Scenes in my life : occurring during a ministry of nearly half a century in the Methodist Episcopal church

Dedication

TO

MY FAITHFUL AND AFFECTIONATE WIFE,

WHO FOR FORTY YEARS HAS SHARED THE TOILS AND BURDENS OF AN ITINERANT'S LIFE, WITH NEVER A MURMUR,

Contents

Chapter Pack

I. Early Days 7

II. Simon Peter said, " I go a-fishing " 40

Chapter I. Early Days

I3ANG0R, situated at the head of the tide-waters -*~' of the Penobscot River, was settled in 1769. A solitary log-hut was erected on the bank of the river just above the present bridge by a man named Burrel, where he resided for some years with no society save the Penobscot Indians, whose location was twelve miles above. About this time a company of bold adventurers sailed from Portsmouth, N.H., to explore that wild region, and find for themselves and their posterity a home. As early as 1605 this river had been visited by French explorers, and about 1670 a trading post was established by a French gentleman, Baron de Castin, on the Penobscot Bay, at the point where the town of Castine is now situated. After the conquest of Canada the English took possession of this territory, and erected a large fort on the high bluff on the north of the town. The remains of this work are still visible; and a powder magazine, built of brick brought from England, remains entire, or did in 1834, when I spent many hours wandering over the interesting grounds. An old Scotchman then residing in the vicinity, and formerly a soldier in the British army, used to entertain the writer with many reminiscences of those early days. He was there and aided in the construction of the fort. He said when all was finished — the abattis composed of ash palings sharpened, and the ponderous gates set up — the chief engineer exclaimed, " The devil himself cannot scale these walls ! " But that evening, said our narrator, just at dark a great outcry was haard, and we rushed out of the barracks to learn the cause, when we saw a huge black bear rushing across the parade ground pursued by a score of yelling soldiers. The animal made for the wall, which he cleared at a bound and disappeared in the dense forest beyond. Every man there believed it to be the devil.

The little schooner containing our heroic explorers, among whom was my maternal grandfather, Jacob Dennet, with his young wife, Betsey Smart, James Budge, who married a sister of hers, and four others, sailed up this magnificent bay, some fourteen miles in width, passing on the east the high promontory on which they themselves were compelled subsequently to perform a tour of duty in building the fort referred to above.

It was summer; nature was in her perfect mood. What a glorious vision burst upon those adventurers! An unbroken forest of pine and spruce down to the water's margin, the glassy bay, the grand unknown river rolling in at the head of the bay from an unexplored wilderness ; an unbroken silence, and all a mystery. These waters, now covered by white sails and plowed by numerous steamers, were then only broken by the paddles of the Tarratines, whose home was some forty miles above. It was to them a new world, with unknown and vast resources. They had gazed with awe upon the Camden mountains, rising abruptly from the bend of the bay ; and now they reach the outlet of the river at the Narrows, where is situated the village of Bucksport on the east, while Fort Knox frowns on the opposite shore. The forest was stocked with game — the moose, the red deer, the brown bear, with other furbearing animals, the beaver, otter, mink, and sable, while the waters literally swarmed with salmon, shad, and alewives. So plenty were the last named that, at a later period, my father has seined hundreds of barrels for compost.

Anchoring the schooner here at the Narrows, the company embark in canoes and push on to find the head of the tide-waters. They had heard of a place named Norumbega, (now Bangor,) and for that they were bound. Milton, in " Paradise Lost," had sung of this region but a little time before, when this whole bleak coast from Pemaquid to Passamaquoddy was called Norumbega: —

" Now from the north Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore, Bursting their brazen dungeon armed with ice, And snow and hail, and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas, and Csecias, and Argestes loud, And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn."

It is eighteen miles from the mouth of the river to the head of the tide-waters. Here they found a stream entering the river at right angles, and called io Scenes in My Life.

later the Kenduskeag. They land, and decide to locate upon this spot. All is a grand solitude. A mile above, at Treat's Falls, since named, they may see the blue smoke curling among the trees from Burrel's log-hut, but no signs of human habitation besides. The river here is about three hundred yards in width, and the tide ebbs and flows from ten to twelve feet. The tide flows up the Kenduskeag about a mile, where it meets and is checked by a rocky barrier which was early selected for a water-power. Among my first recollections is Mr. Nye's grist-mill at this point, while the pond above the dam was a famous skating field for the Bangor boys. A perpendicular cliff above the dam, rising some fifty to seventy-five feet, bore the poetic name of " Lover's Leap," a name which then filled my young heart with sympathy ; but as I have since seen many other rocks bearing the same name, I conclude they were so called because some one might take a leap from them and so quench the consuming flame.

The little band made their settlement in Bangor in 1771, and consisted of ten families. Of Jacob Dennet, my grandfather, the historian of those times remarks: "A shipwright, thickset, grum voice, industrious, honest, and generous ; his wife was a very sensible woman ; " and so I remember her, though she died when I was six or seven years of age. My only distinct recollection of my grandfather was when he slaughtered two calves for my father, and to my young and sympathetic heart it was horrible cruelty. I eschewed veal from that day. When he was born I am not informed. There are Denncts in

Early Days. n

Wrentham, Mass., and also in Portsmouth, Me. My impression is that my mother told me that she came from Portsmouth.

I have received a copy of the coat of arms of the Dennet family from Judge Dennet, of Kittery, Maine, which was sent from England by a branch of the family still residing there. The family was Norman French, and came over with William the Conqueror. On this coat of arms the crest is a boar's head; the quarterings, a field ermine with fleur de lis ; the motto, Per Dei providentium ; the name, d' Anet — and so at last it ran into our patronymic, Dennet. I know nothing of this old savage of the boar's head, but, no doubt, he was a rare fighter, pleased his king, William, and so for his "guerdon" took some poor Briton's lands as a gift from his master. But in that old semi-savage, " d'Anet," I have but little interest, nor am I anxious to know more of him. He may have died of a spear-thrust from some oppressed Briton's spear, or in some mad chase been thrown from his horse and dislocated his neck, or died peacefully in his bed.

Landing now in this remote and romantic region, when " the world was all before them where to choose," " and Providence their guide," my ancestor chose his lot on the bank of the river, the southerly line of which included the spacious cove, long known as " Dennet's Cove," since filled in, and where, in the city of Bangor, is now located the Maine Central Railroad Depot.

The elevated portion of his farm is the thickly built region through which runs Pleasant-street to-day. It was all heavily timbered by magnificent pines and sturdy hemlocks.

To us it would seem a herculean task to clear and prepare arable land in such a forest. But there is a wild excitement in this work, and many a man in the New World has spent his life in such toil, clearing a few acres and then selling his improvement and plunging into the wilderness to commence anew.

On the elevated plateau referred to above my grandfather built his first log-house, subsequently erecting upon the same spot a one-story frame house, which stood there long after my earliest recollection, and on which spot my mother was born in 1775, four years after their arrival and settlement.

The hardships of all first settlers were, of course, theirs to share. Breadstuff must be brought from Castine, or Fort Pownell, below. Venison was found in the woods and supplied by the Indians, and in the spring the river swarmed with fish, so that famine was kept at a distance. Pine timber was cut on the banks of the river, rolled into the water, and floated down to the bay to market ; and long since my time the whole region, now filled with fine dwellings, on the high lands back from the river, was covered with enormous pine stumps from which I have hacked many a hand-sled load of pitch kindlings.

Subsequently my grandfather built a wharf on the river bank, and erected a house at the head of it, on the steep bank, which remained until recently, when, to accommodate the European and North American Railroad, the street was cut down, and these old landmarks disappeared.

My maternal grandparents both lived until far past the allotted limit of human life, and died in peace. A china tea-pot without a handle, a three-legged stand, and a part of the old family Bible, which in my childhood I had often peered into, remain as the sum total of all that has come down to me from my heroic ancestors.

My father, Major Theodore Trafton, was a native of York, Maine. He was descended from a Trafton who came from England and settled in Dighton, near the Rhode Island boundary, and whose descendants still occupy the original homestead. I visited the spot in 1869, and found Mr. Benjamin Trafton still holding the homestead, with his mother, then ninety years of age, who told me that she was the sixth generation from the original settler. She died the following year. She had sent me a quart mug of common delf ware, which the first Trafton had brought from England. It was the old lady's boast that they had never heard of a Trafton accused of a criminal act, or of one who had disgraced the name. I cannot vouch for this, and yet, so far as I know, it is true. I did hear of a Captain Trafton in the rebel army, but. I trust he had stolen the name.

A member of this family immigrated to the Province of Maine, and from him sprang the Traftons of that part of New England. York, named after the old English city of that name, was selected by Sir Fernando Georges as the site of a great city, and laid out ten miles square. Its fine harbor, it was supposed, would speedily invite commerce, and the vast and unexplored region around it would sustain an immense export trade. Buildings were erected, slaves imported, plantations commenced, and all the future filled with hope — to die! There are laws governing these things stronger than the human will, and to them we must bow. York is now a small village of a few hundred inhabitants, while the ambition which planned the vast enterprise has vanished into air. There lies before me as I write a small neat package of hay cut by the hands of slaves on the " Rogers plantation," in York, more than one hundred and twenty-five years ago. My only brother, marrying a descendant of that family, came into possession of a part of the plantation with the old buildings, and on repairing the barn found some handfuls of hay stowed away on the upper beams in the roof, where it had been for a hundred years, and how much longer the family could not tell — that was over twenty years since. In front of the antique mansion is the family grave-yard, on one side the masters, on the other the slaves. " The high and the low are there, and the servant is free from his master." The last descendant of those slaves died in Portsmouth, N. H., only a few years since.

My father was born in 1776, in York, on a farm at " Ground-nut Hill," a short distance from York village. Not fancying farming, he went to an apprenticeship at blacksmithing, and on attaining his majority he also, hearing of the new Eldorado on the Penobscot, started for that region. Finding a promising field at Bangor, (not then named, but called Kenduskeag Plantation,) he decided there to set up his forge.

He erected a shop on the bank of the river on my grandfather's farm, and setting his anvil block and hanging his bellows, he performed the first " anvil chorus " ever heard in that wild region. The Indians found their curiosity greatly excited by the ring of the anvil, and would often crowd the shop, when my father would bring out from the fire a piece of glowing metal, a heavy blow upon which would send a shower of fiery sparks into the crowd, who would rush out screaming with fright. To them he was a " great medicine." He was a fine-looking man, as I recall him in his prime, about five feet eleven inches in height and very strongly built, with a large black eye, very piercing, and black hair. I have heard him say he never, in his youthful days, found the man who could lay him on his back. I recall him, in the days of his prosperity, arrayed in his regimentals — short clothes and a three-cornered hat, with black plume, his hair in a queue and powdered ; or when dressed for a party, in short clothes and silk hose, with silver shoe and knee buckles, a blue coat with gilt buttons, buff vest, and a white necktie. He was often mistaken for a clergyman when away from home.

But he was a hard worker ; early and late his hammer was heard smiting the anvil. At this time, about 1798, some six or seven hundred people were settled in and about this locality, and a large lumbering business was commenced. Of course, numerous teams of oxen were employed, and in the winter they must be shod. My father would toil the most of the night forging shoes and nails, then filling his i6 Scenes in My Life.

large leather saddle-bags, would mount his horse in the morning and visit the surrounding lumbering camps to shoe the cattle.

No man worked harder, or was more devoted to his business. His habits were good. I have often heard him say that he never took a glass of intoxicating liquor until after he was twenty-one years of age. He made money rapidly, erected a one-story house near his shop, married Margaret Dennet, my mother,* and started out in life. He had one strong passion which ' he transmitted to me, the love of that fearless animal, the horse. He would have the best to be found. Erecting a large stable, with stalls for twenty animals, he was able to gratify this passion. He had a splendid coal-black mare, which, from my mother's description, would have turned the head of Mr. Murray even. He was induced to sell it. A neighbor passing the house soon afterward put his head in at an open window, where my father was sitting, and called out, " What do you worship now, Trafton ? " " That boy ! " replied father, pointing to the cradle where lay my oldest brother.

He was elected captain of the first company of militia organized in the town, then commissioned major, which brought him more immediately in contact with the drinking customs of the day, and thus began his downward career.

His prosperity increased. He built and opened a retail store, which was a fatal error. He understood blacksmithing, and was master of this business ; but of the mysteries of trade he was wholly ignorant. He would ride to Boston on horseback to purchase goods, shipping them on some lumber vessel for the east. Soon, becoming more ambitious, he erected another and larger dwelling near the present ferry to Brewer, in which, on the first day of August, 18 10, I was born.

The old house stood on the same spot until a few years since, when it was removed to Main-street, and the basement fitted up for a store. In 1869 I visited it, and, by permission of the woman occupying it, went into the chamber where I first saw the light.

The year i8iowas a sad one for my mother. My father's drinking habits increased ; he neglected his business, contracted bad debts, and finally failed. The mental agony endured by my mother before my birth gave to me a temperament which has clouded my whole life : a depression of spirits, an apprehension of some coming evil, a desire to be alone, a distrust often of my friends. No one can tell the terrible conflicts in which I was engaged, even in early childhood, from this cause, then not at all understood.

How often in my early days I have burst into a flood of tears, and yet unable to assign a reason for it. I ever seemed to carry a heavy burden upon my heart, a singular sense of some responsibility which did not belong to me ; but this depression was sometimes followed by a corresponding elevation of spirits. As I grew in years I was obliged often to assume a cheerfulness I did not feel, and so came to be regarded as light-hearted. Poets sing of a "Careless Childhood," of "Happy Childhood," a state which I never experienced.

My childhood was a long-drawn sigh. At the time of my birth a cousin of my father's was at work for him whose name was Mark Trafton, after ward a brigadier-general, and for many years postmaster at Bangor. I was given his name, and he gave me a lamb for the compliment. But as this was too small a matter for my father to trouble himself about, the donor put it out for me to double once in four years, so that at twenty-one I should have a large flock of sheep.

This was my ship which was to come sailing into port on some happy day in the future. I well remember our childish discussions upon this subject, when I was regarded as the one of the family whose fortune was made. Alas for my childhood's dream ! When my flock numbered about twelve a man in Corinth by the name of Bean took them, failed in business, and my mutton went to pay his debts.

I was the fourth child of my mother. The first-born died in infancy. My memory runs back with great distinctness to my fourth year, though I have a dim consciousness of some things which occurred a year earlier : for instance, the marriage of a young woman living in our family, and the visit of an uncle, (Noah Trafton, from Old York, still living, June, 1877,) who brought a present of some apples from his orchard, and who, having lost his key, was obliged to break the lock of his trunk.

The year 18 12 opened darkly upon the community. War was declared by Congress against Great Britain, business was dull, trade stopped, and the people were reduced to a state of great destitution.

In September, 18 14, the people on the Penobscot were startled by the announcement of the approach of an expedition from Halifax for the subjugation of that region. The immediate cause of this movement was the entrance of the U. S. Frigate John Adams into the river to be repaired and refitted. She sailed up to Hampden, six miles below Bangor, got her armament of thirty-two guns out upon the wharf, and was rapidly being overhauled, when a fleet of gun-boats and transports with a force of twenty-five hundred men entered the bay. Castine, the first point of attack, fell into their hands ; Belfast, on the western shore of the bay, was occupied, and the forces pushed on up the river to burn or capture the John Adams. The troops were landed three miles below the wharf where lay the frigate, marched up about daylight on a foggy morning, met a small force of hastily collected militia under General Blake, which, after firing a few shots, took to the woods, when the crew of .the ship, seeing themselves likely to be surrounded and cut off, set her on fire, and retreated across the country for the Kennebeck.

As the flotilla came up the river firing upon the town the women and children fled into the interior, and the town surrendered. My mother took us three children two miles to the dwelling of a Mr. Lapish, where we found refuge. Very soon the crew of the frigate came hurrying along the road in their flight, and hardly had they passed ere the roll of British drums was heard, and a regiment of red coats swept around the point of " Thomas's Hill " in full pursuit. A horse, loose in the road, became alarmed, and was rushing backward and forward between the two bodies, when I, bent upon mischief, seized a stick, and as he galloped past gave him a cut, which he instantly repaid by a kick, which knocked me into blank unconsciousness. But for the absence of a shoe it would have made an end of me. When restored to consciousness, the red coats, giving up the pursuit of the seamen, had halted in front of the house, and an officer coming in for water offered me a pistol, saying, " Here, my little man, is a gun about big enough for you." We returned in a few days, and once more memory is stored with the images of burning vessels lying along the shores, while I can recall nothing else, not even the house in which we resided. I was now four years of age, and commenced attending school ; at first a private school, where an elderly female with the point of a knife-blade directed our wondering eyes to the mysterious characters A, B, C, the magic key to all we subsequently know. But while of this exercise I have a dim recollection only, I do most distinctly recall the day when I first carried an " English Reader" to school! proud period! I was out of the spelling-book !

On Union-street, a little west of the Bangor House, stands a brick school-house, and on its site was erected the first school-house in town ; a small, square, unpainted structure, with a hipped roof| seats rising on an inclined plane, and a huge fire-place fronting them. In this and a larger building subsequently erected on the same spot I received all the schooling I ever had, save a few months in the country, and a single term at the Maine Wesleyan Seminary.

The most vivid impression made upon my mind at this period was of a feat of truancy performed, illustrating the influence of boys over each other. Hearing the older ones speaking of running away from school I felt an ambition to try my capabilities in that line, and so one day my seat was vacant, and I, the ambitious truant, passed the entire forenoon in solitary meditation under an old causeway bridge not ten rods from my father's house. It was not, however, so satisfactory as to lead to a repetition.

But my horizon extended now, and life became more and more a reality, a painful fact. My childhood had no brightness, and I think now of it with a feeling of bitter sorrow. My poor father was helpless in the tightening folds of the python Intemperance. His property was all gone, and his business neglected. How distinctly I recollect the appearance of a sheriff in our dwelling to attach our old-fashioned tall clock, and the bitter tears I shed when it was borne away. We had two cows. I see them now, a small brindle and a white-faced red. My eyes, swimming in tears, followed the last as the officer drove her away. O, Rum, I owe thee and the human demons who furnish it to the drinker a terrible grudge ! When I was nine years old some of our friends conceived the idea of getting my father out into the country, away from his old haunts and associates, thinking that on a farm, with his trade, he might possibly recover himself out of the snare of the devil. Accordingly a farm, was leased in Corinth, sixteen miles from Bangor, where lived an aunt, a sister of my mother, and thither we removed. A shop was built, and my father found plenty of employment, while the farm was cultivated at the same time. Many an hour have I stood upon a box and blowed the bellows while my father smote the anvil. For a time he kept steadily at work, and might have done well but that the tempter followed him.

About the time of our removal to that town an orthodox deacon, by the name of Parker, also moved into the place, and opened a store where every thing was to be found, including rum. The temptation was too strong for my unhappy father. My mother sent me to the deacon to ask him not to sell liquor to my father ; and, can it be believed ? he simply laughed in my face. " That's the deacon for me," said the arch-fiend no doubt as he also grinned over his shoulder a ghastly smile.

My life in the country gave me a fine opportunity to indulge my love of nature. I learned all about the trees and shrubs ; I soon knew all the variety of feathered fowl and birds, with their habits. My happiest days were spent in the woods, alone. I could always amuse myself, and so did not often seek the society of other children. I was early a dreamer, fond of old tales ; and many an hour have I passed listening to my good mother's stories and old songs, among which was " Wolfe's Victory on the Plains of Abraham ; " and now, after threescore of years, these cheering lines run through my head : —

" Quebec, with all her pride.

Nothing can save her !

She must fall in our hands With all her treasure. ' 0, then,' replies brave Wolfe, ' I die with pleasure.' "

Books we had none, nor newspapers. News was circulated from mouth to mouth as it was caught up. I remember while we lived there my father came in one day with the announcement, " Old Bony is dead ! " Long months after that mighty spirit passed away on the lonely rock of St. Helena the fact slowly crept from lip to lip through the sparsely settled new world. My mother was a great Bonapartist, and filled my ears and fired my imagination with recitals of his battles.

In the winter we attended school for two or three months ; but our range of studies was limited, being confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic. It was difficult to procure school books. Adams' Arithmetic, Webster's Spelling book, the English Reader, and, for more advanced scholars, Murray's Grammar, were all we had.

John Bovee Dodds, once a student in the theological school in Bangor, then a country pedagogue, next a? Universalist preacher, and lastly a celebrated Spiritualist, was our teacher for two years, living in Levant, now Kehduskeag, and walking four miles and back daily. My brother and myself, he four years my senior, had the chores to do, the wood to prepare, and then, when not in school, to blow and strike for my father in the shop. A few years since I visited that region, found the old shop still standing and occupied as a blacksmith shop. I alighted from my carriage, went in, and asked the privilege of taking the bellows-pole and blowing a few moments on the same spot on which I had stood fifty years before.

We struggled on here for three years, although there was no improvement in my father's habits. He was in the toils, and could not extricate himself. He was the kindest hearted man when himself, but, under the influence of liquor, became perfectly frenzied. My poor mother! what a life was her's. She bore it as well as she could, hoping against hope.

I had a desire to tame a robin, but I must first have a cage ; but to make a cage a knife was necessary, and to procure this, money was needed. I had heard that grass-seed brought a high price, and had noticed growing along the fences and walls quantities of herds-grass, or timothy, not reached by the mower's scythe. Procuring a sickle I gleaned the fields far and near, brought home my spoils, carefully dryin- and thrashing it out, until at last I had six or eight quarts of clean seed. The nearest market was Levant M.lls, four miles distant. Taking my bag of seed upon my shoulder I walked off to find a pur chaser. I felt a little timid, as the whole distance was through an unbroken forest and the black bear was a frequent visitor in that region ; but the prospect of a jack-knife of my own gave courage to my trembling heart. I reached the store of Dr. Case, displayed my crop of seed, which was praised for its cleanness, and which, to my great delight, amounted to enough in value to purchase two knives, one of which I gave to my elder brother. Pocketing my treasure, I trudged back a rich lad.