1812 



THE FAliMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR 



181 



tion, will luiii; i-,.-l,iiii tlieir ItTtilify ulien oiire ro- 

 olaiint'd. M;miiractiires in tliis town, as tliey tlo 

 in every plat-e where lliev an; carried on in the 

 spirit of enterprise and willi jroud rali-nlatiojis, 

 come greatly in aid of tlie A;;jicultnre. A fiom-- 

 ishing inan'ufactMrins estahljshnient any where, 

 coii.snniinjr wljatevcr tlje f^roiind alioni it pro- 

 dnces, i;^- sure to iironiote an iiierease of the pro- 

 ductive lands. Jo the town of Weslhrook tliere 

 are several villases. Saccarappa, six miles out 

 of Portland, takin- its name IVonj the Ihlls and 



Ion 



hnjiher bronfiht 

 itil nearly all the 

 •e of some filly 



down from the country ; 

 heavy pines within the 



mills and machinerv have taki^n tin; piai-e of the 

 saws, hecome a po|Milons and Honrishin- village. 



were improved lamps, Hriltannia teapots, tea 

 trays, &c. &e. manulactnred in quantities at 

 VVestbrook. 



GRAY. 



Between Westhiook and Gray on the main 

 travelled road, ihe eomitrv is much the same as 



th( 



of the couniy of Vork. 'I'he village of Gray 

 itself— a sort of (M'ulre or I'ocus liir the couniy ot 

 Cumberland at ihe iulersectiou of many roads — 

 stands upon a plain of considerable exlenl: it 

 seems to be flomisiiiny, haviiii; several new brick 

 and painted wooden liuildiii^rs, occupied as dwell- 

 ings, stores and mechanics' shops. That part of 

 the tosvu throu^jh which the stau-e road passes 



of Maine. Much of it is li^ht, and many fields 

 have imdoid)leilly been exhausted by that system 

 of husbandry w bicli almost every where |)revails 

 nntil the virgin ferlilily is extiacted after the fir.st 

 clearing'. It has not in this nei^'bhorhood yet 

 became fashionalile to briiif; up the exhausted 

 soil: thereliire we see some larpe nakeil houses 

 and barns bifilt for the prosperity and business 

 of a former generation, looking cheerless and 

 comfortless, because the occupants have not the 

 taste or the enterprisi' and perhaps not the abil- 

 ity to make yood the natmal decay and exhaus- 

 tion constanlly goiu;: on. 'J'be whole of this 

 region may and probably will be renovated in 

 the great moral reli)rmation which has been 

 spreading throughout New Eiiglaiui vvtlbii.i the 

 last ten years. The example of one new comer 

 on a sin:;le neighborhood iu the course of a liiw 

 years will cbauiie its whole character. Instances 

 may be poiuied out in which the use of intoxi- 

 cating liquors had not only killed or driven away 

 its fmruer occiqianis, but poisoned the ground 

 nil about their dwellings, where some new occu- 

 pant has chaiige(i in a short time Ihe entire face 

 of things: the reuniautsof Ihe dilapidated build- 

 ings are either torn down and replaced or new 

 inoddled so as to hecome the abode of couteul 

 and cheerfulness; and the fields are made to put 

 on the array of ahuudauce. The dumb animals 

 lU'e of a new order of iulelligetice — they are the 

 living w'ituesses teslifving how much a country 

 may be blessed with the well-direcled efli)rts, -oV 

 cursed by the im|)r()vidence and depraved habits 

 of man. Cases are occm-ring in every part of 

 the country which awaken the zeal and ihe en- 

 terprise of the people: if the ohi occupants who 

 have long been sinking will not be aroused, their 

 children iu this eounlry seldom fail to follow any 

 better example tiian that imjnedialely befoi'e 

 them. That man should be treated as a bene- 

 factor of his race whose personal example pre- 

 vents others from following the paths of vice, 

 and who proves that the only true enjoyment is 

 obedience to the great moral law of our natures. 



NEW GLOUCF.STEIi. 



The direct route from Portland to Franklin 

 county has been shortened vvilhin a few years. 

 It leaves the prineii)al villages and the best fai'ms 

 either on the light or left hand. Passing beyond 

 Gray, we go nearly direct to the north, leaving 

 where the old road formerly nin tlie upper vil- 

 lage of New Gloucester, on a ridge at the east 

 some half a mile, and Ihe Shaker settlement of 

 the same town some iivo miles to the west on a 

 high and more ^beanlifnl swell of ground. Al 

 though this setllemeiit was nearly two miles dis- 

 tant, the unerring marks of industry and enter- 

 prise, which never yet failed ns in any comimi- 

 iiity of the United B.ethren, were here appa- 



TUR.NER — THE ANDROSCO6GI1V VALLEY. 



From New Gloucester we come to the new 

 town of Auburn iu the valley of the Androscog- 

 gin, where the stage roads diverge from this line 

 towards Paris at liie north-west and Augusta at 

 the north-east. Our course to Franklin comity 

 is nearly due north. Here we enter the county 

 of Oxford, whose south-easlerly town of Turner 

 is among the best ancient liirmiiig towns of the 

 State. The ohi road runs over a contiguous 

 ridge iu this town of six miles with fine larms 

 all the way, as is evinced by the double white 

 houses and large barns to he seen at a distance. 

 'I'he new and more direct road has its way over 

 a valley extending north and south of a small 

 tributary siream'of the Androscoggin. In the 

 distance it passes a dead plain ot' some four 

 miles ill leiiglh iu which a sample is to be 

 seen of the great waste that has been made of 

 the beaiilifnl pine forests in this valley, where 

 Utile is now left to tempt the cupidity of specu- 

 lators, or to add to the real value of the land if it 

 had been left standing. In a thin soil upon this 

 plain ihe fires and the axes of the woodman had 

 sported in mere wantonness. It seemed that 

 litlle valuable tunber had been carried away. 

 The decaying trees, blacked over with fire, lay 

 along the ground : now and then a single naked 

 dead tree was left standing a sample of the rest. 

 The many large remaining stumps, whose roots 

 e.xtended nearly through the enlire surface, made 

 the prospect of present cultivation of the ground 

 hopeless. This plain is but a specimen of what 

 was a larger portion of the light lands above 

 Lewiston fiills on the Androscoggin river wlmdi 

 have come within our view. Millions of feet of 

 beautiful pine timber have there been wasted — 

 oilier millions have been cut off and taken down 

 the river to be manufactured at the mills below, 

 but litlle to the advantage of the original owners 

 of the land ; and the iixignificent stumps, not 

 very much decayed after twenty years decapita- 

 tion, remain ns evidence of the great destriic- 



A FARMER OF $100,000. 



The farmers upon the Turner ridge, with a 

 beech and maple growth, have turned their lands 

 10 better account. VVeallh has here made that 

 progress which it cannot fail to make where in- 

 dustry and intelligence unite in the cultiva- 

 tion and improvement of the soil. A Mr. B d, 



a firmer of Turner, worth his hundred thousand 

 dollars — a greater than a millionnire of the cities 

 — has made him a new farm upon the new road, 

 with house, barns and appendages that are more 

 pleasant than the expensive palace to look upon. 

 The industrious habits of this genlleman leave 

 him not when his ample fortune would seem to 

 render those habits no longer necessary : he 

 rises constanlly soon after midnight and does 

 nearly the full day's work of a farm laborer 

 before the sun makes his appearance in the 

 east. 



TWIN TOWNS IN MAINE. 



At the new village of North Turner the stage 

 roail from Augusta east, to Paris, Norway and 

 Fryeburg south-west, intersects with this north- 

 ern route to Farmiiigton. Within a short dis- 

 tance we strike the town of Jay, formerly in Ox- 

 ford now the sonth-wcsi outside town of the 

 coiintv of Franklin, which has been constituted 

 by towns taken from the easterly end of Oxford, 

 and from the westerly portions of Keimebeck 

 and Somerset couiilies. This county of Franklin 

 extends north to the boundary or Canada line. — 

 Jay is eighteen miles from Farmiiigton, half way 

 between which towns is Wilton : westerly of the 

 last is the town of Temple. These two towns 

 iu the county of Franklin bear the names of 

 two towns contiguous to each other in the same 

 relative position in the county of Hillsborough, 

 New Hampshire. The first thrifty settlers of 

 the Maine townships, who took these names 

 from the desire to live under the same appella- 

 tion, although removed to the distance of two 

 hundred miles norlh-east, have chosen a spot of 

 as great productiveness and of naturally much 

 more easy tilth than that from which they re- 

 moved. Temple at the north-west and Willon 

 further south-east have the high Mount Blue 

 overlooking them from the west: they are a part 

 of the south-westerly section of the extended 

 valley which makes the basin of Sandy river, 

 looking eastward towards the Keimebeck. The 

 £ail of thii e.xtended basin, uiiliks the mouutaio 



rwlge which looks down upon the New Hamp- 

 shire towns, is free neariy to the tops of Mou'it 

 Blue, Mount Abraham and the Saddleback 

 mountain, which separate the waters from those 

 running into the Androscoggin through Umbagog 

 and other lakes in New Hampshire to the west, 

 and from those of Dead river running into Ken- 

 nebeck further north. 



The road to Farmington pursues it^a way up 

 one stream which discliarges into Androscoggin 

 over the ridge which divides its waters from those 

 of Sandy river. On the lastslream is the village 

 of Fast Wilton with a woolen factory giving em- 

 ployment to twenty-five persons, owned princi- 

 pally by fanners of the vicinity, and munutiic- 

 turiiig for home use the wool raised iu that 

 neighborhood. 



FAItMINGTON. 



Going so far north-east one would scarcely 

 dream of coming to such a place ns Farmiiigton, 

 the shire town lor the new county of Franklin. 

 We .say without hesitation that we have in no 

 part of the country visited a more beautiful and 

 desirable place than this, whether we regard its 

 position, its soil and improvements, its neat 

 hnildiiigs, or the charms of its society and the 

 inteHigence of inhabitants. 



At this place we arrived an almost utter stran- 

 ger to nearly its whole inhabitants. The first 

 salutation of an old friend, after the lapse of near- 

 ly fifteen years, was that of the former popular 

 and most respected clergyman of Willon, N. H., 

 between whom and the whole people of his 

 town for many years there existed the most 

 pleasant and the most happy relations. The 

 name of this gentleman will occur to those who 

 have read in a former volume of the Visitor the 

 notice of the centennial celebration and his- 

 tory of the rise and progress of a New Hamp- 

 shire mountain town. No clergyman of New 

 Hampshire was better known in his native state 

 than Thomas Beede ; there are few men who 

 have written and delivered sermons of greater 

 practical utility and better adapted to the im- 

 provement and edification of both youth and 

 age — few who have belter or more frequently 

 than he has done, gladdened the hearts of the 

 disconsolate, assuaged the grief of the mourner 

 and the distressed, and administered the comforts 

 of a holy hope to the sick and the dying. This 

 genlleman has within the last two years retired 

 fiom the pulpit, and fii«is_ that protection and 

 comfort in the generosity and enterprise of the 

 children which remain to him, which a cold and 

 iiidifTeient world sometimes fails to give to the 

 man who has spent all in doing good to others. 



AGRICULTURE IN FRANKLIN. 



The occasion which carried us to Farmington 

 brought also there from the several towns of the 

 county a large portion of its inhabitants male 

 and female. It was, we believe, only the second 

 Agricultural exhibition of the county. The State 

 of Maine, we believe, makes provision for the 

 several Agricultural Associations of that Slate by 

 granting a certain sum from the Treasury pro- 

 vided an e^ual sum shall be collected by individ- 

 uals. One gentleman of Franklin county, Hon. 

 Timothy Prescott, a popular and acceptable phy- 

 sician, undertook to raise the adequate sum for 

 Franklin by asking contributions of the farmers 

 iu small sums. In one fortnight, going into the 

 towns, several hundred dollars were contributed 

 at his asking ; and funds were raised sufficient to 

 pay all premiums and necessary expenses of the 

 Society. Another commendable feature in the 

 celebration of this county was the spontaneous 

 contrihulions from ihe several towns of ample 

 provisions already cooked for a public dinner ut 

 the court-house on both days of the exhibition. 

 A better dinner than that set before us we have 

 on no similar occasion tasted. The Rev. Mr. 

 Beede attended the great New York State Agri- 

 cultural anniversary for the year 1841 at Syra- 

 cuse ; and he was of opinion that the collection 

 of people was more numerous in the cold north 

 county of Franklin in 1643 than it was there one 

 year previous. Indeed the .»pirit which should 

 actuate good fiirmers and good livers pervaded 



on this 



FINE CATTLE IN MAINE, &C. 



Perhaps there is no region of the United States 

 where the cattle have been so much improved as 

 they have been in the valley of the Kennebeck 

 above Gardner and Hallowed; and thisimprove- 

 racut has branched out and extended itsttlf ioto 



