PRESENT AT STATEHOOD – PORTER, MAINE

 John Stacy first appears in our local histories on page 407 of The History of Parsonsfield written in 1888:

In William Teg’s History of Porter, written in 1957, we learn a little more detail about our settler when he elaborates on the bear story contained in the Parsonsfield book:

The property to which John and his family moved was described in the deed from Jonathan Blazo shown below as situated in Porterfield Plantation in the County of York “being  the whole of lot 12 in the E Range as described in the Proprietors Plan of said Porterfield and being the same which Blazo has heretofore occupied, containing 100 acres more or less”.

The arrow shows the probable location as                                                                            G.F. Stacey on the 1875 map.

Of John and Ruth’s 5 offspring only 2 were still at home at the time the census was taken in 1820 - Hannah, age 21, and George, age 16.  The 3 older ones had married and begun their own families by then. 

Oliver married Abigail Fox in 1814;

Salome married Jonathan Fox in 1812; and

Jordan married Sally Libby in 1817. 

These family pairings, all children of early settlers, have wonderful stories some of which may be shared in future blogs.  But for now we will share one story involving John’s eldest son, Oliver, as told in William Teg’s Porter book.   Apparently Oliver, like his father, was a good marksman and 1820 was not only the year in which Maine became a state.  It was also the year of…

By the time of the 1830 Census Hannah had married John Mason and George had just married Lydia Taylor the previous year so only John and Ruth were living in their home.  

In 1837 John died and made the following provision for his beloved wife, Ruth.  

He left $50.00 each to his oldest sons, Oliver and Jordan, provided that his daughters, Salome and Hannah, were each to receive a cow and ended his will by leaving his homestead property to his youngest son, George.

By now George and his wife Lydia had added two sons to their family:  Jordan 2^nd, born 1830 and named for George’s brother Jordan, and John, born 1831 and named for his grandfather.

In 1850 the family added a daughter-in-law after Jordan 2^nd, by then 20, married Lydia Frances Tibbetts, age 18.  His brother John, age 18, was also in the household.  Jordan 2^nd’s occupation was listed in the census as school teacher.

 In 1860 Ruth, living with her son George and his extended family, was 88 years old and listed as a domestic.  There were  4 generations living under one roof:   Ruth, her son George and his wife Lydia, their sons John and  Jordan 2^nd joined by his wife Lydia Frances as well as their son, John M., and daughter, Augusta A.   George listed his occupation as a farmer and Jordan 2^nd was listed as a teacher of high school.

Ruth Stacy died in October of 1865 at the age of 94, having outlived her husband by 28 years.  She rests surrounded by generations of family members in the Kezar Falls Burial Ground in Porter.

The next census in 1870 showed the family continuing to grow with 2 more children added to Jordan 2^nd and Lydia Frances’s brood.  Head of the household George had added Town Treasurer to his farming duties and Jordan 2^nd was no longer teaching but was a farmer/cattle broker instead.    Their wives were keeping house and we learned that George’s son John, age 38, was an invalid.  Jordan 2^nd’s oldest son, John M., was helping on the farm at age 16 while his younger sisters, Annie M. (listed as Augusta A. on an earlier census record) and Elizzie were in school at ages 10 and 5 respectively.   Another son, Sidney G., was one year old.

On April 3^rd, 1876 George died at the age of 72.  In his will he provided for those he left behind, leaving 1/5 of his estate to his widow, 1/5 to his invalid son John and the remaining 3/5 to his son Jordan 2^nd. 

At some point the family relocated into the new village of Kezar Falls on what is now called School Street as shown on the 1872 map of the Porter side of Kezar Falls.

 

As the 1880 census below shows, Jordan 2^nd and his family were not listed in the household with Lydia and her other son John in their home.

Rather, we found Jordan 2nd living on what is now called Main Street near the intersection with Pine Street as evidenced by the 1872 map below and the nearby neighbors listed in the census.  We also noted the absence on the census of John M., son of Jordan 2^nd, who died in 1873 at the young age of 19.

The next few years were ones with several more losses in the family.  In November of 1885 Jordan 2^nd’s mother, Lydia, died followed in death two years later by her son John who died in October of 1887.  

In May of 1893 tragedy struck again when their daughter Annie tragically died while visiting at their home for the summer with her two young daughters.  Her husband, Robert Fulton Wormwood , was publisher of the Oxford County Record newspaper in Kezar Falls and Fryeburg from 1883 to 1892 and had just begun a position with the Portland Evening Express at the time of his wife’s death.  They were married in 1884 and had two daughters, Bertha (born 1885) and Florence (born 1887).

The 1900 Census showed Lydia Francis as head of household,  Jordan 2^nd having died in May of 1898.  Living with her were Bertha Wormwood, age 15, and Florence Wormwood, age 13,  her granddaughters.  Their grandmother knew well what it meant to lose a parent while young – her own father, Henry Tibbetts, had died at the age of 43 when she was but 11.  

In 1906 Bertha married Herbert Doe and the census of 1910 shows them living in the house on School Street with her grandmother having added two children to the family – Muriel, born 1908, and Ruth, born 1910. 

Lydia Francis Tibbetts Stacy died in December 1920.  By that time Bertha’s family had moved into a house down the street and added 2 more children to their family – Esther, born 1917, and George, born 1918.  Her granddaughter Florence married 3 times, Roscoe Moulton in 1908 whom she must have later divorced, Morton Garland in 1918 who died in 1921, and Daniel Garland in 1926 who was 30 years her senior.  He died in 1942 and she in 1971, childless. 

After Florence’s death, her sister Bertha having predeceased her in 1951, Bertha’s heirs sold the house on School Street to David and Kay Leavitt in 1972 who remain at the property still.

 

 

The Lougees’ Story Continues

 Note:  Unless other noted, all inserts are from Madge Baker’s book, Woven Together in York County, Maine – 1865-1990.

 Circumstances on the Lougee farm were changing.  In 1897 Myra, as Almira Fogg Lougee was known to everyone, divorced David Gilman Lougee.  She moved with their second son, Arthur Fogg Lougee (age 8), to her home town of Limerick leaving their firstborn, David Gilman Lougee Jr. (age 9) with his father.  Fortunately Myra’s farmer father had been successful enough to leave her a legacy when he died in 1885 which she used to purchase a small house where she made a home with her son, Arthur, her mother and intermittently her other son David Jr.

Arthur graduated high school in Limerick in 1906 and though he had dreams of going to college and of being a professional baseball player, like so many young men before him, he assumed the role of head of the household and went to work at the Limerick Mill.       

In Parsonsfield  Big Dave, his father Gilman, his son David Jr., and Florence Tarbox, a local woman hired to do the housekeeping and nursing were on the farm together in 1900.  After Gilman died in 1902, Big Dave and Florence married.  The household expanded by one when their daughter, Hazel, was born in 1904.

We are told that:

Although Little Dave loved his life, it was to be a short one.  In 1909, after spending more than a month in Portland in the hospital, he died from an intestinal blockage.  He was only 21 when he was sadly laid to rest beside his antecedents in the farm cemetery.

In 1911 Arthur F. married a Limerick classmate, Berniece Townsend, and moved in with her and her widowed mother in the living quarters above the E.F. Townsend & Co. store which they owned and ran.  To their family they added a son, Arthur Townsend (born 1913) and a daughter, Alice Jane (born 1925).   

After their son, Arthur T., went away to school at Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, Massachusetts Madge Baker’s book tells us that he said “he knew he had no interest in being either a farmer living on the edge of survival, or a small town shopkeeper.  So there was nothing to go home for.”  He never returned again to reside in Limerick.  He studied at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston where he met Laura Barr whom he married in 1937.  From time to time they would visit his parents in Limerick but only on holidays and weekends.

This photo of David Gilman “Big Dave” Lougee is undated.

After Big Dave’s death there was no one to tend the farming enterprise which previous generations had built.  Florence began selling off the farm in pieces.  When her and Dave’s only child, Hazel, died in childbirth in 1933 she sold all but one bit and moved away. 

1933 was a significant year in the life of Big Dave’s son, Arthur Fogg Lougee, as well.  After working at the Limerick Mill since high school Arthur was out of job together with all the other employees when the mill went into receivership after the national banking crisis early in 1933.  It was time for a career change.  When the new Casco Bank and Trust Company opened a bank in Limerick he was elected one of the founding directors, becoming branch manager in 1935.

The photograph shows Arthur Fogg Lougee with his mother, Myra, and his daughter, Alice Jane at age 11.  The occasion was the celebration of the 300^th anniversary of York County, Maine.  Myra had donned her wedding dress for the occasion and the others had on family heirlooms.

But the Lougee story in Parsonsfield was not yet over.  Madge Baker tells us that, after serving in the navy during World War II,  Arthur Townsend Lougee looked for a place to settle and support his family but did not consider either Parsonsfield or Limerick as options.   He was hired by the Ford Motor Co. as Art Director of Ford Publications and the family moved to Detriot, Michigan.  Her book goes on to tell us:

Berniece died shortly thereafter but Arthur F. continued the search for potential sellers of the Gilman Lougee farm property.  When he saw the opportunity to purchase the old stone house which had been built by Gilman’s stone mason brother Albion K. P. Lougee, he negotiated the sale for his son in 1949.  Once they had the stone house, the Detroit-based family started returning to the farm every summer and Arthur T.’s father continued to assist his son in reacquiring Gilman’s farm until his death in 1960.  Madge Baker’s book tells us:

In 1997 Laura Barr Lougee died, joined in death by her husband Arthur T. Lougee eight years later in 2005. Their youngest son Arthur James “Jim” Lougee, who had made his home in Parsonsfield as well, died in 2017.   Their final resting place is with those Lougees who had gone before.  For now the farmstead first established in Parsonsfield, later lost and regained, remains in the Lougee family held in trust by Arthur T. and Laura’s surviving son and daughter.   

Photos from Find a Grave.

The family cemetery is listed in the Cemetery Records, Parsonsfield, Maine reproduced by Ancient Landmarks Society of Parsonsfield, 1991 as the Lougee-Foss-Mudgett Cemetery.  The book states that it “is on the north side of North Road 2.4 miles northwest of East Parsonsfield at the Cornish line and just east of the stone house shown in the background.  It is surrounded by a stone and iron fence with an inscription on the stone under the iron gate:  ‘Deacon G. Lougee killed by this stone September 1788’ ”.

PRESENT AT STATEHOOD Parsonsfield – Part 3 The Lougees

 The 1820 Federal Census for Parsonsfield enumerates the following for Gilman Lougee (listed second on the page):

Actually Gilman Lougee Jr, he was the son of Gilman and Joanna Smith Lougee who settled in Parsonsfield from Gilmanton, NH as early as 1779 along with Gilman’s two brothers, John and Samuel – before Parsonsfield was even incorporated as a town.  In her book, Woven Together in York County, Maine – A History 1865 – 1990, Madge Baker writes of the Lougee’s move,

Unfortunately, Gilman Sr. did not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labors.  The History of Parsonsfield written in 1888 relates the story that Gilman was killed by a falling stone while at work in a clay pit on September 29, 1788 at the age of 35, leaving his widow with four young children to raise alone.

Susanna, born 1781; Gilman, born 1783;                                                                      Hugh Bartis, born 1785; and Joanna, born 1788.

As the eldest son Gilman Jr, age 5, became the “man of the house”.  It cannot have been easy.  

In 1808 Gilman Jr. built the house (photo below taken about 1885) to which he would bring a bride two years later when he married Mary Buzzell in 1810.

 The map below shows the location of the homestead (marked in red) on the north side of what is now known as North Road (Route 160) just before the intersection with what is now called Elm Street.

By the time of the 1820 Census Gilman Jr. and Mary had four children and the census counted the family as below.   The information shown in blue has been added as only the head of household’s name was given in the census itself.

Free White Persons – Males – Under 10:  1   Gillman III, born 1817

Free White Persons – Males – 26 thru 44: 1   Gilman Jr, age 37, head of household

Free White Persons – Females Under 10:  3 Ann, born 1815; Joanna, born 1813, and Mary, born 1811

 Free White Persons – Females – 26 thru 44: 1   Mary, age 30, wife

 Total All Persons – White, Slaves, Colored, Other:   6

To their family they would add four more children:                                                          Susan, born 1821;  Julia, born 1823;                                                                         Albion K., born 1827; and Clarinda, born 1829

Then history repeated itself when Gilman Jr. died in 1832.  He was but 49 leaving his widow and the next generation in the hands of his eldest son, Gilman the 3^rd, who was 15 years old.   

Madge Baker relates the following in Woven Together in York County:

Built about 1857 the house is located at the end of Elm Street where it joins North Road.  Albion lived there from 1859 to 1864 when he sold it to his brother’s daughter and her husband to pay off accumulated debts.

Tall Gil married Almira Richardson and they had 7 children, another generation replete with females.  From The History of Parsonsfield we get this picture and information:

And from Woven Together in York County, Maine we learn…

…and later,

In 1886 David Gilman “Big Dave” married Myra Fogg and she moved onto the farm helping to care for her mother-in-law who was failing in health.  She bore two sons, David Gilman Jr. (born 1888) and Arthur Fogg (born 1889). 

In 1896 Almira died, then in 1902 Hugh Bartes fell, injured his spine and broke his arm badly.  Gilman feared that Hugh would not be able to care for his family as an invalid and urged them to return to Parsonsfield where others in the family could help out.  But Bartes died in March and Gilman died later that year, leaving his share of the farm to his neighbor's daughter, Louisa “Lide”.  He had lived a long, industrious life and the farm was intact and productive.  

That is for now. 

To Be Continued…

 

PRESENT AT STATEHOOD - 1820 Porter, Part 2

 A Tale of a Settler and a House

The History of Porter written by William Teg in 1957 has the following entry in its “First Settlers” chapter:

Having bought the land in 1794 John and his wife, Sally, moved to Porter from Farmington, New Hampshire in 1796 with their infant son, Benjamin. After the move they would add seven more children to their family. 

The French homestead was located on what is now called the Gilman Road as shown on the 1858 map of Porter, indicated by the red arrow below.

The 1820 Census below enumerates the French household, 3 of whom it was reported were engaged in agriculture:

1 Male 10-15 years – John Jr., age 14

1 Male 16-18 years – Aaron, age 18

1 Male 18-25 years – Jacob, age 22 (Benjamin, age 24,married in 1818)

1 Male 45 years and over – John, age 45

1 Female under 10 years – Lucy, age 9

1 Female 10-15 years – Kezia, age 11

2 Females 16-25 years – Sally, age 20, and Mary, age 16

1 Female 45 and over – Sally, age 46

1 Male 10-15 years – John Jr., age 14                           

 

John died in 1836 and Sally survived him by 20 years before her death in 1856.  They are buried in what is now called the French-Gilman cemetery located near their homestead farm where their old stones have been lovingly replaced by the one below.

The 1875 map of Porter shows that the farm passed to their youngest daughter, Lucy, who had married Jesse Bickford in 1849.  Jesse and Lucy had one daughter, Veldima, born in 1852. 

Lucy died in January 1878 at the age of 66.  Their daughter, Veldima,  married W. Frank Gilman in 1882 and the couple set up household with her father, Jesse.  To their union seven children were born, three of whom died in infancy:                    

Lucy E. – died September 1886 at 6 months

Cora M. – died December 1888 at 2 months; and

George W. – died April 1888 at 10 months 

The 1900 Census enumerates the other four children along with their parents, Frank and Veldima, and their grandfather, Jesse.  They were Arthur (born 1882), Viola (born 1883), Jesse (born 1886) and Herman (born 1890).

The photo below, dated July 1909, shows the Jesse Bickford farm.  The original part of the house built in 1804 by John French was a log cabin. 

Jesse Bickford died in 1910, joining his wife in the French-Gilman cemetery.

Frank and Veldima Bickford Gilman remained on the farm joined in 1918 by the beginnings of another generation when their son, Arthur, married Olive Gray as shown on the 1920 census.

Frank died in 1940 and Veldima died in 1944, when they also joined family members in the French-Gilman cemetery – the last generation to do so. 

Arthur and Olive Gray Gilman had one child, a daughter, named Dorothy Janet born in 1921.  Dorothy “Dottie” married Clayton Locke (born 1917) in 1946 after she had completed her college degree and he had completed his time of service overseas in World War II.  They, like other generations before, set up household as a married couple sharing her childhood home with her parents.  They had two children, Paul (born 1949 and died 2010) and Patricia (born 1953).  This photo taken in 1959 shows the homestead looking much the same as it does today.

Clayton and Dottie became involved in the newly formed Parsonsfield-Porter Historical Society and served as officers of the Society for many years, Clayton as its President and Dottie as its Treasurer.  In their dotage, again like generations before, their daughter Patty and her husband Dennis Parker, came to live with them on the homestead farm until their deaths – he in 2013 and she in 2016.  They are interred in the Kezar Falls Burial Ground.  Patty and Dennis continue to live on what was the original John French homestead – present not just at statehood but still standing 200 years later.