My family has been in Maine a long time, but few people know that it is 100% attributed to firewood. I really goes back to the Mayflower, some sheep, being a tailor by trade in a cold new world, but the exciting start happens in Cambridge Mass, a town my Great Grandfather founded as the first settler. Ultimately Harvard College began in that town, and in the 1600's, had 157 fireplaces they had to keep stoked with firewood. To meet that demand they owned their own ship that plied the waters between Cambridge, Mass and what today is Belfast, Maine. Here they cut the hardwood that grew beside the protected harbor, and hauled it continuously back to Cambridge, Mass for winter heat. At one point our ancestor made the trip to log, but never returned, instead homesteading here and intermingled with the Indians. (Keep your family close, and your enemies even closer, has even better meaning for us if you ever saw my high cheek bones). That squatting on the Kings land came into play a few years later when in 1746 while fighting for King at the Luisburg Siege, my Great-Grandfather lost his life in battle, for his loss the King granted his father who also served in the war, land here in Maine. This was a decisive victory, and is what pushed the French down to New Orleans ultimately. Already homesteading/squatting here, they knew where the best soil was, and settled down. Today we officially place our farm's establishment as 1746, though it was actually much earlier, in the 1600's sometime. Hardly loyal, during the American Revolution we traded sides, and thus were allowed to keep our land. In 1800 we put axe to tree with the sole intent to clear forest into farmland, not merely homesteading type subsistence farming. During this time some amazing feats were done in my opinion. My Great Uncle says that "him and my chum brother felled 10 acres of land and burned the brush in one summer in 1838", quite the feat considering they only had an axe and ox; the cross-cut saw was not used in the woods until 1898. And the majority of the rock walls in New England were built between 1820-1850. That is pretty impressive since its been said the rock walls in Maine alone could build a rock wall from Maine to California, 3 feet high and 3 feet wide, and the ones in New England could encircle the equator...3 times! That is a lot of rock wall building in 30 years! Land clearing hit its peak in 1910 when 90% of the land here was field and only 10% forest, but as the industrial revolution took over, and America had a insatiable appetite for paper, New England stepped up. In fact in 1947, New England had 147 paper mills...its peak. Today with the demand for paper waning (when was the last time anyone ever read a newspaper), demand for farmland is increasing, and as such forest is once again being cleared into farmland. That includes this farm! In 1838 my Great Uncle said my Great Grandfather "was never able to clear the land in his lifetime", and honestly we have never been able to achieve this either. Even with skidder and chainsaw, the forest grows at a faster rate then I can cut it off. In the mean time, fire wood is still being cut, along with pulpwood and logs. So over almost 400 years, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Fascinating tale, and it's great that you are writing it all down. Funny to think the moving firewood by ship from Maine to Cambridge was easier than moving it overland from a closer source.
There is a Mayflower descendant at my mom's senior home. Nancy is 95, and one day she told me that Isaac Allerton was her ancestor. I looked him up, and sure enough! He set up a couple of trading posts in Castine and Machias, but fell out with the Plymouth colony over shady business dealings.
It can be nice to look at one's family history. We know much about one side of our family but sadly not much about my wife's side. One tidbit about my wife's grandfather is that recently it appears there is some work being done near us on an old coal mine and her grandfather used to work in that mine. Few around here even know there was once a mine there.
The key thing to remember is that EVERYONE has the same amount of history as me, they just do not know it, or know it yet. The only real reason we know ours is because mine follows back through the first born son where it was traditional that they end up with the farm. So we stayed put, as where as other family members moved on to states like California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Washington. Last week I had the misfortune of having some Chex cereal and biting into a rock. So I called General Mills concerned that others might get the same thing, and was interested to see that on their history page they noted that it all started "on a rocky farm in Maine". So on the telephone I told the customer representative that we are still farming "back east", and still raising grains; in fact, I grew a crop of oats last year. We are proud of our family history for sure, but back in the 1800's someone noted our family "was God-Fearing Pioneers of the frontier" as Maine was called back then, and the fact that we hold the bible up in reverence today, is what I think really matters.
I am thinking it was just a tax write off. (I am joking regarding the tax write off, but I do agree with you, it does seem odd).
My great grandfather was a Pole, and was conscripted by the Russian army during WW 1. My great grandmother followed, with my grandfather, and found her husband in Siberia, and they travelled across the Pacific to San Francisco, and from there to Holyoke, MA, where they settled.
my paternal grandfathers family was run out of Ireland for being horse thieves. They eventually settled in Nova Scotia, Im told some of the family still lives there on a horse farm of all things.
