Civil War Soldiers Monument, Gorham

     This photo was taken from my car on my way to work at the USM Gorham campus one morning in April. This is another historic marker that I pass every day, and I had yet to visit it in my 11+ years at USM. I have never seen anyone else visit it either, yet it is an imposing marble monument with a lovely decorative fence in a prominent location - I would think passersby would be curious. Perhaps its location on a busy corner with no parking discourages visitors.
     The monument is made of Italian marble, erected in 1866 to honor the fallen men of Gorham in the Civil War. It stands 24 feet tall and is inscribed with the names of 57 men, including captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, infantry, cavalry, and one reverend, John R. Adams, D.D., who acted as chaplain to the 5th Maine and 121st New York Regiments. An elaborate dedication ceremony ensued on October 18, 1866, and General Joshua Chamberlain was in attendance to give a speech. The dead were young and old and in-between and came from many walks of life. Some had fought in the French and Indian wars and in the War of 1812, and continued to serve their country in its fight for independence.

     The photo above shows a large crowd of soldiers, townspeople, dignitaries and neighboring townspeople at the dedication ceremony. After the ceremony a celebration was held in the Gorham Town House behind the monument. The monument was suggested by the Honorable Toppan Robie (although a town committee approved it) and paid for by him in the amount of $3,060.00, a large sum at the time. He was a well-respected citizen who held many offices in local government, was a very successful businessman, a trustee of the Gorham Academy, and very involved in the church. He donated money or objects to a number of causes in Gorham, including the Gorham Academy, the Ministerial fund, and a clock to the town.
     The monument was carved by William Johnson of Malden, Massachusetts.

     Apparently the monument and old Town House continued to loom large in the town's imagination well after the Civil War, as evidenced by this postcard from circa 1910. The monument is important because it commemorates the shared sacrifice of many in service to the union, and keeps alive the memory of Gorham's dead.

Sources consulted include:
http://www.gorhamhistorical.com/chronology
http://www.maine.gov/civilwar/monuments/gorham.html
http://books.google.com/books/about/Dedication_of_the_Soldiers_monument_at_G.html?id=HcErAAAAYAAJ
http://www.archive.org/stream/memorialofhontop00wate/memorialofhontop00wate_djvu.txt

Tory Hill Meeting House

     Driven by my previous investigations into Reverend Paul Coffin, I wanted to see where he might have preached if he had just lived another year. I visited Tory Hill Meeting House, also known as the First Congregational Church of Buxton at Tory Hill, after work the same day I went to the fountain memorial. Unfortunately, my timing was once again terrible - there was a funeral in progress. That blew my chances of getting in, but since my nephew was married here last summer, I had seen it once already.

      

      So, I roamed around a little and checked out the adjacent South Buxton Cemetery, which dates from the first year Reverend Coffin preached in Buxton in 1761. Paul Coffin and his family are buried in the cemetery. The meeting house sits on the corner of Route 112 and Woodman Road - another connection to the Coffin/Woodman family. I took a drive and when I returned the church was empty, quiet and locked. I could only find one way to get a photo of the inside, so I walked up the inclined cellar door and snapped a photo of the interior, still bedecked with funeral flowers.

      The Tory Hill Meeting House opened in 1822 on the site of Buxton's first log church, and is one of four structures in Buxton listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It almost didn't get raised, though. In keeping with the rum-soaked times, those who raised a building were supposed to be supplied with rum to fortify them for the work. The rum had run out in Buxton, but "Suddenly a great shout arose from the people, for coming around the corner with a 10-quart pail of rum was Pastor Levi Loring. He was the man of the hour, endearing himself to his people by “caring for their thirst as well as their souls.”'

http://www.toryhillchurch.org/about-us/history/

What is ironic is that the congregational church was the site of impassioned meetings during the social reform era, so there were temperance meetings held in the church not terribly long after it opened with the aid of a pail of rum.

     It was presumably named Tory Hill because the Reverend Coffin and many parishioners were royalists. The church was a center for town activities other than just church services for its first forty years, as it was the only church in town. One of its most well-known events was (and is) the performance of "The Old Peabody Pew", which was written by Kate Douglas Wiggin, better known for "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm". Kate Douglas Wiggin is said to have based part of her play on the Tory Hill Meeting House, and she did readings there. The play is still performed to this day every December; she is buried in the churchyard.

     The building is historically significant for being at the center of most of the town's history. During the town's centennial celebrations, people met at the church to proceed behind the cemetery to a field where the celebratory feast was set up. Joshua Chamberlain was a guest of honor and spoke at the centennial.

     The church and the activities held there knitted together a rural community and gave the town a venue to explore social issues of the day. It saw the town's baptisms, funerals, and most of life in between. It continues to be a vital part of the Buxton community.

Sources consulted include:

http://www.toryhillchurch.org/about-us/history/

http://www.buxtonhollishistorical.org/images/buxton_bhhs_page_tour.pdf

http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/22391

http://books.google.com/books?id=FLITAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Fountain Street Memorial to Reverend Paul Coffin

     Just up the street from my home is a memorial that has often intrigued me, but which I never investigated. I visited the memorial in late March, early in the morning during my commute. The memorial is a fountain dedicated to the memory of Reverend Paul Coffin, D.D. and his grandson Cyrus Woodman. It sits at the corner of Fountain Street (naturally) and Route 4A in Bar Mills, just a couple of hundred feet from the Saco River. The fountain has never flowed in the 18 years I've known of it, which makes me a little sad. Behind the fountain is a small open field with a tiny pond, suggestive of a common green space. Nobody hangs out there except mushrooms, frogs, and frog-hunting cats.

     The first item that caught my eye was the name of the grandson, Cyrus Woodman. Just up the road off of Salmon Falls Road is Woodman Road, no doubt named for him or his family. I also knew there was a Paul Coffin house right around the corner, so I began digging up information on Reverend Coffin.

   










     Reverend Paul Coffin, D.D., was a Harvard College educated minister who served Buxton from 1761-1821, the dates on the fountain memorial. Buxton was known as Narraganset No. 1 then, and the Province of Maine was still part of Massachusetts. He was the first minister in the town, and as was typical of the time, he was paid by the town proprietors to settle here. He was ordained in the town in 1763, the year the French and Indian War ended, and was a moderate Calvinist at a time when Anglicanism was growing in Maine and threatening Congregationalists. The house pictured above was built for him in 1763, the year he was married. The top pictures show the house today, and the bottom one shows the house in 1888.

     Reverend Coffin lived through some very interesting times, from the problems with the Great Proprietors, through the last of the Indian wars, through the Revolutionary War and finally seeing Maine become a state. His arrival in Narraganset No. 1 was to a frontier town, but things quickly changed with the influx of migration after the end of the Indian wars. He also saw Massachusetts outlaw slavery in 1783 and the nascent beginnings of the Second Great Awakening.

     The memorial fountain was designed by a famous Portland architect, John Calvin Stevens, and was donated in 1894. Other than being Buxton's first minister, Reverend Coffin is credited with naming Buxton when it was incorporated in 1772. Nobody knows why the name was chosen, but we know he couldn't use his wife's maiden name, Gorham, since that was already in use.

     Other reasons for memorializing him may have been because of his other connections in town. His daughter, Dorcas, married Dr. Royal Brewster, who built the Brewster Mansion across the street from where the reverend preached. The house is one of four buildings in Buxton listed in the National Register of Historic places.

     He served his town a long time, conducting over 1,000 sermons and officiating at nearly 500 weddings. His original church no longer stands, for the Tory Hill Meeting House was built in 1822 on the site of his old log church. He didn't live to see it open.

     The second person memorialized was his grandson, and he was quite accomplished as a lawyer, lumberer and land speculator. He helped publish a history of Narraganset No. 1 and the Great Proprietors, several well known maps, his grandfather's sermons, and a genealogy of his family. He left money to Bowdoin College, his alma mater, and donated land to become a park at Pleasant Point. Although he lived much of his life in Wisconsin, he came home to Buxton and is buried in the town. As his memorial says, he was "Constant in love for his native town".

This memorial says very little, but with a little effort one can see that this family had a huge impact on a new town on the edges of frontier Maine.


Sources consulted included:
http://www.buxtonhollishistorical.org/images/buxton_bhhs_page_tour.pdf
http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/23389
http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/11456
http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/11694/zoom
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=2565&keyword=Genealogy

Eastern Cemetery

      My second site visit was to Eastern Cemetery, another stop on the Portland Freedom Trail. I visited on a week night in late March, and unfortunately the cemetery was closed and locked, even though I had arrived an hour and a half before sunset. I walked the perimeter fence and was struck by the trash, broken headstones and fallen trees. This cemetery, for all of its historical significance, needs some tending. Nobody was checking it out except me and my friend Jay. I took photos and vowed to come back another time so I could wander the headstones and see for myself just who lived here, so to speak.

     Eastern Cemetery is located at 224 Congress Street at the base of Munjoy Hill and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the oldest large cemetery in Portland, established in 1668, soon after much of southern Maine was annexed by Massachusetts Bay Colony but before the Province of Maine officially became part of the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1691 - and before Falmouth was renamed Portland. The cemetery is very close to the waterfront and was located in a mixed neighborhood of immigrants, including Jews, African Americans and Irish. I discovered this was also a stop on the Maine Irish Heritage Trail, for many early Irish Catholics are buried here, though many of the graves are lost.

    The cemetery is about 5 acres in size, though it began as a smaller plot adjacent to a common green. It contains remains of those who fought in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. There is a monument to the first Portland soldier killed in the Civil War, Alonzo Stinson (pictured below), but most burials ended in the cemetery before the Civil War; some sources suggest the cemetery was closed in the 1860's with scattered burials shortly thereafter. In addition to war veterans (the captains of the HMS Boxer and USS Enterprise who fought off Monhegan in the War of 1812 are buried side by side), many people who were influential in Portland's civic life are buried here, including not a few abolitionists (the cemetery is not far from the Abyssinian Meeting House), congressmen, and artists. Some of the first English settlers in Falmouth are buried here, too, though the early grave sites can no longer be identified.

     Although it was no longer in regular use at the time, the cemetery was pictured prominently in a painting dated circa 1866 of the Great Fire of Portland from Eastern Cemetery, 1866 by George Frederick Morse, a Portland artist. I found this interesting, having learned about the fire in association with the saving of the Abyssinian Meeting House nearby.

   
 The cemetery is significant because it is a physical and ancestral link to Maine's very early colonial history up through the mid-19th century. It reminds us that the people of Portland have been participants in major events in American history and have left their mark on the social, political and physical landscape of Maine and the United States.

     The cemetery is cared for by a group called Spirits Alive which conducts historical tours July through October for a small fee, all of which go to maintaining the cemetery. The mostly volunteer group also holds events and lectures, with the aim of keeping the cemetery open, accessible and well maintained while educating the public about its history and its inhabitants. 

Sources consulted include:
http://www.spiritsalive.org/
http://www.ci.portland.me.us/publicworks/historiccemeteriesinfomation.asp
www.mainememory.net
National Register of Historic Places