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".
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
No comments:
Post a Comment