Remembering Camden: Stories from an Old Maine Harbor
()
About this ebook
Barbara F. Dyer
A lifelong area resident, Barbara Dyer has written extensively on the Camden region, having published such works as More Memories of Camden and Vessels of Camden. Known as Camden�s �unofficial town historian,� Dyer has served for years in various capacities on local civic, cultural, and historical institutions. The author has been a member of the Camden Area History Center since 2005, and a member of the town�s War Memorial committee since 2003. Named Rotary International�s Paul Harris Fellow for Camden in 1995, Dyer additionally served on Camden�s Board of Selectmen from 1992-1995.
Related to Remembering Camden
Related ebooks
Framingham Legends & Lore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMurder & Mayhem in MetroWest Boston Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLegendary Locals of Bangor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGloucester's Sea Serpent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhosts of Martha's Vineyard Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHaunted Bowdoin College Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Spectral Tide: True Ghost Stories of the U.S. Navy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAdams County Bigfoot: Friend or Beast? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mysterious Chronicles of the Unexplained Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lost Villages of Scituate Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Have Never Seen Paris but I Have Seen Bigfoot: A True Documentary of Bigfoot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pacific Giants Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ghostly Tales of Door County Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhosts of the Boothbay Region Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ghosthunter’s Guide to England: On the Trail of the Paranormal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNorth America's Top Ten Cryptids: Legends, Sightings, and Theories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLegends of Gods and Ghosts: Hawaiian Mythology, Collected and Translated from the Hawaiian Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMissouri Nightmares: The Top 10 Chilling Legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParanormal Is a Reality Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Maryland State Fair:: Celebrating 125 Years Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerica’S Most Haunted Campus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Occult Files Of Francis Chard Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Legends and Lore of the North Shore Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Apostle of the East: The Life and Journeys of Daniel Little Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrue Paranormal Mystery From Haunted Islands Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5La Llorona: The Legendary Weeping Woman of Mexico Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoston's North End Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5American Goliath Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
United States History For You
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twelve Years a Slave (Illustrated) (Two Pence books) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Remembering Camden
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Remembering Camden - Barbara F. Dyer
Author
Camden’s Birth Certificate
Next May, it will have been 239 years since Camden’s first settler, James Richards, sailed into Camden Harbor. He was followed by Major William Minot and Lewis Ogier. Then Robert Thorndike came the same year to Goose River with his brother, Paul Thorndike, and James Simonton. Then to Clam Cove came William Gregory, William Porter and William Upham.
By the time 331 people had settled in Camden, they felt it should have a town government. So on February 17, 1791, the plantation of Cambden became incorporated as the seventy-second town in the state. It had three readings in the House of Representatives, passed and signed by David Cobb, Speaker. Then it had two readings in the Senate, passed and signed by Samuel Phillips, president. It was approved by none other than John Hancock, who was governor of Massachusetts at that time. All three signers were leaders in the Revolutionary War.
The document read:
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
In the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one. An act to incorporate the Plantation of Cambden, in the county of Hancock into a town by the name of Cambden.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in the General Court assembled and by authority of the same, that the said Plantation called Cambden, included within the following boundaries, viz: Beginning at a rock marked A.X. on the seashore at the north side of Owl’s Head Bay at the southeast corner of Thomaston line; thence running northwest by north, seven miles, thirty-four poles, to a maple stake marked on four sides, and a pile of stones; thence running northeast, five miles, ninety-four poles, to a beech tree marked on four sides; thence running east three miles and one half and twenty poles, to a spruce tree marked on four sides; thence running south east by south, one mile to a fir tree marked on four sides at Little Ducktrap, in Penobscot Bay; thence by the sea shore in a westerly direction to the bounds first mentioned; together with the inhabitants thereon, be and they hereby are incorporated into a Town by the name of Cambden; and that the said Town be and hereby is, vested with all the Powers, Privileges and Immunities which other Towns in this Commonwealth may by law enjoy.
And be it enacted further by the authority aforesaid, that Oliver Parker, Esq.. of Penobscot be and hereby is empowered to issue his warrant, directed to some principal Inhabitant of said Town of Cambden, requiring him to notify the Inhabitants there of to meet at such a time and place as he shall therein appoint, to choose such Officers as Towns are by law required to choose at their annual meeting in the month of March or April.
Camden had been named for Lord Camden, who had been kind to the colonists, and the b
in the spelling is believed to have been a mistake that was corrected in 1805.
In 1794, the commonwealth of Massachusetts had a law that any town would be fined for not having a gospel minister. Previous to that time there was very little preaching in Camden, except occasionally when a religious teacher
would stop while passing through. Upon the speaker’s arrival, news would spread and a large congregation would gather for the privilege of hearing a sermon. There were about three ordained ministers within a hundred-mile radius.
Camden voted that David Blodgett and Sam’l Mclaughlin be the committee to draw up a petition to lay before the Supreme Court to be holden at Hallowell, against paying a fine for not having a minister for three years past.
However, the decision the committee handed down forced Camden to pay in full two pounds, fourteen shillings and six pence. After that, at town meeting, among other interesting articles, they voted to raise thirty or more pounds for support of the gospel.
Reverend Paul Coffin (believed to have been a Congregationalist) kept a journal, and wrote about his wonderful visit to Camden, where he stayed with Captain William McGlathery. He wrote about the fifteen neat houses and other buildings, making it a compact village. Today we might doubt the good minister’s description of compact.
Fifteen houses in Camden—which also included Goose River (Rockport), Clam Cove (Glen Cove), West Camden (West Rockport) and Rockville—couldn’t be considered compact today. Also the harbor was full of pleasant islands. The entry had been dated August 15, 1796.
The next year every citizen was required by the commonwealth law to pay a tax for support of a religious order. In desperation perhaps, some individuals from Camden built a meetinghouse a half mile from the J.C. Curtis store on the old post road.
Today that location would have been on the northeast corner of Elm and Park Streets, across the road from Bank North, formerly known as Peoples Heritage Bank.
This is the first meetinghouse built in Camden.
A True Love Story
While studying the genealogy of the Hosmer family from 1635 to 1925, I found that it also included a touching love story. It had been written by the pseudonym of Frank,
with fictitious names for the people involved. Mary Gibbs Hosmer, granddaughter of Nathaniel Hosmer, recorded the tale when she was about eighteen years old, and it was published in the Camden Advertiser in 1846.
This is a true story, in my words. The Twenty Associates granted to Charles Barrett land in Hope and Appleton in hopes he could entice people to settle the land. Nathaniel Hosmer accepted and built a log cabin so he could farm near what is now Hosmer’s Pond. (Fifty years ago it was Hosmer Lake.)
Nathaniel Hosmer came from Mason, New Hampshire. He went home the next winter and when he came to Camden again in the spring, he brought his sister and Job Hodgman. They married and took a farm nearby.
That summer Hosmer built a frame house and returned home to bring a lady to be his wife. She wanted very much to leave with him, but Mary Wheeler lived with a stepfather, David Blodgett. She also had a very determined mother, who had picked out a husband for her daughter: the son of a wealthy neighbor. Her mother had a difficult life, because of England and the Indians. Nothing would do except her daughter must marry someone who could give her an easy life.
Her mother had nothing against young Hosmer except he was poor, and if Mary went to live in Maine she would have to work hard for the rest of her life. Her daughter answered that she would rather have a home in the wilderness and work with a man she loved, than to live around there with a man she did not care for.
Nathaniel Hosmer settled by this pond, so it is known as Hosmer’s Pond.
Nathaniel tried to see Mary, even though he was about twenty miles from her. But her mother would not let her out of the house unless she was with her. Before he left, he was able to get word to his love, through a mutual friend, that he had to meet her once more. They discussed the obstacles (mainly her mother and that woman’s determination for her daughter to marry wealthy). She promised to become his bride as soon as he could get a house built on his lot in Camden.
Mrs. Blodgett heard of their secret meeting and decided her daughter should marry George by spring; therefore, Mary must receive the attentions of George now. But Mary insisted that she did not love him and would not see him. Feeling sacrificed by her mother, she told her to do anything she pleased. So the intentions were published.
Mary had a raging fever, and for three months it was a life or death situation. So now she was an ill girl. Nathaniel came in the spring to take Mary for his bride. His mother had told him what had happened. In order to get out of the house that night, she removed the shoe buckles he had given her, so mother knew it must be over between them and she had won, by keeping them separate.
After dinner Mary went to call on a friend, and told that friend of their plans. Later she could tell Mrs. Blodgett what she saw. Hosmer came in the night on horseback and picked Mary up and they came to Camden before Mrs. Blodgett could recover from the act of a disobedient child.
The happy couple was forgiven by Mary’s parents. In fact, they were forgiven so much that the Blodgetts sold their New Hampshire property, came to Camden and settled near their daughter. Nathaniel’s parents moved to Camden also. They lived happily as possible ever after.
A Welcoming Arch
A family member asked me last week, Who put the arch on Union Street and why?
This relative had driven through the arch hundreds of times and wondered about it. Well, that was the easiest question thrown at me in weeks.
In an issue of the Camden Herald from July 26, 1926, we read:
A PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION
THAT OUR LATCHSTRING IS OUT
Camden’s New Welcoming Arch
on Union Street—A Thing of
Beauty—Has Made Hit With
Visiting Tourists.
It is a known fact that hundreds of motoring tourists, in the course of a day’s run, go through many towns and villages without ever knowing the name of the place they are entering. Feeling that Camden, The Prettiest Spot in Maine,
nestled at the foot of Camden Hills on the shore of the beautiful Penobscot, should not be passed by,