a member of the Massachusetts Senate, and from 1793-1807 was the first representative in Congress from the District of Maine.  In 1800 he built Wadsworth Hall on his land to the northwest, and in January of 1807 he moved there where, on February 27 that same year, he incorporated the town of Hiram.  He devoted the remainder of his life to farming and local civil service, and died in Hiram on July 18, 1829.  He is buried in the family cemetery at Wadsworth Hall.