History in towns: Wiscasset, Maine

On September 18, 1830, Daniel Webster (1782-1852) wrote his friend Joseph Story (1779-1845), a justice of the Supreme Court, who was contemplating a trip to Wiscasset, Maine, an emphatic warning. "My sincere advice to you, My Dear Sir, is not to go. The weather is cold, & you may in some degree, expose yourself, even with the utmost care."(1)

Wiscasset, on the shore of an expansive bay of the Sheepscot River thirteen miles from the ocean [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE V OMITTED], is indeed harassed by a hostile climate. Alexander Johnston Jr., who lived in the splendid Carlton house ([ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE I OMITTED] and [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1, 2 OMITTED]) for almost a quarter of a century, kept a diary in which he meticulously recorded the daily fluctuations of weather, and the frequency of gales, squalls, blizzards, and northeasters is remarkable. On September 17, 1875, he wrote: "A pouring rain storm and N.E. gale began last evening," and on January 17, 1877: "So much snow has fallen that it is difficult to get into the woods with teams and the roads are full and blocked."(2)

Not only the inclement weather but the stony soil and, in the late seventeenth century, assaults by the Indians and the French combined to discourage permanent settlement. In 1660 the Davie brothers, George and John, the first recorded white settlers, built huts on the bluff where the county jail was subsequently bulk [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XIII OMITTED]. After a score of years, when Indian raids were devastating the region, the Davies abandoned their primitive hamlet.

Whatever tribulations were endemic to Sheepscot Bay, it was blessed with one of the finest natural harbors on the coast of northern New England. An 1813 report of the Navy Department asserted: "The port [of Wiscasset] embraces a good harbor, free from storms, where a large fleet may ride in safety."(3) Inevitably the harbor was a magnet, and in 1729 Robert Hooper and his family came from Massachusetts, bringing cattle and fruit trees, and built a log cabin beside a great rock on the headland that juts into the bay. Hooper and the stalwart pioneers who followed him established the first lasting community in what became Wiscasset. Since sporadic attacks by Indians were still a danger, some of the houses were fortified, and a garrison was built on Fort Hill. In the 1740s Jonathan Williamson (1712-1798), one of the early settlers, was twice seized by Indians, taken a captive to Canada, and twice released.

In 1750 it was Williamson who submitted a petition for municipal incorporation to the General Court of Massachusetts, pleading for "ye Powers & privileges that Other of His Majesty's Good Subjects do Injoy."(4) Despite Williamson's eloquence, it was not until 1760 that the township encompassing the present towns of Wiscasset, Dresden, and Alna, in the county of Lincoln, was incorporated as Pownalborough. The choice of a name for the new town was a political ploy, since the Province of Maine was under the governance of Massachusetts, and Thomas Pownall (1722-1805) was the royal governor.

In the 1790s Dresden and Alna seceded from Pownalborough, citing the inconvenience of conducting town affairs over such an extensive area, and finally, in 1802, the remaining inhabitants of Pownalborough petitioned to change the name of the town on the bay to Wiscasset, stating that "the part of the Town where mercantile business is now transacted hath from the Original Settlement thereof to the present time been known and so called by the name of Wiscasset."(5) Generations of etymologists, while generally agreeing that Wiscasset is an Indian place-name, have squabbled over its precise meaning. Among the various translations are "confluence of three rivers," "place of pine tree cones," little marsh creek," "harbor town," and, simply, "outlet." The street names in Wiscasset are less controversial, There are Summer Street and Pleasant Street; Water Street skirts the harbor; Main Street bisects the town; and High Street is on the crest of a hill overlooking the bay.

In the years preceding the Revolution, the town, still officially called Pownalborough, grew and prospered. The ancient forests in the vicinity of the Sheepscot River provided abundant oak, spruce, and white pine for export as well as for supplying timber to the local shipyards and for the houses of the merchants and shipbuilders, which, while not grand, were substantial, practical, and aesthetically pleasing.

The so-called Lilac Cottage [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VIII OMITTED] is typical of the small, one-story houses that were ubiquitous in colonial New England. It was built for Benjamin Colby probably about the time of his marriage in 1770, and he sold it in 1789 to one John Adams, mariner, for fifty pounds. The house has five bays, with a simple rectangular light above the entrance door, and a steeply pitched roof. The towering center chimney is supported in the cellar by stone piers carrying joists of white oak. This massive arch is twelve feet long and ten feet, eight inches wide.