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                               CAMPOBELLO

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                          AN HISTORICAL SKETCH

                                   BY

                           KATE GANNETT WELLS




     For those who are desirous of exact knowledge concerning the "Story
of the Boundary Line," and the political history of Eastport and its
vicinity, there is no more comprehensive work than that by William Henry
Kilby, Esq., entitled, "Eastport and Passamaquoddy." To him, and also to
two friends who kindly gave me the names of a few of the Island flowers,
do I express my gratitude.




                              Campobello.


THE mysterious charms of ancestry and yellow parchment, of petitions to
the admiralty and royal grants of land, of wild scenery and feudal
loyalty, of rough living and knightly etiquette, have long clustered
round a little island off the coast of Maine, called on the charts
Passamaquoddy Outer Island, but better known under the more pleasing
name of Campobello.

=Its Discovery.= It belongs to the region first discovered by the
French, who, under Sieur De Monts, in the spring of 1604, sailed along
the shores of Nova Scotia, and gave the name of Isle of Margos (magpies)
to the four perilous islands now called The Wolves; beheld Manthane (now
Grand Manan); sailed up the St. Croix; and established themselves on one
of its islands, which they called the Isle of St. Croix. The severity of
the winter drove them in the following summer to Annapolis, and for more
than a hundred and fifty years little was known of this part of the
country, though the River St. Croix first formed the boundary between
Acadia and New England, and later the boundary between the Provinces of
Nova Scotia and Massachusetts Bay.

Campobello itself could scarcely be said to have a history till towards
the end of the eighteenth century. Moose roamed over the swamps and
looked down from the bold headlands; Indians crossed from the mainland
and shot them; straggling Frenchmen, dressing in skins, built huts along
the northern and southern shores, till civilization dawned through the
squatter sovereignty of two men, Hunt and Flagg. They planted the apple
trees whose gnarled branches still remain to tell of the winter storms
that howled across the plains, and converted the moose-yards into a
field of oats, for the wary, frightened animals vacated their hereditary
land in favor of these usurpers. Their mercantile skill taught them how
to use, for purposes of trade rather than for private consumption, the
shoals of fish which it was firmly believed Providence sent into the
bay.

=Post Office.= There were not enough inhabitants to justify the
maintenance of a post office till 1795; then the mails came once in two
weeks. Lewis Frederic Delesdernier was the resonant, high sounding name
of the first postmaster who lived at Flagg's Point (the Narrows). But
when a post office was opened in Eastport, in 1805, this little Island
one was abandoned, or rather it dwindled out of existence before the
larger one established by Admiral Owen at Welsh Pool.

=Welsh Pool.= The Narrows, because of its close proximity to the
mainland, was a favorite place of abode in those early days. Yet Friar's
Bay, two miles to the north, was a safe place for boats in easterly
storms; and thus, before the advent of the Owens, a hamlet had clustered
around what is now called Welsh Pool. A Mr. Curry was the pioneer. The
house opposite the upper entrance to the Owen domain was called Curry
House until it became "the parsonage," a name abandoned when the present
rectory was built. Curry traded with the West Indies, and owned, it is
said, two brigs and a bark.

People also gathered at the upper end of the Island, Wilson's Beach, and
on the road between Sarawac and Conroy's Bridge, where there were
several log houses.

=Garrison's Grandparents.= That some kind of a magistrate or minister
even then was on the Island is attested by the fact that William Lloyd
Garrison's grandparents, Andrew Lloyd and Mary Lawless, chanced to come
to Nova Scotia on the same ship from Ireland, and were married to each
other "the day after they had landed at Campobello, March 30, 1771."
Lloyd became a commissioned pilot at Quoddy, and died in 1813. His wife
was the first person buried in Deer Island. Their daughter Fanny was
Garrison's mother.

Many of the early inhabitants were Tories from New York. Some were of
Scotch origin, especially those who lived on the North Road.

=Captain Storrow.= Among these settlers was a young British officer,
Captain Thomas Storrow, who, while he was prisoner of war, fell in love
with Ann Appleton, a young girl of Portsmouth, N.H. In vain did her
family object, "British officers being less popular then than now; but
young love prevailed," and the marriage, which took place in 1777, "was
a happy one." Captain Storrow took his bride to England; but after a
while sailed for Halifax, where they remained "nearly two years." In
1785 they went to St. Andrews. Through the courtesy of their grandson,
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the following extract is given from
a manuscript sketch of the life of Mrs. Storrow, prepared by her niece,
Mrs. Norman Williams:--

=False Sale.= "Soon after this (1785) they removed to Campobello, which
had been purchased by Mr. Butler and Captain Storrow. There were two
houses on the Island, one for each family, and here they lived very
happily and pleasantly. There was always a garrison at St. Andrews, and
a ship of war stationed near Campobello; so Captain Storrow had
congenial society, and they had many pleasant lady friends, and, as
their hospitality was unbounded, they were seldom without company at one
or the other of the houses.... All was bright and prosperous. But a
change came. In 1790 or 1791 the Butlers and Captain Storrow had gone to
Halifax on business, and Mrs. Storrow was left alone with her children
on the Island, when a notice was served to her that she must quit the
Island immediately, as it had been sold to them under a false title, and
the real owner had come to take possession. The Island had been granted
by William Pitt to his former tutor, David Owen, a hard man who would
not move from the position he had taken. Mrs. Storrow sent to my father,
who was her husband's lawyer, and he, with some other gentlemen,
chartered a sloop and brought the family to St. Andrews, where a house
was already prepared for them. Here they remained a year or more. But
Capt. Storrow's finances were so crippled by the loss of Campobello that
he and his family sailed for Jamaica, where he had a small estate."

=William Owen.= David Owen, to whom this manuscript referred, was a
cousin of William Owen, through whom the Island became connected by
royal gift and by romance with the fortunes of his immediate
descendants. As naval officer William Owen had been "in all the service
and enterprise where ships, boats, and seamen were employed," had
labored at Bengal for the re-establishment of the affairs of the East
India Company, and had fought under Clive. At the blockade of
Pondicherry he lost his right arm, and the Sunderland, to which he
belonged, having foundered, he was ordered to England. Broken in spirit
and weak in body, the copy of what was presumably his memorial to the
Admiralty in 1761 has a piteous sound. It begins:--

=His Petition.= "My Lord, permit me, with the most profound respect, to
lay by your Lordship a true State of my past service, with the accidents
that happened to me during the same, praying your Lordship not to judge
hard of me, in being reduced to the disagreeable necessity of doing that
myself which would appear in a much more favorable light were any of my
Friends in Town who could take the Liberty of Introducing me to your
Lordship." After recounting the services he rendered, and the injuries
he received, he ends with these words: "I beg you will be pleased to
represent to the Right Honorable the Lords of the Admiralty that I am
the person mentioned in Admiral Steuen's [the spelling is illegible]
Letter to have lost my Right Arm, when I had the Honor of Commanding one
of the Divisions of Boats ordered by him to cut out the Two French
Ships, La Baline and Hermione, from under the Guns of Pondicherry, on
the 7th of