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    Portland's Past: Stories from the City by the Sea
    Portland's Past: Stories from the City by the Sea
    Portland's Past: Stories from the City by the Sea
    Ebook169 pages1 hour

    Portland's Past: Stories from the City by the Sea

    By Luann Yetter

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    About this ebook

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized Portland, Maine, as the beautiful town that is seated by the sea. In this volume, Maine author Luann Yetter presents the stories from its past that not only showcase this exquisiteness but also illuminate its diverse and exciting history. The founding members of the Forest City braved the harsh winters, but not without scandals and struggles. One man raised a navy to fight the Barbary pirates threatening ships that sailed from Casco Bay, and privateers brought rum onboard and ashore. And while one Portlander traded slaves, many others worked the Underground Railroad as staunch antislavery crusaders. Discover Portland from its beginning as uncharted territory through to its development into the quintessential New England city it is today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateNov 8, 2011
    ISBN9781614234630
    Portland's Past: Stories from the City by the Sea
    Author

    Luann Yetter

    Luann Yetter is the author of Remembering Franklin County and Portland's Past. She teaches writing classes at the University of Maine at Farmington and blogs at luannyetter.wordpress.com.

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      Book preview

      Portland's Past - Luann Yetter

      luannyetter.com.

      GEORGE CLEEVE STANDS HIS GROUND

      CLEEVE V. WINTER

      George Cleeve looked John Winter defiantly in the eye and said, I will be tenant to never a man in New England!

      With that, he and his small party abandoned their log home at Spurwink and sailed north along the coast to a promising-looking inlet. The bay was sheltered, the water calm and the sea breeze bracing. They went ashore at the foot of a hill; to the west was another hill, and a brook ran through the valley in between. It was March 1633 when Cleeve and his companions stood on a piece of land that would one day become a vibrant city. The early spring held promise.

      The four refugees—Cleeve; his partner, Richard Tucker; his wife, Joan; and their teenage daughter, Elizabeth—set to work building another log cabin, clearing land and planting corn. Scarcely two years before, they had suffered through the same backbreaking work at the mouth of the River Spurwink. Cleeve had laid legal claim to that land only to have John Winter come along and claim it under a patent from Robert Trelawney. When Winter told him that he had to start paying rent, Cleeve refused. He hadn’t uprooted his family and sailed three thousand miles from the comforts of Plymouth, England, to pay rent on wilderness.

      Cleeve claimed that Winter had forced him from Spurwink by threat of violence. Winter downplayed the conflict, maintaining that he told Cleeve in a friendly manner to leave. Winter didn’t want trouble with Cleeve. Though I have given him warning to depart, he told his boss, Trelawney, I am desirous to live quiet here among the neighbors hereabout, if I may, considering we live here among the heathens. There were enough perils in the new land as it was, and Winter had little reason to needlessly antagonize a fellow Englishman.

      The Approach of Cleeve and Tucker (1633). From Centennial Celebration, editor John T. Hull (1886).

      It was a land of exotic natives and harsh winters. The new settlers who arrived by ship from across the Atlantic were independent types who had chosen to leave civilization behind for a place to call their own. Once settled here, they found themselves needing to stick to together for the sake of survival. As Cleeve built his new log cabin on a more northern part of Casco Bay, he hoped that his conflicts with Winter were over. Winter had reason to hope the same. They were both wrong.

      The feud that began on the River Spurwink in the summer of 1632 would continue for the rest of their lives. It played out on a little neck of land in Casco Bay, but it was as big as all New England and full of Royalist conspiracies and Puritan plots.

      Meanwhile, Cleeve planted corn and built a new cabin in a spot at the foot of a hill sheltered from the worst of the northern winds. All in all, it was a better spot than the one from which he had been ousted. This time, he felt confident that he could take legitimate ownership under the royal proclamation that gave every settler 150 acres. Cleeve worked the farm, while Tucker traded with the Abenaki natives for beaver and otter pelts and shipped them to Massachusetts for cash or provisions, such as worsted stockings or leather shoes, which the settlers couldn’t make for themselves. Without a son of his own, Cleeve was grateful for Tucker’s partnership.

      Cleeve and Tucker (1633). From Portland and Vicinity, by Edward Elwell (1876).

      The winters were severe, but game, fowl and fish were plentiful and the fur trade was profitable. Cleeve knew that he wanted to secure his claim and felt it prudent to make the arduous journey back to England to meet with Ferdinando Gorges, the aristocrat who held the patent on an unfathomably huge section of land between the Piscataqua and Kennebec Rivers. In England, Cleeve was the diplomat, ingratiating himself to Royalist Gorges while at the same time speaking well of John Winthrop, the Puritan governor of Massachusetts. His efforts were successful, and he returned to Casco Bay with more than he could have hoped for. He had increased the size of his claim more than tenfold, leasing 1,500 acres from Gorges for one hundred pounds. The lease, for an unusually long one thousand years, proclaimed that the land was now and forever from henceforth to be called or known by the name Stogummor. When Cleeve returned to the Neck, far away from the whims and influence of Gorges, he forgot all about the new name. The valuable piece of real estate he now held was never called Stogummor.

      Cleeve also had Gorges’s commission to act as his land agent, letting and settling all or any part of his lands or islands lying between the Cape Elizabeth and the entrance of Sagadahock [Kennebec] River, and so up into the main land sixty miles.

      Meanwhile, on Richmond Island, Cleeve’s coup did not sit well with John Winter. Sir Ferdinand Gorges hath made Cleeve governor of his province, as he reports, he complained to Trelawney. Now he thinks to wind all men to his will.

      Cleeve wasn’t Winter’s only problem; he had some explaining to do to his proprietor. Trelawney had heard ill reports about Winter’s wife beating her maid. Treating the maid fairly had gotten no results, Winter explained in his wife’s defense. If a fair way will not work, he wrote, beating must, sometimes, upon such idle girls as she is. The maid, who had been around for more than two years, was no doubt an indentured servant. Treated much like a slave, she had tried to escape. She has twice gone marching in the woods, he said. We can hardly keep her indoors after we’ve gone to bed, except we carry the key of the door to bed with us. Winter had any number of complaints about the maid: she couldn’t learn how to milk a cow or goat, she wouldn’t slop the pigs, she slept with her clothes on and she is so fat and soggy she can hardly do any work…she is so slutty that our men do not desire to have her boil the kettle for them. Winter was quick to come to his wife’s defense: If this maid at her lazy times, when she’s been found wrong in her actions, does not deserve two or three blows, I pray judge you who has more right to complain, my wife or the maid.

      Cleeve and Tucker Building the First Log House (1633). From Centennial Celebration.

      Winter’s wife was not popular with Cleeve, either. When she still lived in Plymouth, Cleeve had called her the veriest drunkenest whore in all that town. This piece of information was revisited in 1640 when the first court was held in the province. The settlers flocked to the official proceedings, ready to vent years of pent-up frustrations. When the court opened for business, Winter sued Cleeve for slander, claiming that he and his wife had been greatly prejudiced in their reputation due to the terrible things that Cleeve had said about her.

      Meanwhile, in another suit heard during the flurry of lawsuits, Cleeve had plenty to say about Winter, who, according to Cleeve, was determined to uproot him again. Moved with envy and for some other sinister cause, Cleeve claimed, he hath now for these three years past, and still doth unjustly pretend an interest and thereupon hath and doth still interrupt me to my great hindrance, thereby seeking my ruin and utter overthrow.

      Winter countered that Cleeve cunningly and fraudulently by false information obtained the…lease to his property. The court decided in Cleeve’s favor on this one, confirming his leasehold. As for the slander against his wife, Winter enjoyed a symbolic victory. Cleeve was ordered to Christianly acknowledge his failing therein against Mr. Winter his and afterwards to Mrs. Winter.

      As one of the more prominent men in northern New England, Winter was a popular defendant. He also came under fire from some of the trappers in the area for bringing down the price of beaver. South of Winter’s Richmond Island, traders had been paying eight shillings for beaver pelt, but Winter insisted on paying only six shillings, and now the other traders were following his lead. Winter was driving the price down, and the trappers were hurting. Not only was Winter trying to deflate the price of beaver, but they claimed that he was also overcharging for liquor. He paid seven pounds for a hogshead of brandy and then turned around and sold it for thirty-three pounds. Without a lot of trading posts along the wild northern New England shore, the trappers didn’t think it was fair to force such high prices and low compensation. The court, however, must have felt that free trade should be upheld, because it sided with Winter in the case of the liquor and beavers.

      In 1642, civil war broke out in England, and Royalists were shocked to find their monarchy challenged. Trelawney, the powerful patent holder of Maine’s land and member of the English Parliament, was thrown in prison for his loyalty to the Crown. Gorges, the holder of an even bigger patent in New England, was in exile with the king. Almost overnight, the rules changed. Puritans in England were gaining power, and Cleeve knew that it was time to return to the fatherland to align himself with the new order. He sailed to England out of Boston on a ship laden with Virginian tobacco and arranged a meeting with Parliamentarian Alexander Rigby. Exercising his diplomatic skills once again, Cleeve convinced Rigby to buy the patent that included his land and the land occupied by Winter and others. Cleeve also convinced Rigby to make him deputy governor. With the upheaval in England,

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