out and bringing to light the incidents, trials, hardships and successes of the early movements of civilization on this continent. And now, the study and development of our history and antiquities have become leading and favorite pursuits among our people. Our first volume has been followed by three others, containing matter of great interest to the students of our history, and creditable to the Society: the third volume was published in 1853, the fourth in 1855, and the fifth will be published before the expiration of another year, containing the first printed edition of valuable documents relating to the early settlements between the Kennebec and the Penobscot rivers, which have recently been discovered in the State Department of New York. These are drawn from the records of the Duke of York's Province of Cornwall between the years 1664 the year of the Grant, and 1692, when it was incorporated with Massachusetts under its new charter, a period during which our annals of that region had been very defective. We are still quite deficient in the history of our ancient towns which have materials of the deepest interest to the antiquarian. We have nothing from Kittery and York, our earliest settlements, fields that would well repay a careful gleaning; nothing yet from Brunswick, an old and interesting locality, although we know that our indefatigable friend and member, McKeen, has gathered rich and copious materials for a perfect history of the place; nothing from Castine and that large territory east of the Penobscot river, which for many years was under the rule of the French, and calls loudly for an historical explorer. Few States, we may venture to assert, have so broad a field for interesting historical inquiry, as Maine. Her carly colonists were far from being homogeneous; no State less so. She acknowledges among her earliest settlers, English, German, Dutch and French, who all contributed to colonize and settle different parts of our coast, and of whom traces still remain. The English took possession of all the western part of the State from Piscataqua river to the Kennebec. Between the Kennebec and Penobscot, the French and English claimed, and ultimately held, jurisdiction, but the occupants were principally a combination of Dutch, German and English. East of the Penobscot, the French held exclusive possession under the Indian name of Norembegua, and afterwards, the French, of Acadie, until its union with Massachusetts in 1692, when Governor Phipps took possession of the country. The different parts have also borne different names; the western, while jointly held by Mason and Gorges, received the name of Laconia; after the division, in which it fell to Gorges, he gave it the name of New Somersetshire, from his own county in England: when he obtained a confirmation of his title from Charles I, in 1639 with powers of government, he gave it the name of Maine, in compliment to the Queen, a daughter of France, who held the Province of Mayne in that country as her dowry. A portion of this territory lying between Cape Porpus and Cape Elizabeth, granted to John Dye and others in 1631, fell into the hands of Alexander Rigby, in 1643, who established a government over it and gave it the name of Lygonia. Between the Kennebec and Penobscot, the country has borne the various names of Pemaquid, County of Cornwall, New Castle, and the Duke of York's Province. After the union, under the charter of 1691, the whole State was embraced in the County of York, and so continued unti 1760, when it was divided into the three Counties of York, Cumberland and Lincoln. 1 Our immigrants did not, like those of the other parts of New England, come here for the enjoyment of religious liberty, but for speculation-to fish and trade, and for a larger verge than they could have at home. The English settlers were generally conformists, their connection with the Church of England was not dissolved, and they continued to preserve that form of worship until they were overwhelmed by the superior power of their Puritan neighbor, Massachusetts. The French were Catholics, and maintained firmly their own peculiar forms, under the guidance and control of the powerful and enduring priests. The Germans were Lutherans, whose object was to occupy the vacant soil and improve their temporal condition; they were accompanied and followed by their faithful pastors, whose sterling principles and rigid doctrines made a durable impression upon the sound and rugged minds of their flocks, which has remained almost untinged by surrounding heresies to the present day. There are diversities and wildly interesting materials, to give a romantic hue to the pages of the philosophic historian, or point the story of the novelist and poet. Some of them, like the Acadian Spoliation, have found an eloquent tongue in the Evangeline of our native poet:— Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean. It seems to me appropriate to this occasion, and I therefore propose to devote the remainder of my address to brief notices of the former Presidents of this Society, all of whom have been connected in a greater or less degree with the conduct and progress of our civil affairs. And first, let me speak of the dead, Chief Justice Mellen, Stephen Longfellow and last, of our recently departed member, Albion K. Parris. Mr. Mellen was the eighth of the nine children of the Rev. John Mellen of Sterling, Massachusetts, and was born. in that town, October 11, 1764. His mother was Rebecca Prentiss, daughter of the Rev. John Prentiss of Lancaster, from which family his christian name was derived. His grandfather was Thomas Mellen, a farmer of Hopkinton in Massachusetts. His father graduated at Harvard College, in 1741, and having served long and faithfully in the ministerial office at Sterling and Hanover, in the Old Colony, he died at Reading, Massachusetts, in 1807, aged 85. His elder brother Henry and himself, were fitted for college by their father, and entered Harvard together in 1780, from which they took their degree in 1784, in the same class with John Abbott, long a professor in Bowdoin College, Silas Lee, a distinguished lawyer in Wiscasset, and others who have taken honorable positions in society. Henry, brilliant, witty, an attribute of the Prentiss stock, somewhat wayward, but beloved by all who knew him, established himself in the profession of law at Dover New Hampshire, where he died in 1809. Prentiss spent a year after his graduation, in Barnstable, as a private tutor in the family of Joseph Otis; he pursued his legal studies in the same place, with the eccentric lawyer, Shearjashub Bourne, and was admitted to the Bar in Taunton in October, 1788. On that occasion, in conformity with an ancient custom, he treated the Court and Bar with half a pail of punch. His own version of this treat was as follows, "according to the fashion of that day, on the great occasion, I treated the judge and all the lawyers with about half a pail of punch, which treating aforesaid was commonly called "the colt's tail." Judge Thacher of Maine, Judge Hall of Vermont and Daniel Davis, long settled in Portland, were also students in Mr. Bourne's office. He felt great pride in Solicitor Davis, who was a native of Barnstable, and he used to say, "I took special pains with Daniel. Mr. Mellen commenced practice in his native town, but removed in eight months to Bridgewater, where he continued until November, 1791. Not meeting with the success he desired, he again changed his domicil, and spent the winter and spring with his brother Henry in Dover. From that place, in July, 1792, he removed to Biddeford, in this State, by the advice of his firm and constant friend, the late Judge Thacher, who was then a Representative in Congress from Maine. Here he commenced that sphere of successful and honorable practice, which placed him at the head of the Bar in Maine, and at the head of its highest judicial tribunal. His beginning in Biddeford was of the most humble kind, and may give an idea of what professional men had to encounter in that day. He thus described it to me: "I opened my office in one of old Squire Hooper's front chambers, in which were then arranged three beds and half a table and one chair. My clients had the privilege of sitting on some of the beds. In this room I slept, as did also sundry travelers frequently, the house being a tavern." What his library was may be inferred from this humble office apparatus. The population of Biddeford did not then exceed eleven hundred, and that of the whole county, which embraced a large part of Oxford, was about twenty-eight thousand; all served by three attornies, viz: Dudley Hubbard of Berwick and Messrs. Thacher and Mellen at Biddeford. There was then one term of the Common Pleas Court held at Biddeford, and one term of |
